B 0 0 K S .
RELIGION AFTER THE WAR.•
THE clergy are no exception to the rule that men of all callings are meditating how their own spheres can be reconstructed after the war. Here we have a series of essays on religious reconstruction, originally delivered as addresses, by well-known residents in Cambridge Univer- sity. Nearly all the authors are Professors or Lecturers in theology; but though this fact gives the book authority, we hardly think that the editor has chosen a wise word in calling the essays a " programme." This word implies in its context some unity of purpose, whereas the essays are notable for diversity of view, and probably no very definite scheme—no " programme "—could be extracted from them with the consent of all the authors. Nevertheless we note with much satisfaction a temper that may be called prevalent throughout the assays. It is a temper of moderation ; a repudiation, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, of any theory that would narrow the Church, and perversely exclude any man who desired to be included. This is characteristic of Cambridge theology ; and when we consider the evidence placed before us as to the nature of popular needs in religion as disclosed by the • Religious Reeozudeudion 'offer Me War : a Camtridge Programme. By James Plowden-Wardlaw, C. T. Wood, J. F. Bethune-Baker, F. C. Carpenter, F. Oungosut Clare, A. H. F. Boughey, A. H. M'Nelle, W. Emery Barnes, .1. K. Motley, F. J. Foakes•Jacksoon, J. B. B. Taylor, Arthur J. Tait, T. 1.1. Bonney, and The Raster of Corpus. London ; Robert Scott. (2s. Od. net.]
experiences of Army chaplains at the front, we cannot help thinking that the Cambridge comprehensive view of what Churchmanship means is likely to have great influence after the war. After all, ecclesiastical fashions, like other fashions, move in cycles, and one is inclined to prophesy that after the war the spirit of the historical Broad Church and Low Church will reassert itself, in contrast to the High Church spirit which has for a long time been displayed by a body within the Church of undeniable intellectual force and great personal devotion.
It may be said that the experiences of the chaplains at the front have been only among soldiers, and that after the war appeals to soldiers will have less relative importance than now. The answer of one witness quoted in this book is, to our thinking, complete. He remarks that as the Army is now composed of civilians, and the old professional soldiers scarcely count, Army chaplains are really dealing with the whole youth of the nation. Whatever of ignorance, of indifference, of responsive- ness, is found at the front may be taken as representative of men of all classes between the ages of about twenty and forty. It would not be unfair to summarize the impression of all chaplains at the front (as we read it not only in this book but elsewhere) by saying that the soldier wants something ho can understand, something simple. Moreover, he has no tolerance for the finer points of ecclesiastical rigidity which cause a Christian of one sect to ban a Christian of another as though lie were a Moslem, a Buddhist, or a Taoist. The average soldier is willing to listen to tho preacher who can hold his attention without theological prejudice; and having seen barns and wrecked houses used as chapels by various sects in turn, he has come to the conclusion that Christianity in peace might more closely resemble Christianity under stress. Indeed, if a high bid is to be made by the Church for a more spiritual life after the war, religion will be taught under stress—the stress of knowing that one of the greatest opportunities of modern times is being offered to the Church, and that if it be not used it may slip away never to return.
We do not of course suppose that either the Broad Church or the Low Church will be reconstructed as it was known in the highest tide of its success. In many senses each was intellectually the product of its times, and can never return exactly in the same form ; but we shall be surprised if the civilian returned from the war does not want for his satisfaction something of the tolerance and freedom of Kingsley and Maurice, and something of the simple and strong emotions associated with the school conventionally known as Evangelical. Simple and strong emotion, we know very well, is by no means necessarily pro- hibited lig strict formularies. Dolling and Stanton wore profoundly " Evangelical " in many of their methods, and often confessed that the Church had much to learn from Nonconformists in the matter of relaxing the discipline of the rubrics and letting the natural man on occasion worship in what seemed to his intelligence the natural way for him.
We cannot quote all the instances of soldiers' ignorance of the religious teaching which they technically professed to have received, but one passage may be given. Dr. A. H. M'Neile says :-
" I have talked with many soldiers in the hospital, and their ideas are a fair index of the general state of mind. When a man says that there aro only two religions in England, the Protestant and the Catholic --by which he means Roman Catholic—it shows that he knows very little of the doctrines of the Church. When a man states that Wesleyan and Church of England are the same, it is clear that no one has taken the • trouble to teach him the difference. Another man, who described himself as a member of the Church of England, asked if Confirmation were the same as being enrolled as a member of the Y.M.C.A. And it is very common, when you ask a man whether he has been confirmed, to receive the answer : Not so far as I know. Where is the driving force of corporate enthusiasm to come from if the members of the Church are not taught by those whose lives have been dedicated to the work of teaching 7 " The Rev. J. Plowden-Wardlaw, who edits the book, demands a democratic ministry. We cannot, however, precisely image the kind of" democratic " clergyman ho wants. An educated man is an edu- cated man all the world over, and we hope Mr. Plowden-Wardlaw does not want uneducated men in Holy Orders. The " working-class" clergyman, we imagine, would not arrive at his position except by a proof of intellectual capacity. But having given that proof, would he differ in any essential degree from hundreds of men who are now in the ministry ? It is scarcely true now to say that the clergy of the Church of England are all of the "Public School type." The ladder to the ministry should be easier, we agree. Any one who aspires to climb it should have the opportunity to do so. But there would be no ad an- tage that we can see in a man who has climbed it being in the same mental relation to his own class that a Russian " peasant-priest " bears to the villagers.
The Rev. C. T. Wood demands that the " parson's freehold " should be done away with ; that the laity should have more power ; and that the Thirty-nine Articles should no longer be accepted as a teat of orthodoxy. He says :-
" You may baseyour Christianity on either of two principles : on the exclusive principle of the Church of Rome and of the old-fashioned Nonconformist sect : or on the inclusive principle, which is surely the real spirit of the Church of England ; which is certainly the spirit of the most living religious movement of our times, the Student Christian Movement. It is easy to mock at the principle of inclusiveness as if it would abolish all clear-cut belief and-end in a syncretic religion of vague
sentiment. But we cannot forget that the Church to which our Lord
and His Apostles belonged, the Jewish Church of the first century, was the broadest Church imaginable, including even Sadducees with their disbelief in the very existence of the spiritual ; and yet our Lord never uttered a word of disapproval. Trust your man, I say again, and not your system. Give him a large and a wise liberty, as long as you secure his respect for the rights of the Laity and his obedience to the rule of the Bishops (neither of which is secured at present). Give him some freedom in liturgical usage—freedom to change a lesson in the Lectionary which is unsuitable, or to drop the use of the imprecatory Psalms with their appalling savagery ; freedom to pray at a public service, simply and naturally in his own words, for some need revealed by the passing week. Finally let me make two points, briefly but most earnestly. First, when this war is over, and men, who have faced death day by day, come home, there will be no room for unreality in worship-- for the wearisome drone of monotoned prayer, for the aesthetic quaint- ness of a medieval survival, for the recital of a liturgy as a mechanical office' at such a pace that even the educated cannot echo the petitions. If our Church is to meet their needs, humbug and cant must vanish ; we must be simpler, more real, more straight, more brotherly, more large-minded and large-hearted. And lastly, we must have reunion in Christendom. It is surely no longer tolerable that bodies of Christians, equally devout, equally effective in missionary work (which is the supreme test), loving one Father, serving one Lord and Saviour, inspired by one Holy Spirit, should go on thwarting each other while the tide of unbelief and wickedness rises unchecked. We mist have reunion, or the world will find a larger Christianity without us : we can have it, giving up nothing that we hold dear except our exclusiveness, if we are equally ready to allow others to give up nothing which they in their turn hold dear ; if we admit what the facts of history have proved, that our distinctive beliefs are of the be= esse' of Christianity, not of its esse ' ; if we allow the Church of England to stand on the basis of its own sweet-reasonableness and not on the basis of medieval compulsion. We can have unity on such terms—not uniformity—as the family of God : Sirs, ye are all brethren.' " Dr. Barnes writes in the same sense :—
" From Canada and from Australia conies a strong voice in favour of Reunion in Church fellowship among men of the same blood and of the same language. This voice is truly English. It is our national good sense which cries out that no unreal barriers shall be allowed to separate Christian from Christian. In cases in which Reunion is too difficult or at any rate premature, the claim is raised for Co-operation at least between one body and another. The Kikuyu Conference of June, 1913, together with much for which it stood, has receded to the back of our minds owing to the pressure of an almost world-wide war. But Kikuyu must not be forgotten. The problems remain, and the English love of comprehension and toleration remains. Our Church must justify its English character by returning to the task of removing all that perpetuates avoidable causes of division. It is, for instance, to be remembered that our Church is committed neither by her history, nor by her ordinal, nor by her formulas, to any rigid theory which for- bids co-operation with non-Episcopal bodies. Rigidity is not a principle of the English Church, although it is not seldom exemplified in individual English Churchmen. We are not bound, for instance, by any principle to =church the Presbyterian kirk whether we meet her in Great Britain or beyond the seas. Nor ought the phrase Catholic Practice,' so easily flung in defiance and so loosely used, to keep us from all acts of help and inter-communion. To take one case only which the war has brought once more to the front with urgency. English generosity, no less than Christian charity, constrains us to lend our sacred buildings, where need exists, to other religious bodies. The fact that the English Church has never lost the ancient custom of consecrating her churches does not run counter to the charitable practice of lending churches from time to time for Presbyterian or Wesleyan worship. We do not depreciate the supremo value of the Book of Common Prayer by pro- viding a temporary roof for those who prefer extempore prayer. Such action is not to be ascribed to mere careless good nature. Charity is a principle of Christianity, and therefore of the Church of England."
That is admirably said. The strictest, most detailed, and most exclu- sive doctrine known within the Church of England will of course have its followers, when the teaching is earnest and unrelaxing. We would exclude no teaching, within the bounds of rational discipline, that brings comfort to any man. To do so would be simply to try to arrive at uncomprehensiveness from another side. It is really preposterous to disdain or prohibit, on assumed Christian grounds, what is done de- votedly in the name of Christianity. There is not so much Christianity in the world that we can afford this madness of civil war. But we are sure that as a general test of Churchmanship, and as a standard of Churchmanship, the passages we have just quoted reveal the only true spirit under which a truly National Church can exist.
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