The Church of the future in England, and probably in Russia, will have to come into alliance with what may be called the right side of the theatre. For occasionally in the theatre people worship as much as others do in the Church. Many young people whose families have lapsed from the Church find their religious life functionised in the book, the drama, the opera, the symphony. They are not communicants in the literal sense, they are outside the church walls and the shut church doors, but they are inside the living Church. They have a common word with people inside church walls. Their chorus of praise swells from the other side of the walls, and in some countries the secular chorus of praise to God has considerably more volume than the official ecclesiastical chorus. Somehow in church one rather resents the choir, especially in the Te Deum, when they are singing it to some “God-forsaken” curious tune that a pedant musician has chosen. It is good when the whole church can lift one great voice. And outside the church the greater congregation rather resents the church-goers. They would sing Te Deum also.
The relation of Church and Stage exhibits the confusion of religious values at present existing. The same confusion exists with regard to the Church and Literature—many of the great classics of Russian literature, like Gogol’s Dead Souls, the monks would regard it a sin to read. The ecclesiastical Church takes no useful stand with regard to what is helpful, what harmful, in past and present literature; it is left for the living Church to find out for itself and do what it can without organisation. Even in the domain of Holy Writ there is a confusion of what the living Church believes, and what mere ecclesiasticism lays down. At least one fundamental idea in Christianity has been overlaid, and, as it were, frustrated by the Church itself—the idea of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost has been conventionalised and made terrible. It has become the most inscrutable and awe-inspiring aspect of the Trinity, whereas it should be the most familiar and consoling, Christ saying good-bye to his disciples in that last long sweet talk where He calls them friends, tells them that after He is gone away from them there will come a new consolation, the vision of Truth.
“I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, ... the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.... If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.... When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.”
And in the cross-examination before Pilate, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.... To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”
Therein lies the true idea of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit—it is the vision of Heavenly Truth that gives the lie to worldly values, worldly truth. By virtue of this Holy Spirit the blind see, though they have no eyes, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the dead live, mortality itself is disproved. The mysteries of the Pentecostal mitres, of the gift of tongues, and the conventionalised notion of what is called the “sin against the Holy Ghost,” have stood in the way of the simple and beautiful conception of the comforting vision of Truth. The Church, with its keys of heaven and hell, and its arrogation of the power of anathema and excommunication, has preferred to lay its emphasis on those texts which may seem to imply the dreadfulness of offence against a certain more inscrutable aspect of the Trinity. There is nothing in the Gospels but love of man, forgiveness of man, and nothing is more pitiful than the man who, having a glimpse of the Truth, yet denies it or wilfully confuses it with magic or unclean power.
But the Filioque clause of the Creed is alone sufficient to exemplify the confusion of ecclesiasticism and the living Church. There are many who think that the two Churches of England and Russia are kept apart by this clause alone. England holds that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from the Father and from the Son, Russia that it proceeds from the Father alone. Russia’s basis is St. John, XV. 26, “... the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.” “What does it matter how it is put?” cries the living Church. But ecclesiastical pedantry is strongly entrenched, and whenever the question of the intercommunion of the two Churches is mentioned there arises that fatal phrase—“Filioque—and from the Son.”
“Does not one of your Thirty-nine Articles lay down that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son? And is not assent to the Thirty-nine Articles obligatory upon your clergy? Why, then....” To which one can only answer in one’s heart:
Thirty-nine Articles,
Ye precious little particles,
And did God really make the world by you?