The New Theologian

It is an old story that names do not fit things; it is an old story that
the oldest forest is called the New Forest, and that Irish stew is almost
peculiar to England. But these are traditional titles that tend, of their
nature, to stiffen; it is the tragedy of to-day that even phrases invented
for to-day do not fit it. The forest has remained new while it is nearly
a thousand years old; but our fashions have grown old while they were
still new.

The extreme example of this is that when modern wrongs are attacked, they
are almost always attacked wrongly. People seem to have a positive
inspiration for finding the inappropriate phrase to apply to an offender;
they are always accusing a man of theft when he has been convicted of
murder. They must accuse Sir Edward Carson of outrageous rebellion, when
his offence has really been a sleek submission to the powers that be.
They must describe Mr. Lloyd George as using his eloquence to rouse the
mob, whereas he has really shown considerable cleverness in damping it
down. It was probably under the same impulse towards a mysterious misfit
of names that people denounced Dr. Inge as "the Gloomy Dean."

Now there is nothing whatever wrong about being a Dean; nor is there
anything wrong about being gloomy. The only question is what dark but
sincere motives have made you gloomy. What dark but sincere motives have
made you a Dean. Now the address of Dr. Inge which gained him this
erroneous title was mostly concerned with a defence of the modern
capitalists against the modern strikers, from whose protest he appeared to
anticipate appalling results. Now if we look at the facts about that
gentleman's depression and also about his Deanery, we shall find a very
curious state of things.

When Dr. Inge was called "the Gloomy Dean" a great injustice was done him.
He had appeared as the champion of our capitalist community against the
forces of revolt; and any one who does that exceeds in optimism rather
than pessimism. A man who really thinks that strikers have suffered no
wrong, or that employers have done no wrong--such a man is not a Gloomy
Dean, but a quite wildly and dangerously happy Dean. A man who can feel
satisfied with modern industrialism must be a man with a mysterious
fountain of high spirits. And the actual occasion is not less curious;
because, as far as I can make out, his title to gloom reposes on his
having said that our worker's demand high wages, while the placid people
of the Far East will quite cheerfully work for less.

This is true enough, of course, and there does not seem to be much
difficulty about the matter. Men of the Far East will submit to very low
wages for the same reason that they will submit to "the punishment