Love and Reason

“Love first and then logic,” says Dostoiewsky. “First we understand, and then we can love,” is the watchword of ancient paganism.

The first of these watchwords leads to Christian humility and to general good; the second to worldly pride and general evil.

Five years ago I wrote in the “Guardian” upon the reunion of the Churches. The underlying idea of my article was the above mentioned quotation from the great Russian thinker and poet. I subsequently read the controversy between Charles Kingsley and Cardinal Newman,—the controversy on soul and logic,—and I became still more confirmed in my belief that love, and not logic, must play the leading part in the reunion of the Churches. In other words, let us be united first in practical matters, in our daily, useful dealings with society and humanity, let us more frequently join hands in the charitable work in which we both share; for this will lead us to tolerance, and tolerance in its turn will build the bridge towards the finding of a common logical ground.

To-day I see with pleasure the Roman Catholic and English churches in England working together in the same grand patriotic and national cause, united by the same inspiration, the same desire and the same prayers.

The dogma that divides them lies three hundred years behind them, but the love that unites them in the same labours is with them now. And I see with joy, how the representatives of both these Churches in England are united in sympathy and love towards ravaged Belgium, and sorely-stricken Serbia. The Bishop of London is President of the Serbian Relief Fund, Cardinal Bourne has permitted lectures on behalf of the Serbians to be given in Westminster Cathedral, and himself honoured these lectures by his presence. Divided in dogma, these two great Christian churches are nevertheless united in work. Considering all this, I to-day insist more strongly on my thesis, that all Christian Churches have sufficient logical ground in common, on which they may range themselves side by side in the same work, the same mission, and the same charity. The differences in their points of view concerning transcendental formulae, unrealisable in life, can reasonably take a second place.

A proof of the above may be seen in the life of a whole nation throughout several centuries. I mean the Jugoslavs,—Serbians, Croats and Slovenes,—who are one and the same nation in language, in blood, in destiny, and in their aspirations, and who to-day as one man desire to shake off the Austro-Hungarian yoke, and to build up a single undivided state with free Serbia and Montenegro. The proof alluded to consists in this, that in the great national struggle for national union and freedom which Serbia has now waged for a hundred years, her people have risen superior to all divergencies of creed between Orthodox and Catholic Church, and have held fast only to that which unites, not to that which divides in religion.