Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
It must not be supposed that the Bishop has no answer to this criticism
of his attitude. He would say, "Produce your socialistic scheme, and I
will examine it, and if it will work and if it is just I will support
it; but until you have found this scheme, what moral right do you
possess which entitles you to unsettle men's minds, to fill their hearts
with the bitterness of discontent, and to turn the attention of their
souls away from the things that are more excellent?"
On this ground, the ground of economics, his position seems to me
unassailable; but it is a position which suggests the posture of a
lecturer in front of his black-board rather than that of a shepherd
seeking the lost sheep of his flock. If the socialist must think again,
at least we may ask that the Bishop should sometimes raise his crook to
defend the sheep against the attack of the robber and the wolf. If the
sheep are to be patient, if they are not to stray, if they are not to
die, there must be food for their grazing.
But the Bishop, at the very roots of his being, is conservative, and the
good qualities of conservatism do not develop foresight or permit of
vision. He would stick to the wattled cotes; and I think he would move
his flock on to new pastures as seldom as possible. This will not do,
however. The social reformer tells the Bishop who thinks democracy has
rejected religion that "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed." The
roots of the old sustenance are nibbled level to the ground, and the
ground itself is sour. If socialism is wrong, let the Bishop tell us
where lies a safer pasture.
One seems to see in this thrusting scholar and restless energetic
prelate a very striking illustration of the need in the Christian of
tenderness. Intellect is not enough. Intellect, indeed, is not light; it
is only the wick of a lamp which must be fed constantly with the oil of
compassion--that is to say, if its light is to shine before men. The
Bishop dazzles, but he does not illumine the darkness or throw a white
beam ahead of heavy-laden and far-journeying humanity on the road which
leads, let us hope, to a better order of things than the present system.
Whether such a man calls himself traditionalist or modernist does not
greatly matter. One respects him for his moral qualities, his courage,
and his devotion to his work; one honours him for his intellectual
qualities, which are of a high and brilliant order; but one does not
feel that he is leading the advance, or even that he knows in which
direction the army is definitely advancing.
MISS MAUDE ROYDEN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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