01.06. Thy Will be Done, Heaven Earth

Chapter VI. Thy Will be Done, as in Heaven so on Earth

PAUL BouRGET, the well-known French novelist and man of letters, went three years ago for a visit to America. What impressed him there, with a force which appears continually in the fascinating account of his expedition which he has given in Outrc-mer, was the omnipresent spirit of enterprise. Everywhere in men and women he met with a vigorous and powerful will a will bent on being successful, bent on seizing the exact situation under which present effectiveness was most possible. This vigorous will, this enterprise, is, as we all proudly recognize, the mark of the Anglo Saxon race; but then, as we know it, this vigorous will has a way of showing itself in the form of vigorous competition. We walk down the streets of our towns, and watch one tradesman contending against another in a self-advertisement, to say the least of it, not over scrupulous about truth, each using all his cleverness to under-sell and make life impossible for the other. And the Lord’s Prayer what we see among individuals appears also among classes. If Labour organizes itself, it is against Capital.

If Capital combines, it is to offer more effective resistance to the pressure of a strong Trades Union. The area enlarges itself, but its spirit is still the same. In France, in Germany, in England, in Russia, in Italy a vast expenditure is going on to arm every nation against every other. And the same competition is at least as apparent in the race for Africa, or the jealous watching of one nation by another, lest any should get an advantage over the others in the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire. Nor is this spirit less apparent in the matter of religion. The assertion of the individual will, the determination to work a successful enterprise, in a word, the spirit of competition, has intruded itself there. It has split the Christian Church into an infinite number of sects; and it is only too lamentably apparent, that a large proportion of what is called religious energy is occupied, not in combating sin and falsehood, but in pressing against one another the claims of different religious bodies. Enterprise, energy, will, ambition, these are marks then of the human race, and especially the Anglo-Saxon race, and the form in which they show themselves is a universal and unlimited competition.

Now there is no doubt at all that, if we are to make the best of ourselves, we must kindle to the very utter most in all men the will to be, the will to realize all that is in them; nay, more, we must kindle even the appetite for enjoyment, for after all enjoyment is, as Aristotle says, the crown and accompaniment of every completed activity, and to develop our faculties is in the long run to secure the most permanent and deepest enjoyment. And it is also no doubt true, that this will to realize ourselves carries us far off from one another and makes us different. To work at our best is to work with the greatest amount of individual difference. We work best when we are least restrained by the cramping necessity of being like some one else The development of individuality then means the development of differences, means a world full of strong and dissimilar modes of operation. Then the question arises, must strong and unlike individualities be necessarily in antagonism? Can there be no vigour except competitive vigour, and no development of unlikeness that is not also a development of hostility? Now it is to this question that the better conscience of mankind, wearied with the waste of life which unlimited competition produces, is giving an emphatic No. Every where men of all sorts are asking, how can we introduce a spirit of co-operation to supplant or to modify the spirit of competition? Thus we are aiming at Boards of Conciliation between Capital and Labour, which shall represent to each party that their separate interests lie not only in the strong organization of each, but also in the recognition of a common interest over both. There is more real hope than at any previous time of the establishment of a system of arbitration, at least between the two great and predominantly AngloSaxon nations. Once again, when people see some necessity of life, such as water, manipulated not always in the interests of the consumer, to the profit of a body of shareholders in a water company, they are asking themselves, why should not the municipality (every where, as has already been done in some places) take the place of the private company, and let the water be manipulated in the interests of all? Tardily, moreover, lamentably tardily, but still we hope with greater promise of effectiveness the same class of questions is being asked in the region of religion, and the antiChristian spectacle of rival and competing sects is at least becoming a burden on the consciences of a greater number of people. Thus everywhere the old Christian idea of the body corporate is on the way to a revival. The body represents unity in diversity; it results from the development of the most marked variety of function in individual limbs, the most marked variety of differences in their methods of working, but all dominated by one common interest not competing, but co-operating. For the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body. If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand I am not of the body, it is not therefore not of the body; and if the ear shall say, because I am not the eye I am not of the body, it is not therefore not of the body. If the whole body were an eye where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now they are many members, but one body; and the eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee, or again, the head to the feet I have no need of you. Nay, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary; and those parts of the body which we think to be less honourable, on these we put on (in the way of dress) more abundant honour, and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; whereas our comely parts have no need. But God tempered the body together, giving more abundant honour to the parts which lacked; that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another, and where one member suffers all the members suffer with it, and where one member is honoured all the members rejoice with it. This is the divine ideal of the Universe, that each creature inanimate, animate, rational should find its joy in realizing its own function, that is, in being the thing it is meant to be, in experiencing the joy proper to itself, and in seeing all the other creatures realizing all their separate functions, while all together contribute to a common end. No doubt sacrifice, the sacrifice of one to the other, is more or less knit up into the heart of this process. But God does not shrink from requiring 50 sacrifice. No doubt gradation is inseparable from combination, and one must rejoice to be higher, and another rejoice to be lower. But God has no sympathy with the desire to excel each the other for vain-glory’s sake. When Dante in Paradise expected to find those in its lowest places deploring that they were not higher, he was reproved for introducing an idea of competition and jealousy altogether subversive of the life of heaven.

* God’s will is our peace, was the reply of the questioned spirit. That is the law of heaven, the law of archangels and angels and just men made perfect, each joyfully occupying his own place and fulfilling his own function each obeying, and in obedience free; free, because he finds in obedience his essential good. And we pray, like Richard Hooker on his death-bed, that this law of heaven may become the law of earth to the over throw of the principle of mere self-assertion and competition, Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.

It was for the realizing of this ideal that the Church was divinely created. Its maxim is, let each man look not to his own things only, but also to the things of others; and its ideal has been again and again realized, at least, in great and effective measure. In the early Church, in days when it cost men much to become Christians, we have a spectacle of happy co-operation, the like of which the world has never seen equalled.

And, again and again, when the spirit of worldliness and competition has corrupted the Church at large, earnest men have gathered themselves together and formed fresh centres of unselfish life, centres of cooperation. Such were the religious orders, especially in the West, both of men and women; such was the co-operative family life among the Moravians; such is to be found in the heart of every Christian parish or enterprise where the Spirit of God is at work. Every where there are men and women taxing all their energies in work, for their own happiness, no doubt, but also for the common good the good of the whole body which is the glory of God, for the glory of God is the living man. But, alas! the measure in which we have realized our ideal is nothing compared with the boundlessness of our failure hitherto. In its own proper sphere the Church has allowed the spirit of the world to enter into her, and she has altogether failed to realize her catholicity by making her power felt in politics and in commerce. Once again we are waking to our duty. Once again we pray with more earnestness, that the idea of service like Christ’s co-operative service may take the place of selfish ambition and wasteful competition, Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth.

II The prayer is a prayer against selfishness; it is equally a prayer against sloth. No doubt, in the world, and especially in our Anglo-Saxon world, there is a great deal of energy, but side by side with it there is a vast deal of sloth. Think of it! The sloth of intellect; the sloth which seems to make men unwilling, for all our increasing education, to read anything longer than a paragraph in a newspaper with a sensational headline and perhaps a picture. The sloth of intellect which, in religious things, is terrified by the appearance of doubt and difficulty, and imagines that the only sign of excellence in a religion is to be found in that clearness of authoritative dogma which will dispense the individual from the trouble of thinking. Or again, sluggishness in prayer, how widespread it is how paralyzing to one of the richest of human activities!

Or, once more, what sloth there is with regard to the imagination what a lack of will to regulate effectively this powerful human faculty! Thus, instead of its being a storehouse of dominant ideas, inspiring, consecrating, and ruling life, it becomes the mere passive slave of every unclean spectacle, of every foolish suggestion, of every profitless day-dream. Once more, what sluggishness of heart there is! Where true love is kindled every faculty brightens; but where the heart is dead or cold, what paralysis ensues of the faculties of thinking, and sympathizing, and contriving, and willing!

Thy will be done, then, is a prayer against sloth.

It is the will sends the renewing nerve Through flaccid flesh, that faints before the time it is the will; the human will, but most effectively the human will possessed by the divine will, and following along with it, as with Jesus of Nazareth, in whole hearted and unconditional obedience to the mind of God.

Let our imaginations rest, then, on the burning love, the thrilling knowledge of those dimly known spiritual beings, archangels and angels; on the keen joy of vision which has been obtained by the spirits of just men made perfect. And let us pray that, with a like effectiveness, now in our days of darkness and difficulty, an effectiveness to be crowned at last with a like reward, God’s will may be done, as in heaven so on earth. And who can tell what an utterly different place the world would look, if those who do intend to be sincere Christians would realize the duty of vigorous and effective willing, vigorous and effective co-operation, to bring about the kingdom of God in this world! The Christian religion is a religion of comfort, and comfort (confortare), with its Greek original, means first of all to make strong or to encourage. Religion is to put heart and courage into us, both to work and to pray, to co-operate according to the divine will both for the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness and the establishment of the kingdom of God. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.