think--assert that a sect has truth; it asserts that the nation has
truth, or is seeking it. The truth abides in the best thought of the
whole nation, and the Church is established to express that truth. The
clergy have no special rights, they are servants appointed to do the
will of the nation. Truth abides not in ‘the Church’ of the bishops
and clergy nor in a book, it abides in the people. Once when it was
proposed in the House of Commons to refer a matter of doctrine to the
bishops, ‘No, by the faith I bear to God,’ said Mr. Wentworth, with the
approval of the House, ‘we will pass nothing before we understand what
it is, for that were to make you Popes.’ It is the people, therefore,
which by its Parliament has settled, and may again settle, the limits
of teaching and ritual. The clergy are its servants paid out of funds
set apart for this special purpose. Lord Palmerston put it shortly when
he said, ‘The property of the Church belongs to the State.’
The nation, in old language, is holy. The body of people called English
is set apart for a special service, its laws are laws of God, its
work is worship, and every one of its members owes a duty to God. The
memory of such a fact was kept alive in Israel where every town’s
meeting was a congregation, every parliament a solemn assembly, every
law the Word of God, and every workman was inspired by the Spirit
of God. The Jewish nation has been preserved in the Jewish Church.
That the English nation is holy must also be kept alive. The nation,
that is, must be a Church and its citizens organised for worship.
‘The spirit of nationality,’ says Burke, ‘is at once the bond and the
safeguard of nations; it is something above laws and beyond thrones,
the impalpable element, the inner life of states.’ In his own language
Burke asserts the holiness of nations, and it is to protect this
impalpable element that it becomes so important for nations to identify
their secular and religious aspects, to be at once nations and churches
with duties to men and to God.
Disestablishment denies this holiness, and so lets escape the strongest
element in nationality. Disestablishment is, moreover, a short-sighted
policy, because, however great be the measure of Disendowment, it would
make the Church of England the strongest of the sects. In a short time
one of the parties now held in union within the Establishment would
obtain the supremacy, and that party would inherit all the power and
prestige of the position. This party--being only a section of the
religious body--would pose as the representative of religion, and its
clergy would identify their interests with the interest of God. Again,
there would be some Becket to oppose the will of Parliament, and to
call some law affecting his order ‘irreligious,’ and a clericalism
would be let loose to assume, and perhaps make hateful, the name of
religion. ‘Clericalism is the enemy of men,’ is a saying which has
much truth in it. The pity is if clericalism and religion are enabled
to seem to be the same thing.
Disestablishment, finally, would intensify the competition of sects. To
make one proselyte, the supporters of various forms would compass sea
and land. The standard of morality would be lowered and the flags of
doctrine, invented out of will-worship, would be waved to bring in rich
adherents, and get the use of their money. Even, as it is, there is no
need to go far to find work, which would fall to pieces if the preacher
spoke the truth to the subscribers about their private life or their
tempers. It is urged that the congregations in American non-established
Churches are large; it is not urged that the people in America are
above bribery in politics or above cheating in trade. It is not urged
that American social life is spiritualised, and that is the only fact
which would be evidence of the good of the system.
To sum up the case against those who offer Disestablishment of the
Church as an answer to the question, ‘How is the nation to be brought
into union with the spirit of goodness?’ it may be urged that--
1. Disestablishment is a destructive and wasteful method of getting rid
of abuses, and would destroy the power of the State to teach what the
State holds to be truth.
2. Disestablishment would establish clericalism, a force which more
than once in history has made religion hateful, and roused for its
repression the God-fearing men of the nation.
3. Disestablishment, trusting to competition, would leave poor
neighbourhoods unhelped. A poor congregation could not hope for a
church in which worship should be stirred by the beauty of sight and
sound. An ignorant population would not exert itself to get either a
church or a teacher. The most needy would thus be the most neglected.
It is only the State which can give with equal hand to all its members,
and which thus can either educate or spiritualise the masses.
The solution offered by those who say, ‘Reform the Church,’ remains for
examination.
These, like the religious liberationists, are anxious that the
instrument for spiritualising life should be effective. The Reformers,
though, recognise that this, the highest object of any organisation
is also the object of the State, and can only be attained by means of
the Constitution. Individuals may be left to provide for the wants
they have recognised. The State must provide for the wants of the
higher life and send out teachers to tell individuals of things beyond
their ken. The Church reformers urge, therefore, that the principle of
Establishment should be retained, but that abuses should be eradicated
and old-fashioned methods reformed.
The practical difficulties of reform are doubtless many, but they are
not insuperable. Inasmuch as Burke has said, ‘What is taught by a State
Church must be decided by the State, and not by the clergy,’ it is
possible to conceive that the nation, and not a sect, might determine
how truth should be sought and taught. Inasmuch as now it is the people
who directly or indirectly appoint their rulers, it is easy to conceive
how the people, and not a patron, might have a voice in the choice of
the parson, and how the parishioners, and not the parson, might govern
the Church and the parish. There need be no ill-paid, no over-paid,
no unworthy incumbent. There need be no neglected parish, and a State
Church might be as effective an organisation for promoting spirituality
as the State Post-office is for promoting intercourse.
Institutions have survived a greater reform than that which is required
in the Church, and those who have seen the changes which the law-making
department of the State has endured may without fear submit the
right-making department to like changes.
It is no new principle to reform the Reformed Church. By a law of
Henry VIII. the king has authority to ‘reform, correct all errors,
heresies and abuses,’ and the people’s Parliament now takes the place
of the king. ‘The particular form of Divine worship,’ says the preface
to Edward VI.’s second Prayer Book, ‘and the rites and ceremonies
appointed to be used therein, being in their own nature indifferent
and _alterable_, and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable, &c. &c.’
The Long Parliament changed the whole Constitution and Ritual of the
Church. The Restoration Parliament undid that work. Throughout the
seventeenth century the Teaching, the Ritual, and the Organisation
were discussed as open questions, and the present system is the result
purely of a Parliamentary decision.
Three hundred years ago, to suit the new age, the new birth of
learning, the Church was reformed. The present times are marked by
changes as great as those of the Renaissance, and the Church remains
unchanged. As was the Church of the sixteenth century, so is the Church
of the nineteenth century.
The government of England has become popular, and the people elect
the Parliament which makes the laws; the Church of England is still
exclusive, and the clergy in ‘their’ churches and ‘their’ parishes are
still supreme.
Freedom has destroyed monopolies; and, according to a rough scale,
justice is equally administered. In the Church, monopolies still exist,
justice is defied in arrangements which are for the benefit of the
strong, and the clergy are a ‘protected’ class.
The language and the fashion of Englishmen have changed, but the Church
still addresses men with the language and the ritual of the Middle Ages.
The Church, once reformed to suit new needs, the rites of which are
‘alterable,’ has not been made to suit the needs of modern times.
The Church must be again reformed. If details be asked as to the
Constitution of the Church of the future, if questions rise to men’s
lips, ‘What will be done about Bishops?’ ‘Who will fix the limits of
doctrine?’ ‘How will the rights of minorities be considered?’ the
simple answer is that all can be settled by the people. The Reformers
of 1832 did not map out the details of the new government of England;
they simply gave the power to the people, and the people rooted out
abuses and reformed the administration of law. It will be sufficient
to-day if the people are admitted to that place in Church government
which is now usurped by the clergy or their nominees. The State is
democratic, the Church must also be democratic. As the State is
governed by the people for the people, the Church must be governed by
the people for the people.
It is waste of time to make a paper constitution, which often binds
the hopes of its makers to one plan. Church boards, a popular veto on
patronage, or a general synod, may be the best means of introducing
the people’s power, but it is not wise to proceed as if the means
were ends. Church reformers need not advocate any means as essential,
the one thing essential is to give the people power to form their own
Church; to see, in a word, that the Church is the people’s Church.
The obstacle to Church reform is not the doubt as to its possibility
or difference of opinion as to its method. The real obstacle is
the general indifference to religion. The zeal or enthusiasm which
passes as religious is most often roused by opinions, and, as Wesley
said, ‘Zeal for opinions is not zeal for religion.’ In the noise of
controversy and in the hurry of trade the very nature of religion seems
forgotten. The arguments of theologians and the sensationalism of
revivalists are discussed as religious problems, in which it is well
to show an intelligent interest, but men do not feel that their daily
lives, the lives of the poor, and the hope of England depend on their
relation with God. If it were really seen that it is on religion, that
is, on keeping up the communication between the little good within
and the great good without, between man’s broken light and God’s full
light, that trade, happiness, and life depend; if it were seen that
England cannot be virtuous till Englishmen drink of the Fountain of
virtue, then Church reform would be undertaken without delay. No
difficulty would seem too great to prevent the vast resources of the
Church being brought to the service of religion, and the highest
intelligence of statesmen would be devoted to making perfect the
organisation for spiritualising life.
It may not be in the power of those of less intelligence to tell the
method of reform, but all who are weary at the thought of the present
condition of the people may refresh themselves with hopes. Those who
reflect on the cheerless faces so common to East London, the dull,
weary round of the workers, their deathful life and their hopeless
death, are borne down by the thought that each lives in the parish of
some Church minister. They weary themselves wondering how the servant
provided by the State might better serve the needs of the poor, how the
great Church organisation might eradicate unfit houses, bring wealth
to the relief of poverty, and make the means of joy more equal. They
ask themselves in vain how the house of God might be a house for God’s
children. Unable to answer, they may at any rate gladden themselves
with an ideal.
The People’s Church then may be so close to the best thought of the
nation that it will reflect that thought in every parish, as the
ministers who have gathered light from the greatest teachers of science
and history direct that light on to the lives of the hardest workers.
It may be so near to every individual that its buildings will be the
meeting-place of all, the scene of the Holy Communion, where men will
learn to know and love God and man. It may so bring together rich and
poor, the cultured and the ignorant, that the efforts and the money
now fitfully wasted by rival philanthropists will be directed to
the effectual remedy of ignorance and poverty. The ministers of the
People’s Church may be near to God and near to men, a means by which
the avenues to the highest are kept open, the spiritual teachers who,
by their lives and doctrines, touch the divine within the human, and
make all men respond to the call of right and duty, and settle life on
eternal calm.
The conception of such a Church is possible, though it is not possible
to say how it may be accomplished; or how these competing claims of
creeds and rituals to be religion may be satisfied; or how the rights
of men and the rights of their little systems may be sunk in the
thought of duty. The organisation of the Church of the future is not
now to be sketched. The first step which it is for this generation to
take has been made clear. All progress has been through the people, and
the Church must be in fact, as in name, the people’s Church. There must
be a parish parliament and not a parish despot, and the government of
the Church must be by the people as well as for the people.
This is the first step, and what will follow is in God’s counsels.
It is the people who govern the nation and decide on peace or war.
They have moulded the machinery by which justice is administered and
freedom secured; the people must also mould the machinery by which
right will be taught and life spiritualised. If they are excluded from
exercising their will upon the Establishment, nothing can hinder them
from destroying it. God speaks in every age; He has not forgotten to be
gracious, and the people are now His instruments, as in old days were
kings. It is by them His will is being done, and in that belief the
people may be trusted so to order the Church that by its means the Holy
Spirit will once more show among men the fruit of virtue and honesty.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
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X.
_WHAT HAS THE CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY TO DO WITH SOCIAL REFORM?_[1]
[1] A Paper read at a meeting of members of the Charity Organisation
Society, held at the Kensington Vestry Hall on February 28, 1884.
I feel not a little shy at speaking to so large and thoughtful a body
of workers; and I should not have ventured to accede to Mr. Loch’s
proposal had I not felt myself to be an old friend of the Charity
Organisation Society. I cannot say that I have ever seen its founder,
neither was I present at its birth, but I was at its christening, when
some long names were given; and later, at its confirmation, I heard the
duty undertaken, and indeed the declaration made, that the main object
of its existence was ‘to improve the condition of the poor.’
I am very proud of our friend; but, being a Charity Organiser, I can
see his faults, of which, to my mind, one of the chief is that he has
forgotten his baptism! I do not mean his name, but some of the promises
then made for him. Far from forgetting his name, he thinks rather too
much of it, having fallen into the aristocratic fault of believing a
name more important than a character; and inasmuch as ‘on what we dwell
that we become,’ he has run the danger--and we will not say wholly
escaped it--of sacrificing the one to the other. He has, in short,
unkindly ignored the thoughts and wishes of some of his god-parents.
Have not his friends a right to be aggrieved?
We hear nowadays much about Social Reform, which, being interpreted,
means, I suppose, the removal of certain conditions in and around
society which stand in the way of man’s progress towards perfection.
Every human being, surely, ought to be able to make a free choice for
good or evil. It is, no doubt, possible for each of us to choose the
higher or the lower life ‘in that state of life in which it has pleased
God to call us’; but the condition of some states keeps the higher life
very low.
The moralists may tell about the educating influence of resistance
to temptations; but are not temptations strong enough in themselves
without being buttressed by conditions? Even the most ingenious of
Eve’s apologists has never ventured to advance the view that she was
hungry.
It should be a matter of man’s free will alone that determines which
life he lives. Social conditions, over which as an individual he has
no power, now too often determine for him, for there are forces in and
around society which crush down the individual will of man and which
bind his limbs so tightly that not only his course, but too often his
gait, has been determined for him.
1. Great Wealth.--Can a man live the highest life whose abundance
puts out of daily practice the priceless privilege of personal
sacrifice--from whom effort is undemanded--whose floors are padded
should he chance to fall--whose walls, golden though they be, are
dividing barriers, high and strong, between him and his fellow-men?
2. Great Poverty.--Can a man live the highest life when the
preservation of his stunted, unlovely body occupies all his
thoughts--from whose life pleasure is crushed out by ever-wearying
work--to whom thought is impossible (the brain needs food and leisure
to set it going)--to whom knowledge, one of the prophets of the
nineteenth century and a revealer of the Most High, is denied?
3. Unequal Laws.--Is a man wholly unfettered in his choice of life when
his country’s laws have allowed him to become a victim to unsanitary
dwellings--when they permit him to sin, by providing that his wrong
should (on himself) be resultless--when its ministers of justice,
interpreting its laws, declare in the strong tones of action that
bread-stealing is more wicked than wife-beating? Or is the highest
life made more possible by laws that allow so much of our great mother
earth--God-blessed for the use of mankind--to be reserved for the
exclusive benefit and enjoyment of the upper classes?
4. Division of Classes.--Love is the strongest force in the universe.
At least the ancient teachers thought so when they renamed God, and
left Him with the Christian name of Love. But love, a certain kind
of love for which no other makes up, becomes impossible by the great
division between classes. We cannot love what we do not know; it is as
the American said, ‘Oh, Jones! I hate that fellow.’ ‘Hate him?’ asked
his friend; ‘why, I did not think you knew him.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ was the
reply; ‘if I did, I guess I shouldn’t hate him.’ The division between
classes is a wrong to both classes. The poor lose something by their
ignorance of the grace, the culture, and the wider interests of the
rich; the rich lose far more by their ignorance of the patience, the
meekness, the unself-consciousness, the self-sacrifice, and the great
strong hopefulness of the poor.
5. Besides these conditions, others exist, forming barriers and
hindering a man from leading his true life, such as want of light,
space, and beauty. The sun-rising is to a large number of town livers
only an intimation--and rarely an agreeable one--that they must get out
of bed. It is but the lighting of a lamp, and not, as Blake said, the
rising of an innumerable company of the heavenly host consecrating the
day to duty by crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ And even
if there is the space to see the sky, there is still the absence of
leisure to watch its unhurried changes. We all haste and rush, we hurry
and drive. The very parlance of the day adopts new words to express
dispatch, and one dear old body whom I know, who is sixty years old
and of appropriate proportions, constantly informs me that she ‘flew’
hither and thither--a method of locomotion which, in earlier years, I
remember, she reserved strictly for future and more heavenly purposes.
But enough has been said of the ills of society. We all know them. The
hearts of some of us have been very sick for many a weary year. The
hands of those who have sat on the height and watched the progress of
the battle have become tired, and have been upheld only by faith and
prayer. But reinforcements have arrived; friends for the poor have
arisen; from all sides press forward willing volunteers, who say, ‘Put
us in our place. Let us do something. How can we break down these
barriers--unloose the golden fetters of these imprisoned souls--or
relieve the burdened shoulders of those pale dungeoned creatures? How
are we to make strength out of union--to right wrongs, and give to
every man the light by which to see to make his choice?’
If one is to carry heavy weights one must have trained muscles. If
one is to reply one must know. The Charity Organisation Society is
the watchman set on a hill, who by his very constitution has special
facilities for giving an answer--and a wise one--to these questions.
He has exceptional opportunities for knowing both the classes in which
social reform is most needed, and knows them under the best conditions.
The rich come to him with ‘minds on helpfulness bent’; the poor come at
a time when their hearts are sore, when their lives are troubled, when
their sorrows have made them ‘unmanfully meek,’ and they are willing to
lay their lives and circumstances bare to inquiring eyes. For fifteen
years the one class has been meeting the other in the thirty-nine
district offices provided by the Society, and some 230,000 families
have asked for succour when they have been either morally, physically,
or circumstantially sick. Last year alone 14,132_l._ passed through
the hands of this Director of Charity, and at this moment there are
more than 2,000 men and women actively engaged in his work, while he
records the names of nearly 3,000 subscribers whose money is an earnest
of sympathy and potential working power.
But magnificent as this sounds, and _is_ (for there can be no doubt
about it that our friend is a very fine fellow), still there are
flaws both in his past and present constitution and character which
make his work less effective than it otherwise might be. Briefly, his
heart is not large enough for his body--his circulation is slow--his
movements are ponderous--and, being slightly hard of hearing, he does
not take in things until some little time after other people have done
so. Then, too, he is somewhat a creature of habit; his mind does not
readily assimilate new ideas, and he does rather an unusual number of
things because ‘he always has done so.’ His _raison d’être_, his whole
work, is founded on the first word of his name--Charity--(which the
new translators tell us we may call love, if we like), and yet he is
sometimes curiously persistent in ‘thinking evil,’ and he hardly, I
fear, ‘hopeth all things,’ nor yet lives up to his standard of ‘never
failing’; or what does 463 cases thrown aside as ‘undeserving and
ineligible’ mean in this last month’s returns of work?
Then he has an odd way of talking about his work. I have often seen
ordinary, commonplace, every-day sort of people begin to listen to him
with keen interest, but gradually drop eyelids and lose sympathy as he
threads his way through investigations, organisations, registrations,
co-operations, applications, administrations, each and all done by
multiplication!
This is a pity, for of course the every-day sort of people are most
wanted to help him. He cannot only work with people who have been
cradled in blue-books and nourished with statistics, nor yet with those
who are like the man who ‘did not care to look unless he could see the
future.’