Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

day, and the Pharisees protested because they plucked the ears of corn. On other occasions the Master vindicated the duty of saving life, even though it meant laborious work on the Sabbath. This is the justification of the Archbishop's sanction to workers in the fields at the present time. No one condemns our sailors and soldiers for defending themselves against the enemy on Sunday, nor do we blame the minesweepers who clear the seas on that day. Thus they save life. It is possible that the war may be decided by our ability to maintain the food supply of this country. In these circumstances those who engage at every opportunity in work which adds to this supply are saving life, and this surely is a work of charity which is to be encouraged on Sundays as on other days.

We should not minimize the importance of the devout observance of the Lord's Day. We need not be too free in our criticism of the Puritanical Sunday. It has done much for this country, and we owe to its discipline and devotion more than we are sometimes disposed to own.

The Creed and the Imagination

[ocr errors]

From The London Times.

WO-MORROW the ancient words in which the Church in its Eucharist, confesses and adores the Holy Trinity will be repeated. Some worshippers will be content to say the words without inquiring too closely into origins. Others will resent what they consider an attempt to define the indefinable in terms of ancient thought. "His name will flee, the while Thou mouldest Thy lips for speech." There are others, again, for whom the Creed releases the mind to travel back in sympathy and wonder over the highway of man's spiritual thought. They will travel far and pass by many battlefields of the spirit, and study the inscriptions on many pillars, where are told the narrow escapes of the Church in its stormy history. To them the doctrine of the Trinity is no dry and guarded formula,

imparted in some moment of time to a listening ear. No human name can be attached to the doctrine, not even that of Athanasius. It gathers into itself, as in a cold summary, the thoughts and intellectual visions and spiritual insight of many seers. It is the epitome of much thinking upon the problem of the Divine Nature, and the experience of the Divine Redemption.

-

In the doctrine of the Trinity, Greek thought has given its polished weapons to the Church; Plato and his heirs have brought the glory of their spiritual pilgrimages into the City of God. The Church, with its own amazing experiences, found the language in which to express and to safeguard them already waiting. On Trinity Sunday the imagination goes back to a place where the waters met where the Church, with its knowledge of the Redeemer and its unexpressed mysteries, found forms ready moulded and reserved. At the very words of the Creed the mind presses back to Augustine and Athanasius, to Philo and Plato, with many others on the way -back to the noisy markets and schools of Byzantium and Alexandria; at the parting of the ways on the one stream back to Greece, on the other to Canaan. And always there are sub-tones to the music; hints of the mystery are heard from Egypt and India; it is a relief and not a bewilderment to Faith that so many adumbrations of the Christian doctrine should have been discovered. The harmony of the Creed is all the richer for these undertones.

The words may be said coldly now, but once they were like molten lava. They were cries which the little flock shouted in the hour of martyrdom; they were the words of victory when danger was over. They have their glorious past; no less have they shameful memories. The profession of the Creed has often been a passport to the backstairs of palaces, and often the occasion for persecution. The story of the Councils of the Church. confirms the faith of the Church in its Divine Inspirer; only He could have saved the Church in such an atmosphere and with such advocates from certain destruction. Yet in each hour of decision, as though guided by an overruling Spirit, the Church chose the one way of intellectual salvation. The records come

back as though they told of a long confus'd battle, in which few knew all that was involved, and men often defended the Truth with unclean weapons and yet the Spirit of Truth never left the

scene.

The note of adoration will be found only if the worshippers can penetrate through the form to the content, and discover that the words enshrine the story of an Eternal Purpose wrought out in the Cross upon the fields of time, and forever made operative in human wills through the Holy Spirit. The saints who contended for the intellectual setting of the truth were safeguarding the reality of that Experience and Hope by which they lived. Inevitably and slowly they were driven to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

These thinkers, whose quick intellects no one with any insight can despise, were concerned for the honour of the Eternal God. How could He be out of the great things which were happening in this human life? He must be in it; any other God would be impossible. It would be a poor compensation to leave Him the ordering of the stars if from Him were taken His part in the incomparably more wonderful task of redeeming humanity. They who adored the Eternal Lord under the name of the Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity were jealous for the honour of God. Through the words, which have become cold to us, there throbs the mightiest of all spiritual passions, the jealousy for God. Men were led to this apparently intellectual statement of their belief not because they cared to set and to answer metaphysical puzzles, but because they wished to ensure for their redemption an eternal reality. They longed, moreover, to guard their Eternal Creator from the slur that in a world like this, with such a redeeming love of action, He should be above the scene, and not sharing in its pain and glory.

The words at best set forth the mystery, which men can only know in part; but they may be repeated still with something of the former passion and adoration if through the things said by the saints the worshippers may penetrate to the things they never said, because such things can never be spoken.

THE CHURCH AT WORK

[ocr errors]

The Church Periodical Club

HAT is this church Periodical Club," asked the rector of an eastern parish, "that men like Bishop Biller, Bishop Tucker, and Archdeacon Stuck are willing to speak at its meetings? Somewhere in North Carolina the people told a visiting missionary, "We don't know much about the Church, but we know all about the Church Periodical Club." In these two sentences we have the viewpoint of those to whom food for the mind is as much a matter of course as food for the body, and of those others (so many of them!) who look to the C. P. C. for the satisfaction, wholly or in part, of their intellectual and, maybe, spiritual needs.

The aims of the C. P. C. are to make the helpful printed page of use to someone until it is worn out, to share with others what has brought pleasure or satisfaction to ourselves, to give concrete expression to the "love of the brethren " that we profess as members of Christ. The method is simple, branches of the Club are organized along parish and diocesan lines, members are asked to forward to designated addresses the magazines and books they have read, the games they no longer play, the records of which they are tired, the pictures at which they never look. Such utilization of used material was the original plan of the Club, and constitutes still its principal effort, making it possible for almost anyone to qualify for membership. From those who are able to give new material further help is asked. As the workers in the mission field, in the small parish, and the crowded institution come to appreciate the C. P. C. better, they naturally make known the larger needs of their work, technical books, reference books for libraries and schools, recent theology for the clergy, books for men preparing for Holy Orders, and last, but not least, tracts and books for the missionaries to use among the scattered people to whom they can give but little personal instruction. It is with some hesitancy that this last item is mentioned, as it has been the sad experience of the

writer that, while there is enthusiastic response to the story of the rancher so lost in his first good magazine that nothing but a beating at the hands of his wife could recall him to a sense. of milking time, a pall of coldness and indifference settles over an audience at the first suggestion of the need of Church literature for propaganda. And Christian Science continues to gather in the converts.

Whatever the thing sent, the sender is asked to get in touch by correspondence, whenever possible, with the recipient. Since the early days of the Club the establishment of a friendly relation has been the basis of its work. The material given is useful, but that material plus personality is a gift whose value is beyond computing, lifted entirely out of the class of miscalled charity. A priest whose failing health of mind prevented any practical use of his magazines would hold them tenderly in his arms when they came, conscious still of the thought and love they represented. Chaplain," said a man in prison, " I know what Heaven and hell are. It's hell to be forgotten, it's Heaven to be just remembered."

[ocr errors]

Directly or indirectly the C. P. C. quite literally renders service to all sorts and conditions of men, bishops, clergy, lay workers, teachers, and students, men in the Army and Navy, inmates of hospitals and prisons, and perhaps more than all "just people," like ourselves in all save fulness of opportunity. To share this fulness and thus to be a good member of the C. P. C. calls for a little time, a little thought, a little perseverance, for a willingness to make at times a venture of faith and send without expectation of response or gratitude, and for the expenditure of such money as is possible. Special effort is being made to enlarge the membership among those who know and care for the best in literature and life. There is still a lurking belief in the minds of many that any missionary in an isolated station will greet with joy an out-of-date commentary or the ponderous sermons of our forefathers. It is difficult to eliminate the tendency to think of Alaska in terms of the Saturday Evening Post and the detective tale and to convince our contributors that there, as in all pioneer countries, men are

« AnteriorContinuar »