"It is very hard to be a good Christian." Did Athanasius make it easier?
Did the Inquisition which condemned Galileo make it easier still?
Dr. Gore thinks that the supreme mistake of Christianity was placing
itself under the protection and patronage of national governments. It
should never have become nationalised. Its greatest and most necessitous
demand was to stand apart from anything in the nature of racialism.
He mourns over an incoherent humanity; he seeks for unifying principles.
The religion of an Incarnation must have a message for the world, a
message for the whole world, for all mankind. Surely, surely. But
unifying principles are not popular in the churches. It is the laity
which objects to a coherent Gospel.
He sighs for a spiritualised Labour Party. He shrinks from the thought
of a revolution, but does not believe that the present industrial system
can be Christianised. There must be a fundamental change. Christianity
is intensely personal, but its individualism is of the spirit, the
individualism of unselfishness. He laughs grimly, in a low and rumbling
fashion, on hearing that Communism is losing its influence in the north
of England. "I can quite imagine that; the last thing an Englishman will
part with is his property."
Laughter, if it can be called laughter, is rare on his lips, and is
reserved in general for opinions which are in antagonism to his own.
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