The Christian Standard
Christian Ethics and Modern Problems. By W. R. Inge, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 15s.).
TIIE Dean of St. Paul's tells us that he has gathered in this important volume "probably the last considerable work that I shall have time to write," his considered view of the bearing of traditional Christian ethics on the social and personal prob- krns of our time. We are passing through an epoch in which all humanity's past findings, even the most sacred, are called in question. Can we say that the ethics of the New Testament have an absolute quality, which can still make them the touchstone of human conduct in the new age now being Lam? Is the moral teaching of Christ the revelation of an unchanging reality ? Christians, of course, can only give one answer to this question ; but it is no longer an answer that can be given easily and off-hand.
"The morality of the New Testament must stand its trial before the conscience of our generation, to be accepted or rejected on its merits as a guide for the men and wcmen of to-day."
The almost prophetic position which the Dean occupies in the English-speaking world, and his peculiar temper of mind— at once mystical and rational, philosophic and practical— especially fit hint for the conduct of such an enquiry as this. Even the slightly aristocratic disdain with which he views our rather vulgar and materialistic society" gives him that aloofness which the prophet requires. He entertains no illusions about the benevolent materialism which Often passes as " social Christianity" ; the Gospel, for him, is not a message of social reform. It means the difficult application of a scale of absolute values to the changeful conduct of daily life—an art in which success will always be rare, and never achieved without discipline and renunciation.
" It cannot be asserted too often or too strongly that there is no promise and no expectation that true Christians will ever be more than a small minority. . . We are distressed becauscour churches are half empty. Many of them would be much emptier if the Gospel was preached in them."
No one who has followed with attention the development of Dr. Inge's thought will be astonished by the two outstanding characteristics of this book ; the discriminating but definite approval extended to austerity of life, the hard judgment dealt out to institutional religion. In the long chapter on the relation of asceticism to Christian ethics, he makes plain his conviction that the moral requirements of Christianity are exceedingly searching and exacting." Though asceticism as such is a one-sided exaggeration, it merely over-stresses an essential of all deep religion. Some renunciation of the tem- poral must ever be the price paid for the eternal ; the ghostly athlete is called to keep in training to the last—" in the spiritual warfare there is no exemption for those over fifty." The ease with which the modern world discounts the austere demands of perfection, and especially the arguments now put
forward in extenuation of sexual license, obviously fill hint with disgust. Yet here we are brought up against one of the main difficulties which result from isolating the ethical Strand in Christianity from the other elements of that rich complex. For the observance of this moral code in its purity is prae- tically impossible to the ordinary man without the added energy, the concrete supernatural lift which is given by the redemptive and sacramental elements in Christianity and strongly marked in New Testament experience. The defin- ition of the Gospel as a "prophetic and ethical message for lay folk" cannot account for its immortal power. In one passage at least the Dean appears to recognize this ; quoting with approval Troeltsch's dictum, that Christianity Can never live on moral aphorisms or on a "galvanization" of Platonism in Christian dress. But he surely fails. to work out to its logical end Troeltsch's positive conception of the Christian complex, as a body or brotherhood indwelt by a living Spirit. For this must mean a visible and historical organism—in some sense, a "Church." It is here that Dean Inge's sturdy Pro- testantism comes out most strongly. He regards the whole history of the Western Church as a progressive aberration front the intentions of the Founder, finding "little to praise and much to censure in its bloodstained annals " ; and in some passages exhibits a dislike of institutionalism which almost equals that of George Fox.
"Catholics have been very slow to see the moral pointed by the action of that typical ecclesiastical statesman, Archbishop Caiaphas. We may be pretty sure that half the great bishops whose names are honoured in Church history . . . would have behaved as he did."
It is possible to agree with this, and yet to doubt whether that Church of the Spirit to which Dean Inge looks forward in his lofty and moving conclusion—though it might elude some of the cruder evils of institutional religion—could long main- tain its influence in our sense-conditioned world, or escape degeneration into a coterie of spiritual aristocrats. "Resting on ethical not on institutional unity," and mystical rather than dogmatic in its outlook, its task is to be the upholding of the Christian values—absolute charity, sincerity and unworld- liness—as against the largely unchristian ideals of an ever more secularized civilization. For this it must face with courage and independence the new problems that civilization brings forth ; whilst maintaining an unswerving loyalty to the ethical standards set once for all in the New Testament. For such a Church we are not to expect a spectacular triumph : "The prince of this world is no master of ours ; but the Church may be again what the Church was in the days of the persecutions, before the fatal alliance with the decaying empire—a city set on a hill, the salt of the earth."
We may think this a beautiful dream, but it is the dream of a prophet : and it is sometimes through the dreams of the prophets that the work of the Spirit is carried on.
EVELYN UNDERHILL.
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