Painted Windows / Studies in Religious Personality

. . . attracted, corrected, guided, rewarded, satiated, in a long discip

more than one quarter that a vote on this subject would place him head and shoulders above all other

oth in temperament and intellect as the Dean of St. Paul's has confessed

numerous company of high-minded men who live devout and disinterested lives. But no man conveys, both in his writings and in personal touch, a more telling sense of ghostly earnestness, a fee

, "Charles Gore has not aimed at harmonising his ideas with the

napproached, but one which must infallibly diminish with time. For it is, I am compelled to think, the salience of personality. History does not often endorse th

n impression on the public, plainly lies in saving from irretrieva

a thing quite unique in his experience, something indeed incommunicable to those who had not met the man; yet, checking himself of a sudden, and as it were shaking

Gladstone was infinitely greater than his ideas. The tradition of that almost marvellous impression still prevails, b

hardly at all with the beauty of his life or the bewitchments of his character; for our purpose is to arrive at his

leman, breathing a charm not to be found in the house of a rich parvenu. He has avoided without effort the conscious artistry of Chelsea and the indifference to art of the un?sthetic vulgarian. As to the manner of his life, it is reduced to an extreme o

ike Mr. Tawney, church government with men like Bishop Temple, writes his books and sermons, and on a cold day, seated on a cushion

nt to a meeting about it in Margaret Street, where crises in the Chur

ng about with him "a permanently troubled conscience." The phrase lives in his face. It is not th

its challenging tilt and wide war-breathing nostrils, the broad white moustache and sudden pointed beard sloping inward; nor can one listen to the deep, tired, and ghostly voice slowly uttering the laborious ideas of his troubled mind with the somewhat painful pronunciation of the elocutionist (he makes chapell of Chapel); nor mar

his voice. He has the look of one whose head has long been thrust out of a window gloomily expecting an accident to happen at the street corner. FitzGerald once admirably described the face of Carlyle as w

feet to go into hell." Has he reached strength at the centre, one wonders, by doing violence to any part of his moral being? Is his strength not the strength of the whole man but the strength only of his will, a forced strength to which his reason has not grea

n of the Christian world, and who has placed himself whole-heartedly in political alliance with the militant forces of victorious Labour, exercises so little influence in the

y hard to be a good Christian," and that we must surely, as St. Peter says, "pass the time of our sojourning here in fear." All of which suggests to us that the Bishop has not entered

he main events

influence at Oxford, where he remained, first as Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon

the theory that the human knowledge of Christ was limited. This book distressed a number of timid people, but extended the

by a most singular simplicity, a profound piety, and above all by a deep honesty of conviction which few who heard him could withstand. Weller, the Dean's verger at the Abbey, has many

ife devoted to the mystical element and the moral implications of the Christian religion. He

o had frightened Liddon by his tremulous adventure towards the mere fringe of modernism became the declared enemy, the implacable foe, of the least of his clergy who questioned even the most questionable clauses of the creeds. He demanded of them all a categorical assent to the literal truth of the miraculous, in exactly

Charles Gore on this matter, and that he agreed with Charles Gore's ruling that if belief in that miracle were abandoned Chris

imself. He did well to retire. But unfortunately this retirement was not consecrated to those exercises which made him so impressive and so powerful an

life. From the day of the great sermons in Westminster Abbey that wonderful influence has diminished, and he is now i

he richest of spiritual gifts, which demand quiet and a profound peace for their development, he has thrown himself into the arena of theological disputation, where force of intellect rather than beauty of character is the first requirement of victory. Instead of drawing all men to the sweet reas

the universe, n

e up what was me

e such manifold sacrifices, and by which he is not always so loyally followed as he deserves to be, is of all parties in the Church t

rs to make up for that sad if not fatal deficiency by an almost inexhaustible credulity, a marked ability in superstitious ceremonial, a not very modest assertion of the cl

l extravagance is distasteful, all disloyalty is impossible. He is, indeed, a survival from the great and orderly Oxford Movement

, to the younger generation of Anglo-Catholics-not many of whom are scholars and few gentlemen-the party which he has served so loyally, and with so much distinction, so

understand, demands a reversal of itself to account for the change which takes place in digestion. If they were rid of his restraining hand, if they felt they could trust themselves without his intellectual championship, these Boishevists of sacerdotalism, these enthusiasts for the tyr

let him read the Anglican chapters in A Spiritual ?neid. Father Knox was once a member of this pa

the great influence he once exercised, or began to exercise, on the national life, a moral and spiritual influence which might at this time have been well-nigh supreme if

f Coleridge's grave warning, "He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed b

ituted the two chief sacraments. He will sacrifice nothing in this respect. His whole mind, which is a very different thing from his whole spirit, leans towards authority

ave got no short or easy answer at all." A large, important, and learned body of men in the Church, he says, hold views which are "directly subversive of the foundations of the creeds." He calls this state

uth on grounds of Scripture, reason, history, everything, so that we may have a party, a body whic

on saw Athanasius laid in the grave, a long time since the Inquisition pronounced the opinions of Galileo to be heretical and therefore fals

ion and patronage of national governments. It should never have become nationalised. Its grea

must have a message for the world, a message for the whole world, for all mankind. Surely, surely. But

t be a fundamental change. Christianity is intensely personal, but its individualism is of the spirit, the individualism of unselfishness. He laughs grimly, in a low and rumbl

and economists saying that what those men hate more than anything else is a fixed principle. He quotes with a sardonic pleasure the capital saying that a certain statesman's idea of a settled policy based on fixed mor

ng; we could do no other; it was a stern duty laid upon us by the Providence which overrules the foolishness of man. But he is insistent that

m, incredulity, and the base appetite for revenge. We might have led the world into a new epoch if at that moment we had laid down our sword, taken up our cros

fuses to style himself a pessimist. There is much good in the world; he is continually being astonished by the goodness of individuals; he c

pposed conflict between Religion and Science. What they want is a message. T

n't preach in England." As for those chapels to which people go to hear a popular preacher, he calls them "preaching shops," and speaks with pity of those who occupy their pulpits: "That must

. In its genesis, the Oxford Movement threw up great men, very great men, men of considerable intellectual power and a most profound spirituality; it is not to be expected, perhaps, that such giants should appear again, and in their absence lesser men may possibly mistake the symbol for

arty is the Aaron's rod of all the Churches. Many would have followed him if he had been content to say only, "Do as I do," but he descended into the dust of controversy, and bade us think as he thinks. Nevertheless, in spite of this fatal

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olar and Porson Prizeman, 1880; Porson Scholar, 1881; Craven Scholar and Browne Medalist, 1882; Senior Chancellor's Medalist, 1883; 1st Class Classics, 1882 and 1883; Hare Prizeman, 1885; Assistant Master at Eton, 1884-88; Fellow of King's, 1886-88; Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford, 1889-1904; Select Preacher at Oxford, 1893-95, 1903-5, 1920-21; Cambridge, 1901, 1906, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1920; Bampton Lecturer, 1

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