Excuse my delay in answering your letter of last month. The fact is I
have not so much leisure as I had. I was glad indeed to hear from you
(last Christmas, I think) that you could not so lightly put away the
worship and service of Christ as you had felt disposed, or compelled to
do, some eighteen months before; that the question appeared to you now a
deeper one than you had then supposed, not to be decided by mere
historical evidence but, to some extent, by the experience of life; and
that you were inclined at least so far to take my advice as to wait a
while, to stand in the old ways, and to adhere—so far as you honestly
could—to old religious habits, including the habit of prayer and
attendance at public worship. This was as much as I could reasonably
hope. I could not expect that a few letters from one who is quite
conscious that he does not possess the strange and sometimes
instantaneous influence exerted by a strong religious character, would
do all that will, I trust, be done for you by patience, by a prayerful
and laborious life devoted to good objects, and by cherishing habits of
reverence for the good, and of thoughtfulness for all. I had been in the
habit of regularly giving my Sundays, and occasionally some hours on
week days, to our theological correspondence: but when I received that
announcement from you, I felt that my time might now be devoted to other
objects, and I made arrangements accordingly. Hence, when your recent
letter reached me, I was not quite at leisure to reply to it
immediately. But you pressed me to answer “one last question,” which I
should rather call two questions (for they are quite distinct, although
you combine them so closely as to leave me uncertain whether you
recognize the wide difference between them): “Can a man who rejects the
miraculous element in the Bible remain a member or a minister in the
Church of England?”
Your first question I should answer with an unhesitating affirmative.
The Church of England does not require from its lay members any
signature of the Articles or any test but a profession of belief in the
Creed at the time of baptism, renewed in the Catechism and Confirmation
service; and I cannot think that any sincere worshipper of Christ ought
so far to take offence at one or two expressions in the Creed—which may
be interpreted by him metaphorically, though by others literally—as to
separate himself on that account from the national church. Grant that
his interpretation may be a little strained, nay, grant even that he is
obliged to say “I cannot believe this;” yet I should doubt the
necessity, or even wisdom and rightness, of cutting himself off from the
Church of England because of one or two clauses in the Creed, as long as
he feels himself in general harmony with the Church doctrine and
services. There would be no end to schisms, and no possibility of
combining for worship, if every one separated himself from every
congregational utterance with which he could not heartily agree in every
particular. On this point I find myself obliged to remember for my own
sake, and to apply to myself, the advice I once gave a very little child
many years ago. We were singing a hymn, and had come to the words:
“Ah me, ah me, that I
In Kedar’s tents here stay:
No place like that on high,
Lord, thither guide my way.”
“I suppose,” said the child (who was young but somewhat old-fashioned in
thought and expression), “that these words mean that you want to die, if
they mean anything. But I don’t want to die. So I don’t think I ought to
say them.” In my own mind I sympathized very much with the objector; but
I endeavoured to meet the objection. “Hymns,” I said, “are written not
for single persons but for congregations. In a whole churchful you will
find all sorts of people of different ages and ways of thinking. Some
are glad and strong, others sad and weak. Some rejoice in life and look
forward eagerly to labour. These are mostly the young; but the older
sort are sometimes tired of life and longing for rest. Now when we are
singing a hymn we must all do our best, young and old, happy and sad, to
enter into one another’s feelings, and we must not expect that every
word in every hymn will precisely represent our own particular feelings
at the moment: the time will perhaps come when the words that now seem
meaningless to us will exactly represent our deepest feelings, and we
shall wonder how we could have ever failed to feel them; but for the
present we must not be disposed always to be asking, ‘Do I agree with
this? Do I exactly feel that?’ Of course if it occurs to you that these
or those words are so opposite to what you think, that you would be
telling a lie to God in uttering them, why then you must not utter them:
but you ought not to suppose that in a church service God exacts from
you a rigid account for every word of the congregational utterances in
which you take part: if you can heartily join in the greater part of the
service, do not be afraid; He accepts your prayers and praises.” Many
years have passed away since I spoke thus: and, since then, I have found
myself often obliged to repeat to myself, for my own guidance, the
advice which I then gave to guide another. In a public service one must
give and take, and I see no reason at all why a believer in
non-miraculous Christianity should not find himself in harmony with the
services of the Church of England. His interpretation both of the Bible
and of the Prayer-book will be different from that of most of the
congregation; but he will accept both the Bible and the Prayer-book as
the best books that could be used for their several purposes, and would
be sorry to see them replaced by anything that could be devised by
himself or by those who think as he does.
So far I can speak confidently; but I am more doubtful as to the answer
that should be given to your second question, “Can a believer in
non-miraculous Christianity remain a minister in the Church of England?”
Looking at the Articles, if I were forced to assume that every one of
them is binding on a Church of England minister, I should say that a
belief in the miraculous is necessary for every one who can honestly
sign an assent to the Article on Christ’s Resurrection, which asserts
that, “Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body
with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature, wherewith He ascended into heaven.” These words distinctly
declare the Resurrection of Christ’s material body; and as I do not
believe in the fact, I cannot assent to the words, nor do I see how any
believer in non-miraculous Christianity can assent to them.
Perhaps you may think, in your innocence, that this disposes of the
question, arguing logically thus: “The Church of England appoints
certain Articles as tests of belief for her ministers; A cannot assent
to one of these Articles; therefore A has no right to remain a minister:
there is no loophole out of this logical statement of the case.” There
is not: and if the Church of England were governed in accordance with
logic, I (and a good many others) ought to have left the ranks of her
ministers as soon as we found that we had been forced to reject a single
clause of a single Article. But the Church has not been fur several
generations governed in this logical way. Besides practically and
generally allowing among its members a great degree of freedom and
latitude, it has enlarged that latitude during the last generation by a
specific and authoritative alteration of the terms of subscription to
the Articles. When I signed them—which I did, with perfect honesty and
sincerity, some three or four and twenty years ago—we were obliged to
“assent and consent” to “each and every” Article in each particular: I
forget the exact terms, but I know they were as stringent as they well
could be. But in 1865 the Clerical Subscription Act introduced a new
form:—“I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book
of Common Prayer.... I believe the doctrine of the Church of England as
therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God.” Now if “therein”
meant “in each and every clause of each and every Article,” that would
have been tantamount to a mere repetition of the old requirement.
Obviously therefore this alteration implies an obligation of the
subscriber to assent, no longer to “each and every Article” in
particular, but to the Articles as a whole, regarded as an expression of
Anglican doctrine. Consequently, at present, the necessity of
subscription need not repel any one unless he finds himself unable to
accept “the doctrine of the Church of England as set forth,” not in
detail, but generally, in the Articles and the Prayer-book; and I need
not say that a believer in non-miraculous Christianity by no means
occupies a position of such dissent as this.
The only obstacle therefore for a scrupulous minister will be in the
services of the Church and in the reading of the Bible: and here I admit
that there is a very considerable obstacle, though it appears to me to
be less than it was a dozen years ago, and each year lessens it still
further. The difficulty lies, not in the scepticism of the minister (who
may be a more faithful worshipper of Christ than any one in his flock)
nor in any congregational suspicion or alarm (for his advanced views lie
quite beyond the horizon of the thoughts of any country congregation,
and any but an exceptional congregation elsewhere) but almost entirely
in the minister’s own uneasy sense of a difference between himself and
his people; in his fear that he may be acting hypocritically; in his
consequent loss of self-respect; and in a resulting demoralization
affecting all his work.
Clearly this is a difficulty which would be diminished, if not
altogether removed, by publicity; but as long as it is not publicly
recognized that widely different interpretations of the Scripture are
possible and compatible with the worship of Christ, the difficulty is a
very serious one. Whenever such a man reads the Bible in the discharge
of his public duty, he is liable to be haunted with the consciousness
that he is two-faced. He conveys to his congregation an obvious meaning
and they assume that he accepts that meaning himself; but he does not.
Suppose, for example, he reads the story of the battle of Beth-horon:
his congregation believes that it is listening to the most stupendous
miracle that the world has witnessed; the minister believes that he is
reading an account of one of the twenty, or more, decisive battles of
history. Similarly, in the New Testament, if he reads the narrative of
the feeding of the 4,000 or 5,000, he reads it as a religious legend,
curiously preserving a deep spiritual truth, but of no value except for
its emblematic meaning; but his congregation listens to him as if he
were reciting one of the most important proofs that Jesus was no mere
man, but truly the Son of God. I do not wish to exaggerate the
difference between the rationalizing minister and the literalizing
congregation. Both he and they believe that in the battle of Beth-horon
God was working out the destiny of Israel and preparing for Himself a
chosen people; both he and they believe that Jesus Christ was the true
Bread of Life; and similarly, as regards many other miraculous
narratives of the Scriptures, the congregation and the minister, though
divided as to the acceptance of the historical fact, will be united in
accepting the spiritual interpretation which is the essence of the
narrative. Moreover, every year is probably increasing the number of the
laity who take the same esoteric view as the minister takes about many
of the miracles. In any educated congregation there must be a large
number of men, and there will soon be a large number of women, who do
not believe in the literal stories of Balaam’s ass, Elisha’s floating
axe-head, and Samson’s exploit with the jaw-bone. Unless educated people
are kept out of our churches, or separate themselves from the Church,
this number must soon increase. Thus the gulf between the rationalizing
minister and the congregation tends yearly to diminish through the
action of the congregation; and if only both the esoteric and the
exoteric interpretation of the Scripture were generally recognized as
being compatible with the faithful worship of Christ, I do not see why
the minister should not claim for himself, without any sense of
constraint or insincerity, the same freedom of interpreting the Bible
which is accorded to the laity.
There still remains however the clause in the Creed stating the
Miraculous Conception, which to me appears the greatest difficulty of
all. It is one thing, in my judgment, to repeat the prayers of the
Church and to read passages from the sacred books of the Church, as the
mouthpiece of the congregation, and rather a different thing to stand up
and say—not only as the mouthpiece of the congregation, but in your
individual character, as a Christian, and as a priest as well—“I believe
this, or that,” and to take money for so saying; while all the time you
are saying under your breath, “But I only believe it metaphorically.”
Here, again, my scruples would be removed, if it were only generally
understood that the metaphorical interpretation was possible and
permissible. As regards the Athanasian Creed, for example, I should have
no scruples at all. For the tone and spirit, as well as for the
phraseology, of that Creed, I feel the strongest aversion. Yet I should
repeat it as the mouthpiece of the congregation without any hesitation,
because they would all know that the Church of England, so far as it can
speak through the archbishops and bishops, has signified that the
repulsive clauses in the Creed may all be so explained as practically to
be explained away. I do not in the least believe that this mild
interpretation of the damnatory clauses explains their original meaning;
but that matters little or nothing. Provided there be no suspicion of
insincerity, I am willing to make considerable sacrifices of personal
convictions in so complex a rite as congregational worship. The
clergyman whom I most respect has not read the Athanasian Creed for
thirty years: for my own sake, as a participator in the worship of his
church, I rejoice; but all my respect for him did not prevent me from
doubting sometimes whether he was right in this matter, until I found
that his action had been prompted by an expression of feeling on the
part of some representative members of his congregation. For if one
clergyman is justified in omitting the Athanasian Creed whenever he
likes, I do not see why another is not justified in reading it whenever
he likes: the liberty of the clergy might easily become the slavery of
the laity. I should therefore be ready to read the repugnant Athanasian
Creed because every member of my congregation would know (and I should
feel justified in letting them know from the pulpit) that I read it in
obedience to the law and in spite of my convictions. But I am not so
ready, at present, to read the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed, although
I cordially accept them except so far as concerns the one word which
expresses the Miraculous Conception. My reason is, that I should not
like to leave my congregation under the impression that I accepted that
dogma, and on the other hand I should not feel justified in using a
pulpit of the National Church to explain why I rejected it.
Here again, as in the previous instance, I feel that times are rapidly
changing, and the freedom of ministers in the Church of England is
rapidly increasing. For scruples as to the use of the Creeds, no less
than for scruples as to the reading of the Scriptures, publicity is the
chief remedy wanting to dissipate scruples; and time is on the side of
freedom. Belief in miracles now rests on an inclined plane; friction is
daily lessening, the downward motion is rapidly increasing; in a few
more years the authorities of the Church of England may recognize, not
with reluctance but with delight, that there are some young men who know
enough of Greek, and of history, and of evidence, to be convinced that
the miracles are unhistorical, and who, nevertheless, are worshippers of
Christ on conviction, with a faith not to be shaken by anything that
science or criticism can discover, and with a readiness to serve Christ,
as ministers in the English Church, if they can do so without sacrifice
of their opinions and without suspicion of insincerity.
Personally, I have not felt these scruples very acutely. Circumstances
have placed me where nothing has been required of me which might not
have been done as well by a Nonconformist as by a member of the Church
of England. To help a friend, or do occasional work in an unofficial
way, has never caused me the least misgiving; for I have always remained
in cordial accord with the forms of worship current in the Church of
England. The only difference that my views have made in my clerical
action has been this, that I have preferred for a time not to place
myself in any position where ministerial work might officially be
required of me. Yet even these scruples have been doubtfully
entertained, and would vanish altogether if ever I were to publish a
volume of such letters as I am now writing to you, so that I could be
sure that my opinions were no secret from my Bishop and from such
members of my congregation as were likely to understand them.
The advice which I have given to myself, I should also be inclined to
give to others who are already ministers in the Church of England, and
who have scruples of conscience in consequence of some divergence from
orthodox views: “Stay where you are, as long as you feel that you can
sincerely worship Christ as the Eternal Son of God, and as long as you
can preach a gospel of faith and strength, not only from the pulpit but
also by the bedside of the dying. If you can do this, you may stay,
though you are obliged to interpret metaphorically some expressions in
the Creed. If you cannot do this, go at once, even though you can accept
every syllable in all the Creeds in the most literal sense.”
To young men who have not yet been ordained and who incline to
“rational” views of Christianity, I have been disposed hitherto to give
different advice: “Wait a while. The fashion of men’s opinion is rapidly
changing; the excessive fear of science on the part of the Clergy—many
of whom come from Public Schools where they have received no training in
the rudiments of science or mathematics—is, strange to say, predisposing
all but extreme High Churchmen to welcome the adhesion of any who are
firm believers in Christ, even though they may doubt or reject the
miracles. It would be a miserable thing to be ordained, and to undertake
the task of preaching a doctrine implying the highest conceivable
morality, and presently to find yourself condemned by those to whom you
should be an example as well as an instructor, for what appears to them
patent insincerity—condemned by others, and perhaps not wholly acquitted
by yourself. In a few years you may perhaps find it possible to be
ordained not upon tolerance but with a hearty reception, and then there
need be no concealment of your opinions.”
Such is the language that I have hitherto used on the very few occasions
when I have been consulted, generally advising delay. But now I am
inclined to think that the time has come when young men with these
opinions ought not to wait, but ought at least to set their case before
the Bishops, leaving it to them to accept or refuse them as candidates
for ordination. Schisms and prosecutions are very objectionable things,
but there are worse evils even than these. There is the danger of
hypocrisy, spreading, like an infection, from oneself to others. The
hour has perhaps come for authorizing or condemning the extreme freedom
of opinion which some of the Broad Churchmen have assumed. Proverbs and
texts might be quoted in equal abundance to justify action or inaction
in the abstract; but two important practical considerations appear to me
to dictate some kind of action without delay.
On the one hand, we hear the complaint that the ablest and most
conscientious men are deterred by scruples from entering the ministry in
the Church of England, even when they feel a strong bent for clerical
work. If this scarcity of able candidates for ordination continues for
many more years, we shall have bad times in store for us. Already I
think I have noted, among some ministers who are conscious of but little
intellectual and not much more spiritual power, a disposition unduly to
magnify their office, the ritual, the mechanical use of the sacraments,
parochial machinery, processions, sensational hymns, church
salvation-armies, and church-routine generally, because they feel they
have no evangelic message of their own, no individual inspiration. In
some degree, such a subordination of self is good and may argue modesty;
but in many cases it is not good, when it leads young men to materialize
and sensualize religion, to suppose that the preaching of Christ’s
Gospel and the elevation of the souls of men can be effected by
ecclesiastical battalion drill; to dispense with study, thought, and
observation; to acquiesce in the letter of the collected dogmas of the
past, and to hope for no new spiritual truth from the progress of the
ages controlled by the ever fresh revelations of the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, there is the opposite evil, on which I have already
touched—I mean the danger that some of the more intellectual among the
clergy, those who do not sympathize with sacerdotalism and are popularly
reckoned among the “Broad Church,” may not only be suspected of
insincerity in professing to believe what they, as a fact, disbelieve,
but may also become actually demoralized by self-suspicions and hence
indirectly demoralize their congregations. I confess my sympathies are
very much with a man in that position. He has been sometimes the victim
of cruel circumstances. In his youth, the religious problems of the
present day lay all in the background. Before he was ordained, he may
very well have discerned no difficulties at all in the career before
him, nothing but the prospect of a noble work, to which he felt himself
called. His life was probably spent in a public boarding-school, where
he scarcely ever had a minute to himself for thought and meditation; it
being the ideal of the educator so to engross the time and energy of
each pupil in studies or in games that the average youth might be kept
out of moral mischief and the clever youth might get a scholarship at
Oxford or Cambridge. When he came to the University he found himself
expected to devote himself to “reading for a degree,” and there was
little or no time for theology; after taking his degree he found himself
under the necessity of earning his living, and if he was intending to
become a clergyman he naturally desired to be ordained as soon as
possible. If he was very fortunate, he may have contrived (as I did) to
get a year’s reading at theology while he supported himself by taking
pupils; but that was probably the utmost of his preparation. Soon after
reaching his twenty-third year he was ordained. And now, for the first
time, leaving school and college, he begins to realize what life means,
and to think for himself. Can we wonder that this “thinking for himself”
produces considerable changes of thought? If he is healthy, and active
in his parish, and has not much time for reflection and reading, the
changes will be long deferred, and he will be scarcely conscious of
them: but if he has any mind at all in him, and gives it the least
exercise, it is hardly possible that an able and honest student of the
Bible at the age of forty-six, when he comes to compare the opinions of
his manhood with those of his youth, will not find that he has ceased to
believe, or at all events to be certain of, the historical accuracy of a
good deal which he accepted with unquestioning confidence at the age of
twenty-three.
Changes of this kind are inevitable, and they ought not to be feared.
Yet perhaps the fear of them deters some of the more thoughtful young
men from presenting themselves for ordination. They know that they
believe in such and such facts now, but, say they, “Many sincere and
thoughtful persons dispute the truth of these facts; and what will be my
position some ten years hence if I find that I am driven to deny what I
now affirm?” What one would like to be able to reply, in answer to such
an appeal, would be, that the worship of Christ does not depend upon the
truth of a few isolated and disputable pieces of evidence, but upon the
testimony of the conscience based upon indisputable (though complex)
evidence; so that, if the man’s conscience remains the same, he need not
fear lest the fundamental principles of his faith will be shaken by any
historical or scientific criticism. From the terrestrial point of view,
Christ is human nature at its divinest. Whoever therefore in the highest
degree loves and trusts and reveres human nature at its divinest, he
naturally worships a representation of Christ, even though he may never
have heard of the name. Now life will bring a young man many
disappointments and disillusions and paradoxes: but no one, who has once
worshipped Christ in this natural way, need fear (or hope?) that life
will ever bring him anything more worthy of representing human nature at
its divinest, anything therefore more worthy of worship, than Jesus of
Nazareth. The only danger is, that one may cease to be able to love and
trust and revere the objects that deserve these feelings. There is
indeed that danger, just as there is the danger that one may cease to be
able to be honest. But what young man, in mapping out his future, would
make insurance against such a moral paralysis? A man ought no more—a man
ought still less—to contemplate the possibility of becoming unable to
worship Christ, than the possibility of becoming unable to revere a kind
father or love affectionate children. If then our candidate for
ordination regards Christ in this spirit, one would like to encourage
him to present himself for ordination even though he may already doubt
the Biblical narrative on some points, and though he may be pretty
certain that he will change his mind on many others by the time he is
twice as old as he is now. However it rests very much with Bishops to
settle this question; and the question as to what the Bishops might do
is so important as to demand a separate letter.
P.S. Since writing the above remarks about the reluctance of the ablest
men at the Universities to be ordained, I have been told that the state
of things is even worse than I had conceived at Cambridge. There, at the
two largest colleges, Trinity and St. John’s, I am told that of the
Fellows who took their degrees between 1873-9 only eight, out of sixty
or thereabouts, took holy orders; and of those who took degrees between
1880-6, only three out of sixty. Trinity is conspicuous; of the sixty
Fellows who took degrees from 1873-86 only two have been ordained.
XXXI
WHAT THE BISHOPS MIGHT DO