DEAN INGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

DEAN INGE.

SCOURGE AND FLAME.

rnroßTH:oi>ox conservatism.

(By CYRANO.)

Mr. Bernard Shaw once solemnly cursed the day when William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, was submitted

to the processes of education provided for his class. Mr. Shaw has a great respect for Dean Inge's intellect, but he thinks it might have h«en much more effective if it had not been warped by the traditional curriculum of school and college.. Dean Inge's retirement from St. Paul's recalls Mr. Shaw's comment, and will set many persons, in print and in their own minds, forming an estimate of this very remarkable ecclesiastic It may occur to some that there is a good deal of resemblance between the two men. It is true that Mr. Shaw is a Socialist and Dean Inge regards Socialism as the last infirmity of ignoble minds. '"AH young people with soft hearts tend to be Socialists at twenty-one, 5, says the Dean; •'only those with soft heads are Socialists twenty years later." Discussing such questions, Mr. Shaw and Dean Inge might say, as Carlyle did after a con* rersation* with someone, that they agreed in everything except opinion. Both men are highly unorthodox and quite fearless. They regard themselves as scourges of the age, and they express themselves with disturbing frankness. Mr. Shaw is a. leader in the antivaccination and anti-vivisection movement, but listen to Dean Inge on the other side. "I cannot imagine a more disgraceful or unpatriotic agitation than that in which you are engaged," so he wrote to the president of the AntiVaccination Society. "If I were at the head of affairs I should have you shot summarily." I? not that the authentic G.B.S. note? There is this difference. however, that Dean Inge does not try to shock the public, whereas Mr. Sfcaw does. And the foundations of the Dean's philosophy are deeper and more soHd.

An Unorthodox Christian. Bv a dean vre understand a handsome grey-headed, grave-looking man walkfn°~ slowly in the beauty of a cathedral close. He is scholarly, benign and orthodox. Dean Inge does not suggest such a picture- Hβ is scholarly, but he is not orthodox. He suggests war as -well as peace—war not only on evils of the time, but on institutions and beliefs of Ms own Church. And he has been in his right place at St. Paul's. There, in the bustle of the city, under or in the shadow of that great alien pile of Wren's, this lonely 'figure, has stood for many years, speaking uncomfortable things" to Jerusalem, which, whjlc it might shrug and scoff, has always listened. In the Gothic twilight of Westminster Abbey <?ueh a harsh voice would seem more discordant. Dean Inge illustrates the breadth of the broadest

Omreh in Christendom, the Church. that reads over High and Low, fundamentalist, Anglo-Catholic and modernist. faithfnl and agnostic, the majestic comfort of its committal to earth or flame. It is a -weakness of the Church that it does not speak -with one voice, and that generally there is doubt -where it stands. It is a strength that men of such diverse views can find shelter under its wings. Probably there is no other Church that ■would tolerate William Ralph Inge even as a priest, let alone a Dean. Mr. A. G. Gardiner says of him that he re-states Christianity in a way that cuts across all the schools. He "leaves the historicity of the miracles to science and rejects the verbal inspiratio_ of the Scriptures." "Christ Himself, if He had returned mi earth in the Middle Ages, •would certainly have been burnt alive for denying* the dogmas about His own nature." *"I shall, of course, discues them {certain moral problems) with reference to Christian standards, but without assuming that traditional Christian teaching is necessarily right.." He thinks it "permissible to speculate ••whether the religion of Christ might not be a greater power in the world if its professional custodians were removed.'" Mr. Gardiner is left awake at nights wondering what the Bishop of London reallv thinks of the Dean of St. Paul's.

Certain Prejudices. In eecular affairs he has his blind spots, and sometimes says foolish things. He has never understood the Irish question, in which failure he keeps company with a large number of his countrymen. His attitude towards the working class displays sometimes either sad ignorance or immovable prejudice. It must be connected with hie rooted objection to socialism. He refers to "the lazy miner, who extorts his thousands a year from the householders of England," and he maintains that the politicians are corrupting the citizenship of the worker by '"their pampering and pauperising legislation." When he agrees with Leeky "that the happiest time to live in England -was between the first and second Reform Bills, between 1532 and 1567," he invites the question: Happiest for whom, working men or deans? He hates sentimentalism.

"There is an increasing orgy of sentimentalism and indiscipline over England, due in part to the fact that board-school boys are not caned. Thank God. the lads at Eton are still birched/' He advocates birth control, and admit? that he belongs to the "better-not-to-be-born" school. He had said hard things of democracy —'"'the old divine light of Kings standing on its head" — yet ih& case for, as well as against-,* could hardly be summed up better than in an address be gave in America nine years ago.

Some of the opinions quoted above help to account for the valuation of Dean Inge in some quarters as a shallow man. The whole man must be judged, and he is very far from being shallow. He is moved* by a passionate attachment to spiritual values. He is a philosopher and theologian of high repute. The public knows him best as the writer of lay essays, but the churchman knows him as the author of a number of works of deep significance on religious and philosophical questions. His Christianity is coloured with Grook philosophy. He believes uncompromisingly in property and inherited tradition aW culture, but ho judges a country as he judges an indivi-

dual, not by Its material possessions, tart by its moral and spiritual values. lbs

importance of religion to him lies 3>ot in its instilurions, but in its effect on j kbe soul The materially-minded rich man means as little to I>;an Inge as to Mr. Shaw, save by -way of terrible example, only Mr. Shaw regards wealth | as & crime and a sin, -whereas Dean Inge ] thinks of it as something that makes virtue difficult. Here are one or two of his own religions aphorisms. "He who' ■will live .for others shall have great' troubles, but they shall seem to him small. He who will live for himself shall have small troubles, but tliey shall s?em to him great." '"Ebb and flow in tbe spiritual life, as in the sea., are and sre a sign of not of death." "Many religious people shut themselves in their systems like a snail in his shell, because they are naked." And I must add this one from the philosophical section, if only because it is a corrective to the vulgar title given to him of "The Gloomy Dean": ""Pessimism contains its own refutation: it believes in an_ idea 1 ., standard by which tbe world is judged' to be evil." A Moral Force. Dean Inge has been one_ of the most nowerful morel forces of his generation. At times his -utterances may seem harsh and bleak, and his sympathies defective. But his i> a call for honest thinking. X-ike Mr. Shaw, he is a sworn foe of 'blather and bunknm. Into our dansrerous comfort he arrives with his cold = wind of questioning. "We have fancied there was. an automatic law o: progress. Of course, there, is nothing of t'nb kind." '""We were all'stark mad together,"' he said in a sermon when the war was over. ••'There is no abstract demon called Germany. . . . We cannot afford to have a humiliated, embittered. degenerate Germany any more than a triumphant, militant Germary." The atta-cks that this provoked from fellow ■clerics he described as "fatuous and insolent." A formidable antagonist, this man, with a, scourge in his hand and a flame in his soul. He has not Mr. j Shaw's amazing wit —who else ha*?—j but he is highly effective without ever being dull. His* wit is hie own, and his sense of humour keen, which, with his learning and his sincerity, make him eminently readable. His eye for a telling allusion is liawk-jike. "But, as a Scotch preacher said, c The Almighty 5s compelled to do many things in his offe-ecial capacity which he would scorn to do as a private individual. , " **As Herbert Spencer said, there is no political alchemy for getting golden conduct out of leaden -instincts." This second citation is in the lecture on democracy, which he characteristically concludes with appeals to Plato and St. Paul. The visible State must be a «ipy of . the Spiritual City, where values and not commodities ' rule. Finally, dropgiag suddenly from the celestial city to a topic of the moment, may I mention that Dean Inge ha<s written about cricket? He has even criticised Hobbs for the way in which he holds his bat.

He is to'leave St. Paul's and, though he is a Cambridge man, live in Oxford. His retirement, "however, means less than soma may suppose. There will be pen. ink and paper in Jiis Oxford rejreat; and he will continue— one believes and hopce —to admonish and exhort the world.