DEAN STANLEY ON CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS.*
Is a very characteristic passage in this, the latest, and cer- tainly not the least interesting, picturesque, and earnest of the
many volumes which the Dean of Westminster has given to the world, Dr. Stanley writes :—
"In the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., the words of adminis- tration in the Holy Communion were almost the same as now in the Roman Church, and as formerly in the Sarum Missal :- 'The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and sonl unto everlasting life.' In the second Prayer-book of Edward VI., when the Swiss influence had taken complete possession of the English Reformers, this clause was dropped, and in its place the words were substituted, 'Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.' In the Prayer. book of Queen Elizabeth, and, no doubt, by her desire, the two clauses were united, and so have remained ever since. 'Excellently well done was it,' says an old Anglican divine [L'Estrange] of the Queen and her Reformers, to link both together, for between the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist and the Sacramental commemoration of his passion, there is so inseparable a league as sub- sist they cannot, except they consist." Excellently well done was it,' we may add, to leave this standing proof, in the heart of our most solemn service, that the two views which have long divided the Christian Church are compatible with joint Christian communion. So that here at least Luther and Zwingli might feel themselves at one; that the Puritan Edward and the Roman Mary might have thus far worshipped together, had they lived under the Latitudinarian, though Lutheran, Elizabeth."
From these words, our readers will be prepared to hear that the entire work is penetrated with the spirit of Catholicity, .and that while the Dean has been engaged in the thorough historical consideration of the origin and later development of such "Christian institutions" as Baptism, the Eucharist, and the Ministry, and while he utters his convictions on many ' burning questions" of the day with his wonted fearless- mess, he is not more loyal to the truth, as he understands it, than to charity. Certainly the drastic policy which, if carried out to its logical issues, would exclude Luther him- self from the holy orders of our Church, finds no countenance in the volume before us. At the same time, it seems to .us that no unbiassed reader could rise from the perusal of the pages of Dr. Stanley, which are admirable in their expositions of fact, without the question arising within him,—Is it a necessary law, in the evolution of spiritual truth, that what originates as a divine simplicity of prin- ciple should always have to undergo a transition period of material complication ; that the stream, which at its fountain- lead. rises fresh and bright, like the water from the rock in the wilderness, must needs always, as it gathers volume in its pro- gress, be contaminated, either by the inflowing of less crystal- line tributaries, or by the abrasions of the soil through which it passes ? However the phenomenon is to be accounted for, still history has to record almost uniformly the fact of a develop- ment which shows exactly the inverse order to that set forth in the great Apostolic deliverance, that the " earthy " is superseded by the "spiritual." And just as it is maintained by certain ethno- logists that the more degraded types of 'the human family are representatives not of a primitive and low original species, but of a decline and fall mainly brought about by the pressure of the many at special centres of population,—a pressure which necessitated the exodus of the weaker to other regions ; so is it affirmed by inquirers into comparative religion that Fetishism has nowhere been a pristine or initial form of worship, but that it has always been a secondary, or later, manifestation of the ineradicable religious instinct,—a substitution of the symbol in the place of the substance, a confounding of the letter with the spirit. Both of these propositions are, in the happy phraseology -of De Quincey, " militant " ones ; and no doubt the whole range of history occupies, in this sense of the expression, a "militant" attitude. At the same time, there are certain great landmarks in the records of the past which are as truly authenticated to us as are the so-called objects of our common-sense perceptions ; and if, among the former, are those of a Roman Republic giving place to an Empire, and a French Imperialism giving place to
• Christian Institutions ELMS on Ecclesiastical Subjects. By Arthur Penrhyn :Stanley, D.D., Dean of Weatminatrer. London : John Murray. 1881.
a Republic, with not less assurance, as it seems to us, may the most reverent student of history add that, in Egypt, in India, in Palestine, and in modern Christendom, we find the spirit often giving place to the letter. The Osiris legend of the Egyp- tians, perhaps, in some of its details, prophetic of the spiritual investment with an altogether new habit or " robe " of life which is the legacy of Christ to the children of men, got buried under a terrible ceremonial ; the old Vedic hymns know nothing of Caste, or the Car of Juggernaut. The Prime Minister of Siam, in his Survey of the Religions of the World, while the result of his inquiry only serves to attach him more cordially to his own faith, can only lament how sadly the teachings of his lord and master have been either corrupted or overlaid by tradition ; two of the Hebrew prophets at least, and, as we might have expected, one of the Hebrew poets, distinctly and emphatically repudiate the divine origin of the Levitical prescriptions; and Christianity, as Butler, though from a some- what different point of view, pointed out long ago, is no excep- tion to the general rule. And if in a secular journal we may freely quote the language of the New Testament as the language of literature, whether in the old English Version, or in the Revised one, we are brought face to face with the fact that religions which "begin in the spirit," if they do not " end," at all events, take embodiment "in the flesh ;" and that words which, as they fell from the lips of the speakers of them, were instinct with "spirit and life," have been trans- formed into expressions of matter and death. That Christ- ianity would experience a very considerable contagion of fleshly, or worldly, influence, was, as it seems to us, not hidden from its Founder; and, remembering that to the mind of the Jew, as in all St. Paul's writings, " leaven " was invariably the symbol of corruption or depravation, we may conjecture that when the Kingdom of Heaven, or a certain stage in the de- velopment of Church history, was likened to "leaven," it was not the silent but inevitable progress of truth—for the true is only developed by active faith and anxious struggle—but the spread of error, like the spread of an epidemic, which requires special human effort to stamp it out, that was signified. But whether our interpretation of the meaning of this parable be correct or not, one has only to turn to the pages of Dean Stanley, in this carefully elaborated volume, the latest contri- bution to Church history from the sparkling forge of his fervid and untiring brain, to recognise the truth and adroit- ness of the words of the author of Ancient Christianity, that the "Church, in her eagerness to christianise Paganism, paganised Christianity."
If the question has been asked,—Where was Protestantism before the Reformation ? it may be asked, in reply,—Where was the Christianity of Christ himself, pure and simple, after the death of the Alexandrian Fathers, until the "Friends of God," amidst the ceremonialism and practical atheism of the middle- ages, uttered their " Saspiria de Profundis," to be followed by the martyrdom of the gentle Huss, and the thunder-tones of Luther? This latter question has been answered by Dean Stanley as only a scholar and genuine student of history could answer it, and if our readers who are not familiar with Bingham, Neander, or Milman—and even if they are—desire to have vividly set before them the degeneratory progress of ecclesiasticism, in the course of which the lowly "vine" was developed into a " mustard tree," in the branches of which the unclean fowls of the air found shelter, let them at once make themselves acquainted with this volume. They will learn here, if they did not know before, how baptism, which originally was only administered to adults, be- came the sine qud non of even infant salvation ; how the Holy Supper of Christian brethren, breaking bread together in memory of his love who laid down his life for the world,—a supper the participation of which was a "token and pledge "that each com- municant was really drinking the " blood " of Christ, which is the blood of charity or love, and was ready to follow his Master even unto death,—was perverted into a priestly pro- pitiation; and how the holy order of ministering to the needs of others, in accordance with the divine will, and after his example who took upon him the form of a servant, was stereo- typed into a caste, which erected itself into supreme and abso- lute dictators of the opinions and ultimate welfare of the whole human family.
We have persistently claimed for the Church of England a Catholicity not less comprehensive than that advocated by Dean Stanley. With ourselves, the Dean would say,—" Let both parties grow together." He would add, as we would add, that the loss to the State from Disestablishment would be vastly greater than the loss to the Church, and that though the Ritualist of the nineteenth ceatury seems to know little of the simplicity of the faith, yet he is one of the national e- presentatives of the divine sympathy with the needs of humanity. And in these days of secularism and agnosticism, those knowing somewhat, as the present writer does, of the indifference to religion which prevails among the lower classes, must strongly deprecate any measure which would dissociate from the life of the English people a large body of public officers, whose very profession in itself testifies to the presence and love of an unseen Will which ceaselessly cares for the best interests of all men, and which sent Christ into the world to save the world.
It is quite impossible, within the limits of a single article, to do anything like justice to a volume like the present, which covers almost the entire field of Christian doctrine and of Christian ritual, which is so thickly studded with facts, and which contains such eloquent expositions of the deeper and more spiritual meanings of the Apostles' Creed and of the Ten Commandments, so that we must refer our readers to the work itself. In one of these expositions—that of the Creed —we have been reminded of a fine saying of the late Alexander Scott, that "Christ is God seen, and the Holy Spirit is the eye to see Goa;" and nowhere do we remember to have ever read a commentary on the Second Table of the Decalogue which so strikingly illustrates the great generalisation of St. Paul, "And if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self.'" In the chapter on Baptism, to turn to another subject, the Dean refers to the circumstance that Lord Palmerston was once severely attacked for having said, "Children are born good ;" and then he adds that his Lordship was only saying what Chrysostom and the Gospels, too, had already said before him. But if we remember aright, Lord Palmerston's dictum was curiously qualified by the additional words, "at least, with very few exceptions,"—as if in theology, too, there must needs be room for one or more of the " courses " of the politician.
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