MR. LYULPH STANLEY'S ADVICE TO DISESTAB- • deprecated compliance with
his advice. They thought that the would not be repelled by the confined intellectual air and campaign could be fought at more advantage as a religious cam- narrow moral limits of sectarian life I The National Church paign than as a political one, that an appeal to the religious may be, in its present condition, little to their liking, but convictions of constituencies against the injury which an Estab- they must at once recognize at least the enormous advan- lishment does to the religion of the community will be at least tage of combining men of almost innumerable varieties of not less successful and more worthy of their highest efforts thought within one and the same organization,—an advantage than an appeal to the political convictions of constituencies which, with anything like a thoroughly popular reform, might against the injury which an Establishment does to the politics be greatly extended. Free and regular interchange of thought .of the community. between the religious denominations external to the Church can
As we, of course, do not happen to agree with either party hardly be said to exist at all, while such interchange between the to the discussion, we hardly feel called upon to give the Con- various religious parties which exist within the Church itself ference the aid of our judgment upon this delicate question,— is necessarily incessant and most important in its effects, in whether it be better for Mr. Miall's purpose to adhere to the gradually leavening each of those parties with the better more noble, dignified, and consistent policy of the past, or to elements of the others' creeds. A National Church is, indeed, popularize the agitation by at once stigmatizing the Established the only conceivable expedient under which there can Church as the hereditary political enemy of democracy and exist at once very great varieties of spiritual conviction, and the working-class. But thus much we may fairly point out a perpetual circulation of thought upon the grounds of those to Mr. Lyulph Stanley, that while the policy hitherto adopted varieties. Do the working-classes really want to destroy such by the Society has at least this advantage,—that all religious an institution as this, instead of renovating or popularizing it men who are convinced by it are quite certain to become so far as it seems to them to have become the natural ally of earnest adherents of the cause, his own view of the Establish- political exclusiveness ? Surely they must see that a nation went as an organization hitherto very hostile to the political. without any common meeting-ground for the purposes of moral wishes of the working-classes might be accepted by the people and spiritual life, is a nation with one •great organ of unity without any disposition to draw his inference, that it ought missing, a nation needlessly shorn and crippled of its highest to be cut away root and branch. Might not the working-men opportunities of collective life and feeling. If any- 'retort upon him that precisely the same has been true of the thing is notable in the working-class, it is its jealousy 'Universities, and that the political inference has not been the of the extreme individualism which the spirit of modern 'duty of disestablishing and discarding the Universities, but the trade has endeavoured to introduce into the labouring duty of popularizing and turning their great resources to really class, and its desire for something of "solidarity " in social wise national account ; nay, that precisely the same was for- life,—for individual sacrifices of ambition on behalf of a whole inerly true of Parliament itself, and that in that case also the class, for class sacrifices of influence on behalf of a nation. political inference was not the duty of abolishing the House of And is it consistent with aspirations of this kind deliberately Commons, but the duty of popularizing it and infusing into it a to part with the only institution which gives us hope of a true sympathy with the people, What can be done with one religious life more than disunited, sectarian, patchy ? Why, great national institution can be done also with another. the very sects which are calling for disestablishment and dis- Nobody ever thought of disestablishing and disendowing all the endowment are crying for a common system of education, in grammar-schools because they were managed in a close Con- obedience, we believe, chiefly to an impulse from the people ;— tervative spirit. There was a previous question, whether that for thirty years ago the Dissenters threw their whole influence which was monopolized at present by a small coterie or sect into the scale of the extremest voluntaryism as regards education, could not be gained for the people at large. Before hewing no less than as regards worship. Is it not worth while, then, down the Establishment as a tree that oembereth the ground, for those classes whose strong desire for a recognition of their simply because Tory or Conservative traditions have grown common intellectual life and common interests in intellectual freely under the shade, is there no wisdom in asking whether, matters, has produced the almost unanimous concession of a whatever its past may have been, it could not be made a great scheme of national education, to consider whether the same de- /help and boon to the working-classes in the future,—whether sire for unity of national action in relation to higher things may there is no room, in the political ideal of that class for a not go further, and produce in the next generation, if not in great spiritual rock and shelter in the weary land of every-day this, a similar craving for a common spiritual life, and the labour and business,—for an institution which should be a freest exchange of convictions and feelings in spiritual matters ? standing protest against the perpetual encroachment of worldly —and whether, if this should be so, this blind and premature
which he has emphatically said that if it once existed, there would be no manner of danger of its being disestab- lished. " I can conceive the existence of an Established
AT the Conference of the ' Liberation ' Society,—the Society Church which should be a blessing to the community,—a which wants to ' liberate Religion from State patronage Church in which week by week services should be devoted and control,'—Mr. E. L. Stanley—son of the late Lord Stanley not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, of Alderley—advised his brother agitators to be more political but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, and less religious in their policy. The working-classes, he just, and pure living ; a place in which those who are remarked, are really in possession of the constituencies, and a weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moraent's great number of the working-classes care very little for specific rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible religion of any kind. If you want to interest them you must for all, though obtained by so few ; a place in which the man not talk of liberating religion from State patronage and con- of strife and of business should have time to think how small, trol, but of liberating them from the burden of Clerical Con- after all, are the rewards he covets, compared with peace and servatism. " If they wished to enlist the working-man in their charity. Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one present movement, they must infuse into it something a little would seek to disestablish it." This remarkable expression more political and a little less theological than they h ad hitherto of feeling, by one who in all probability hardly accepts -done. The Established Church should be shown to him as a great a single article of the creed of any Christian Church now in organization encamped in every parish, enormously subsidized, existence, and who yet realizes so strongly that the highest working day by day as the handmaid of the political party intellectual interests and the most laborious practical employ- which had kept him down, and then the working-man would ments leave a great vacuum still unfilled in the heart of man, see that it was not an institution for him to uphold." In ought to be a warning even to the most bitter of secularists other words, the title of the Society should be changed, and how they hastily determine to destroy, rather than enlarge instead of indicating by it a religious purpose, it should stand and popularize, so noble a national institution as the Church openly forward as bent on destroying a political enemy. It of England. That those of the working-class who already hold should transform itself from a society for "the liberation of Reli- defined religious convictions may obtain such sympathy gion from State patronage and control " into a society for "the and instruction as they need within the limits of sec- liberation of Politics from Church patronage and con- tarian organizations is, no doubt, true enough. But how trol." The Conference did not, however, enter at all heartily many of those who really feel the need of some supernatural into the advice. The Nonconformist Ministers present, while light upon their lives hold defined religious convictions .complimenting the Hon. E. L. Stanley on his advanced views, at all ? And of those who do not, how few there are who
• deprecated compliance with his advice. They thought that the would not be repelled by the confined intellectual air and campaign could be fought at more advantage as a religious cam- narrow moral limits of sectarian life I The National Church paign than as a political one, that an appeal to the religious may be, in its present condition, little to their liking, but convictions of constituencies against the injury which an Estab- they must at once recognize at least the enormous advan- lishment does to the religion of the community will be at least tage of combining men of almost innumerable varieties of not less successful and more worthy of their highest efforts thought within one and the same organization,—an advantage than an appeal to the political convictions of constituencies which, with anything like a thoroughly popular reform, might against the injury which an Establishment does to the politics be greatly extended. Free and regular interchange of thought career which leaves no room or opportunity for fully realizing the mischiefs of sectarian isolation, and the need of larger comprehension and a more catholic system in religious matters. There, too, there is no dearth of means for objects of any kind, there is no monopoly of land or wealth such as must always hamper an old country, and no danger that if the wealth set apart to the higher spiritual uses be once appropriated to lower objects, it will be difficult beyond measure to lay the basis of a great ideal teaching for the nation again. Europe, and not America, should be our example in a matter of this kind, and there is not a country in Europe in which the greatest of all its political and social difficulties are not due to the religious disintegration of the people, and the uneasy socialistic dreams which fill the vacuum caused by the dissolution of a national faith.
Now, can we doubt for a moment that if ever the people put themselves fairly to demand not a destructive, but a popular constructive Church policy, there would be no kind of difficulty in so reorganizing the Church that it would soon show itself the social ally of the people rather than of the policy of exclusion. What makes the House of Com- mons so reluctant to enter on any scheme of Church reform, is the indifference of the people, and the unfamiliarity of the work. It is impossible for such a Parliament as ours to give a new popular constitution to the Church without a popular demand, and hitherto the people have been utterly indifferent,—not only to the 'Liberation' Society's efforts, but to the reforming policy which is the proper reply to it. Mr. Lyulph Stanley's suggestion that the people must be got at in one way or the other is perfectly true. The Church cannot continue as it is. It must either be strengthened by a real infusion of popular spirit, or it must fall. But as yet there is no sign either that the people sympathize with Mr. Miall, or that they are opposed to him. For our own parts, we believe that the Church is quite as capable of being made part and parcel of the national life as either the Universities or Parliament itself. And assuredly it is far more consonant to the genius of the working-classes that they should try to give a spirit of popular comprehension to the Church, than that they should waste for all time that noble national organization, by a thoughtless act of prodigality com- mitted in the interests of denominational jealousies and a doctrinaire voluntaryism. •
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