Church and Nation / The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15

by William Temple

For a while the three new forces worked together, carrying men's thought and action forward; and then in the 18th century it would seem that there was, in England at any rate, a torpor due to their exhaustion; when revival came it was because Wesley and his friends revived the Hebrew element in our life, because Newman and Pusey with their friends revived the Latin element, and because F. D. Maurice and the Broad Church movement revived the Hellenistic, and this, with its passion for more adequate comprehension and expression, is the dominant force of our time. We watch these three influences still at work; but as they interact upon one another and within the persons of the new races, a new product is gradually being produced, and in those corporate personalities which we call nations, we see a character being born which is something that history has not known before.

The first requirement of personality is always freedom—freedom as we have already said in its two senses, that conduct is not dictated from without but is governed by the whole person, and not by isolated elements; and the corporate persons need freedom just as much as the individual; hence the need, the vital and absolute need, for political sovereignty in any State which is conscious of itself as a person, that is as having a single spiritual life.

But that life and freedom are exercised only in the citizens who are members of the State. We cannot surely assert that the corporate person is immortal, as the individual is; and therefore, to destroy a State is to inflict a more irreparable loss than to kill a man, which is one reason at least, perhaps the chief reason, why a man should die for the political freedom of his country, and even, if need be, kill for it; but, as freedom is the first requirement of personality, fellowship is its first duty, for it is true of corporate personalities quite as much as of individuals that they only find themselves and fulfil themselves in their inter-action upon one another, and the nations of the world do in fact need one another, and need one another's full life.

In economics we found out long ago that in order to be wealthy, a country needs rich neighbours who may afford good markets. It is so in every other department. We need the gifts of the other peoples. We need that they shall be free and vigorous. Indeed the chief lesson which the world at this time needs to learn is just this—that all the nations of the world need one another, each needing also that the others should be free, in order that they may bring their contributions to the common life in which all share.

But we should, I think, be reading the signs of the times amiss if we did not also take account of the fact that there has been growing up lately a new type of corporate personality, not known to history before, and exemplified by your own United States and by the British Empire; the conception of sovereign States linked together in a single life, and exercising therein a joint sovereignty in dealing with those who lie outside the federation, is something of which history bears no record; and we need to try to understand its principle, and see what it is capable of contributing to the life of men in order that we may not fail to use our opportunity, and bring our contribution.[#]

[#] See [Appendix V]. On Providence in History.

There is our outline sketch of the way in which the history of our own civilisation has grown, within which the Church and Nation are at work. We are members of both. What duty falls upon us as the result of that dual membership? The Christian citizen is called of necessity to fulfil one of three functions—prophet, priest and king.

The prophet is one who is called to testify to the ideal unflinchingly, not considering consequences, not perhaps considering ways and means of reaching the ideal, but simply insisting on its nature and calling men and nations to penitence so far as they fail to reach it. It may require more courage than the office of the king or statesman, and yet in itself it is the easiest, because it is relatively simple.

In all modern nations, and more so in the degree in which they are democratic, every citizen partakes of the duty of kingship. He has some share in determining how his nation shall act, either in the management of its own internal affairs or in its dealings with other people, and one who has this responsibility and is also a Christian, is involved in the absolute duty of trying to think, and to think with genuine effort, how he may be actually guiding his nation toward the ideal. He must not be content with pious platitudes leading to no action, nor content to consider only his own country's welfare; but as a member of the Church of Christ which embraces all mankind, he is called to think out and, having thought, to pursue in act the methods by which his nation may genuinely be doing its part to build up the one great Temple of God—His Holy City.

The priest is prophet and statesman, both at once. He, as minister of the Word of God, must perpetually insist upon the true ideal, and bid men to guard against all self-contentment so far as they fail to reach it; and yet he must be ready to take his stand by the side of every individual or group of individuals, even of the nation itself, nerving each to do the best of which it then and there in the circumstances of the day is capable. And meanwhile he is a wretched human being like the rest, terribly liable to pride if he upholds an ideal higher than is usually recognised; terribly liable to worldliness, alike in his own soul and in his teaching, if for a single moment he forsakes the Divine Presence; and uniquely exposed to the deadliest of all temptations; for while we preach what neither we nor anybody else can practise, we are sorely tempted to be content with spiritual mediocrity ourselves.