The answer is characteristic. Dr. Inge has thought things out; everything in his faith has been thought out; and the basis of all his thinking is acceptance of absolute values--absolute truth, absolute goodness, absolute beauty. No breath from the cla.s.s-rooms agitated by Einstein can shake his faith in these absolutes. His Spirit of the Universe is absolute truth, absolute goodness, absolute beauty. He is a Neoplatonist, but something more. He ascends into communion with this Universal Spirit whispering the Name of Christ, and by the power of Christ in his soul addresses the Absolute as Abba, Father.

No man is freer from bigotry or intolerance, though not many can hate falsity and lies more earnestly. The Church of England, he tells me, should be a national church, a church expressing the highest reach of English temperament, with room for all shades of thought. He quotes Dollinger, "No church is so national, so deeply rooted in popular affection, so bound up with the inst.i.tutions and manners of the country, or so powerful in its influences on national character." But this was written in 1872. Dr. Inge says now, "The English Church represents, on the religious side, the convictions, tastes, and prejudices of the English gentleman, that truly national ideal of character... . A love of order, seemliness, and good taste has led the Anglican Church along a middle path between what a seventeenth century divine called 'the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid s.l.u.tterny of fanatic conventicles.'"

Uniformity, he tells me, is not to be desired. One of our greatest mistakes was letting the Wesleyan Methodists go; they should have been accommodated within the fold. Another fatal mistake was made by the Lambeth Conference, in its insistence on re-ordination. Imagine the Church of England, with two Scotch Archbishops at its head, thinking that the Presbyterians would consent to so humiliating a condition! An interchange of pulpits is desirable; it might increase our intelligence, or at least it should widen our sympathy. He holds a high opinion of the Quakers. "Practical mystics: perhaps they are the best Christians, I mean the best of them."

Modernism, he defines, at its simplest, as personal experience, in contradistinction from authority. The modernist is one whose knowledge of Christ is so personal and direct that it does not depend on miracle or any accident of His earthly life. Rome, he thinks, is a falling power, but she may get back some of her strength in any great industrial calamity--a revolution, for example. Someone once asked him which he would choose, a Black tyranny, or a Red? He replied "On the whole, I think a Black." The friend corrected him. "You are wrong. Men would soon emerge from the ruins of a Red tyranny, but Rome never lets go her power till it is torn from her."

His contempt for the idea of reunion with Rome in her present condition is unmeasured. "The notion almost reminds us of the cruel jest of Mezentius, who bound the living bodies of his enemies to corpses." It is the contempt both of a great scholar and a great Englishman for ignorance and a somewhat ludicrous pretension. "The _caput orbis_ has become provincial, and her authority is spurned even within her own borders." England could not kneel at this Italian footstool without ceasing to be England[6].

[Footnote 6: "There are, after all, few emotions of which one has less reason to be ashamed than the little lump in the throat which the Englishman feels when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of Dover."--_Outspoken essays_, p. 58.]

"A profound reconstruction is demanded," he says, "and for those who have eyes to see has been already for some time in progress. The new type of Christianity will be more Christian than the old, because it will be more moral. A number of unworthy beliefs about G.o.d are being tacitly dropped, and they are so treated because they are unworthy of Him."

He sees the future of Christianity as a deep moral and spiritual power in the hearts and minds of men who have at length learned the value of the new currency, and have exchanged profession for experience.

But this Erasmus, far more learned than the other, and with a courage which far exceeds the other's, and with an impatience of nature, an irritability of mind, which the other seldom knew, is nevertheless patient of change. He does not lead as decisively as he might. He does not strike as often as he should at the head of error. Perhaps he is still thinking. Perhaps he has not yet made up his mind whether "Art is a Crime or only an Absurdity," whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied or exterminated, whether in general we are getting on, and if so where we are going to.

I feel myself that his mind is made up, though he is still thinking and still seeking; and I attribute his indecision as a leader, his want of weight in the affairs of mankind, to one fatal deficiency in his mysticism. It is, I presume to suggest, a mysticism which is separated by no gulf from egoism--egoism of the highest order and the most spiritual character, but still egoism. In his quest of G.o.d he is not conscious of others. He thinks of mankind with interest, not with affection. Humanity is a spectacle, not a brotherhood.

When one speaks to him of the confusion and anarchy in the religious world, and suggests how hard it is for the average man to know which way he should follow, he replies: "Yes, I'm afraid it's a bad time for the ordinary man." But then he has laid it down, "There is not the slightest probability that the largest crowd will ever be gathered in front of the narrow gate." Still one could wish that he felt in his heart something of the compa.s.sion of his Master for those who have taken the road of destruction.

He attaches great importance to preaching. He does not at all agree with the sneer at "preaching-shops." That is a convenient sneer for the younger generation of ritualists who have nothing to say and who perform ceremonies they don't understand; not much meaning _there_ for the modern man. No; preaching is a most important office, although no other form of professional work is done anything like so badly. But a preacher who has something to say will always attract intelligent people.

One does not discuss with him the kind of preaching necessary to convert unintelligent people. That would be to take this great philosopher out of his depth.

As for the Oxford Movement, he regards it as a changeling. His grandfather, an archdeacon, was a Tractarian, a friend of Pusey, a scholar acquainted with all the doctors; but he was not a ritualist; he did not even adopt the eastward position. The modern ritualist is hardly to be considered the lineal descendant of these great scholars.

"Romanticism, which dotes on ruins, shrinks from real restoration ... a Latin Church in England which disowns the Pope is an absurdity."

No, the future belongs to clear thinking and rigorous honesty of the intellect.

Dr. Inge began life as the f.a.g of Bishop Ryle at Eton--the one now occupying the Deanery of St. Paul's; the other the Deanery of Westminster, both scholars and the friendship still remaining. He was a shy and timorous boy. No one antic.i.p.ated the amazingly brilliant career which followed at Cambridge, and even then few suspected him of original genius until he became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in 1907. His attempts to be a schoolmaster were unsuccessful. He was not good at maintaining discipline, and deafness somewhat intensified a nervous irritability which at times puts an enormous strain on his patience. Nor did he make any notable impression as Vicar of All Saints', Ennismore Gardens, a parochial experience which lasted two years. Slowly he made his way as author and lecturer, and it was not until he came to St.

Paul's that the world realised the greatness of his mind and the richness of his genius.

As a correction to the popular delusion concerning his temperament and outlook, although, I must confess, there is something about him suggestive of a London Particular, I will quote in conclusion a few of the many witty epigrams which are scattered throughout his pages, showing that he has a sense of humour which is not always discernible in those who would laugh him away as an unprofitable depressionist.

The clerical profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor write.

Seminaries for the early training of future clergymen may indeed be established; but beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the gardeners in greenhouses while the young plants are in the open air.

It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of G.o.d is distributed denominationally.

Like other idealisms, patriotism varies from a n.o.ble devotion to a moral lunacy.

Our clergy are positively tumbling over each other in their eagerness to be appointed court-chaplain to King Demos.

A generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be five times as civilised as one which only travels twelve.

It is not certain that there has been much change in our intellectual and moral adornments since pithecanthropus dropped the first half of his name.

I cannot help hoping that the human race, having taken in succession every path except the right one, may pay more attention to the narrow way that leadeth unto life.

It is useless for the sheep to pa.s.s resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

After the second century, the apologists for the priesthood are in smooth waters.

Not everyone can warm both hands before the fire of life without scorching himself in the process.

It is quite as easy to hypnotise oneself into imbecility by repeating in solemn tones, "Progress, Democracy, Corporate Unity,"

as by the blessed word Mesopotamia, or, like the Indians, by repeating the mystic word "Om" five hundred times in succession.

I have lived long enough to hear the _Zeitgeist_ invoked to bless very different theories.

... as if it were a kind of impiety not to float with the stream, a feat which any dead dog can accomplish... .

An appendix is as superfluous at the end of the human caec.u.m as at the end of a volume of light literature.

The "traditions of the first six centuries" are the traditions of the rattle and the feeding bottle.

In speaking to me last year of the crowded waiting-lists of the Public Schools, he said: "It is no longer enough to put down the name of one's son on the day he is born, one must write well ahead of that: 'I am expecting to have a son next year, or the year after, and shall be obliged if--' The congestion is very great, in spite of the increasing fees and the supertax."

Much of his journalism, by the way, has the education of his children for its excuse and its consecration--children to whom the Dean of St.

Paul's reveals in their nursery a side of his character wholly and beautifully different from the popular legend.

There is no greater mind in the Church of England, no greater mind, I am disposed to think, in the English nation. His intellect has the range of an Acton, his forthrightness is the match of Dr. Johnson's, and his wit, less biting though little less courageous than Voltaire's, has the illuminating quality, if not the divine playfulness, of the wit of Socrates.

But he lacks that profound sympathy with the human race which gives to moral decisiveness the creative energy of the great fighter. A lesser man than Erasmus left a greater mark on the sixteenth century.

The righteous saying of Bacon obstinately presents itself to our mind and seems to tarry for an explanation: "The n.o.bler a soul is, the more objects of compa.s.sion it hath."

FATHER KNOX

KNOX, REV. RONALD ARBUTHNOTT; b. 17th Feb., 2888; 4th s. of the Rt.

Rev. E.A. Knox, Bishop of Manchester. Ethuc.: Eton (1st Scholarship); Balliol College, Oxford (1st Scholarship). Hertford Scholarship, 1907; Second in Honour Moderations, 1908; Ireland and Craven Scholarship, 1908; 1st in Litt. Hum., 1910; Fellow and Lecturer at Trinity College, Oxford, 1910; Chaplain, 1912; Resigned, 1917; received into the Church of Rome, September, 1917.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FATHER KNOX]

CHAPTER III

FATHER KNOX

_Our new curate preached, a pretty hopefull young man, yet somewhat raw, newly come from college, full of Latine sentences, which in time will weare off._--JOHN EVELYN.