Painted Windows / Studies in Religious Personality

If you must cast, lead the hounds into the belief t

friends of hers refused, even with averted eyes and a bottle of smelling salts at the nose, to

ither the ladies of Oxford go up in great numbers to listen to the beautiful music which disting

ds on the walls challenge the visitor to define his definitions. The atmosphere of the place is worship. The greatest of all Christ's affi

rd Brooke and Charles Hargrove, author of Mad Shepherds, Legends of Smokeover, and other books which have won the

lish apologist of our day"; it lacks the marvellous sweetness of Martineau's expression, but has a greater strength; it does not bear witness to s

tineau's is eminently the indoors face of a student, this is the face of a man who has lived out of doors, a mountaineer and a seafarer. Under the dense bone of the forehead which ov

avy shoulders, its deep chest, its broad firm upright neck, and its slow movements, the movements as it were of a peasant. Always there is about him the feeling of the

its academic citizens, building for himself a home on a hill two miles and more from Magdalen Br

I think, the thoughtful attention of his contemporaries. It can be set forth in a few words, for his faith is

re are others who choose to dwell on the uniqueness of Jesus, who feel in Him some precious but quite inexpressible, certainly quite indefinable, spell of divinity, and who love to lose themselves in mystical meditations concerning His continual presence in the

understand you, you must consider that you baptise in the name of an abstraction, a man, and a metaphor." More simple was the interpretation of a Japanese who, after listening with a corrug

lution. And Jesus, so far as human thought can reach into the infinite, is the Messenger of God, the Revealer both of God's Personality and man's immortality, the great Teacher of liberty. What else He may be we do not know, but may discover in other phases

ing in Christian forms the rites of those mystery religions which competed with each other for the superstition of the Greco-Roman world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr. Jacks's interpre

from the grave with His physical body or not, certain is it, and beyond all dispute of every conceivable kind, th

After writing about dogma, and endeavouring to show that the traditionalist is on firmer ground than the modernist, because he can say, "Here is the Truth," w

f the stick, that they have radically misconceived the whole nature of the Chri

essage. What con

theology, on the other hand, demand Councils of the Church for their definition, and an infallible Pope for their interpretation. They change, have changed even in the unchangeable Catholic Church, and will change with every advance of th

are responsible for that rejection, let the conscience o

l minds, for all places, for all times-a reading which stands clear of controversial theology,

arth is not a Borstal Institution. Nature is the handiwork of a Father. Look deeply into that handiwork and it reveals a threefold tendency-the tendency towards goodness, the t

jects for which He manifested that love. These things have "a deeper significance than our pensive theologies have da

ing, the most joyous, the least repressive, and the least forbidding of all the religions of the world." It does not fear the world, it

f redemption, the religion of the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, but "the end of it all is a resurrection

ey and gradually rises to the major, until it culminates in a great merry-making, to the surprise of the Elder Son, who thinks the majesty of th

adapt this religion to the minds of the young, we regarded it as "originally a religion

the radiance of Christianity made its first appearance and it

ance attracted children to His side. He was fond of choosing a child for the sublimest of teachings. He made it clear that entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is eas

he thing in itself. He loved "the reality that abides beyond the shadows." He directed our spiritual vision to this reality, telling us that the soul makes a natural response "to a world built on the same heavenly pattern with its

ess is to be discerned only by the spiritual eye. For Him the

ous atmosphere as though it were a foreign envelope, of little account so long as the substance it enshrines is reta

nd our religion, instead of transforming the corruptible world into its incorruptible equivalents

f the world, short of "those radiant conceptions of God, of man,

s, "We are free when our acts proceed from our entire personality, when they express it, when they ex

only the intelligence of a man, but the whole of his intuitions as well. The entire personality, the entire field of consciousness, the entire mystery of the ego, is bidden to throw it

ith powers which are invisible and eternal-with justice, with virtue, with beauty, with truth, with love, with excellence. More to him than any house built with hands, more, much more even than the habitation of h

God can mean nothing else but love of God. All our troubles have come upon us from the failure of the Church to live in

ultivated fear of God, and could not

and the State another. . . . All this was closely connected with the idea of the potentate God which Church an

Here it is that Dr. Jacks mak

d whose second need is for government, and you will find that as his need for lig

s are complaining of emptiness, the schools, the co

n, a Chinaman, and a Japanese, "What is the leading interest in your country? W

t have you learnt from the war?" the answer

grasping the vast potentialities of the human spirit, and that is what this hunger for education means, have they

ight, and Ligh

f it develops according to promise, will grow into the

husiasms, will displace the struggle for power, with its mean

h would merely set it going again in another form, but by being submerged, lost sigh

they will not happen unless men are

exist-a visible world reduced by positive science to the invisible world of philosophy. They confront not a quantitative universe, but a qualitative. They almost begin at the very spirit of man; they cannot advance far before the

ntiality, to realise that his first need is for light, and to define that mystic all-important word in terms of education. Chri

fied with the system of education which exists at the present time. Dr. Jacks l

degrading? Plato has warned us that no man is fit to govern until he has ceased to desire power. But these m

aith 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 nobler system of education. They will compel the polit

ble way out of our present chaos. For many they will shed a new light on their old ideas of both religion and

s 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 th

hat almost filled it and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little cor

his retirement even to cry, "I told you so," to a Church which is coming more an

o Dr. Jacks on one occasion, "as a vi

"Better not say so. Let t

hing with patient eyes the action of the Spirit of God 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

uptions, but the most serious of all is not to be f

nd radiant energy, in a tendency to revert in spirit, if not in termin

eems, so the world in its innermost nature is a far nobler fabr

efinition of God which goes behind and beneat

and perhaps joy most of all. It is a joyou

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 e

e characteristics of the propagandist. But the work of Dr. Jacks at Manchester College may yet give not only this country but the

HENSLEY

oul'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, Essex, 1888-95; Select Preacher at Oxford, 1895-96, 1913-14; Cambridge, 1901; Incumbent of St. Mary's Hospital, Ilford, 189

HENSLEY