(November, 1882.)
The Archbishop of York is peculiarly qualified to speak on religion
and progress. His form of thanksgiving to the God of Battles for our
"victory" in Egypt marks him as a man of extraordinary intellect and
character, such as common people may admire without hoping to emulate;
while his position, in Archbishop Tait's necessitated absence from the
scene, makes him the active head of the English Church. Let us listen to
the great man.
Archbishop Thomson recently addressed "a working-men's meeting" in the
Drill Hall, Sheffield. It was densely crowded by six or seven thousand
people, and this fact was cited by the Archbishop as a proof that the
working classes of England have not yet lost interest in the Christian
faith. But we should very much like to know how it was ascertained
that all, or even the major portion, of the vast audience were
working-men. It is easy enough to give any meeting a name. We often hear
of a Conservative Working-men's banquet, with tickets at something like
a guinea each, a duke at the top of the table and a row' of lords
down each side. And our experience leads us to believe that nearly all
religious meetings of "working-men" are attended chiefly by the lower
middle classes who go regularly to church or chapel every Sunday of
their lives.
Even, however, if the whole six or seven thousand were working-men, the
fact would prove little; for Sheffield contains a population of three
hundred thousand, and it was not difficult for the clergy who thronged
the platform to get up a big "ticket" meeting, at which a popular
Archbishop was the principal speaker, and the eloquence was all to be
had for nothing.
The Archbishop's lecture, or sermon, or whatever it was, contained
nothing new, nor was any old idea presented in a new light. It was
simply a summary of the vulgar declamations against the "carnal mind"
with which we are all so familiar. Progress, said his Grace, was of two
kinds, intellectual and moral. Of the former sort we had plenty, but
of the latter not so much. He repudiated the notion that moral progress
would naturally keep pace with intellectual progress, and he denied that
righteousness could ever prevail without "some sanction from above."
This was the sum and substance of his discourse, and we have no
doubt that our readers have heard the same thing, in various forms of
language, some hundreds of times.
Like the rest of his tribe, Archbishop Thomson went abroad for all his
frightful warnings, and especially to France. He severely condemned the
French "pride in progress," which led to the Revolution. His Grace has
certainly a most original conception of history. Ordinary historians
tell us that the Revolution was caused by hunger, bad government, and
the rigidity of old institutions that could not accommodate themselves
to new ideas. But whatever were the causes, look at the results. Compare
the state of France before the Revolution with its condition now. The
despotic monarchy is gone; the luxurious and privileged aristocracy has
disappeared; and the incredibly wealthy and tyrannous Church is reduced
to humbleness and poverty. But the starving masses have become the most
prosperous on the face of the earth; the ignorant multitudes are well
educated; the platform and the press are free; a career is open to every
citizen; science, art, and literature have made immense strides; and
although Paris, like every great capital, may still, as Mr. Arnold says,
lack morality, there is no such flagrant vileness within her walls as
the corruptions of the _ancien régime_; no such impudent affronting of
the decencies of life as made the _parc aux cerfs_ for ever infamous,
and his Christian Majesty, Louis the Fifteenth, a worthy compeer of
Tiberius; no such shameless wickedness as made the orgies of the Duke of
Orleans and the Abbé Dubois match the worst saturnalia of Nero.
His Grace felt obliged to advert also to the Paris Commune, about which
his information seems to be equal to his knowledge of the Revolution. He
has the ignorance or audacity to declare that the Commune "destroyed a
city and ravaged the land;" when, as a matter of fact, the struggle was
absolutely confined to Paris, and the few buildings injured were in
the line of fire. This worthy prelate thinks destruction of buildings
a crime on the part of Communalists, but a virtue on the part of a
Christian power; and while denouncing the partial wreck of Paris, he
blesses the wholesale ruin of Alexandria.
His Grace ventures also to call the leading men of the Commune "drunken
dissolute villains." The beaten party is always wicked, and perhaps
Dr. Thomson will remember that Jesus Christ himself was accused of
consorting with publicans and sinners. Drunken dissolute villains do
not risk their lives for an idea. The men of the Commune may have been
mistaken, but their motives were lofty; and Millière, falling dead on
the Church steps before the Versailles bullets, with the cry of _Vive
l'Humanité_ on his lips, was as noble a hero as any crucified Galilean
who questioned why his God had forsaken him.
That intellectual and moral progress naturally go together, the
Archbishop calls "an absurd and insane doctrine," and he couples with
these epithets the honored names of Buckle and Spencer. Now it will
be well to have a clear understanding on this point. Are intellectual
causes dominant or subordinate? Even so intensely religious a man as
Lamennais unhesitatingly answers that they are dominant. He affirms, in
his _Du Passé et de l'Avenir du, Peuple_, that "intellectual development
has produced all other developments," and he adds:--
"It is represented that evil, as it appears in history, springs entirely
from the passions. This is quite false. The passions disturb the
existing order, whatever it may be, but they do not constitute it. They
have not that power. It is the necessary result of the received ideas
and beliefs. Thus the passions show themselves the same in all epochs,
and yet, in different epochs, the established order changes, and
sometimes fundamentally."
The truth is that the great moral conceptions are securely established,
and the only possible improvement in them must come from the increased
fineness and subtlety of our mental powers.
Civilisation and progress are, according to Archbishop Thomson, nothing
but "cobwebs and terms." He besought the working men of Sheffield not to
go for information to a big book written in some garret in London.
His Grace, who lives in a palace at other people's expense, has a very
natural dislike of any man of genius who may live in a garret at his
own. What has the place in which a book is written to do with its value?
"Don Quixote" and the "Pilgrim's Progress" were written in gaol; and for
all Archbishop Thomson knows to the contrary every gospel and epistle of
the New Testament may have been written in an attic or a cellar.
The Archbishop seems to hate the very idea of Progress. What has it
done, he asks, to abolish drunkenness and gambling? To which we reply
by asking what Christianity has done. Those vices are unmistakably here,
and on the face of it any objection they may furnish against Progress
must equally apply to Christianity. Nay more; for Christianity has had
an unlimited opportunity to reform the world, while Progress has been
hindered at every turn by the insolent usurpation of its rival.
Dr. Thomson admits that he cannot find a text in the Bible against
gambling, and assuredly he cannot find one in favor of teetotalism. On
the contrary he will find plenty of texts which recommend the "wine that
cheereth the heart of God and man;" and he knows that his master, Jesus
Christ, once played the part of an amateur publican at a marriage feast,
and turned a large quantity of water into wine in order to keep the
spree going when it had once begun.
We repeat that all the Archbishop's objections to Progress, based on the
moral defects of men, apply with tenfold force against Religion, which
has practically had the whole field to itself. And we assert that he is
grievously mistaken if he imagines that supernatural beliefs can ennoble
knaves or give wisdom to fools. When he talks about "Christ's blood shed
to purchase our souls," and specifies the first message of his creed
as "Come and be forgiven," he is appealing to our basest motives, and
turning the temple into a huckster's shop. Let him and all his tribe
listen to these words of Ruskin's:--
"Your honesty is _not_ to be based either on religion or policy. Both
your religion and policy must be based on _it_. Your honesty must be
based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the
firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night If you ask
why you are to be honest--you are, in the question itself, dishonored
'Because you are a man,' is the only answer; and therefore I said in
a former letter that to make your children _capable of honesty_ is
the beginning of education. Make them men first and religious men
afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the
rottenest thing about him.--_Time and Tide_, p. 37."
These are the words of a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will
never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody
be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his
discourse, like a mental rolling of the whites of his eyes.
As we approach the end of his address, we begin to understand his
Grace's hatred of Progress. He complains that "intellectual progress
never makes a man conceive eternal hopes, never makes a man conceive
that he has an eternal friend in heaven, even the Son of God." Quite
true. Intellectual progress tends to bound our desires within the scope
of their realisation, and to dissipate the fictions of theology. It is
therefore inimical to all professional soul-savers, who chatter about
another world with no understanding of this; and especially to the
lofty teachers of religion who luxuriate in palaces, and fling jibes and
sneers at the toiling soldiers of progress who face hunger, thirst and
death. These rich disciples of the poor Nazarene are horrified when
the scorn is retorted on them and their creed; and Archbishop Thomson
expresses his "disgust" at our ridiculing his Bible and endeavoring to
bring his "convictions" into "contempt." It is, he says, "an offence
against the first principles of mutual sympathy and consideration." Yet
this angry complainant describes other people's convictions as "absurd
and insane." All the sympathy and consideration is to be on one side!
The less said about either the better. There can be no treaty or truce
in a war of principles, and the soldiers of Progress will neither take
quarter nor give it. Christianity must defend itself. It may try to kill
us with the poisoned arrows of persecution; but what defence can it
make against the rifleshot of common-sense, or how stand against the
shattering artillery of science? Every such battle is decided in its
commencement, for every religion begins to succumb the very moment it is
attacked.