CHURCH AND THEOCRACY
“The equality of man,” exclaims Disraeli in _Tancred_, “can only be
accomplished by the sovereignty of God. The longing for fraternity can
never be satisfied but under the sway of a common Father ... announce
the sublime and solacing principle of theocratic equality.”
This is a Semitic idea; but, then, so is the Church. The State, on the
other hand, is an Aryan conception. The real religion both of Athens
and of Rome was the State. These radical ideas of Church and State,
to which we have grown so accustomed, are, in fact, the products of
special races and the salvage of the centuries. The Romans invented
“Empire,” the Athenians “Democracy,” the Jews created “Theocracy.”
It may be interesting to inquire how this idea of a spiritual
_Church_--a colony from the unseen and eternal--has been in constant
conflict with that other dominant idea of the _State_; and how, among
the nations, England alone has made any serious or successful attempt
to reconcile them. For these are the ideas, expressed or implied, of
Disraeli. I take the liberty of illustrating these ideas afresh in my
own manner, and in continuous commentary, rather than by considering
isolated passages scattered through his books and speeches, many of
which I shall quote later on. And the standpoint marked by the title
of this chapter is the point of view which seems to me to distinguish
the many varieties of the theme which he presents, and which evidently
fascinated him.
A _national_ Theocracy has always been rejected in the West. The Roman
Church, whose ideal is an international Theocracy under an imperial
form, is in essence anti-national and cosmopolitan; and for this very
reason it became repugnant to those Northern races whose genius makes
for nationality and independence. Moreover, it is unable itself to
flourish without the temporal appanage of a _State_; and it therefore
tends to become an _imperium in imperio_. On Western soil religion is
unable to thrive as a living force unless aided by the equipments of
the _State_, which the instinct of the West evolved, and to which it
is prone; while a non-organised, inorganic creed can no more make a
_Church_, which is a society of believers, than a paper constitution
can make a _state_, which is the community individualised.
A _national_ Theocracy failed also in the East because the faculty
for creating a _State_ was deficient. When once Theocracy, pure and
simple, vanished from Palestine--“the fatherland of the Spirit”--Israel
and Judah were confronted by their inherent inability to found a
_State_. It was this, indeed, which gave rise to the Messianic hope,
a hope which yielded to daily motherhood the consecration of divine
destiny. For to lend an effective earthly sanction to the theocratic
ideal, to reconcile without violence the government of a community
under the Eternal and Invisible with the progress of a community
under a visible chieftain, a perfect monarch, the founder of a golden
age, was required--a theocrat king. The Jewish polity was a _Church_.
All European churches, on the contrary, are polities. This is well
recognised by Professor Ewald,[88] who proves that the _State_, as
such, took no root and found no real place in Palestine. The tentatives
towards a _State_ conflicted with the native theocratic ideals of
race aspiration, and failed to survive them. And when at length the
Incarnation displayed the “Perfect King,” whose “kingdom was not
of this world,” but “within you,” and whose Kingship was “without
observation,” it was the very anti-nationalism of His teaching at
a period when Rome had tinged Palestine with Western politics that
perplexed or offended a perverse caste of fanatics athirst for
national unity, although national independence had crumbled away. When,
once more, the Apostle to the Gentiles laid the Pauline foundations of
an international Christian Church, the Jewish nationalism, despite the
sublime prophecies of Isaiah, grew doubly embittered, and closed its
ears to that theocratic message, which was, in fact, the fulfilment of
its highest aspirations.
For the ideal of the early Christian Church was undoubtedly an
_international Theocracy_. On this very account it disgusted the Roman
patriotism which despised it. But directly it became acclimatised
in the West, and prevailed, it also underwent that modification of
theocratic ideals which the West always entails. It threw itself into
the mould of the _State_. It assumed the purple of the Cæsars; it “sent
forth its dogmas like legions into the Provinces.”
This only happens in Europe; in the East religions are never
politicised. The West seeks the tangible and turns to myth the
wonders that are literal to the Eastern mind. In so far as the old
Egyptian belief was in the priestly power, it may perhaps be termed
oligarchical, but not in the Western sense. The Church of Buddha is a
spiritual brotherhood, never a _State_. Islam, like that from which
it sprang, is a Theocracy without any inherent organisation. Like it,
it eventually chose a monarchical headship; and, like it too, its
monarchy came to be cleft in twain. It is, I repeat, only in the West
that creeds are politicised. As the earthly sanctions for Christianity
coarsened through the centuries, it became at once Cæsarian and
cosmopolitan. But the warfare between the so-called secular and
spiritual powers, which, indeed, forms the history of the earliest
Middle Ages, soon began to impair its birthright of cosmopolitanism.
The invincible bias towards nationality of the Northern races asserted
itself.
Dante, it is true, dreamed of a real Theocracy. But he was a strong
champion of a monarchical State. He staked his hopes on that great
Emperor--that “patriot king”--whose premature death dashed his vision
to the ground. And after Dante, Savonarola craved a real Theocracy; but
it again assumed that Republican shape which, two centuries later, was
to play a greater, though as futile, a part in England. The Church one
way or another throughout Europe perpetually tended towards becoming “a
State within the State,” a “King of kings;” and in this regard it is
not a little curious that the present Oratorians still obey the antique
Florentine Constitution which St. Philip of Neri transcribed and
embalmed as the rule of his order. In the same way the early American
Episcopalians brought with them, in their three-yearly Conventions,
that Triennial Parliament which William of Orange grudgingly granted to
the Tories, and which Walpole was afterwards to repeal for the Whigs.
Once more, the Pilgrim Fathers brought the ideal of Republican forms
to America; but Republican forms soon passed into democratic facts.
From Jemima Wilkinson to Mormonism and Christian science, sects and
sectaries have abounded. No religious vagary has lacked its audience
and its franchise. America exemplifies the disadvantage of lacking
a national comprehensive Church in a country whose aspirations are
national. Early in the seventeenth century the Presbyterians persecuted
the Quaker immigrants with a ferocity of which Torquemada might have
been proud; but in their turn the American Presbyterians eventually
fell a prey to their own factions. While she was still a British
colony, England unwisely forced on America bishops consecrated at
home; but these very bishops were themselves rejected admittance by
persecuting Presbyterians, who regarded Episcopalians as Jacobites,
and taunted them as Papists. It was the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel that persistently sought to remedy the gross anomaly of the
Bishop of London being the Bishop of America.
The Reformation in England was in its essence a national protest
against internationalism. Out of it flowed the notion of a _national
Church_ like a “national party” (a contradiction in terms but a most
remarkable actuality), which it, in common with France, theoretically
justified as prior to Roman usurpation. Our Church is one at once
rooted in the soil as a civil institution, a source of parish life,
a security for local government, a bar at once to oligarchy and
bureaucracy, against the exclusion of the many from public life,[89]
the trustee of an estate which enables all to become proprietors of
the soil, which is, as Disraeli termed it, “the fluctuating patrimony
of the great body of the people;” and it is also by inheritance one
paramount in the country as a spiritual authority, an educator, a
social regenerator, and a mainspring of that tolerance and religious
liberty which the great Whig party secured for our country. As Disraeli
has pointed out repeatedly, the union of Church and State means the
hallowing of the civil power, the investment of secular authority with
religious sanction, the loss of which the State would be the first to
feel and regret, should the bond be severed.
England, then, is the only nation that has reconciled through
compromise the spiritual ideas of Theocracy with the dominant forms of
the _State_.
But the English Church, headed by the English king, was soon faced by
Puritanism; and of this phase Disraeli, through his father’s history,
was a deep student.
Puritanism was cradled among small traders, conscious of their virtues,
but socially ill at ease. It at once became terribly at ease in the
courts of Zion. It began with a retail outlook, and it soon politicised
its creed. It became eminently republican, nor was it ever democratic.
Instinctively counter to all forms, whether “temporal” or “spiritual,”
it aimed at the destruction both of Monarchy and the Church, and yet
it set up an exclusiveness of its own. The Jewish Theocracy had, as I
have pointed out, broken down even under that monarchical shape which
suited it, just because its outward _State_ apparatus was mechanical
and out of touch with the development of national life. The finer
spirits of Puritanism--and they were very fine--had these features to
reckon with. Cromwell, like Savonarola, compassed an impracticable
solecism. He desired a Republican Theocracy. His scheme only chimed
with that of the Church which he sought to ruin in this, that he too
wished religion to be nationally organised--to be political. But the
result was an intolerant fanaticism of mutually persecuting sects, and
a Parliamentary censorship of morals which cramped, nay, imprisoned
self-developing virtue, confounded holiness with austerity, and
furnished the best argument for a “national Church.”
Milton, who tempered the Puritanic fire with the Renaissance light,
who, in his youth, was a worshipper of the subdued loveliness of the
Church and “her dim, religious light,” came to regard our national
Church as merely, in his own phrase, “an anti-papal schism.” Like
Cromwell, he longed to destroy it.
“It is a rule and principle,” he urges,[90] “worthy to be known by
Christians, that no Scripture, no, nor so much as any ancient creed,
binds our faith or our obedience to any Church whatsoever denominated
by a particular name; far less if it be distinguished by a several
government from that which is indeed Catholic.... It were an injury to
condemn the papist of absurdity and contradiction for adhering to his
Catholic Romish religion, if we, for the pleasure of a king and his
public considerations, shall adhere to a Catholic English.” Milton only
wanted republican instead of monarchical forms. Politics were still the
setting of religion. He was even more inconsistent. He deprecated any
discipline by the State, although his Church was a political Church,
and although Cromwell’s purposes are contradicted by Milton’s very
deprecation” ”If we think”--who can forget this fine passage from his
“Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing”?--“if we think to
regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all
recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to men. No music must
be set or sung but what is grave and Doric.... I hate a pupil-teacher;
I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an
overseeing fist.” How did Milton relish the Independents as “pupil
teachers,” or the “overseeing fist” of the Fifth-Monarchy men, or the
wardship of the Reign of Saints? Milton wants neither the Church as a
Polity, nor the State as a Church. Not staying to inquire what fits the
genius of England and her national traditions and customs, he seeks a
Theocracy which is untheocratic, and a national republic doomed to fall
when the perfect ruler is removed.
“When,” he indignantly exclaims[91]--“when God shakes a kingdom with
strong and healthful commotions to a general reforming, it is not
untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in
seducing, but yet more true is it that God then raises to His own work
men of rare abilities and more than common industry, not only to look
back and revise what hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further
and to go on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.”
So, then, a reformed commonwealth, and no visible Church are Milton’s
ideals.
“The Parliament of England,” he protests, had turned “regal bondage
into a free commonwealth.” “All Protestants,” he proceeds, “hold that
Christ in His Church hath left no vicegerent of his power, but Himself
without deputy is the only head thereof, governing it from heaven.” So
far Milton announces pure Theocracy; but the leaven of his classical
republicanism is disclosed in the next sentence: he cannot divorce
religion from politics. “How, then, can any Christian man derive his
kingship from Christ? I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men
will easily agree with me that a free commonwealth, without a single
person or House of Lords, is by far the best Government, if it can
be had.” And then he propounds grand councils of a perpetual senate,
safe-guarded against “any dogeship of Venice,”[92] as the means to
save the State. “The whole freedom of man,” he says, “consists either
in spiritual or civil liberty.” No rule for the first is admitted by
him but the Scriptures; for the second he takes the Dutch model of
the United Provinces. But he neglects to consider how liberty can be
settled without order, or order without discipline, or discipline
without authority, or authority without creed.
Even the loftiest Puritan ideal of Theocracy, therefore, was no less
political than that of the Church.
A very few years witnessed the complete breakdown of a system which
sought to blend the early Latin and the early Semitic ideals together
in unnatural alliance, and disregarded the native bias of Great
Britain.
The ensuing reaction rendered the English Church more political than
ever. She was split into contending partisanship for contending
dynasties. She repudiated James the Second, but not the Stuarts. Under
William of Orange latitudinarianism, even her latitudinarianism,
was militant. But under the two first Georges she grew torpid and
time-serving. The rash and rabid Sunderland, the astute Walpole,
parodied the old Miltonic ideals in their zeal for indifferentism,
and in self-defence the Church tended temporarily to seem the mere
stipendiary of the State, like an excise officer. But Wesley in
England, and Whitefield both here and in America, re-aroused the Church
to the higher and holier ideals of a _national_ Theocracy. Some century
later the Tractarian movement spurred her energies afresh, and they
have since been once more quickened in the battle with mechanical
materialism.
But all along it has been a sheer necessity in England--a necessity
for spiritual as well as civil _freedom_--that the State should lend
its earthly sanction of _order_ to the Church. A _national_ Church so
uncontrolled is impossible in England, where politics tinge every form
of aspiration. For international Theocracy, for that “millenary year”
which is the magnificent ideal of Romanism, the times are unripe. It
must remain a remote goal so long as the competitive egoism of nations,
transfiguring the baser egotism of individuals and of mere races, is
paramount.
The Church State has been unrealisable. England alone has realised
the State Church. The former has been impossible in the West, owing
to the Aryan genius for State development, and especially to the
national instinct of the Anglo-Saxon family. With the British spirit
a cosmopolitan religion is incompatible. No nation ambitious of being
a world-power can revert to Theocracy. It is not feasible under such
conditions.
The latter, however, the Anglican Church, has reconciled these two
concepts of opposite origins, the Oriental idea of a “Church,” and the
Occidental idea of the State. For it is not only a religious, but a
national and a social tradition.
This, I take it, was Disraeli’s attitude. By temperament he was
theocratic. He believed in the original spirituality of his race;
but he also believed in the great destiny of the nation to which he
belonged, and in her Church he descried the naturalised power of
Semitic ideas, the only form in which they could become nationally
operative, the sole political means in a political country of
sanctifying the secular. “The Church,” he once said, “is one of the few
great things left.” The Church ever found him a wise and enthusiastic
supporter. The fact is, as he put it in a speech of 1860, “the Church
is a part of England.” Nor would he ever allow that mere differences
of opinion negatived her comprehensiveness. She was still Anglican.
What he recoiled from was the hard-and-fast narrowness of Puritanism,
the fiercer fanaticisms of which, he always maintained, had undone
Ireland. Sectarianism is not strength, for strength resides in national
discipline. He regarded a “national Church” as the best pledge for
religious liberty to even those outside her communion, as a national
refuge from bigotry and a national rampart against priestcraft.
The Church’s “nationality” is proved even by the peculiar character of
her property. It is territorial. It is (as he emphasised in a speech of
1862) “... so distributed throughout the country, that it makes that
Church, from the very nature of its tenure, a national Church; and the
power of the Church of England does not depend merely on the amount
of property it possesses, but in a very great degree on the character
and kind of that property. Then I say that the Church, deprived of its
status, would become merely an _episcopal sect_ in this country. And in
time, it is not impossible it might become an insignificant one. But
that is not the whole, nor, perhaps, even the greatest evil, that might
arise from the dissolution of the connection between Church and State,
because in the present age the art of government becomes every day more
difficult, and no Government will allow a principle so powerful as the
religious principle to be divorced from the influences by which it
regulates the affairs of a country. What would happen?... The State of
England would take care, after the Church was spoiled, to enlist in its
service what are called the ministers of all religions. They would be
salaried by the State, and the consequences of the dissolution of the
alliance between Church and State would be one equally disastrous to
the Churchman and to the Nonconformist. It would place the ministers of
all spiritual influences under the control of the civil power, and it
would in reality effect a revolution in the national character....”
De Tocqueville has proved that the French clergy were the staunchest
upholders of civil liberty before the Revolution; but he has also
acutely shown that the Roman priesthood, devoid of domestic ties, looks
to the Church as its sole fatherland, unless it can itself become a
proprietor of the soil. The French Revolution disempowered it for that
purpose, and evicted it from its heritage. The English clergy, on the
other hand, are linked to civil life both by the land and the home.
Contrast for one moment the landscape of a French village with that of
an English, and the difference becomes typified. In the one the church
stands aloof and dominates the hamlet. In the other it nestles among
the cottages, and helps the daily life around it.
What was present to Disraeli’s mind was not only that, in such a case,
the ancient landmarks of parish life, the ancient trusts of education,
the ancient equality of social intercourse between clergy and laity,
the ancient duties and intimacies, the ancient openness to the poorest
of career in the Church and of residence on the land, would be swept
away; but that, as he expressed it when discussing the “Cowper-Temple
Amendment” in 1870, “you will not entrust the priest or the presbyter
with the privilege of expounding the Holy Scriptures ... _but for that
purpose you are inventing and establishing a new sacerdotal class_.”
“My idea of sacerdotal despotism,” he said in 1863, “is this, that
a minister of the Church of England, who is appointed to expound
doctrine, should deem that he has a right to invent doctrine. That ...
is the sacerdotal despotism I fear....” The State would suffer; and it
would suffer doubly. Not only would religion cease to be an official
element of order, but the ministers of religion might be unduly
strengthened in civil affairs--might be over-politicised. “Whether
that is a result to be desired,” he remarked ten years afterwards,
“is a grave question for all men. For my own part, I am bound to say
that I doubt whether it would be favourable to the cause of civil and
religious liberty.”
In his novels he emphasises his belief that society is inconceivable
without religion, and that “without a Church there can be no true
religion, because otherwise you have no security for the truth,”
although he also distinguishes between differing “orthodoxies” and
real religion. At the same time, the Church as a polity must have
dogmas--“No Church, no creed”--“no dogmas, no deans, Mr. Dean.”
The human craving, the passionate instinct for religion, he ever
based--from the date of _Contarini Fleming_ and _Alroy_ to that
of _Coningsby_ and _Tancred_, and from that of _Tancred_ to that
of _Lothair_--on the fact that “_man requires that there shall be
direct relations between the created and the Creator, and that in
those relations he should find a solution of the perplexities of
existence_.”--“The brain that teems with illimitable thought will never
recognise as his Creator any power of nature, however irresistible,
that is not gifted with consciousness.... The Church comes forward,
and without equivocation offers to establish direct relations between
God and man. Philosophy denies its title and disputes its power. Why?
Because they are founded on the supernatural. What is the supernatural?
Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence of man and the
world? Anything more literally supernatural than the origin of things?
The Church explains what no one else pretends to explain, and which
every one agrees it is of first moment should be made clear.”
Of the two passions which moved Disraeli, the one for mastery, the
other for the mysterious, the last was perhaps the strongest. The
mysteries that fascinated him were real, and did not render him a
mystic, still less a quietist. It is a mistake so to regard him. His
strength alike and his weakness resided in the practical energy of his
imagination. The whole of existence was for him a standing miracle.
“Contarini” finds his fate by a vision in a church; “Venetia” receives
a miraculous answer to her prayer of agony. He delights to depict, even
in the short biography of his father, providential coincidences. What
is deemed bizarre in his works, is really the sense of magic wonder
in all we experience. His irony, too, contrasting show with substance
and words with things, works by paradox.[93] That man is a spirit on
earth was his firm conviction. We find it accentuated from his earliest
utterances to his latest. “... There are some things I know,” said the
Syrian in _Lothair_, according with the Syrian in _Tancred_, “and some
things I believe. I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is
immortal....”[94] The riddle of life is not to be solved by theories,
however true or ingenious of the processes of development, still less
by the fashionable “prattle of protoplasm,” or the glib triflers with
their “We once had fins, we shall have wings.” He was quite sincere
and consistent in his famous “Ape or Angel” dilemma. He believed,
both passionately and dispassionately, that man was divine. Science
confesses that its discoveries are merely of recurrent facts called
laws; it does not profess to account for them.
“Science may prove the insignificance of this globe in the scale of
creation,” said the stranger, “but it cannot prove the insignificance
of man. What is the earth compared with the sun? A mole-hill by a
mountain; yet the inhabitants of this earth can discover the elements
of which the great orb exists, and will probably, ere long, ascertain
all the conditions of its being. Nay, the human mind can penetrate far
beyond the sun. There is no relation, therefore, between the faculties
of man and the scale in creation of the planet which he inhabits....
But there are people now who tell you there never was any creation,
and therefore there never could have been a creator.”--“And which is
now advanced with the confidence of novelty,” said the Syrian, “though
all of it has been urged, and vainly urged, thousands of years ago.
There must be design, or all we see would be without sense, and I do
not believe in the unmeaning. As for the natural forces to which all
creation is now attributed, we know that they are unconscious, while
consciousness is as inevitable a portion of our existence as the eye
or the hand. The conscious cannot be derived from the unconscious.
Man is divine.... Is it more unphilosophical to believe in a personal
God omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces unconscious and
irresistible? Is it unphilosophical to combine power with intelligence?
Goethe, a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza, said he could bring
his mind to the conception that in the centre of space we might meet
with a monad of pure intelligence. Is that more philosophical than the
truth first revealed to man amid these everlasting hills,” said the
Syrian, “that God made man in His own image?” ... “It is the charter
of the nobility of man ... one of the divine dogmas revealed in this
land; not the invention of councils, not one of which was held on this
sacred soil; confused assemblies first got together by the Greeks, and
then by barbarous nations in barbarous times.”--“Yet the divine land no
longer tells us divine things,” said “Lothair.” “It may, or may not,
have fulfilled its destiny,” said the Syrian. “‘In my Father’s house
are many mansions,’ and by the various families of nations the designs
of the Creator are accomplished. God works by races,[95] and one was
appointed in due season, and after many developments, to reveal and
expound in this land the spiritual nature of man....”
This quotation may suffice, though many others, even from the biography
of Lord George Bentinck, might have been offered. These ideas are
perhaps best summarised in the Preface to _Lothair_. Disraeli really
believed in the sacredness of the Syrian soil and air, the peculiar
genius of the Semite for communion with God, as of the Hellene for
communion with nature and origination of art; in the special religious
revelation vouchsafed to Semites alone and consummated in Christianity,
which he ever held was the fulfilment of Judaism. The dogma of the
Atonement he received literally. It was a divine mystery enacted by
a prince of Israel. Disraeli’s sense of mystery was, let me repeat,
literal, and never explained through emblems. There was nothing of
Gothic symbolism in his nature. From these convictions flowed his
sanguine confidence in himself and his mission; in destiny, which he
has himself said may be but the exertion of our own will. From these
flowed his sympathy with the heroic, his turn for the adventurous; his
disrelish, too, of modern rationalism, modern materialism,[96] and
even of modern metaphysics.[97] From these flowed his faith in the
revelations of conscience--“I worship in a Church where I believe God
dwells, and dwells for my guidance and my good; my conscience;”[98]
in a word, from these flowed his bias towards a natural Theocracy.
But, as I have already said, he recognised that the English Church
had alone, as the depository of these _racial_ ideas, attuned them to
the _national_ refrain of England, embodied them in living Western
flesh. Just as for him Government meant organised authority, and
Party organised opinion, so the Church meant organised belief; nor
did he ever cease to point out that if the national Church were
disestablished, if that form of Protestant religion, resting on
popular sympathies and popular privileges, which had grown with the
growth of England and had leavened her life, her civil society, her
public education, and even her pastimes, were divorced from the
principle of authority, not only might the competition of sects cause a
bigoted intolerance, but the State itself would certainly be the loser.
I will choose another most pertinent passage from his speech on
the Irish Church Bill, delivered in March, 1869. He had discussed
“disendowment,” and he opposed it with all his might, as the plunder of
the Church in English history had always gone into the coffers of the
land, although it was a trust for the poor.
“Now, sir,” he continued, with regard to disestablishment, “I myself am
much opposed to it, because I am in favour of what is called the union
between Church and State. What I understand by the union of Church and
State is an arrangement which renders the State religious by investing
authority with the highest sanctions that can influence the sentiments,
the convictions, and consequently the conduct of the subject; while,
on the other hand, that union renders the Church--using that epithet
in its noblest and purest sense--political. That is to say, it blends
civil authority with ecclesiastical influence; it defines and defends
the rights of the laity, and prevents the Church from subsiding into
a sacerdotal corporation. If you divest the State of this connection,
it appears to me that you necessarily reduce both the quantity and the
quality of its duties. The State will still be the protector of our
persons and our property, and no doubt these are most important duties
for the State to perform. But there are duties in a community which
rather excite a spirit of criticism than a sentiment of enthusiasm and
veneration. All, or most of the higher functions of Government--take
education, for example, the formation of the character of the people,
and consequently the guidance of their future conduct--depart from the
State and become the appanage of religious societies, of the religious
organisations of the country--you may call them the various Churches,
if you please--when they are established on what are called independent
principles.”
After welcoming the fact of a religious revival, he next continues:--
“When we have to decide whether we can dissociate the principle of
religion from the State, it is well to remember that we are asked
to relinquish an influence that is universal. We hear in these days
a great deal of philosophy. Now, it is my happiness in life to be
acquainted with eminent philosophers. They all agree in one thing. They
will all tell you that, however brilliant may be the discoveries of
physical science, however marvellous those demonstrations which attempt
to penetrate the mysteries of the human mind, wonderful as may be
these discoveries, greatly as they have contributed to the comfort and
convenience of man, or confirmed his consciousness of the nobility of
his nature--yet all those great philosophers agree in one thing--that
in their investigations there is an inevitable term where they meet
the insoluble, where all the most transcendent powers of intellect
dissipate and disappear.[99] There commences the religious principle.
It is universal, and it will assert its universal influence in the
government of men. Now, I put this case before the House. We are asked
to commence a great change.... When, therefore, we are called to the
consideration of these circumstances, it is absolutely necessary that
we should contemplate the possibility of our establishing a society
in which there may be two powers, the political and the religious,
and the religious may be the stronger.[100] Now I will take this
case. Under ordinary circumstances, a Government performing those
duties of police, to which it will be limited when the system has
perfectly developed, the first step to which we are called upon to
take to-night--such a Government, under ordinary circumstances, will
be treated with decent respect. But a great public question, such as
has before occurred in this country, and as must periodically occur
in free and active communities--a great public question arises, which
touches the very fundamental principles of our domestic tranquillity,
or even the existence of the Empire; but the Government of the country,
and the religious organisations of the country, take different views,
and entertain different opinions on that subject. In all probability
the Government of the country will be right. The Government in its
secret councils is calm and impartial, is in possession of ample and
accurate information, views every issue before it in reference to the
interests of all classes, and takes, therefore, what is popularly
called a comprehensive view. The religious organisation of the country
acts in quite a different manner. It is not calm; it is not impartial;
it is sincere, it is fervid, it is enthusiastic. Its information is
limited and prejudiced. It does not view the question of the day in
reference to the interests of all classes. It looks upon the question
as something of so much importance--as something of such transcendent
interest, not only for the earthly, but even for the future welfare
of all her Majesty’s subjects--that it will allow no consideration to
divert its mind and energy from the accomplishment of its object. It,
therefore, necessarily takes what is commonly called a contracted view.
But who can doubt what will be the result, _when on a question which
enlists and excites all the religious passions of the nation, the zeal
of enthusiasm advocates one policy, and the calmness of philosophers
and the experience of statesmen recommend another. The Government
might be right, but the Government would not be able to enforce its
policy, and the question might be decided in a way that might disturb
a country or even destroy an empire._ I know, sir, it may be said that
though there may be some truth in this view abstractedly considered,
yet it does not apply to the country in which we live, because ... we
enjoy religious freedom ... and because only a portion of her Majesty’s
subjects are in communion with the National Church. I draw a very
different conclusion to that which I have supposed as the objection....
_It is because there is an Established Church that we have achieved
religious liberty and enjoy religious toleration; and without the union
of the Church with the State, I do not see what security there would be
either for religious liberty or toleration._ No error could be greater
than to suppose that the advantage of the Established Church is limited
to those who are in communion with it. Take the case of the Roman
Catholic priest. He will refuse--and in doing so he is quite justified,
and is indeed bound to do so--he will, I say, refuse to perform the
offices of the Church to any one not in communion with it. The same
with the Dissenters. It is quite possible--it has happened, and might
happen very frequently--that a Roman Catholic may be excommunicated
by his Church, or a sectarian may be denounced and expelled by his
congregation; but if that happens in this country, the individual in
question who has been thus excommunicated, denounced, or expelled, is
not a forlorn being. There is the Church, of which the Sovereign is
the head, which does not acknowledge the principle of Dissent, and
which does not refuse to that individual those religious rites which
are his privilege and consolation.... Now, I cannot believe that the
disendowment of the Church of England could occur without very great
disturbances.... _England cannot afford revolution. England has had
her revolutions. It is indeed because she had revolutions about two
hundred years ago, before other nations had their revolutions, that
she gained her great start in wealth and empire._ Now, sir, what have
we gained by these revolutions? A period of nearly two hundred years
of great serenity and the secured stability of the State. I attribute
these happy characteristics of our history to the circumstance, that in
this interval we did solve two of the finest and profoundest political
problems. We accomplished complete personal, and, in time, complete
political liberty, and combined them with order. We achieved complete
religious liberty, and we united it with a national faith. These two
immense exploits have won for this country regulated freedom and
temperate religion.... Speaking now not as a partisan, I believe the
Tory party, however it may at times have erred, has always been the
friend of local government, and that _the instinct of the nation made
it feel that on local government political freedom depended_.”[101]
“It is said,” he remarked three years afterwards, after commenting
on the historical union between Church and State--“two originally
independent powers,” and the fact that their alliance has prevented
the spiritual power from “usurping upon the civil and establishing a
sacerdotal society,” as well as the civil power from invading “the
rights of the spiritual,” and from degrading its ministers into
“salaried instruments of the Government.”--“It is said,” he continued,
“that the existence of Nonconformity proves that the Church is a
failure. I draw from these premises an exactly contrary conclusion; and
I maintain that to have secured a national profession of faith with
the unlimited enjoyment of private judgment in matters spiritual is
... one of the triumphs of civilisation.” Nonconformity he considered
a misfortune, though it was a symptom of national freedom. With
Nonconformists, however, he sympathised. It was with indifference that
he warred.
Let me illustrate these points. In an earlier speech he addresses
himself to prove that the Church is none the less truly national
because millions of the nation are not in communion with it; and he
analyses Nonconformity.
“Now, the history of English Dissent will always be a memorable chapter
in the history of the country. It displays many of those virtues for
which the English character is distinguished--earnestness, courage,
devotion, conscience. But one thing is quite clear, that in the present
day the causes which originally created Dissent no longer exist;
while--which is of still more importance--there are now causes in
existence opposed to the spread of Dissent. I will not refer to the
fact that many--I believe the great majority--of the families of the
descendants of the original Puritans and Presbyterians have merged
in the Church of England itself; but no man can any longer conceal
from himself that the tendency of this age is not that all creeds
and Churches and consistories should combine--I do not say that,
mind--but I do say that it is that they should cease hereafter from
any internecine hostility; ... and therefore, so far as the spread of
... mere sincere religious Dissent is concerned, I hold that it is
of a very limited character, and there is nothing in the existence
of it which should prevent the Church of England from asserting her
nationality. For observe, the same difficulties that are experienced
by the Church are also experienced by the Dissenters, without the
advantage which the Church possesses in her discipline, learning, and
traditions.”
Part of these “difficulties” he considered in the later speech, above
cited, where he holds that the existence of parties in the Church is
a sign of vigour; but the other part, the growth of indifferentism
among millions of the populace, he considers here, and he considers it
as affording a great field for the Church if it be true to its great
traditions and answers to the temper of the times and to the call of
the summons. “... If, indeed, the Church of England were in the same
state as the pagan religion was in the time of Constantine; if her
altars were paling before the Divine splendour of inspired shrines, it
might be well indeed for the Church and its ministers to consider the
course that they should pursue; but nothing of the kind is the case.
With the indifferentists you are dealing with millions of a people the
most enthusiastic, though not the most excitable, in the world. And
what awakes their enthusiasm?
“... _The notes on the gamut of their feeling are few, but they are
deep. Industry, Liberty, Religion, form the solemn scale. Industry,
Liberty, Religion--that is the history of England._” He predicts a
feeling of exaltation for religion similar to those enthusiasms for
freedom and toil which have inspired the nation in recent periods,
and he harps on the opportunity for a Church with a tradition of
“the beauty of holiness.” “What a field for a corporation which is
not merely a Church, but ... the Church of England; blending with a
divine instruction the sentiment of patriotism, and announcing herself
as the Church of the country;” which may realise its nationality by
increasing her hold on the education[102] of the people, “though it is
possible there may be fresh assaults and attacks upon the machinery
by which the State has assisted the Church in that great effort;” by
extending the Episcopate (which has happened); by developing the lay
element in the administration of her temporal affairs; by fulfilling
the right of visitation both by priest and parishioner, and maintaining
those parochial privileges which are still inviolate both in town and
country; by remedying the gross inequality of stipend (which remains to
be done); by, so far as possible, relying on the Church itself, and not
resorting to the Legislature.
With respect to indifferentism among the more enlightened classes, it
is “agnosticism,” partly due to the scientific spirit on which I have
touched; partly to that “higher criticism” which Germany originated,
and which, it is clear, can only modify the views of an educated few.
With the mild rationalism of “Essays and Reviews,” Disraeli dealt
characteristically. He found them “at the best a second-hand medley of
contradictory and discordant theories.” Thirty years earlier he had
satirised those devout Christians who do not believe in Christianity.
As in the march of Science he perceived nothing new, and held that it
interpreted the imagery without sapping the foundations of belief, so
with regard to the “Teutonic rebellion” against inspiration, he saw
only repeated in another form, and with no more ability, the Celtic
“insurrection” which distinguished the eighteenth century: both had
their uses. “Man brings to the study of oracles more learning and more
criticism than of yore; and it is well that it should be so.” Nay, the
very development of the German theological school proves its ephemeral
character.
“About a century ago” (he observed in 1861) “German theology,
which was mystical, became by the law of reactions critical.
There gradually arose a school of philosophical theologians which
introduced a new system for the interpretation of Scripture.
Accepting the sacred narrative without cavil, they explained all the
supernatural incidents by natural causes. This system in time was
called Rationalism.... But where now is German Rationalism, and what
are its results? They are erased from the intellectual tablets of
living opinion. A new school of German theology then arose, which,
with profound learning and inexorable logic, proved that Rationalism
was irrational, and successfully substituted for it a new scheme
of scriptural interpretation called the mythical.[103] But if the
mythical theologians triumphantly demonstrated ... that Rationalism
was irrational, so the mythical system itself has already become a
myth; and its most distinguished votaries, in that spirit of progress
which, as we are told, is the characteristic of the nineteenth century,
and which generally brings us back to old ideas, have now found an
invincible solution of the mysteries of human existence in a revival of
Pagan pantheism.”
This he defined elsewhere as “Atheism in domino.” Since Disraeli’s
death the German school has made further strides. There has been a
brisk export of fresh theories “made in Germany.” We are now told
that the Old Testament is Babylonian, and that the New springs out of
Aryan ideas; and side by side with this _tour-de-force_ of paradox,
an orgy of anarchical hysteria threatens the sanctions of authority,
the secular as well as the spiritual. Disraeli would probably meet it
by what he retorted in the ’sixties, that when the periodical deluge
subsides, the ark is seen resting at the summit of the mountain.
But if education was to be secularised, might not the ark be chopped
up for firewood? Education was a problem that, in its private and
public aspects, engrossed Disraeli from his youth. In the second of
two election addresses at High Wycombe in the memorable year 1832 he
had announced: “... By repealing the taxes upon knowledge, I would
throw the education of the people into the hands of the philosophic
student, instead of the ignorant adventurer.” He believed that its
current principles were constantly wrong--that words were taught
instead of ideas, and grammar studied instead of character; and he was
also a great advocate of the wisdom of steeping the youth of a nation
in national literature. It was a keen disappointment to him that he
was deprived of the occasion of settling--partially, at any rate--the
problem of national education, and he considered that the less it was
fettered by direct State interference and the more it was helped by
State support, the better. He was persuaded that any national system
ought to be religious. For the Church’s original training of the
people, for her alliance with the Universities, too, he had the keenest
admiration.
“Nothing is more surprising to me,” he urged in 1872, “than ... that
in the nineteenth century the charge against the Church of England
should be that Churchmen, and especially the clergy, had educated
the people.... I think the greatest distinction of the clergy is the
admirable manner in which they have devoted their lives and fortunes to
this greatest of national objects.”[104]
It may not be generally remembered that only two years after Disraeli
entered the House of Commons he delivered himself of a remarkable
speech in this connection. He was opposed, he said, at that time to
a strictly State system, for he was opposed to “paternal government,
which stamped out the sense of independence in man, and caused him
to rely upon others.” Society should be strong, and the State weak;
order should not be disturbed by national injustice, nor liberty by
popular outcry. “_It is always the State and never Society--always
machinery and never sympathy._” But though he did not change the
principles of his outlook, he came by experience very materially to
change his view of the machinery by which they were to be applied. He
detested the interferences of centralisation; but a doubled population
and the overgrowth of cities rendered State measures imperative, and
their absence a disgrace. In his Edinburgh speech, twenty-eight years
later, he thus handled this national need: “... Ever since I have been
in public life I have done everything I possibly could to promote
the cause of the education of the people generally. I have done so
because I always felt that with the limited population of this United
Kingdom, compared with the great imperial position which it occupies
with reference to other nations, it is not only our duty, but ... an
absolute necessity, _that we should study to make every man the most
effective being that education can possibly constitute him_. In the
old wars there used to be a story that one Englishman could beat three
members of some other nation. But _I think if we want to maintain our
power, we ought to make one Englishman equal really in the business of
life to three other men that any other nation can furnish_. I do not
see otherwise how ... we can fulfil the great destiny that I believe
awaits us, and the great position we occupy.”
It will be noticed that he forecasts the practical and technical
requirements which, at a period of comparative commercial decline, we
are only now beginning to take to heart.
“Therefore,” he resumed, “so far as I am concerned, whether it be a far
greater advanced system of primary education--whether it be that system
of competitive examination which I have ever supported, though I am not
unconscious of some pedantry with which it is associated--or whatever
may be the circumstances, I shall ever be its supporter.”
He kept his word. Leading the Opposition in 1870, he supported Mr.
Forster’s great measure, though he strongly opposed the Cowper-Temple
Amendment--one which has undoubtedly kept much religious acrimony
alive. His speech on these clauses can still be studied with
advantage. In 1854, Lord John Russell introduced his bill for the “good
government of the University of Oxford.” Here, again, Disraeli objected
to undue Government interference. He thought that this “great seat of
learning” should deal with these problems itself independently, and
in the spirit of the age. It was designed to create professors on the
Prussian model. Disraeli showed that in Prussia there was then small
“sphere for the genius, the intellect, the talent, and the energy of
Germany, except in the professorial chair.” There were not then great
opportunities for a public career in Germany. “In this country you
may increase the salaries as you please; but to suppose that you can
produce a class of men like the German professors is chimerical.... We
are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it that, however you
may increase the rewards of professors ... ambition in England will
look to public life.... You will not be able, however you think you
may, to lay your hand upon twenty-five or thirty professors suddenly,
capable of effecting a great influence on the youth of England. You
cannot get these men at once. It will be slowly, with great difficulty,
by fostering and cultivating your resources, that you will be able to
produce one of these great professors--a man able to influence the
public opinion of the University. Whether, then, you look to the great
change which you propose with respect to these private halls, which is
in fact a revolution of the collegiate system; or whether you look to
the great alteration you contemplate by the revival of the professorial
instead of the tutorial system--on both points you will meet, I think,
with disappointment.... If I were asked, ‘Would you have Oxford, with
its self-government, freedom, independence, but yet with its anomalies
and imperfections; or would you have the University free from those
anomalies and imperfections and under control of the Government?’ I
would say, ‘Give me Oxford free and independent, with its anomalies and
imperfections.’”[105]
In the discipline of the Church itself also Disraeli eventually found
it imperative for the State to interfere. With extreme Ritualism, with
amateur popery in an alien camp, effetely and sometimes treacherously
practised, till the insubordination of a few, who were not in any
sense strong men or leaders, began to infect the many, Disraeli could
not sympathise. The Mass of the Roman Church as a solemn act he could
reverence, but not the “masquerade” of amateur ultramontanes. With the
High Anglicans, with the Tractarians, he in many respects sympathised
profoundly. Their movements were those of noble aspiration and high
endeavour. But most of the ultra-Ritualists were of wholly different
calibre. Their attitude he typified most humorously in _Lothair_, and
in the person of the “Reverend Dionysius Smylie,” who was wont to
observe, “Rome will come to _me_.” Moreover, the Church had passed
rapidly through varying vicissitudes. In the late ’thirties and early
’forties there had been a signal revival; but the secession of Newman,
“apologised for but never explained,” had proved a blow under which
“the Church still reels.” She lost a great, a generous, a necessary
leader, when a leader was her need. “If,” Disraeli wrote in 1870, “a
quarter of a century ago, there had arisen a Churchman equal to the
occasion, the position of ecclesiastical affairs in this country would
have been very different from that which they now occupy. But these
great matters fell into the hands of monks and Schoolmen....”
In the ’fifties there was some degeneration, and the revival of
Convocation was not on the wider basis which might have quickened
clerical energy and lay enthusiasm. In the ’sixties the Church began
to be “in danger.” Radicalism and Ritualism united; and there is a
manuscript letter of Disraeli, still extant, written at this period,
and affording some very interesting and secret knowledge.
What Disraeli disliked and regretted was that the choice between faith
and free thought should be more and more presented as one between the
Roman purple and the “Red Republic.”
And this brings me to the consideration of Disraeli’s ideas regarding
the Latin Church, the immortal Rome, “that great confederacy which has
so much influenced the human race, and which has yet to play perhaps a
mighty part in the fortunes of the world.”
This imperial form of Theocracy exercised for him, both imaginatively
and historically, an enormous attraction. Its special appeal to
the Latin and Celtic races; its unbroken phalanx of organisation;
its immemorial persistence of policy; its creative combination of
spirituality with art, of purity with beauty; its union of ideals
beyond and above the world with the mechanism of empires; its blend
of contrasts, of solemn softness with sombre control, of charm with
coldness, of callousness with charity, of loneliness with society,
of curse and comfort; its theoretic espousal of theological free
will with the practical denial of it in action, and of outward pomp
with inward simplicity; its watchful intimacies with every moment of
life--the way in which, as he puts it in _Contarini_, it “... produces
in” its “dazzling processions and sacred festivals an effect upon the
business of the day;” its guardianship of the weak, the erring, and
the poor; its nursing motherhood of doubt and despair; its insidious
captivation of the will and intellect; its power to recall and continue
the spirits of the centuries, to absorb schism and rebaptise it union;
its claims to obliterate the past for the penitent; to keep all things
old and make all things new; its great deeds and its great heroes;
these elements and many more, that have cooped Jews in Ghettos while
blazoning the proud inscription in front of St. Peter’s, _Vicit Leo
de tribu Juda_,--all these opposites enchant even when they fail to
enchain the mind and the feelings. They have linked the Vatican and
the Palatine, the see to the throne, the tiara to the diadem. They
have transfigured, while maintaining, pagan rites and customs, till
“Madre Natura” reappears with a halo, the very shrines of the Madonna
repeat the antique pattern of those dedicated to the Lares and Penates,
and the procession of waxen images in Southern Italy but perpetuates
another and an older ceremony. The Roman Church has been the most
consistent educator, the greatest organiser, the most universal
legislator of the last thousand years. It has attained uncompromising
ends unswervingly pursued by compromises the most subtle and the most
skilful. Nor is the esoteric doctrine which recalls the Eleusinian
Mysteries, and enables the initiated to regard forms comprehensible
by the multitude as merely popular symbols of higher truths, without
a certain glamour of its own. Disraeli’s father had penned a treatise
on the Jesuits, and their history had been deeply studied by the son.
I can still recall the unconscious tone of ironical appreciation
with which one of those “professors,” “capable of effecting a great
influence on the youth of England,” informed me that when he met
Disraeli, “he spoke to me of the Jesuits.” Both the two factors in
himself which I have mentioned, the sense of mystery and the impulse to
control, are precisely the atmosphere of the Papal Church. There was,
therefore, to some extent the attraction of affinity. But the Papacy
appealed to him imaginatively, not theologically, as it did to his
great rival. I recollect being told by a member of the symposium that
Gladstone once discussed deep into the night at Hawarden what form of
Christianity would eventually survive and prevail. Three chosen friends
agreed with him that it would be Romanism, the establisher and not the
establishment, the supernational and not the national, theocratic and
not (as Disraeli makes one of his characters describe the Church of
England) “parliamentary Christianity.”
Not so Disraeli. Its political influences, its “clamour for
toleration,” its “labour for supremacy,”[106] its warping limitations,
its prying priestcraft, its humble haughtiness, its casuistic candour,
its centralising forces fatal to Northern liberty, the ban placed
on free discussion and free intercourse, its proclamation of the
uniformity rather than of the unity of human nature, and above all
its admixture of paganism, were the drawbacks that repelled him. “The
tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful,” he observes, adverting
to that “mistake and misfortune” of Newman’s desertion. “Resting on the
Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would
have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality
of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the
seceders sought refuge in mediæval superstitions which are generally
the embodiments of pagan ceremonies and creeds.”[107]
The spell of Romanism is an incident in _Contarini Fleming_. The spell,
but also the perils of Romanism, its bewitchment of judgment and of
conscience, its repugnance to free politics and independent wills,
its arrogance of inspiration, its monopolies, its burdens of enjoined
etiquette, form the theme of _Lothair_. He cannot bind himself to the
danger, yet how adorable is its source! How firm the rock on which it
is founded, when it is not of offence! How certain the conclusions, if
only the premises can be conceded!
“Religion is civilisation,” said the Cardinal--“the highest: it is a
reclamation of man from savageness by the Almighty. What the world
calls civilisation, as distinguished from religion, is a retrograde
movement, and will ultimately lead us back to the barbarism from which
we have escaped. For instance, you talk of progress: what is the chief
social movement of all the centuries that three centuries ago separated
from the unity of the Church of Christ? The rejection of the Sacrament
of Christian matrimony. The introduction of the law of divorce, which
is, in fact, only a middle term to the abolition of marriage. What
does that mean? The extinction of the home and household on which God
has rested civilisation. If there be no home, the child belongs to the
State, not to the parent. The State educates the child, and without
religion, because the State in a country of progress acknowledges no
religion.[108] For every man is not only to think as he likes, but to
write and speak as he likes.... And this system which would substitute
for domestic sentiment and Divine belief the unlimited and licentious
action of human intelligence and will, is called progress. What is it
but a revolt against God?”
What religious intelligence would not endorse these truths! But let
us now listen to the other side, that of “other-worldliness,” of
“the conversion--or conquest of England,” though the allusions to
“Corybantic Christianity” are not without justice.
“There is only one Church and one Religion,” said the Cardinal; “all
other forms and phrases are mere phantasms, without root or substance
or coherency. Look at that unhappy Germany, once so proud of its
Reformation.... Look at this unfortunate land, divided, subdivided,
parcelled out in infinite schism, with new oracles every day, and
each more distinguished for the narrowness of his intellect or the
loudness of his lungs; once the land of saints and scholars, and people
in pious pilgrimages, and finding always solace and support in the
Divine offices of an ever-present Church; which were a true, though a
faint type of the beautiful future that awaited man. Why, only three
centuries of this rebellion against the Most High have produced ... an
anarchy of opinion, throwing out every monstrous and fantastic form,
from a caricature of the Greek Philosophy to a revival of Feticism....
The Church of England is not the Church of the English. Its fate is
sealed. It will soon become a sect, and all sects are fantastic.
It will adopt new dogmas, or it will abjure old ones; anything to
distinguish it from the Non-conforming herd in which nevertheless it
will be its fate to merge....”
“I cannot admit,” replied the Cardinal, “that the Church is in
antagonism with political freedom. On the contrary, in my opinion,
there can be no political freedom which is not founded on Divine
authority; otherwise it can be at the best but a specious phantom of
licence inevitably terminating in anarchy. The rights and liberties of
the people of Ireland have no advocate except the Church, because there
political freedom is founded on Divine authority; but if you mean by
political freedom the schemes of the illuminati and the Freemasons,
which perpetually torture the Continent, all the dark conspiracies
of the secret societies, then I admit the Church is in antagonism
with such aspirations after liberty; those aspirations, in fact, are
blasphemy and plunder. And if the Church were to be destroyed, Europe
would be divided between the atheist and the communist.”
This last opinion is Disraeli’s own. None knew better, or realised
more, the disintegrating terrors of the secret societies, the
propaganda of desperation served by desperadoes and exploited by
soldiers of fortune.
Disraeli appreciated and often testified that Roman Christianity had
pre-eminently spiritualised the once undecayed Latin races. To its
services and ideals he always paid the deepest homage; for some of them
he displayed an evident affection. Nowhere has the higher aspiration of
Romanism been portrayed more touchingly than in the person of “Clare
Arundel.” The description in that book of the _Tenebræ_ vibrates with
delicate emotion. In the same book he foresees the erection on the site
of slums of the stately fane which now adorns Westminster. His public
utterances on Ireland, on the Maynooth question, and many others, his
ardent championship of the bill which secured the offices of his priest
for the Catholic prisoner, showed not only respect, but a sympathy and
conversance with Roman affairs passing that of ordinary statesmen. But,
as a statesman, he also realised that the Roman Church was not only
hostile to the Anglo-Saxon instincts, but has always claimed a despotic
temporal dominion; and he also realised not only the earlier and
far-reaching designs of Cardinal Wiseman, but the later diplomacies of
a definite scheme for the capture, now that absolutism is on the wane,
of democracy. Rome means to be the sole absolutism that shall survive.
What Disraeli dreaded and countervailed was the new-fangled alliance,
not only between Radicalism, but between Liberalism and Romanism. In
Ireland, as I shall show, a peculiar phase of the design was apparent,
and what Rome had manœuvred she came to deplore and even to struggle to
prevent. In _Lothair_, “Monsignor Berwick,” Antonelli’s ultramontane
disciple, is made to say of “Churchill,” the leader of Irish
Nationalism, “For the chance of subverting the Anglican establishment,
he is favouring a policy which will subvert religion itself.”
In later times the famous encyclical _Rerum Novarum_, Monsignor Ireland
and the “Knights of Labour” in America, Cardinal Manning and the London
Dock strikers, are an evidence that Disraeli’s insight was sound.
The people as a _Civitas Dei_--the Church-State--is a superb
ideal, one with which Disraeli was in heartfelt accord. But under
what _national_ forms is this to be compassed in England? A desire
that Anglican orders should be confirmed by the Bishop of Rome has
been during the last few years publicly advanced by dignitaries
of our own Church. Is the Roman system capable of satisfying the
progressive demands of the masses in England? Though their sordid
homes need purifying, will they ever tolerate the intrusion of their
privacy by celibate priests? Is a doctrinal absolutism, which the
people themselves have dethroned from political ascendency, likely
to consummate the cosmopolitan dream? State socialism divorced from
ecclesiastical dominion would never for one moment enlist the Pope. And
if some form even of State socialism ever became national (and Disraeli
could have withstood it to the death), how could Catholic socialism
control the socialism of the State? Can the supreme voice of God brook
the admonitions of the voice of the people?
_Lothair_ treats more especially of the diplomacies of Rome, and
perhaps the polite struggle at “Muriel Towers,” between the Cardinal
and the Bishop for the hero’s soul, is one of Disraeli’s most finished
pieces of humour. “The Anglicans have only a lease of our property, a
lease rapidly expiring,” ejaculates “Monsignor Berwick.” This imminent
expiry of the lease is undoubtedly a cherished hope of the Vatican and
Sacred College.
“Lothair,” it will be remembered, himself an earnest if somewhat
ineffectual youth, falls under the influence of “Lady St. Jerome,”
whose houses are rallying-centres for the great Cardinal and his
associates. “Lady St. Jerome” induces “Lothair” to attend the office
of the _Tenebræ_. He is told that nothing in this particular service
can prevent a Protestant from attending it. This is followed by the
master-gardener, “Father Coleman’s” comments on the adoration of the
Cross in the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, and a picnic with “Miss
Arundel” and the courtly “Monsignor Catesby.” “The Jesuits are wise
men; they never lose their temper. They know when to avoid scenes as
well as when to make them.” “Lothair,” under the banner of his heroine,
“Theodora,” fights for Garibaldi and the “Madre Natura” against the
Papal troops. He is wounded at Mentana, and, by a coincidence, tended
by “Clare Arundel” and her Roman circle. On his recovery, a miracle
is announced concerning his rescue. The Virgin has interposed to
save a defender of the Faith. He is led to a great function in the
sacristy of St. George of Cappadocia. He finds himself the centre of
devout attraction. The Cardinal assures him that the miracle is true.
“Lothair” indignantly protests and denies. The Cardinal maintains that
there are two “narratives of his relations with the battle of Mentana.”
“If I were you, I would not dwell too much on this fancy of yours about
the battle.” ... “I am not convinced,” said “Lothair.” “Hush!” said
the Cardinal; “the freaks of your own mind about personal incidents,
however lamentable, may be viewed with indulgence, at least for a
time. But you cannot be permitted to doubt of the rest. You must be
convinced, and, on reflection, you will be convinced. Remember, sir,
where you are. You are in the centre of Christendom, where truth, and
where alone truth resides.”
Nobody for one moment would believe that the illustrious Archbishop
of Westminster debased strategy to stratagem; or could under any
circumstances have resorted to a deliberate lie. _Lothair_ is a
satirical fairy-tale, and “Cardinal Grandison” is only an outward
semblance of the late Cardinal Manning. But this passage sheds a
true light on Rome’s attitude towards doubt, and her methods of
proselytising; it shadows her secular policy. Can any one deny that
“the truth with a mental reserve” of Jesuitry composes much of the
plot in the drama of the hierarchy? Moreover, the passage agrees with
a very remarkable one in a distinguished French novel that appeared
three years afterwards--“L’Abbé Tigrane,” by M. Fabre. Long after these
events, when “Lothair” comes of age, his guardian, the same Cardinal,
converses with him on the impending Œcumenical Council. The duologue
contains a forcible summary of the Church’s infallibility, however
fallible may seem her individual members:--
“The basis on which God has willed that His revelation should rest in
the world is the testimony of the Catholic Church, which, if considered
only as a human historical witness of its own origin, constitution, and
authority, affords the highest and most enduring evidence for the facts
and contents of the Christian religion. If this be denied, there is no
such thing as history. But the Catholic Church is not only a human and
historical witness of its own origin, constitution, and authority, _it
is also a supernatural and Divine witness, which can neither fail nor
err_. When it œcumenically speaks, it is not merely the voice of the
Father of the World; it declares ‘_what it hath seemed good to the Holy
Ghost and to us_.’”
No wonder that “Lothair,” sitting down in the crisis of his life
by the moonlit Coliseum, muses in a rhapsody of the magnetism for
opposed causes of the genius of the spot, strangely anticipating
Zola’s contrast between the new Italian “Orlando” and the old Italian
“Boccanera.”
“Theodora lived for Rome and died for Rome. And the Cardinal, born and
bred an English gentleman, with many hopes and honours, had renounced
his religion and, it might be said, his country, for Rome; and his
race for three hundred years had given, for the same cause, honour,
and broad estates, and unhesitating lives. And these very people
were influenced by different motives, and thought they were devoting
themselves to opposite ends. But still it was Rome; Republican or
Cæsarian, papal or pagan, it still was Rome.”
I have shown the sources, as I believe, of Disraeli’s convictions.
He was the first to dwell on those problems of race which are now
recognised. His derided “Asian mystery” has been amply justified. His
view of the “Caucasian” is that of subsequent science. Writing nearly
forty years after he had mooted his ideas, he observed: “familiar as we
all are now with such themes ... the difficulty and hazard of touching
for the first time on such topics cannot now be easily appreciated.”
His beliefs were _racial_, and depended on the clue of race to history.
Their applications, however, were _national_. For he knew that race
is only an element among the shared associations and common language,
customs and history, that make up that ideal assembly which is called
a nation; and he also knew that mere communication is not communion;
that the rapidity of increased methods of material intercourse will
never extinguish the slow, but certain, fires of race discord, which
can only “consume its own smoke” through the free fusion of nationality.
His own race he cleared from prejudice, and proudly displayed as a
potent, if sometimes hidden, force throughout the world. His praise
and illustration of its endowments, its strength by virtue of its
purity of strain, its tenacity and power of organisation, its veiled
ramifications among the mainsprings that move Governments and alter
systems, no longer raise a smile; and if they did, they would certainly
cease to do so when placed on the lips of Macaulay, who thus treated
them--
“He knows,” said Macaulay, speaking in 1833 of the member for the
University of Oxford--“he knows that in the infancy of civilisation,
when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts
were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on
what was afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had their
fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of
merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen
and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their
poets.... Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy
can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say
that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, or heroism
among the descendants of the Maccabees.”