And so we come at last to "the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Christ, and the supreme law of ethics, the demonstrably final law of ethics, is laid down—Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Of course the words come from the Old Testament. Some critics used to say: "You will find in the Rabbis almost everything, if not quite everything, which you find in the teaching of Christ." "Yes," added Wellhausen, "and how much else besides." It was the singling out of this great principle and laying the whole emphasis upon it that made the difference.
To a man who believes that Christ came to set up the Kingdom of God, clearly neither the Conservative nor Liberal Party can appeal with any compelling force of divinity. How far the Labour Party may appeal must depend, I should think on the man's knowledge of economic law. As Dean Inge says, Christ's sole contribution to economics is "Beware of covetousness"—an injunction which the Labour Party has not yet quite taken to its heart. But Dr. Temple has a right to challenge his clerical critics for Christ's sanction of the present system, which is certainly founded on covetousness and produces strikingly hideous results.
His theological position may be gathered from the following reply which he made, as a Canon of Westminster, to a representative of the Daily Telegraph nearly two years ago. I do not think he has greatly changed. He was asked how far the Church could go in meeting that large body of opinion which cannot accept some of its chief dogmas. He replied:
I can speak freely, because I happen to hold two of the dogmas which most people quarrel about—the virgin birth and the physical resurrection. There are other heresies floating about! One of our deans is inclined to assert the finitude of God, and another to deny anything in the nature of personality to God or to man's spirit! Rather confusing! Philosophic questions of this kind, however, do not greatly concern mankind. To believe in God the Father is essential to the Christian religion. Other doctrines may not be so essential, but they must not be regarded as unimportant. Personally I wish the Church to hold her dogmas, because I would do nothing to widen the gulf which separates us from the other great Churches, the Roman and the Eastern. The greatest political aim of humanity, in my opinion, is a super-state, and that can only come through a Church universal. How we all longed for it during the war!—one voice above the conflict, the voice of the Church, the voice of Christ! If the Pope had only spoken out, with no reference to the feelings of the Austrian Emperor!—what a gain that would have been for religion. But the great authentic voice never sounded. Instead of the successor of St. Peter we had to content ourselves with the American Press—excellent, no doubt, but hardly satisfying.
Let me tell you a rather striking remark by an Italian friend of mine, an editor of an Italian review, and not a Roman Catholic. He was saying that every Church that persisted for any time possessed something essential to the religion of Christ. I asked him what he saw in the Roman Church that was essential. He replied at once, "The Papacy." I was surprised for the moment, but I saw presently what he meant. The desire of the world is for universal peace, universal harmony. Can that ever be achieved by a disunited Christendom? The nations are rivals. Their rivalry persisted at the Peace Conference, disappointing all the hopes of idealists. Must it not always persist, must not horrible carnage, awful desolation, ruinous destruction, and, at any rate, dangerous and provocative rivalries, always dog the steps of humanity until Christendom is one?
Personally, I think reunion with Rome is so far off that it need not trouble us just now; there are other things to do; but I would certainly refrain from anything which made ultimate reunion more difficult. And so I hold fast to my Catholic doctrines. But I tell you where I find a great difficulty. A man comes to me for adult baptism. I have to ask him, point by point, if he verily believes the various doctrines of the Church, doctrines which a man baptised as an infant may not definitely accept and yet remain a faithful member of Christ's Church. What am I to say to one who has the passion of Christian morality in his heart, but asks me whether these verbal statements of belief are essential? He might say to me, "It would be immoral to assert that I believe what I have not examined, and to examine this doctrine so thoroughly as to give an answer not immoral would take a lifetime. Am I to remain outside the Church till then?" Here, I think, the Church can take a step which would widen its influence enormously. No man ought to be shut out of Christ's Church who has the love of God and the love of humanity in his heart. That seems to me quite clear. I don't like to say we make too much of the creeds, but I do say that we don't make half enough of the morality of Christ. That's where I should like to see the real test applied.
What I should like to see would be a particular and individual profession of the Beatitudes. I should like to see congregations stand up, face to the East, do anything, I mean, that marks this profession out as something essential and personal, and so recite the Beatitudes. There might be a great sifting, but it would bring home the reality of the Christian demand to the heart and conscience of the world. After all, that's our ideal, isn't it?—the City of God. If we all concentrated on this ideal, realising that the morality of Christ is essential, I don't think there would be much bother taken, outside professional circles, about points of doctrine.
Then, writes the interviewer, arose the question of fervour. "Can the City of God be established without some powerful impulse of the human heart? Can it ever be established, for example, by the detached and self satisfied intellectual priggishness of the subsidised sixpenny review, or by the mere violence of the Labour extremist's oratory? Must there not be something akin to the evangelical enthusiasm of the last century, something of a revivalist nature? And yet have we not outgrown anything of the kind?