TRANSFORMATIONS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
The vicissitudes of religious thought in the Victorian age illustrated
by the quaint saying of an Oxford verger. Changes in the organization
of the Church of England during the present reign. The revival of
Convocation; the Ecclesiastical Commission. Facts and figures
illustrating the results of these and the progress made at home and
abroad. Activity and efficiency of other religious bodies, Protestant
and Papist. Special influence of individuals in the Churches. In the
Anglican, Dean Arthur Stanley, Professor Jowett, Professor Mansel. In
the Nonconformist bodies, R. W. Dale, and C. H. Spurgeon. A friendly
critic on the abuse of religious liberalism. How this re-acts, even on
the new High Church critics, _e.g._ _Lux Mundi_ and _The Sermon on the
Mount_.
A verger at St Mary's Church, Oxford, during the sixties used devoutly to
thank his Maker that after having heard University sermons for thirty
years, he still remained a Christian. Conflicts within, attacks without,
at least as severe as any to which either was exposed during the Georgian
epoch, have been the lot of the Christianity whose depository is the
Church of England during the Victorian age. Neither Christian faith, nor
the Church that is its national expression, has come forth maimed or
weakened from that ordeal. Modern scepticism scarcely aims at substituting
for a Divine Being any tangible object of faith. It retires from the
discussion with the remark that high and invisible things are beyond human
knowledge. Hence nothing in agnosticism, however hostile its tendency to,
need be inconsistent with, Revelation. The mere statement of difficulties
in the way of belief and of purely abstract alternatives to belief makes
no proselytes.[107]
Freethinkers of the last century appealed, and were limited, to the rich.
The secularists who are their successors since 1840 pose as the friends of
the poor. Neither school can consider itself a power. The Victorian age is
in fact above all others an age of religious revival. This has been
largely due to the influence of the Court. From the _entourage_ of the
later Georges and of William IV. the best of their subjects held aloof.
Had the year of Revolution come then instead of in 1848, the English
throne, whose possessor lacked all personal hold of the people, might have
shared the fate of continental crowns.
The Queen saw nothing of any Court until she presided over a transformed
Court of her own. Her subjects no sooner knew their fresh ruler than they
were powerfully impressed by the contrast of her blameless life and
society to anything of which they had read, heard, or seen. Under such a
sovereign, a change in the whole spirit of the nation's religious life
naturally followed. Thinking minds had indeed long been in a state of
spiritual ferment. The Tractarian movement had begun with Keble's Assize
Sermon five years before the Queen's accession. Its full results were not
to be seen till 1846.
Meanwhile, in the third year of the reign the idea of reviving
Convocation, which since 1717 had been suspended, of which Burke had said
that it was without functions save to pay compliments to the king and then
dissolve, took form; since 1850, that body has met. Unreformed this
clerical parliament still remains. As in 1864 it declared _Essays and
Reviews_ heretical, but could not punish the men whom it branded, so,
to-day, a canon of Convocation, though approved by the Crown, has no
binding power. But the days when the _Times_, long since convinced of its
Erastian errors, could sneer at Convocation as 'a clerical debating
society with a long name' are altogether gone by.
Many who are by no means ardent Churchmen, or are outside the Church
Communion, are interested to know the actual opinion of Convocation on
social and industrial questions of the hour, as this opinion is expressed
by educated men who reflect the views of their cloth at least as
faithfully as the House of Commons reflects the views of the people. Thus,
during the recent sittings of a single year, Convocation in its two
provinces with their divisions into lower and upper Houses, has discussed
and suggested solutions of subjects so varied as sisterhoods and
deaconesses, betting and gambling, popular education, soldiers' marriages,
marriage law amendment Bills, spiritual provision for workhouses, clergy
discipline Bill, the relations between the Church and State in the
Colonies. Even in its unreformed condition, this body can scarcely fail to
be of some use in officially telling Parliament men the opinion of the
Church, which, on any view of it, is at least a considerable corporation,
on matters affecting clerical interests or popular morals. In the remote
event of the Church being disestablished, Convocation is a useful drilling
ground on which Churchmen of all degrees can be trained to collective
action.
What are the facts relating to the Church to-day? At the opening of this
age, the beneficed clergy were often unfit for their posts; they were very
largely indifferent to their duties. The attacks on the Establishment led
by the Lord Henley of that day and others, shortly after the 1832 Reform
Act, were more organized and plausible than anything which has been
witnessed since. There are, after all, not many things more national in
England than the Church. Even the differences of the clergy, and the
professed desire of some among them to be free from State supervision,
have not lessened the national regard for the Established Faith. The
attack from within, therefore, seems likely to be weathered not less
successfully than the attack from without.
The parochial system of the Church--its clergy resident in every village
where the squire is often an absentee, has struck its fibres too deep into
the soil of English life, to be rooted out by any sectarian agitation. The
best proof that Church endowments do not check, but rather encourage,
private beneficence is the amount of money donations to the Established
Church during the present age. Gifts to the Church, whether in the shape
of lands, tithes, other rent charges, stock or cash, represent roughly a
sum of L5,500,000, yielding a perpetual yearly income of L181,940.
The second of the two Acts establishing the Ecclesiastical Commission is
of Victorian date. The operations of this body have increased the incomes
of Church livings by L1,016,775 a year, or by a capital sum of
L30,599,100; and this during the twelve years ending 1896-97. Queen Anne's
bounty does not, indeed, seem to have been uniformly administered with
such wisdom. Its funds have sometimes been granted to incumbents to
enlarge houses, schools, and other buildings beyond the point at which
there was an assured income for the maintenance of these fabrics. The
Tithes Commutation Act is not blamed for the periodical return of hard
times for the clergy. The distress itself is partial, sometimes
exaggerated. Still, there seems to have been a general reduction of
incomes in rural districts by 25 per cent. No offertories, which in towns
greatly help the clergy, can make the country deficiency good. The
suggestion of repealing the Act which put down pluralities so as to
concentrate several poor preferments in one incumbent is not likely to be
acted on. But some relaxation of the Act might be a feasible concession to
a growing opinion. Rich livings are sometimes the worst served. Some
re-adjustment of stipends after a new enquiry seems, therefore, likely to
be proposed.
So much for the purely English aspect of clerical activity in our age. The
alliance in the foreign enterprise of the Church with the State coincides
exclusively with the Victorian reign. In 1841 the Colonial Bishopric fund
was begun. By 1851 the Colonial episcopate was fairly organized. Four
years after the Queen's accession there were 10 Anglican dioceses out of
England. Sixty years after that accession there are 92.[108] These sees
are grouped into provincial Synods. This foreign Church, one in doctrine
with the Established Church at home, is modified in its agency and
development to suit the soil to which it is transplanted. The late Sir J.
R. Seeley, with respect to its calming influences amid jarring faiths, has
in a familiar passage dwelt on the Christianity of the English Church as a
reconciling element between the rival creeds of the Eastern world. Add to
this the organization of episcopal Protestantism of the Anglican type, not
only in the West Indies and in our Canadian Dominion, but in the United
States themselves.[109]
A fair idea may thus be formed of the State Church in its character of a
veritable catholic, not less than a national, power. Improved organization
does not always argue increased efficiency. The machinery of the Roman
Empire was never more elaborate than when it was in a state of atrophy.
Coinciding, however, with the unmistakable signs of spiritual life at home
and abroad, the domestic resources and the foreign work of the national
religion are tributes alike to the efficacy of the Church as a world-wide
instrument of righteousness, and to the increased motive power of religion
during the Victorian age. With the spiritual work that has been done,
certain names very briefly must be associated. The Oxford Tractarianism
between 1832-46 is only one of many manifestations of religious life which
mark that epoch, and which nearly perplexed into infidelity the Oxford
verger aforesaid. In extreme Evangelicalism outside our Church, the
followers of Wesley, regardless of their founder's injunction not to form
a separate sect, were perfecting their system when the reign began. In
1833, an English clergyman at Plymouth, J. L. Darby, left the National
Church and founded the sect of 'Brethren' who take their name from the
Western seaport where he had officiated. Fifteen years later, in 1848,
Plymouth Brethrenism was itself divided by one of Darby's followers, named
Newton; he created a clique of his own now called by their rival
religionists, the loose, or open, Brethren. The missionary and literary
activities of this little sect are really remarkable. In 1843
Presbyterianism across the Tweed had a schism of its own. The secession of
Chalmers on the issue of State patronage resulted in the founding of the
Free Kirk. The religious activity of the epoch has been universal. Among
the older dissenting bodies, Congregationalists, in point of numbers,
influence, in national repute of their leaders, perhaps come first. These
in 1837, numbered 170,000 full members. Now they number nearly 400,000. Of
the Baptists there were, in 1837, 125,000. Sixty years later they are
340,000. This increase is due to the single agency of C. H. Spurgeon,
whose personal influence is not yet fully realized but may be judged from
the circulation by millions of his posthumous Sermons, as well as by the
pulpit imitations of him in all Communions, not excepting the high
Anglican pulpits. Hence of course Nonconformist numbers depending largely
on individual attractions, are subject to greater fluctuations than in the
Establishment. Roman Catholics have increased in the large towns of
England and in the Colonies. In 1837 their priests were less than 1,000.
Fifty years later they were in round numbers 2,500. Their Churches have
risen from 600 to 1,350. The activity of British Evangelicalism is farther
shown by the doubling of the income of the British and Foreign Bible
Society during the reign, by the cost of a New Testament being ten-pence
in 1837, a penny in 1897. Similarly the income of the Propagation of the
Gospel Society is very nearly twice, and of the Church Missionary Society
almost thrice, as much to-day as it was in the Accession year.
Among Nonconformist bodies, numbers vary according to the eminence of
individual leaders, rising by bounds with a Spurgeon, diminishing
temporarily with some of his successors. Similarly, among Anglican
Communicants numbers fluctuate according to the influence of the leaders
of the great schools, a Liddon, or a Ryle, a Maurice, a Webb Peploe, or a
Lefroy. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, whose work on the Atonement is a
recognised text book, even among many Anglicans, did as much as A. P.
Stanley of Westminster, to soften down sectarian differences, and to
command the respect of other Communions. Nor has Dale had any lack of
worthy successors now living. Unless religion had been ineradicable in the
national, because in the human, mind, results very different from this
general increase in the number of all religious Communions, judged by
whatever test, would have been witnessed.
Scarcely had the Church recovered from the shock of Newman's secession,
and the agitating effects during two decades of High Church and Low Church
controversies[110] when Dr Mansel, then an Oxford tutor and
professor,[111] in his ardent, but not wholly discreet zeal, expressed
views on the relations of the Infinite to the finite which, as F. D.
Maurice perceived, declaring the Deity to be unknowable by man, might be
perverted into an apology for agnosticism. That religion did not really
suffer is due in some degree to Benjamin Jowett. This good and honest
scholar's life was spent in educating young men into useful Christians,
into serious citizens, and into sincere believers. He claimed liberty; he
loved truth. He ridiculed with quiet satire the religious nescience and
despair which Mansel's terrific propaganda had been distorted into making
the vogue. When Dr Temple was made Primate:--the first and greatest
tribute was paid to the variety of Oxford ecclesiasticism that would be
rightly described not as the broad, or high, but as the hard Church.
There could be no more striking instance of the transformation in
religious ideas witnessed during our age than the fact that the volume to
which Dr Temple and Mr Jowett both contributed, _Essays and Reviews_, was
branded by Convocation as heretical during the sixties, and is discovered
to be harmless during the nineties.
So qualified a judge on these matters as Mr Stopford Brooke deplores the
declension of religious liberalism into something indistinguishable from
unbelief. But as Professor Mansel's orthodox zeal for the dignity of his
faith helped his enemies rather than his friends, so the services rendered
by his devout successors are not always unmixedly conducive to the old
faith. The 'higher criticism' has been a dubious ally of Biblical
Christianity. _Lux Mundi_ distinguished between the historic and mythic
elements in the _Pentateuch_. The gifted editor of that work has more
recently[112] applied the same method to the sayings of the Founder of
Christianity, and has seemed to some to sanction the evaporation into
proverbs of some Divine utterances.[113]