The Henson Journals

[73]

Wednesday, March 3rd, 1920.

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Are not the really alienating differences practical rather than theoretical? Or, to state the same fact from another point of view, is not the alienating power of theoretical differences really derived from their effect in creating different habitudes?

Was not the difference in their treatment of the Lord's day far more alienating than the difference of Episcopalians and Presbyterians on the type of ecclesiastical polity?

Is not the use or non–use of a liturgy in public worship more deeply divisive than difference with respect to the ministry? For it creates a divergence of religious habit, & tends to fashion different religious temperaments.

The reason why theoretical differences gradually lose their divisive power in a tolerant and tolerating society is that a common habitude is created by the free intercourse of society, & this fosters a common temper. Therefore, it needs not to trouble about the unreconciled theories, whether doctrinal or political so long as they are not allowed to isolate the theorists from fellowship with one another. Conversely, a very complete agreement in religious theory may consist with the extremest measures of misunderstanding & uncharity.

Thus it is fairly arguable that undenominational societies are indirectly helpful to the cause of ecclesiastical reunion because they provide a platform on which members of many churches can come together, & thus tend to break down religious isolation, the grand condition of misunderstanding.. The Jesuits were from their own point of view not ill–advised when they set themselves to isolate their converts from society with Protestants.

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"No religion has ever succeeded in bringing all of its adherents to its standards of right living, or within sight of its intellectual and spiritual ideals; and in the highest religions the gulf between the intellectual and moral leaders and the superstitious & depraved sediment of society is widest. But it is not from ignorance and superstition that anything can be learned about a religion; at that end they are all alike".

Moore. History of Religions. Vol.II.p.xi.

This is well said. The author proceeds to point out the folly of spending excessive study on the beginnings of a religion:

"A study of the origins of a religion can yield nothing but a knowledge of the origins; the religion itself can be known only in its whole history".

On this view, every existing religion can only be partly known. It may not yet have disclosed its salient features. We can but guess at Christianity after 19 centuries, for it is here and still waxing though, in some parts of its dominion, throwing evident signs of exhaustion. Moreover in judging a religion in its whole history ought one not to include the by–products or incidental consequences which belong to it? Secularism, for example, is distinctive of modern Christendom. How far is it properly accounted a by–product of Christianity even if only a violent reaction against the intolerable asceticism of the medieval tradition?

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