Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
He gives most of us the feeling of a very able man of business, an ideal
family solicitor; but there is a quite different side to this character.
He is by no means a mystic, as that word is usually understood, but he
is a man who deeply believes in the chief instrument of the mystic's
spiritual life, that is to say, in prayer. He is not a saint, in the
general acceptance of that term, but his whole life is devoted with an
undeviating singleness of aim to effecting the chief ambition of the
saint--a knowledge of God in the hearts and minds of men. Because he
believes that the best method of achieving that consummation, having
regard to the present level of human intelligence, is by moderate
courses, one must not think that he is lukewarm in the cause of
religion. With all the force of his clear and able mind, he believes in
moderation. Anything that in the least degree savours of extravagance
seems to him impolitic. He does not believe in sudden bursts of
emotional energy; he believes in constant pressure.
In my intercourse with him I have found him eminently sane and judicial,
cold towards excessive fervour, but not cold at all towards ardent
faith, inclined perhaps to miss the cause of spiritual impatience,
constitutionally averse from any understanding sympathy with religious
ecstasy, but never self-satisfied, intolerant, or in the remotest
fashion cynical. Always he expresses his views with modesty, and
sometimes with healthy good-humour, disposed to take life cheerfully,
never moved to mistake a molehill for a mountain, always quietly certain
that he is on the right road, whatever critics may care to say about his
pace.
It is perhaps unreasonable to expect height and depth where there is
excessive breadth. The Archbishop might make a bad captain, but he could
have few rivals as an umpire. He is an admirable judge if an indifferent
advocate.
His grave earnestness is balanced by a conviction that humour is not
without a serious purpose. He looks upon life in the average, avoiding
all abnormality, and he sees the average with a genial smile. He
thoroughly appreciates the oddities of English character, and would ask
with Gladstone, "In what country except ours (as I know to have
happened) would a Parish Ball have been got up in order to supply funds
for a Parish Hearse?"
His attitude to the excitements and sensations of the passing day may be
gathered from a simple incident. During the most heady days of the War,
that is to say, days when people made least use of their heads, I
encountered him at the country-house of a well-known statesman. One
morning, while we were being lined up for a photograph, the boar-hound
of our host came and forced himself between the Archbishop and myself.
"What would the newspapers say," exclaimed the Archbishop in my ear, "if
they knew that his name is--_Kaiser_!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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