PROFESSOR MAX MULLER IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
THE Clergy are almost as easily ruffled as the doves in a dove- cote. From the sort of comment which one hears on the lecture given by Professor Max Muller on "Missions," in West- minster Abbey, on Wednesday week, it would seem that there is something of real consternation in clerical minds at the thought that a layman may deliver his vieivs on a religious subject within the same walls within which the clergyman, at other times, preaches and prays. Especially deep is this horror, apparently, if the lay- man's homily be preceded by a hymn, and followed by a prayer. "We have, indeed, beard," says our respected contemporary the Guardian, in a brief but evidently horrified comment on the pro- ceeding, "that the step is defended on the ludicrously inadequate ground, that occasionally such men as Professor Willis and Sir Gilbert Scott have given architectural or antiquarian descrip- tions of Cathedrals on the spot, which assumed something of the character of lectures. Whatever may be thought of the pro- priety of such dissertations, it is clear that they could not have been given elsewhere, whereas Professor Max Muller might have lectured just as well in St. James's Hall as in Westminster Abbey ; nor have we ever heard that they were accompanied by
hymn and prayer If the proceeding of Wednesday evening was a service, then the appearance of a layman as the speaker was a breach, not only of the ecclesiastical, but even of
the civil law, which in the last Session an attempt was vainly made to alter. If it was not a service, then -the question remains Whether a church ought to be used except for service, and whether a Dean has a right to turn a consecrated building into a lecture-room." This is pathetic, and no reasoner will deny -that the logical division between "a service" and " not-a-service " is exhaustive, even if a little overpowering. We are accustomed to dilemmas, and usually find that one at least of the horns is like the chamois' horns one so often buys in Switzerland, something of a sham, and not so well adapted to pierce the unhappy reasoner through and through as his opponent supposes. Now, let us admit that in this particular case the ceremonial, whatever it was, which was gone through on the evening of Wednesday week (there had been two regular services in the Abbey in the previous part of the day) was " not-a-service." And, as everybody will admit, it was not in any legal sense a service of the English Church, all of which are prescribed by law. But why a "con- secrated building "should not be the right place for many a thing which is " not-a-service," it seems to us impossible, on any but the most superstitious grounds, to say. Is it the place for mixed religious emotions, not wholly religious, but deeply tinctured with religion, to be indulged ? One would say so, or why have the various English cathedrals been again and again made the scenes of "musical festivals," where the music no doubt was sacred, but the motive both of singers and hearers was chiefly to give and receive a high-class musical entertainment? But if it is the right place for musical entertainments,—on condition that the music is of the sacred kind,—it seems a mere paradox to say that it is not the place for laymen of piety and learning to gratify intellectual desires deeply mingled with religious emotions by lectures like Professor Max Miiller's, which was certainly far less of an entertainment, far more of a direct appeal to the reli- gious part of man, than even the music of the "Elijah" or the "St. Paul." Of course, if, by any accident, it is illegal for a layman to express his views on a religious subject in a "consecrated build- ing," no one would wish the law to be disobeyed, though every sensible person would wish it to be repealed. But no one seems to allege that it is illegal, in Westminster Abbey at least, for a layman to open his mind about Missions; and that being so, why should not the Dean of Westminster set the example he has so fairly, earned the right to set, of opening the mouths of distinguished laymen on the subject on which it is so important that we should hear the laity as well as the clergy, within the walls of his own Cathedral? The horror of the Guardian is only intelligible on an assumption which is to us one of the most baseless and irreligious in the world, that laymen's spirits, minds, and consciences are different from, and inferior in kind to, those of the ordained, and that what they have to say on religious sub- jects is "common and unclean " compared with the thoughts of clerical personages, whom we suppose God is supposed, in some special manner, to have "cleansed," on the same subjects. We say, on the contrary, that Professor Max Muller's_ views on Mis- sions are rather more important to the religious life of the day than those of ninety-nine clergymen out of every hundred, pre- cisely because he has carefully studied and compared the working of the missionary spirit under the influence of very widely diverse creeds. If it is desirable to hear, under so many consecrated roofs, purely conventional remarks, sometimes very aboard twaddle, from clerical lips on the subject, surely it must be desirable, so far as it is lawful, to hear, under the same roof, what a layman of first-rate ability and learning and profound piety thinks on the matter. If the clergy have studied their subjects more than most laymen, very few of them indeed have studied these matters so much as Professor Max Miller. And against the professional view of the subject, it must be admitted that when laymen do independently attain to strong religious convic- tions, they are likely to have a -far greater influence than clergy- men of equal ability, for the very simple reason that they are less committed and more completely free to be silent or speak, just as they please. If, then, '-consecrated buildings' are to be devoted to the purposes for which they are consecrated, it is very much to the purpose indeed to open the mouths of the laity in them, as well as those of the clergy. The superstition about a consecrated caste is one of the deadliest of all the enemies of popular faith.
When we come, however, to ProfessorMax Miiller's own opinion's, as expressed in the thoughtful and beautiful lecture which Iv delivered on Wednesday week in the Abbey, we cannot say 'that we are in quite as hearty a concurrence with it, as we are with the manly policy which gave him the opportunity of delivering it. The Professor distinguished the three great Missionary religions of the world as Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism ; the other chief religions, the religion of Zeroes- ter,—now professed by the Parsees,—that of the Brahmins, that of Judaism, and that of Confucius, having never taken any missionary development, and thereby shown, as Mr. Max Mailer truly observes, an inherent weakness marking a definite inferi- ority to their rivals. "This, then," said the lecturer, "is the common feature in Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, —this binds them together. In some points they may be as diverse as the day and night, but they could not have achieved what they have if the spirit of truth and of love had not been alive in their founders. But missionary work is only one manifestation of this spirit, for that which animates the missionary abroad animates his brother at home, and religions which can boast of men who have left the home of their childhood, have parted from their parents and their children never to meet again, and have gone to the world's end ready to lay down their lives, are rich also in honest and intrepid inquirers ready to leave behind them the cherished creeds of their childhood, and to stand alone among men who shrug their shoulders and say What is truth?'" In other words, the spirit of those religions which are essentially missionary is essentially speculative and inquisitive ; and if Mohammedanism has never been thus speculative and inquisitive, that only marks the fact that even its missionary spirit was more one of military command than of spiritual persuasion. A religion whose missionary instru- ment was the sword could not be expected to lead to free speculative thought. Thus Buddhism and Christianity are the only two genuinely missionary and genuinely self-searching, meditative creeds, which not only insist on spreading the lights they have, but are continually studying and analysing the source and secrets of that light. Mr. Max Mailer then goes on to show how these two religions, which alone are at once missionary,—i.e., truth- spreading,—and truth-seeking, must really battle it out with each other, and with their more inert, but not less firmly rooted com- petitors. He points out that the chief missionary successes have always been gained by missions of the parental kind, missions conducted by men who have not got to argue, but simply to win over people infinitely their own inferiors in civilisation. This, as he justly says, is no test at all of the truth of Christianity, except so far as that truth is implied in the evidence afforded of the reality and depth of Christian love. Mr. Max Muller discredits the controversial missionary altogether, and thinks that the victory between the three formidable religions still left in contact with each other, Buddhism, Christianity, Brahminism, will be determined not by controversy, but by a process akin to natural selection. When two great religions are in contact and do not seek controversy, the result, says the Professor, is generally a reformation of both,—and out of such contiguous reformations, he thinks, if we rightly understand him, that we shall at length get a purified essence of religion in which all can concur. When Mohammedanism and Brahminism came into daily contact in Northern India the result was a purified Mohammedanism and a purified Brahminism,—the latter being the religion of the Sikhs. What Mohammedanism there did for Braiuninism, Christianity is beginning to do now in Bengal, and even more effectually, says Professor Muller ; and we see the reset in the Brahmo-Somaj of Keshub Chu.nder Sen. In- deed he contends that we ought to recognise these new Brahmoists as Christians:—" If our missionaries receive con- verts, who can hardly understand the abstract conceptions of our creeds and formulas, how can it be necessary to exclude those who understand them too well to submit the wings of their spirits to galling chains ? Indeed, what are-these formulas after all but the stammering of children which only their loving father can interpret and understand ? The fundamentals of our religion are not in creeds, but in love,—in love of God, and the love of man flowing from the love of God. That is the whole law and the prophets. That is the religion which will convert all lands ;"—and that religion will be, as we suppose Mr. Max Muller means us to understand, the purified essence of all such religions as survive the process of natural selection, whether it be called by one name or another in commemoration of its doctrinal ancestry._ Now, on this theory of the Professor's, we must say that we cannot go far with him. We hold it quite true that the first great steps of missionary conquest are taken as he describes. They /..Ire not direct triumphs of refined religious intellect over the intellect and conscience of inferior races, but they are in the first instanceltriumphs of goodness and force of character, carrying with them as a natural consequence faith in the religion which is confessed by those who show this goodness and force of char- acter. Again, doubtless it is true that the self-examina-
tion and self - purification which the moral competition of contiguous creeds not in controversial relations ensures, is likely to produce the best moral type of each kind of faith. Roman Catholicism, for instance, is never so blameless as it is when encamped in a Protestant country where it is given fair play. Dissent widens the spirit of the Established Church, and the Established Church gives dignity and refinement to Dissent. But we cannot go with Professor Muller at all in his implicit assumption that the final test of theological truth is wholly of this negative, moral kind. Indeed, that assumption seems to us to involve the abnegation of theology, and the enthronement of an affectional morality in its place.
In the first place, even if we admit that the love of God and the love of man constitute the whole essence of religion, there forces itself upon us the great, the immense difficulty of the best means of realising this love. Are they their own sufficient evidence, or do we need a trust in the supernatural origin of the belief in them, in order to prevent the belief in them from drying up and dying out? Is the life and death and resurrection of Christ the guarantee for these principles amongst us, or could we— could Europeans, with their hard, practical judgments—believe them just as deeply on the strength of Buddhist testimonies or Brahmo-Somaj intuitions ? At the present time and in this quarter of the world, some kind of Deism or Theism probably is the most popular of all forms of belief as to the origin of the world, but is such a Deism or Theism one which really finds it easy to trace everything back to infinite love, and to make love for others the foundation of human conduct? If not, the question as to the revelation and where it comes from, returns as surely upon us before we can really believe these great messages of Divine love, as if a much more elaborate creed were involved with them. Indeed, it may be much more easy to believe the simple creed on the strength of a more complete revelation, than to believe it solely on its own authority. It is often a great mistake to suppose that the simplest creed is the most credible. Granted a living Spirit above and within us, it is easier to believe in his love when we are told what he has done to prove it, than when we are told of it without any such living illustration of its meaning.
And again, what a great and, to the intellect alone, increasingly difficult theological axiom is that assumption as to the living God which Professor Muller slips in as if it did not involve a creed at all! Why, by his own account, Buddhism might give us a spiritual morality not far off that of the Christian, with an axiom on this head infinitely vaguer and less significant, not always distinguish- able from a kind of Nihilism. For our own parts, we cannot help thinking that Professor Max Muller's view as to the proper euthanasia of controversy and dogma, ought to land him in something much more like Buddhism than Christianity as the final religion of the world. If creed and dogma are to dis- appear, we shall have a religion of love without any distinct God, and without any clear immortality for man, and how long such a religion of love can exercise any living influence, we greatly doubt. No. Professor Max Miller has conceived truly and powerfully the first stages in Missionary development, but not the last. Christianity, is in truth, a theology, or it is nothing. A religion which doom not come from God, and declare God, and lift us up to God, will never conquer man. That a perfectly righteous God loves us, is as profound a basis of faith as the mind of man can have. But love alone,—origin uncertain, object uncertain, destiny uncertain,—is a mist, a vapour ; and that is the best thing which a religion without creed and without dogma can hope to be.
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