REV. W. R. INGE, D.D., ON FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE. 253 



voices ? When a Church claims absolute authority, it is using 

 an instrument which is not what it pretends to be. It is really 

 a proclamation of martial law ; it gives warning that it will 

 punish dissent and forbid criticism. Religious persecution 

 is martial law in practice. For this reason it is quite futile to 

 argue with a man who has accepted the principle of absolute 

 authority. The Roman Church does not even think it worth 

 while to discard the most irrational of its fables. It knows 

 that a Newman will accept the liquefying blood of St. Januarius 

 and the flying house of Loreto, as soon as he has made his 

 submission." But we must remember that the authority of 

 the inner light is not inf all ible either. The natural man percei veth 

 not the things of the Spirit of God. He cannot know them, 

 because they are spiritually discerned. To purge the spiritual 

 eye is no light task, but the work of a lifetime. The example 

 of some of the Grnostics, and of the Brethren of the Free Spirit 

 in the Middle Ages, shows how dangerous it is to trust to private 

 inspiration. That way madness lies. 



In nothing is the conflict of the two ideals more intense than 

 in education. Catholicism will surrender every other channel 

 of influence sooner than its hold over the children. Liberalism 

 thinks it absolutely immoral to imbue the immature mind with 

 indelible prejudices. Contrast the Jesuit seminary with an 

 English public school, governed very largely by the boys them- 

 selves ; or, to give a stronger instance, with such remarkably 

 successful experiments as the " Ford Junior Repubhc," for young 

 criminals, near Detroit. 



Before the end of this lecture I hope to consider briefly what 

 to a Christian must be the conclusion of the whole matter — 

 the attitude of Christ towards the conflicting claims of Freedom 

 and Discipline. But first I should like to say something of the 

 allegiance which the two ideals severally command in our own 

 time. 



There can be no greater mistake, in my opinion, than to suppose 

 that the trend of our age before the war and in Britain was 

 towards socialism. State-socialism is the apotheosis of discipline 

 and the negation of freedom. It is the hardest of all hard forms 

 of government. It ruthlessly suppresses the inclinations of the 

 individual, subordinating him entirely to the interests of the 

 State. It regulates every detail of his life— if it ever establishes 

 itself it will certainly be obliged to regulate marriage and the 

 number of births. It will crush all revolts, whether of individuals 



