A Wayfarer's Faith: Aspects of the common basis of religious life

by T. Edmund Harvey

But after two generations the position had wholly changed, and to be a Christian was a penal offence which, if adhered to, was punishable with death. This necessarily involved a need for greater precaution, for more order and wise management in the assembling of the Church. [p.49] And in the early days when the churches lived in constant expectation of the immediate end of the age and the outward coming of Christ to set up His Kingdom, they would naturally lay little stress on church order; the struggle of the church militant was but to last a brief time more; there was no need for much organisation, or for any other connection between one church and another than the friendly ties of love. One church might have its prophets and teachers, another only presbyters or a bishop and deacons; others of larger size and needs might have ail these officers together with deaconesses and widows. But no one was anxious about such differences. Travelling apostles and evangelists formed living links of love betwixt church and church, and occasionally, individuals and churches sent letters to each other. No other bond was needed.

But when it became slowly more evident that the Church might yet have to continue long years at work in the world before the consummation came, and when it seemed to the leaders that they had to fight a life and death struggle, on the one hand against the vast force of the world empire of Rome, whenever a persecuting edict might be enforced, and on the other against a growing crowd of strange errors, which seemed to them to be sent by the Devil to delude the hearts of the faithful, and draw them away from the Gospel of Christ; can we wonder that they did their best to draw the scattered communities of [p.50] Christians to a sense of unity under a like organization, adapted for a strenuous fight to preserve the good order of the Church from being shattered by persecutions from without or broken up and corrupted by false or mistaken brethren from within. And often, too, especially under the fire of persecution, something of the true prophetic spirit showed itself in the bishops themselves, as they admonished their fellow believers to be faithful even unto death, and beheld, amidst the shadow of death, visions of the deep things of God. Very true is this of Ignatius, whose letters breathe forth again and again the fiery faith and zeal of the true prophet, with flashes now and then of great and Christlike thoughts that still shine like gems amid the dust of pious exposition and mistaken exegesis that even first century Christian literature shares as a characteristic with our own. In the letter which he wrote to his friend Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one sees how intensely he felt the importance of a bishop's work for the life of the Church, how great the need was for gifted and holy men to fill such posts and what true help such men were able to give to the struggling communities for whom they lived and whom they served. Ignatius, for all his exaltation of the bishop's office, is full of humanity, feeling his own unworthiness and regarding himself as the servant of his church. As we hear him urging upon Polycarp to do his best to save all his flock, to put up with them all, even as Christ bears with [p.51] him, to love not just the good disciples but rather more especially the worse, and to conquer them by gentleness, to stand like a rock against false teaching, to care for the widows and not to overlook the slaves, we feel indeed how high the task of such a bishop was; and with both Ignatius and Polycarp, as with countless of their less illustrious fellows, it was a task crowned by martyrdom.

But if history shows us how valuable was the work done under the system of the catholic hierarchy to preserve a living Christianity across the centuries, it also bears witness to the way in which in succeeding ages the prophetic spirit re-asserted itself. A long series of heresies from that of the Montanists in the second century to that of the Fraticelli in the fourteenth, or of the Lollards and Hussites in the fifteenth, up to the days of the Reformation and the Anabaptist prophets of Munster, give us evidence of the way in which that spirit meets the profound need of humanity and proves the outcome of deep stirring of soul. But inside the Church itself we shall find again that the spirit of prophecy cannot be banished, just because there always was true life there. Yet the prophetic gift does not go along the orthodox channels of the hierarchy, but is continually bursting out in new and unexpected quarters, so that often the authorities of the Church are in a strait whether they are dealing with a saint or a heretic. To those outside the Church, the canon sometimes seems strange enough which [p.52] rules into one class St. Theresa, into the other Madame Guyon, which, after burning Savonarola was almost on the point of canonising him, which deposed and exiled John of Parma, and then beatified him. The prophetic spirit surely often found its outlet in the early ages amongst the monks of the desert, witness for instance such a saint as Telemachus, who brought to an end the gladiatorial shows at Rome; and in later times first in the Benedictine and the subsequent monastic orders, and then, very notably, in the Franciscan brotherhood, it found freer outlets than the church of the day could provide, while the lives of countless saints bear witness to some touches at least of the spirit of the prophet re-asserting itself in spite of the trammels of the organization of the church. If the gift of prophecy were to be connected with a divinely ordered hierarchy we might naturally look for it most of all in the popes. Yet in so many centuries comparatively few popes have been canonised as saints, and few amongst these are conspicuous as showing forth this gift in the way in which we see it in such a simple woman as Catherine of Siena, or in plain men like Giles of Perugia.

In our own day, a devout catholic like Fogazzaro has pictured for us the way in which a true prophet may arise within the bosom of the Church, only to meet with obstacles from the authorities, and finally with persecution ending almost in martyrdom. Yet that book, which, in spite of [p.53] Papal prohibition, has found such warm support and awakened such eager interest in Catholic Italy, bears witness to the profound longing (which many in England surely share) that there is within the orthodox Church for a deep spiritual ministry, which the recognised authorities have not always supplied, for a revelation of new truth to meet the needs of our day, for a fresh unfolding of the meaning of the gospel of Christ, which shall appeal once more with apostolic power to the hearts of men.

Two centuries ago the early Quakers felt that they had known such an experience and tried to hand it on to others. Need we wonder if it should appear that the Society of Friends to-day has inherited their traditions but not their spirit? For, indeed, the prophetic spirit can never be inherited, or passed on from man to man by any mechanical arrangement. It must come anew from generation to generation, often after the hardest travail of soul, through fresh strivings, as the result of other needs; but we can, at least, see that our ordering, whether of the Church's life or our own, is such as not to hinder its coming but to prepare us for it.

And not the least of such a heritage has been a form of worship and a view of life which may still give not only to a little community but to a wider world a school of the prophets.

When we see the weak side of quietism, and mistakes of an earlier day of mystics (as now we [p.54] are so apt to do), let us not forget that, amidst the quietist Quakerism of the eighteenth century, there grew up and flowered one of the most beautiful products not only of Quaker but of Christian training; to many of us to-day, John Woolman speaks as do few others with the power of a true prophet. Yet too often in the past the Society of Friends has been content with a succession of minor prophets, whose message was only to a little congregation. Without was a multitude who had no priests or shepherds, and nations needing a guide. To-day, if we cannot make teachers like Woolman, at least we can prepare the way for their coming.

Prophecy is born of prayer, supported by it, not the prayer of words, but that attitude of soul, of will, of which the most beautiful of our collects are the momentary reflections. In this spirit then, feeling our need and our fellows', let us long for more light to come into our lives. Let us remember that we have not just to sit down contentedly in the dark and wait for God's light.

If we try to listen to the voice of the prophet teachers of the past whose message still comes home to us, and to picture the thoughts of some disciple of theirs to-day, might we not frame them thus?

"If we cannot scatter the clouds, we can at least clean our windows and open our doors. Every faculty of our nature is God's gift and to be used in His service, and so we are not to think of prophecy [p.55] as coming with the atrophy of the intellect; with every power of our minds we are called to serve God and seek truth, which is His revelation. To pray, ' Thy will be done ' should be, as Fogazzaro has told us, no attitude of passive submission, but a call to our whole nature to strive to the utmost for the cause of God.