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Garden" and passed also by the Porch and the Pre-Socratics. Yet all these schools were, during the first two centuries, the "present day religious knowledge and thought." Very curiously the orthodox line of theology, represented by St. John's Gospel, St. Justin, St. Clemens Alexandrinus, St. Irenaeus, was ahead of the time and not "present day," in those days. It was Platonism which seems to have influenced the philosophical expression of the faith, but Platonism did not come into its own again until the next, the third, century. Then, in the great age of Origen, St. Athanasius, St. Basil and the Gregories, Dr. Tyson might say the Church was up-to-date, though we should prefer to say the date was up to the Church. However that may be, it seems quite certain that, among many currents of ancient thought, the Church selected Platonism. After that there was no question of six weeks. It wasn't even six centuries. From the triumphant Platonism of Origen and St. Athanasius to the hesitating Platonism, inadequate for the great tasks of the age, of William of Champeaux was not six weeks but nine centuries. Then Abelard inserted the fine point of Aristotelianism into theology, which, in the great St. Thomas, was to rule the thought of Western Catholicism down to Leo XIII.

The judicious Hooker had a different task. He laid the foundations of the established Church by showing that one must obey the law. The Caroline divines used the historic records of Greek Christianity to show what the laws ought to be. Then came the eighteenth century, the century of scepticism. Bishop Butler and Pierre Bayle both used sceptical arguments, the one to urge us to accept what was probable, the other to urge us to accept what was improbable. Dean Mansel, in the last century, made a similar use of Kant. Yet no theologian founded a restatement upon Herbert Spencer any more than St. John or St. Clement used Epicurus and Lucretius. How could they?

Two things come out of this cursory view of the past: one, that real restatements are few and far between. Secondly, that many schools of thought, whatever their value for other purposes, do not lend themselves to the Church's purposes.

Before we ask the American clergy why they don't interpret their beliefs to present day American thought, let us ask if anyone have so much as heard whether there be any American thought. That is surely germane. Can you call "new thought" new thought or old moonshine? Has natural science, which is wholly empirical, anything more to do with the case than the rules of the stock exchange? Is Social Service thought or is it only a sweeet aspiration to sympathise with the poor and to manage them, without offending the rich or frightening them? American thought has generally been colonial, that is imported. Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Edwards were Idealists influenced by Berkeley. Dr. McCosh and Dr. Witherspoon were Realists influenced by Thomas Reid. The New England Transcendentalists, though having more claim to originality, seem to go back to Kant and the German Idealists. That current, however, had a literal interpreter in William T. Harris. Romantic idealism was reflected in Josiah Royce. These names are not popular. They are not "present-day." If there be any "presentday" thought it is clear to writers like John Fiske, William James, John Dewey. In other words, current thought tends toward the good old Grex Epicuri. James's "Plural Universe" and Lucretius's fortuitous concourse of atoms would be patient of reconciliation. Yet this Epicurean-materalistic school of the ages of Augustus and Roosevelt is exactly the school the Church's doctors have never learned in. How could they?

Epicureanism and Atomism and Natural Science and Pragmatism are all empirical. They deal with phenom

She deals with Realty.

ena. The Church is rational. Reality, I mean, in the sense of substance. The Fosdicks and Grays and Glovers can go on writing their good little books, but that is not a restatement of the faith. The Broad Churchmen can go on attacking now this, now that; and interpreting the cargo to the hurricane by lightening the ship, but that brings no merchandise to port. The Church must wait, resting on her great philosophic heritage from the ancient civilization, until the new civilization have produced thought as great, as general, and as compelling. Until then, let the Euckens shroud themselves in never-to-be-brought-to-a-point and yet richly overloaded with illustrations mist; let the Jameses figure up the cash value of religion; let the Motts stir things up for a "drive"; but the Church must go on and wait.

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The Spiritual Vitality of Dante

REV. WILLIAM PHILIP DOWNES

EPTEMBER 21, 1321, Dante died, and the sixth centenary of his death is being widely commemorated this year throughout the civilized world. If Carlyle with amazing inaccuracy described the divine poet as the "voice of ten silent centuries," Dante is unquestionably "the synthesis of mediaeval thought." If Dante evoked only an historical interest, the commemoration of this anniversary would be confined to the savants. Dante is however one of the immortals. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare-these belong to a class apart. Enjoying throughout these six centuries an almost continuous celebrity, Dante was probably never more widely read and loved than he is today.

The Dante literature is enormous; and the stream of texts, commentaries, translations and expositions seems never-ending. To this vast literature it is gratifying to know that America has made no insignificant contribution. The annotated Italian text by Grangent; the translations by Longfellow, Norton, Johnson and Langdon; the "Life" and the "Aids" by Dinsmore; the interpretations by Lowell, Harris, Fletcher and Sedgwick; have not only done much to popularize a knowledge of Dante, but they have also distinctly raised the estimation of American scholarship abroad. Dante's nitch in the Temple of Fame is secure. It is our privilege today to share with all the cultured world in thanking God for His great gift of this illustrious Florentine.

At this time when we are celebrating the lengthened fame of Dante it is natural that we should ask: What is the chief source of Dante's vitality? Knowing how manysided, encyclopaedic a man he was, and accordingly how varied his appeal is, the question is not precisely easy to answer. To the historian, the philologist, the theologian, the moralist, the aesthete, and the mystic, Dante is of first-class importance. That he is one of the greatest literary artists none would dispute. His artistry, it has been pointed out, combines the gifts of the sculptor, the painter, the musician, and the architect. Critics, like Carducci and Santayana, professing to care nothing for his "message," believe that only Dante's "poetry"-whatever that may be-will survive. Some have affirmed that the "Divine Comedy" is simply a political pamphlet, though the most powerful one ever written. Others, like Charles Eliot Norton, consider that the supremacy of Dante is revealed in his moral passion. To Carlyle, who knew Dante's works only imperfectly, the man, Dante"The Hero as Poet"-is of most compelling interest. Finally, there are those who, with Bishop Boyd Carpenter

and Henry Sedgwick, maintain that Dante's claim to never-dying fame is to be discovered in his spiritual message. It is the opinion of the present writer that the powerful vitality of Dante is to be traced, in the last analysis, to the depth and intensity of his spirituality. Dante is the supreme poet of the supernatural. After Eschenbach's Parzival, the "Divine Comedy" is the first momentous Christian poem to appear, and it remains, incomparably, the greatest Christian poem ever written. The greatness of Dante consists then in the masterly way in which he brings to artistic expression the wonderful poetry inherent in the spiritual life. He puts the romance of the spirit, as he experienced it, into classic form.

What is the essence of Dante's spirituality? What is the secret of his power? It is mysticism. Dante is a master-poet and a master-mystic. His supreme achievement, "that sacred poem to which heaven and earth have set their hand" (Par. xxvi. 2), whatever else it may beand it is many things-is a transcendently mystical poem. Its protagonist is Dante the mystic. Dr. E. G. Gardner says that "while scholasticism is the body of Dante's religion, mysticism is the soul, and love the animating spirit of both" ("Dante and the Mystics," p. 6). And Dr. Edward Moore bids us not to treat Dante "as if he were a mere schoolman. In a great part of the Divina Commedia at any rate he is first a poet and a theologian afterwards." ("Studies in Dante," Sd. Sr. p. 60n.) Though at times Dante indulged in speculation, he was actually more of a psychologist than a philosopher; and if he was a theologian, "a scholar, though a layman," as his contemporary, Villani, describes him, the core of his being reveals affinities rather with the mystics than the scholastics. Not that Dante was hostile to the scholastics. immense indebtedness to St. Thomas is well known. because he was a poet first, his affinity with the mystics

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