BODY AND SOUL

PART I-GENERAL

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

THERE are signs of revival in Christendom. This revival has about it an air of spontaneity that is very remarkable. It has not sprung from the clergy, nor has it originated in the Universities. Rather it would seem as if the average man, who as often as not has not belonged to any religious body, is finding his way by himself because of some voice within him. There is an Epiphany preparing; and from all quarters of the world the quiet tramp of many feet is heard: the tramp of men and women, walking through the darkness with some decision towards a centre where heaven and earth, they think, are met together.

They have no quarrel with orthodox Christianity; for the era of negations and protestations has passed away. But neither have they any allegiance. Inde, they are a little impatient about dogma. And this is not to be wondered at: dogma to them means

disputation about words, and the waving about of phrases. We cannot blame them for condemning it, if it has been presented thus to them as a superficies; and we are bound to admit that this superficial treatment of religious truth—this barren orthodoxy which is the most dangerous of heresies has been a characteristic of the age from which we are emerging. Perhaps it was the inevitable result of a custom that required every minister of religion to be a perennial fountain of eloquence, and every place of worship to provide from three to six discourses a week. Religion has been beaten rather thin.

That which is a solid has in fact been treated as a superficies and indeed much religious teaching has been further reduced to a line, which geometry tells us is length without breadth. Texts from the Bible and articles of the Creeds, religious phrases and theological terms, have been tossed about with little realisation of their vital meaning. And I think this is what the public has in mind when it shrugs the shoulders at dogma.

Besides, it may be doubted whether any religious movement ever began with theology. As the movement grows, the dogma forms as surely as the bones form in the unborn child. We cannot do without bones; and yet bones without flesh and blood, like dogmas, are useless, except for the fertilisation of the soil.

Thus, I think, it is that at the present time a movement is forming amongst us, a great movement which, when it arrives, will have changed many familiar coast-lines. It is profound, sincere,

and very wide-spread indeed, it stretches beyond the borders of Christendom. But it is essentially Christian, essentially orthodox; and it may thus prove to be a unifying as well as a converting movement.

No one can indeed say how this stirring in our midst may develop, or what it may eventually become. But at least two enthusiasms are real and religious amongst us at the present day: of the one the belief in man's brotherhood and the consequent duty of social service it is not here the place to speak. The other enthusiasm which is already moving men forward at the present time is a certain belief in the supremacy of the spirit which is not easy to define or describe in a few words, since it hardly as yet possesses a vocabulary that would be at once understood. The words Salvation and Peace ought exactly to express its basis, but their meaning has long been limited and changed. Professor James "the religion of healthy-mindedness" describes one aspect; but for common use we may, I think, justly include all the phases of this new enthusiasm in the title, Inner Health Movement. On its negative side this movement is a reaction against the materialism of the last generation, and against the ferocity of a once dominant theology which is no doubt a reason why it is strongest in America. It is also clearly a reaction against the high pressure and material aims of modern life. On its positive side this movement has its most striking and popular manifestation in faith-healing- every genuine instance of which bears witness to the forgotten reality of spiritual

forces thus for a large circle of persons (who had been brought up, like most of us, to connect certainty with matter and uncertainty with religion) spirit has taken the place of matter as the supreme and ultimate reality. Body and Soul have changed places. The practical results of this are very marked; a new conception of life is growing up, a new desire for prayer, a new type of character; and the world, which had been scared by the Christianity of the long face and the round head - a perversion as common in Catholic as in Protestant Christendomis much drawn to the idea of a religion that is cheerful and valiant, sweet-tempered, confident, unfretted.

Religion, we are seeing, comes with healing in its wings health for the soul and health for the body; it is harmony, balance, happiness, peace.

It is

And nothing of all this is the least new. as characteristic of the New Testament as that other enthusiasm, of brotherhood, which I have mentioned. It had only been forgotten. For us it is new. For God, and for the saints in heaven, it is eternal; but for us, after centuries of embittered and contentious religion, after fifty years of scientific naturalism, after a revolution of thought, it comes as fresh and as dazzling as those high Alpine flowers that fling out their colours at the melting of the snows.

So it is that the kingdom of Heaven is like a householder bringing forth from his treasure-house things new and old. To the first disciples it was said that there were many things yet to break forth from the Word, "but ye cannot bear them now."

There are some things which now we can bear, and others which future generations will come to understand when we have done our work and passed beyond. Upon us lies the responsibility neither to neglect things because they are old nor to reject them because they are new.

If we consider the general commands of Christ we shall see that they are both old because they were given long ago, and new because they are the message of the prophets who lead onward to-day. Also we shall see that no age has even tried to keep them all. The advanced reformers, for instance, all over Europe and America, and the Colonies (that is, all over Christendom) are but trying to realise the doctrine of brotherhood which our Lord taught so thoroughly; and this doctrine had been forgotten in Christendom- no one could say that "Love one another" was a guiding principle of the eighteenth century or the seventeenth - not to mention the sixteenth. Again, the call to personal religion, the need of individual conversion, were dominant motives of Protestantism; yet in their right insistence upon this, people forgot the corporate and the sacramental side, and those who heard Christ gladly when he said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," 1 gave little heed to the command, "This do in remembrance

1

Again, the Middle Age was a period in which the hold of Christianity upon Christendom was re

1 Matt. 417. It is curious, by the way, how very rare are such sayings as this among the words of our Lord, and how much stress is laid on what comes after repentance.

2 Luke 2219, etc.