It is the characteristic distinction of some men's work that they are resolute to take into just account all the elements and conditions of the matter with which they deal. They will not purchase simplicity at the expense of facts; they will not, by any act of arbitrary exclusion or unreal abstraction, give up even the most distant hope of some real attainment for the sake of securing a present appearance of completeness. They recognise and insist upon all the complexity of that at which they look; they may see many traits in it to which they can assign no definite place or meaning, but they will not ignore or disparage these; they will not forget them, even though for a while they may have to defer the closer study of them; they will dutifully bear them in mind, and carry them along through all their work; they will let them tell with full weight in qualifying, deferring, or precluding the formation of any theory about that of which these traits, trivial or important, explained or unexplained, are a genuine part. It is difficult to find a name for this rare and distinctive excellence. But it is that which more than any other quality gives permanence and fruitfulness to work: for even the fragmentary and loosely ordered outcome of such thought is wont to prove germinant and quickening as time goes on. Patience, honesty, reverence, and unselfishness, are virtues which appear congenial with such a character of mind; and the high, undaunted faith which is the secret of its strength and the assurance of its great reward has been told by Mr. Browning in A Grammarian's Funeral:—
Was it not great? did not he throw on God
(He loves the burthen)—
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen[377]?
It will be the chief aim of this essay to shew that in the embodiment and presentation of Christianity by the Church of Christ there may be seen an excellence analogous, at least, to this distinctive characteristic of the work that all approve as best and truest upon earth; that in contrast with many religious systems, attaining a high degree of moral beauty and spiritual fervour, the historic Church meets human life in full front; that it has been taught and enabled, in its ministry of Sacraments, to deal with the entirety of man's nature, not slighting, or excluding, or despairing of any true part of his being. But it is necessary at the outset to define, in general and provisional terms, the nature and the principle of that element in the Church's faith and life which is here under consideration, and in which especially this amplitude and catholicity of dealing with human nature is to be sought. By the Sacramental system, then, is meant the regular use of sensible objects, agents, and acts as being the means or instruments of Divine energies, 'the vehicles of saving and sanctifying power[378].' The underlying belief, the basal and characteristic principle of this system, may be thus stated. As the inmost being of man rises to the realization of its true life, to the knowledge and apprehension of God and of itself, in the act of faith, and as He whose Spirit quickened it for that act, greets its venture with fresh gifts of light and strength, it is His will that these gifts should be conveyed by means or organs taken from this world, and addressed to human senses. His Holy Spirit bears into the faithful soul the communication of its risen Lord's renewing manhood; and for the conveyance of that unseen gift He takes things and acts that can be seen, and words that can be heard; His way is viewless as the wind; but He comes and works by means of which the senses are aware; and His hidden energy accepts a visible order and outward implements for the achievement of its purpose.
The limits of this essay preclude the discussion of the larger questions which beset the terms of these definitions. Previous essays have dealt with those truths which are necessarily involved in any declaration of belief about the Christian Sacraments. The Being of God, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Atonement, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Person and Mission of the Holy Ghost, these are indeed implied in the Sacramental system of the Church, not simply as component and essential parts of the same building, nor as mere logical data, but rather as the activities of the bodily life are pre-supposed in the exertion of the body's strength. But these cannot here be spoken of: it is from preceding pages of this book that thoughts and convictions must be gathered, without which much that is here said will seem either unsubstantial, or merely technical. It must be owned that the severance of any subject from its context entails not only incompleteness, but also a certain disproportion and obscurity in its treatment; since the lines of thought which run out into the context are lines down which light comes, light that is lost if they are closed. Indeed anything like a full presentation or a formal defence of a detached part of Christian teaching and practice seems intrinsically very difficult, and within the limits of an essay impossible. There are, however, two questions which must be asked concerning each several part of the whole structure, and in regard to which something may here be said. The first is: Does this part match with its surroundings in Christianity; is it a harmonious and congenial element in the whole order, in the great body of doctrine to which it claims to belong? The second is: Does it match with the surroundings on which it claims to act, with its environment in human life; is it apt for the purpose to which it is addressed and the conditions among which it comes? It is here proposed, as has been said, to consider in regard to the Sacramental system the second especially of these two questions: but its consideration will involve some thoughts which may perhaps be a sufficient answer to the first. And thus something may also be gained beyond the range of the present inquiry; for it seems fair to hold that any part of Christian teaching in regard to which both these questions can be answered in the affirmative, has a strong tendency at all events to commend the claim of the whole scheme with which it is inwoven and essentially continuous. For the perfection of inner coherence in a structure whose main lines, at least, were projected in the world under circumstances which preclude the thought of scientific or artificial elaboration, and the perfection of adaptation, not to the wishes and tastes of men, nor to the arrangements of society, but to the deepest, fullest, surest truth of humanity; these are characteristics which we should expect to find in a revelation from God to man, and be surprised to find elsewhere.
I. Probably there come to most men who have got beyond the happy confidence of youth, and the unhappy confidence of self-satisfaction, times at which they seem to themselves to be living in a somewhat perplexed and dimly lighted world, with tasks for which their strength is insufficient, among problems which they cannot solve. And Christianity is held out to them, or has been received by them, as a way of life under these circumstances, as a method and a means of living rightly; a system which does not indeed take all the perplexity out of the world, or all the difficulties out of their course, but which will give them light and strength enough to keep in the right track, to use their time well, to take their proper place, and do their proper work, and so to move towards the realization of all the many parts and possibilities of their nature; a goal which may seem to grow both larger and more distant the more one thinks about it. Christianity professes to be that Divine word, which was faintly surmised of old[379], and in due time was sent forth to bear men wisely and surely through this world. Plainly one of the first and fairest questions which may be asked in regard to it is, whether it shews a perfect understanding of the nature with which it claims to deal, and the life which it claims to guide.
Now when we set ourselves to think what we are for whom a possible and satisfactory way of life is sought, what that nature is, whose right principles and conditions of development are to be determined, one of the first things which we discern is an apparently invincible complexity. The life we have to order is a twofold life, it moves through a twofold course of experience: the facts, the activities in which we are conscious of it, are of two kinds; and men ordinarily distinguish them as bodily and spiritual. Some such distinction is recognised and understood by the simplest of us: it is imbedded beyond possibility of expulsion in all language: stubbornly and successfully it resists all efforts to abolish it. We know for ourselves that either of the two groups of facts may stand out in clearer light, in keener consciousness, at certain times: we may even for a while, a little while, lose sight of either of them and seem to be wholly occupied with the other: but presently the neglected facts will re-assert their rights: neither the one group nor the other may long be set aside without risk of the Nemesis which avenges slighted truths:—the Nemesis of disproportion and disease. We may confuse our sense of the distinction; we may shift or blur or bend whatever line had seemed to mark it: we may insist on the qualifying phenomena which forbid us to think of any barrier as impenetrable; but we cannot so exalt or push forward either realm as utterly to extrude, absorb, or annihilate the other: we cannot, with consistency or sanity, live as though our life were merely spiritual or merely bodily. It is as impossible steadily to regard the spirit as a mere function or product of the body, as it is to treat the body with entire indifference, as a casually adjacent fragment of the external world. But further, as the distinction of the two elements in our being seems insuperable, so does their union seem essential to the integrity of our life. Any abstraction of one element, as though it could detach itself from the other and live on its own resources, is felt to be unreal and destructive of our proper nature. So it has been finely said, 'Materialism itself has here done valuable service in correcting the exaggeration of a one-sided spiritualism. It is common, but erroneous, to speak of man's body as being related to his spirit only as is the casket to the jewel which it contains. But, as a matter of fact, the personal spirit of man strikes its roots far and deep into the encompassing frame of sense, with which, from the first moment of its existence, it has been so intimately associated.... The spirit can indeed exist independently of the body, but this independent existence is not its emancipation from a prison-house of matter and sense; it is a temporary and abnormal divorce from the companion whose presence is needed to complete its life[380].' If we try to imagine our life in abstraction from the body we can only think of it as incomplete and isolated; as impoverished, deficient, and expectant. And certainly in our present state, in the interval between what we call birth and death, the severance of the two elements is inconceivable: they are knit together in incessant and indissoluble communion. In no activity, no experience of either, can the other be utterly discarded: 'for each action and reaction passing between them is a fibre of that which forms their mutual bond[381].' Even into those energies of which men speak as purely spiritual, the bodily life will find its way, will send its help or hindrance: sickness, hunger, weariness, and desire: these are but some of its messengers to the spirit, messengers who will not always be denied. And in every conscious action of the bodily life the presence of the spirit is to be discerned. The merely animal fulfilment of merely animal demands, devoid of moral quality, is only possible within that dark tract of instinct which lies below the range of our consciousness. When once desire is consciously directed to its object, (wherever the desire has originated and whatever be the nature of the object,) a moral quality appears, a moral issue is determined: and the act of the body becomes an event in the life of the spirit[382]. The blind life of brute creatures is as far out of our reach as is the pure energy of angels: we can never let the body simply go its own way; for in the essential complexity of our being, another sense is ever waiting upon the conscious exercise of those five senses that we share with lower animals:—the sense of duty and of sin.
Thus complex are we,—we who crave more light and strength, who want to find the conditions of our health and growth, who lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence cometh our help. It would be interesting to consider from how many different points of view the complexity has been recognised, resented, slandered, or ignored; and how steadily it has held its own. It may need some exercise of faith (that is to say, of reasonable patience amidst half-lights and fragments) to keep the truth before one, and to allow it its just bearing upon thought and conduct, without exaggeration, or self-deception, or one-sidedness; but there is neither health of body nor peace of mind in trifling with it.