England, chiefly from the want of opportunity for divergence. Not only
education goes always in the same course, but the circumstances of
professional career attach themselves very closely to one form. The
livings are more generally in the gift of the bishops than with us, and
the Irish bishops, perhaps, are more inclined to give promotion solely
on the score of merit than are the English bishops. There is, we
believe, less of Church patronage,--or rather of the exercise of Church
patronage for the furthering of private ends; and if this be so, the
Irish Church in that respect is superior to our own. But as the Irish
curate is to get his living from the Irish bishop, and is to receive it
as a reward for his clerical zeal, and not because he is his father’s
son, it is absolutely incumbent on him to work as a curate up to the
established diocesan mark. And this mark or standard will not be the
standard fixed exactly by the bishop himself. Bishop’s predecessors and
bishop’s chaplains, and the very air round the bishop’s residence, will
have been for years impregnated with high Protestant principles. And
even a bishop who may himself be lacking in that fiery Protestant zeal
which is regarded as Church of England orthodoxy in Ireland, will not
find himself able to subdue the strength of the atmosphere in which he
is called upon to live. There have been bishops sent to Ireland,--nay,
there still are bishops in Ireland, placed over dioceses there because
they have been considered to be,--we will not say anti-Protestant, but
liberal in their tendencies towards Roman Catholics and Presbyterians;
but the clergymen who come forth ordained from under the hands of the
liberal Whatelys are nearly of the same form as those who, from time out
of mind, have been given to us by the orthodox Trenches and the orthodox
Beresfords. The stream runs too strongly to be stemmed by any
bishop;--so that the Irish clergyman who desires to swim must, almost of
necessity, swim with it.
The clerical aspirant becomes first a curate. One would be disposed to
think that there could be no great need for curates in Ireland,--that as
the population of the country is chiefly Roman Catholic, and as not much
above one-half even of the Protestants conforms to the Church of
England,--so that the proportion of even nominal church-goers is less
than one in eight,--and as there is a beneficed parson in every parish,
whether there be much, little, or nothing to do,--curates could not be
needed in addition to rectors and vicars; but curates seem to be as
common in Ireland as they are in England,--the souls of men requiring,
we must suppose, more surveillance, and the work, we must presume, being
more closely done. The young clergyman almost always becomes a curate,
and then looks to his bishop for a living. Depending thus on the bishop,
he lives strictly, works with energy, is constant in his adherence to
all the exigencies of his cloth, and in the ripeness of time is blessed
with a living of, we will say, two hundred and fifty pounds a year with
a glebe. Irish livings are thought to be very good, but the value here
named is above the average. In the rich diocese of Meath, perhaps of all
the Irish dioceses the richest, the endowment of more than one-half of
the livings is less than the sum above named. Then begins the real
battle of his life. Of course our Irish clergyman marries, and of course
he has a family, and, even in Ireland, the support of a wife and family
upon two hundred and fifty pounds a year is not easy. His glebe is
probably remote from any town, and far removed from the houses of other
gentry. The parish squire is a personage who, as such, hardly exists in
Ireland. Here and there a resident landowner is to be found with a large
house and a wide demesne; but the parish squire who has interests in the
parish almost identical with those of the parson does not exist. The
clergyman, therefore, located in the country lives alone, and his
nearest neighbours are the rectors and vicars of other parishes. He
lives alone, and the solitude of his life does not tend to make him
jovial, or even satisfied with things around him. But he has his
religion, and he tells himself that that should suffice for him;--that
that should be all in all to him. He has his religion, and he
endeavours to make the most of it. It is to be not only his guide
through life to things spiritual, but his chief comfort in things
temporal. He must abide by it in every phase under which it has been
presented to him; he must hang to it as the politician does to his
party; he must trust to it,--not merely for the God and Saviour whom he
knows through its assistance, but for his very politics, thoroughly
believing that all its doctrines and all its formularies are essentially
necessary, and that they must be taken with the exact tenets and with
all the twists which have been given to them by his side in church
disputes.
Of all men the Irish beneficed clergyman is the most illiberal, the most
bigoted, the most unforgiving, the most sincere, and the most
enthusiastic. He is too often an unhappy man, being poor, aggrieved,
soured by the misfortunes of his own position, conscious that something
is wrong, though never doubting that he himself is right, aware of his
own unavoidable idleness, aware that when he works he works to little or
no effect, feeling that prayers said and sermons preached to his own
family, to three policemen and his clerk, cannot be said to have been
preached to much effect. It is a life-long grief to him that in his
parish there should be four hundred and fifty nominal Roman Catholics,
and only fifty nominal members of the Church of England. But yet he is
staunch. There is a good day coming, though he will never see it. He
consoles himself as best he may with the certainty of the coming
triumph; but cannot refrain from sadness as he tells himself that it
certainly will not come in his days.
There is nothing more melancholy to a man’s heart, nothing more
depressing to his feelings, than a doubt whether or no he truly earns
the bread which he eats. The beneficed clergyman of the Church of
England in Ireland has no doubt as to his right to his bread,--as to his
right either by the law of man or by the law of God; but he cannot but
have a doubt as to his earning it. He tells himself that it is the fault
of the people,--that it comes of their darkness; that he is there if
they will only come to him. But they do not come; and he has on his
spirit the terrible weight of wages received without adequate work
performed. It is a killing weight. To preach to three policemen is as
hard as to preach to three hundred educated men and women,--nay, perhaps
it is much harder; but he who so preaches feels that his preaching is
nothing. He is as the convict labourer who moves sand from one hole to
another;--and who can get no comfort from his work.
And he is daily told,--this Irish beneficed clergyman of the Church of
England,--that of all men he is the most overpaid. Newspapers which he
cannot but see, speakers on public platforms to whose orations he cannot
entirely stop his ears, are telling him constantly that he is a drone,
growing fat upon honey which he does not help to make, threatening him
with Parliamentary annihilation, and invoking against him all the ardour
of all the Radicals. In the meantime, he knows that he and his are
barely able to subsist on the pittance which the Church allows him. He
has terrible temporal grievances in poor rates, charges for his glebe,
deductions on this side and on that, till he knows not how to pay his
butcher and his baker, and the wife of his bosom is driven to painful,
stringent economies. He has not, he tells himself, half of that which a
liberal Church in old days had intended for the parish, and yet they
tell him that he is robbing the public! He is there to do his duty. Why
do not the people come to him? For what he receives, whether it is much
or little, he is ready to work, if only his work might be accepted.
But his work is not accepted, and there is no slightest sign in Ireland
that it will be accepted. The anomalies of the Church of England in
Ireland are terribly distressing, and call aloud for reform. But to none
can they be so distressing as to the beneficed clergyman in Ireland; and
in the behalf of no other class is that reform so vitally needed.
X. AND LAST.
THE CLERGYMAN WHO SUBSCRIBES FOR COLENSO.
We have heard much of the Broad Church for many years, till the
designation is almost as familiar to our ears as that of the High Church
or of the Low Church; but the Broad Church of former times,--some twenty
years ago, we will say, when the ecclesiastical world was all on fire
because the then Prime Minister was minded to give a mitre to a certain
professor of divinity at Oxford,--held doctrines very far indeed behind
those to which the liberal parsons of these days have made progress. The
ordinary Broad Church clergyman of that era was one who showed himself
to be broad by his tolerance of the doubts of others, rather than by the
expression of doubts of his own. He was not uncomfortably shocked at
finding himself in company with one who was weak in faith as to the Old
Testament miracles, and listened with placid equanimity to discussions
which went on around him to show that our ancient Bible chronology was
defective. But now we have got much beyond that. The liberal clergyman
of the Church of England has long since given up Bible chronology, has
given up many of the miracles, and is venturing forward into questions
the very asking of which would have made the hairs to stand on end on
the head of the broadest of the broad in the old days, twenty years
since. There are bishops still living, and others have lately died, who
must have been astonished to find how quickly their teaching has had its
results, how soon the tree has produced its fruit.
The free-thinking clergyman of the present time is to be found more
often in London than in the provinces, and more frequently in the towns
than in country parishes. They are not many in number, as compared with
the numbers of all parsondom in these realms; but they are men of whom
we hear much, and they are sufficiently numerous to leaven the whole.
There are many things, gone recently altogether out of date, which the
meek old-world clergyman dares no longer teach, though he knows not
why,--the placid, easy-minded clergyman who would be so well satisfied
to teach all that his father taught before him,--the actual six days for
instance, the actual and needed rest on the seventh; but the placid
clergyman dares not teach them, not knowing why he dares not. He has
been leavened unconsciously by the free-thinking of his liberal brother,
and his teaching comes forth conformed in some degree to the new
doctrines, although, to himself, the feeling is simply that the ground
is being cut from under him, and that that special bit of ground,--the
actual six days,--has slid away altogether from the touch of his feet.
In London and in the large towns, where they most abound, these new
teachers have their own circles, their own flocks, their own churches,
and their admirers who have become familiar with them. And it is when so
placed, no doubt, that they are most efficacious in operating on the
education of laymen and of other clergymen. But it is when such a one
finds himself placed as a parson in a country parish, out, as it were,
alone among the things of another day, that he calls upon himself the
greatest attention. He has around him antediluvian rectors and pietistic
vicars, who regard him not only as a bird of prey who has got into a
community of domestic poultry, but, worse still, as a bird that is
fouling its own nest. They hate his teaching, as all teachers must hate
doctrines which are subversive of their own--which, however, they can
themselves neither subvert nor approve. But they hate more intensely
that want of professional thoroughness, that absence of esprit de corps,
which these gentlemen seem to them to exhibit. “He has taken orders,”
says the antediluvian rector, speaking of his free-thinking neighbour to
his confidential friend, “simply to upset the Church! He believes in
nothing; nothing in heaven, nothing on earth,--nothing under the earth.
He told his people yesterday that the Book of Exodus is an old woman’s
story. And the worst of it is, we cannot do anything to get rid of
him;--no, by Heaven, not anything!” To which the rector’s confidential
friend replies that the rector has still the power left of preaching
his own doctrine. “Psha!” says the rector, “preach, indeed! Preach the
Devil as he does, and you can fill a church any day! What I want to know
is how a man like that can bring himself to take four hundred a year out
of the Church, when he doesn’t believe one of the Articles he has sworn
to?” Now the special offence of the liberal preacher on this occasion
was a hint conveyed in a sermon that the fourth commandment in its
entirety is hardly compatible with the life of an Englishman in the
nineteenth century. And the laymen around are astounded by the man,
feeling a great interest in him, not unmixed with awe. Has he come to
them from Heaven or from Hell? Are these new teachings, which are not
without their comfort, promptings direct from the Evil One, who is ever
roaring for their souls, and who may thus have come to roar in their own
parish? There is mystery as well as danger in the matter; and as
mystery, and danger also when not too near, are both pleasant, the new
man is not altogether unwelcome, in spite of the anathemas of the
neighbouring rector. What if the new teaching should be true? So the
men begin to speculate, and the women quake, and the neighbouring
parsons are full of wrath, and the bishop’s table groans with letters
which he knows not how to answer, or how to leave unanswered. The
free-thinking clergyman of whom we are speaking still creates much of
this excitement in the country; but in the town he is encountered on
easier terms, and in London he finds his own set, and has no special
weight beyond that which his talents and his energy can give him.
It is very hard to come at the actual belief of any man. Indeed how
should we hope to do so when we find it so very hard to come at our own?
How many are there among us who, in this matter of our religion, which
of all things is the most important to us, could take pen in hand and
write down even for their own information exactly what they themselves
believe? Not very many clergymen even, if so pressed, would insert
boldly and plainly the fulminating clause of the Athanasian Creed; and
yet each clergyman declares aloud that he believes it a dozen times
every year of his life. Most men who call themselves Christians would
say that they believed the Bible, not knowing what they meant, never
having attempted,--and very wisely having refrained from attempting
amidst the multiplicity of their worldly concerns,--to separate
historical record from inspired teaching. But when a liberal-minded
clergyman does come among us,--come among us, that is, as our
pastor,--we feel not unnaturally a desire to know what it is, at any
rate, that he disbelieves. On what is he unsound, according to the
orthodoxy of our old friend the neighbouring rector? And are we prepared
to be unsound with him? We know that there are some things which we do
not like in the teaching to which we have been hitherto subjected;--that
fulminating clause, for instance, which tells us that nobody can be
saved unless he believes a great deal which we find it impossible to
understand; the ceremonial Sabbath which we know that we do not observe,
though we go on professing that its observance is a thing necessary for
us;--the incompatibility of the teaching of Old Testament records with
the new teachings of the rocks and stones. Is it within our power to get
over our difficulties by squaring our belief with that of this new
parson whom we acknowledge at any rate to be a clever fellow? Before we
can do so we must at any rate know what is the belief,--or the
unbelief,--that he has in him.
But this is exactly what we never can do. The old rector was ready
enough with his belief. There were the three creeds, and the thirty-nine
articles; and, above all, there was the Bible,--to be taken entire,
unmutilated, and unquestioned. His task was easy enough, and he believed
that he believed what he said that he believed. But the new parson has
by no means so glib an answer ready to such a question. He is not ready
with his answer because he is ever thinking of it. The other man was
ready because he did not think. Our new friend, however, is debonair and
pleasant to us, with something of a subrisive smile in which we rather
feel than know that there is a touch of irony latent. The question asked
troubles him inwardly, but he is well aware that he should show no
outward trouble. So he is debonair and kind,--still with that subrisive
smile,--and bids us say our prayers, and love our God, and trust our
Saviour. The advice is good, but still we want to know whether we are to
pray God to help us to keep the Fourth Commandment, or only pretend so
to pray,--and whether, when the fulminating clause is used, we are to
try to believe it or to disbelieve it. We can only observe our new
rector, and find out from his words and his acts how his own mind works
on these subjects.
It is soon manifest to us that he has accepted the teaching of the rocks
and stones, and that we may give up the actual six days, and give up
also the deluge as a drowning of all the world. Indeed, we had almost
come to fancy that even the old rector had become hazy on these points.
And gradually there leak out to us, as to the falling of manna from
heaven, and as to the position of Jonah within the whale, and as to the
speaking of Balaam’s ass, certain doubts, not expressed indeed, but
which are made manifest to us as existing by the absence of expressions
of belief. In the intercourse of social life we see something of a smile
cross our new friend’s face when the thirty-nine articles are brought
down beneath his nose. Then he has read the _Essays and Reviews_, and
will not declare his opinion that the writers of them should be
unfrocked and sent away into chaos;--nay, we find that he is on terms
of personal intimacy with one at least among the number of those
writers. And, lastly, there comes out a subscription list for Bishop
Colenso, and we find our new rector’s name down for a five-pound note!
That we regard as the sign, to be recognized by us as the most certain
of all signs, that he has cut the rope which bound his barque to the old
shore, and that he is going out to sea in quest of a better land. Shall
we go with him, or shall we stay where we are?
If one could stay, if one could only have a choice in the matter, if one
could really believe that the old shore is best, who would leave it? Who
would not wish to be secure if he knew where security lay? But this new
teacher, who has come among us with his ill-defined doctrines and his
subrisive smile,--he and they who have taught him,--have made it
impossible for us to stay. With hands outstretched towards the old
places, with sorrowing hearts,--with hearts which still love the old
teachings which the mind will no longer accept,--we, too, cut our ropes,
and go out in our little boats, and search for a land that will be new
to us, though how far new,--new in how many things, we do not know. Who
would not stay behind if it were possible to him?
But our business at present is with the teacher, and not with the
taught. Of him we may declare that he is, almost always, a true
man,--true in spite of that subrisive smile and ill-defined doctrine. He
is one who, without believing, cannot bring himself to think that he
believes, or to say that he believes that which he disbelieves without
grievous suffering to himself. He has to say it, and does suffer. There
are the formulas which must be repeated, or he must abandon his ministry
altogether,--his ministry, and his adopted work, and the public utility
which it is his ambition to achieve. Debonair though he be, and smile
though he may, he has through it all some terrible heart-struggles, in
which he is often tempted to give way and to acknowledge that he is too
weak for the work he has taken in hand. When he resolved that he must
give that five pounds to the Colenso fund,--or rather when he resolved
that he must have his name printed in the public list, for an anonymous
giving of his money would have been nothing,--he knew that his rope was
indeed cut, and that his boat was in truth upon the wide waters. After
that it will serve him little to say that such an act on his part
implies no agreement with the teaching of the African bishop. He had, by
the subscription, attached himself to the Broad Church with the newest
broad principles, and must expect henceforth to be regarded as little
better than an infidel,--certainly as an enemy in the camp,--by the
majority of his brethren of the day. “Why does he not give up his
tithes? Why does he stick to his temporalities?” says the old-fashioned,
wrathful parson of the neighbouring parish; and the sneer, which is
repeated from day to day and from month to month, is not slow to reach
the new man’s ear. It is an accusation hard to be borne; but it has to
be borne,--among other things,--by the clergyman who subscribes for
Colenso.
THE END.