"Wells, H G - Soul Of A Bishop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

--unquestioningly and beneficially.

And indeed that has been the way with most bishops since
bishops began.

It is a busy continuous process that turns boys into bishops,
and it will stand few jars or discords. The student of
ecclesiastical biography will find that an early vocation has in
every age been almost universal among them; few are there among
these lives that do not display the incipient bishop from the
tenderest years. Bishop How of Wakefield composed hymns before he
was eleven, and Archbishop Benson when scarcely older possessed a
little oratory in which he conducted services and--a pleasant
touch of the more secular boy--which he protected from a too
inquisitive sister by means of a booby trap. It is rare that
those marked for episcopal dignities go so far into the outer
world as Archbishop Lang of York, who began as a barrister. This
early predestination has always been the common episcopal
experience. Archbishop Benson's early attempts at religious
services remind one both of St. Thomas a Becket, the "boy
bishop," and those early ceremonies of St. Athanasius which were
observed and inquired upon by the good bishop Alexander. (For
though still a tender infant, St. Athanasius with perfect
correctness and validity was baptizing a number of his innocent
playmates, and the bishop who "had paused to contemplate the
sports of the child remained to confirm the zeal of the
missionary.") And as with the bishop of the past, so with the
bishop of the future; the Rev. H. J. Campbell, in his story of
his soul's pilgrimage, has given us a pleasant picture of himself
as a child stealing out into the woods to build himself a little
altar.

Such minds as these, settled as it were from the outset, are
either incapable of real scepticism or become sceptical only
after catastrophic changes. They understand the sceptical mind
with difficulty, and their beliefs are regarded by the sceptical
mind with incredulity. They have determined their forms of belief
before their years of discretion, and once those forms are
determined they are not very easily changed. Within the shell it
has adopted the intelligence may be active and lively enough, may
indeed be extraordinarily active and lively, but only within the
shell.

There is an entire difference in the mental quality of those
who are converts to a faith and those who are brought up in it.
The former know it from outside as well as from within. They know
not only that it is, but also that it is not. The latter have a
confidence in their creed that is one with their apprehension of
sky or air or gravitation. It is a primary mental structure, and
they not only do not doubt but they doubt the good faith of those