That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.
The ideal of Christianity is not the abolition of inequality (only a certain sort of social theorists are insane enough to expect that). All men are born unequal in a variety of ways, physical, intellectual, moral; and under any form of society that so far has been invented they are born in social classes which remain very hard realities in spite of our theories. What Christianity aims at accomplishing is to transcend these inequalities, natural and artificial, by raising men to a state of spiritual equality, a state which ensures true and full enjoyment of all the privileges of the child of God. In this state there is open to all the gift of sanctifying grace which is the possession of God now, and in the future will unfold into the capacity of the complete participation of the life of heaven. This belongs to, is within the grasp of, any child, any ignorant peasant, any toiler, as much as it is within the grasp of bishop or priest or Religious. And this much--and how much it is!--the Church has succeeded in accomplishing. It may be slow in offering the riches of the Gospel to the unconverted world, but where it has presented the Gospel, it presents it to all men as a Gospel of salvation and sanctification. When tempted to discouragement let us remember that whatever the shortcoming of the Church, it is yet true that every man, woman and child in these United States of America can through its instrumentality, become a saint whenever he desires. But, naturally, to become a saint, effort is necessary.
Where the Church has failed is not in the offer of salvation and sanctity, but in removing some of of the obvious obstacles to its attainment by many to whom it appeals, to whom its divine mission is. It has not succeeded in convincing us that we are members one of another, that is, it has not succeeded in persuading us to act upon what we profess in any broad way. The Church is not a fellowship in any comprehensive sense. The divisions which run through secular society and divide group from group run through it also. The parish which should be the exemplification of the Christian brotherhood in action is not so. Too often a parish is known as the parish of a certain social group. There are parishes to which people go to get "into society." Very likely they do not succeed, but that is the sort of impression that the parish membership has made upon them. Then there are parishes to which people "in society" would not be transferred. There are churches in which no poor person would set foot, not that they would be unwelcome, but that they would feel out of place. So long as such things are true, our practice of brotherhood has not much to commend of it.
And when we go about setting things right I am not sure that we do not mostly make them worse. I do not believe that it is the business of the Church to set about the abolition of inequalities and the getting rid of the distinctions between man and man. Apart from the waste of time due to attempting the impossible, what would be gained? Pending the arrival of the social millenium we need to do something; and that something, it seems to me a mistake to assume must be social. "We must bring people together": but what is gained by bringing people together when they do not want to be together, and will not actually get together when you force them into proximity. There is nothing more expressive of the failure of well-meant activity than a church gathering where people at once group themselves along the familiar lines and decline to mix, notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of clergy and zealous ladies to bring them together. The thing is an object lesson of wrong method.
Is there a right method? There must be, though no one seems to have found it yet. There is in any case a right point of departure in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from our present point of view, counts, the fact that we are Christians. Suppose one learns to meet all men and all women simply on the basis of their religion; when that forms the bond that unites us when we come together, we have at once common grounds of interest in the life and activities of the Body of Christ. Suppose the millionaire going down town in his motor sees his clerk walking and stops and picks him up, and instead of talking constrainedly about the weather or about business, he begins naturally to talk to him about spiritual matters. Why could they not talk about the Mission that has just been held, or the Quiet Day that is in prospect? One great trouble, is it not? is that we fight shy of talking to our fellow-Christians of the interests that we really have in common and try to put intercourse on some other ground where we have little or nothing in common. The things that should, and probably do, vitally interest us, we decline to talk about at all. We are so stiff and formal and restrained in all matter of personal religious experience that we are unable to express the fact of Christian Brotherhood. The fact that you smile at the presentment of the case, that you cannot even imagine yourself talking about your spiritual experience with your clerk or your employer, shows how far you are from a truly Christian conception of Brotherhood.
Our Lord's words that we are making our subject indicate the paramount importance that He laid upon the acceptance of God's will as the ultimate rule of life. "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother, and my sister, and my brother." "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." That is the common ground on which we are all invited to stand, the ground of a common loyalty to God, of intense zeal for the cause of God. Our Lord gave His whole life to that cause. As His disciples watched Him on an occasion, they remembered that it was written: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Zeal is not a very popular quality because it is always disturbing the equanimity and self-complacency of lukewarm people. And then, we dislike to be thought fanatics. But I fancy that there will always be a touch of the fanatic about any very zealous Christian, and it is not worth while to suppress our zeal for fear of the world's judgment upon it. What we have to avoid is the misdirection of zeal. There is, no doubt, a zeal which is "not according to knowledge." We need to be sure, in other words, that our zeal is a zeal for God, and not a zeal for party or person or cause. It is no doubt quite easy to imagine that we are seeking to do God's will when we are merely seeking to impose on our own will. Self-seeking is quite destructive of the friendship and service of God. The Kingdom whose interests we are attempting to forward may turn out to be a Kingdom in which we expect to sit on the right hand or the left of the throne because of the brilliance of the service rendered.
Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to our relation to our heavenly Father. Then have we brought life to that complete simplicity which is near akin to peace. When we have learned in deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think, we have little difficulty in making up our minds. Suppose that a boy has to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called the whole question should be settled. In fact in most cases it is far from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained. There is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to be decided. It is so all through life. In most questions of life's decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices? Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest. It is our weakness, or the sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will. We do not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories. Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no doubt that He has many things to suffer there. But He is there, and will suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there being supreme.
Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking. I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly into God's hands than it is to so surrender some one we love. I suppose that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance that her mind went. But surrender to the will of God means complete surrender of ourself and ours. It means absolute confidence in God, it means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of his mother. It means that we trust God.
Rose-Mary, Sum of virtue virginal,
Fresh Flower on whom the dew of heaven downfell;
O Gem, conjoined in joy angelical,
In whom rejoiced the Saviour was to dwell:
Of refuge Ark, of mercy Spring and Well,
Of Ladies first, as is of letters A,
Empress of heaven, of paradise and hell--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
O Star, that blindest Phoebus' beams so bright,
With course above the empyrean crystalline;
Above the sphere of Saturn's highest height,
Surmounting all the angelic orders nine;
O Lamp, that shin'st before the throne divine,
Where sounds hosanna in cherubic lay,
With drum and organ, harp and cymbeline--
Mother, of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
O Cloister chaste of pure virginity,
That Christ hath closed 'gainst crime for evermo';
Triumphant Temple of the Trinity,
That didst the eternal Tartarus o'erthrow;
Princess of peace, imperial Palm, I trow,
From thee our Samson sprang invict in fray;
Who, with one buffet, Belial hath laid low--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
Thy blessed sides the mighty Champion bore,
Who hath, with many a bleeding wound in fight,
Victoriously o'erthrown the dragon hoar
That ready was his flock to slay and smite;
Nor all the gates of hell him succour might,
Since he that robber's rampart brake away,
While all the demons trembled at the sight--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
O Maiden meek, chief Mediatrix for man,
And Mother mild, full of humility,
Pray to thy Son, with wounds that sanguine ran,
Whereby for all our trespass slain was he.
And since he bled his blood upon a tree,
'Gainst Lucifer, our foe, to be our stay,
That we in heaven may sing upon our knee--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway,
Hail, Pearl made pure; hail, Port of paradise;
Hail, Ruby, redolent of rays to us;
Hail, Crystal clear, Empress and Queen, hail thrice;
Mother of God, hail, Maid exalted thus;
O Gratia plena, tecum Dominus;
With Gabriel that we may sing and say,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus--
Mother of Christ, O Mary, hail, alway.
William Dunbar,
XV-XVI. Cents.