W. E. H., JR.
Confessions of an Old Priest. By Rev. S. D. McConnell. (The MacMillan Co.)
We are all, being students, in a period when our opinions are forming rapidly according to our characters and interests. For those who feel that a religious philosophy is an essential basis from which other values must be derived, or for those whose religion is an untouched field of inherited beliefs and inhibitions, the time and the subject-matter of “Confessions of an Old Priest” are ripe. The Rev. Mr. McConnell remains in the end as devout a Christian as he was fifty years ago, when he entered the Church convinced that “it owed its origin to Jesus Christ, and that He was the unique Son of God”. But he is no longer a worshipper of Jesus; he has taken the very cornerstone out of Christian doctrine and cast it away—and the edifice still shelters him as efficaciously as before.
The volume is devoted to his explanation of this paradox: how he finds himself a faithful Christian still, while the result of his historical research has disproved for him the divinity of Jesus. For Jesus, he declares, was not the original Christ; Christus, a Greek word, was applied to the heroes of a number of Mystery religions during the century before the obscure Hebrew province of Gallilee had any intimations that the “Messiah” was born.
And the most startling attack upon traditional dogma is his analysis of “the trouble with Christianity”. “It is,” he says, “not an unworthy Christianity, but an unworthy Christ.” When the reader has swallowed hard for a moment over that declaration, he reads on to discover what this astounding pastor means, and finds a wealth of plausible argument to support his extravagance of phrase. Jesus himself preached a “workless” doctrine, a “toil not, nor spin” existence, a “turn the other cheek” attitude, and it is his biographers, together with such followers as Paul, who have incorporated Him into the practical philosophy and morality of the Church, to make Him the greatest exemplar in history of life as it should be lived. Jesus, and “Christlike” people are delightful, adorable characters, according to this book, but they are a care to the community, and should their ethics be generally adopted, civilization would go immediately more or less to smash.
The Rev. Mr. McConnell’s conclusions are so wholesale and so radical that I am not sure we can all accept them without comment or refutation. I cannot agree with his method of discriminating between true history and apostolic imagination in the “synoptic” gospels. But I do think every Christian should read this work as a test for his present beliefs and an introduction to new areas of religious thought. And it is quite possible that here is the way to a new religion and a satisfactory one in this time of restlessness and agnosticism.
D. G. C.
What I Saw in America. By G. K. Chesterton. (Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd.)
After reading Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s account of his recent travels in this country, we recalled to mind a certain cartoon which appeared some time ago in a London periodical, which depicted the author as an immense Zeppelin floating over the city. From his mouth came great clouds of vapor and below were written the words: “G. K. C. spreading paradoxygen over London”. A similar caricature might be made in the present instance, for the gentleman in question has, in this book, tinged his treatment of America and American life with a shade of paradox.