Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
One thinks of him as a soul under a cloud. He gives one no feeling of
radiance, no sense of a living serenity. What serenity he possesses at
the centre of his being does not shine in his face nor sound in his
voice. He has the look of one whose head has long been thrust out of a
window gloomily expecting an accident to happen at the street corner.
FitzGerald once admirably described the face of Carlyle as wearing "a
crucified expression." No such bitterness of pain and defeat shows in
the face of Dr. Gore. But his look is the look of one who has not
conquered and who expects further, perhaps greater disaster.
He has told us that "a man must be strong at the centre before he can be
free at the circumference of his being," and in support of this doctrine
he quotes the words of Jesus, "It is better to enter into life halt or
maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to go into hell." Has he
reached strength at the centre, one wonders, by doing violence to any
part of his moral being? Is his strength not the strength of the whole
man but the strength only of his will, a forced strength to which his
reason has not greatly contributed and into which his affections have
not entirely entered? Is this, one asks, the reason of that look in his
face, the look of bafflement, of perplexity, of a permanently troubled
conscience, of a divided self, a self that is both maimed and halt?
How is it, we ask ourselves, that a man who makes so profound an
impression on those who know him, and who commands as no other teacher
of his time the affectionate veneration of the Christian world, and who
has placed himself whole-heartedly in political alliance with the
militant forces of victorious Labour, exercises so little influence in
the moral life of the nation? How is it that he suggests to us no
feeling of the relation of triumphant leadership, but rather the spirit
of Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow?
We learn from his teaching that no one can be a Christian without "a
tremendous act of choice," that Christ proclaimed His standard with
"tremendous severity of claim," that "it is very hard to be a good
Christian," and that we must surely, as St. Peter says, "pass the time
of our sojourning here in fear." All of which suggests to us that the
Bishop has not entered into life whole, even perhaps that sometimes he
looks back over his shoulder with a spasm of horror at the hell from
which he has escaped only by the sacrifice of his rational integrity.
Let us recall the main events of his history.
He was educated at Harrow and Balliol, and exercised a remarkable
spiritual influence at Oxford, where he remained, first as
Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon College and then as Librarian of Pusey
House, till he was forty years of age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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