Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

it would be ridiculous to think of this heavenly citizenship as democratic. In Bunyan's "Holy War," Diabolus, before surrendering the town of Mansoul to its lawful Prince, God Almighty, demands that no law or officer shall be made there without the people's consent. But the will of the Blessed and Only Potentate, God Three in One, is absolute and supreme, though he desires an unforced and joyous obedience from His sons and daughters. His judgments are not popular, but righteous and true. The philosophic doctrine called Pluralism regards the universe as a self-supporting, co-operative society, a manifold of independent wills, a commonwealth complete in itself, but graded and culminating in a kind of elected President or World-Chairman, primus inter pares, the apex of a broadbased pyramid, to whom we give the name "God." Evolution, again, if it be an absolute principle governing universal process, must demand an evolved deity, the crown and goal of all development, led up to by the progressive efforts of good beings, and created by them rather than their Creator.

But the Lord God Almighty, as we believe Him, is not a First Magistrate, voted into His throne by a majority of celestial electors; the Object rather of adoring worship by cherubin and seraphin. Beneath Him stands the ninefold hierarchy of thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers. Popular sovereignty, in fact, is so utterly inconsistent with our thought of Heaven that an article in the Hibbert Journal entitled "The Democratic Conception of God" tells us that in the enlightened age that is coming "Monotheism must pass away." Indeed, I fancy we are not far from supposing that, if God were discovered to be non-existent, we could carry on the world fairly well with a provisional Government on a plebiscitary basis of one vote to each sentient, or at least each rational, being.

Let us turn now to Incarnate Godhead. In Him Who has stooped to take our poor nature upon Him the highest and lowliest are one. Very dear to Him are the common christened folk. "Equality of consideration" has always seemed to me a more Christian phrase than "equality of opportunity," which suggests" all start fair," but a race and competitive struggle none the less. Yes, we are all one in Christ. And our enthroned

Priest (Zech. vi. 13) is not one that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Nevertheless, He is our Sovereign Prince, and we submit to His royal law. "Of the Lord Christ,' says the Bishop of Winchester, "the vain boast of the French monarch, l'etat c'est moi,' is but the simple truth." Modern kenotic theory would strip Incarnate Godhead of all Divine attributes. To the levelling spirit he is not Master but Comrade. He is now familiarly called " Jesus," without any title, and the reverential bowing of the head is becoming unusual even among clergymen and choirs.

A popular religious writer desires that, being now just "one of us," He should no longer be called obsequiously " Our Lord." Recent religious art, the Bishop of Oxford points out, "represents Jesus of Nazareth by a cheap sort of sentiment, easily appealing to a cheap sort of humanitarian feeling, and altogether failing to disclose the greatness and the glory of the Divine Majesty." At Whitefield's Tabernacle in London there is, or used to be, a fervent prayer to God to "take out of our hearts everything that is undemocratic." Yet He Whom the Father has set at His own right hand, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, is called by St. Peter" the Lord (literally Despot) who bought us," and by St. Jude "our only Master (literally Despot) and Lord Jesus Christ." Our relation to Him is constantly spoken of as that of bond-servants, though it is a bond-service which is perfect freedom. St. John in the wondrous vision fell at His feet as dead, and records title after title of majesty and authority claimed for the glorified humanity of the Son of God. The great Puritan poet of the seventeenth century denounced the "crouching servility crouching servility" of bowed head and bended knee in worship. But Milton's doctrine of the Person of Christ was Arian, and not Catholic. If we saw our Redeemer as the Lord of Glory, His eyes burning like a flame of fire, on His head many crowns, and upon His blood-dipped vesture and His thigh the Name written, " King of kings and Lord of lords," could we do otherwise than fall prostrate and tremblingly adore? Those words, "King of kings and Lord of lords," were inscribed over the door of the Palazzo Vecchio at

"Jesus

Florence in place of the older republican inscription,
Christ, elected King of the Florentine people by decree of the
Senate and Commons."

The expectation of a Messianic kingdom among the Jews began after a time to leave out the figure of the Messiah Himself; and there is a good deal of talk in our day about the realization on earth of a kingdom of God or kingdom of righteousness which dispenses with the Sovereign of that kingdom. Sometimes the omission is deliberate. A plea for a "re-view of religion" was published recently by an eminent Indian statesman, which proposed to substitute the mutual influence of good people upon one another for devout loyalty to Christ and supplication for God's grace and favour. All the pantheistic and naturalistic tendencies of our day look towards the de-personalization of Deity and the republicanization of the

world.

66

For us, however, the imperial sway of the Lord Christ, though He be, in Bunyan's quaint phrase, a common and publique person," is real and absolute. And it is not even like the irremovable absolutisms devised by the old social compact philosophers, from Hobbes to Rousseau, which rested on an original mandate from the governed. For Christ said, "Ye have not elected Me, but I have elected you." We are not His constituents, for He has constituted us. He is the Representative of redeemed humanity before the Father, but not through our choice and suffrage-only because He is Perfect Man. Nevertheless, as our sovereigns at their sacring submit themselves to the joyful" recognition" of their subjects, who are asked to north and south and east and west, "Sirs, are ye willing to do your homage to your undoubted King?" so our anointed Lord craves our free and adoring acknowledgment of His regal claim. Yet He knows what is in man." He withdrew Himself from the multitude both when they would stone Him and when they would make Him a King. A prelate noted for his popular sympathies remarks on the "astonishing contempt for majorities which runs through Holy Scripture." But nowhere is this so marked as in the Gospels.

art

"Art thou a king? " asked the awed Roman governor; 66 thou a monarch, an emperor (basileus)?" and our Lord replied, "For this cause came I into the world." It was as a King that He died for His people, the Shepherd for the sheep. "Tribulation and kingship and endurance" is St. John's striking collocation of phrase. And before His death the Christ said to the Twelve," I appoint unto you a monarchy "- the word "kingdom" has lost the force of the original" as My Father appointed unto Me; and ye shall sit on thrones." The Church on earth is Christ's monarchy or kingdom in process of being realized. The Episcopal Order are its divinely commissioned officers and high stewards; so that, though our faith is aflame with the passion of humanity, it is an "apostolic," and therefore not a democratic, Church in which we profess belief. The fact must be faced that our Lord did not found His Church as a popular government, a "free democracy of believers." Episcopal authority, indeed, is not arbitrary and autocratic, yet it is really monarchical. The Episcopate is not just an executive committee of the multitude of the faithful to carry out their ideas. In Christ's Church there is a real popular element, but ambassadorial authority to rule and teach, the keys to open and shut, are always from above by transmission, not from below by delegation. I do not mean that the Church consists of the clergy, or that every member of the same, in his or her vocation and ministry, however humble, has not an important and responsible part and interest in the building up of Christ's mystical Body. The lay people are not to be dead weights, but living stones. Nevertheless, we have to guard, especially in this country and the colonies, against the desire to copy in the Church Anglo-Saxon parliamentary institutions, based on the machinery of the polling-booth, the end of which is bound to be the adoption of an un-Catholic theory of Christ's Kingdom as a "crowned republic," resting on the will and mandate of an electorate. Believe me, this is a real danger. And all the more because the position of an apostolic and authoritative royal society will become increasingly difficult and strange when it is ringed round by a universe of secular democracies. The radiance

of the Church being reflected, not from man, but from God Himself, she will resemble

The wandering moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heaven's wide, pathless way.

One other institution, indeed, there will be which can never be purely democratic — though this too is being republicanized. I mean the Family. Mr. Bernard Shaw contends that "every child has a right to its own bent, and the right to liberty begins not at the age of twenty-one years, but at the age of twenty-one seconds." In the French Revolution of 1848 children struck against going to Mass-" cela nous ennuie "- and compulsory lessons. But few are logical enough to insist on the emancipation of the nursery or schoolroom, and on parents being voted or not voted into the domestic chair during good behaviour, and with accountability to their offsprings. "It is," St. Paul says, "from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that all fatherhood (arpía) in heaven or earth is named " (Eph. iii. 15).

If we turn now to the constitution of man as a moral being, we observe that, like that of the universe at large, it is monarchical and hierarchic, and yet, as the word implies, constitutional. The passions must not rule or usurp the throne of the conscience, yet they have their place, and man's spirit ought, priestlike, to consecrate them and offer their unequal powers for God's use. Again, whereas in the aristocratic scheme of the physical world the weak perish for the sake of the strong, and nature gains her ends by the survival of the fittest, Christian nobility sacrifices itself and its advantages for the weaker members of the body. For, in a sense, we are in the world, as Huxley pointed out, not to "follow nature" but to combat the cosmic process.

To glance finally for a moment at the government of States, we notice that controversy has for centuries turned on the conflicting claims of paternal authority, responsible to God only, and liberty of self-governance. The question is at bottom a religious one, but it is not well suited to the pulpit and it is

« AnteriorContinuar »