“These Are Grave Words”

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 15

“These Are Grave Words”

4 < IBERTY,” says Hr. Hensley Henson, formerly Bishop of Durham, jl “is shown to be the distinctive character of Christian civilizai tiou by two facts, unchallengeable and conclusive, namely, first, JI Jl that it has been, within Christendom, that is, within the sphcie of Christian influence, that human faculty has found its frce.su ami fullest exercise; next, that tyranny has ever perceived in the Christian religion its most formidable obstacle, and has, therefore, found itself compelled in its own interest to persecute Christians. “The influence of Christianity within the national life is a public interest of the greatest importance, since the quality ami stability of our civilization are plainly concerned in it. “Human faculty has been so stimulated by Christianity, that within Christendom it has been exercised most freely and has achieved its noblest works. Do not misunderstand me. I do not forget, I would not underrate, the shadows ami scandals -of ecclesiastical history—the debasing perversions of asceticism, the crimes of bigotry, the stupid blunders of obscurantism, the squalid vices of mundane ambition—which stain the record of Christ’s religion and obscure its character. “These, indeed, are baffling and lamentable. But they cannot alter the broad character. of the judgment which history passes on Christianity. If we base that judgment, as we surely ought to base it, not on local and transitory aberrations, nor on demonstrable and acknowledged violations of Christian principle, but on the apparent and unchallengeable effect which Christianity has had in the societies which it has shaped and guided, then the truth of my contention has -been made plain. “Christianity has proved itself to be a quickening principle, bringing into fruitful activity the latent potencies of human nature, and by its-presence making civilization greater, richer, more exalted and enduring than it could otherwise be. It is surely no accident that it is on Christian soil that science and the arts, law and literature, philosophy and politics have flowered most richly. >

“Persecution was an early consequence of Apostolic witness. The first contact with the established authorities of Palestine evoked from the disciples of Jesus a declaration which throughout Christian history has been the

slogan of Christian loyalty, and the occasion of the persecutor’s violence—‘Peter and the apostles answered and said: We must obey God rather than mem’

“With those -words the Apostles refused obedience to the Sanhedrin in the first century; with those words Pastor Niemoller and bis colleagues have refused obedience to the totalitarian German State in the twentieth, lhe Rights of Man are bound up with them. “They place the tyrant under the dolorous necessity of becoming also the persecutor. He knows instinctively that the divine right of the individual spirit, once perceived and claimed, must draw with it consequences which can never be harmonized with personal injustice and political oppression. Persecution is the involuntary acknowledgment of the tyrant that his claim to obedience violates the self-respect of his victims. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ “From all this it follows that no considering citizen who values civilization can be indifferent to the fortunes of Christianity. Some words of the late Lord Bryce in the final chapter of his monumental work on ‘Modern Democracies,’ which treats of ‘The Future of Democracy,’ arc deeply suggestive : “ ‘The question of the permanence of democracy resolves itself into the question of whether mankind is growing in wisdom and virtue, and with that comes the question of what religion will be in the future, since it has been for the finer and more sensitive spirits the motive power behind mortality. Governments that have ruled by force and fear have been able to live without moral sanctions or to make their subjects believe that those sanctions consecrated them, but no free government has ever yet so lived and thriven, for it is by a reverence for the Powers unseen and eternal which impose those sanctions, that the powers of evil have been, however imperfectly, kept at bay and the fabric of society held together.’ “These are grave words, and they have the authority of one who, beyond most of his coutemiioraries, had studied the course of social development iu the past and in the present. We may well have them in mind when we reflect on. our present situation.”