STEPHEN REMARX.* Mn. ADDERLEY has raised some difficult questions in
the story of Stephen Remarx, but we cannot say he has thrown any new light upon them. Ever since the Sermon on the Mount, thoughtful minds have striven to harmonise its precepts with the hard and unbending facts which make the problems of social life, and generation after generation passes away with these questions still unanswered. The truth is, we are still too materialistic to be able truly to balance the conflicting claims of body and soul. Each fresh effort to ameliorate the circumstances which press so heavily on the mass of men seems often to be rendered impotent and vain by that unseen but ever-present spark of spiritual life within us all. We can give men bread, but we cannot make them happy. We can bring material comfort, but the deeper vision and enlarged sympathy which alone raise man towards God are more often hidden and confused by the increase of the very things which should and do bring means to develop and enlarge them.
Stephen Remarx is a young clergyman of position and wealth, who has an entirely consistent desire to fulfil the whole law of love. To heighten the effect (for we cannot think Mr. Adderley believes the description be gives of the richer classes to be a really just and adequate one of society as a whole), Stephen is placed among a set of worthless society people, whose speech and action may possibly represent certain " fast " sets in London, but are happily removed from the ordinary speech and action of the average men and women of that well-hated and often misrepresented class called even "leisured." He becomes a curate in an East-End parish, and is brought face-to-face with Socialism, much fostered and in- creased by the Church being in the hands of a rector who in these days is really something of a caricature. Stephen has an unusual gift for preaching, allied to most earnest convictions, and he becomes by degrees the leading spirit of the place, as much at home in the clubs and resorts of the people as he is in his own home,—which is just what he should be. From this really good and useful work he is removed to a wealthy West-End church, where again he draws multitudes by his gift of preaching. Naturally enough, however, he does not find this sufficient to fill his soul. He had, as it were, kept all these commandments of God from his youth up, and so was ready for the higher call, "Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." This, too, is just what we may expect. First, the simple duties of his walk in life ; then the counsel of greater perfec- tion, the call to poverty and sacrifice of will. There is surely * Stephen Remarx the Story of a Venture in Ethics. By James Adderloy. London : Edward Arnole. nothing new in this. It is the same call which in one generation produced monasteries, or in another, devoted life, like that of Stephen Remarx, without wife or children. It is the same call coming again, after the long centuries of the Renaissance and its world-spirit. As the monasteries arose out of the darkness of the early centuries, in answer to this call, so the same reply is given by devoted followers of Christ in these later days. Blessed are those who are called, and who respond; but all are not bidden; and of those who are, all do not arise and go.
Stephen Remarx, however, does obey the call. He and a band of six devoted followers live the monastic life—for, indeed, it is no other, in spite of its new name of " Christian Socialism "—in a West-End house which is left to Stephen by a worldly old uncle at his death. Some of the little band are very wealthy, and some are poor; but all share in common as the monks of old did, and as various Orders in the Roman Church do now. From this centre good works of all kinds go forth, just as they do from brotherhoods and sisterhoods now. So far all is most excellent and useful ; only it is not new. There are very good and earnest people among the leaders of the socialist movements who would shudder at the idea that the highest outcome of it all is monastic. What !' they say, we who have rejected the Church and its teach- ing, are we to live the lives of monks and nuns P' But certainly in Stephen Remarx, the highest ideal set out by Mr. Adderley is this, and nothing more. As Christians, we can say it is the highest, for those called to it; but it certainly is not the view the modern socialist would accept. He would hardly consent to its being permissible. He is a, utilitarian before anything; and that a band of men should set themselves up to say that earthly gains and earthly joys are not the highest ideal, is to land us again in fixed theories of right and wrong opposed to utilitarian principles. Possibly, as undertaking the less pleasing but perhaps necessary care of the sick in mind or body, he would allow such communities to exist; but if France is to be any index to the spirit of Socialism, jealousy of a so- called " higher life" is certain to exist,—not in the Lord .A.rthurs of Stephen Remarx, but in the rank-and-file of the socialistic movement. To be distinguished for anything will be a danger; to be distinguished for a higher ideal than the average, will mean what it meant in the days of Christ. But persecution will not come, as Mr. Adderley thinks, from the rich and great. They may hate you ; but in riches and pleasure they lose power to do you much injury. It was the people who finally gave our Lord to crucifixion. They were led on, no doubt, by political leaders; still, it was not the political leaders who finally pronounced judgment. Pilate would have let Jesus go ; but envy of his goodness procured his death through the cry of the populace.
In Stephen Remarx, we regret greatly that Mr. Adderley has allowed himself to be drawn away from justice towards the richer classes. Surely a man of his standing and experience must know that poverty or wealth in themselves are equal in the sight of God. "Meat commendeth us not to God ; " and our Lord went willingly to rich men's feasts, and deigned to be buried in a rich man's grave. The fact, too, that comfortable respectability is perhaps the least elevating and most deadening of the environments in which a man can find himself, is not taken into account. If all the world could have, say, £300 a year, then the Kingdom of God would have come upon earth. Perhaps by that time it would ; but it would not be because every man had £300 a year. In our experience, this dead-level of material comfort does not tend to call forth man's noblest qualities nor higher aspirations. Are the small shop-keeping class so much in advance of the labourer in faith and charity P Do we find unselfish- ness and fortitude especially represented among them P Are they distinguished for justice and consideration to- wards others,—for sympathy and open-handedness P They possibly are no worse than their neighbours of both greater and less degree ; but we cannot see that they are much the better for their higher range of income. The New Testament nowhere puts the having, or not having, money as in itself bringing either happiness or holiness. The Saints have not, as a rule, arisen from amongst men with small assured in- comes. The larger efforts and wider visions which have made epochs in the spiritual history of the world, have but seldom sprung from men of small assured surroundings. No; the Kingdom of Righteousness is deeper and more spiritual than any possessions or absence of possessions can produce. While
we make every effort to become more just and unselfish our- selves, and to help to make others so, do not let us blind ourselves or others to the fact that in the spiritual kingdom of Christ material things do not count. "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound ; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need," so says that most detached of apostles, that single-minded servant of God, St. Paul. This is the spirit to be aimed at ; and this spirit of detachment is just the one which cannot grow if material things are to be counted great either for good or for evil.
In the end, Stephen Remarx dies something of a martyr's death. He gives his last coat to a poor old man, and dies of cold from want of vitality following upon his self-sacrificing life. A noble death indeed, but, thank God, one that is not very uncommon, even among those who would wonder, with holy humility, that any name but duty could be applied to their self-sacrifice. The world, we earnestly hope and believe, is not so bad as Mr. Adderley depicts it. Selfishness abounds in all classes, both rich and poor, but self-devotion and earnest en- deavour, and sympathetic love for others not of our own im. mediate household, exist also. That some are called to a closer, deeper, more entirely self-sacrificing walk with God, we have no doubt; and we are grateful to all who, like Mr. Adderley, direct the attention of the English Church to these higher calls, be they like that of Mary over Martha, or that of the rich young man over his less perfect self. Since the Reformation, we have, through a perhaps natural reaction, greatly overlooked them ; and no nation, no Church, can be safe without a due recogni- tion of grades of calling, even in the spiritual life itself.
Of the many side-issues raised by Mr. Adderley, we have said nothing, preferring to take him rather in the spirit than in the letter, and realising with him that if the Spirit of Christ is in us, it will show each one of us the path in which we are to walk.
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