BOOK ON CHURCH AND STATE
We have now followed Mr. Gladstone in his course until well on the way
in his political career, and yet he is but twenty-eight years of age.
His personal appearance in the House of Commons at this early stage of
his Parliamentary life is thus described: "Mr. Gladstone's appearance
and manners are much in his favor. He is a fine looking man. He is about
the usual height and of good figure. His countenance is mild and
pleasant, and has a highly intellectual expression. His eyes are clear
and quick. His eyebrows are dark and rather prominent. There is not a
dandy in the House but envies what Truefit would call his 'fine head of
jet-black hair.' It is always carefully parted from the crown downwards
to his brow, where it is tastefully shaded. His features are small and
regular, and his complexion must be a very unworthy witness if he does
not possess an abundant stock of health.
"Mr. Gladstone's gesture is varied, but not violent. When he rises he
generally puts both his hands behind his back, and having there suffered
them to embrace each other for a short time, he unclasps them and allows
them to drop on either side. They are not permitted to remain long in
that locality before you see them, again closed together and hanging
down before him. Their reunion is not suffered to last for any length of
time, Again a separation takes place, and now the right hand is seen
moving up and down before him. Having thus exercised it a little, he
thrusts it into the pocket of his coat, and then orders the left hand to
follow its example. Having granted them a momentary repose there, they
are again put into gentle motion, and in a few seconds they are seen
reposing _vis-a-vis_ on his breast. He moves his face and body from one
direction to another, not forgetting to bestow a liberal share of his
attention on his own party. He is always listened to with much attention
by the House, and appears to be highly respected by men of all parties.
He is a man of good business habits; of this he furnished abundant proof
when Under-Secretary for the Colonies, during the short-lived
administration of Robert Peel."
From this pen picture and other like notices of Mr. Gladstone he must,
at that time, have attained great distinction and attracted a good deal
of attention for one so young, and from that day to this he has
commanded the attention not only of the British Senate and people, but
of the world at large. And why? may we ask, unless because of his modest
manner and distinguished services, his exalted ability and moral worth.
"The House of Commons was his ground," writes Justin McCarthy. "There he
was always seen to the best advantage."
Nevertheless, Mr. Gladstone wrote with the same earnestness and ability
with which he spoke. It was early in life that he distinguished himself
as an author, as well as an orator and debater in the House of Commons.
And it was most natural for him to write upon the subject of the Church,
for not only his education led him to the consideration of such themes,
but it was within his sphere as an English statesman, for the law of the
land provided for the union of the Church and State. It was in 1838,
when he was not thirty years of age, that he wrote his first book and
stepped at once to the front rank as an author. He had ever been a
staunch defender of the Established Church and his first appearance in
literature was by a remarkable work in defense of the State Church
entitled, "The State in its Relations with the Church." The treatise is
thus dedicated: "Inscribed to the University of Oxford, tried and not
found wanting through the vicissitudes of a thousand years; in the
belief that she is providentially designed to be a fountain of
blessings, spiritual, social and intellectual, to this and other
countries, to present and future times; and in the hope that the temper
of these pages may be found not alien from her own."
This first published book of Mr. Gladstone's was due to the perception
that the _status_ of the Church, in its connection with the secular
power, was about to undergo the severe assaults of the opponents of the
Union. There was growing opposition to the recognition of the Episcopal
Church as the Church of the State and to taxation of people of other
religious beliefs for its support; and this objection was to the
recognition and support of any Church by the State. What is called the
"American idea"--the entire separation of the Church and State--or as
enunciated first by Roger Williams in 1636, in Rhode Island, that the
magistrate should have authority in civil affairs only, was becoming
more and more the doctrine of dissenters. Preparations were already
being made for attacking the national establishment of religion, and
with all the fervor springing from conviction and a deep-seated
enthusiasm, he came forward to take part in the controversy on Church
and State, and as a defender of the Established or Episcopal Church
of England.
Some of the positions assumed in this work have since been renounced as
untenable, but its ability as a whole, its breadth and its learning
could not be denied. It then created a great sensation, and has since
been widely discussed. After an examination and a defense of the theory
of the connection between Church and State, Mr. Gladstone thus
summarizes his principal reasons for the maintenance of the Church
establishment:
"Because the Government stands with us in a paternal relation to the
people, and is bound in all things not merely to consider their existing
tastes, but the capabilities and ways of their improvement; because it
has both an intrinsic competency and external means to amend and assist
their choice; because to be in accordance with God's mind and will, it
must have a religion, and because to be in accordance with its
conscience, that religion must be the truth, as held by it under the
most solemn and accumulated responsibilities; because this is the only
sanctifying and preserving principle of society, as well as to the
individual, that particular benefit, without which all others are worse
than valueless; we must, therefore, disregard the din of political
contention and the pressure of novelty and momentary motives, and in
behalf of our regard to man, as well as of our allegiance to God,
maintain among ourselves, where happily it still exists, the union
between the Church and the State."
Dr. Russell in the following quotation not only accounts for this
production from the pen, of Mr. Gladstone, but gives also an outline of
the argument:
"Naturally and profoundly religious ... Mr. Gladstone conceived that
those who professed the warmest regard for the Church of England and
posed as her most strenuous defenders, were inclined to base their
championship on mistaken grounds and to direct their efforts towards
even mischievous ends. To supply a more reasonable basis for action and
to lead this energy into more profitable channels were the objects which
he proposed to himself in his treatise of 1838. The distinctive
principle of the book was that the State had a conscience. This being
admitted, the issue was this: whether the State in its best condition,
has such a conscience as can take cognizance of religious truth and
error, and in particular whether the State of the United Kingdom at that
time was, or was not, so far in that condition as to be under an
obligation to give an active and an exclusive support to the established
religion of the country.
"The work attempted to survey the actual state of the relations between
the State and the Church; to show from history the ground which had been
defined for the National Church at the Reformation; and to inquire and
determine whether the existing state of things was worth preserving and
defending against encroachment from whatever quarter. This question it
decided emphatically in the affirmative. Faithful to logic and to its
theory, the book did not shrink from applying them to the external case
of the Irish Church. It did not disguise the difficulties of the case,
for the author was alive to the paradox which it involved. But the one
master idea of the system, that the State as it then stood was capable
in this age, as it had been in ages long gone by, of assuming
beneficially a responsibility for the inculcation of a particular
religion, carried him through all. His doctrine was that the Church, as
established by law, was to be maintained for its truth; that this was
the only principle in which it could be properly and permanently upheld;
that this principle, if good in England, was good also for Ireland; that
truth is of all possessions the most precious to the soul of man; and
that to remove this priceless treasure from the view and the reach of
the Irish people would be meanly to purchase their momentary favor at
the expense of their permanent interests, and would be a high offense
against our own sacred obligations."
We quote also from the opening chapter of the second volume of this
work, which treats of the connection subsisting between the State of the
United Kingdom and the Church of England and Ireland, and shows Mr.
Gladstone's views at that period of his life upon the relations of the
Church as affecting Ireland in particular. The passage also indicates
the changes that have taken place in his mind since the time when he
defended these principles. It also shows the style in which this
remarkable book was written and enables us to compare, not only his
opinions now and then, but his style in writing then with his style now.
"The Protestant legislature of the British Empire maintains in the
possession of the Church property of Ireland the ministers of a creed
professed, according to the parliamentary enumeration, of 1835, by
one-ninth of its population, regarded with partial favor by scarcely
another ninth, and disowned by the remaining seven. And not only does
this anomaly meet us full in view, but we have also to consider and
digest the fact, that the maintenance of this Church for near three
centuries in Ireland has been contemporaneous with a system of partial
and abusive government, varying in degree of culpability, but rarely,
until of later years, when we have been forced to look at the subject
and to feel it, to be exempted in common fairness from the reproach of
gross inattention (to say the very least) to the interests of a noble
but neglected people.
"But, however formidable at first sight the admissions, which I have no
desire to narrow or to qualify, may appear, they in no way shake the
foregoing arguments. They do not change the nature of truth and her
capability and destiny to benefit mankind. They do not relieve
Government of its responsibility, if they show that that responsibility
was once unfelt and unsatisfied. They place the legislature of the
country in the condition, as it were, of one called to do penance for
past offences; but duty remains unaltered and imperative, and abates
nothing of her demand on our services. It is undoubtedly competent, in a
constitutional view, to the Government of this country to continue the
present disposition of Church property in Ireland. It appears not too
much to assume that our imperial legislature has been qualified to take,
and has taken in point of fact, a sounder view of religious truth than
the majority of the people of Ireland in their destitute and
uninstructed state. We believe, accordingly, that that which we place
before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial
to them; and that if they know it not now, they will know it when it is
presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the
expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?
"It does, indeed, so happen that there are powerful motives on the other
side concurring with that which has here been represented as paramount.
In the first instance we are not called upon to establish a creed, but
only to maintain an existing legal settlement, when our constitutional
right is undoubted. In the second, political considerations tend
strongly to recommend that maintenance. A common form of faith binds the
Irish Protestants to ourselves, while they, upon the other hand, are
fast linked to Ireland; and thus they supply the most natural bond of
connection between the countries. But if England, by overthrowing their
Church, should weaken their moral position, they would be no longer
able, perhaps no longer willing, to counteract the desires of the
majority tending, under the direction of their leaders (however, by a
wise policy, revocable from that fatal course) to what is termed
national independence. Pride and fear, on the one hand, are therefore
bearing up against more immediate apprehension and difficulty on the
other. And with some men these may be the fundamental considerations;
but it may be doubted whether such men will not flinch in some stage of
the contest, should its aspect at any moment become unfavorable."
Of course the opponents of Mr. Gladstone's views, as set forth in his
book, strongly combated his theories. They replied that "the taxation of
the State is equal upon all persons, and has for its object their
individual, social and political welfare and safety; but that the
taxation of one man for the support of his neighbor's religion does not
come within the limits of such taxation, and is, in fact, unjust and
inequitable."
It was no easy task for Mr. Gladstone, with all his parliamentary
duties, to aspire to authorship, and carry his book through the press.
In preparing for publication he passed through all the agonies of the
author, but was nobly helped by his friend, James R. Hope, who
afterwards became Mr. Hope-Scott, Q.C., who read and criticised his
manuscript and saw the sheets through the press. Some of the letters
from the young Defender of the Faith to his friend contain much that is
worth preserving. We give some extracts.
He writes: "If you let them lie just as they are, turning the leaves one
by one, I think you will not find the manuscript very hard to make out,
though it is strangely cut in pieces and patched.
"I hope its general tendency will meet with your approval; but a point
about which I am in doubt, and to which I request your particular
attention, is, whether the work or some of the chapters are not so
deficient in clearness and arrangement as to require being absolutely
rewritten before they can with propriety be published.... Between my
eyes and my business I fear it would be hard for me to re-write, but if
I could put it into the hands of any other person who could, and who
would extract from my papers anything worth having, that might do.
"As regards myself, if I go on and publish, I shall be quite prepared to
find some persons surprised, but this, if it should prove so, cannot be
helped. I shall not knowingly exaggerate anything; and when a man
expects to be washed overboard he must tie himself with a rope to
the mast.
"I shall trust to your friendship for frankness in the discharge of your
irksome task. Pray make verbal corrections without scruple where they
are needed."
Again: "I thank you most cordially for your remarks, and I rejoice to
find you act so entirely in the spirit I had anticipated. I trust you
will continue to speak with freedom, which is the best compliment as
well as the best service you can render me.
"I think it very probable that you may find that V and VI require quite
as rigorous treatment as II, and I am very desirous to set both my mind
and eyes at liberty before I go to the Continent, which I can now hardly
expect to do before the first week in September. This interval I trust
would suffice unless you find that the other chapters stand in
equal need.
"I entirely concur with your view regarding the necessity of care and of
not grudging labor in a matter so important and so responsible as an
endeavor to raise one of the most momentous controversies which has
ever agitated human opinion,"
Again: "Thanks for your letter. I have been pretty hard at work, and
have done a good deal, especially on V. Something yet remains. I must
make inquiry about the law of excommunication.... I have made a very
stupid classification, and have now amended it; instead of faith,
discipline and practice, what I meant was the rule of faith, discipline,
and the bearing of particular doctrines upon practice.
"I send back also I and II that you may see what I have done."
The work was successfully issued in the autumn of 1838, and passed
rapidly through three editions. How it was received it would be
interesting to inquire. While his friends applauded, even his opponents
testified to the ability it displayed. On the authority of Lord
Houghton, it is said that Sir Robert Peel, the young author's political
leader, on receiving a copy as a gift from his follower, read it with
scornful curiosity, and, throwing it on the floor, exclaimed with truly
official horror: "With such a career before him, why should he write
books? That young man will ruin his fine political career if he persists
in writing trash like this." However, others gave the book a heartier
reception. Crabb Robinson writes in his diary: "I went to Wordsworth
this forenoon. He was ill in bed. I read Gladstone's book to him."
December 13, 1838, Baron Bunsen wrote: "Last night at eleven, when I
came from the Duke, Gladstone's book was lying on my table, having come
out at seven o'clock. It is a book of the time, a great event--the first
book since Burke that goes to the bottom of the vital question; far
above his party and his time. I sat up till after midnight, and this
morning I continued until I had read the whole. Gladstone is the first
man in England as to intellectual power, and he has heard higher tones
than any one else in the land." And again to Dr. Arnold he writes in
high praise of the book, but lamenting its author's entanglement in
Tractarian traditions, adds: "His genius will soon free itself entirely
and fly towards Heaven with its own wings."
Sir Henry Taylor wrote to the Poet Southey: "I am reading Gladstone's
book, which I shall send you if he has not.... His party begin to think
of him as the man who will one day be at their head and at the head of
the government, and certainly no man of his standing has yet appeared
who seems likely to stand in his way. Two wants, however, may lie across
his political career--want of robust health and want of flexibility."
Cardinal Newman wrote: "Gladstone's book, as you see, is making a
sensation." And again: "The _Times_ is again at poor Gladstone. Really I
feel as if I could do anything for him. I have not read his book, but
its consequences speak for it. Poor fellow! it is so noble a thing."
Lord Macaulay, in the _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1839, in his well-known
searching criticism, while paying high tribute to the author's talents
and character, said: "We believe that we do him no more than justice
when we say that his abilities and demeanor have obtained for him the
respect and good will of all parties.... That a young politician should,
in the intervals afforded by his Parliamentary avocations, have
constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original
theory, on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which,
abstracted from all considerations of the soundness or unsoundness of
his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We
certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrine may become
fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable
desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by
long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were
much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become."
It was in this article, by Lord Macaulay, that the mow famous words
occurred which former Conservative friends of Mr. Gladstone delight to
recall in view of his change of political opinions: "The writer of this
volume is a young man of unblemished character and of distinguished
parliamentary talents; the rising hope of those stern and unbending
Tories who follow, reluctantly and cautiously, a leader whose experience
and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and
moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be strange if Mr. Gladstone
were one of the most unpopular men in England."
Higginson writes: "The hope of the stern and unbending Tories has for
years been the unquestioned leader of English Liberals, and though he
may have been at times as unpopular as Macaulay could have predicted,
the hostility has come mainly from the ranks of those who were thus
early named as his friends. But whatever may have been Mr. Gladstone's
opinions or affiliations, whoever may have been his friends or foes, the
credit of surpassing ability has always been his."
It was remarked by Lord Macaulay that the entire theory of Mr.
Gladstone's book rested upon one great fundamental proposition, namely,
that the propagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends of
government _as_ government; and he proceeded to combat this doctrine. He
granted that government was designed to protect our persons and our
property, but declined to receive the doctrine of paternal government,
until a government be shown that loved its subjects, as a father loves
his child, and was as superior in intelligence to its subjects as a
father was to his children. Lord Macaulay then demonstrated, by
appropriate illustrations, the fallacy of the theory that every society
of individuals with any power whatever, is under obligation as such
society to profess a religion; and that there could be unity of action
in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would
naturally follow, or be justifiable in an association where Mr.
Gladstone's views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of
the circumstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the
one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The
religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to countenance
and maintain is that from which he, in his conscience, believes that the
people will receive the most benefit with the smallest mixture of evil.
It is not necessarily his own religious belief that he will select. He
may prefer the doctrines of the Church of England to those of the Church
of Scotland, but he would not force the former upon the inhabitants of
Scotland. The critic raised no objections, though he goes on to state
the conditions under which an established Church might be retained with
advantage. There are many institutions which, being set up, ought not
to be rudely pulled down. On the 14th of June, 1839, the question of
National Education was introduced in the House of Commons by the
Ministry of the day. Lord Stanley opposed the proposal of the government
in a powerful speech, and offered an amendment to this effect: "That an
address be presented to her Majesty to rescind the order in council for
constituting the proposed Board of Privy Council." The position of the
government was defended by Lord Morpeth, who, while he held his own
views respecting the doctrines of the Roman Catholics and also
respecting Unitarian tenets, he maintained that as long as the State
thought it proper to employ Roman Catholic sinews, and to finger
Unitarian gold, it could not refuse to extend to those by whom it so
profited the blessings of education. Speeches were also made by Lord
Ashley, Mr. Buller, Mr. O'Connell and others, and in the course of
debate reference was freely made to Mr. Gladstone's book on Church and
State. Finally Mr. Gladstone rose and remarked, that he would not flinch
from a word he had uttered or written upon religious subjects, and
claimed the right to contrast his principles, and to try results, in
comparison with those professed by Lord John Russell, and to ascertain
the effects of both upon the institutions of the country, so far as they
operated upon the Established Church in England, in Scotland and in
Ireland. It was at this time that a very remarkable scene was witnessed
in the House. Turning upon Mr. O'Connell, who had expressed his great
fondness for statistics, Mr. Gladstone said the use he had made of them
reminded him of an observation of Mr. Canning's, "He had a great
aversion to hear of a fact in debate, but what he most distrusted was a
figure." He then proceeded to show the inadequacy of the figures
presented by Mr. O'Connell. In reply to Lord Morpeth's declaration
concerning the duty of the State to provide education for Dissenters so
long as it fingered their gold, Mr. Gladstone said that if the State was
to be regarded as having no other functions than that of representing
the mere will of the people as to religious tenets, he admitted the
truth of his principle, but not that the State could have a conscience.
It was not his habit to revile religion in any form, but he asked what
ground there was for restricting his lordship's reasoning to
Christianity. He referred to the position held by the Jews upon this
educational question, and read to the House an extract from a recent
petition as follows: "Your petitioners feel the deepest gratitude for
the expression of her Majesty's most gracious wish that the youth of the
country should be religiously brought up, and the rights of conscience
respected, while they earnestly hope that the education of the people,
Jewish and Christian, will be sedulously connected with a due regard to
the Holy Scriptures."
Mr. Gladstone very pertinently asked how the education of the Jewish
people, who considered the New Testament an imposture, was "to be
sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures," which
consisted of the Old and New Testaments? To oblige the Jewish children
to read the latter would be directly contrary to the views of the
gentlemen on the other side of the House. He would have no child forced
to do so, but he protested against paying money from the treasury of the
State to men whose business it was to inculcate erroneous doctrines. The
debate was concluded, and the government carried its motion by a very
small majority. Two years later, when the Jews' Civil Disabilities Bill
was before Parliament, Mr. Gladstone again took the unpopular side in
the debate and opposed the Bill, which was carried in the House of
Commons but defeated in the House of Lords.
Mr. Gladstone published, in 1840, another work, entitled "Church
Principles Considered in their Results." It was supplementary to his
former book in defense of Church and State, and was written "beneath the
shades of Hagley," the house of Lord and Lady Lyttelton, and dedicated
"in token of sincere affection" to the author's life-long friend and
relative, Lord Lyttelton. He dwelt upon the leading moral
characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value
and their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, and defined
these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the
Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the
Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments.
In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the
gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no
means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and
criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding,
misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate instructor
in matters of religion, is most highly irrational." Nevertheless, "the
understanding has a great function in religion and is a medium to the
affections, and may even correct their particular impulses."
In reference to the question of the reconversion of England to
Catholicism, earnestly desired by some, Mr. Gladstone forcibly remarked:
"England, which with ill grace and ceaseless efforts at remonstrance,
endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were
but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth
which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled
like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude
which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost
her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that
principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it
refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more
surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the
unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme." Here is the
key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone's utterances in after years against
the pretentious and aspirations of Rome. The defense of the English
Church and its principles and opposition to the Church of Rome have been
unchanging features in Mr. Gladstone's religious course. But, in the
light of these early utterances, some have criticised severely that
legislative act, carried through by him in later years, by which the
Disestablishment of the Irish Church was effected. How could the author
of "The State in its Relations with the Church" become the destroyer of
the fabric of the Irish Church?
To meet these charges of inconsistency Mr. Gladstone issued, in 1868, "A
Chapter of Autobiography." The author's motives in putting forth this
chapter of autobiography were two--first, there was "the great and
glaring change" in his course of action with respect to the Established
Church of Ireland, which was not due to the eccentricity or perversion
of an individual mind, but to the silent changes going on at the very
basis of modern society. Secondly, there was danger that a great cause
then in progress might suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and
rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of the author.
He stated that "The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was
to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for
England it was good for Ireland too. But he denied that he had ever
propounded the maxim _simpliciter_ that we were to maintain the
establishment. He admitted that his opinion of the Church of Ireland was
the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his
work were in conflict with an assault upon the existence of the Irish
Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it
was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church
upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people
of Ireland, and if it could not be maintained as the truth it could not
be maintained at all."
Mr. Gladstone contended that the Irish Episcopal Church had fallen out
of harmony with the spirit and use of the time, and must be judged by a
practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding the author puts
antithetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church of
Ireland: "An establishment that does its work in much and has the hope
and likelihood of doing it in more; that has a broad and living way open
to it into the hearts of the people; that can command the services of
the present by the recollections and traditions of the past; able to
appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to
the respect or scruples of living work and service, and whose
adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that
there will be a future for them and their opinions; such an
establishment should surely be maintained.
"But an establishment that neither does nor has her hope of doing work,
except for a few, and those few the portion of the community whose
claims to public aid is the smallest of all; an establishment severed
from the mass of the people by an impassable gulf and a wall of brass;
an establishment whose good offices, could she offer them, would be
intercepted by a long, unbroken chain of painful and shameful
recollections; an establishment leaning for support upon the extraneous
aid of a State, which becomes discredited with the people by the very
act of leading it; such an establishment will do well for its own sake,
and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as soon as may be, of
gauds and trappings, and to commence a new career, in which renouncing
at once the credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, and shall
seek its strength from within and put a fearless trust in the message
that it bears."
Such, then, were the reasons that led the defender of the Irish Church
to become its assailant, "That a man should change his opinions is no
reproach to him; it is only inferior minds that are never open to
conviction."
Mr. Gladstone is a firm Anglican, as we have seen, but the following
extract from his address made at the Liverpool College, in December,
1872, gives a fine insight as to the breadth of his Christian
sentiments:
"Not less forcibly than justly, you hear much to the effect that the
divisions among Christians render it impossible to say what Christianity
is, and so destroy all certainty as to the true religion. But if the
divisions among Christians are remarkable, not less so is their unity in
the greatest doctrines that they hold. Well-nigh fifteen hundred years
have passed away since the great controversies concerning the Deity and
the person of the Redeemer were, after a long agony, determined. As
before that time, in a manner less defined but adequate for their day,
so, even since that time, amid all chance and change, more--aye, many
more--than ninety-nine in every hundred Christians have, with one
voice, confessed the Deity and incarnation of our Lord as the cardinal
and central truth of our religion. Surely there is some comfort here,
some sense of brotherhood; some glory due to the past, some hope for the
times that are to come."
Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister of England, during his several
administrations, has had a large Church patronage to dispense, in other
words, has been called upon, by virtue of his office, to till many
vacancies in the Established Church, but it has been truly testified
that there has probably never been so laboriously conscientious a
distributor of ecclesiastical crown patronage as Mr. Gladstone. In his
ecclesiastical appointments he never took politics into consideration. A
conspicuous instance of this may be mentioned. When it was rumored that
he intended to recommend Dr. Benson, the present Archbishop, for the
vacant See of Canterbury, a political supporter called to remonstrate
with him. Mr. Gladstone begged to know the ground of his objection. "The
Bishop of Truro is a strong Tory," was the answer; "but that is not all.
He has joined Mr. Raikes's election committee at Cambridge; and it was
only last week that Raikes made a violent personal attack upon
yourself." "Do you know," replied Mr. Gladstone, "that you have just
supplied me with a strong argument in Dr. Benson's favor? for, if he
had been a worldly man or self-seeker he would not have done anything so
imprudent."
Mr. Gladstone sympathized more or less with the Nonconformists
struggling against the application of university tests and other
disabilities from which the Dissenters suffered, but it was not until
1876 that he really discovered the true religions work of the English
Nonconformists. The manner in which the Congregationalists, Baptists,
Quakers and others rallied to the standard raised in the cause of
Bulgarian nationality effected a great change in his attitude towards
his Dissenting fellow countrymen. He entertained many of the
representative Nonconformist ministers at breakfast, and the fidelity
and devotion of Nonconformists generally to the Bulgarian cause left on
his mind an impression which has only deepened with the lapse of time.
The extent to which this influences him may be gathered from the reply
which he made to Dr. Döllinger whilst that learned divine was discussing
with him the question of Church and State. Dr. Döllinger was expressing
his surprise that Mr. Gladstone could possibly coquette in any way with
the party that demanded the severance of Church and State in either
Wales or Scotland. It was to him quite incomprehensible that a statesman
who held so profoundly the idea of the importance of religion could make
his own a cause whose avowed object was to cut asunder the Church from
the State. Mr. Gladstone listened attentively to Dr. Döllinger's
remarks, and then, in an absent kind of way, said, "But you forget how
nobly the Nonconformists supported me at the time of the Eastern
Question." The blank look of amazement on Dr. Döllinger's face showed
the wide difference between the standpoint of the politician and the
ecclesiastic. But Mr. Gladstone knew upon whom to rely in the hour of
need, when great moral issues were at stake. The Bishops of the House of
Lords had not always done their duty. Lord Shaftesbury, himself a very
ardent Churchman, wrote, June 16, 1855, in reference to the Religious
Worship Bill: "The Bishops have exhibited great ignorance, bigotry and
opposition to evangelical life and action, and have seriously injured
their character, influence and position."
Mr. Gladstone never displayed more marked respect for the "Nonconformist
conscience" than when, in deference to their earnest appeal, he risked
the great split in the Home Rule ranks that followed his repudiation of
Mr. Parnell. Mr. Gladstone never hesitated or made the slightest
pretense about the matter. If the Nonconformists had been as indifferent
as the Churchmen, his famous letter about the Irish leadership would not
have been written. "He merely acted, as he himself stated, as the
registrar of the moral temperature which made Mr. Parnell impossible.
He knew the men who are the Ironsides of his party too well not to
understand that if he had remained silent the English Home Rulers would
have practically ceased to exist. He saw the need, rose to the occasion
and cleared the obstacle which would otherwise have been a fatal
impediment to the success of his course. Mr. Gladstone is a practical
statesman, and with some instinct divined the inevitable."
Mr. Gladstone's religious belief, as well as his opinion of the Bible
and the plan of salvation revealed in the Gospel, are manifest as
expressed in the following words from his pen:
"If asked what is the remedy for the deeper sorrows of the human
heart--what a man should chiefly look to in his progress through life as
the power that is to sustain him under trials and enable him manfully to
confront his afflictions--I must point him to something which, in a
well-known hymn is called 'the old, old story,' told of in an old, old
book, and taught with an old, old teaching, which is the greatest and
best gift ever given to mankind."
Another may read the lessons on the Lord's day in Hawarden Church and
write and speak in defense of the Established Church of England, but Mr.
Gladstone did more--he put his trust in his Lord and Saviour, and
believed in his word. Mr. Gladstone was denominationally a member of
the Episcopal Church, but religiously he held to views commonly held by
all Evangelical Christians, from which the temptations of wealth at
home, of college and of politics never turned him.
[Illustration: Kilmainham Jail, where the Irish M.P.'s were confined in
1883]