LEARNED BISHOPS. T HE death of the Bishop of Durham, who
was a great scholar as well as a good man, reminds us that the reasons for reserving two or three of the bishoprics to learned ecclesiastics are too often forgotten, and will, we fear, be forgotten more and more. The whole drift of the time is. against the claim of learning, and especially of the learning in which clerics used to exult, the learning which made Hebrew and Greek familiar languages, and gifted its possessor- with a knowledge of every question that had ever agitated the Christian Churches. As the parish priest of to-day is expected to be enthusiastic in "serving tables," that is, in all associated work tending to make his poorer parishioners more comfortable and respectable, so a Bishop is expected to devote himself to organising, and directing, and answering correspon. dents, who apparently regard him as something between an ecclesiastical stipendiary magistrate and the editor of a religious newspaper. In the public mind that rector is best who is most like the secretary to a branch of the Charity Organisa- tion Society, and that Bishop is best who is most like a kind. of glorified Socialist. The idea that the business of a clergy- man is to maintain and spread belief in a particular religion which he believes to have been revealed, and of a Bishop to see that he does it, is slowly dying away, until there is a doubt whether learning is of any use, and the man who possesses it, especially if it be of the older kind, is regarded often with kindness no doubt, and sometimes with admiration, but usually with a pity from which contempt is not entirely absent. "What could you expect?" said a county town magnate a few years ago, when told that the largest parish was falling into disorder; "why E— [the rector] is a Hebrew scholar." The contempt is natural enough when the govern- ing tone of the day is considered, but, nevertheless, we venture to think that it should be sometimes resisted in the disposal of patronage. It is not well that in a great and ancient Church, still invested with certain exclusive privileges of teaching, the clergy should be less learned than the laity, and should, whenever reference is made to the language of the records which, on the theory of that Church, are inspired, be liable to be overwhelmed. An ignorant clergy • is hardly likely to be a respected clergy, more especially when they are not allowed prerogatives, either by right of birth, as Brahmins are, or from supposed. miraculous powers, as Roman priests are, but have to rely for influence in the main on their own gifts and qualities. Yet if learning is set aside as yielding no claim to high place in that Church, it will soon be pursued only by the very few to whom it is its own exceeding great reward, and will come to be regarded, as it already is in society, as rather a 'disqualification than otherwise. That means loss of influence among the cultivated, who have souls to be saved as well as costermongers, and loss, too, in the. whole Church of a certain sense of certainty in deliverance and exposition, which, we venture to think, is in theological as in political controversy of considerable value. There should be a Bishop, one would think, who could at least understand Dr. Robertson Smith's objections as to the age of a Psalm, and another capable of a weighty opinion as to the authenticity of St. John's Gospel, which, after all, even if the inner meaning of the Revelation is to teach philanthropy, is of - some importance to the Christian faith. There need not be many, perhaps, just now, when the world is seeking other recommendations in Bishops, but still there should be some, and if learning is excluded from the list of claims to prefer- ment there will speedily be none, and the lead in the conflict over the records on which the creed is based will be transferred
to laymen, usually iconoclastic. That may be a good result or a bad one—it is not we who run down the claim of the laity to be an essential part of the Churches—but it surely is not a result which it is the business of the Church to promote even by careless negligence in making the great appoint- ments.
We wonder whether it is necessary nowadays to meet another plea which fifty years ago was one of terrible weight, governed the Nonconformist Churches, and was loudly urged even in the Church of England, the plea, namely, that human learning can be no aid to God, and may even be an impedi- ment to the reception of divine grace. Most of the Churches would repudiate that theory now, asking with John Foster— or was it Rowland Hill P—why, if God had no need of human knowledge, He had need of human ignorance ; but we are not quite sure that the repudiation is sincere. A notion that learning and piety tend to be incompatible lingers, we fancy, still, and still requires to be dispelled. We would ask those who at heart believe that thesis to ask themselves why they think knowledge—and learning, in the sense in which we are using the word, is only a particular form of knowledge—is offensive to the God who has refused us bread unless we know how to grow corn, or what is their explanation of the miracle of the tongues, which they reverently accept. Read that story how you will, and it still must mean that a group of disciples did acquire, with a rapidity which to a man like St. Luke seemed wonderful, the means of spreading their knowledge abroad, that is, in our modern phraseology, did become good linguists. There is no way out of that except denial of the truth of the story, which those with whom we are arguing would regard as almost or wholly blasphemous. Surely, then, as God would not give bad gifts to His selected agents, that amount of human learning must be good, and that unusual knowledge of the languages needful for a diffusion of the Gospel is precisely the learning which a majority of learned ecclesiastics claim. The argument from grace, as independent of learning, or inherently opposed to it, therefore falls through, and ought not to be repeated when an appointment is discussed. It is true that the majority of the Apostles were lowly men originally without cultivation— at least one does not see how Galilean labourers could have acquired any before they met their Master—but then it is also true that the Apostle of the Gentiles, whose teaching made the Christianity which caught the white races, was a rather unusually cultivated person. We see no sense in the argument from the value of ignorance, and prefer even that other one, which we also think false, that the object of Christianity being to make men comfortable, the best philanthropist must also be the best Bishop.
We would also plead, though the plea, we know, is most unpopular, that there is danger of the old learning dying out, and that it is well to retain for it one city of refuge. The value of that learning has no doubt been often exaggerated, but still it has great value, if only because through its aid alone can human thinking remain continuous. It does not, we quite admit, any longer assist men to make money, and as that is the modern object of intelligent effort it runs some risk of being thrust aside and forgotten. The new generation expects very little except from science and commerce, and would *declare with one voice that Adam Smith had done more for true progress than the Psalmists, or Homer, or Thucydides. They may be right, though we do not think so ; but it is a pity to lay aside instruments of such proved efficiency—in at least one direction, culture—and their only defence now is that to one profession, and that the pro- fession which controls education, they still seem valuable. If that profession gives them up they will gently glide out of notice, and it will give them up if high places cease to be accessible by the ladder of learning. It is not a stair- case now, but only a little and difficult ladder ; but we venture to think that its utility is not wholly disproved, and that for a few more days it should not be removed. Certain we are that the Churches, at any rate, will not benefit by a decree that men like Dr. Lightfoot and Dr. Westcott are anachronisms, and that bishoprics should be reserved to men who can answer letters for sixteen hours a day, and make splendid speeches in defence of Dr. Wilber. force's thesis that "it is hard to be a Christian on less than a pound a week."
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