Part 5

I hasten to my conclusion too long delayed, but a word must still be added on a subject of not less consequence than any I have yet touched on. You say, "Churchmen will to a very great extent indeed find relief from the dilemma in a third course, viz. _co-operation with the political forces_, which, year by year, more and more steadily are working towards disestablishment. This is not a menace; it is the statement of a simple fact." I am bound to believe, and I do believe, you do not intend this as a menace; but such a statement of a future course to depend on a contingency cannot but read very much like one--and against your intention it may well be understood as such. You do not say that _you_ are one who will co-operate with the political party which now seeks to disestablish the Church in accomplishing its purpose, and I do not suppose you ever will. But on behalf, not so much of the clergy as of the laity--on behalf of the worshippers in our churches, of the sick to be visited at home--of the poor in their cottages, of our children in their schools--of our society in general, I entreat those of the clergy who are now feeling the most acutely in this matter, not to suffer their minds to be so absorbed by the present grievance as to take no thought of the evils of disestablishment. I am not foolishly blind to the faults of the clergy--indeed I fear I am sometimes censorious in regard to them--and some of their faults I do think may be referable to Establishment; the possession of house and land, and a sort of independence of their parishioners, in some cases seems to tend to secularity. I regret sometimes their partisanship at elections, their speeches at public dinners. But what good gift of God is not liable to abuse from men? Taken as a whole, we have owed, and we do owe, under Him, to our Established clergy more than we can ever repay, much of it rendered possible by their Establishment. I may refer, and now with special force, to Education--their services in this respect no one denies--and but for Establishment these, I think, could not have been so effectively and systematically rendered. We are now in a great crisis as to this all-important matter. Concurring, as I do heartily, in the praise which has been bestowed on Mr. Forster, and expecting that his great and arduous office will be discharged with perfect impartiality by him, and with a just sense of how much is due to the clergy in this respect, still it cannot be denied that the powers conferred by the Legislature on the holder of it are alarmingly great, even if necessary; and who shall say in what a spirit they may be exercised by his successor? For the general upholding of religious education, in emergencies not improbable, to whom can we look in general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? I speak now specially in regard to parishes such as I am most familiar with, in agricultural districts, small, not largely endowed, sometimes without resident gentry, and with the land occupied by rack-renting farmers, indifferent or hostile to education.

In what Sir John Coleridge urges against the fatal step of welcoming disestablishment under an impatient sense of injustice we need not say that we concur most earnestly. But it cannot be too seriously considered by those who see the mischief of disestablishment, that as Sir John Coleridge also says, the English Churrh is, in one sense, a divided one; and that to pursue a policy of humiliating and crippling one of its great parties must at last bring mischief. The position of the High Church party is a remarkable one. It has had more against it than its rivals; yet it is probably the strongest of them all. It is said, probably with reason, to be the unpopular party. It has been the stock object of abuse and sarcasm with a large portion of the press. It has been equally obnoxious to Radical small shopkeepers and "true blue" farmers and their squires. It has been mobbed in churches and censured in Parliament. Things have gone against it, almost uniformly, before the tribunals. And unfortunately it cannot be said that it has been without its full share of folly and extravagance in some of its members. And yet it is the party which has grown; which has drawn some of its antagonists to itself, and has reacted on the ideas and habits of others; its members have gradually, as a matter of course, risen into important post and power. And it is to be noticed that, as a party, it has been the most tolerant. All parties are in their nature intolerant; none more so, where critical points arise, than Liberal ones. But in spite of the Dean of Westminster's surprise at High Churchmen claiming to be tolerant, we still think that, in the first place, they are really much less inclined to meddle with their neighbours than others of equally strong and deep convictions; and further, that they have become so more and more; and they have accepted the lessons of their experience; they have thrown off, more than any strong religious body, the intolerance which was natural to everybody once, and have learned, better than they did at one time, to bear with what they dislike and condemn. If a party like this comes to feel itself dealt with harshly and unfairly, sacrificed to popular clamour or the animosity of inveterate and unscrupulous opponents, it is certain that we shall be in great danger.

V

MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTER ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH[7]

[7] _Guardian_, 29th October 1884.

Mr. Gladstone's Letter, read at the St. Asaph Diocesan Conference, will not have surprised those who have borne in mind his deep and unintermitted interest in the fortunes and prospects of the Church, and his habit of seeking relief from the pressure of one set of thoughts and anxieties by giving full play to his mental energies in another direction. Its composition and appearance at this moment are quite accounted for; it is a contribution to the business of the conference of his own diocese, and it was promised long before an autumn session on a great question between the two Houses was in view. Still the appearance of such a document from a person in Mr. Gladstone's position must, of course, invite attention and speculation. He may put aside the questions which the word "Disestablishment"--which was in the thesis given him to write upon--is likely to provoke--"Will it come? ought it to come? must it come? Is it near, or somewhat distant, or indefinitely remote?" On these questions he has not a word to say. But, all the same, people will naturally try to read between the lines, and to find out what was in the writer's thoughts about these questions. We cannot, however, see that there is anything to be gathered from the Letter as to the political aspect of the matter; he simply confines himself to the obvious lesson which passing events sufficiently bring with them, that whatever may come it is our business to be prepared.

His anxieties are characteristic. The paper shows, we think, that it has not escaped him that disestablishment, however compensated as some sanguine people hope, would be a great disaster and ruin. It would be the failure and waste to the country of noble and astonishing efforts; it would be the break-up and collapse of a great and cheap system, by which light and human kindliness and intelligence are carried to vast tracts, that without its presence must soon become as stagnant and hopeless as many of the rural _communes_ of France; the blow would at the moment cripple and disorganise the Church for its work even in the towns. But though "happily improbable," it may come; and in such a contingency, what occupies Mr. Gladstone's thoughts is, not the question whether it would be disastrous, but whether it would be disgraceful. That is the point which disturbs and distresses him--the possibility that the end of our later Church history, the end of that wonderful experiment which has been going on from the sixteenth century, with such great vicissitudes, but after every shock with increasing improvement and hope, should at last be not only failure, but failure with dishonour; and this, he says, could only come in one of two ways. It might come from the Church having sunk into sloth and death, without faith, without conscience, without love. This, if it ever was really to be feared, is not the danger before us now. Activity, conviction, energy, self-devotion, these, and not apathetic lethargy, mark the temper of our times; and they are as conspicuous in the Church as anywhere else. But these qualities, as we have had ample experience, may develop into fierce and angry conflicts. It is our internal quarrels, Mr. Gladstone thinks, that create the most serious risk of disestablishment; and it is only our quarrels, which we have not good sense and charity enough to moderate and keep within bounds, which would make it "disgraceful."

The main feature of the Letter is the historical retrospect which Mr. Gladstone gives of the long history, the long travail of the later English Church. Hardly in its first start, under the Tudors, but more and more as time went on, it instinctively, as it were, tried the great and difficult problem of Christian liberty. The Churches of the Continent, Roman and anti-Roman, were simple in their systems; only one sharply defined theology, only the disciples and representatives of one set of religious tendencies, would they allow to dwell within their borders; what was refractory and refused to harmonise was at once cast out; and for a certain time they were unvexed with internal dissensions. This, both in the case of the Roman, the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic Churches of the Continent, requires to be somewhat qualified; still, as compared with the rival schools of the English Church, Puritan and Anglican, the contrast is a true and a sharp one. Mr. Gladstone adopts from a German writer a view which is certainly not new to many in England, that "the Reformation, as a religious movement, took its shape in England, not in the sixteenth century but in the seventeenth." "It seems plain," he says, "that the great bulk of those burned under Mary were Puritans"; and he adds, what is not perhaps so capable of proof, that "under Elizabeth we have to look, with rare exceptions, among the Puritans and Recusants for an active and religious life." It was not till the Restoration, it was not till Puritanism had shown all its intolerance, all its narrowness, and all its helplessness, that the Church was able to settle the real basis and the chief lines of its reformed constitution. It is not, as Mr. Gladstone says, "a heroic history"; there is room enough in the looseness of some of its arrangements, and the incompleteness of others, for diversity of opinion and for polemical criticism. But the result, in fact, of this liberty and this incompleteness has been, not that the Church has declined lower and lower into indifference and negation, but that it has steadily mounted in successive periods to a higher level of purpose, to a higher standard of life and thought, of faith and work. Account for it as we may, with all drawbacks, with great intervals of seeming torpor, with much to be regretted and to be ashamed of, that is literally the history of the English Church since the Restoration settlement. It is not "heroic," but there are no Church annals of the same time more so, and there are none fuller of hope.

But every system has its natural and specific danger, and the specific English danger, as it is the condition of vigorous English life, is that spirit of liberty which allows and attempts to combine very divergent tendencies of opinion. "The Church of England," Mr. Gladstone thinks, "has been peculiarly liable, on the one side and on the other, both to attack and to defection, and the probable cause is to be found in the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was attempted in her case to combine divergent elements within her borders." She is still, as he says, "working out her system by experience"; and the exclusion of bitterness--even, as he says, of "savagery"--from her debates and controversies is hardly yet accomplished. There is at present, indeed, a remarkable lull, a "truce of God," which, it may be hoped, is of good omen; but we dare not be too sure that it is going to be permanent. In the meantime, those who tremble lest disestablishment should be the signal of a great break up and separation of her different parties cannot do better than meditate on Mr. Gladstone's very solemn words:--

The great maxim, _in omnibus caritas_, which is so necessary to temper all religious controversy, ought to apply with a tenfold force to the conduct of the members of the Church of England. In respect to differences among themselves they ought, of course, in the first place to remember that their right to differ is limited by the laws of the system to which they belong; but within that limit should they not also, each of them, recollect that his antagonist has something to say; that the Reformation and the counter-Reformation tendencies were, in the order of Providence, placed here in a closer juxtaposition than anywhere else in the Christian world; that a course of destiny so peculiar appears to indicate on the part of the Supreme Orderer a peculiar purpose, that not only no religious but no considerate or prudent man should run the risk of interfering with such a purpose; that the great charity which is a bounden duty everywhere in these matters should here be accompanied and upheld by two ever-striving handmaidens, a great Reverence and a great Patience.

This is true, and of deep moment to those who guide and influence thought and feeling in the Church. But further, those in whose hands the "Supreme Orderer" has placed the springs and the restraints of political movement and of change, if they recognise at all this view of the English Church, ought to feel one duty paramount in regard to it. Never was the Church, they tell us, more active and more hopeful; well then, what politicians who care for her have to see to is that she shall have _time_ to work out effectually the tendencies which are visible in her now more than at any period of her history--that combination which Mr. Gladstone wishes for, of the deepest individual faith and energy, with forbearance and conciliation and the desire for peace. She has a right to claim from English rulers that she should have time to let these things work and bear fruit; if she has lost time before, she never was so manifestly in earnest in trying to make up for it as now. It is not talking, but working together, which brings different minds and tempers to understand one another's divergences; and it is this disposition to work together which shows itself and is growing now. But it needs time. What the Church has a right to ask from the arbiters of her temporal and political position in the country, if that is ultimately and inevitably to be changed, is that nothing precipitate, nothing impatient, should be done; that she should have time adequately to develop and fulfil what she now alone among Christian communities seems in a position to attempt.

VI

DISENDOWMENT[8]

[8] _Guardian_, 14th October 1885.

This generation has seen no such momentous change as that which has suddenly appeared to be at our very doors, and which people speak of as disestablishment. The word was only invented a few years ago, and was sneered at as a barbarism, worthy of the unpractical folly which it was coined to express. It has been bandied about a good deal lately, sometimes _de coeur léger_; and within the last six months it has assumed the substance and the weight of a formidable probability. Other changes, more or less serious, are awaiting us in the approaching future; but they are encompassed with many uncertainties, and all forecasts of their working are necessarily very doubtful. About this there is an almost brutal clearness and simplicity, as to what it means, as to what is intended by those who have pushed it into prominence, and as to what will follow from their having their way.

Disestablishment has really come to mean, in the mouth of friends and foes, simple disendowment. It is well that the question should be set in its true terms, without being confused with vague and less important issues. It is not very easy to say what disestablishment by itself would involve, except the disappearance of Bishops from the Upper House, or the presence of other religious dignitaries, with equal rank and rights, alongside of them. Questions of patronage and ecclesiastical law might be difficult to settle; but otherwise a statute of mere disestablishment, not easy indeed to formulate, would leave the Church in the eyes of the country very much what it found it. Perhaps "My lord" might be more widely dropped in addressing Bishops; but otherwise, the aspect of the Church, its daily work, its organisations, would remain the same, and it would depend on the Church itself whether the consideration paid to it continues what it has been; whether it shall be diminished or increased. The privilege of being publicly recognised with special marks of honour by the State has been dearly paid for by the claim which the State has always, and sometimes unscrupulously, insisted on, of making the true interests of the Church subservient to its own passing necessities.

But there is no haziness about the meaning of disendowment. Property is a tangible thing, and is subject to the four rules of arithmetic, and ultimately to the force of the strong arm. When you talk of disendowment, you talk of taking from the Church, not honour or privilege or influence, but visible things, to be measured and counted and pointed to, which now belong to it and which you want to belong to some one else. They belong to individuals because the individuals belong to a great body. There are, of course, many people who do not believe that such a body exists; or that if it does, it has been called into being and exists simply by the act of the State, like the army, and, like the army, liable to be disbanded by its master. But that is a view resting on a philosophical theory of a purely subjective character; it is as little the historical or legal view as it is the theological view. We have not yet lost our right in the nineteenth century to think of the Church of England as a continuous, historic, religious society, bound by ties which, however strained, are still unbroken with that vast Christendom from which as a matter of fact it sprung, and still, in spite of all differences, external and internal, and by force of its traditions and institutions, as truly one body as anything can be on earth. To this Church, this body, by right which at present is absolutely unquestionable, property belongs; property has been given from time immemorial down to yesterday. This property, in its bulk, with whatever abatements and allowances, it is intended to take from the Church. This is disendowment, and this is what is before us.

It is well to realise as well as we can what is inevitably involved in this vast and, in modern England, unexampled change, which we are sometimes invited to view with philosophic calmness or resignation, as the unavoidable drift of the current of modern thought, or still more cheerfully to welcome, as the beginning of a new era in the prosperity and strength of the Church as a religious institution. We are entreated to be of good cheer. The Church will be more free; it will no longer be mixed up with sordid money matters and unpopular payments; it will no longer have the discredit of State control; the rights of the laity will come up and a blow will be struck at clericalism. With all our machinery shattered and ruined we shall be thrown more on individual energy and spontaneous originality of effort. Our new poverty will spur us into zeal. Above all, the Church will be delivered from the temptation, incident to wealth, of sticking to abuses for the sake of gold; of shrinking from principle and justice and enthusiasm, out of fear of worldly loss. It will no longer be a place for drones and hirelings. It is very kind of the revolutionists to wish all this good to the Church, though if the Church is so bad as to need all these good wishes for its improvement, it would be more consistent, and perhaps less cynical, to wish it ruined altogether. Yet even if the Church were likely to thrive better on no bread, there are reasons of public morality why it should not be robbed. But these prophecies and forecasts really belong to a sphere far removed from the mental activity of those who so easily indulge in them. These excellent persons are hardly fitted by habit and feeling to be judges of the probable course of Divine Providence, or the development of new religious energies and spiritual tendencies in a suddenly impoverished body. What they can foresee, and what we can foresee also is, that these _tabulae novae_ will be a great blow to the Church. They mean that, and that we understand.

It is idle to talk as if it was to be no blow to the Church. The confiscation of Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Church property would be a real blow to Wesleyan or Roman Catholic interests; and in proportion as the body is greater the effects of the blow must be heavier and more signal. It is trifling with our patience to pretend to persuade us that such a confiscation scheme as is now recommended to the country would not throw the whole work of the Church into confusion and disaster, not perhaps irreparable, but certainly for the time overwhelming and perilous. People speak sometimes as if such a huge transfer of property was to be done with the stroke of a pen and the aid of a few office clerks; they forget what are the incidents of an institution which has lasted in England for more than a thousand years, and whose business extends to every aspect and degree of our very complex society from the highest to the lowest. Resources may be replaced, but for the time they must be crippled. Life may be rearranged for the new circumstances, but in the meanwhile all the ordinary assumptions have to be changed, all the ordinary channels of activity are stopped up or diverted.