Prayer and Genius
RY THE BISHOP OF RIPON.
AGREAT part of the problem of our time lies in the growing disequilibrium between personality and process, the inability of man to stand up to his environ- ment, the drying up of the power, and even the desire, to take the actual and, in the light of the ideal, "mould it closer to the heart's desire."
"Things are in the saddle and ride the world." Mechanization has invaded the sanctuary of the human spirit : and the human quality which should have kept the Machine in its place as a servant is failing when it is needed most. Genius, especially moral genius, is at a prohibitive premium. "We have been given every- thing," wrote Dr. Gilbert Murray some years ago, " except a certain necessary greatness of character." And what has not been " given " we do not imagine we can "grow."
It is to challenge this inferiority complex that this article is written. Genius we regard as something elusive, unpredictable, rare in its incidence, incom- mensurable with anything else. There is no prescription or formula for it. And when it comes, it may be as much a curse as a blessing. Yet everyone, surely, in his honest and expansive moments, at least while he is young, believes in the presence of just a touch of genius in himself, however little others may recognize it. At any rate, we have the fact of our own individual unique- ness: and uniqueness is the thread around which genius crystallizes, the starting-point of originality. Further, there is the witness of history to the connexion between human greatness, of all kinds, and that attitude of the- human spirit to its environment which we call " faith " and which expresses itself in worship. "Worship," says Ruskin, "stands in some commanding relation to the health of man and to his highest power, so as to be, in some manner, the sourte of intellect. All the great ages have been ages of faith." If so, not only is there prima fade cause for a shortage of genius, especially moral genius, in an age of un-faith and disillusionment, when in most lives " worship " goes by the board, but we have also at least a clue to the remedy.
In anything like a full discussion one would need to consider the dictum of the late Dr. P. T. Forsyth, that " the decay of faith in a nation is a moral fact,. the stigma or the scar of a sin." That aspect of modern disillusionment has been too little pondered ; and in the Christian perspective " repentance " is always closely coupled with faith. On all sorts of counts a huge collective "repentance towards God" is long overdue : and this is one reason for a public, corporate act, such as a National Day of Humiliation and Prayer. But here we must think in terms of .the individual. The problem is to make "personality " in .him once more the master of circumstance ; to blow into flame the spark of potential genius in each till he becomes the creative influence on his environment that every man, as such, is meant to be. And that means persuading him really to act as what he is—not a rational but a praying animal : a creature "incurably religious," made (in Mr. H. G. Wells's phrase) "with a God-shaped blank in his heart," and therefore only himself when in com- munion and co-operation with God, "in whom we live and move and have our being."
The place of the prayer-instinct in the human make-up need not be argued nowadays. Alike as savage and as scientist man is up against an Unknown Quantity in his universe, an unattainable ideal in himself. His only true and " scientific " attitude is therefore one of dependence and awe. And, in so far as he has yielded to this instinct, he has risen in the scale. " Dis te • minorem quod geris, imperas," says Horace to the Roman people ; and if natural science to-day is the one region in which man has been really creative, it is because, within its own scope, the laboratory is a temple and exacts the attitude of worship. The problem is to restore that attitude in relation to every part of life. At present those who use prayer" scientifically as an organic law of their nature—are a tiny minority, though those who never pray are probably far fewer.' To make prayer what the business man calls "a business proposition" is, surely, the way to restore personality to the saddle and make man master in his world again.
Where have we gone wrong ? A sentence of George- Meredith seems to me to suggest it. " For this reason so many fall from God after they have attained unto Him, that they cling to Him with their weakness, not with their strength." God is the last resort of the defeated spirit, not the source of inspiration which averts defeat. Someone has said that "the chief function of a friend is to make us do what we can" : and no man feels ashamed of drawing inspiration from those he loves. Yet to "fall back upon" God is widely regarded as a confession of failure. "A man," we are told, "ought to be able to stand by himself." And so in the majority of lives divine intervention, when it comes, is associated with a sense of humiliation, and remains unacknowledged, even by the beneficiary himself. The grace (or helpfulness) of God is experienced only in the form of what theology calls " redemption." : the second of the three characteristic activities which the doctrine of the Holy Trinity underlines. God is the Saviour of situations which man -has bungled, the Overcomer of evil with good. Yet His first and most distinctive activity is "creation." Redemption is but clearing the ground that new creation may take place. And the keynote of the process, when God and the human spirit come together—the point where "the Third Person" of the Trinity comes in—is " inspira- tion " : the activity which moves others to create, redeem, and be " inspiring " in their turn.
In other words, the activities most distinctive of God are just those which we connect with genius. In refusing Him access to a situation until we have first mismanaged it we reduce both God and man to_ a lower level. It _ is. as though Michelangelo or Raphael, coming to life again, were so continuously. employed "restoring" those of their own masterpieces which time has damaged, or later mediocrity has "touched up," that their genius could never find new creative expression. It is as it was with Jesus at Nazareth: "He could do there no mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and ,healed them." The power which seeks to "make all things new" is mainly used for salvage operations.
The mistake lies in failure to recognize the organic link between God and man, which again the doctrine of the Trinity expresses, and which accounts for our being "praying animals" whether we act accordingly or not. The Christian doctrine of God, put in action by the Christian practice of prayer, is the plain man's road to genius : the key to the enhancing of whatever natural gifts the individual may have and (above all) fo the making of every individual " human " in the highest sense—a moral genius, a creative influence in the sphere of character and contacts, a master of the vital "art of getting on together," a pioneer of higher moral standards, a discoverer of new forms of good. "He who can spiritualize _democracy," said Mazzini, ", will save the world." The humanization of humanity is now admittedly our urgent need if the mechanization of industry, which should have enriched and liberated us, is not to be our ruin instead. The key to the process is Christian prayer, as that which makes and keeps per- sonality creative. In Emerson's words, "If your eye is on the Eternal, your intellect will grow and your opinions and actions have a beauty which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival." With which one may couple a splendid sentence from a second-century " defence " of Christianity, the Apology of Aristides, describing a feature of the early Christians of which we could do with more in the Churches of to-day : "Because they acknowledge the goodness of God towards them "—a reminder that Christian prayer is never far from praise—" therefore on account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world."
There is an old tale of a millionaire who lost his reason and, imagining himself bankrupt, thought that he had to live upon a week allowed him. by the charity of his creditors. So every Saturday he went to his bank and drew £1, and scraped along somehow till he died. Then his estate was found to be still worth a million of money. But it was no longer his to use.
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