Painted Windows / Studies in Religious Personality

would usurp, and so leaves little room for it; and likewise lay

ell: I will do as you say. Then he turned to

athematics, a great virtue and a small fault combine to check his intellec

ream of lifting an elbow to push his way through a press of people bound for the limelight. It is only a deep moral earnestn

hat is sensational, and of all "undue emphasis," he resembles Joubert, who wanted

s of scientific territory. But he knows much; much too much for vociferation; and his eyes are so wide open to the enormous sweep of scientific inqui

ucid exposition. Few men of our day, in my judgment, are better qualified to state the whole case for Christianity than this distinguished Canon of Westminster Abbey, this evangelical Fellow of the Royal Society, who is neverthele

d who is admirably grounded in the physical sciences, should lack that fighting instinct, that "confidence of reason," wh

his neck, shoving him forward by a series of jerks; and he seems to throw, like Lord Robert, a particular sense of enjoyment into the motion of his legs, as though he would get rid of all perilous swagger at that, the less harmful end of his two extremities-the antipodes of his reason. Like Lord Robert, too, he has a most pleasant voice, and a

cing at the head of modern Churchmen to the rich future of a depaganised and wholly rational Christianity. His heart says "Fight," but his reason says "Watch." Fighting i

ing signs of the period that such distinguished preaching should have made a mark. Moreover, he is yet three years from fifty, with a mind so hospitable to growth that it has no room for one of those prejudices

n, which is the most difficult of all. First, comes the destruction of false ideas-a bracing time for the born fighter; second, comes the tentative search for new ideas-an anxious t

are in the

ied new idea may be more dangerous than he who still clings, in the Name of Christ, to an old idea which is false. We

respected, honoured, loved; but it is no longer a fetish. In ceasing to be a superstition, and in coming to be a number of genuine books full of light for the student of

ound His teaching. This great battle is not over, but it looks as if victory will lie with the more moderate school of modernists. Outside very extreme circles, the old rigid notions concerning the Person of Jes

ristianity. Already in France and Germany the question is asked, Did Jesus institute any sacraments at all? But even in these two countries the battle has not yet begun in real earnest, while over here only readers

, but our main responsibility is to bear a ma

st everything in the Higher Criticism, but holds to Christ as an incarnation of the Divine purpose, an incarnation, if you will, of God, all we can know of God limited by His human body, as God we must suppose is not limited, but still God. And, finally, there is the Catho

y of unselfish earnestness which have given to Christianity the most effectual of its impulses. A man may still worship Christ, and still make obedience to the Will of Christ the chief passion or object of his

their true nature, and have become a living principle, we shall feel ourselves great and free as huma

ng as He abides a living principle in the hearts of individual men. So long as He expresses for mankind the Character of God and reveals to mankind the nature of God's purpose, so long as men love Him as they love no other, and set themselves to make His spirit tell, first in their lives and after that in the world about them, does it

his head, speaking of the miraculous changes wrought in men's lives by religious fervour pure and simple; but it was in vain. He agrees that religious fervour may work such miracles: he is the last man in the

, to save their beliefs rather than their souls. He regards the emotionalist as occupying territory as dangerous to himself and to the victory of Christianity as the territory occupied b

on of his faith, a faith which, resting only on tradition or emotion, must obviously take its place among al

st. If not, there are religions in the world of an antiquity greater than Christianity's, whose traditions have been faithfully kept by a vaster host of the human race than has e

with every theory of supernatural evidence excluded from his mind. The psychologist may eventually be driven to accept the Christian explanation of these phen

th, bringing our minds as well as our hea

he utterances of Canon Barnes which show

e and sweep destructively across lands where Jesus reigned as the Son of God,

though some do not acknowledge, the necessity of pres

ucture of the human mind if we would explain how Jesus was re

ship or theology, have in simple language revealed the power of Christ in their lives. For theory and practice, speculation and life, cann

re of necessity pretentious or arid in speaking of such

the end of the second century to the close of the Middle Ages, concealed beneath alien ideas derived from the mystery religions; that the Reformation was t

in richness and purity

y the belief that our Lord had a right

rocess. His highest attributes must serve to show its pu

the standard set by Jesus. Jesus will ever more completely draw men and inspire

's estimate of its values and duties. It will endure so long as the work and P

ives, great a

h he may be able to present the historic power of Christianity in terms of modern thought. Jesus remains for him the central Figure of evolution. "Human thought," he d

ll schools of thought, all parties, all sects, that they must prepare themselves for the final strife which is yet to come, that great strife, foreseen by Newman, when the two contrary principles o

to Canon Barnes, religion is simply the teaching of Christ, and Christ is the revelation to man of God's nature and purpose. He would simplify dogma in order to clarify truth. He would clarify truth in order to enlarge the op

e he has spoken to me with almost a ringing enthusiasm, emphasizing his unbounded force, his unbounded courage; and of Bishop Gore with the deepes

are now seeking, and to seek is eventually to find. This seeking, he observes, is among the latest utterances of theology, a fact of considerable im

d like go out the day after they come in, sometimes the same day." Then pointing to the upper shelves, "But I've plenty of the older books"; and there in the dust and neglect of the top shelves Canon Barnes surveyed

as Bishop Gore claims, most of the theological colleges are in the hands of the traditionalists, and the tendency of these colleges is to turn out priests rather than teachers, formalists rather than evangelists. Such colleges as represent the evangelical movement are, thanks to their title deeds, largely in the hands of pious la

esmen; but such is the present condition that a man who is made a bishop finds himself so immersed in the business of a great institution that his intellectual and spiritual life become things of accident, luxurious things to be sq

bove all other things a social force, a great cleansing and sanctifying influence in the daily life of evolving m

gnise that we must preach the Gospel; that we must

of God is a

aloof from intellectual, pol

message and sympathies of Jesus into the factory, the

t first be disentangled from the accretions of ancient error before it can work its transforming miracles both in the heart of men and in the institutions of a materialistic civilisation. It is in order that it sh

Dr. Johnson observed and praised in a

BRAMWE

tely. Commenced public work 1874; Chairman of the S.A. Life Assurance Society and the Reliance Bank; Chief of Staff, Salvation Army, 1880-1912. Publications: Books that Bl

BRAMWE