We have always felt and expressed the opinion that the de facto separation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome came about by process of law; not, indeed, primarily ecclesiastical, but civil. In this it did but follow the character of our people, over whom the majesty of law has always had such sway that for a time the country accepted with almost Oriental fanaticism the Divine Right of Kings.

This fixed opinion of ours on the legal and civil origin of the breach with Rome led us to expect that the formal, official and collective separation would be ended by the same process which had been its cause. It became part of our service of Jesus Christ, the Truth, to look for any signs, however slender and struggling, of an official will or wish to have speech, if not yet inter-communion, with the Holy See. Perhaps our hopes gave sight to our eyes when we discerned in the official acts of the ‘Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion,’ held at Lambeth in 1920, some beginning of that official action by the Church of England which three centuries had awaited in vain.

Though many books and articles are written round every decennial performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, and the drama has so many points of deep interest that it requires altogether exceptional control in any writer who sees it not to record his impressions, I think that there is still something to be said. With the conviction that the play could not be performed in any other theatre or by any other actors, abides the assurance that its chief virtues, its atmosphere of uniqueness, can yet be shared by the majority necessarily unable to make the pilgrimage. If I can persuade the reader to this paradoxical conclusion, perhaps I shall have deserved my own good fortune. Let me, then, try to show him the simple means whereby he can make a spectator’s experience his own. It is doubtful if The Ring can be enjoyed adequately anywhere but at Munich or at Bayreuth. It is certain that, in England, Shakespeare is himself only at the Old Vic. Ibsen demands to be played in cycles. But the Passion Play, which could not be transplanted, can be experienced in the study by anyone who studies its traditions, its history, and (above all) its text, with the aid of the magnificent sets of photographs that are available. Of course, some supreme effects will be lost. The music, which has never been published, will be wanting. The peculiar virtue of an open-air theatre, to realise which the Greek model at Bradfield should be visited, remains to seek.

To speak at all of religious values in literature may be regarded by some as rather questionable, on the ground that religion and the art of letters have little in common and that conscious attempts to make literature serve the cause of religion are generally failures or, at the best, half-successes, serving neither the one nor the other with completeness. But it is not quite from that point of view that the theme for this essay has been stated. Even the ‘art for art’s sake’ critics and artists—an ever-diminishing company, in the usual acceptation of the phrase—would agree that literature was expression, individual and social. Most people would further agree that religion was still a vital, if often unrecognised, element in the life of the human being or of the community. Given literature, then, as ‘expression,’ and religious aspiration as the same thing, it is justifiable to isolate them for a while and discuss, without any question of propaganda or of making ‘literature the handmaid of religion,’ the way in which the first is being linked to the second—the particular instance under notice being that of Germany to-day where, as will be seen shortly, the enquiry promises to be especially fruitful and thought-provoking.

When the Master-Builder spoke apprehensively of the younger generation knocking at the door, it certainly never occurred to him to apprehend that it might be the church-door. And yet even in the figure of Ibsen might have been found signs of so strange a sequel. The very words Master-Builder are but a tradition from a medieval system, and it is that very system which some would now make a rough model for the modern system. And if the Master-Builder had been driven by his ruthless lady friend to make a tour of Europe, looking for the tallest towers to climb, he would soon have discovered what people of what period had the right to be called masters of building He would have found himself in the tracks of many a master, who not only climbed his own tower but carved his own angels or devils at the four corners of it, hanging as on wings above the void. The artists and art critics of the rising generation had already begun knocking at the church-door fifty years ago, in the time of Ruskin and William Morris. In our own time a yet younger generation of art students are justifying their bold or possibly bald simplifications by yet severer doctrines drawn from the Primitives. The new artists may be in a chronological sense Post-Impressionists, but they are also in a strict historical sense Pre-Raphaelites.

War has its apologists, defenders, and even glorifiers, however anomalous it may appear, among professed disciples of the Prince of Peace. Dwellers in lands untouched by the scourge have marshalled facts and expounded theories to justify its necessity and desirability. I have heard an armchair critic say that a ‘good war’ from time to time cleared the air, eased economic problems, gave a stimulus to industry, and was a blessing all round ! How far removed from logical Christianity is such a view of men’s relations to each other can be recognised by contrast with the attitude of the Father of Christendom, who never ceased calling on his children during the recent European war to abandon their abominable fratricide and compose their differences by peaceful arbitration. By no force of imagination can we represent the Founder of Christianity Himself as inciting to slaughter; and yet many who call themselves His followers deliberately encouraged revenge, and denied forgiveness to their prostrate enemies.