Читать книгу The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation - Edward Maitland - Страница 5

Table of Contents

There are certain introductory remarks which, in view of the prevailing tendency to reject prior to examination whatever conflicts with strongly cherished preconceptions—as anything purporting to be a "new Gospel" is undoubtedly calculated to do—may be made with advantage. Those remarks are as follows:—

(1) As its title implies[6], that which is propounded is not really a new Gospel, but one of Interpretation only, which is precisely what is admitted by all serious and thoughtful persons to be the supreme need of the times. It was said, for instance, by the late Matthew Arnold, "At the present moment there are two things about the Christian religion which must be obvious to every percipient person: one, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is."

(2) As also its title implies[6] nothing new is told in it, but that only which is old is interpreted; and the appeal on its behalf is not to authority, whether of Book, Tradition, or Institution, but to the Understanding—a quality which accords not only with the spirit of the times, but also—as shewn herein—with that of religion itself, properly so called.

(3) Scripture manifestly comprises two conflicting systems of doctrine and practice, having for their representatives respectively the priest and the prophet, one only of which systems, and this the system reprobated in Scripture itself, has hitherto obtained recognition from Christendom. It is the purpose of the New Gospel of Interpretation to expound the system represented by the prophet and approved in Scripture, with a view to replacing the other.

(4) For those who attach value to the prophecies contained in the Bible, so far from there being an a priori improbability against the delivery of a new revelation in interpretation, confirmation, or completion of the former revelation, and in correction of the false presentment of it, the probability ought to be all in favour of such an event. This is because Scripture abounds in predictions of a restoration both of faculty and of knowledge, as to take place at the present time and under the existing conditions of Church and World; and this of such kind as shall constitute a second and spiritual manifestation of the Christ in rectification of the perversion of the import of His first and personal manifestation, and in arrest of the great Apostacy, not only from the true faith of Christ but from religion itself, of which that perversion has been the cause.

(5) So far from the idea of a new revelation which shall have for its end the disclosure, as the true sense of Scripture and Dogma, of a sense differing so widely from that hitherto accepted as to be virtually destructive of it—so far from this idea being universally repugnant to orthodox ecclesiastics, it has found warm recognition from one of the foremost of modern churchmen. This is the late Cardinal Newman.

Said Dr. Newman in his Apologia pro vitâ suâ, speaking of his earlier days, "The broad philosophy of Clement and Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological doctrine. … Some portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various Economies or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable: Scripture was an allegory: … The process of change had been slow; it had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, 'at sundry times and in divers manners,' first one disclosure and then another, till the whole evangelical doctrine was brought into full manifestation. And thus room was made for the anticipation of further and deeper disclosures of truths still under the veil of the letter, and in their season to be revealed. The visible world still remains without its divine interpretation: Holy Church in her sacraments and her hierarchical appointments, will remain, even to the end of the world, after all but a symbol of those heavenly facts which fill eternity. Her mysteries are but the expressions, in human language, of truths to which the human mind is unequal"[7].

Dr. Newman is credited also with the remark, made on visiting Rome for his investiture, that he saw no hope for religion save in a new revelation.

These are utterances the value of which is in no way diminished by the fact that their utterer failed to bring his own life into accordance with them. He could write, indeed, the hymn "Lead, kindly light"; but when the "kindly light" was vouchsafed him of those suggestions of a system of thought concealed within the Christian Symbology, "magnificent in themselves" and making "music to his inward ear," which he found in the patristic writings; instead of following that lead, and striving to exhume the treasures of divine truth thus buried and hidden from sight, for the salvation of a world perishing for want of them—he turned his back upon it, and—entering the Church of Rome—wrote his "Grammar of Assent," calling upon others to follow him in committing the suicide, intellectual and moral, of renouncing the understanding and divorcing profession from conviction.

This was a catastrophe the explanation of which is not far to seek. Dr. Newman had in him the elements which go to make both priest and prophet. But the former proved the stronger; and the Cain, the priest in him, suppressed the Abel, the prophet in him. Thus was he a type of the Church as hitherto she has been. But, happily, not as henceforth she will be. For "now is the Gospel of Interpretation come, and the kingdom of the Mother of God," even the "Woman," Intuition—the mind's feminine mode, wherein it represents the perceptions and recollections of the Soul—who is ever "Mother of God" in man, and whose sons the prophets ever are, the greatest of them being called emphatically, for the fulness and purity of his intuition, the "Son of the Woman" and she a "virgin."

E.M.