I say these things will happen. But they will not happen unless men are sufficiently resolved that they shall.
Let the reader remember that those who now flock to the schoolmaster are less likely than men of the previous generation to fall into the pit of materialism. They begin at a point which the previous generation did not believe to exist--a visible world reduced by positive science to the invisible world of philosophy. They confront not a quant.i.tative universe, but a qualitative. They almost begin at the very spirit of man; they cannot advance far before they find themselves groping in the unseen, and using, not the senses given to us by action, but the eyes and ears of the understanding by which alone the soul of man can apprehend reality. Even the Germans have gone back to Goethe.
This, then, is the contribution which Dr. Jacks makes to modern thought.
We are to consider man as a creature of boundless potentiality, to realise that his first need is for light, and to define that mystic all-important word in terms of education. Christianity was not concerned with the moral law; it was concerned with the transcending of all law by the spirit of understanding.
I need not guard myself against the supposition that so true a scholar is satisfied with the system of education which exists at the present time. Dr. Jacks looks for a reform of this system, but not from the present race of politicians.
"How can we hope to get a true system of education from politics?" he asked me. "Is there any atmosphere more degrading? Plato has warned us that no man is fit to govern until he has ceased to desire power. But these men think of nothing else. To be in power; that is the game of politics. What can you expect from such people?"
He said to me, "Men outside politics are beginning to see what education involves. It involves the whole man, body, mind, spirit. I do not think you can frame an intelligent definition of education without coming up against religion. In its simplest expression, education is a desire to escape from darkness into light. It is fear of ignorance, and faith in knowledge. At the present time, most people have escaped from darkness into twilight; a twilight which is neither one thing nor the other. But they will never rest there. The quest of the human spirit is Goethe"s dying cry, Light--more Light. And it is from these men that I look to get a n.o.bler system of education. They will compel the politicians to act, perhaps get rid of the present race of politicians altogether. And when these humble disciples of knowledge, who are now making heroic efforts to escape from the darkness of ignorance, frame their definition of education, I am sure it will include religion. The Spirit of Man needs only to be liberated to recognise the Spirit of G.o.d."
Most people, I think, will agree with Dr. Jacks in these opinions; they are intelligent and promise a reasonable way out of our present chaos.
For many they will shed a new light on their old ideas of both religion and education. But some will ask: What is the Unitarian Church doing to make these intelligent opinions prevail?
Dr. Jacks confesses to me that there is no zeal of propaganda in the Unitarian communion. It is a society of people which does not thrust itself upon the notice of men, does not compete for converts with other churches in the market-place. It is rather a little temple of peace round the corner, to which people, who are aweary of the din in the theological market-place, may make their way if they choose. It is such a Church as Warburton, to the great joy of Edward FitzGerald, likened to Noah"s family in the Ark:
The Church, like the Ark of Noah, is worth saving; not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost filled it and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality that was as much distressed by the stink within as by the tempest without.
It is significant of the modesty of the Unitarian that he does not emerge from this retirement even to cry, "I told you so," to a Church which is coming more and more to accept the simplicity of his once ridiculed and anathematised theology.
"You must regard modernism," I said to Dr. Jacks on one occasion, "as a vindication of the Unitarian att.i.tude."
He smiled and made answer, "Better not say so. Let them follow their own line."
No man was ever less of a proselytiser. In his remarkable book _From Authority to Freedom_, in which he tells the story of Charles Hargrove"s religious pilgrimage, he seems to be standing aside from all human intervention, watching with patient eyes the action of the Spirit of G.o.d on the hearts and consciences of men. And in that little masterpiece of deep thought and beautiful writing, _The Lost Radiance of the Christian Religion_, from which I have made most of the quotations in this chapter, one is conscious throughout of a strong aversion from the field of dogma and controversy, of deliberate determination of the writer to keep himself in the pure region of the spirit.
Christianity, he tells us there, has seen many corruptions, but the most serious of all is not to be found in any list of doctrines that have gone wrong:
We find it rather in a change of atmosphere, in a loss of brightness and radiant energy, in a tendency to revert in spirit, if not in terminology, to much colder conceptions of G.o.d, of man, and of the universe.
"As man in his innermost nature is a far higher being than he seems, so the world in its innermost nature is a far n.o.bler fabric than it seems."
To discover this man must live in his spirit.
"G.o.d," said Jesus, "is Spirit," and it is a definition of G.o.d which goes behind and beneath all the other names that are applied to Him.
The spirit is love; it is peace; it is joy; and perhaps joy most of all. It is a joyous energy, having a centre in the soul of man.
It is not a foreign principle which has to be introduced into a man from without; it belongs to the substance and structure of his nature; it needs only to be liberated there; and when once that is done it takes possession of all the forces of his being, repressing nothing, but transfiguring everything, till all his motives and desires are akindle and aglow with the fires and energy of that central flame, with its love, its peace, its joy.
A man who sees so deeply into the truth of things, and lives so habitually at the centre of existence, is not likely to display the characteristics of the propagandist. But the work of Dr. Jacks at Manchester College may yet give not only this country but the world--for his students come from many nations--a little band of radiant missionaries whose message will repel none and attract many.
BISHOP HENSLEY HENSON
DURHAM, Bishop of, since 1920; Rt. Rev. Herbert Hensley Henson; b.
London 8th Nov., 1863, 4th s. of Late Thomas Henson, Broadstairs Kent, and Martha Fear; m. 1902 Isabella Caroline, o.d. of J.W.
Dennistoun of Dennistoun, N.B. Educ.: Privately and at Oxford.
First Cla.s.s Modern History; Fellow of All Soul"s College, Oxford, 1884-91, reelected 1896; B.D. 1898; Hon. D.D. Glasgow, 1906; Durham, 1913; Oxon, 1918; Head of the Oxford House, Bethnal Green, 1887-88; Vicar of Barking, Ess.e.x, 1888-95; Select Preacher at Oxford, 1895-96, 1913-14; Cambridge, 1901; Inc.u.mbent of St. Mary"s Hospital, Ilford, 1895-1900; Chaplain to Lord Bishop of St.
Alban"s, 1897-1900; Canon of Westminster Abbey and Rector of St.
Margaret"s, 1900-12; Sub-Dean of Westminster, 1911-12; Dean of Durham, 1912-18; Bishop of Durham, 1918-20; late Hon. Professor of Modern History in Durham University; Proctor in Convocation, 1903-18.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP HENSLEY HENSON]
CHAPTER V
BISHOP HENSLEY HENSON
_He early attained a high development, but he has not increased it since; years have come, but they have whispered little; as was said of the second Pitt, "He never grew, he was cast_."--WALTER BAGEHOT.
Rumour has it that Dr. Henson is beginning to draw in his horns. Every curate who finds himself unable to believe in the Virgin Birth, so it said, feels himself ent.i.tled to a living in the diocese of Durham. They flee from the intolerant zealotry of the sacerdotal south to the genial modernism of the lat.i.tudinarian north.
But the trouble is, so rumour has it, these intelligent curates prove themselves but indifferent parish priests. Dr. Henson has to complain.
The work of the Church must be carried on. Evangelicalism seems a better driving force than theology. Dr. Henson has to think whether perhaps ...
One need not stop to ask if this version is strictly true. The fact seems to emerge that the Bishop of Durham, one of the ablest intellects in the Church of England, and hitherto one of the strongest pillars of modernism, is beginning to speak theologically with rather less decision.
Let us at least express the pious hope that the Dean of Durham, Dr.
Welldon, has had nothing to do with it. A greater man than Dr. Henson, a greater scholar and a profounder thinker, has spoken to me of this new movement in the Bishop"s mind with a deep impersonal regret. Modernism will go on; but what will happen to Dr. Henson? "A man may change his mind once," he said; "but to change it twice--"
The words of Guicciardini came into my mind, "The most fatal of all neutralities is that which results not from choice, but from irresolution."
There is much to be learned, I think, from a study of Dr. Henson"s personality. He stands for the moment at a parting of the ways, and it will be interesting to see which road he intends to take; but the major interest lies in his abiding psychology, and no change in theological opinions will affect that psychology at all. Attach to him the label of "modernist" or the label of "traditionalist," and it will still be the same little eager man thrusting his way forward on either road with downward head and peering eyes, arguing with anyone who gets in his way, and loving his argument far more than his way.
When he was at Oxford, and was often in controversial conflict with Dr.
A.C. Headlam, now Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr. Hensley Henson earned the nickname of c.o.xley c.o.c.ksure. Never was any man more certain he was right; never was any man more inclined to ridicule the bare idea that his opponent could be anything but wrong; and never was any man more thoroughly happy in making use of a singularly trenchant intellect to stab and thrust its triumphant way through the logic of his adversary.
It is said that Dr. Henson has had to fight his way into notice, and that he has never lost the defect of those qualities which enabled him so victoriously to reach the mitred top of the ecclesiastical tree. He has climbed. He has loved climbing. Perhaps he has so got into this bracing habit that he may even "climb down," if only in order once more to ascend--a new rendering of _reculer pour mieux sauter_. I do not think he has much altered since he first set out to conquer fortune by the force of his intellect, an intellect of whose great qualities he has always been perhaps a little dangerously self-conscious.
Few men are more effective in soliloquy. It is a memorable sight to see him standing with his back to one of the high stone mantelpieces in Durham Castle, his feet wide apart on the hearth-rug, his hands in the openings of his ap.r.o.n, his trim and dapper body swaying ceaselessly from the waist, his head, with its smooth boyish hair, bending constantly forward, jerking every now and then to emphasise a point in his argument, the light in his bright, watchful, sometimes mischievous eyes dancing to the joy of his own voice, the thin lips working with pleasure as they give to all his words the fullest possible value of vowels and sibilants, the small greyish face, with its two slightly protruding teeth on the lower lip, almost quivering, almost glowing, with the rhythm of his sentences and the orderly sequence of his logic. All this composes a picture which one does not easily forget. It is like the harangue of a snake, which is more subtle than any beast of the field.
One is conscious of a spell.
The dark tapestried room, the carved ceiling, the heavy furniture, the embrasured windows, the whole sombre magnificence of the historic setting, quiet, almost somnolent, with the enduring memories of Cuthbert Tunstall and Butler, Lightfoot and Westcott, add a most telling vivacity to the slim and dominating figure of this boylike bishop, who is so athletic in the use of his intellect and so happy in every thesis he sets himself to establish.
It is an equally memorable sight to see him in his castle at Bishop Auckland in the role of host, entertaining people of intelligence with the history of the place, showing the pictures and the chapel, exhibiting curious relics of the past--a restless and energetic figure, holding its own in effectiveness against men of greater stature and more commanding presence by an inward force which has something of the tang of a twitching bow-string.
So much energy would suggest a source of almost inexhaustible power. But that is perhaps the greatest disappointment of all in the Bishop"s psychology. In the case of Dr. Inge one is very conscious of a rich and deep background, a background of mysticism, from which the intellect emerges with slow emphasis to play its part on the world"s stage. In the case of Bishop Ryle one is conscious behind the pleasant, courtierlike, and scholarly manner of a background of very wholesome and unquestioning moral earnestness. But in Dr. Henson one is conscious of nothing behind the intellect but intellect itself, an intellect which has absorbed his spiritual life into itself and will permit no other tenant of his mind to divert attention for a single moment from its luminous brilliance, its perfection of mechanism.
One may be quite wrong, of course; one can speak only of the impression which he makes upon oneself and perhaps a few of one"s friends; but it would almost seem as if he had ever regarded Christianity as a thesis to be argued, not a religion to be preached, a principle to be enunciated, not a practice to be extended, a tradition to be maintained, not a pa.s.sion to be communicated.
Yet his sermons, which a great Anglo-Catholic declared to me with a mocking mordancy to be full of "edification," do often enter that region of religion which seems to demand an appeal to the emotions; moreover, it is not to be thought for a moment that the Bishop is not deeply concerned with all moral questions, that he is in the least degree indifferent to the high importance of conduct. But for myself these excursions, earnest and well-intentioned as they are, proclaim rather the social energy of the good citizen than the fervent zeal of an apostle on fire with his Master"s message. The evangelicalism of the Bishop has taken, as it were, the cast of politics, and he enters the pulpit of Christ to proclaim the reasonableness of the moral law with the alacrity of the lecturer.