Church and Nation: The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15Temple, William
Religion
Church and Nation: The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1914-15
Temple, William
Church and state
No doubt if these evils are to be dealt with on a large scale, the work
must be done by the State, for nothing else is adequate; and the Church
here has two main tasks. It is no part of the Church’s task to advocate
general principles or particular maxims of economic science, though its
members, in their capacity of citizenship ought to be active in these
ways. The first task of the Church is to inspire the State, which after
all very largely consists of the same persons as itself, with the desire
to combat the evil; and the second is to counteract the one great
difficulty which the State experiences. When the State takes up such
work as this, there is one thing which we all fear: "Officialism." What
is "Officialism"? Simply lack of love; nothing else in the world. It
consists in treating people as "cases," according to rules and red tape,
instead of treating them as individuals; and the Church which must
inspire the State to want to deal with these things, must then supply
the agents through whom it may deal with them effectively, inspiring
them with the love of men which is the fruit and test of a true love of
God.
But beyond all this, the Church must be making demands far greater than
it has ever made upon man’s spiritual nature and spiritual capacity, and
must then point to the organisation of our social life and say—"That
organisation, because and in so far as it deprives men of the full
growth of their spiritual nature, because and in so far as it prevents
them from taking the share which belongs to God’s children in His
worship and the enjoyment of his gifts of nature and Grace, is proved to
be of the devil."
In our worship we find for the most part what we expect to find. There
may be gifts offered us, gifts from God, that we never receive because
we have not looked for them. It is in our intercourse with Christ that
we shall find the means of solving the horror of our social problem, if
we are expecting to find it; but we have not expected it. We have not
really believed that He is the Redeemer of the World; we have not looked
to Him for the redemption of Society. The State by itself, until the
Church comes to its help, can do something indeed, but something which
by itself is almost worthless.[#] It supplies the indispensable
foundation without which a spiritual structure cannot be built up; but,
if that building never comes, the foundation by itself is little more
than useless. To those whom the social order favours it offers real
liberty and life, but no inspiration; a perfect social order would offer
liberty to all, but still no inspiration. The State alone can never be
the house of many mansions wherein every soul is truly at home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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