The Unity of Western Civilization

by Unknown

In tracing out the causes of this new temper in religion, a first place may legitimately be assigned to the growth of the scientific spirit. In considering science as a source of unity, it is a mistake to dwell exclusively on the creation of a body of common knowledge. To know the same thing may do little to unite men. To attack problems in the same way, and to share the same spirit of free inquiry, the same reverence for fact, the same resolute endeavour to surmount prejudice, issue in a far closer bond of union. Science unites men even more closely by its spirit than by its achievement. The application of scientific method to the literary and historical study of the Bible, as well as in the psychological analysis of religious experience, has called into being in every Church and every land, groups of people who approach the subject-matter of their faith from the same angle and under the guidance of the same mental discipline. As a result of the critical movement a man finds his foes in his own and his friends in his neighbours' ecclesiastical household. The study of religion renews international contact and requires international co-operation as much as any other branch of science. It is possible to detect differing characteristics in the scholarship of the leading nations, though it may be doubted whether these are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it constitutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr. Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus, to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's Ecce Homo. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method associates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war will not destroy.

Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ, we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we differ.

It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual growth—each receives his due, and neither need despise the other. There are dangers associated with our constant reference to temperament. It is really a condemnation of a Church to say that its position appeals to a particular temperament, while it is often no real kindness to an individual to be excused from attempting to enter into a particular phase of religious life on the ground that he is temperamentally disqualified. But it is clearly a gain to challenge an over-rigid standardization of religious life. It is pathetic to hear people protest that they have no religious experience, when they are simply blinded by too narrow an interpretation of the term. In so far as the psychology of religion throws into relief the manifold appeal of religious ideas to different minds, it helps to create a new sense of unity in difference.

Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship. Considering first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a revival of the hope of reunion. We may further claim that certain advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian than before. Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith. It has been suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and through rationalism. Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of repression. I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the argument, 'You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to persecute heretics or fight Protestants,' nor would I underestimate the influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by few, contributed to the triumph of the principle. For the Christian, the duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels. Some of the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans. Nor is it a question of a particular incident. A deep respect for individuality is found to lie at the centre of the gospel. For the Christian, the attitude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to every man's conscience, has become more and more clearly the indispensable qualification of the ambassador for Christ. As the acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first to intensify division. It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of Rome. But in the long run, this development of thought must make for better understanding and wider fellowship.

Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed. The epistle to the Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the Reformation. It is clear that the present position of the Church, in which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not reflect and envisage the ideal that 'they all may be one'. The unity of the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its testimony. The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely felt. Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the healing of the nations.

There is hope then for closer fellowship within the Church, because the problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover—not even those who say they do. The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential. But if I may venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles' creed will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity. The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be regarded as indispensable. If I may attempt to forecast, I would say that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the Apostles' Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of Jesus. The choice will lie between a conception of God for which the story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance. This is not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian. The ultimate parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man's faith in God is Christ-centred or not. The significant cleavage of the future will come between those who believe that Christianity—the belief in the Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ—is the final religion, and those who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up in some still broader faith in God for which other revelations, through nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries ago. But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and reveal fellowship in fundamentals where men had previously supposed themselves to be hopelessly divided.

It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias rather than critical judgement. Yet it is perhaps permissible to point out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural development of the Quaker respect for that of God in every man. It represents the longing for a religious fellowship which does not force opinion but offers the most favourable conditions for the formation of independent judgement and the growth of individual faith. How far the movement realizes its ideal, I forbear to inquire, but its very existence affords some evidence of the belief in the positive virtue of toleration as an essential element of the Christian character. Another powerful factor making for co-operation and better understanding among Christians may be found in the Student Christian movement. For this country its value has been enhanced if not created by the opening of the older Universities to Nonconformists. The future leaders of all our Churches are now being educated together, and through the Student Christian movement, they are educating each other and facing together old controversies and inherited problems at a time when their judgements are least hampered either by tradition or responsibility. What this may mean for the religious life of this country, we cannot yet tell, but it is certain that a new temper will be brought to bear on our divisions. The men who learn to appreciate one another through this association, tend to hold together when they pass out of the Universities into their life-work. There are springing up through the Student movement new associations or fellowships which conserve and continue the unifying impetus of the movement itself. Nor is that unifying power confined to this country. It forms a world-wide federation whose lines of communication have not been cut even by the present war. In every land, the Student movement intends to resume international intercourse at the earliest possible moment. I think it is not simply the bias of a student in favour of his own class, which makes me regard the Student Christian movement as one of the most hopeful developments in the religious life of our age.

Perhaps the influence of this movement itself may be traced in the growing demand for co-operation in the missionary task of the Church. This demand has no doubt arisen in part through the changes in the means of transport and communication which have made the world a smaller place. Missionary effort is less sporadic than it was. The Churches are developing a Weltpolitik. The exact proportions of the task before them are now more clearly grasped. The difficulty of overtaking the task even when united, and the impossibility of discharging it effectively while divided are also more apparent. But the demand for unity and the power of co-operation have also been strengthened by the men and women who have gone abroad under the influence of the Student Volunteer Missionary Union. High Churchmen and Nonconformist having learnt to work together on a Christian Student executive do not find it difficult to co-operate, where opportunity offers, in India or China. A half-involuntary revolution of sentiment is proceeding under our eyes. The strength of the new spirit of co-operation was revealed in the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. That date will stand out as supremely significant in the growth of a new Catholicism in the West.

We have so far been concerned with influences making for a deeper sense of unity within the Christian Church. But if we attempt a wider survey, we shall discover that religious thought and feeling in the West, whether definitely Christian or no, possess some common characteristics, bear the impress of convictions which are ever struggling for expression.

First among these characteristic features of religious thought in the West I would place faith in the solidarity of mankind. The origin of this faith probably passes beyond our analysis. I should suspect that there is a universal impulse stimulating this belief which I should be inclined to regard as instinctive. Yet it has certainly found fuller expression in the West than in the civilization of India or China. It is possible to point to traditions, to philosophies, and to particular events which have carried this faith in human solidarity deep into the consciousness of the West. Dr. Prichard, whose scientific labours, we were told in an earlier lecture, refuted the heresy of polygenism, was moved to undertake his inquiries by a desire to maintain the accuracy of the Mosaic tradition as to the common origin of mankind. It is a little curious to reflect that illusory anthropology, accepted on the authority of Moses and of Rousseau, the belief in Adam, and the belief in the free and happy savage, have perhaps done more than scientific research into primitive culture to maintain our faith in human brotherhood and equality. We must not, however, attach too much weight to the story of Adam. The Western sense of the dignity of ordinary manhood owes much more to the great Stoic conception of humanity, as Mr. Barker reminded us in his lecture on the Middle Ages. Perhaps even more significant is the feeling for humanity engendered by regarding all men as the objects of a common redemption. The poorest of men have been protected from their fellows where they have been recognized as brothers for whom Christ died. It would be worth while, if one had the time and the knowledge, to follow the growth of this sentiment in modern times, to trace the influence of the doctrine of Natural Rights, of the French Revolution, of the philosophy of Comte, and of the Evangelical Revival, upon its development. But whatever the sources and phases of its growth, the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world.