There are many obstacles to be overcome; the cowardice of the early fathers after Nicaea; the pride and arrogance of Hildebrand in the 11th century; the madness of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years War (of a house divided against itself), which must have aggravated the aggressiveness of the German people; the complacency of the clergy in the face of the challenge of science after our Glorious Revolution of 1688. These obstacles are all focussed in the timidity of spirit within all Christians today. How on earth dare one have the necessary courage to begin, without its spilling over into extravagant absurdity? Only with the utmost self-discipline is there any hope of success.
Julius Caesar wrote, I regret I cannot remember where, that the greatest penalty in not punishing wrongdoers was the discouragement of the law-abiding, because they will say, “What is the point of continuing to be law-abiding if crime pays?” I felt our eyes met, over the chasm that separated us.
If it takes 300 hundred years to create a naval tradition, I suggest it takes 500 or 700 years to create a tradition in a civilian society that its members should be law-abiding. I reckon this tradition began in England when Edward I wisely acknowledged the privileges that Parliament had won from the Executive, and did not try to revoke them. This tradition may have reached its zenith in the inter-war years, but is now crumbling under the attack from all sides of the forces of self-interest. Surely someone should suggest that our native Christianity offers a solution, when no-one else seems able to suggest a way of halting the triumph of Mammon?
But those, who go to church for the comforts of myth and fantasy, violently oppose any suggestion that an Indwelling with Jesus, which the communion service is supposed to foster, actually means we should do something about the evils in society. This would prevent them leading their own private lives. It would allow God to break into their domestic convenience, and that is unthinkable. They include both laity and clergy; and they would oppose to their dying day the idea that the truth of Creation is midway between the archaic man’s world of spirits and modern man’s scientific world. Thank goodness we have left the world of superstition and magic behind! But Science on the other hand is speechless in the face of creation, incoherent in talking about chance and providence, deluded in its denial of evil, which one meets every day in the Law Courts. And the story of Jesus healing the woman who was bent double for 18 years, in the synagogue and on the Sabbath, makes more sense if one regards him as freeing her from an evil spirit, rather than curing in a moment all traces of arthritis that had progressively crippled her for so long. It is easier for us to believe that science is ignorant of the world of the spirit, than that it is hopelessly mistaken about the world it has studied in such minute detail. Science is valid, but only in limited conditions. I find it comparatively easy to think that Jesus was a master craftsman in the world of the spirit, but was ignorant of science and for example the mathematics of infinite series. It is harder for me to think that science has proved all his healings were legend, as Albert Schweitzer came to believe. It would be nice to think the Church held the balance between these conflicting worlds. But she has a long way to go, to win back the reputation of being the repository of truth.
Today, when the Internet provides nearly instant communication around the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to impose a system of belief and conduct on a whole society or nation. It may even be impossible. Whatever penalties governments try to impose on its citizens who listen to the subversive culture of others, it is now so easy to do so, that a government’s efforts are likely to fail. The converse surely is that in any society the spiritual relationship of the bulk of its citizens to the One, creates the spirit of the times, or the Zeitgeist, of the society. And to take the extreme case of a society most of whose members have no relationship with the One, their attitude of mind will tend to be entirely parochial, and there will be no future for that society at all.