A Russian Newman

A TYPICAL Slav mystic and one of the most potent religious forces which presentday Russia has produced was Vladimir Soloviev, whose recent death at the early age of forty-seven cut short a spiritual pilgrimage that seemed to be at some distance yet from its final stage. He died an enthusiastic convert of the Roman Church, and his Catholic biographers have compared him to Cardinal Newman. The comparison is scarcely happy. To mention only one radical point of difference, Newman was a constitutional sceptic and miles removed from mysticism. Soloviev was, above all things, a believer and a mystic. Faith was his vital atmosphere and mysticism his spiritual language. Incapable of strict logic, no greater contrast could, in fact, be imagined than that between him and the author of A Grammar of Assent. A true patriot, Soloviev was no blind Slavophile, and used all his influence against "the blind nationalism of Muscovy" that would cut off Russia from the West. As he labored unceasingly for the union of the Roman and Eastern churches, so his ideal for his country was that she might have a place in the great unity of nations. His philosophical writings, to which some of his countrymen have assigned an exaggerated value, reveal a rich, vigorous, somewhat chaotic mind incapable of cool and disinterested enquiry, which could not distinguish between religion and metaphysics. It is as a mystic prophet that he will live a characteristically Slav mystic prophet, in whom asceticism coexisted with a certain naïve materialism, and contemplative rapture went with a passion for propaganda. If we really wish to understand the religious aspirations of Russia in its best moments, we can not afford to ignore a writer like Soloviev.

Reform in the Greek Church With the appointment of Bishop Meletios Metaxakis as the new Metropolitan of Athens in succession to the reactionary Theoclitos, a breath of the reforming spirit seems likely to sweep over the stagnant Greek Church. According to two journals, the Nea Ellas and the Proodos, he is some

thing of a firebrand; insists upon the marriage of all clergy, including bishops, and wishes to suppress the monastic orders. His inaugural sermon, however, does not altogether bear this out. It is the utterance of a moderate and slow-going reformer, and it shows no hostility to monasticism as such. The new Metropolitan stands above all for the autonomy of the Greek Church. He aims at the restoration of the old synodical system-the system which anticipated the representative constitution upon which the peoples of civilized Europe pride themselves. The present administrative system imposed on the church from without, according to which not all the bishops together meeting in synod, but only a certain number selected in rotation or otherwise, carry on the administration of the church, must go. This system was akin to that which had been forced upon the Russian sister church for purely absolutist ends, and meant stagnation and death. As for the clergy, he longs to see the day when no one will be able to reproach them with lack of education. A thoroughly educated clergy is a sine qua non, and to this end the monasteries must be recalled to their first object. They must once again become schools of prayer and theological seminaries, and no longer be degraded to "academies of craftsmanship." He calls upon the nation not to forget that 66 we are a people of grace, and so far as we now live, we live by the faith of the Son of God." The Greek people were the first to embrace the preaching of the cross and the resurrection; they can not live the true national life without the fire of religion. To the Synod of Athens is assigned the care of the scattered orthodox communities abroad, and foremost among them are those in the United States; one of its first acts will be to send to the Greeks in America a bishop "capable of contributing to the higher appreciation of the Orthodox Church."

A Religion Without Suffering A pathetic interest attaches to the late Professor James Hope Moulton's studies in Zoroastrianism, as representing the last piece of research he was engaged in before the

dastardly action of the enemy cut short his life. It was largely on account of his Iranian scholarship that Dr. Moulton had been invited to go to India, where he lectured on Zoroastrianism to Parsi students. For over twenty-five years Dr. Moulton had been more or less closely engaged in the study of Zoroaster-Zarathushtra, to give him his correct name-and of all oriental religions Zoroastrianism made the most powerful appeal to him. None the less he laid a remorseless finger upon its central weakness. Zoroastrianism has failed-how completely it has failed may be judged from the fact that Buddha may claim to-day, in lands where Zoroastrianism was planted, thousands of followers for every one that adheres to Zarathushtra. The reason is not far to seek. Dr. Moulton shows how in Zoroastrianism there is no room for suffering, and, therefore, no room for love, loyalty, sainthood. It has remained stationary, it has no dynamic, and produces no great personalities, for it lacks the great creative emotion of love to God. Zarathushtra's God is much that is lofty and wise, but it can not be said of him that he is love. Dr. Moulton emphasizes a "text" upon which war has written a solemn and glorious commentary. Four years ago we still imagined that men craved ease, pleasure, peace at any costthat only an easy, genial religion could attract them. Now we know that there is a deep chord in the heart of man that vibrates to the call of suffering; that men run to embrace it, provided the call is authoritative. Only a religion of love and loyalty of love that rejoices in suffering the loyalty that scorns death-can make saints and command the homage of men of honor and good will.

The Hindu Conception of Sin In the International Review of Missions Rev. John McKenzie, professor of English literature at Wilson College, Bombay, writes lucidly upon the vexed question of the Hindu doctrine of sin. The subject is not merely of intense missionary interest; it also flings a sidelight upon the present craze for eastern mysticism or rather occultism, among nominal Christians of a certain type. As far as language goes, many passages from the Hindu writings might have been written by Christians, and can be appropriated by Christians; but once we go beneath the

terms to the connotation in which they are used and the system which they represent, what seemed identical is seen to be separated by an impassable gulf. The present-day religious dilettante who dabbles in Eastern mysticism enthusiastically quotes the say. ings of Hindu sages on purgation, union with God and so forth, sublimely unconscious of the essentially unethical conception of purity and communion with God that form their background. As illustrating the influence of the Hindu conception of sin upon the process of conversion, Mr. McKenzie cites the experience of Devendranath Tagore. On the night after his grandmother's death, while he was seated at the burningghat on a coarse mat and was listening to the funeral chant, his soul awoke to the light of God.

"A strong sense of the unreality of all things suddenly entered my mind. I was as if no longer the same man. A strong aversion to wealth rose within me. The coarse bamboo mat on which I sat seemed to be my fitting seat; carpets and costly hanging spreadings seemed hateful; and in my mind was awakened a joy unfelt before. What was religion? What was God knew nothing, had learnt nothing. My mind could scarcely contain the unworldly joy, so simple and natural, which I experienced at the burning-ghat."

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Here we have the Hindu religious mind at its best. In its contempt for wealth, place, and power it sets an example to a world that has been far too slow to accept Christ's transvaluation of values; its ethical weakness stands revealed in the absence of any sense of sin.

The Evangelization of England Last year's "Mission of Repentance and Hope," which represented the Church of England's profound sense of the momentous spiritual issues of these days, went to show that the evangelization of England had to begin with a mission to those already within the Church. As such a mission it was a complete success. That is why to-day Anglicanism is justified in making a further appeal to those outside. In the archbishop of Canterbury's "Report on the Evangelistic Work of the Church" there are three clear-cut proposals: First, that the Church be definitely summoned to the evangelization of the English people; second, that local evange

listic councils be formed; third, that the Church's work and thought during the campaign year be concentrated upon evangelism, irrelevant organizations being abandoned for the time being. These suggestions are interesting to all thoughtful Christians, for they embody a radical fallacy which has vitiated evangelistic effort, denominational and interdenominational, in time past. They assume that evangelism is only a department of the Church's work which a time such as this renders specially important, instead of one of its fundamental functions-that which gives its worship, sacraments, and social activities their only rightful basis. To make evangelism an occasional thing-something that is "good for the present distress"

and to relegate it to special committees and councils is to court failure from the beginning. Wherever it has been narrowed down to mean a dramatic attack upon an abnormal situation it has failed, and in the end has done more to alienate the best minds from Christianity than any amount of "neglect." If the war has done anything for us as Christians, it has been to lay bare the foundations of our individual and corporate life in God. Evangelism belongs to the foundations of the spiritual house; it is not a storm-screen or a lightning-conductor.

Training of the Clergy

Nowhere does the problem of ministerial training loom so largely to-day as within the Church of England. The "Life and Liberty" movement, and even more the representations of chaplains who have proved the inadequacy of their training when faced with the needs of our fighting men, have given all serious Churchmen furiously to think. Mr. Harold Anson, one of the least conventional of critics, ventilates the subject in The Challenge, in terms which do not err on the side of timidity. He sees three main causes of complaint. First, the lack of intellectual equipment. A glance at the bookshelves of many clergymen shows that they ceased reading at some date in Queen Victoria's reign. They bought Lightfoot's commentaries years ago, and since then they

have lived on "preacher's aids" and collections of anecdotes. His second point is that the clergy are easily shocked-probably on account of their intellectual narrownessand that, therefore, men talk to them as they do to their maiden aunts. There is no attempt to discuss serious subjects with them, as they would with lay friends, and such burning questions as, e.g., the relations of the sexes, are studiously avoided. Again, the clergy still affect a specially dogmatic and professional manner. They speak er cathedra and expect the walls of Jericho to fall flat when they perambulate them. They carefully avoid meeting on equal grounds men and women who doubt their claims, and are as carefully avoided by such. The result is a melancholy clerical caste, effectually barred out from the common life of mankind. Mr. Anson suggests as a remedy first and foremost a thorough modern theological training, supplemented by practical work. He commends the American custom of spending the long vacation in some form of strenuous lay-work, such as helping in the harvest, acting as stewards on ships or waiters in tourist resorts, etc. In this way future clergymen would rub shoulders with all sorts and conditions of men and have their theories and characters tested by the remorseless standards of business life. He pleads for a longer diaconate. Post-graduates should remain deacons for at least two years, study hard, hear the best preachers, engage in religious work of a manlier type than addressing mothers' meetings, and gain experience in the conduct of affairs, municipal as well as ecclesiastical, preaching not too often and getting their sermons criticized by wise judges. In this way, he thinks, the Church of England would be saved from a body of clergy who are sheep rather than shepherds and go bleating through the world, objects of pity to the faithful and of cruel contempt to the public at large. It is surely one of the signs of the times that so conservative and complacent a body as the Church of England should be troubled by a tide of wholesome self-criticism of which articles like Mr. Anson's are the merest surface-ripples.