Our last witness shall be the learned Roman Catholic layman, Baron Friedrich von Hügel, the deepest thinker, perhaps, of all living theologians in this country. 'It is now ever increasingly clear to all deep impartial students that religion has ever primarily expressed and formed itself in cultus, in social organisation, social worship, intercourse between soul and soul and between soul and God; and in symbols and sacraments, in contacts between spirit and matter.' He proceeds to discuss the strength and weakness of institutionalism in a perfectly candid spirit, but with too particular reference to the present conditions within the Roman Church to help us much in our more general survey. He mentions the drawbacks of an official philosophy, prescribed by authority; 'only in 1835 did the Congregation of the Index withdraw heliocentric books from its list.' He emphasises the necessity of historical dogmas, but admits that orthodoxy cherishes, along with them, 'fact-like historical pictures' which 'cannot be taken as directly, simply factual.' He vindicates the orthodoxy of religious toleration, and refuses to consign all non-Catholics to perdition, lamenting the tendency to identify absolutely the visible and invisible Church, which prevails among 'some of the (now dominant) Italian and German Jesuit Canonists.' Lastly, he boldly recommends the frank abandonment of the Papal claim to exercise temporal power in Italy. This is not so much a critique of institutionalism as the plea of a Liberal Catholic that the logic of institutionalism should not be allowed to override all other considerations. The Baron is, indeed, himself a mystic, though also a strong believer in the necessity of institutional religion.
We have then a considerable body of very competent opinion, that a man cannot be a Christian unless he is a Churchman. To the mystic pure and simple, such a statement seems monstrous. Did not even Augustine say, 'I want to know God and my own soul; these two things, and no third whatever'? What intermediary can there be, he will ask, between the soul and God? What sacredness is there in an organisation? Is it not a matter of common experience that the morality of an institution, a society, a state, is inferior to that of the individuals who compose it? And is organised Catholicism an exception to this rule? And yet we must admit the glamour of the idea of a divine society. It arouses that _esprit de corps_ which is the strongest appeal that can be made to some noble minds. It calls for self-sacrifice and devoted labour in a cause which is higher than private interest. It demands discipline and co-operation, through which alone great things can be done on the field of history. It holds out a prospect of really influencing the course of events. And if there has been a historical Incarnation, it follows that God has actually intervened on the stage of history, and that it is His will to carry out some great and divine purpose in and by means of the course of history. With this object, as the Catholic believes, He established an institutional Church, pledged to the highest of all causes; and what greater privilege can there be than to take part in this work, as a soldier in the army of God in His long campaign against the spiritual powers of evil? The Christian institutionalist is the servant of a grand idea.