Painted Windows | Page 7

a soul under a cloud. He gives one no feeling of
radiance, no sense of a living serenity. What serenity he possesses at
the centre of his being does not shine in his face nor sound in his voice.
He has the look of one whose head has long been thrust out of a

window gloomily expecting an accident to happen at the street corner.
FitzGerald once admirably described the face of Carlyle as wearing "a
crucified expression." No such bitterness of pain and defeat shows in
the face of Dr. Gore. But his look is the look of one who has not
conquered and who expects further, perhaps greater disaster.
He has told us that "a man must be strong at the centre before he can be
free at the circumference of his being," and in support of this doctrine
he quotes the words of Jesus, "It is better to enter into life halt or
maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to go into hell." Has
he reached strength at the centre, one wonders, by doing violence to
any part of his moral being? Is his strength not the strength of the
whole man but the strength only of his will, a forced strength to which
his reason has not greatly contributed and into which his affections
have not entirely entered? Is this, one asks, the reason of that look in
his face, the look of bafflement, of perplexity, of a permanently
troubled conscience, of a divided self, a self that is both maimed and
halt?
How is it, we ask ourselves, that a man who makes so profound an
impression on those who know him, and who commands as no other
teacher of his time the affectionate veneration of the Christian world,
and who has placed himself whole-heartedly in political alliance with
the militant forces of victorious Labour, exercises so little influence in
the moral life of the nation? How is it that he suggests to us no feeling
of the relation of triumphant leadership, but rather the spirit of
Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow?
We learn from his teaching that no one can be a Christian without "a
tremendous act of choice," that Christ proclaimed His standard with
"tremendous severity of claim," that "it is very hard to be a good
Christian," and that we must surely, as St. Peter says, "pass the time of
our sojourning here in fear." All of which suggests to us that the Bishop
has not entered into life whole, even perhaps that sometimes he looks
back over his shoulder with a spasm of horror at the hell from which he
has escaped only by the sacrifice of his rational integrity.
Let us recall the main events of his history.

He was educated at Harrow and Balliol, and exercised a remarkable
spiritual influence at Oxford, where he remained, first as Vice-Principal
of Cuddesdon College and then as Librarian of Pusey House, till he
was forty years of age.
During these years he edited the book called Lux Mundi in which he
abandoned the dogma of verbal inspiration and accepted the theory that
the human knowledge of Christ was limited. This book distressed a
number of timid people, but extended the influence of Dr. Gore to men
of science, such as Romanes, as well as to a much larger number of
thoughtful undergraduates.
For a year he was Vicar of Radley, and then came to London as a
Canon of Westminster, immediately attracting enormous congregations
to hear him preach, his sermons being distinguished by a most singular
simplicity, a profound piety, and above all by a deep honesty of
conviction which few who heard him could withstand. Weller, the
Dean's verger at the Abbey, has many stories to tell of the long queues
at Westminster which in those days were one of the sights of London.
The Abbey has never since recovered its place as a centre of Christian
teaching.
Up to this time Dr. Gore's sympathy for the Oxford Movement was
merely the background of a life devoted to the mystical element and the
moral implications of the Christian religion. He was known as a High
Churchman; he was felt to be a saint; his modernism was almost
forgotten.
It was not long before his tentative movement towards modernism
ended in a profession of Catholic principles which allied him with
forces definitely and sometimes angrily ranged against the Higher
Criticism. He became a Bishop. Almost at once the caressing fingers of
the saint became the heavy hand of the dogmatist. He who had
frightened Liddon by his tremulous adventure towards the mere fringe
of modernism became the declared enemy, the implacable foe, of the
least of his clergy who questioned even the most questionable clauses
of the creeds. He demanded