16-Dogma, Sentiment, and Ritual 1

XVI. DOGMA, SENTIMENT, AND RITUAL 1.

John 20:11. “Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” As the Lord Jesus had come from the Father to bring peace, so his envoys, the disciples whom he had trained for their office, were similarly to be messengers of peace to mankind. The whole Apostolic ministry was summed up in this word 4 There was enmity on the earth. Men were alienated from God, and made enemies to him by their wickedness. There was a separation, which bore the marks of God’s own hand, between the chosen people and the nations whom God had not called.

There was unnatural ill-feeling of every degree between neighbour and neighbour. Christ came to be the peace of the world, peace between the Father and men, peace between Jew and Gentile, peace between man and man. His Apostles or envoys, in being heralds of their crucified and risen 1 Preached at Banbury Church, Oct. 7th, 1874, Master, were heralds of peace. It was their commission to proclaim the Divine forgiveness, and to beseech men to receive it.

I take this Divinely-ordained ministry of peace, my Christian brethren, as a starting-point for our reflections this evening. It is a subject which harmonizes well with the circumstances under which I am permitted to address you. Coming at the kind request of my valued friend your Vicar to bear a part in a ceremony so interesting to him and to you as this opening of your new Chancel, what can my first feeling be but to wish and pray that his ministry may be true and faithful, may be honoured and rewarded, amongst you? And I am sure that the work of a minister of Christ has the promise of being successful in the sight of God, whether in the sight of men or not, in proportion as priest and people realize together that Christ through his servants is still speaking peace to mankind.

There is something elementary in this original word of reconciliation as spoken by the Apostles of Jesus Christ, which may suggest questions like these. “Is it enough? Does it not require that a good deal should be added to it? Or, have we not outgrown it? Do we not want, in this advanced age, something more modern?” My answer to any such questions would be, that the original commission of the Christian ministry can never become obsolete, that it must always be the kernel, the heart, the life-power, of a Church; but that, the more simply and purely the message of peace is carried on from age to age, the more freely and actively will it take up whatever is new, so as to organize modern life in harmony with itself. I say that the strength of the ministry of the Church of England would be found at the present day in a kind of severe loyalty to the commission which Christ first gave to his Galilean disciples.

There are two tendencies manifestly active in our religious life, one drawing towards comprehension, the other towards separation.

Those who are the most affected by the former are generally averse to dogma, and make much of Christian sentiment. They point out that all Christian communions agree in commending the great practical matters of Christian life, such as truth, goodwill, purity. They see, on the other hand, doctrines which one communion pronounces to be essential rejected as false and hurtful by another.

They know that the history of the Christian Church has been deformed by the mutual contradictions of Catholics and Arians, of Romanists and Protestants, of Calvinists and Arminians, of Churchmen and Dissenters. The only deliverance, they say, from these barren and discreditable controversies is in preferring sentiment to dogma. Let it be understood that the important point is not what a man thinks, but how he feels. “He can’t be wrong, whose life is in the right.” Each denomination, each party in the Church, might learn to insist less and less on its distinctive dogmas, and then there would be a hope of all gradually drawing together.

Comprehension by the discouragement of dogma is a watch-word of considerable power amongst us. It appeals to very common experiences, to the discoveries which the young soon make, that those of their own traditional way of thinking are not practically better than some upon whose opinions they have been taught to look with aversion and fear; to the veneration which noble lives excite in all generous minds; to the perplexities about belief by which many in days of inquiry are likely to be distressed. The more excellent way of charity has high sanctions, and offers itself persuasively to Christian hearts. But on the other hand there is a strong instinctive conviction that sentiment cannot be healthy and vigorous unless it has a root in faith. Those who are called upon to be loving want to know whom or what they are to love, and why they are to love. Sentiment nourished for the sentiment’s sake does not gain that powerful hold with which the conscience must be seized if a new life is to be led. Then, what are these statements which are to be discouraged under the name of dogmas? Are they not concerned with sin, with guilt, with forgiveness, with the motive powers of a new life, that is, with the very things about which an awakened soul is most in earnest? Could it be expected that a religio’us union, in which there should be an agreement of silence on such points as the offence of sin and the removal of the barrier which obstructs the approach of the sin-laden conscience to the holy presence of God, should be vital and durable? Can it possibly be a matter of indifference whether God has spoken to men or not, and if he has spoken, what the things are that he has said?

There is an evident likelihood that a union in Christian sentiment without dogma would prove a lifeless and vapid fellowship, from which those who are stirred to the lower spiritual depths would turn away in disappointment. Look, it is urged, at the energy developed in those who hold together the same strictly denned faith concerning the ways and purposes of God. Who have been the people who have shewn religious zeal? Who have made sacrifices proving them to be heartily in earnest? History answers that it has been they who have believed that God has made known some way by which men may reach to him, and who have agreed one with another in their conceptions as to the manner and purport of that revelation. These have felt their religion to be a serious thing; these have sought to bring others over to what they have held to be saving truth. To ask men to subordinate doctrine to sentiment is in fact to ask them to admit that they know of nothing which they can firmly believe as to the ways of God; it is to ask them to give up the hope by which human life has been sustained at its best, and from time to time recovered and raised from its lowest. So there is a disposition not uncommon amongst us to conclude that the best course is that persons who take the same views on religious subjects should form themselves through mutual attraction into separate religious communions. The Dissenting bodies in this country have attained considerable results by following this policy. An association of persons holding identical opinions works freely when compared with an association the members of which differ much amongst themselves. The rivalry of religious bodies, each concerned to demonstrate that its own truth is the real and absolute truth, often stirs them to great it may be to beneficial activity. The National Church of this country moves slowly. Earnest members of it naturally fret and are impatient under the obstructions which are caused principally by the differences of opinion which it embraces within its hospitable shelter. Some outside the Church of England, some within it, are beginning to say, “ How much freedom and force would be gained, if this unwieldly State-system were broken up, and the different schools in the Church were made each a denomination by itself! Evangelicals could then mould the Prayer-book more exactly to their way of thinking, and could get rid of the offence of acknowledging as fellow-members of the same Church those High-Churchmen and liberal Churchmen whose views they consider so dangerous. High-Churchmen could advance with no restraints from unwilling parishioners or disapproving bishops, with no fear of prosecutions before their eyes. Liberal Churchmen might free themselves from every superstition which the progress of knowledge appears to them to have made untenable.” The introduction of perfect freedom of voluntary association would lead, it is urged, to a sudden and remarkable development of religious energy.

Yes; I have little doubt that it would. But at what a cost! Do we want, can we patiently contemplate, an ever-increasing multiplication and subdivision of religious bodies? Do we not already see and deplore a tendency to make much of particular opinions for the very sake of having a distinction and a difference? Does not this put the great mass of simple Christians at the mercy of those who are opinionated and pertinacious? Considering what a Gospel we all profess to have received, is it not lamentable that we who read the same Bible should find it necessary to separate ourselves into so many folds? But I must not dwell on the practical arguments against religious division, nor upon the loss which would seem to me as an Englishman an almost intolerable one, the loss of a national Church representing in an organic form the national Christianity. I must return to my point, namely, the strength which the Church of England may find in the simplest loyalty to the ministry of reconciliation.

If there is to be no confident declaration to mankind of forgiveness and redemption, then the Church of Christ ought to be expressly abolished, to make place for an institution of a different kind.

Those who believe that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself cannot possibly be willing to put this light under a bushel as a matter of mere personal opinion, or as an obsolete dogma. But this very declaration, dogmatic as it would be called, is a proclamation of unity and comprehension, a call to peace. It may indeed be met with enmity; the bringer of peace may in effect be sometimes the bringer of a sword. But the preacher of reconciliation assures men that there is a peace with God and with one another into which they may enter if they will. The Church which duly cherishes this testimony is pledged by its principal dogma to promote peace, to remove stumblingblocks out of the way, to offer a welcome to all who are willing to be reconciled to God. The Church of England, as charged with the ministry of peace, ought to lay aside all exclusiveness, to cast out the spirit of self-complacence and scorn, to be considerate of prejudices and weaknesses, to count it a shame and reproach that its practical witness for comprehension has not been more earnest and effectual. If the entreaty, “We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God,” were to become more genuinely the characteristic voice of the Church, can we doubt that a wider influence over the consciences of men would reward such faithfulness? Judge, my brethren, by what you know of yourselves, how the offer of forgiveness, if it only reach the conscience of any man, must work upon him. Think how the grace of God will soften the hard heart, and humble the pride which is the root of so much evil; how it engages a man to enter upon a lifelong struggle against the dominion of that sinfulness which is enmity against God and enmity amongst men; what a vital spring of endurance and effort there is in the consciousness of being brought near to God and having hope in him; how the man is practically saved from those impulses which hinder godly union and concord. Here surely, in the thankful acceptance of God’s grace, is the seed of all spiritual life, the guarantee of all true fellowship.

If this ministry of reconciliation, ordained in the primary commission given by our Lord to his Apostles, is entitled to have the central and ruling place in our Christianity which the New Testament seems to assign to it, other doctrines and all the observances of religion will be best understood when they are referred to it and interpreted by it.

We shall shew our faith in the great message of the Gospel by allowing it to work its own effects both upon our mental apprehensions and upon our practice. The peace into which it is our privilege to enter must have its fruit in a continued spiritual fellowship. We are not to stand still as Christians, however Divine be the foundation on which we are placed. It is appointed to us to go forward, to grow in knowledge, to be more energetic and efficient in action. There is a partnership in the Gospel, a fellowship in good works, a serving of the eternal purposes of God, to which we Christians are called. The design and hope of the Saviour will not be fulfilled without the most earnest cooperation of his disciples in the work which he finds for their hands to do.

It is sufficiently obvious that in our Church, as in any Church, Christian fellowship can only be carried out into Christian work by a close and hearty sympathy between the clergy and the laity. The clergy cannot do the work of the Church without the laity; the laity cannot do it without the clergy. In the Church of England, one of the faults we have to acknowledge, I do not know on whom the blame should be laid, is that we have had too little of this general partnership of all in Christian work. We may rejoice to confess this error, because in so doing we are putting the finger on a discovered cause of weakness. We have found one of the leaks in our noble vessel, and we can hasten to stop it. We are awakening, I trust, clergy and laity together, to a sense of our common responsibility. Clergymen are longing to call in more and more the help of the people, and are willing, if they are wise, that those who give their help should share the power and practical government of the Church. Laymen, feeling that they have their part in the Church, are not by this conviction drawn away from the clergy, but on the contrary, I believe, are drawn more closely to them, entering more heartily into their cares and responsibilities, sometimes, no doubt, restraining and checking them as well as urging them forward with their support, but in the one action as well as the other proving that all are members of one body, and that each organ has the liveliest interest in the healthy working of the rest.

Let us pray that these tendencies, by the grace of God, may go on and prosper. It may well fill us with anxious hope to think what a future is before us, if the members of our English Church were to be fully roused by the great ideas embodied in the constitution of our national Church.

It is inspiring, surely, to think of England as a Christian country, built as a city that is at unity in itself, embracing all the various elements of national life, all the traditions of the past, all the knowledge and activity of the present, all the aims of the future, within the bonds of a worship which is grounded on the original ministry of Christ and his Apostles, and which has come down to us safely through all the vicissitudes and the sins of our history. May it be given to us to bear our humble part in working out such an ideal. Here, in this place, there are happy indications that there is no lack of Christian zeal and true Churchlike cooperation. You have been doing much; may it be the earnest of more yet to be done. It is the instinct of every awakened Christian body to take an interest and a pride even in the outward accessories of worship. It would be unnatural in Christian Englishmen at the present time to be satisfied with an inadequate house of God. The life within organizes and moulds that which is on the surface. But it should be steadily borne in mind by both priests and people that the outward is outward, and that the life of faith and love is what our Master desires and looks for. On this point there ought to be no mistake. The Lord of the universe, whom we worship, is indeed the author of all beauty, physical as well as moral; it is he who has given us the faculties by which we choose and delight in beautiful things; and we cannot think of Divine or heavenly perfection without borrowing aid from some of the images of beauty which the outward world presents to us. But, if we had to compare together two assemblies, the one consisting of rude uncultivated persons, content with the unadorned necessities of existence, not sensitive to the grossest violations of artistic taste, but burning with love and devotion within and making it their supreme object to be in harmony, through faith and penitence, with the Divine will; the other worshipping in a sublime Gothic cathedral, trained to move in perfect harmony under the sway of the laws of reverence, singing exquisite music without a false note, but caring for Art more than for God, thinking more of a satisfactory “ service “ than of bearing the burdens of humanity, and wanting in those deepest affections which found their Divine utterance in a Life the life of the Son of God totally unadorned by Art; it would be folly and impiety to doubt on which of the two scenes God would look down with the most satisfaction. Whenever people, beginning with the honest intention of making the outward offering of their faith as worthy and perfect as they can, have gone on to fix their minds on the outward forms so as to neglect the inner reality, then he who rebuked the Pharisees for their bondage to tradition has found it necessary to rebuke the lovers of beauty also, and to complain, “ Thus have ye made the word of God of none effect by your aesthetics.” That there is such a danger in the present day, it would be well for us to bear in mind. It is a time of reaction against a strange condition of the general mind, when through some unintended alliance between Puritan feeling and cold indifference the nation turned its back upon its noble inheritance of ecclesiastical form and beauty, and dulness and vulgarity became the accepted characteristics of our Anglican worship. We are now in the flush of a reaction against that state of mind; and quiet people are in many places fretted by the eagerness with which improvements in style and manner are being introduced into our Churches and services, not to speak of decorations and symbols of doubtful taste or alien to the spirit of our English Christianity. They do right who refuse to be dragged into excesses of decorative and symbolical worship. But we do not effectually avoid this danger, by simply resolving to cling to what is old-fashioned and dull and bare. Our religious worship ought to participate, in a fit and proportionate manner, in any tendency which characterizes the general mind.

It was a true instinct expressed in those words of David, “ I will not offer to the Lord my God of that which costs me nothing.” Religion is the more real when people clothe it in the forms which seem to them the worthiest. A rude community may worship rudely; a wealthy community, interesting itself in form and colour, studying the laws of Art, and seeking to possess beautiful things, would be less sincere towards God, if it made a rule of excluding Art from its worship. And on the other hand, it will be good for our secular life that Religion should not be divorced from Art. Art may be either high or low, either morally useful, or morally degraded. If people insist on regarding the delights of form and colour and sound as only proper to be associated with a kind of pleasure of which they are almost ashamed, a large part of their life becomes emptied of purpose and aspiration. When Art is thought worthy of being associated with the deepest convictions and with the most serious aims, then a healthier and purer breath is inspired into common pursuits and pleasures.

I would conclude then, Leave not the outward beauty of service uncared for, leave not these other things undone; but the things you ought to do, with all your heart and soul and strength, are the great moral and spiritual acts of the inner life.

These are acceptable to God; these are also useful to men. May our worship be truly spiritual, in order that our daily lives may be spiritual. Let us cherish the awe which the recollection of God’s presence must inspire. Let us think of ourselves as gathered together before him who is holy, just, and good, before our Father and the Father of our wandering and neglected brethren. May God in his goodness make us thoughtful, earnest, spiritual Christians! Then he will teach us to rejoice in all his good gifts; then he will make us desire to shew forth our delight in his service.