Part 4

I have described the erroneous impressions as to the actual and prospective state of things, under which was urged the practical application of that system of thought embodied in my work of 1838. It may be said my error was a gross or even an absurd one. On that question I need not enter. But I will endeavour to bring into view some circumstances relating to the time, which may help to account for it. And here I feel that I pass beyond the narrower and more personal scope of these pages, if I attempt to recall some of the changes that have taken place during the last thirty or five-and-thirty years, in matters which bear upon the religious character and relations of the State.

At that time, Jews, and others not adopting the Christian name, were excluded from civil office; and though Roman Catholics and Nonconformists had effected an entrance into Parliament, there still remained an oath for the former, and a declaration for the latter, which, if they did not practically limit freedom, yet denoted, like the mark of chains on the limbs of an emancipated slave, that there had been a time when it did not exist. The Establishment of Scotland was still entire, and animated with the strength principally of the eminent men who afterwards led the Free Church Secession. The attack on the Irish Church, pushed in 1835 with earnestness and vigour by the Liberal party, had speedily proved to be hopeless. The State continued to make to other persuasions certain grants, little more than compassionate, and handed down from other times; but, even in the case of the classes especially in its charge, such as soldiers and sailors, or such again as paupers and criminals, it rarely permitted, and still more rarely provided for them, the means of religious worship according to their own religious convictions. In the great province of popular education in England, nothing was granted except to schools of the Church, or to schools in which, while the Bible was read, no religion other than that of the Church was taught; and he would have been deemed something more than a daring prophet, who should have foretold that in a few years the utmost ambition of the lay champions, and of the spiritual heads of the Church, would be to obtain the maintenance of a denominational system in popular education, under which all religions alike should receive the indirect, yet not unsubstantial, countenance of the State.

But the most important of all the changes which have taken place within the interval, has been the change in the condition of the Church of England itself.

Even for those old enough to have an adequate recollection of the facts, it requires no inconsiderable mental effort to travel backwards over the distractions, controversies, perils, and calamities of the last thirty years, to the period immediately before those years; and to realise not only the state of facts, but especially the promises and prospects which it presented. I am well aware that any description of it which may now be attempted will appear to bear more or less the colour of romance; but, without taking it into view, no one can either measure the ground over which we have travelled, or perceive how strong was then the temptation to form an over-sanguine estimate of the probable progress of the Church in her warfare with sin and ignorance, and even in persuading seceders of all kinds to re-enter her fold.

That time was a time such as comes, after sickness, to a man in the flower of life, with an unimpaired and buoyant constitution; the time in which, though health is as yet incomplete, the sense and the joy of health are keener, as the fresh and living current first flows in, than are conveyed by its even and undisturbed possession.

The Church of England had been passing through a long period of deep and chronic religious lethargy. For many years, perhaps for some generations, Christendom might have been challenged to show, either then or from any former age, a clergy (with exceptions) so secular and lax, or congregations so cold, irreverent, and indevout. The process of awakening had, indeed, begun many years before; but a very long time is required to stir up effectually a torpid body, whose dimensions overspread a great country. Active piety and zeal among the clergy, and yet more among the laity, had been in a great degree confined within the narrow limits of a party, which, however meritorious in its work, presented in the main phenomena of transition, and laid but little hold on the higher intellect and cultivation of the country. Our churches and our worship bore in general too conclusive testimony to a frozen indifference. No effort had been made either to overtake the religious destitution of the multitudes at home, or to follow the numerous children of the Church, migrating into distant lands, with any due provision for their spiritual wants. The richer benefices were very commonly regarded as a suitable provision for such members of the higher families as were least fit to push their way in any profession requiring thought or labour. The abuses of plurality and non-residence were at a height, which, if not proved by statistical returns, it would now be scarcely possible to believe. In the greatest public school of the country (and I presume it may be taken as a sample of the rest) the actual teaching of Christianity was all but dead, though happily none of its forms had been surrendered. It is a retrospect full of gloom; and with all our Romanising, and all our Rationalising, what man of sense would wish to go back upon those dreary times:

"Domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna"?[16]

But between 1831 and 1840, the transformation, which had previously begun, made a progress altogether marvellous. Much was due, without doubt, to the earnest labour of individuals. Such men as Bishop Blomfield on the Bench, and Dr. Hook in the parish (and I name them only as illustrious examples), who had long been toiling with a patient but a dauntless energy, began as it were to get the upper hand. But causes of deep and general operation were also widely at work. As the French Revolution had done much to renovate Christian belief on the Continent, so the Church of England was less violently, but pretty sharply, roused by the political events which arrived in a rattling succession. In 1828, the repeal of the Test Act. In 1829, the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. In 1831-2, the agony and triumph of Reform. In 1833, the Church Temporalities Act for Ireland. There was now a general uprising of religious energy in the Church throughout the land. It saved the Church. Her condition before 1830 could not possibly have borne the scrutinising eye, which for thirty years past has been turned upon our institutions. Her rank corruptions must have called down the avenging arm. But it was arrested just in time.

It would be difficult to give a just and full idea of the beneficial changes which were either accomplished or begun during this notable decade of years. They embraced alike formal, official movements, of a nature to strike the general eye, and those local improvements in detail, which singly are known only in each neighbourhood, but which unitedly transform the face of a country. Laws were passed to repress gross abuses, and the altering spirit of the clergy seconded and even outstripped the laws. The outward face of divine worship began to be renovated, and the shameful condition of the sacred fabrics was rapidly amended, with such a tide of public approval as overflowed all the barriers of party and of sect, and speedily found its manifestations even in the seceding communions. There is no reason to doubt that at that time at least, and before such changes had become too decidedly the fashion, the outward embellishment of churches, and the greater decency and order of services, answered to, and sprang from, a call within, and proved a less unworthy conception of the sublime idea of Christian worship. The missionary arm of the Church began to exhibit a vigour wholly unknown to former years. Noble efforts were made, under the auspices of the chief bishops of the Church, to provide for the unsatisfied spiritual wants of the metropolis. The great scheme of the Colonial Episcopate was founded; and, in its outset, led to such a development of apostolic zeal and self-denial as could not but assist, by a powerful reaction, the domestic progress. The tone of public schools (on one of which Arnold was now spending his noble energies) and of universities, was steadily yet rapidly raised. The greatest change of all was within the body of the clergy.[17] A devoted piety and an unworldly life, which had been the rare exceptions, became visibly from year to year more and more the rule. The spectacle, as a whole, was like what we are told of a Russian spring: when, after long months of rigid cold, almost in a day the snow dissolves, the ice breaks up and is borne away, and the whole earth is covered with a rush of verdure. These were bright and happy days for the Church of England. She seemed, or seemed to seem, as a Church recalling the descriptions of Holy Writ; to be "beautiful as the sun which goeth forth in his might,"[18] "and terrible as an army with banners."[19]

Of this great renovating movement, a large part centred in Oxford. At the time, indeed, when I resided there, from 1828 to 1831, no sign of it had yet appeared. A steady, clear, but dry Anglican orthodoxy bore sway, and frowned, this way or that, on the first indication of any tendency to diverge from the beaten path. Dr. Pusey was, at that time, revered, indeed, for his piety and charity, no less than admired for his learning and talents, but suspected (I believe) of sympathy with the German theology, in which he was known to be profoundly versed. Dr. Newman was thought to have about him the flavour of what, he has now told the world, were the opinions he had derived in youth from the works of Thomas Scott. Mr. Keble, the "sweet singer of Israel," and a true saint, if this generation has seen one, did not reside in Oxford.[20] The chief Chair of Theology had been occupied by Bishop Lloyd, the old tutor and the attached and intimate friend of Peel: a man of powerful talents, and of a character both winning and decided, who, had his life been spared, might have acted powerfully for good on the fortunes of the Church of England, by guiding the energetic influences which his teaching had done much to form. But he had been hurried away in 1829 by an early death: and Dr. Whately, who was also, in his own way, a known power in the University, was in 1830 induced to accept the Archbishopric of Dublin. There was nothing at that time in the theology, or in the religious life, of the University to indicate what was to come. But when, shortly afterwards, the great heart of England began to beat with the quickened pulsations of a more energetic religious life, it was in Oxford that the stroke was most distinct and loud. An extraordinary change appeared to pass upon the spirit of the place. I believe it would be a moderate estimate to say that much beyond one half of the very flower of its youth chose the profession of Holy Orders, while an impression scarcely less deep seemed to be stamped upon a large portion of its lay pupils. I doubt whether at any period of its existence, either since the Reformation, or perhaps before it, the Church of England had reaped from either University, in so short a time, so rich a harvest. At Cambridge a similar lifting up of heart and mind seems to have been going on; and numbers of persons of my own generation, who at their public schools had been careless and thoughtless like the rest, appeared in their early manhood as soldiers of Christ, and ministers to the wants of His people, worthy, I believe, as far as man can be worthy, through their zeal, devotion, powers of mind, and attainments, of their high vocation. It was not then foreseen what storms were about to rise. Not only in Oxford, but in England, during the years to which I refer, party spirit within the Church was reduced to a low ebb. Indiscretions there might be, but authority did not take alarm: it smiled rather, on the contrary, on what was thought to be in the main a recurrence both to first principles and to forgotten obligations. Purity, unity, and energy seemed, as three fair sisters hand in hand, to advance together. Such a state of things was eminently suited to act on impressible and sanguine minds. I, for one, formed a completely false estimate of what was about to happen; and believed that the Church of England, through the medium of a regenerated clergy and an intelligent and attached laity, would not only hold her ground, but would even in great part probably revive the love and the allegiance both of the masses who were wholly falling away from religious observances, and of those large and powerful nonconforming bodies, the existence of which was supposed to have no other cause than the neglect of its duties by the National Church, which had long left the people as sheep without a shepherd.

And surely it would have required either a deeply saturnine or a marvellously prophetic mind to foretell that, in ten or twelve more years, that powerful and distinguished generation of clergy would be broken up: that at least a moiety of the most gifted sons, whom Oxford had reared for the service of the Church of England, would be hurling at her head the hottest bolts of the Vatican: that, with their deviation on the one side, there would arise a not less convulsive rationalistic movement on the other; and that the natural consequences would be developed in endless contention and estrangement, and in suspicions worse than either, because even less accessible, and even more intractable. Since that time, the Church of England may be said to have bled at every pore; and at this hour it seems occasionally to quiver to its very base. And yet, all the while, the religious life throbs more and more powerfully within her. Shorn of what may be called the romance and poetry of her revival, she abates nothing of her toil; and in the midst of every sort of partial indiscretion and extravagance, her great office in the care of souls is, from year to year, less and less imperfectly discharged. But the idea of asserting on her part those exclusive claims, which become positively unjust in a divided country governed on popular principles, has been abandoned by all parties in the State.

There was an error not less serious in my estimate of English Nonconformity. I remember the astonishment with which at some period,--I think in 1851-2,--after ascertaining the vast addition which had been made to the number of churches in the country, I discovered that the multiplication of chapels, among those not belonging to the Church of England, had been more rapid still. But besides the immense extension of its material and pastoral organisation, English Nonconformity (in general) appears now to have founded itself on a principle of its own, which forbids the alliance of the civil power with religion in any particular form or forms. I do not embrace that principle. But I must observe, in passing, that it is not less unjust than it is common to stigmatise those who hold it as "political Dissenters,"--a phrase implying that they do not dissent on religious grounds. But if they, because they object to the union of Church and State, are political Dissenters, it follows that all who uphold it are political Churchmen.

The entire miscalculation which I have now endeavoured to describe of the religious state and prospects of the country, was combined with a view of the relative position of governors and governed, since greatly modified; and the two lay at the root of my error. These two causes led me into the excess of recommending the continued maintenance of a theory which was impracticable, and which, if it could have been enforced, would have been, under the circumstances of the country, less than just. For I never held that a National Church should be permanently maintained except for the nation,--I mean either for the whole of it or, at least, for the greater part, with some kind of real concurrence or general acquiescence from the remainder.

Against the proposals of my book, Lord Macaulay had set up a theory of his own.[21]

"That we may give Mr. Gladstone his revenge, we will state concisely our own views respecting the alliance of Church and State....

"We consider the primary end of Government as a purely temporal end, the protection of the persons and property of men.

"We think that Government, like every other contrivance of human wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end best, when it is constructed with a single view to that end....

"Government is not an institution for the propagation of religion, any more than St. George's Hospital is an institution for the propagation of religion. And the most absurd and pernicious consequences would follow if Government should pursue as its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary end: though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a Government which considers the religious instruction of the people as a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will we think be likely to do much good and little harm."

These sentences, I think, give a fair view of Lord Macaulay's philosophy of Church Establishments. It has all the clearness and precision that might be expected from him. But I own myself unable to accept it as it stands. I presume to think that perhaps Lord Macaulay, like myself, made, from a limited induction, a hasty generalisation. The difference was, that his theory was right for the practical purpose of the time, while mine was wrong. Considered, however, in the abstract, that theory appears to me to claim kindred with the ethical code of another writer, not less upright, and not less limpid, so to speak, than Lord Macaulay himself, I mean Dr. Paley. And the upshot of it may be comprised in three words: Government is police. All other functions, except those of police proper, are the accidents of its existence. As if a man should say to his friend when in the country, "I am going up to town; can I take anything for you?" So the State, while busy about protecting life and property, will allow its officer of police to perform any useful office for the community, to instruct a wayfarer as to his road, or tell the passer by what o'clock it is, provided it does not interfere with his watching the pickpocket, or laying the strong hand upon the assassin. I doubt if it is possible to cut out, as it were, with a pair of scissors, patterns of policy, which shall solve for all time and place the great historic problem of the relation of the civil power to religion.

It seems to me that in every function of life, and in every combination with his fellow-creatures, for whatever purpose, the duties of man are limited only by his powers. It is easy to separate, in the case of a Gas Company or a Chess Club, the primary end for which it exists, from everything extraneous to that end. It is not so easy in the case of the State or of the family. If the primary end of the State is to protect life and property, so the primary end of the family is to propagate the race. But around these ends there cluster, in both cases, a group of moral purposes, variable indeed with varying circumstances, but yet inhering in the relation, and not external or merely incidental to it. The action of man in the State is moral, as truly as it is in the individual sphere; although it be limited by the fact that, as he is combined with others whose views and wills may differ from his own, the sphere of the common operations must be limited, first, to the things in which all are agreed; secondly, to the things in which, though they may not be agreed, yet equity points out, and the public sense acknowledges, that the whole should be bound by the sense of the majority.

I can hardly believe that even those, including as they do so many men both upright and able, who now contend on principle for the separation of the Church from the State, are so determined to exalt their theorem to the place of an universal truth, that they ask us to condemn the whole of that process, by which, as the Gospel spread itself through the civilised world, Christianity became incorporated with the action of civil authority, and with the framework of public law. In the course of human history, indeed, we perceive little of unmixed evil, and far less of universal good. It is not difficult to discern that (in the language of Bishop Heber) as the world became Christian, Christianity became worldly; that the average tone of a system, which embraces in its wide-spreading arms the entire community, is almost of necessity lower than that of a society which, if large, is still private, and into which no man enters except by his own deliberate choice, very possibly even at the cost of much personal and temporal detriment. But Christ died for the race: and those who notice the limited progress of conversion in the world until alliance with the civil authority gave to His religion a wider access to the attention of mankind, may be inclined to doubt whether, without that alliance, its immeasurable and inestimable social results would ever have been attained. Allowing for all that may be justly urged against the danger of mixing secular motives with religious administration, and above all against the intrusion of force into the domain of thought; I for one cannot desire that Constantine in the government of the empire, that Justinian in the formation of its code of laws, or that Charlemagne in refounding society, or that Elizabeth in the crisis of the English Reformation, should have acted on the principle that the State and the Church in themselves are separate or alien powers, incapable of coalition.