“I have no patience,” for instance, he writes at one of these crises,
“with —— for mixing himself up with Church politics. I believe you know
what I think about them, namely, that both parties are right in some
things and wrong in others, and that the truth lies between the two.
I hope I shall always be able to express my dissent from both without
calling names or imputing motives, and when I hear others doing so, I am
always inclined, like yourself, to defend the absent. I was very sorry to
hear that —— has given up his parish. I cannot understand his excessive
attachment to what is, after all, only the outside of religion; but he is
so good a man, so hard-working, so self-denying, that one feels what a
great loss he must be.”
Outside the Church the same religious unrest has had several noteworthy
results, perhaps the most remarkable of these being a negative one: I
mean, the aggressive attitude and movement of what is popularly known
as scientific thought. Amongst its leaders have been, and are, some of
the best, as well as the ablest, men of our time, who have had, as they
deserved to have, a very striking influence. But the tone of scientific
men towards religion has been uniformly impatient or contemptuous, not
seldom petulant. “Why go on troubling yourselves and mankind about that
of which you can know nothing?” they have said. “This ‘eternal’ or
‘inner’ life of which you prate is wholly beyond your ken. We can prove
to you that much of your so-called theology rests on unsound premises. Be
content to work and learn with us in the material world, of which alone
you can get to know anything certain.” That challenge has shaken the
foundations of much which called itself faith in our day. I never could
discover that my brother was ever seriously troubled by it. Dissertations
on the Mosaic cosmogony, theories of the origin of species, speculations
on the antiquity of man, and the like, interested, but never seemed to
rouse in him any of the alarm or anger which they have excited in so many
good Christians. Granting all that they tend to prove, they deal only
with the outward garment, with the visible universe, and the life which
must be lived in it, leaving the inner and real life of mankind quite
untouched.
He was, however, neither so tolerant of, nor I think so fair to, the
stirring of thought within the Church, which has resulted in criticisms
supposed to be destructive of much that was held sacred in the last
generation. His keen sense of loyalty was offended by anything which
looked like an attack coming from within the ranks, and so he shared the
feeling so widely, and I think wrongly, entertained by English Churchmen,
that the right of free thought and free speech on the most sacred
subjects should be incompatible with holding office in the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account