“A CITY SET ON A HILL”

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 23

“A CITY SET ON A HILL”

Sermon preached by the Ven. Archdeacon L. G. Whitehead at llavensbourne on Whitsunday. “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”—St. Matthew v.,' 14. This Whitsunday wo may regard as the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Christian Church—that organisation which from a humble and obscure origin in old Jerusalem became the most magnificent spectacle in history. The development of the church has been marred by quarrels and divisions, by- persecutions, by crimes against the spirit of Christ, and yet, withal, the highest and best things the world has known have found shelter in its shadow. The scandals of ecclesiasticism have led earnest men to seek for the quintessence of Christianity in the nope that this precious residuum might be used for the healing of the nations apart from the follies and ambitions of churchmen. But no one can live on essences, and the truth is that, however watered down, Christianity has lived in and by the church. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the significance for mankind of both the church and the Gospel is any less today than it ever was. ' European owes all that is distinctive and best in it to the coexistence of Christianity and the scientific organisation of life. From our religion Europe has gained its moral and social ideals, “ while science has given it its power of material organisation and its control over Nature. Without religion science can give us no guidance for the good Me. Its marvellous discoveries may be more a curse than a blessing when used by scoundrels or fools. Science can be used for military madness or the exploitation of helpless peoples. On the other hand, religion without science leads to a fixity of social life such as is still to be found in the East. We have no reason to suppose that the Christian Church, like the human race itself, is far past its infancy, bo that we need regard a vision of further achievement for both mankind and the church as no fantastic dream. In a world of applied science, guided by religious and moral principles, a civilisation could arise greater than anything hitherto known, equally removed “ from the sterile inaction of the ancient East and the aimless material activity of the modern West.” The immense success that application of science to the increase of human comfort has met with has led the men and women of our day into many dangerous delusions. AV© nave on the one side the cult of bourgeois ideals, with its tacitly accepted doctrine of life as one pleasant Sunday afternoon: on the other the NeoMarxian Bolshevism which aims to make all men like the middle classes whom the Bolshevists at once despise and envy. These two gospels of life are now accepted hy the largely part of the white races, and a conviction, explicit or implicit, is very widespread that one or both combined will do more for human happiness than all the dog mas and the prayers of the church have achieved through the centuries But when wo lift up our eyes from the short period called aodern times and look back over the history of our race till it is lost in the darkness of the past, we see “ the broad sameness of human lot,”-as George Eliot -‘alls it, and as long as time and space ant* life endure we may expect that ho same tyrants will rule human lives, “ hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death.” No promise of an earthly millennium will make us contented in the depth of our nature, for there lie demands which no temporal changes will ever satisfy. The church exists to teach men the true ends or purposes of life —those ends which when realised give a satisfaction and peace which neither time nor change can take away. Christians who are clear-headed know quite well that the Gospel cannot tell us by what means this-worldly moral ideals may reach fruition; for example, how men, whether they be Christians or not, may be made sober, industrious, free from poverty, or how war may cease to be. The actual means by which such good things may come to pass really lie in the province of science. He would be a rash, man who would say that science yet knows how to abolish poverty and avert war. Whatever ultimately may be the case, here and now, wo mortals must learn to adjust ourselves to two worlds —the world of Nature and the world of grace. This makes life very difficult. The world of Nature is the province of science; the world of grace that of religion. We are quite wrong to confuse the two; for example, it is an error to teach that a good life must unfailingly bring its own reward in worldly success or that social or political reform can apportion life’s good things strictly according to merit. It is no part of the church’s task to encourage delusions of this kind or to lead men, to believe that eugenics, sociology, etc. , can bring about _an earthly paradise on this precarious foothold in immensity. The church exists to preach not “ divine discontent,” but trust in Providence, however unwelcome that teaching may bo. We have to prepare t..a mass of mankind for life’s inevitable disillusionment and tragic uncertainties. Wo have to uphold the conviction that the highest things can be discovered and'enjoyed by the humblest and most ignorant without respect to worldly rank or riches; that the saintly poor, the' “ Nature’s gentlemen,” are to_ be found even in our own time, realising the Christian ideal with fewer hindrances than beset their so-called betters. The teaching of the Catechism is still true—that God has given to each one a vocation, entrusting him with a special work or duty (even the bedridden sufferer), and that He will judge a man by his faithful use of limited opportunities and few talents. The Christian ideal is that no rank or station in life need fail in the highest aims. To teach that such aims can be realised only under certain favourable circumstances or with education in facts is to contradict not merely the genius of the Christian religion, but our most certain experience. “ Other-worldliness ” is not popular just now. Tlio church is regarded by many as useful only as a moral policeman or an agency for social reform, political enlightenment, and a vaguely conceived “ progress.” If the things of time are the chief purpose of man's existence, then religion is quite rightly called the opium of the people, for in its most intense form (e.g., in Christianity) it develops in men a state of soul which perceives and feels the difference between time and eternity, the fleeting and the abiding, pleasure and happiness, the creature and God. And to this temper the panaceas of social Utopians are as satisfying as sawdust to the starving. So it is that the main work of the church can never bo the maintenance or reform of earthly States and empires. As Hubbard ;...ys in his ‘ Fate of Empires ’ : “A true and stable civilisation can never be more than a by-product of religion. It is to bo at-

tained by those alone by whom it is not sought; and wo see that in the long run the world belongs to the unworldly; that in the end empire is to those to whom empire is nothing; and we remember with a sense of awe the most astonishing of the Beatitudes: ‘ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’