REV. W. R. INGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 251 



to innovate, it is in the moral sphere that the evil eifects of a 

 bad system are most manifest. I do not wish to abuse the 

 Germans, but as regards humanity and chivalry in war they 

 have put back the clock several hundred years. Discipline 

 turns the pupil of the Jesuits into a pliant and service- 

 able tool for any iniquity which may be prescribed to him in 

 the name of obedience, and for "the greater glory of God." 

 The conscience, which was intended to be an inward monitor 

 on every question of right and wrong, is forbidden to act. Under 

 this treatment it soon atrophies. Whatever progress takes place 

 in a severely disciplined society must come from above — from 

 the rulers. But the rulers are generally opposed to all innova- 

 tion, when once they think that their machine is in working 

 order. They regard society as a mechanism rather than as a 

 changing organism ; they look backward rather than forward 

 for their inspiration ; they particularly dislike that uncertainty 

 about the goal which is part of the free man's outlook upon life. 

 There is a spirit of adventure in the free man, in the Protestant, 

 such as finds expression in these fine lines of Browning's Rabbi 

 hen Ezra : — 



" And I shall thereupon 



Take rest, ere I be gone 

 Once more on my adventure brave and new ; 



Fearless and unperplexed, 



When I do battle next, 

 What weapons to select, what armour to endue." 



George Meredith even says, " Spirit raves not for a goal," as if 

 perpetual action were an end in itself. This I do not agree with. 

 The world is a kingdom of ends : all that we do has an object, 

 and the object is something which will have its fulfilment. 

 But the world is in the making, and we who. work in it and try 

 to know it are in the making too. The goal is not in sight : 



it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Therefore, we follow 

 the gleam, like travellers in a strange country ; even as Abraham 

 set forth at God's command, not knowing whither he went 

 Evolution, for the lover of Freedom, is no mere mechanical 

 unpacking of what was there all the time. There is a new creation 

 always going on. " Tempora mutantur ; nos et mutamurin illis.'' 



All such thoughts are unwelcome to the disciplinarian and 

 institutionalist. He would instinctively prefer a stable world, 

 and a revelation completed in the past. For him the truth was 

 implicitly communicated long ago ; the function of history, of 



