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QUE PULPIT, THE SYMMETRY OF THE CHRISTIAN OHlIRdH. By the Right Rev. Bishop Frodsham, Canon Residentiary of Gloucester. "Preached at Christ Church, Harrogate, on All .Sainis' Paji.. U To the end that ye, being rooted and 'grounded in love, may be strong to appre- lierid with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and that ye may be: filled unto all the fullness of God."— EPHESIANS iii. 17-19. THE vital meaning of this passage is i obvious-. As the sun shines alike over the mountains and monotonous plains of human life, so the love of God floods with greater splendour the cottages of peasants and the palaces of kings. Im- mensity and perfection are the only adequate conceptions of God's love. Yet these conceptions are not the sole pos- session of those who leave the common path of men to dwell on the solitary heights of contemplation. Although the love of Christ passeth know- ledge," it is the common blessedness of all the saints." Shall we be wrong, therefore, if we endeavour (on this fes- tival of All Saints) to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length find height and depth" of the ap- plied love of Christ, that we, too, may be filled unto all the fullness of God'" ? I have no heart to-day to seek to en- tangle you in the meshes of mystical in- terpretation, nor to wander along the attractive paths by which centuries of commentators have already trod. Let me simply remind you that the writer of the Book of Revelation, also striving to express the relationship existing between Christ and His Church, saw, in the sym- bol of length, breadth and height, a type of the perfected city of God. I suggest, therefor.e, that it will be both practical and edifying for us to think to-day of the love of Christ as extended to His Church and as displayed in its sym- metrical character. If we believe that our, individual profession is to follow Christ, that we may be made like unto Him, why should we hesitate to hope for the Church, as Milton hoped for the State, that it should become one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature of an honest man ? Comradeship. Strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth." Regarded as a moral symbol, breadth here may be taken to mean an outstretch laterally in human sympathy and co-operation. These were the first and foremost ap- parent results of the Christian faith. iWidemindedness and unity differen- tiated the early Christians so much both from Jews and pagans that they were known as a new race." To become a Christian was to incur imminent danger, but it gave a sense of comradeship un- known before. It is sad in these latter days that Christians have become more notable for the lack of widemindedness and unity than for their presence. A speaker at the Leicester Church Con- gress said: "There is often more com- radeship in a group of the Labour Party than in a Christian congregation." Yet the Church should aim at a comradeship far wider than the Labour Party at its best. The Church cannot be contented by a comradeship limited by any concep- tion which divides class from class any more than it can consent to separate jnation from nation, or race from race. So far as the love of Christ is concerned,' there is neither Englishman nor Ger- man democrat nor aristocrat; Unionist, Liberal, nor Labour Party; employer nor employed; for all are one, in Christ. It is strange that the war should have awakened among us in this country the spirit of wideminded sympathy. Amid pain and horror and death comradeship was born afresh. Outside the bounds of kinship, overlapping barriers of class and rank, innumerable friendships sprang into being which now provide the sweetest, if the saddest, memories in life. The war did what politics, industrialism, education, and even religion had failed to do. It made us stand revealed be- fore the world as a united people. Now the tear is done. Old national rivalries and class divisions are reappearing. The spirit of comradeship and unity is in danger of falling as-leep again; but it is there, and it is the duty of the Church not only to keep it awake but to place it on a Christian basis. "No Help from the Church." Let us make no mistake about it: people to-day are not looking to the Church for much help. A recent speaker before the Cambridge Union Society said in effect that organised Christianity was becoming more ineffective each day. How far this is true I cannot say, but unless the Churches practise what they preach, unless they have done with jealousies and snobbishness, unless they sink their religious animosities—ani- mosities which are no less bitter because they are cloaked in the phraseology of toleration and unity — unless the Churches can show that they are trying I 3:, .ii' to love one another, they will never fire afresh the sense of comradeship and i n, unity which, shone brighter than the stars of heaven when men walked to- gether in the valley of the shadow of I death. Sympathy without some far-reaching purpose is soft and flabby. We must therefore endeavour with all the saints to apprehend what is the" length of the loving purposes of Christ. Respice fin cm We must consider the end. Whatever limitations there might have been in the eschatology of 'the early Christians, they believed intensely in the perfected kingdom in which dwelleth righteousness. With glowing eyes the saints of each successive century looked forward to the formation of the city of God. To some the walls of this were laid entirely in the world to come, and there seemed no hope in this world. To other eyes the amelioration of the present world was almost everything. This may be so to-day. It is the old tale of the- swaying tide, the ebbing and flowing of the ocean of humanity, or of the swing- ing pendulum of all human affairs. Pagan Without Pagan Dignity. There is another aspect of the situa- tion. It is expressed by an acute ob- server, a man who served in France both as a private and an officer. He has stated his conviction that the attitude of his comrades towards all life, before the war at least, was" pflgan, without the dignity and beauty associated with paganism." "Men," he said, "took life as it came, life consisting of stretches of monotonous labour broken by intervals of relief and recreation." They concluded that all that could be hoped from life was a moderate degree of comfort and occasional excitement." They never interpreted life into spiritual forms. Why should they, when it seemed to them obvious that life was only an affair of dullness and in- justice." ? These conclusions of a soldier speaking of soldiers who are no more soldiers are like the word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword. Un- less we are infatuated by make-believes we must see for ourselves that the world to-day is sick to death, and that if the Church is to help in the work of healing we who call ourselves Christian must first of all believe, and then present to others, a gaspel of good will which con- tains within itself a vision of hope. Our own spiritual well-being depends upon this very thing. Next to a' refusal to face facts, the real danger of all the Churches is depression. And just as surely in the Holy War as in the trenches, the great leader that inspires his men with confidence and heroism is the man who is filled with hope. Confidence in the Church. Let me make it clear that I am not giving a counsel of despair. The men of our own generation have shown their readiness to cast their lives aside like a flickering match for the sake of the vision of a better England. Are they likely to do less if they can be convinced, not of the necessity, but. of the certainty of building Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land ? You shake your heads and smile at the thought. Why should you ? Is it because you only believe theoretically in the Church's mission ? At a Brotherhood meeting in Gloucestershire a little time back a Trade Union official begged me to bring home to Churohpeople the importance of having confidence in the Church. He said: You can take it from ine Bishop, that our chaps have nothing but contempt for Churchfolk who think they are going to commend the Church by bleating about wha;t the Church has not done or is not doing. Tell us what the Church has done. Show us what the Church can do. Make us see you believe in what you tell us. Then you will make us want to join you, but not other- wise. I am convinced this advice is as true as it was sincere. But the Church needs not only oom- radeship and hope. It must have faith. Sympathy without purposeful deter- mination is soft and flahby. Length without breadth is hard and narrow. Another dimension is required. It is the I uplift towards God from the very depths of our inmost being. An apprehension of the love of Christ is not contempla- tion alone, nor is it sympathy alone, nor is it purpose alone. It is correlated unity. This.is, to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth." The Army and Religion. Let me illustrate the need for this third dimension in the Church from a recent event. One night in a Y. M. C. A. hut behind the lines in France there was a discussion on "God and the War. I I Two Canadians said they had lost all their faith up the line." The men listened silently. 3Fhen a Tommy got up and said, All the faith, I have came to me 'up thfi line.' There was a genexal reuad of applause. And the dis- i..j- .1: cnssipn waxed so Jeell that the time passed unawares. At last the hut leader came and told the men that he would have to close the refreshment counter,, -but if they cared-to give tip their supper and stay they might do so. Hardly a man moved, and they kept it up till the final time limit. This incident is told in that remark able inquiry into the reli- gious life of the nation called "The Army and Religion," but I have had many similar .experiences of the keen- ness of the nation under arms about the two ultimate facts of life—God and self. Can't you see, then, how this war has changed the circumstances of the nation from what it was before ? The men may be in civilian clothes, but they have had experiences denied to those who have re- mained at home. They have seen their comrades dissolved by high explosives. They have lived in the shambles of the salient or amidst the unutterable stench of the sodden Somme trenches. What are you going to say, simply as human equations, to men with such experiences of the reality of human brotherhood or the ultimate reign of righteousness ? Doctrinal Teaching. Late one Saturday night during the war a dirty scrap of paper was thrust into my hands in the dark. Upon it had been scrawled with a blunt pencil the words: Bishop, tell us straight, if there's a God why He doesn't stop this war? What is the Church going to do, what are you going to do under cir- cumstances like these ? Are we to ignore Christian doctrine as we have done in the past, or to emasculate from it every- thing about which Christians and Christian Churches differ? Are we who are dying men to speak to dying men about everything in the wide world but those things which make the world morally comprehensible? Or, on the other hand, are we, who pride ourselves on being true to the Catholic faith in its entirety, to be content with mutter- ing little offices in Church, or with administering the blessed sacraments to ever dwindling congregations ? Are we not deluding ourselves by thinking be- cause Christ commissioned only twelve He never went also to the great multi- tudes ? Or are we in our hearts a little afraid of the men who look stonily for- ward when they pass uss in the street, but who on occasions have shown themselves ready to miss their supper to talk about the first article of the Creed? As an old Australian padre I am under no mis- apprehension as to the fact that there is much vice and selfishness and materialism among men, but I have had proof also that there are mul- titudes just wearying for help and for direction in the way that is so hard to tread. But this help and.direc- tion must be given them in simple terms such as men can take home. Statements of doctrines for which no reasons are assigned are no good. > Perfunctory speeches by men and women who have never felt the cutting edge of the greatest problem in the world are of no avail. And who is sufficient for these things ? Eleven years ago England was deeply stirred by the Pan-Anglican Congress. I remember the wonder expressed by one of the leading London newspapers at an eagerness to claim for Christ all spheres of useful work." Even more i remarkable was the tone of charity, and that was upheld by a foundation of faith. Length and breadth and height of the vision of the Church were alike I remarkable. The Congress was followed by the Lambeth Conference. "There was no faintness of heart in facing great problems," wrote the Bishops in their encyclical letter, and no narrow-j ness in dealing with them. The genuine wish to work together swept away all thought of partisanship and brought in- stead the reality of mutual understand- ing. Minds and hearts were lifted up on high, and as from the Mount of God men saw visions of service." It is for a pouring out of this couragkms Spirit that we pray to-day. Consecration. The Church is a living city to be built with living Stones upon the living Christ. The greatest social truth ever uttered was that spoken by Christ: For their sakes I consecrate Myself." It was this power of personal consecra- tion of one single life which gave the world the gift of the Church. And, even now, the ultimate abiding force of the Church of Christ is the force of single wills united in His purpose, stimulated by His Spirit, surrendered to His will. I Strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length a.nd depth and height, and to know the love of Christ -which passeth know- ledge. Here is something to stir your hearts and spur your -courage. Here. is the scarlet and the trumpet call. You who hear the call do not dare to live without some clear intention towards all life. Do not be so much absorbed in your own purposes, in your own life, that you fail to listen to the vast pathetic music made up of the mingled joys and sorrows of your fellow men. Ambition grows mean without comrade- ship, sympathy alone is a feeble sort of thing, and both are frail unless they are strengthened by a purposeful belief in the far-reaching loving plans of God.