do that, let us pray God to lay it to our hearts; to write His laws in
our hearts, that we may not only fear them, but love them; not only see
their profitableness, but their fitness; that we may obey them, not
grudgingly or of necessity, but obey them because they look to us just,
and true, and beautiful, and as they are—Godlike. Let us pray, I say,
that God would make us love what He commands, lest we should neglect and
despise what He commands, and find it some day unexpectedly alive and
terrible after all. Let us pray to God to keep alive His kingdom of
grace within us, lest His kingdom of retribution outside us should fall
upon us, and grind us to powder.
SERMON XIX.
CIVILIZED BARBARISM.
(_Preached for the Bishop of London’s Fund_, _at St. John’s Church_,
_Notting Hill_, _June_ 1866.)
ST. MATTHEW ix. 12.
They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
I HAVE been honoured by an invitation to preach on behalf of the Bishop
of London’s Fund for providing for the spiritual wants of this
metropolis. By the bishop, and a large number of landowners, employers
of labour, and others who were aware of the increasing heathendom of the
richest and happiest city of the world, it was agreed that, if possible,
a million sterling should be raised during the next ten years, to do what
money could do in wiping out this national disgrace. It is a noble plan;
and it has been as yet—and I doubt not will be to the end—nobly responded
to by the rich laity of this metropolis.
More than 100,000_l._ was contributed during the first six months; nearly
60,000_l._ in the ensuing year; beside subscriptions which are promised
for the whole, or part of the ten years. The money, therefore, does not
flow in as rapidly as was desired: but there is as yet no falling off.
And I believe that there will be, on the contrary, a gradual increase in
the subscriptions as the objects of this fund are better understood, and
as its benefits are practically felt.
Now, it is unnecessary—it would be almost an impertinence—to enlarge on a
spiritual destitution of which you are already well aware. There are, we
shall all agree, many thousands in London who are palpably sick of
spiritual disease, and need the physician. But I have special reasons
for not pressing this point. If I attempted to draw subscriptions from
you by painting tragical and revolting pictures of the vice, heathendom,
and misery of this metropolis, I might make you fancy that it was an
altogether vicious, heathen, and miserable spot: than which there can be
no greater mistake. These evils are not the rule, but the exceptions.
Were they not the exceptions, then not merely the society of London, and
the industry of London, and the wealth of London, but the very buildings
of London, the brick and the mortar, would crumble to the ground by
natural and inevitable decay. The unprecedentedly rapid increase of
London is, I firmly believe, a sure sign that things in it are done on
the whole not ill, but well; that God’s blessing is on the place; that,
because it is on the whole obeying the eternal laws of God, therefore it
is increasing, and multiplying, and replenishing the earth, and subduing
it. And I do not hesitate to say, that I have read of no spot of like
size upon this earth, on which there have ever been congregated so many
human beings, who are getting their bread so peaceably, happily, loyally,
and virtuously; and doing their duty—ill enough, no doubt, as we all do
it—but still doing it more or less, by man and God.
I am well aware that many will differ from me; that many men and many
women—holy, devoted, spending their lives in noble and unselfish
labours—persons whose shoes’ latchet I am not worthy to unloose—take a
far darker view of the state of this metropolis. But the fact is, that
they are naturally brought in contact chiefly with its darker side.
Their first duty is to seek out cases of misery: and even if they do not,
the miserable will, of their own accord, come to them. It is their first
duty too—if they be clergymen—to rebuke, and if possible, to cure, open
vice, open heathendom, as well as to relieve present want and
wretchedness: and may God’s blessing be on all who do that work. But in
doing it they are dealing daily—and ought to deal, and must deal—with the
exceptional, and not with the normal; with cases of palpable and shocking
disease, and not with cases of at least seeming health. They see that,
into London, as into a vast sewer, gravitates yearly all manner of vice,
ignorance, weakness, poverty: but they are apt to forget, at times—and
God knows I do not blame them for it in the least—that there gravitates
into London, not as into a sewer, but as into a wholesome and fruitful
garden, a far greater amount of health, strength, intellect, honesty,
industry, virtue, which makes London; which composes, I verily believe,
four-fifths of the population of London. For if it did not, as I have
said already, London would decay and die, and not grow and live.
Am I denying the spiritual destitution of this metropolis? Am I arguing
against the necessity of the Bishop of London’s Fund? Am I trying to
cool your generosity towards it? Am I raising against it the text—‘They
that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick?’ Am I trying
to prove that the sick are fewer than was fancied, the healthy more
numerous; and, therefore, the physician less needed? Would to heaven
that I dare so do. Would to heaven that I could prove this fund
unnecessary and superfluous. But instead thereof, I fear that I must
say—that the average of that health, strength, intellect, honesty,
industry, virtue, which makes London—that the average of all that, I
verily believe, is to be counted (though it knows it not) among the sick,
and not among the sound. It is sick, over and above those personal sins
which are common to all classes; it is sick of a great social disease; of
a disease which is very dangerous for the nation to which we belong;
which will increase more and more, and become more and more dangerous,
unless it is stopped wholesale, by some such wholesale measure as this.
That disease is (paradoxical as it may seem) Want of Civilization;
Barbarism, which is the child of ungodliness. And that can, I verily
believe again, be cured only (as far as we in the nineteenth century have
discovered) by an extension of the parochial system.
And yet—let us beware of that expression—Parochial System. It seems to
imply that the parish is a mere system; an artificial arrangement of
man’s invention. Now that is just what the parish is not. It is founded
on local ties; and they are not a system, but a fact. You do not
assemble men into parishes: you find them already assembled by fact,
which is the will of God. You take your stand upon the merest physical
ground of their living next door to each other; their being likely to
witness each other’s sayings and doings; to help each other and like each
other, or to debauch each other and hate each other; upon the fact that
their children play in the same street, and teach each other harm or
good, thereby influencing generations yet unborn; upon the fact that if
one takes cholera or fever, the man who lives next door is liable to take
it too—in short, on the broad fact that they are members of each other,
for good or evil. You take your stand on this physical ground of mere
neighbourhood; and say—This bond of neighbourhood is, after all, one of
the most human—yea, of the most Divine—of all bonds. Every man you meet
is your brother, and must be, for good or evil: you cannot live without
him; you must help, or you must injure, each other. And, therefore, you
must choose whether you will be a horde of isolated barbarians—your
living in brick and mortar, instead of huts and tents, being a mere
accident—barbarians, I say, at continual war with each other: or whether
you will go on to become civilized men; that is, fellow-citizens, members
of the same body, confessing and exercising duties to each other which
are not self-chosen, not self-invented, but real; which encompass you
whether you know them or not; laid on you by Almighty God, by the mere
fact of your being men and women living in contact with each other.
Out of this great and true law arises the idea of a parish, a local
self-government for many civil purposes, as well as ecclesiastical ones,
under a priest who—if he is to be considered as a little constitutional
monarch—has his powers limited carefully both by the supreme law, by his
assessors the church-wardens, and by the democratic constitution of the
parish—influences which he is bound, both by law and by Christianity, to
obey.
Arising, in the first place, from the fact that our forefathers colonized
England in small separate families, each with its own jurisdiction and
worship; our country parish churches being, to this day, often the sites
of old heathen tribe-temples, and this very place, Notting-hill, being
possibly a little colony of the Nottingas—the same tribe which gave their
name to the great city of Nottingham; arising from this fact, and from
the very ancient institution of frank-pledge between local neighbours,
this parochial system, above all other English institutions, has helped
to teach us how to govern, and therefore how to civilize, ourselves. It
was overlaid, all but extinguished, by the monastic system, during the
latter part of the Middle Ages. It re-asserted itself, in fuller vigour
than ever, at the Reformation. But with its benefits, its defects were
restored likewise. The tendency of the mediæval Church had been to
become merely a church for paupers. The tendency of the Church of
England during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, was
to become merely a church for burghers. It has been, of late, to become
merely a church for paupers again. The causes of this reaction are
simple enough. Population increased so rapidly that the old parish
bounds were broken up; the old parish staff became too small for working
purposes. The Church had (and, alas! has still) to be again a missionary
church, as she became in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when
feudal violence had destroyed the self-government of the parishes—often
the parishes themselves—and filled the land with pauperism and barbarism.
But that is but a transitional state. Her duty is now becoming more and
more (and those who wish her well must help her to fulfil her duty) to
reorganize the ancient parochial system on a deeper and sounder footing
than ever; on a footing which will ensure her being a church, not merely
for pauper, nor merely for burgher, but for pauper and for burgher
equally and alike.
But some will say that parochial civilization is only a peculiar form of
civilization, because its centre is a church. Peculiar? That is the
last word which any one would apply to such a civilization, if he knows
history. Will any one mention any civilization, past or present, whose
centre has not been (as long as it has been living and progressive) a
church? All past civilizations—whether heathen or Mussulman, Jew or
Christian—have each and every one of them, as a fact, held that the
common and local worship of a God was a sign to them of their common and
local unity; a sign to them of their religion, that is, the duties which
bound them to each other, whether they liked or not. To all races and
nations, as yet, their sacred grove, church, temple, or other place of
worship, has been a sign to them that their unity and duties were not
invented by themselves, but were the will and command of an unseen Being,
who would reward or punish them according as they did those duties or
left them undone. So it has been in the civilizations of the past. So
it will be in the civilization of the future. If the Christian religion
were swept away—as it never will be, for it is eternal—and a civilization
founded on what is called Nature put in its place, then we should see a
worship of something called Nature, and a temple thereof, set up as the
symbol of that Natural civilization. So the Jacobins of France—when they
tried to civilize France on the mere ground of what they called
Reason—had, whether they liked it or not, to instal a worship of Reason,
and a goddess of Reason, for as long as they could contrive to last.
To the world’s end, a church of some kind or other will be the centre and
symbol of every civilization which is worthy of the name; of every
civilization which signifies, not merely that men live in somewhat better
houses, travel rather faster by railway, and read a few more books (which
is the popular meaning of civilization), but which means—as it meant
among the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Christians, among those who
discovered the idea and the very words which express it—that each and
every truly civilized man is a civis, a citizen, the conscious and
obedient member of a corporate body which he did not make, but which (in
as far as he is not a savage) has made him.
How far from this idea are the great masses of our really wealthy and
well-to-do Londoners? How much is it needed, that wise men should try to
re-awaken in them the sense of corporate life, and literally civilize
them once more!
Consider the case, not of the average wretched, but of the average
comfortable man. The small shopkeeper, the workman, skilled or
unskilled—how small a consciousness has he of citizenship. What few
incentives to regard civism as a solemn duty. For consider, of what is
he a member?
He is a member of a family; and, in general, he fulfils his family duties
well.
Yes, thank God, the family life of Englishmen is sound. The hearts of
the children do not need to be turned to their fathers, or the hearts of
the fathers to the children, as they did in Judea of old. Family life,
which is the foundation of all national life—nay, of all Christian and
church life—is, on the whole, sound. And having that foundation we can
build on it safely and well, if we be wise.
But of what else is the average Londoner a member? Of a benefit-club, of
a trades’ union, of a volunteer corps. Each will be a valuable element
of education, for it will teach him that self-government, which is the
school of all freedom, of all loyalty, of all true civilization.
Or he may be a member of some Nonconformist sect. That, too, will be a
valuable element, for it will teach him the solemn fact of his own
personality; his direct responsibility to God for his own soul.
And I cannot pass this point of my sermon without expressing my sense of
the great work which the Dissenting sects have done, and are doing, for
this land (with which the Bishop of London’s plan will in no wise
interfere), in teaching this one thing, which the Church of England,
while trying to carry out her far deeper and higher conception of
organization, has often forgotten; that, after all, and before all, and
throughout all, each man stands alone, face to face with Almighty God.
This idea has helped to give the middle classes of England an
independence, a strong, vigorous, sharp-cut personality, which is an
invaluable wealth to the nation. God forbid that we should try to weaken
it, even for reasons which may seem to some devout and orthodox.
But all these memberships, after all, are only voluntary ones, not
involuntary. They are assumed by man himself—the worldly associations on
the ground of mutual interest; the spiritual associations on that of
identity of opinions. They are not instituted by God, and nature, and
fact, whether the man knows of them or not, likes them or not. They are
of the nature of clubs, not of citizenship. They are not founded on that
human ground which is, by virtue of the Incarnation, the most divine
ground of all. And for the many they do not exist. The majority of
small shopkeepers, and the majority of labourers too, are members, as far
as they are aware, of nothing, unless it be a club at some neighbouring
public-house. The old feudal and burgher bonds of the Middle Age, for
good or for evil, have perished by natural and necessary decay; and
nothing has taken their place. Each man is growing up more and more
isolated; tempted to selfishness, to brutal independence; tempted to
regard his fellow-men as rivals in the struggle for existence; tempted,
in short, to incivism, to a loss of the very soul and marrow of
civilization, while the outward results of it remain; and therefore
tempted to a loss of patriotism, of the belief that he possesses here
something far more precious than his private fortune, or even his family;
even a country for which he must sacrifice, if need be, himself. And if
that grow to be the general temper of England, or of London, in some
great day of the Lord, some crisis of perplexity, want, or danger,—then
may the Lord have mercy upon this land; for it will have no mercy on
itself: but divided, suspicious, heartless, cynical, unpatriotic, each
class, even each family, even each individual man, will run each his own
way, minding his own interest or safety; content, like the debased Jews,
if he can find the life of his hand; and—
‘Too happy if, in that dread day,
His life he given him for a prey.’
Our fathers saw that happen throughout half Europe, at a crisis when,
while the outward crust of civilization was still kept up, the life of
it, all patriotism, corporate feeling, duty to a common God, and faith in
a common Saviour, had rotted out unperceived. At one blow the gay idol
fell, and broke; and behold, inside was not a soul, but dust. God grant
that we may never see here the same catastrophe, the same disgrace.
Now, one remedy—I do not say the only remedy—there are no such things as
panaceas; all spiritual and social diseases are complicated, and their
remedies must be complicated likewise—but one remedy, palpable, easy, and
useful, whenever and wherever it has been tried, is this—to go to these
great masses of brave, honest, industrious, but isolated and uncivilized
men, after the method of the Bishop of this diocese, and his fund; and to
say to them,—‘Of whatever body you are, or are not members, you are
members of that human family for which our Lord Jesus Christ was
contented to be betrayed, and to suffer death upon the Cross; over which
He now liveth and reigneth, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God,
world without end. You are children of God the Father of spirits, who
wills that all should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.
You are inheritors—that is, members not by your own will, or the will of
any man, but by the will of God who has chosen you to be born in a
Christian land of Christian parents—inheritors, I say, of the kingdom of
heaven, from your cradles to your graves, and after that, if you will,
for ever and ever. Behave as such. Claim your rights; for they are
yours already: and not only claim your rights, but confess your duties.
Remember that every man, woman, and child in your street is, primâ facie,
just as much a member of Christ as you are. Treat them as such;
associate yourselves with them as such. Accept the simple physical fact
that they live next door to you, as God’s will toward you both, and as
God’s sign to you that you and they are members of the same human and
divine family. Enter with them, in that plain form, into the free
corporate self-government of a Christian parish. Fear no priestly
tyranny; from that danger you are guaranteed by the fact, that the great
majority of the promoters of this fund are laymen, of all shades of
opinion. You are guaranteed, still further, by the fact, that in the
parochial system there can be no tyranny. It is one of the very
institutions by which Englishmen have learnt those habits of
self-government, which are the admiration of Europe.
‘Do, then, the duty which lies nearest you; your duty to the man who
lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your
duty to your parish; that you may learn to do your duty by your country
and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilized men.
‘And confess your sins in this matter, if not to us, at least to God.
Confess that while you, in your sturdy, comfortable independence, have
been fancying yourselves whole and sound, you have been very sick, and
need the physician to cure you of the deadly and growing disease of
selfish barbarism. Confess that, while you have been priding yourselves
on English self-help and independence, you have not deigned to use them
for those purposes of common organization, common worship, for which the
very savages and heathens have, for ages past, used such freedom as they
have had. Confess that, while you have been talking loudly about the
rights of humanity, you have neglected too often its duties, and lived as
if the people in the same street had no more to do with you than the
beasts which perish.
‘Confess your sins. We monied men confess ours. We ought to have
foreseen the rapid growth of this city. We ought to have planned and
laboured more earnestly for its better organization. And we freely offer
our money, as a sign of our repentance, to build and establish for you
institutions which you cannot afford to establish for yourselves. We
excuse you, moreover, in very great part. You have been gathered
together so suddenly into these vast new districts, or rather chaos of
houses, and you have meanwhile shifted your dwellings so rapidly, and
under the pressure of such continual labour, that you have not had time
enough to organize yourselves. But we, too, have our excuse. We have
actually been trying, at vast expense and labour to ourselves, for the
last forty years, to meet your new needs. But you have outgrown all our
efforts. Your increase has taken us by surprise. Your prosperity has
outrun our goodwill. It shall do so no more. We are ready to do our
part in the good work of repentance. We ask you to do yours. You are
more able to do it than you ever were: richer, better educated, more
acquainted with the blessings of association. We do not come to you as
to paupers, merely to help you. We come to you as to free and
independent citizens, to teach you to help yourselves, and show
yourselves citizens indeed.’
I hope, ay, I believe, that such an appeal as this, made in an honest and
liberal spirit, which proves its honesty and liberality by great and
generous gifts out of such private wealth as no nation ever had before,
will be met by the masses of London, in the same spirit as that in which
it has been made.
I am certain of it, if only the ecclesiastical staff employed by this
Fund will keep steadfastly in mind what they have to do. True it is, and
happily true, that they can do nothing but good. If they confine
themselves to the celebration of public worship, to teaching children, to
giving the consolations of religion to those with whom want and
wretchedness bring them in contact—all that will be gain, clear gain,
vast gain. But that, valuable, necessary as it is, will not be
sufficient to evoke a full response from the people of London.