CHURCH & LABOUR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1018, 6 January 1911, Page 6

CHURCH & LABOUR.

FIFTY YEARS AGO AND NOW. A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. (By Canon Scott Holland, in the "Morning Post.") Fifty years ago I was but thirteen and was blithely ignorant of what a Church Congress meant. But five or six years later I was at Oxford and began to fe.l the swing of the big tides at work in Church and World. And certainly it seems a far-off date now,- looking back. Oxford lay abjectly imprisoned within the rigid limitations of Mill's Logic. And, for its philosophical outlook, it talked of nothing but the Association of Ideas and of tho bundle of Sensations out of which it hoped to derive something that might be called Individuality. Individualistic Sensationalism held tlie field. Wo were practically Sophists. Individual man was to be the measure of all things. .Life was to bo reduced to mechanical terras. Scientific Analysis held the key to tho Universe. Under this intellectual dominion we had lost all touch the Ideals of Life in Community.. The deeps of. Transcendental Lmot:on a had vanished out of our horizon. There was a dryness in the Oxford air, and there was singularly little Inspiration to be felt abroad. Wo wero frightened; we saw everything passing into the tyranny of rational abstract Mechanism.

' Out there, in the huge and hideous cities, the awful problem of Industry lay like a bad dream. 'We shook with the fury of Carlyle, but 110 did not tell us what to do. We quaked, but we got no lead from him. And then we had soaked ourselves with the Political Economy which warned us off that ground. The boards were up everywhere: "Trespassers will be prosecuted." And tho trespassers, whom it warned were men with hearts and feelings, attempting to introduce uioro of human motives into the play of the great Industrial machine. If only such silly interferers as these would keep their hands off affairs, atl might go well. The freo.play of competitive forces is bound to discover the truo equipoise. It does it of itself. The result is mechanically certain. No intervention can really offect the inevitable outcome. It can only disturb and hinder its proper action. For goodness' sake leave things alone! So they implored, and wo believed them.

Not - even tho heroic efforts of Lord Shaftesbury in tho early factory lcgisla"mv avn '' break the numbing spell. There we're, it is true, always a faithful knot of good, wise Broad Churchmen pegging away at social amelioration. But they mainly stuck to Thrift and Drains, and this did not captivate our imagination. Jowett might' preach "Neither, did this man sin nor his parents, but that tho laws of Sanitary Reform might be revealed." Quito right; but it left us cold. We dul'not feel as if Sanitary Reform compensated for the loss of the Glory of i°i somehow, those good men not m ? ush sanitation with the ■ 110 1 correlato their Creed with their reforms. Wo were not sure what their Creed was; or how it told upon the Reforms. They had the chill XS .?f m T' 1 " 0 ' 1 llas haunted Drains and llirirt and C.O.S. So we were not stirred.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS IGNORE I?. 1 "We, moreover, .were enthusiastic Churchmen, on. fire with the new Hope. And tlic -industrial revolution had thrown upon our- Church tho like tremendous strain to that under which Labour was sufrering so deeply. This vast displacement of populatious out of old homes into unknown environments, which had created theso nightmare cities and had shattered all the normal human ties, "called aloud for tho Church to build new. spiritual homes, and to moralise and spiritualiso millions who had fallen wholly, outside Christ. It was a tremendous task set her. She had to iling all her energies out into, the desperate work, which had aiready, before she was aware of what was happening, spread itself out far and wide beyond her capacity to overtake it. Is it wonderful.that in the ardour of .this adventure, under the stress of this, necessity, she was wholly absorbed in her.own business and was forced to leave the social problem severely alone? That is exactly what she was told to do by all the honourable men, the professors. And so after a v.-ild look round at the ghastly spectacle, at which she sickened, she plunged back again into the blind grind of Christianising tho slums, and building new churches, and "attracting the masses." Filled with this high passion, we clamoured for the Church' to bo free to show itself in its visionary glory, beautiful as an army with banners, filled with tho shout of its Ivmn;. .It should be no dry "shell of Establishment." It should be no cut-and-dricd conventional matins. It should speak its own splendid language, it should wear its garment of praise. It should be unfettered by suspicious Parliaments and stupid. Privy Councils. It should show itself as the people's own; the true home of the heart. So wc dreamed. It was the'day of heroism and adventures; the day of St. Alban's and its band of saints; the day when priests were throwing their lives away upon their work among tho piteous poor. And there was collision with authority, an'd glorious fights, and prisons, and romance, , and self-sacrifice, arid everything that young hearts desire. We threw ourselves in with nil this. It swept our imagination and satisfied our spirit of venture. The Church was enough. Thus it came about that for all theso long years the tradition of Maurice and Christian Socialism narrowed'itself down to tho very, few; while Labijur on one side and the Church on tho other burrowed along in ignorance of each other, eacli utterly preoccupied .with its own endeavour to meet the problem which tho industrial revolution had created.

AN AWAKENING. Then, at last, the walls began to break. A world of novel influences began to open upon us. Philosophically, the change from Oxford thought and temper came' about, mainly, through the overpowering influence of T. H. \ Green. He broke for us the sway of individualistic Sensationalism. He released us from the fear of agnostic Mechanism. He' taught us tho reality of the co-operato life,and the inspiration of the community. Ho gavo us back the' language of "sel'f-sacrifice, and taught us' how we belonged to one ai> other in the one life of organic humanity. He filled us again with the breath of high idealism. We took life from him at its spiritual value. And then we were startled and kindled by seeing this great intellectual leader give himself over to civic duties, and tako up, personally, the obligations of citizenship and work for poor despised Oxford City. This had an immense practical effect on us.

Again we suddenly awoke to the fact that our other great tcacher who had brought back to us the world of emotion and -beauty was talking a new language. John'Ruskin hod hitherto fed our delight in reviving the loveliness of faith; but ono day when we wero asking him what he thought of a new beautiful church just built ho said, "he had not seen it. Ho would not see it. If it was new it was perfectly ugly. [In this he was right, for it was Kcblc chapel that we were pressing upon his attention.] But if it .was beautiful, it ought not to be. We 'ought not to be building beautiful churches. Wo are not in a state to deserve them. We ought to bo out in caves, in the Wilderness, with John the Baptist. That was the only form religion ought to take while men in citics were housed in tliose vile slums." This knocked us all of a heap. Not Vestments then, but Sackcloth. That is what wo ought to be after. And we read "Unto this Last," and were changed men. I remember well a little group or us meeting in Arthur Lyttelton's room to read "Unto this Lasf with our best-known undergraduates; and I can still see the present Bishop of London as a nice-looking boy from Marlborough curled up silently in a chair listening. Lyttelton was our only economist, and we clung to his guidance into the new matters. And he Could tell us of tho change that was already at work within Political Economy itself. He could show us how much of Ruskin's vehement teaching was, in a less exaggerated form, becoming accepted by tho authorised Professors of the science.

An immense shifting was going on. Ingram of Dublin and others wero breaking up tho older abstractions, and showing how economic laws were historical, sociological, experimental, They rcpre'.

sented what happened under ccrtain human conditions at a ccrtain time. They wero not abstract and mechanical, hut human, concrctc, alive. And then, again, there whs the slow-won triumph of Trade Unionism, which had proved itself wiser than the Professors, and had corrected and counteracted the "iron law" of wages by holding out for the higher standard of living and of efficiency. The "man/' then, counts after all; and economic efficiency turns on sustaining all that makes for good manhood at a high level. This was a happy discovery, and allowed for much. .Then, again, Huxley came along and delivered us out of the terrorism exercised by the formula "the survival of the fittest." In the name of Darwinism he'bade us defy the mechanical cosmic process and devote ourselves to fitting as many as possible to survive. We were to determine who should best survive on human and moral grounds; and, then, equip them deliberately with the resources that would ensure survival.

T. H. Green's pamphlet on Liberty of Contract taught us how positive and constructive a policy is needed in order to ensure the conditions which would enable men to be free to make a contract. Competition was; then, to Ixj no blind mechanical force; We wero deliberately to provide adequate equipment for the competitors. • ' i •

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM, Thus/from every side windows were flung open, barriers were thrown down, we were summoned to the work of controlling human destiny. Industrial Society was not to be abandoned to mechanical fatalism. It asked for conscious and active co-operation. We were ready for a call; and it came. From over the sea, we began to be awaTe' of a Social Philosophy which, however materialistic some of its tendencies might have become, had had alliancc with the spiritual Hegelianism with which wo had been touched. It took its scientific shapes.in the hands of Karl 'Marx, but it also floated across to us, in dreams and visions, using our own Christian language, and invoking the unity of tie Social Body and the lav.* of love, and the -solidarity of Humanity. It read out the significance of citizenship iu terms that were .spiritual and Christian. It challenged us to say why we ,were not bringing our creed into action as the. true secret of all social well-being. Were we not engaged in asserting -the preeminent value of tho community over the individual by our faith in the Church? Wero wo not preaching the sanctity of human nature here on earth by our belief in the Sacraments? If we brought this Creed to bear upon society would it not show itself in the form of Christian Socialism as Maurice and Kingsley had understood it in the fifties?

Wo woke up to . Maurice. His influence, which had lain, as it were, alongside the Oxford . Movement, now passed inside it. The effect of this was first seen in tlie brilliant and heroic knot of men who created the Guild of St. Matthew—Hcadlam, Shuttleworth, and Hancock. These men ; were kindled into splendid inspiration. They fused the message of Maurice with tho Gospel learned from Tractarianism. They ..saw the vital efficacy of such a. fusion, and they carried their Gospel abroad with high courage and with direct effect. The workers found in them priests who were ready, to identify themselves heart and soul with the cause of labour. They passionately pleaded for a living alliance between a Sacramental Ghurth and a Socialistic Community. They won the confidence of the workers, where they failed to win their- adherence. They marked a new moment..

Anil then the Oxford Churchmen became more and more affected by the work of. the great Cambridge scholars., and especially by that of Dr. Westcott. And, after learning from him how to revise our New Testament te.xt, wo found ourselves also receiving, through his fervid social enthusiasm, the message, again, of Maurice. We had been shown, by the Tractarians, tho depth and intensity of significance to be disclosed by faith in the Incarnation. Now we added to this 'a fuller estimate of the farreaching extension of its meaning and of the scope of its activities. So Cambridge enlarged the cxerjise of the energies"l which 1 Oxford had created and stored. "Christian doctrine showed itself as tho , very ' heart of 1 a Social Gospel, and it was no longer necessary for an interest in ; Draiisfe to 7 be identified with a desire to "hang Theology." On the. contrary, it was Theology itself which, as a fair Handmaid, led us straight to the Drains.

So Maurice worked ,n:ore and more inside, instead of outside, the Catholic Movement. The two streams, fused. I always felt the symbolic"moment of the ■fusion was reached when Dr. Westcott finally overcame his intense distrust of Oxford and his repugnance to the Oxford Movement, and took" the chair for a great meeting of the Christian Social Union in Christ Church Hall. We had foundedi the Christian Social Union under his presidentship, leaving to tlio Guild of St. Matthew tljeir old work of justifying Christ to the masses,, while wo devoted ourselves* to converting and impregnating the solid, stolid flock of our own ciiurchfolk within the fold. The average mass of Established people are, naturally, always the. last to arrive at ideas: so that our people had just got fast hold of the elder mechanical and inhuman Economy at the moment when its own professors were throwing it overboard. We had, therefore,, our work cut out for us in dislodging the-horrible. cast-iron formulae, which were, indeed, wholly obsolete, but which seemed for' that very reason to take tighter possession of their last 'refuge in the bulk of the Church laity. For. twenty years or so this slow dislodgment has been proceeding. And the extent of- ( the change of temperament became manifest 'at. the Pan-Anglican Conference, when, a silent mass of listeners found themselves accepting paper after paper which they would onco have thought, intolerable; and only Lord' William Cecil had the courage to lift a voice' of gallant protest against the- invasion of Socialism. During the last few years the younger evangelicals have drawn keenly towards a social creed, and have joined .hands with the rest.

A DAY OF.GREAT POSSIBILITIES. .. Naturally, the social causes have enabled us to tio-operats cordially and freely with: our brother Christians in'the Nonconformist bodies. There has been through this , a great rallying of hearts. In the meantime Father Adderley, whose delightful books have done so much to bring Labour and Church together, has, with a number of priests, adopted the Economic Socialist programme in full, and. they have identified themselves with the Independent Labour Party. The Bishops have done excellent, work in backing industrial legislation in the House of Lords; they have beeu foremost in pressing for factory reform, and have ardently supported the Bill for securing a standard wage in the sweated industries. It marks a notable general advance when a Bishop of London carries across to Canada a social message as decided and bracing as the following:—.

"Let the new uation be a land of p* free, and let this freedom secure equalitv cf opportunity for all, so that each shall count ,for one, and no one for more than one, and no downtrodden slave shall find his way to this new; earth without finding an equal chance with all the world, it is not too late for this here aud now; for you are not tied down by class distinctions. There ..is only ono' aristocracy you know here—the aristocracy of merit, "and in the new nation which is to be there must dominate from end to end the quiet but far-reaching statement of the Bible: 'There is but one God, even the Father; and all ye are brethren.'"

Yes! A change of temperament; ,» change of language; n change of ideas and of ideals—this has certainly happened. The gates are open that were closed iifty years ago; aud strong-iloods lie ready to press through. ' It is a 'day of great possibilities. But that is as far as wo havo got. The change of temper has yet got to prove itself 1 in acts. The new language has .still to translate itself into facts; The new ideas have still" to discover how they are going to pet to work. For still we are "well-fed and comfortabla people" who cannot understand. . Still the Church wears the air of the World to which she is so closely allied by a thousand social and political and immemorial associations.

Still gulfs yawn between her worship and the industrial populations who have fallen wholly outside her lines. Still our Palaces and Canonical Houses and happv Rectories and glorious Deaneries disguise the Christ, so that the common' folk fail to see or hear Him.

Still we are encased in sccial conventions which belie: our true' selves, and falsify the message which we geuuiuelv desire to .