Lastly, we must ask whether institutionalism is really a spiritual and moral force. Of the advantages of esprit de corps I have spoken already. No one can doubt that unity is strength, or that Catholicism has an immense advantage over its rivals in the efficiency of its organisation. But is not this advantage dearly purchased? Party loyalty is notoriously unscrupulous. The idealised institution becomes itself the object of worship, and it is entirely forgotten that a Christian Church ought to have no 'interests' except the highest welfare of humanity. The substitution of military for civil ethics has worked disastrously on the conduct of Churchmen. Theoretically it is admitted by Roman casuists that an immoral order ought not to be obeyed; but it is not for a layman to pronounce immoral any order received from a priest; if the order is really immoral, 'obedience' exonerates him who executes it; in all other cases disobedience is a deadly sin. The result of this submission of private judgment is that the voice of conscience is often stifled, and unscrupulous policies are carried through by Churchmen, which secular public opinion would have condemned decisively and rejected. The persecution of Dreyfus is a recent and strong instance. If all France had been Catholic, the victim of this shocking injustice would certainly have died in prison. It is extremely doubtful whether the presence of a highly organised Church is conducive to moral and social reform in a country. The temptation to play a political game seems to be always too strong. In Ireland the priesthood has probably helped to maintain a comparatively high standard of sexual morality, but it cannot be said that the Irish Catholic population is in other respects a model of civilisation and good citizenship. In education especially the influence of ecclesiasticism has been almost uniformly pernicious, so that it seems impossible for any country where the children are left under priestly influence to rise above a certain rather low level of civilisation. The strongest claim of institutionalism to our respect is probably the beneficial restraint which it exercises upon many persons who need moral and intellectual guidance. It is the fashion to disparage the scholastic theology, and it has certainly suffered by being congealed, like everything else that Rome touches, into a hard system; but it is immeasurably superior to the theosophies and fancy religions which run riot in the superficially cultivated classes of Protestant countries. The undisciplined mystic, in his reliance on the inner light, may fall into various kinds of Schwärmerei and superstition. In some cases he may even lose his sanity for want of a wise restraining influence. It is not an accident that America, where institutionalism is weakest, is the happy hunting-ground of religious quacks and cranks. Individualists are too prone to undervalue the steadying influence of ancient and consecrated tradition, which is kept up mainly by ecclesiastical institutions. These probably prevent many rash experiments from being tried, especially in the field of morals. Even writers like Dr. Frazer insist on the immense services which consecrated tradition still renders to humanity. These claims may be admitted; but they come very far short of the glorification of institutionalism which we found in the authors quoted a few pages back.
The institutionalist, however, may reply that he by no means admits the validity of Sabatier's antithesis between religions of authority and the religion of the Spirit. His own religion, he believes, is quite as spiritual as that of the Protestant individualist. He may quote the fine saying of a medieval mystic that he who can see the inward in the outward is more spiritual than he who can only see the inward in the inward. We may, indeed, be thankful that we have not to choose between two mutually exclusive types of religion. The Quaker, whom we may take as the type of anti-institutional mysticism, has a brotherhood to which he is proud to belong, and for which he feels loyalty and affection. And Catholicism has been rich in contemplative saints who have lived in the light of the Divine presence. The question raised in this essay is rather of the relative importance of these two elements in the religious life, than of choosing one and rejecting the other. I will conclude by saying that our preference of one of these types to the other will be largely determined by our attitude towards history. I am glad to see that Professor Bosanquet, in his fine Gifford Lectures, has the courage to expose the limitations of the 'historical method,' now so popular. He protests against Professor Ward's dictum that 'the actual is wholly historical,' as a view little better than naïve realism. History, he says, is a hybrid form of experience, incapable of any considerable degree of being or trueness. It is a fragmentary diorama of finite life-processes seen from the outside, and very imperfectly known. It consists largely of assigning parts in some great world-experience to particular actors—a highly speculative enterprise. To set these contingent and dubious constructions above the operations of pure thought and pure insight is indeed a return to the philosophy of the man in the street. 'Social morality, art, philosophy, and religion take us far beyond the spatio-temporal externality of history; these are concrete and necessary living worlds, and in them the finite mind begins to experience something of what individuality must ultimately mean.' Our inquiry has thus led us to the threshold of one of the fundamental problems of philosophy—the value and reality of time. For the institutionalist, happenings in time have a meaning and importance far greater than the mystic is willing to allow to them. Like most other great philosophical problems, this question is largely one of temperament. Christianity has found room for both types. I believe, however, that the aberrations or exaggerations of institutionalism have been, and are, more dangerous, and further removed from the spirit of Christianity than those of mysticism, and that we must look to the latter type, rather than to the former, to give life to the next religious revival.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] Moore, Science and the Faith, Introduction.
[91] Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu für den Glauben, pp. 25 sq.
[92] Royce, The Problem of Christianity, vol. i. 39.
THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
(1917)
No thinking man can deny that this war has grievously stained the reputation of Europe. Even if the verdict of history confirms the opinion that the conspiracy which threw the torch into the powder-magazine was laid by a few persons in one or two countries, and that the unparalleled outrages which have accompanied the conflict were ordered by a small coterie of brutal officers, we cannot forget that these crimes have been committed by the responsible representatives of a civilised European power, and that the nation which they represent has shown no qualms of conscience. That such a calamity, the permanent results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit, accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity, the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in its civilisation and culture. The ancient races of Asia, which have never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested spectators of our suicidal frenzy. A Japanese is reported to have said, 'We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her hara kiri.' This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think about the present struggle. Just as the feudal barons of England destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be reconstructed. Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument that a European war would be ruinous to both sides. The material objects at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the war-bill. We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless wars of the past.