Baron Friedrich von Hugel
IN the two years which have almost elapsed since , Baron von Hiigel's death--and even whilst we are still waiting for the publication of his great work on the Reality of God —it has become possible to estimate at least the outstanding qualities of the gift that he made to us, and the extent in which the best theological thinking of our day draws its strength from his teaching. The publication of this group of essays, ranging in date from 1004 to 1922, and offering, on the whole, an easier approach to his doctrine than that provided by his earlier books, should help this process ; and bring an increased understanding of the depth, the span, the steadiness of a mind which so wonderfully combined the special insights of critic, philosopher and saint. In these papers, ranging in subject from religious history and philosophy to the most secret places of the devotional life, we see the Baron as both " thinking mind and " praying soul "—that rare and solid combination of fearless intellect and profoundly religious spirit, of which the perfect historical type is seen in his deeply-loved St. Thoinas Aquinas. He, at least, was never tempted . to the unhappy divorce between head and heart, which so many moderns will canonize as though ultimate and indeed attractive," but exhibits in his greatest work that mingling of the profoundly metaphysical with the tenderly human, which is, of course,
the very essence of the Christian scheme. • - It is not by chance that von Hugel has given us again and again helps to the better understanding of St. _Thomas ; for it has been one of his greateSt and least understood achievements to bring back into the theological foreground the noble " two step " philosophy of the Summa, with its steady insistence on the reality and distinctness of the natural and supernatural worlds. This sense of twofoldness, a duality running right through all man's experiences and apprehensions, is probably destined to stand out more and
more as his chief contribution to the thought of his time. It meant a world scheme which provided a place for those
great facts of the interaction of sense and spirit involved in sacramentalism, and indeed in the very existence of a visible Church. It meant a view of Christianity as never
reducible to mere ideas,- however lovely, but requiring a real. " penetration of spirit into sense, of the spaceless into space, of the eternal into time, of God into man." It meant, as a frame for the continuance of this incarnating process,
the absolute need of institutions—an external as well as an internal Church-- if spiritual truths were to be conserved and do. their full work among men. The first three essays in the new volume are substantially expositions from different angles of that principle ; which, with all its clearly seen difficulties and tensions, he never ceased to press upon the modern world. Thus, though the author disliked both the method and name of apologetic, and once even protested that the title of Catholic apologist'' made him feel like a dog who had been given first prize among the cats, it remains true that the Christian apologetic of the future will owe much to his solid and ceaseless insistence on the combined Metaphysical and :historical requirements of faith.
If on the historical side his chief warnings were uttered
against that shallow antithesis between the " religion of authority " and " religion of spirit " which has .captured so many hurried minds, on the philosophic side he thought that religion had in our day no more deadly or subtler enemy than Monism. This, followed to its logical conclusion, can—and, indeed, does—only land us in some variety of pantheism ; an interpretation of Reality which can never satisfy the hunger of the soul. For religion, and indeed, all that is deepest in our strange human experience, requires a God who is :- " Perfect Love, Unmixed Joy, Entire Delectation. He is all this, not as a bundle of separate qualities, however consummate each quality may be, but as a living, spiritual, Personalist Reality, Who Himself is all this overflowingly. I believe this to be a true account of the fundamental religiousexperience and apprehension.... All this Goodness and Joy God does not become, does not acquire: He simply is it. We will be watchful against the blurring over of the contrast between ourself, as experienced by us, and other, contingent things, always experienced by us at the time : those things and we are not identical, never were and never will be. How much more, then, will we be on our guard against any real blurring of the contrast between God and ourselves. His Otherness is as essential a part of the facts and of the power of religion as his Likeness can ever be."
Thus he steadily presented religion, nqt as the acceptance of a creed, not as a moral compulsion, not as -a consolation— though, indeed, it involved all these things—but as an expression and satisfaction, on levels both visible and invisible, both natural and supernatural, of the soul's thirst for Reality, for Ultimates : its seeking and finding of that Cod who " secretly initiates what He openly crowns " :-
" Religion presupposes, and reveals, man as inevitably moved by, and in travail with, this sense of, and thirst after, truth, th, truth, reality, the Reality. Man cannot renounce this sense and thirst as an illusion ; the very dignity and passion that accompany or foster, at any time, his declaration of such illusion, ever imply such ontology—that there somehow exists a more than merely human truth and reality, and that man somehow really experiences it."
And this conception of faith as, above all, an intuition of the Perfect, rules out not only the New Realists' notion of a self-evolving Deity still in the making, but also that modern resurrection of the ancient Patripassian heresy, which seeks to dodge the mystery of suffering by ascribing to God a share in the world's pain. The most substantial and impressive single essay in the present volume deals with this doctrine ; which at present enjoys episcopal patronage, but is, at bottom, a cheaply sentimental solution of the central mystery of life. In its current form it frequently- claims the support of the late James Hinton ; a writer who is here subjected to a scrupulously fair but most damaging criticism. The essay ends with a passage of singular and touching beauty : describing its author's personal experience of that pure Joy of God " too much our Friend for us not to rejoice that He does not suffer," which transcends all sin and anguish, and is the very sustenance of man :— " For indeed dreary and petty, oppressive and imprisoning. our poor little life, on its surface and apart from God and from Iiis merciful condescensions towards us. But we would not know our misery, we would not feel it as such; were there not Saints and Heroes around us, and Christ our Lord above us, and, encompassing all and penetrating all, God—not a Sufferer, but indeed the Sympathiser, God Joy, the Ocean of Joy, our Home." .
EVELYN UNDERHILL.
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