It remains now to turn to another most potent motive which has
affected the fortunes of religion in the nineteenth century. It may
be called Nationalism, meaning by the term that higher conception of
the life of the state or nation, slowly but most effectively asserting
itself throughout the nineteenth century, never apart from religious
convictions, always indeed in their support and furtherance. In
illustration of this point, we turn again to the French Revolution,
as giving the momentum, both directly and by way of reaction, to
the conception of the sacredness of the state, as an ultimate fact
in God’s government of the world. In that fearful outburst of the
French people, their long pent-up indignation was vented no less
against the state than against the Church—the one a device of kings
and lawgivers for holding mankind in subjection, as the other was a
scheme for the same end by a designing priesthood. The humanitarian
sentiment received in consequence at this impressive moment a direction
of antipathy to nationality as an evil to be overcome, or at least
to be kept in subjection to some higher principle, if the rights of
man were to be secured. Something even of this negative mood entered
into the formation of the American Constitution, where there is to
be noted a singular omission of any reference to Deity as the author
and preserver of the national life. On the continent of Europe there
was the phenomenon of Napoleon building on the ruins of the French
Revolution, while yet preserving the destructive motives which inspired
it. Napoleon revived the dream of empire, in whose expansive embrace
the nations of Europe were to be subordinated, if not suppressed
altogether. He proposed to reconstruct the map of Europe, as though
nationalities and crowns were purely human artificial arrangements to
be disposed of at his sovereign pleasure.
The failure of the French nation, its demonstrated inability to do
the proper work of a state, as well as the fact that the career of a
Napoleon was possible, indicates inherent weakness in all the nations
of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They existed
either in repose, and even stagnation, after the long turmoil of the
age of the Protestant Reformation, averse to change, distrustful of
enthusiasm, or were content to strive for purely selfish aims. In
accordance with the principle that the people existed for the state,
rulers followed their personal whims, indifferent to moral sanctions,
heedless of the growing evils calling aloud for redress. Such in
particular was the condition in France. It was better in England, but
even there the same tendency existed, manifested in the unnecessary
alienation of the American colonies. However this may be, there has
been a reaction against nationality during the nineteenth century.
The nations have been forced to struggle against this opposition,
and through the struggle they have attained their rebirth, their
purification.
The subject is connected with the fortunes of religion in many ways.
The indifference to nationality, the distrust of the nation as
incompetent for the exigencies of life, the placing of an abstract
humanity as an ideal above nationality, so that to labor directly for
the interests of humanity apart from the well-being of the nation,
and even in its defiance, became the motive of reformers—these
characteristics, when seen in the religious sphere, have led to a
reaction against the various forms of Protestantism, and especially as
represented in the state Churches. The Roman Catholic Church, which in
all its history has subordinated national distinctions to the higher
interests of a common Christendom, had fallen into inefficiency in
the eighteenth century, and was no longer reckoned a force worthy of
consideration, either by religious thinkers or by statesmen. But in the
first third of the nineteenth century there came a change, when the
Roman Church arose from its lethargy to meet the demand imposed upon
it by the timid fears of statesmen and ecclesiastics, as the safeguard
of religion and morality, where national Churches or particular
Churches were thought to have failed. The Napoleonic aspiration after
universal empire and the frantic effort to realize it by rearranging
or suppressing nationalities has its counterpart in the religious
world in the effort to restore a Christian empire with the Papacy at
its head, as in the Middle Ages. The effect of this ambition may be
seen in Germany and other countries, but is most clearly manifest in
England, where the Oxford Movement (1833) appears as an unnational, if
not anti-national, uprising in behalf of some imperfectly conceived
cosmopolitan Church designated as “Catholicity.” The date of the
“Movement,” as Newman fixed it, was Keble’s sermon on the “Apostacy of
the National Church.” This same feeling, that national existence is
inferior in importance to humanitarian reforms or to the expression of
religion in some other shape than in any particular or national Church,
has been shown in the break with the Established Church in Scotland, or
in the difficulties experienced in Germany in consolidating the forms
of Protestantism in a strong state Church, or in the aspirations after
some universal form of religion to be accomplished by a parliament of
religions. Beneath these various schemes there is the common principle
that humanity is a worthier object of devotion than the state, and
constitutes a higher ideal in whose cause to labor. This conviction, it
may be added, has been strengthened vastly by the extraordinary way in
which, during the nineteenth century, the whole world has been brought
together by the material forces of steam and electricity.
That there is here a great truth no one can deny, but the point to
be noticed now is that nationality has been at a disadvantage in the
competition with humanity. Out of the necessities of the situation
there has been born the spirit of a deeper inquiry into the place and
significance of the nation as the indispensable medium by which the
highest result can be secured for the world at large. Thus we have
the studies in this direction of German students, Hegel and Stahl,
Trendelenburg and Bluntschli, Maurice in England, and in America
Mulford in his book _The Nation_, all of them combating the motive of
Comte and setting forth the essential, even the eternal, significance
of nationality. The ancient doctrine is still preserved that the people
exist for the state, but it is justified on the ground that the state
also exists for the people, for the freedom of the individual man, so
that through the state the rights of man are better subserved and more
securely guaranteed than by an exclusive one-sided devotion to the
cause of an abstract humanity.
As the nineteenth century drew to its close, it became increasingly
apparent that the nations had emerged from the depression in which
they were found when the century opened. America may be said to
have attained the consciousness of nationality in its highest form
in consequence of the Civil War, and to have entered from that time
upon a new career. In that awful conflict, whose origin dates back to
the rise of the anti-slavery movement, may be discerned the issue of
the century—humanitarianism, on the one hand, contending for the
rights of man, careless, if need be, for the national unity if only
a great reform could be secured; and on the other hand, the nation,
slowly realizing that slavery was a force hostile to national unity
and integrity, and on this ground demanding its suppression. The two
attitudes in this instance appear organically related, while yet
they spring from distinct and separate motives. In 1870 Germany and
Italy took their places in the family of nations. Nor should there be
omission to mention Greece, which, after its subsidence for hundreds of
years, again attained its national independence.
It has become further apparent that it is to the Protestant nations,
America, England, and Germany, that the leading place must be conceded,
together with the determination of the world’s fortunes. And to
these must be added Russia, which is also outside the pale of Latin
Christianity. Those nations remaining in alliance with the Papacy are,
for the present at least, in an inferior position.
The triumphant assertion of the spiritual significance of nationality
in the latter part of the nineteenth century has made it further
apparent that the forces working for religion, and especially for
its Protestant forms, were stronger than the forces in opposition.
The nation enters the arena of the controversy as a spiritual force,
assuming as a first principle the existence of God and His supernatural
government of the world. Never was this truth more impressively
illustrated than in the experience of Lincoln, who, when he became
President of the United States in the supreme crisis of its history,
ceased to be indifferent to religion and passed into a devout belief
in the mysterious control of the destiny of the nation by a sovereign,
omnipotent hand. As the indifference to nationality was among the
causes of religious doubt and of the weakness in the Churches in the
middle of the century, so the triumphant assertion of nationality has
contributed to turn the tide towards theistic belief and the Christian
faith.
To give a full exposition of the inner relationship of the nation to
religion and the Churches is not possible here, but some remarks may be
offered which will tend to illustrate their organic connection.
(1) In any large historical survey the nation appears as guided by
religious leaders. Religion is seen to have flourished in proportion
as the nation is conscious of its strength and destiny. When the
Roman Empire broke down the nationalities and merged them in a large
composite unity, it broke down also religious faiths, and its own
religion as well, till scepticism was the result and a consequent
immorality. All attempts to build up religion on the basis of empire,
as distinct from nationality, ended in failure.
(2) The Christian religion tended from the first to break up the empire
and to restore nationality. Ultimately it became manifest that the
cause which undermined the Roman Empire and accomplished its downfall
was the Christian Church. In its Eastern half the empire was resolved
into nationalities. In the West a Church, Latin Christendom, rose upon
its ruins, but within this Latin Christendom the spirit of nationality
began at once to work, forcing its way against the opposition of
the Papacy, till, in the age of the Protestant Reformation, when
nationality was felt as a conscious motive, it sundered Latin
Christendom into fragments.
(3) The Old Testament in its form as a whole is simply the history of
a nation from its birth through all its fortunes. Never did religion
rise to a diviner and fuller expression than under the realization of
the conviction that God was protecting the nation and determining its
career. The Hebrew prophets were primarily statesmen, devoted to the
nationality, as the incarnation of the divine will, in whose fortunes
were revealed the divine purpose. Any nation which has not the similar
conviction that it is the chosen people of God, and called to some
important task, cannot maintain its independence and integrity, and has
no future. This conviction to-day inspires the leading nations of the
world.
(4) The nation mediates between humanitarianism and individualism. In
serving its own ends and seeking to accomplish its mission, it works
for the good of all, and also for the freedom of the individual man.
The tendency of humanitarianism as a motive apart from the higher life
of the state, or apart from its impersonation in Christ as its head and
leader, is to weaken individualism and to defeat the very end it wishes
to subserve, the achievement of the rights of man. Humanity as a whole
lacks the visible, tangible embodiment of the nation. It has not yet
the consciousness of itself nor of its unity. It cannot respond to the
needs it awakens. It does not, as a whole, realize its relationship to
God, nor is it placed in such a position as to make it feel the need
of God. It is in danger of becoming an abstraction in so far as it
exists without relationships. But the nation is close at hand, near,
and felt as a moral personality or being, seeking ideal ends which are
also within the bounds of possibility. Humanity as a whole undertakes
no enterprises which make it tremble as it comes to unknown, trackless
seas. But when the nation comes to great crises, where human wisdom
is powerless to direct its course, it falls back instinctively and by
necessity upon the belief in the guidance of God. Thus the nation as a
whole appears in a higher form of personality than individual men can
achieve, even the greatest men, and so prepares the way for the belief
in the still higher, the invisible, infinite personality of God.
(5) The nation as a moral personality and depending upon God becomes
the safeguard of morals. If there has been a decline in morality in the
nineteenth century, as some maintain, shown in the general weakening
of moral sanctions, or by the increase of divorce and indifference to
the sacredness of family life, it must be attributed in some measure
to the indifference to nationality from the time that political
liberalism resting on an abstract humanitarianism, or in combination
with a scientific naturalism, gained the ascendency. So far as this
tendency has in any degree invaded the Christian Church it has been
powerless to effect a change for the better. The great men whom
humanity is directed to worship do not constitute a moral standard,
nor can scientific postulates be made a basis for moral culture; for
nature is at least unmoral, if not, as some assert, immoral, and it is
only as acted upon by man that nature gives response to the increasing
purpose of the world. Religious truths—the personality of God, His
creation and government of the world, immortality, and the freedom
of the will—these are shattered, we are told, “by the great eternal
iron laws of the universe,” or “are in hopeless contradiction with the
most solid truths of empirical science.” And so, it must be added,
are the sanctions of ethics and moral law. It is when we turn to the
state, to the moral personality of the nation, that we encounter other
laws and living forces which restore what an empirical science or a
transcendental humanitarianism has broken down. Here the supreme test
is spiritual—the well-being of the nationality. The state must build
upon the family as its corner-stone; it must enforce those moral laws
which the history of nations, as well as human experience in its best
estate, reveal to be the inmost expression of the normal life of man.
The beginning of a new century may seem like an artificial division
of time, but the self-consciousness with which the nineteenth century
closed, the efforts at introversive estimates of its place in history
and of the work it had accomplished, indicate something more than a
conventional barrier to be passed. Prophecies in regard to the new
age may be futile, for God reserves to Himself the knowledge of the
future. But it is much if we can to any extent read the meaning of the
past and detect the sources of its strength and weakness. And for the
rest, Christian faith and hope are inextinguishable, looking forward to
the fulfilment of the Christian ideal—that higher unity where Christ
appears as the embodiment of humanity and the voice of its yearning for
a perfect brotherhood; where the nation also acknowledges Him as its
overlord, so that, in the words of Christian prophecy, the kingdoms of
this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. In
that ideal conception, the _dominium_ belongs to the state, and the
_ministerium_ to the Christian Church.