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Exegetical4
He did not get much beyond this point at the time, though he remained talking with Lady Sunderbund for nearly an hour longer. The rest was merely a beating out of what had already been said. But insensibly she renewed her original charm, and as he became accustomed to her he forgot a certain artificiality in her manner and the extreme modernity of her costume and furniture. She was a wonderful listener; nobody else could have helped him to expression in quite the same way, and when he left her he felt that now he was capable of stating his case in a coherent and acceptable form to almost any intelligent hearer. He had a point of view now that was no longer embarrassed by the immediate golden presence of God; he was no longer dazzled nor ecstatic; his problem had diminished to the scale of any other great human problem, to the scale of political problems and problems of integrity and moral principle, problems about which there is no such urgency as there is about a house on fire, for example.
And now the desire for expression was running strong. He wanted to state his situation; if he did not state he would have to act; and as he walked back to the club dinner he turned over possible interlocutors in his thoughts. Lord Rampound sat with him at dinner, and he came near broaching the subject with him. But Lord Rampound that evening had that morbid running of bluish legal anecdotes which is so common an affliction with lawyers, and theology sinks and dies in that turbid stream.
But as he lay in bed that night he thought of his old friend and helper Bishop Likeman, and it was borne in upon him that he should consult him. And this he did next day.
Since the days when the bishop had been only plain Mr. Scrope, the youngest and most helpful of Likeman`s historical band of curates, their friendship had continued. Likeman had been a second father to him; in particular his tact and helpfulness had shone during those days of doubt and anxiety when dear old Queen Victoria, God`s representative on earth, had obstinately refused, at the eleventh hour, to make him a bishop. She had those pigheaded fits, and she was touchy about the bishops. She had liked Scrope on account of the excellence of his German pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs --nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could ever find out who showed them to the old lady--anticipating his elevation. She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months. Likeman had brought her round.
It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman before he came to any open breach with the Establishment.
He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on account of the war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as ever. His voice sounded more than ever like a kind old woman`s.
He sat buried in his cushions--for "nowadays I must save every scrap of vitality"--and for a time contented himself with drawing out his visitor`s story.
Of course, one does not talk to Likeman of visions or intuitions. "I am disturbed, I find myself getting out of touch;" that was the bishop`s tone.
Occasionally Likeman nodded slowly, as a physician might do at the recital of familiar symptoms. "Yes," he said, "I have been through most of this.... A little different in the inessentials.... How clear you are!"
"You leave our stupid old Trinities--as I left them long ago," said old Likeman, with his lean hand feeling and clawing at the arm of his chair.
"But--!"
The old man raised his hand and dropped it. "You go away from it all--straight as a line. I did. You take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. And there you find--"
He held up a lean finger, and inclined it to tick off each point.
"Fate--which is God the Father, the Power of the Heart, which is God the Son, and that Light which comes in upon us from the inaccessible Godhead, which is God the Holy Spirit."
"But I know of no God the Holy Spirit, and Fate is not God at all. I saw in my vision one sole God, uncrucified, militant-- conquering and to conquer."
Old Likeman stared. "You saw!"
The Bishop of Princhester had not meant to go so far. But he stuck to his words. "As if I saw with my eyes. A God of light and courage."
"You have had visions, Scrope?"
"I seemed to see."
"No, you have just been dreaming dreams."
"But why should one not see?"
"See! The things of the spirit. These symbols as realities! These metaphors as men walking!"
"You talk like an agnostic."
"We are all agnostics. Our creeds are expressions of ourselves and our attitude and relationship to the unknown. The triune God is just the form of our need and disposition. I have always assumed that you took that for granted. Who has ever really seen or heard or felt God? God is neither of the senses nor of the mind; he is of the soul. You are realistic, you are materialistic...."
His voice expostulated.
The Bishop of Princhester reflected. The vision of God was far off among his memories now, and difficult to recall. But he said at last: "I believe there is a God and that he is as real a person as you or I. And he is not the theological God we set out before the world."
"Personification," said Likeman. "In the eighteenth century they used to draw beautiful female figures as Science and Mathematics. Young men have loved Science--and Freedom--as Pygmalion loved Galatea. Have it so if you will. Have a visible person for your Deity. But let me keep up my--spirituality."
"Your spirituality seems as thin as a mist. Do you really believe--anything?"
"Everything!" said Likeman emphatically, sitting up with a transitory vigour. "Everything we two have ever professed together. I believe that the creeds of my church do express all that can possibly be expressed in the relationship of--That "-- he made a comprehensive gesture with a twist of his hand upon its wrist--"to the human soul. I believe that they express it as well as the human mind can express it. Where they seem to be contradictory or absurd, it is merely that the mystery is paradoxical. I believe that the story of the Fall and of the Redemption is a complete symbol, that to add to it or to subtract from it or to alter it is to diminish its truth; if it seems incredible at this point or that, then simply I admit my own mental defect. And I believe in our Church, Scrope, as the embodied truth of religion, the divine instrument in human affairs. I believe in the security of its tradition, in the complete and entire soundness of its teaching, in its essential authority and divinity."
He paused, and put his head a little on one side and smiled sweetly. "And now can you say I do not believe?"
"But the historical Christ, the man Jesus?"
"A life may be a metaphor. Why not? Yes, I believe it all. All."
The Bishop of Princhester was staggered by this complete acceptance. "I see you believe all you profess," he said, and remained for a moment or so rallying his forces.
"Your vision--if it was a vision--I put it to you, was just some single aspect of divinity," said Likeman. "We make a mistake in supposing that Heresy has no truth in it. Most heresies are only a disproportionate apprehension of some essential truth. Most heretics are men who have suddenly caught a glimpse through the veil of some particular verity.... They are dazzled by that aspect. All the rest has vanished.... They are obsessed. You are obsessed clearly by this discovery of the militancy of God. God the Son--as Hero. And you want to go out to the simple worship of that one aspect. You want to go out to a Dissenter`s tent in the wilderness, instead of staying in the Great Temple of the Ages."
Was that true?
For some moments it sounded true.
The Bishop of Princhester sat frowning and looking at that. Very far away was the vision now of that golden Captain who bade him come. Then at a thought the bishop smiled.
"The Great Temple of the Ages," he repeated. "But do you remember the trouble we had when the little old Queen was so pigheaded?"
"Oh! I remember, I remember," said Likeman, smiling with unshaken confidence. "Why not?"
"For sixty years all we bishops in what you call the Great Temple of the Ages, were appointed and bullied and kept in our places by that pink irascible bit of dignity. I remember how at the time I didn`t dare betray my boiling indignation even to you --I scarcely dared admit it to myself...."
He paused.
"It doesn`t matter at all," and old Likeman waved it aside.
"Not at all," he confirmed, waving again.
"I spoke of the whole church of Christ on earth," he went on. "These things, these Victorias and Edwards and so on, are temporary accidents--just as the severance of an Anglican from a Roman communion and a Greek orthodox communion are temporary accidents. You will remark that wise men in all ages have been able to surmount the difficulty of these things. Why? Because they knew that in spite of all these splits and irregularities and defacements--like the cracks and crannies and lichens on a cathedral wall--the building held good, that it was shelter and security. There is no other shelter and security. And so I come to your problem. Suppose it is true that you have this incidental vision of the militant aspect of God, and he isn`t, as you see him now that is,--he isn`t like the Trinity, he isn`t like the Creed, he doesn`t seem to be related to the Church, then comes the question, are you going out for that? And whither do you go if you do go out? The Church remains. We alter doctrines not by changing the words but by shifting the accent. We can underÄaccentuate below the threshold of consciousness."
"But can we?"
"We do. Where`s Hell now? Eighty years ago it warmed the whole Church. It was--as some atheist or other put it the other day --the central heating of the soul. But never mind that point now. Consider the essential question, the question of breaking with the church. Ask yourself, whither would you go? To become an oddity! A Dissenter. A Negative. Self emasculated. The spirit that denies. You would just go out. You would just cease to serve Religion. That would be all. You wouldn`t do anything. The Church would go on; everything else would go on. Only you would be lost in the outer wilderness.
"But then--"
Old Likeman leant forward and pointed a bony finger. "Stay in the Church and modify it. Bring this new light of yours to the altar."
There was a little pause.
"No man," the bishop thought aloud, "putteth new wine into old bottles."
Old Likeman began to speak and had a fit of coughing. "Some of these texts--whuff, whuff--like a conjuror`s hat--whuff-- make `em--fit anything."
A man-servant appeared and handed a silver box of lozenges into which the old bishop dipped with a trembling hand.
"Tricks of that sort," he said, "won`t do, Scrope--among professionals.
"And besides," he was inspired; "true religion is old wine-- as old as the soul.
"You are a bishop in the Church of Christ on Earth," he summed it up. "And you want to become a detached and wandering Ancient Mariner from your shipwreck of faith with something to explain-- that nobody wants to hear. You are going out I suppose you have means?"
The old man awaited the answer to his abrupt enquiry with a handful of lozenges.
"No," said the Bishop of Princhester, "practically--I haven`t."
"My dear boy!" it was as if they were once more rector and curate. "My dear brother! do you know what the value of an ex-bishop is in the ordinary labour market?"
"I have never thought of that."
"Evidently. You have a wife and children?"
"Five daughters."
"And your wife married you--I remember, she married you soon after you got that living in St. John`s Wood. I suppose she took it for granted that you were fixed in an ecclesiastical career. That was implicit in the transaction."
"I haven`t looked very much at that side of the matter yet," said the Bishop of Princhester.
"It shouldn`t be a decisive factor," said Bishop Likeman, "not decisive. But it will weigh. It should weigh...."
The old man opened out fresh aspects of the case. His argument was for delay, for deliberation. He went on to a wider set of considerations. A man who has held the position of a bishop for some years is, he held, no longer a free man in matters of opinion. He has become an official part of a great edifice which supports the faith of multitudes of simple and dependant believers. He has no right to indulge recklessly in intellectual and moral integrities. He may understand, but how is the flock to understand? He may get his own soul clear, but what will happen to them? He will just break away their supports, astonish them, puzzle them, distress them, deprive them of confidence, convince them of nothing.
"Intellectual egotism may be as grave a sin," said Bishop Likeman, "as physical selfishness.
"Assuming even that you are absolutely right," said Bishop Likeman, "aren`t you still rather in the position of a man who insists upon Swedish exercises and a strengthening dietary on a raft?"
"I think you have made out a case for delay," said his hearer.
"Three months."
The Bishop of Princhester conceded three months.
"Including every sort of service. Because, after all, even supposing it is damnable to repeat prayers and creeds you do not believe in, and administer sacraments you think superstition, nobody can be damned but yourself. On the other hand if you express doubts that are not yet perfectly digested--you experiment with the souls of others...."
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