A second question is now propounded respecting the Christian Gospel. "The Gospel of Christ" is spoken of in a connection which seems to indicate that Luther and Augustine were equally, in the writer's opinion, the setters forth of a "gospel." Is this an unintentional disclosure of his estimate of our blessed Lord,—"Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God," and no more than that? For [the eighth Letter] contains a sneer at the Gospel that He is our Advocate with the Father, as one to mend the world with. A confused question follows, which may mean either, that it is in the first place desirable that the Gospel should be put into plain words, or, that the first principles of the Gospel should be put into plain words. Its probable meaning is, "Is it not desirable that religious teaching should be divested of any mysteries?" The extraordinary supposition that the Gospel is intended to be set forth in the Thirty-nine Articles can only be equalled by a supposition that a treatise on military tactics is embodied in the Articles of War. Perhaps even some of the axiomatic principles of mathematics, such as that "a point is that which hath no parts," though laid down in "plain words and short terms," might sorely perplex "simple persons."
But several fallacies underlie this second question. The fallacy that the moral principles of our nature are necessarily connected with the extent of our intellectual capacities; the fallacy that Divine Truths can be adequately expressed through the inaccurate instrument of human language; the fallacy that deep things are necessarily made plain by the use of plain words; the fallacy that everything upon which we act is necessarily understood. A plain man does not refuse to use the telegraph because he may know nothing about the Correlation of Force, or a simple person to travel because "space" is beyond his comprehension. If the Gospel is, as St. Paul says it is, a revelation of the power of God unto salvation, an amount of mystery must necessarily surround it. Since it is impossible that the Divine Nature should be to us other than a mystery, a revelation of Divine purposes such as is the Gospel as understood by the Church, must remain mysterious also. Only upon the supposition that our Lord was the teacher of a high but still human morality can we remove all mystery from the Christian Gospel, if it still deserve the name. Such teaching might be conveyed in plain words and short terms, but it would cease to be a Gospel which angels desire to look into, and could hardly be described as the "manifold wisdom of God," or be the story of the "love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
The Gospel, as the Church understands it, rests upon the revealed fact of the Incarnation, or the union of the Infinite with the Finite, that He who is very God of very God became man in order to introduce the Divine possibility of manhood being made to partake of the Divine nature; and so long as the triumphal chant ascends that "the Catholic Faith is this," so long will the Church's Faith be veiled indeed with mystery, and so long will she continue to gather within her bounds the humble and holy men of heart, who are content to say, "I cannot understand: I love." That "God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him" are short and plain words enough, and Gospel enough, surely, but the depth of their meaning is unfathomable by even the most cultivated understanding, to which the power of God and the wisdom of God may appear to be but foolishness.
This Letter, after endorsing the expressions of the preceding one, deals apparently with Capital and Labour. The clergy, if not required to divide the inheritance among their brethren, or to actually serve tables, are, taking "Property is theft" as their text, to resolutely and daily inquire how the dinners of their flock are earned. The gist of the Letter seems to be that the worker earns and the capitalist steals his dinner. It is really possible that the clergy do constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake, even though they may not subscribe to all the articles of some peculiar schemes of social science, nor hold some singular doctrines as to political economy. Doubtless were they to assimilate their conduct to that of an injudicious district-visitor, they would have to take a new view of "life and its sacraments," whatever this expression may mean.
It would seem as if the writer had yet to learn that a Christian Church may exist teaching the most dogmatic definitions of doctrine, binding, even in this respect, burdens on men's shoulders grievous to be borne, while its members may be patterns of self-denial in "offices of temporal ministry to the poor." He does not appear to regard with favour the "Evangelistic sect of the English Church;" if this is intended for the "Evangelical" sect, Charles Kingsley could say, in a certain place, of its founders, "They were inspired by a strange new instinct that God had bidden them 'to clothe the hungry and feed the naked.'" Yet these men thought that "justification by faith only" was the Gospel they were "to carry to mend the world with, forsooth."
This concluding Letter calls but for slight remark,—of many portions we feel O si sic omnia! That there is much sorrowful truth underlying the unmeasured denunciations which have gone before few will care to deny. Few there are who will not pray to be kept from the evils which the writer discerns, and against which he inveighs. Such will be the first to regret that the Letters, as they read them, seem to fall short of the fulness of the Catholic Faith. "The holy teachers of all nations:" was our blessed Lord but one of them? There is nothing in the Letters to show that "the full force and meaning" of Gospel teaching is concerned with anything beyond wealth, and comfort, and national prosperity, and domestic peace. Preaching the acceptable year of the Lord is something more surely than an invective against usury.
We read that in old times Bezaleel was filled for his own work with the Spirit of God, but we do not read that he aspired to become a religious teacher; and when we are told by one eminent in Art that a Church nineteen centuries old has yet to learn that the "will of the Lord" is a sanctification which brings comfort and wealth in its train, we think of a Moses who esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, and then of a Paul who counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.