The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson (books to read this summer txt) 📕

God--he may express God by terms of co-equality and consubstantiality, and even desire to proclaim such expressions, in concert with like-minded persons, to the harmonies of an organ, so long as it uplifts him in spirit; but such a man falls into a grievous error when he vilifies or condemns others for not seeing as he does, or enunciates that thus and thus only can a man apprehend God. The more firmly that a Church holds the necessity of what is unessential, the more it diverges from the Spirit of Christ.

It is by the essentials that we live and make progress. The man who apprehends such a statement of doctrine as the Athanasian creed affords, as a sweet and gracious mystery, thereby draws nearer to God. But if he goes further and says, "The essence of my finding inspiration in any particular creed is that I should believe it to be absolutely and literally true, and that all outside it are thieves and robbers, or at the best ignorant and misguided persons," then he stumbles at the very outset. His own belief is probably true in the sense that the truth doubtless transcends and embraces all spiritual light hopefully discerned; but the moment that a man condemns those who do not exactly agree with himself, he sins against the Spirit. Is it not a ghastly and inconceivable thought that Christ should have authorised that men should be brought to the light by persecution? Or that any of his words could be so foully distorted as to lend the least excuse to such a principle of action? It matters not what kind of persecution is employed, whether it be mental or physical. The essence is that men should so apprehend God as to desire to draw nearer to him, and that they should be goaded or coerced or terrified into submission is intolerable.

The true worshipper is the man who at no specified place or time, but as naturally as he breathes or sleeps, opens his heart to God and prays for holy influences to guard and guide him. There are some who have a quickened sense of fellowship and unity, when such prayers and aspirations are uttered in concert; but the error is to desire merely the bodily presence of one's fellow-creatures for such a purpose, rather than their mental and spiritual acquiescence. The result of such a desire is that it is often taught, or at all events believed, that there is a kind of merit in the attendance at public worship. The only merit of it lies in the case of those who sacrifice a personal disinclination to the desire to testify sympathy for the religious life. It is no more meritorious for those who personally enjoy it, than it is for a lover of pictures to go to a picture-gallery, for thus the hunger of the spirit is satisfied.

It would be better, perhaps, if it were frankly realised and recognised that it is a special taste, a peculiar vocation. It would be better if those who loved liturgical worship desired only the companionship of like-minded people; better still if it were recognised that there is no necessary connection between liturgical worship and morality at all, except in so far that all pure spiritual instincts are on the side of morality. But so far from holding it to be a duty for a man to protest against the importance attached to worship by liturgically-minded people, I should hold it to be a duty for all spiritually-minded men to show as much active sympathy as they can for a practice which is to many persons a unique and special channel of spiritual grace.

It is not the business of those who are enlightened to protest against conventional things, unless those conventions obscure and distort the truth. It is rather their duty to fall in with the existing framework of life, and live as simply and faithfully inside it as they can. To myself the plainest service is beautiful and uplifting, if it obviously evokes the spiritual ardour of the worshippers; and, on the other hand, a service in some majestic church, consecrated by age and tradition and association, and enriched by sacred art and heart-thrilling music, appeals as purely and graciously as anything in the world to my spiritual instinct. But I would frankly realise that to some such ceremonies appear merely as unmeaning and uninspiring; and the presence of such people is a mere discord in the harmony of sweetness.

The one essential thing is that we should desire to draw near to God, that we should faithfully determine by what way and in what manner we can approach him best, and that we should pursue that path as faithfully and as quietly as we can.


IX


It is Good Friday to-day. This morning I wandered through a clean, rain-washed world; among budding hedges, making for the great Cathedral towers that loom across the flat. It was noon when I passed through the little streets. Entering the great western portals, I found the huge Cathedral all lit by shafts of golden sunshine. There was a little company of worshippers under the central lantern; and a grave and dignified priest, with a tender sympathy of mien, solemnly vested, was leading the little throng through the scenes of the Passion. I sate for a long time among the congregation; and what can I say of the message there delivered? It was subtle and serious enough, full of refinement and sweetness, but it seemed to me to have little or nothing to do with life. I will not here go into the whole of the teaching that I heard--but it was for me all vitiated by one thought. The preacher seemed to desire us to feel that the sad and wasted form of the Redeemer, hanging in his last agony on the cross among the mocking crowd, was conscious at once of his humanity and his Divinity. But the thought is meaningless and inconceivable to me. If he was conscious then of his august origin and destiny, if he knew that, to use a material metaphor enough, he would shortly pass through lines of kneeling angels amid triumphant pealing music to the very Throne and Heart of God, the sufferings of his Passion can have been as nothing. There is no touch of example or help for me in the scene. Even the despairing cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" becomes a piece of unworthy drama; and yet if one presses the words of Jesus, and remembers that he had said but a few short hours before that he had but to speak the word, and legions of angels were at hand to succour him, it is impossible to resist the feeling that he knew who he was and whither he was bound. I do not say that the thesis is untrue; I only say that if he knew the truth, then there is no medicine in his sufferings for human despair.

The preacher seemed to feel the difficulty dimly, for he fell back upon the thought that the agony was caused by Christ's bearing the load of the world's sin. But here again I felt that, after all, sin must have been in a sense permitted by God. If God is omnipotent and all-embracing, no amount of freewill in man could enable him to choose what was not there already in the Mind of God.

And then, too, the lesson of science is that man is slowly struggling upwards out of his bestial inheritance into purity and light; and thus if a man can inherit evil from evil progenitors by the law of God, he is not a free agent in the matter; and it thus becomes a piece of sad impiety, or worse, to say that it was inconceivable agony to God to bear the sins which his own awful law perpetuated.

And to go deeper, what did the sacrifice effect? It effected no instant change in the disposition of man; it appears to me to be a dark profanity to believe that the human death of Christ effected any change in the purpose and Love of God to the world. That God should come himself on earth to die, in order that he might thereafter regard the human race more mercifully, seems to me, if it were true, to be a helpless piece of metaphysical jugglery. If that were true of God, there is nothing that I could not believe of him.

And so the words of the preacher, a man, as I knew, of faithful energy and unbroken prosperity of virtue, brought me no more hint of the truth than did the voice of a hidden dove which cooed contentedly in the stillness in some sun-warmed window of the clerestory. Dove and preacher alike had lived secure and contented lives under the shadow of the great Church, and equally, no doubt, if unconsciously, approved of the system which made such tranquil lives possible.

Once, it seemed to me, the human accent broke urgently through, when the preacher spoke of dark hours of spiritual dryness, when the soul seemed shut out from God--"When we know," he said in heart-felt tones, "that the Love of God is all about us, but we cannot enter into it; it seems to be outside of us." Had he indeed suffered thus, this courteous, kindly priest? I felt that he had, and that he was one of the sorrowful fellowship.

One word he said that dwells with me, that "Faith overleaps all visible horizons." That was a golden thought; so that as I walked back in the cool of the afternoon, and saw the prodigious plain stretch on all hands, and thought how strangely my own tiny life was limited and bound, I felt that the message of Christ was a mysterious trust, an undefined hope; not a mechanical process of forgiveness and atonement, but an assurance that there is something in the world which calls lovingly to the soul, and that while we stretch out yearning hands and desirous hearts to that, we are indeed very near to the unknown Mind of God.


X


I have often wondered how it has come about that Job has become proverbial for patience. I suppose that it has arisen out of the verse in the Epistle of St. James about the patience of Job; but, like the passage in the Book of Numbers which attributes an extreme meekness to Moses, it seems to me to be either a very infelicitous description, or else a case where both adjectives have shifted their meaning. Moses is notable for an almost fiery vehemence of character, and the punishment that was laid upon him was the outcome of a display of intemperate wrath. Just as we associate meekness with the worm that never turns, so the typically patient animal is the ass who is too phlegmatic to resent the most unjust chastisement, and ready to accommodate itself to the most overtaxing burdens. But Job is the very opposite of this; he endures, because there is no way out; but he never for a moment acquiesces in the justice of his affliction, and his complaints are both specific and protracted. He does not even display any very conspicuous fortitude under his afflictions. He is not indomitable so much as persistent. He is rather stubbornly self-righteous. It could not, of course, be otherwise, for the essence of the situation is that the sufferer should be aware that his deeds do not deserve punishment, and that the sufferings he endures should be permitted in order that his faith in God as well as his faith in his own integrity should be tested.

The truth is that the word patience is used in English in a double