Imatges de pàgina
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does for the priesthood. It would be interesting to know what it does to hold their priestly rule in check; and still more instructive would it be to have a clear definition of the further developments of sacerdotalism which might be expected if the power which now hinders were withdrawn. At present the laity are taught that their control is exerted through Parliament, and the power of Parliament is practically paralysed by the fact that it has long since ceased to be, even in profession, representative of the laity of the Episcopal Church. No one doubts that reforms are necessary, and yet no one expects them to be undertaken. The Public Worship Regulation Act proposed nothing more than the abolition of cumbrous processes in ecclesiastical courts, by means of which offending clergymen had become practically independent of the law, and the result is an internal convulsion which menaces the existence of the Establishment. The statesman who should venture to take any further step towards asserting the boasted control of Parliament, for whose sake we are asked to sacrifice so much-who should propose, for example, to give the rubrics a more Protestant character, or even to terminate all discussion on the celebrated ornaments rubric by defining its exact significance-would simply seal the fate of the institution. The plain fact is, that while the necessity for keeping a Church so rich and powerful under the rule of the State is put forward as a plea for the continuance of the Establishment, that control is, to a large extent, a nullity. It is developed in a very offensive form in the nomination of the bishops and other dignitaries, and there it practically ceases, the bishops themselves being unable to assert the power and secure the reverence due to them on the theory of the system, because they are regarded simply as nominees of the Crown, or rather of the electors by whom the Prime Minister who creates them is chosen.

But, whatever force there may be in these views, it is certain that the establishment of religious equality must mean the loss of national endowments as well as of exclusive national privileges. What property the Church holds in her own right will belong to her under the coming dispensation as in the present; and however the knotty question as to what portion of her present revenue answers to this description may be decided, it is perfectly certain that the residuum which she will hold when the nation has resumed whatever is adjudged to belong to the nation will be so considerable as to leave her one of the richest, if not the richest Church in the world. I have no desire to underrate the sacrifices which must necessarily be exacted from her as the price of freedom, nor is it the place here to insist how small they will be compared with the inestimable advantages she will gain. Suffice it to point out that the apostolic poverty, the distant vision of which seems so to have alarmed the good bishop, is not awaiting her; that there is no disposition on the part even of her

strongest opponents to adopt a rash, still less a vindictive, policy in carrying out such changes as may be necessary; that those who are most desirous for the overthrow of the system are at the same time most anxious to avoid even the appearance of injustice to the individuals connected with it; and finally, that with the political Dissenters, so strangely misunderstood, the question is not one at all of property, but of right. They are contending only against a system by which religious opinion is endowed by the State, and their opposition is based on the principles of political justice, not of sectarian feeling.

This is a point which the bishop seems to have left out of consideration. He deals with the prospects of the Establishment rather than with any question of her rights. He is full of hope as to the future, not only because of her own qualities, but also of the signs of the times. Even should matters come to the worst, he has an idea that Europe is on the eve of wide-spread and bloody strife, in the midst of which England will not find time to disestablish the Church. The Establishment has had many buffetings and many kicks, but it may be doubted whether a more severe humiliation has often been inflicted upon her than is conveyed in the suggestion of one of her own prelates that she may owe her salvation to the distractions of European warfare. Whether his vaticinations are well founded, I shall not stop to inquire. The only feature in his speculations to which I wish to refer is his absolute silence as to the rights of Dissenters. His one anxiety is as to the power of the Church to adjust her internal differences and tide over her own difficulties; his one argument against disestablishment, the injurious effect it would be likely to exert on the Church. Of the objections of Noncon

formists to the system he takes no account. So unconscious does he seem of the relations between different Christian communities, that he writes as though disestablishment would leave his Church still the Church of England, and warns us that its 'antagonism with Dissent would be strong and abiding.'

It would perhaps be too much to expect him to see that Dissent is the creation of the law, and that with the establishment of religious equality it must cease to exist. Unfortunately sectarian distinctions would not be effaced, but the stigma implied in the designation of all but those who hold the creed and belong to the Church of the State as Dissenters would be removed. This name is itself the outward and visible sign of the grievance of which we complain, and no one who is at all familiar with English society, especially in rural districts, can doubt that it carries with it a very distinct idea of inferiority, not to say of separation from the national life. It may be said that it is a small matter to parade as an injury, especially now when the more substantial wrongs, of which it was the symbol, have been redressed. It is true, also, that those who are unable to endure its

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pressure can escape from it by a convenient change, if not of principles, of Church associations. Still further, it is certain that wherever the sacerdotal element has any place in a Church, there will be the tendency, which may be seen in Roman Catholics to-day, to treat all outsiders as heretics and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.' But none of these pleas really touch the question. Whether the injury be serious or trivial-a point in relation to which there will be great diversity of feeling-it is one which the State has no right to inflict on any of its subjects. If a Church is able to surround herself with so much authority that to be excluded from her fellowship becomes a reproach, separatists must accept the consequences of their voluntary acts. It is a very different matter when the State interposes and adds the weight of its censure by an exclusion from certain national privileges, and, by setting up a standard of orthodoxy, brands all who do not accept it as heretics. Are we told, with a courtesy and good taste which I need not characterise, that, even if the State made no distinction, the differences of rank and culture would still maintain Churchmen in their present elevated position? We can only answer, accepting the reminder with such meekness as we can command, that to such inferiority we must submit. We do not complain of our social status, or repine because of the lack of natural advantages which others enjoy. We ask only that no disabilities should be imposed on us because of our religious opinions. Already we have got rid of the idea that it is right to repress error by a positive action of the law. We ask that the emancipation of the mind should be completed by the withdrawal of all premiums on the profession of what the nation regards as the truth. Religious liberty itself is incomplete so long as there are advantages conferred by the State upon those who hold a particular creed which are denied to all Our contention is that a State should know its subjects neither as Episcopalians, Presbyterians, nor Independents, neither as Christians nor unbelievers, but simply as citizens; and that it cannot depart from this strait line of action without interfering with those rights of conscience which all just rulers will hold sacred.

others.

There is an amusing story told by Mr. Wallace in his recent book on Russia which to my mind is extremely suggestive. He was talking with a peasant about the creed of the Tartars and the Mokolanas, the Russian Dissenters, and to his astonishment found that the man regarded the Mohammedanism of the former more leniently than the Nonconformity of the latter, which Mr. Wallace describes as closely resembling Scotch Presbyterianism. On inquiring the reason of this strange preference, he received the following significant answer: The Tartars, you see, received their faith from God, as they received the colour of their skins, but the Molokani are Russians who have invented a faith out of their own heads!' Mr. Wallace calls the answer 'singular,' but I fancy that it gives an idea of Dissent which is much

more common in England than is supposed. The Russian peasant had got the very notion which Mr. Matthew Arnold has inculcated more than once, with his characteristic courtesy, to all who do not agree with him. Dissent is sometimes treated as an unhappy accident of birth for which a man is to be pitied, at others as a manifestation of a wild and erratic temper which merits only reprobation. That it may be inspired by a sincere devotion to truth; that the separation into which it forces them may be felt by numbers as a cruel necessity, and one to which only loyalty to conscience would induce them to submit; that it may argue neither mental eccentricity nor moral perversity, nor even mauvaise honte, but simple difference of judgment on subjects in relation to which infallibility ought not to be claimed either by Church or State, seems hardly to be understood by numbers. It is regarded as a departure from the faith of the nation which it is hard to tolerate, and for which a man may fairly be treated as a kind of pariah.

If this kind of feeling were confined to the class which is on a level with the Russian peasants, or even to the unintelligent adherents of the Anglican Church-the men who shout for Church and State at elections, and who, as Mr. Freeman cleverly said, are just as ready to go in for beer and the Koran as for beer and the Bible at another—it would be utterly beneath notice. Even Mr. Matthew Arnold's rude nicknames and savage pleasantries, though so entirely different in character, may come to be equally harmless when once their secret is understood. But there are manifestations of this contempt for Dissenters, as Dissenters, which reveal a temper that naturally produces irritation in those to whom it is exhibited, which must be fatal to any idea of real national unity, and which, so far as I can see, is utterly incompatible with that honest respect for the convictions of others in the absence of any professed love of liberty, is as a sounding brass or a tinking cymbal. Thus it is no uncommon thing for a tribute of admiration for a Dissenting minister on the part of a clergyman to take the form of a wish that he were in the Church. 'Quoniam talis sis, utinam noster esses! It is meant to be a compliment, but if it were picked to pieces perhaps even those who have employed it might see that it was at least doubtful in its character. The real meaning in most cases is that the Churchman thinks the Dissenting minister good enough for his own Church. If the speaker is a bishop, perhaps some allowance is to be made for the view he takes of a Church in which he has found so pleasant a home; but when (as in cases I have known) a young country clergyman writes to an able and experienced Dissenting minister to acknowledge the benefit he has received from his writings, and ends by expressing regret that one for whom he has such high respect does not belong to the Church, such charming condescension becomes a little

nauseous.

It may be suggested that to take such a view would be

to show true Dissenting churlishness. I am quite prepared for such criticism, and I have only to ask those who are disposed to employ it to reverse the cases, and fancy a young Dissenting minister, or even one of most eminent name, writing to express the gratitude which numbers feel to a man like Canon Lightfoot, or thanking the Bishop of Manchester for some special exhibition of liberality and courage, and ending his letter with a lamentation that he is not a Dissenter. The truth is, the sort of language of which I speak would never be used but for the feeling which tradition and habit have fostered in the minds of the adherents of the Establishment, and especially of the clergy, that Dissent is a synonym for vulgarity, ignorance, and

narrowness.

Unhappily there are but few even of the best men in the Church who are wholly free from the influence of this prejudice. There have been few, if any, truer and nobler men among the clergy of our generation than Charles Kingsley. His was no mawkish liberality, but a broad and catholic feeling which made him ready to recognise and honour good wherever he found it. His personal knowledge of Dissent was probably very limited, and may have been derived mainly, at least up to a certain period of his life, from specimens which do not seem to have been of very attractive type in his own parish, where the Dissent which prevailed was founded on supralapsarian Calvinistic dogmas, which have been received into the heart as the deepest counsels of God.' Still he was a scholar, had a familiarity with all kinds of men and books, was distinguished by the breadth and liberality of his culture, and might have been expected to make himself acquainted with Dissenters and their views, as belonging to the noteworthy phenomena of the time. With historic Dissent he had sympathy, for he tells one of his correspondents, ‘I should be a second Ham if I had no respect for the Independents. For why? My forefathers were Independents, and fought by Cromwell's side at Naseby and Marston Moor, and, what is more, lost broad acres for their Puritanism.' Yet he can write thus to another friend in relation to an eminent and learned Independent minister: 'Do not reject Wardlaw because he is a Presbyterian.' He was nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, as sturdy an opponent of Presbyterianism as of Episcopacy. 'The poor man was born so, you know. It is very different from a man's dissenting personally.' This might be put down as a piece of pleasantry, were it not that it is in such perfect sympathy with the prevalent tone in relation to Dissent, quâ Dissent. Such a feeling was the product of the system in which he had been educated, and that alone must be credited. The true heart of the man himself comes out in such language as that he addresses to the correspondent referred to above. 'As to your being an Independent, sir, what's that to me? provided you-as I see well you do-do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with

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