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

by T. Edmund Harvey

Most of us must sympathize with Iscariot; we have so often been in his place, sometimes in spite of ourselves, perhaps. Or if we cannot sympathize with him, at least we must with Brother Elias, that born master of organization, the practical man who saw the beauty of the character of St. Francis, recognised the power of his attractive nature, and wished to turn all to visible use, to build up around him a great society which should be a guide to kings and prelates, a divine strong- hold into which the beauty and the riches of the world should be brought. Elias doubtless felt that St. Francis was too good for this world; he himself dealt with men as men, understanding the worth of compromise, seeing the strength of institutions. The Elias whom most of us know well enough always tends to think of an ideal merely in its relation to institutions actual or possible, while the Francis, for whom we look too often in vain, thinks of the institution only as at best the imperfect embodiment of, or the means to, the ideal, and more often as the hindrance to be overcome on the way, "my brother the ass," who can only be guided with difficulty.

It is very easy for us to recognise in a far off time the failure of institutions to realize the ideal that inspired their origin, and we readily admit, in the abstract, the need for the ideal to dominate [p.93] the institution and the danger of the institution running away with the ideal. It is harder to see in our own lives how far we are allowing the machinery to take us from its object, how far that machinery is out of date or out of gear, since we are in the thick of it all, our ears dulled by the roar of the wheels. Assuming that we admit that Iscariot has his right and helpful place, how are we to find it and keep him there?

It may help us to understand the danger that follows upon organization, if we make even a partial survey of a group of existing institutions and try to trace the history of some one of them.

How great is the failure of our countless institutions intended to promote social welfare, we to some extent realize as we take up such a work as the "Annual Charities Register and Digest," of the Charity Organization Society, and turn over those 700 pages describing the various societies, with all their staffs and offices at work in the city which is still the London that we know. Life appears almost to become at times to some men one long committee, but, little, after all, seems done. And this failure may be seen, to some extent at least, even in recent movements which were originally a protest against the narrowness and superficiality of earlier methods of dealing with the problems of modern society. The first thought of the men who conceived the idea of the university settlement was surely not to found a new institution, so much as to bring life into touch [p.94] with life, to make centres in which knowledge and experience might be collected, and from which men and ideas might be put at the service of all who had most need of them. Yet, in spite of themselves, they have almost become institutions; indeed, some settlements have frankly made it their aim to be such, and as one reads reports from across the water of all that our American friends are doing, one must admit that they have been most successful in achieving their object. If the settlement movement (as it is called) had not begun as it did twenty odd years ago, perhaps these wonderful centres of activity would not have come into being, or would have been very different from what they are. Yet would the founders of the first settlement have recognised as their spiritual descendants these men, unselfish as they are, whose methods are so different? Did there ever come before their vision the picture of a great building raised by some millionaire, maintained by like gifts, manned by a staff of salaried workers, and providing at the expense of far-seeing or enlightened manufacturers, healthy amusement and duly certified religious teaching and secular instruction to the workmen of these subscribers, as well as dispensing, on behalf of Dives, basketfuls of crumbs, both of plain and fancy bread, to Lazarus and his fellows at the door?

This is, after all, an instance of a world-wide process. We are face to face once again with the fact that men are constantly attempting to do their [p.95] duty by deputy; to subscribe to what they see to be a good work rather than to set about to do it themselves, to give of their money rather than of their lives. It is the danger that has beset the church from almost the earliest days, that the men who should be inspiring and setting others to work have too often simply done their work for them, or tried to do it. Doubtless the old robber baron returning from some murderous fray felt his heart uplifted as, rounding a comer of the road on the way to his castle on the hill, he came in sight, in the valley below, of the monastery he had founded, and thought of the holy lives of the monks, and of their prayers put up daily for him, who had such need of them. Doubtless, too, the good monks' hearts warmed towards the old freebooter who yet had so much good in him as to be their founder and protector. But it was small consolation to the men he robbed and put to death to know that some part at least of their possessions would go to Holy Church and to make possible the cloistered self-denial of these men of God. The baron's keep has vanished, and the abbey is in ruins, but is there not evidence that the same process is going on to-day? It is not always pleasant to think of the ultimate source of some of the contributions which are to be found in the subscription lists of churches and charities. The man who realizes this may well hesitate to appeal to the wealthy for money to aid his plans, for he sees the effect of such methods in making [p.96] religious and social agencies distrusted by many among the very classes which they aim at helping. He will rather honour the spirit in which such a social worker as Jane Addams of Chicago refuses to receive gifts of "tainted gold," as she feels the conscience money of some unscrupulous men of business to be. Yet here again he may be in danger of deceiving himself. He needs, it is true, to beware of accepting, still more of asking for, gifts which would merely be given to promote the vanity or to further the selfish interests of the giver, but can a man so easily wash his hands of the stain of the mammon of unrighteousness? Does he not rather need to recognise that, indirectly at least, the fruits of injustice enter into all the money that comes to him, since selfishness plays the part it does in our social life, and since our lives are so bound up with each other that no man can set himself apart from his fellows? Only let him see that the gifts he asks for will quicken in the givers the sense of social responsibility and increase the desire to do and to give more themselves.

The payment of subscriptions, if this principle be disregarded, becomes a soul-destroying process, alike to him that gives and him that takes. The pious Henry III. turned once at bay, after listening to the pleading of Friar William of Abingdon, one of the most eloquent of the early Dominican preachers, and cried to him, "Brother William, there was a time when thou couldst speak of spiritual things; now all thou canst say is, [p.97] ' Give, give, give ! ' One may compare the disgust with which a modern public schoolboy often turns from the familiar appeal of the clergy- man who year by year comes to the school to preach on behalf of the school mission, and to carry back with him the usual collection, but nothing better. For the only thing worth giving or asking is life; and such a missioner too often fails to ask for it. Here surely we may find a hint of the explanation of all successful social work, which is the passing on of life from life, the result of the contact of personality with personality. In so far as organization promotes this and makes it possible does it stand justified, and only by this test.

One does not wish to undervalue the associations, the reflexes of life, which institutions so often pass on, or the wealth of a great past which they keep in store for us. But death is perhaps as needful and as inevitable for the body corporate as for the individual; for both it is often true that whom the gods love die young. It is surely better to spend and be spent in a short life rich in ideas, than to carry on a long existence by the aid of a comfortable endowment, which may prevent men from realizing how far out of touch they are with the actual needs of those about them. It is not known whether any council of bishops has decided if there be humour in Heaven, but one is inclined to think that the solemn way in which men shake their heads and lament the impending decease of an outworn institution must sometimes be greeted elsewhere by a peal of celestial laughter.

CHAPTER VII: PRIESTS AND PONTIFFS

SOME day we may hope to see among our great national museums one made to illustrate the religions of the world, from the rudest rites of the savage to the highest developments of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity. This museum of comparative religions does already exist to some extent in embryo in every great collection of antiquities, and the students of ethnology and folklore have been long at work in preparing materials for its catalogues. A partial glimpse of what it would contain is given in such a world-wide missionary exhibition as that organised in connection with the work of the London Missionary Society at the Agricultural Hall in the early summer of 1908.

The survey of such a great collection cannot but be stimulating to every thoughtful student. Some of its visitors may see in the hideous idols of the South Seas and in the pictures of the medicine man at work at his craft only a further incentive to aid the spreading of their own faith, which they feel more strongly than ever to be immeasurably [p.99] raised above the rites and thoughts of the savage. Others may look with sad eyes at the long series of pictures that is spread out before them, for they see everywhere only the same superstition, the primitive fears of unknown forces, developing with the growth of civilization into religions which expand with man's own needs and conceptions, intermingling with his hopes and aspirations and refined by his thought into the creeds and theologies of the higher faiths. Through all they trace the same instincts, and feel that the savage kneeling before a blood-smeared stone explains to them the Nicene Creed, that the hierarchy of the Church has its origin in the spirit-doctors and fetish-men of a simpler age.