LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY.—V.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE ePHOTATOR:] SIR, —I trace the evils which afflict the Church to its bureaucratic form of government, in other words, to the concentration of authority and influence in the hands of a paid official class, and to the insignificance of free unpaid labour within it. Or rather— for it is not a case of pure bureaucracy—the mischief lies partly in this absorbing influence of an official class, and partly in the fact that this official class is at the same time a learned profession. The Church suffers at the same time from the prejudices which belong to officialism, and front the pedantry which is fostered in learned corporations.
This sort of government has bad effects both upon the ruling offi- cial class itself, and upon the unofficial part of the community, upon those who are ruled. Its effect upon the latter is most disastrous, but at the same time so easy to be understood that I shall not have occasion to dwell upon it long. Any one who has looked into history knows, and any one who thinks might discover without looking into history, that to give strong corporate life to any society, you must give every member of it something to do, some function. Patriotism and political energy have reached their height in States where every citizen served in the army and was eligible to office ; no State has ever reached a high degree of healthy vitality which has not contained at least a large class freely giving up time to public affairs. To hand all public function over to a paid class is understood in States to be a fatal measure ; it means political death to all the rest of the community. Those who are excluded, ceasing to have anything to do in public affairs beyond paying money, gradually cease to realise that they belong to a political community ; the feelings proper to citizens die out of their breasts. German historians tell us that under the old bureaucratic Government of Prussia this had taken place to such an extent, that the first impression produced in Prussian society by the battle of Jena was not so much grief or dismay, as a feeling of malicious amusement at the humiliation of the Army.
States that make this mistake are punished for it by foreign invasion and battles lost, military law and war requisitions. But Churches maygo on in this way for a long time, and perceive nothing amiss beyond a general want of animation. Look at the laity of the Church of England ! With no feeling in general but what is respectful towards the Church, and with a kindly feeling towards the clergy, their connection with the Church is nevertheless almost entirely passive. When they have occupied a seat in church on the Sunday, and put a shilling in a plate, they have fulfilled almost all the functions the Church imposes on them. It will be answered, "It is true the Church imposes next to nothing, but that is because it desires voluntary service. Let a man volunteer to help in the work of the Church, and work enough will be found for him." A certain kind of work will be found for him, but only an inferior kind. He will be allowed, for instance, to give more money ; he is welcome to put a sovereign in the plate instead of a shilling ; he will be admitted to take a share in some clerical tasks ; but he can exercise no perceptible influence on the course of ecclesiastical affairs. If he has ideas, or views, or original suggestions to offer,—and surely the life of societies 'is in things of this kind—within the Church he has no means of doing it. Of coarse, in this free country he can publish his views to the world at large ; in that case he may expect that they will meet with more attention anywhere else than within the Church, and that in all probability the Church will at once set him down for an enemy. For within the Church everything is settled already by the clerical tradition, and in every ecclesiastical assembly the layman who has views will find himself so outnumbered by clergy-
men and the atmosphere so clerical that he will feel it to be useless to open his lips ; unless, indeed, he has something to say in de- fence of the existing system, in which case he will, no doubt, be heard with enthusiasm. For beneficial work of the higher kind the layman has no more opportunity in the Church, than an inde- pendent statesman would be able to do good in a House of Commons in which there should be three hundred placemen and three hundred lawyers looking forward to place.
This passiveness to which the laity are condemned has another consequence, to which a parallel is to be found in the history of bureaucratic States. It causes the discontented to fix their thoughts not on reform, but on revolution. This is partly because no means suggest themselves of effecting a reform where only the
official class has any initiative and this, as official classes always are, is deaf to argument and blind to danger. But it is also partly due to the extreme slightness of the link which binds them to the corporate body. What sort of tie binds the layman of the present day to the Church of England ? Is it, as Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen described the connection between the colonies and the mother country, a tie "too soft to gall, but too strong to be broken "? Perhaps while it continues to be the former, it will also be the latter. But suppose it should begin to gall; suppose ritualism should disgust the people with the parish church, by what an easy process might the Church of England pass away ! Such a revolution would involve no great change of habits to any large class. Life would be much the same to everybody, only people would cease to take a certain walk on Sunday mornings.
But I mean to speak rather of the effect which this clerical as- cendancy produces on the teaching of Christianity. Few men dis- tinctly realise to themselves any way of life but that which they fol- low themselves, and this blindness is increased when people are formed into professions, and live constantly in the society of others whose life is the counterpart of their own. The man of science imagines all mankind to be constantly engaged in investiga- tion, the philologist listens with amused perplexity to those who talk of politics or war, and is inwardly sure that they only pretend to be interested in such things, and that they recognise all the while the infinite importance of his Sanscrit roots. The clergy in like manner have their heads full of church services. Ritual is their occupation, and they only imperfectly understand the feelings of those who think it makes but a small part of Christianity. What must be the effect of committing Christianity entirely into the hands of a class of professed ritualists ? Among other effects, we may certainly expect to find Christianity too much merged in ritual. And assuredly we do find this done, not merely by a party among the clergy, but by the clergy everywhere, and that practically means by the Church everywhere. The ritual may be gor- geous or simple, but universally it is the form in which Christianity is conceived. Christianity is realised in our minds as a number of people in a church or chapel singing hymns, or listening while an official prays or preaches. When we speak of spiritual destitution in a neighbourhood, we mean that it has only church accommodation for a small proportion of the popula- tion. When we speak of a revival of religion in a country, we mean that a great number of new churches has been built, and that a greater number of services is held in them and the services performed with more reverence than formerly.
What is now called Ritualism is only the grotesque extreme of this purely clerical view of Christianity. Alarmed at what they think the decay of religion, a certain school make a heroic effort to bring about a revival ; but they are unable to distinguish between Christianity and their own professional business, and so all they can think of is to work twice as hard at ritual, improve the quality of it, reform the millinery and the music, and make sure not only that the work is done, but that an impression is really produced.
Again, every profession has affairs of its own, its own private politics, in which it takes an intense interest. An effect, there- fore, of committing a vast affair like Christianity to the hands of a single profession, will be to degrade Christianity by association with those purely professional interests which are unavoidably almost all-important to the members of the profession themselves. Questions of profound and universal interest are postponed in the religious world, because it is the clerical world, to questions which to the world at large are utterly insignificant. If new theological views are broached, the question agitated is not, are they true ? but had Mr. So-and-So a right to broach them, after having sub- scribed this or that confession of faith ? And so now, when the
world is agitated more than it has been for a long time with theological questions, the discussion goes on mainly outside of Christianity, because Christianity has no voice but that of the clergy, and they are much more interested in the question whether a creed which the Archbishop of Canterbury says none of them believe should continue to be read in churches or not. The pro- feasional question carries it over the human question.
Meanwhile the complaint arises that on all important practical questions Christianity is silent. Putting theology aside, it is evident that Christianity was meant to be a morality, a social philosophy, and when we see that it has so little to say in the midst of the dis- orders of the age, and that reformers are constantly engaged in correcting the abuses it has allowed to grow up and still sanctions, we cry out, "Christianity must be dead." St. Simon and Comte undertake to furnish us with the teaching which could not be got from the Church. But surely if we look at facts, we shall 800 that the fault is not in Christianity. The fault lies in great part here that Christianity only speaks through officiating priests, and that they, with professional narrowness, can see nothing in Christianity but ritual. They know nothing about labour and capital, for their business is with Sunday, and on Sunday labour rests and capital lies idle. They have their favourite reforms, and unselfish ones, too,—for instance, the abolition of pews. If there is distress, they can feel for it,—and they will preach a charity sermon. But outside the Church and beyond the range of the pulpit and the reading-desk their imagination fails them and their views grow indistinct. In this they are only like other people, who understand little beyond their own business ; the fault is in the arrangement which has thrown so much upon a single class.
Of course, I do not profess that this statement is more than generally true. All clergymen are not actually engaged in per- forming ritual. A good many are engaged in education, and Dr. Arnold did great good by emphatically asserting such work to be properly clerical. Canon Kingsley, I understand, has applied the machinery of Chester Cathedral to the teaching of science. But the religious world in general still regards not only the teaching of science, but even education generally, as secular work, and the only work it acknowledges as religious is the performance of ritual and the visitation of the sick. If legislative power could be received in the Church, she would not only cease to work entirely through functionaries, but she would have functionaries of many different kinds, who would look at Christianity from many different sides, and save her from the danger of merging it in ritual.
But clerical ascendancy perverts and enfeebles Christianity in still other, and even more important, ways.—I am, Sir, &c., A.
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