For she speaks as one
having the authority of a deep personal experience, making no dogmatic
claims, expressing sympathy with all those who fail, but assuring her
hearers that when the moment comes for their illumination it will come,
and that it will be a veritable dayspring from on high. Earnestness is
hers of the highest and tenderest order, but also the convincing
authority of one who has found the peace which passes understanding.
She has spoken to me with sympathy of Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, whose
trench-like methods in the pulpit are thoroughly distasteful to a great
number of people. It is characteristic of Miss Royden that she should
fasten on the real cause of this violence. "I don't like jargon," she
said, "particularly the jargon of Christian Science and Theosophy. I
love English literature too much for that; and I don't like slang,
particularly slang of a brutal order; but I feel a deep sympathy with
anybody who is trying, as Mr. Studdert-Kennedy is trying, to put life
and power into institutionalism. It wants it so badly--oh, so very
badly--life, life, life and power."
Of one whose scholarship greatly impresses her, and for whose spiritual
life she has true respect, but whose theology fills her soul with dark
shadows and cold shudders, she exclaimed, as though it were her own
fault for not understanding him, "It is as if God were dead!"
Always she wants Christianity as life and power.
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