THE ENGLISHMAN'S RELIGION
By DR. W. R. MATTHEWS
ARE the English a religious people ? Two remarks by distinguished contemporaries come to mind. A very eminent German theologian, visiting this country again after 25 years' absence, summed up his impressions by saying, " England is still the most religious country in Europe ; by that I mean it is the country where religious motives have the greatest influence on conduct." And he went on to attribute no small part of this power of religion to the Book of Common Prayer. Side by side with this we may put an obiter dictum of the late Canon T. A. Lacey, " England is very religious, but unfortu nately its religion does not happen to be Christianity." Doubtless there is a modicum of truth in this ; but we may claim for England that there is no other country where so large a proportion of people are trying, often rather grotesquely, to be Christian. It is significant that the most effective attack on the Churches is to point out that they are not fulfilling the law of Christ. The most powerful weapon against . organized religion in this country is the accusation that it is not religious enough.
One important fact may be noticed about English religion (we are not speaking of Scotland). There is one kind of religious activity in which our countrymen have been singularly deficient—that of systematic theology. England has produced great saints and spiritual heroes from Alfred to Bishop Hannington and General Booth; its devotional poetry and prose writing is distinguished ; and when we remember, Hooker, Butler, Westcott, F. D. Maurice and Charles Gore with many others, we cannot deny that it has nourished a long line of Christian scholars and thinkers ; but it has no name to set beside those of Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Schleier- macher and Ritschl. The need to show the whole body of religious truth as springing from a single principle and forming a coherent whole has not been acutely felt. The contributions which the English mind has made to theology in the proper sense have always been ad hoe. They have been provoked by some controversy and have been intended primarily as a reply to some assault. This must be connected with some element in the national character, for we find the same phenomenon in English politics and English philosophy. The logical and coherent structure has not been a British product in either sphere, and system-builders have never found in England a congenial atmosphere. This suspicion of systems is connected with a mystical strain in the national character which is real enough though generally inarticu- late. The deep things of God, the Englishman feels, cannot be expounded in logical terms, and the tidy completeness of a coherent theology must be misleading just because of its intelligibility.• Some of the strength of English religion arises from this character. The disadvantage of a system is that it can be refuted by denying its foundation. To show that the cosmological argument is invalid is to bring the whole theology of Thomas Aquinas to the ground ; negate Calvin's coneep- eeption of the sovereignty of God and the whole of the " Institutes " is reduced to fruitless speculation ; demon- strate that Schleiermacher's view of the nature of religion is unsound and the cord is loosened which binds his doctrine together. The Englishman's religion is not open to this frontal attack because it is an organism of a !esti highly articulated type. It is a reaction to life rather than an exercise in logic. That typically English docu- ment the Thirty-Nine Articles must be refuted in detail, if at all, and is susceptible of no single fatal stroke.
A grave defect in the English religious temperament is closely connected with this mystical indifference to logic. Nowhere else, except in America, has senti- mentality so secure a hold. Nowhere else are there so many religious persons who believe inconsistent doctrines because they " feel better " for doing so. Indeed their capacity for holding contradictory propositions together in the same mind often amounts to genius. Recently I was present at a meeting of the League of Nations Union at Which the principal speaker explained with some care the three alternative policies of non- resistance, isolation, and mutual guarantee through the League. At the conclusion a man, who appeared to be thoughtful, stated that he cordially agreed with all three policies, but did not worry much because he was sure that the English were the lost Ten Tribes. Could this amiable idealistic muddle-headcdness be found in any other country ?
Matthew Arnold's phrase " morality touched with emotion " is a very bad definition of religion, but not so far from the mark as a description of much English piety. Deeply entrenched in the soul of the nation is the conviction that a religion which does not express itself in conduct is probably hypocritical and certainly worthless. At its best, in all ages English religion has inspired lives of high integrity and sober godliness. Even its heroic adventures of missionary enterprise have been conducted by committees of business men. We are indeed most fortunate that as yet there has been no clear breach between Church and State and there is no gulf between the religious and the secular society. It would be difficult to decide which has derived more benefit from the association, but we should miss one of the chief characteristics of the national religious type if we did not notice that English Christianity has been, and still is, the source of a great part of the public spirit which makes local government, on the whole, superior in our country to that of all others; We have come to regard it as self-evident that work for the community may be the service of God—so much so that we have a sense of shock when we find in Christian communities of another tradition that the co-operation of the priest in social welfare work is neither expected nor welcomed. Yet this fine tradition of English religion has been the cause of some defects. There has been a tendency to identify religion with social service and even to identify the Kingdom of God with nn earthly Utopia. Some churches have become, it would seem, primarily centres of excellent social and cultural activities, and their ministers entangled with the multiplicity of organized good works. This phenomenon was pointed out in Edwardian days by Charles Booth in his great " Survey " of London. At present a reaction can be observed in most sections of English Christianity. The idea that the Church exists first of all for the worship of God is gaining ground, and with it the perception that worship is an " end in itself."
It cannot be questioned that English religion is passing through a period of crisis. It is an inner crisis far more than an external one and is being resolved in the secret thoughts of many minds. One who talks on religion to persons of various types and classes will be impressed with the fact that everywhere men are conscious of a change and are uncertain how much of the old belief can stand unmodified. They are • inclined to complain that the official teachers of religion speak too often with imperfect apprehension of the problems which confront the faith. We need not doubt that the religion of England will remain a distinctive thing and a source of inspiration of the highest national -qualities ; but We. may wonder What its immediate future will be. We should have light on that question if we knew what the young are thinking. In spite of confident assertions both by those who believe that religion is dying and by hose who believe that it is reviving, we have no sufficient knowledge. The young on this subject remain, on the whole, strangely silent.
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