Part 2

Never was there a more instructive comment on the blessings of separation, which we are so often invited by separatists to admire. Why does not Dissent forbear to assert its ordinary self, and help to win the world to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, without this vain contest about machinery? Why does not the Church? is the Dissenter's answer. What an answer for a Christian! We are to defer giving up our ordinary self until our neighbour shall have given up his; that is, we are never to give it up at all. But I will answer the question on more mundane grounds. Why are we to be more blamed than the Church for the strife arising out of our rival existences? asks the Dissenter. Because the Church cannot help existing, and you can! Therefore, _contra ecclesiam nemo pacificus_, as Baxter himself said in his better moments. Because the Church is there; because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are sure to come with breaking off from her; and because strife, jealousy, and self-assertion are the very miseries against which Christianity is firstly levelled;--therefore we say that a Christian is inexcusable in breaking with the Church, except for a departure from the primal ground of her foundation: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_.

The clergyman,--poor soul!--cannot help being the parson of the parish. He is there like the magistrate; he is a national officer with an appointed function. If one or two voluntary performers, dissatisfied with the magisterial system, were to set themselves up in each parish of the country, called themselves magistrates, drew a certain number of people to their own way of thinking, tried differences and gave sentences among their people in the best fashion they could, why, probably the established magistrate would not much like it, the leading people in the parish would not much like it, and the newcomers would have mortifications and social estrangements to endure. Probably the established magistrate would call them interlopers; probably he would count them amongst his difficulties. On the side of the newcomers 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' as Mr. Winterbotham says, would thus be created. The public interest would suffer from the ill blood and confusion prevailing. The established magistrate might naturally say that the newcomers brought the strife and disturbance with them. But who would not smile at these lambs answering: 'Away with that wolf the established magistrate, and all ground for jealousy and quarrel between us will disappear!'

And it is a grievance that the clergyman talks of Dissent as one of the spiritual hindrances in his parish, and desires to get rid of it! Why, by Mr. Winterbotham's own showing, the Dissenters live 'in a spirit of watchful jealousy,' and this temper is as much a spiritual hindrance,--nay, in the view of Christianity it is even a more direct spiritual hindrance,--than drunkenness or loose living. Christianity is, first and above all, a temper, a disposition; and a disposition just the opposite to 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' Once admit a spirit of watchful jealousy, and Christianity has lost its virtue; it is impotent. All the other vices it was meant to keep out may rush in. Where there is jealousy and strife among you, asks St. Paul, _are ye not carnal_?[7] are ye not still in bondage to your mere lower selves? But from this bondage Christianity was meant to free us; therefore, says he, get rid of what causes divisions, and strife, and 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' 'I exhort you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be not divisions among you, but that ye all be perfectly joined in the same mind and the same judgment.'[8]

[Footnote 7: I _Cor._, iii, 3.]

[Footnote 8: I _Cor._, i, 10.]

Well, but why, says the Dissenting minister, is the clergyman to impress St. Paul's words upon me rather than I upon the clergyman? Because the clergyman is the one minister of Christ in the parish who did not invent himself, who cannot help existing. He is not asserting his ordinary self by being there; he is placed there on public duty. He is charged with teaching the lesson of Christianity, and the head and front of this lesson is to get rid of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' which, according to the Dissenter's own showing, is the very spirit which accompanies Dissent. How he is to get rid of it, how he is to win souls to the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, it is for his own conscience to tell him. Probably he will best do it by never speaking against Dissent at all, by treating Dissenters with perfect cordiality and as if there was not a point of dispute between them. But that, so long as he exists, it is his duty to get rid of it, to win souls to the unity which is its opposite, is clear. It is not the Bishop of Winchester[9] who classes Dissent, full of 'a spirit of watchful jealousy,' along with spiritual hindrances like beer-shops,--a pollution of the spirit along with pollutions of the flesh;[10] it is St. Paul. It is not the clergyman who is chargeable with wishing to 'stamp out' this spirit; it is the Christian religion.

[Footnote 9: The late Bishop Wilberforce.]

[Footnote 10: I _Cor._, vii, 1.]

But what is to prevent the Dissenting minister from being joined with the clergyman in the same public function, and being his partner instead of his rival? Episcopal ordination.[11] If I leave the service of a private company, and enter the public service, I receive admission at the hands of the public officer designated to give it me. Sentiment and the historic sense, to say nothing of the religious feeling, will certainly put more into ordination than this, though not precisely what the Bishop of Winchester, perhaps, puts; this which we have laid down, however, is really all which the law of the land puts there. A bishop is a public officer. Why should I trouble myself about the name his office bears? The name of his office cannot affect the service or my labour in it. Ah, but, says Mr. Winterbotham, he holds opinions which I do not share about the sort of character he confers upon me! What can that matter, unless he compels you, too, to profess the same opinions, or refuses you admission if you do not? But I should be joined in the ministry with men who hold opinions which I do not share! What does that matter either, unless they compel you also to hold these opinions, as the price of your being allowed to work on the foundation: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_? To recur to our old parallel. It is as if a man who desired the office of a public magistrate and who was fitted for it, were to hold off because he had to receive institution from a Lord-Lieutenant, and he did not like the title of Lord-Lieutenant; or because the Lord-Lieutenant who was to institute him had a fancy about some occult quality which he conferred on him at institution; or because he would find himself, when he was instituted, one of a body of magistrates of whom many had notions which he thought irrational. The office itself, and his own power to fill it usefully, is all which really matters to him.

[Footnote 11: It has been inferred from what is here said that we propose to make re-ordination a condition of admitting Dissenting ministers to the ministry of the Church of England. Elsewhere I have said how undesirable it seems to impose this condition; and to what respectful treatment and fair and equal terms, in case of reunion, Protestant Nonconformity is, in my opinion, entitled. See the Preface to _Culture and Anarchy_. What is said in the text is directed simply against the objection to episcopal ordination as something wrong in itself and a ground for schism.]

The Bishop of Winchester believes in apostolical succession;--therefore there must be Dissenters. Mr. Liddon asserts the real presence;--therefore there must be Dissenters. Mr. Mackonochie is a ritualist;--therefore there must be Dissenters. But the Bishop of Winchester cannot, and does not, exclude from the ministry of the Church of England those who do not believe in apostolical succession; and surely not even that acute and accomplished personage is such a magician, that he can make a Puritan believe in apostolical succession merely by believing in it himself! In the same way, eloquent as is Mr. Liddon, and devoted as is Mr. Mackonochie, their gifts cannot yield them the art of so swaying a brother clergyman's spirit as to make him admit the real presence against his conviction, or practise ritualism against his will; and official, material control over him, or power of stipulating what he shall admit or practise, they have absolutely none.

But can anything more tend to make the Church what the Puritans reproach it with being,--a mere lump of sacerdotalism and ritualism,--than if the Puritans, who are free to come into it with their disregard of sacerdotalism and ritualism and so to leaven it, refuse to come in, and leave it wholly to the sacerdotalists and ritualists? What can be harder upon the laity of the national Church, what so inconsiderate of the national good and advantage, as to leave us at the mercy of one single element in the Church, and deny us just the elements fit to mix with this element and to improve it?

The current doctrines of apostolical succession and the real presence seem to us unsound and unedifying. To be sure, so does the current doctrine of imputed righteousness. For us, sacerdotalism and solifidianism stand both on the same footing; they are, both of them, erroneous human developments. But as in the ideas and practice of sacerdotalists or ritualists there is much which seems to us of value, and of great use to the Church, so, too, in the ideas and practice of Nonconformists there is very much which we value. To take points only that are beyond controversy: they have cultivated the gift of preaching much more than the clergy, and their union with the Church would renovate and immensely amend Church preaching. They would certainly bring with them, if they came back into the Church, some use of what they call _free prayer_; to which, if at present they give far too much place, it is yet to be regretted that the Church gives no place at all. Lastly, if the body of British Protestant Dissenters is in the main, as it undoubtedly is, the Church of the Philistines, nevertheless there could come nothing but health and strength from blending this body with the Establishment, of which the very weakness and danger is that it tends, as we have formerly said, to be an appendage to the Barbarians.

So long as the Puritans thought that the essence of Christianity was their doctrine of predestination or of justification, it was natural that they should stand out, at any cost, for this essence. That is why, when the 'Zeit-Geist' and the general movement of men's religious ideas is beginning to reveal that the Puritan gospel is not the essence of Christianity, we have been desirous to spread this revelation to the best of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular exposition to help it forward. Because, when once it is clear that the essence of Christianity is not Puritan solifidianism, it can hardly long be maintained that the essence of Christianity is Puritan church-order. When once the way is made clear, by removing the solifidian heresy, to look and see what the essence of Christianity really is, it cannot but soon force itself upon our minds that the essence of Christianity is something not very far, at any rate, from this: _Grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Jesus Christ_. This is the more particular description of that general ground, already laid down, of the Christian Church's existence: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_. If this general ground, particularised in the way above given, is not 'the sincere milk' of the evangelical word, it is, at all events, something very like it. And matters of machinery and outward form, like church-order, have not only nothing essentially to do with the sincere milk of Christianity, but are the very matters about which this sincere milk should make us easy and yielding.

If there were no national and historic form of church-order in possession, a genuine Christian would regret having to spend time and thought in shaping one, in having so to encumber himself with serving, to busy himself so much about a frame for his religious life as well as about the contents of the frame. After all, a man has only a certain sum of force to spend; and if he takes a quantity of it for outward things, he has so much the less left for inward things. It is hardly to be believed, how much larger a space the mere affairs of his denomination fill in the time and thoughts of a Dissenter, than in the time and thoughts of a Churchman. Now all machinery-work of this kind is, to a man filled with a real love of the essence of Christianity, something of a hindrance to him in what he most wants to be at, something of a concession to his ordinary self. When an established and historic form exists, such a man should be, therefore, disposed to use it and comply with it. But,--as if it were not satisfied with proving its unprofitableness by corroding us with jealousy and so robbing us of the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, which is our mainstay,--political Dissent, Dissent for the sake of church-polity and church-management, proves it, too, by stimulating our ordinary self through over-care for what flatters this. In fact, what is it that the everyday, middle-class Philistine,--not the rare flower of the Dissenters but the common staple,--finds so attractive in Dissent? Is it not, as to discipline, that his self-importance is fomented by the fuss, bustle, and partisanship of a private sect, instead of being lost in the greatness of a public body? As to worship, is it not that his taste is pleased by usages and words that come down to _him_, instead of drawing him up to _them_; by services which reflect, instead of the culture of great men of religious genius, the crude culture of himself and his fellows? And as to doctrine, is it not that his mind is pleased at hearing no opinion but its own, by having all disputed points taken for granted in its own favour, by being urged to no return upon itself, no development? And what is all this but the very feeding and stimulating of our ordinary self, instead of the annulling of it? No doubt it is natural; to indulge our ordinary self is the most natural thing in the world. But Christianity is not natural; and if the flower of Christianity be the grace and peace which comes of annulling our ordinary self, then to this flower it is fatal.

So that if, in order to gratify in the Dissenters one of the two faults against which Christianity is chiefly aimed, a jealous, contentious spirit, we were to sweep away our national and historic form of religion, and were all to tinker at our own forms, we should then just be flattering the other chief fault which Christianity came to cure, and serving our ordinary self instead of annulling it. What a happy furtherance to religion!

For my part, so far as the best of the Nonconformist ministers are concerned, of whom I know something, I disbelieve Mr. Winterbotham's hideous confession. I imagine they are very little pleased with him for making it. I do not believe that they, at any rate, live in the ulcerated condition he describes, fretting with watchful jealousy. I believe they have other things to think of. But why? Because they are men of genius and character, who react against the harmful influences of the position in which they find themselves placed, and surmount its obvious dangers. But their genius and character might serve them still better if they were placed in a less trying position. And the rank and file of their ministers and people do yield to the influences of their position. Of these, Mr. Winterbotham's picture is perfectly true. They are more and more jealous for their separate organisation, pleased with the bustle and self-importance which its magnitude brings them, irritably alive to whatever reduces or effaces it; bent, in short, on affirming their ordinary selves. However much the chiefs may feel the truth of modern ideas, may grow moderate, may perceive the effects of religious separatism upon worship and doctrine, they will probably avail little or nothing; the head will be overpowered and out-clamoured by the tail. The Wesleyans, who used always to refuse to call themselves Dissenters, whose best men still shrink from the name, the Wesleyans, a wing of the Church, founded for godliness, the Wesleyans more and more, with their very growth as a separate denomination, feel the secular ambition of being great as a denomination, of being effaced by nobody, of giving contentment to this self-importance, of indulging this ordinary self; and I should not wonder if within twenty years they were keen political Dissenters. A triumph of Puritanism is abundantly possible; we have never denied it. What we, whose greatest care is neither for the Church nor for Puritanism, but for human perfection, what we labour to show is, that the triumph of Puritanism will be the triumph of our ordinary self, not the triumph of Christianity; and that the type of Hebraism it will establish is one in which neither general human perfection, nor yet Hebraism itself, can truly find their account.

Elsewhere we have drawn out a distinction between Hebraism and Hellenism,[12]--between the tendency and powers that carry us towards doing, and the tendency and powers that carry us towards perceiving and knowing. Hebraism, we said, has long been overwhelmingly preponderant with us. The sacred book which we call the Word of God, and which most of us study far more than any other book, serves Hebraism. Moses Hebraises, David Hebraises, Isaiah Hebraises, Paul Hebraises, John Hebraises. Jesus Christ himself is, as St. Paul truly styles him, 'a minister _of the circumcision_ to the truth of God.'[13] That is, it is by our powers of moral action, and through the perfecting of these, that Christ leads us 'to be partakers of the divine nature.'[14] By far our chief machinery for spiritual purposes has the like aim and character. Throughout Europe this is so. But, to speak of ourselves only, the Archbishop of Canterbury is an agent of Hebraism, the Archbishop of York is an agent of Hebraism, Archbishop Manning is an agent of Hebraism, the President of the Wesleyan Conference is an agent of Hebraism, all the body of the Church clergy and Dissenting ministers are agents of Hebraism. Now, we have seen how we are beginning visibly to suffer harm from attending in this one-sided way to Hebraism, and how we are called to develop ourselves more in our totality, on our perceptive and intelligential side as well as on our moral side. If it is said that this is a very hard matter, and that man cannot well do more than one thing at a time, the answer is that here is the very sign and condition of each new stage of spiritual progress,--_increase of task_. The more we grow, the greater is the task which is given us. This is the law of man's nature and of his spirit's history. The powers we have developed at our old task enable us to attempt a new one; and this, again, brings with it a new increase of powers.

[Footnote 12: See _Culture and Anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. iv.]

[Footnote 13: _Romans_, xv, 8.]

[Footnote 14: II _Peter_, i, 4.]

Hebraism strikes too exclusively upon one string in us. Hellenism does not address itself with serious energy enough to morals and righteousness. For our totality, for our general perfection, we need to unite the two; now the two are easily at variance. In their lower forms they are irreconcileably at variance; only when each of them is at its best, is their harmony possible. Hebraism at its best is beauty and charm; Hellenism at its best is also beauty and charm. As such they can unite; as anything short of this, each of them, they are at discord, and their separation must continue. The flower of Hellenism is a kind of amiable grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth; the flower of Christianity is grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ. Both are eminently _humane_, and for complete human perfection both are required; the second being the perfection of that side in us which is moral and acts, the first, of that side in us which is intelligential and perceives and knows.

But lower forms of Hebraism and Hellenism tend always to make their appearance, and to strive to establish themselves. On one of these forms of Hebraism we have been commenting;--a form which had its first origin, no doubt, in that body of impulses whereby we Hebraise, but which lands us at last, not in the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Christ, but in 'a spirit of watchful jealousy.' We have to thank Mr. Winterbotham for fixing our attention on it; but we prefer to name it from an eminent and able man who is well known as the earnest apostle of the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion, and to call it _Mialism_. Mialism is a sub-form of Hebraism, and itself a somewhat spurious and degenerated form; but this sub-form always tends to degenerate into forms lower yet, and yet more unworthy of the ideal flower of Hebraism. In one of these its further stages we have formerly traced it, and we need not enlarge on them here.[15]

[Footnote 15: See _Culture and Anarchy_ (2nd edition), chap. ii.]

Hellenism, in the same way, has its more or less spurious and degenerated sub-forms, products which may be at once known as degenerations by their deflexion from what we have marked as the flower of Hellenism,--'a kind of humane grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth.' And from whom can we more properly derive a general name for these degenerations, than from that distinguished man, who, by his intelligence and accomplishments, is in many respects so admirable and so truly Hellenic, but whom his dislike for 'the dominant sect,' as he calls the Church of England,--the Church of England, in many aspects so beautiful, calming, and attaching,--seems to transport with an almost feminine vehemence of irritation? What can we so fitly name the somewhat degenerated and inadequate form of Hellenism as _Millism_? This is the Hellenic or Hellenistic counterpart of Mialism; and like Mialism it has its further degenerations, in which it is still less commendable than in its first form. For instance, what in Mr. Mill is but a yielding to a spirit of irritable injustice, goes on and worsens in some of his disciples, till it becomes a sort of mere blatancy and truculent hardness in certain Millites, in whom there appears scarcely anything that is truly sound or Hellenic at all.

Mankind, however, must needs draw, however slowly, towards its perfection; and our only real perfection is our totality. Mialism and Millism we may see playing into one another's hands, and apparently acting together; but, so long as these lower forms of Hellenism and Hebraism prevail, the real union between Hellenism and Hebraism can never be accomplished, and our totality is still as far off as ever. Unhappy and unquiet alternations of ascendency between Hebraism and Hellenism are all that we shall see;--at one time, the indestructible religious experience of mankind asserting itself blindly; at another, a revulsion of the intellect of mankind from this experience, because of the audacious assumptions and gross inaccuracies with which men's account of it is intermingled.