THE CHURCHES
The English have one sauce. But the number of their religions is as the
sands of the sea. Roughly speaking, they divide themselves religiously
into two classes--Anglicans and Nonconformists. The Anglicans, one may
say, are reformed Catholics; the Nonconformists, reformed Anglicans.
Apparently all English religions--with the exception, of course, of
the Catholic religion, which is not counted--date from or since the
Reformation. We know what the Reformation means in Scotland, though
the English notion of it seems to be a trifle vague. We also know in
Scotland what religion means. I doubt if the English have any such
knowledge. One has only to visit an average Anglican or Nonconformist
church on the Sabbath to perceive that in England religion is under
a cloud and has almost ceased to be a spiritual matter. In the first
place, you will notice that the congregation is for the most part
composed of women and children. Englishmen are too busy or too bored to
go to church on the Sabbath. What little faith, what little religious
fervour or feeling, they ever possessed has been knocked out of them,
and they no longer go to church. And this change has been accomplished,
not by the failure of dogmas, not by the spread of free-thought, not
by secularists, anti-clericalists, or philosophers, but simply by an
indolent clergy on the one hand and cheap railway fares on the other.
The mediocre preacher and the new-fangled English week-end have emptied
the churches of England's manhood. The women and children are left, a
puling, bemused crowd, and to these the English shepherds and pastors
blate their cheap ritual and read their ill-considered sermons.
It is curious to note how easily an English parson or Nonconformist
minister can make a reputation for greatness as a preacher. Let him
be just a little more competent than the average, and people flock
to hear him. I doubt if there is a really great preacher alive in
England to-day. Yet there are three or four who pass for great, and
who are supposed to be in line with St. Paul, John Knox, and Wesley.
To give instances would be invidious, but I have no hesitation in
asserting that the preachments offered in London at the three or four
great churches which are supposed to enshrine orators are, as a rule,
exceedingly feeble efforts, tricked out with gauds and mannerisms,
packed with trite sentiment, and utterly devoid of doctrine,
inspiration, and value. There are not three bishops on the English
bench that can furnish forth a sermon worth going fifty yards to hear.
There is not a Nonconformist minister who has a soul above stodginess,
convention, and a convenient if threadbare Scriptural tag. The
Salvation Army, perhaps, have the fervour and the courage, but they
lack wisdom, and they have no art. The Congregationalists have some of
the wisdom and a touch of the art, but they have no fervour. Indeed,
wherever you turn you find that the recognised English religionists
have given themselves up to a decadent, Hebraic emotion, and let the
solid things of the spirit--the Hebraic culture, the Hebraic vision,
the Hebraic passion--pass by them.
Gradually the churches of this remarkable country are ceasing to
have anything to do with religion at all. "Religion be hanged!" say
those that run them. "Religion no longer appeals to the wayward,
stony-hearted, over-driven, half-educated English populace. What is
wanted is social brightness and warmth, the religion of brotherhood
and the full belly; so that we will give magic-lantern entertainments
in our churches on the Lord's Day, we will go in 'bald-headed' for
pleasant Sunday afternoons, hot coffee and veal-and-ham pies, and
screws of tobacco given away at the doors, wrapped up in a tract,
which you are at liberty either to read or to light your pipe with."
As for the English priests that had the authority of God, they are no
longer sure whether they have that authority or not. Of course, they
believe they have it in a sacerdotal, canonical, and private way; but
not one of them dare stand up and swear by his powers publicly. The
bishops are all for peace and quietness. "If you please, we are your
friends, and not your masters," say they to their clergy; and their
clergy, to use an English vulgarism, "wink the other eye." And the
clergy, too, in turn are the friends and not the masters of common
men; they are so much your friends, indeed, that, providing you mount
a silk hat on Sunday and put a penny on the plate, you can depend
upon a friendly shake of the hand and a kindly grin of recognition
six days in the week, even though you happen to be a bookmaker or the
keeper of a bucket-shop. For the Nonconformist clergy, if clergy they
may be called, they speak humorously at tea-parties, they enter into
hat-trimming competitions at bazaars, and they play principal guest
at the tables of over-fed tradesmen. There is not a man amongst them
who can say boo to a goose. There is not a man amongst them who as a
social unit is worth the L150 a year and a manse, with L10 per annum
for each child, that a glozing, unintellectual English congregation
hands over to him. Out of the ease and security and respectability
and _dolce far niente_ which the Church of England provides for a
considerable proportion of her priests, she has managed to evolve
a few scholars, a few men of letters, perhaps an odd saint or two,
and an odd man of temperament and mark. But what have the English
Nonconformists produced? Dr. Horton and Dr. Parker, and that G.R. Sims
of religionists, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. To this distinguished
triumvirate--though the English Nonconformists will hold up pious hands
of horror at the notion--one may add that valiant thumper of the pulpit
drum, General Booth, who is doing a work in religious decadence and
bathoticism which it will take centuries to undo. Want of heart and
want of mind, coupled with the blessed spirit of tolerance, have indeed
played havoc with the English Churches.
The loosening of the grip of the Church on English society has, of
course, not been without its results on English morals and on English
society at large. There is a general feeling abroad that religion is
played out, that the system of Hebrew ethics which has been drilled
into the English blood by generations of the faithful was all very
well for the faithful, but is altogether impracticable and out of
harmony with the present intelligent times. You will find Englishmen
nowadays complaining that the taint of spiritualism, asceticism, and
ethical faith which they have inherited from their people is a source
of hindrance to them in the matter of their commercial or social
progress, and their lives are spent in an endeavour to eradicate or to
triumph over that taint. The Archbishop of Canterbury could not run
a tea-shop by the rules laid down in the Sermon on the Mount, they
will tell you; and, what is worse, the Archbishop of Canterbury agrees
with them. "Take all thou hast, and give it to the poor" is out of the
question even for Dr. Horton. Since those blessed words were said, we
are told, the Poor Law has sprung up; we give all that is necessary
for pauperism in the poor-rate; and, thanks to the excellence of our
social system, it is now impossible for man, woman, or child to die
of starvation, provided only that they will work. I have heard it
stated by an English Nonconformist minister that his chief complaint
against the Roman Catholic community in his district was their habit
of being over-liberal to the poor. "No man is refused," observed my
Nonconformist friend, "no matter how dissolute or idle or irreligious
he may be."
Then in the large question of the employment of human flesh and blood
to make money for you, the modern Englishman finds that he must either
tear the effects of his religious bringing-up out of his heart, or
forego the possibility of becoming really rich, don't you know. It is
all a matter of supply and demand; and if the mass of humanity live
starved lives and die daily in order that I may be fat and warm and
cultured and possessed of surpluses at banks, it is not my fault. You
must really blame supply and demand. With this fine phrase on his lips,
the English capitalist confutes all the philosophies and sets his foot
on the majority of the decencies of life. Of course, I shall be told
that the prince and chief of all hide-bound industrial capitalists is
Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who happens to be a Scot. And I cheerfully admit
that Mr. Carnegie is a very serious case in point. But for our one Mr.
Carnegie, the English have fifty Mr. Carnegies. They may not be so
rich or so famous; but there they are, and the blood and spirit of the
English people suffer accordingly. The religion of the wealthy does not
prevent them from grinding the face of the poor; and the religion of
the middle classes is of pretty much the same order. It is at the hands
of the English middle classes that the English poor suffer a further
and a bitterer depredation. For when you have earned money hardly, you
want good goods for it; and the English middle classes, who are nearly
all shopkeepers, either directly or indirectly, make a point of palming
off on you the very worst goods the law will allow them to sell.
And, in spite of all, the churches continue to open their doors, new
churches continue to be built, million-pound funds are raised, the
missionary speeds over the blue wave to the succour of the 'eathen,
and English women and children have their pleasant Sunday afternoons,
and bishops keep high-stepping horses; Church and State are grappled
together with hooks of steel, and England is a Christian country.
Till the churches get out of their slippers and their sloth and their
tea-bibbing and their tolerance, matters will go on in the same old
futile, scandalous way. If they are to have charge and direction of
the soul of man, they must remember that the soul of man is a greater
thing than ease, and a greater thing than the Church; they must not
play with the immortal part of humanity, and they must not trifle
with the things which they believe to be of God. In no other country
save England would such churches and such priests as the English now
possess be tolerated or supported; it is the English decadence which
has rendered Englishmen blind to the stupidity and banality of their
pastors and spiritual guides, and it is the English easy-heartedness
which permits the game of cant and cadge and sham to go on unchecked.