MR. GLADSTONE ON " ROBERT ELSMERE."
MR. GLADSTONE, in his profoundly interesting paper on " Robert Elsmere," in the May number of the Nineteenth Century, makes a suggestion that will be looked upon with very different feelings by the idolaters and the depreciatory of the Time-Spirit. He thinks that he sees in the anti-dogmatic tone of the age " an exaggerated and almost ludicrous estimate of the capacity and performances of the present generation as compared with those which have preceded it." " Judges in our own cause," he goes on, " pleaders with nobody to reply, we take ample note of every comparative advantage we possess, but forget to register deteriorating and disqualifying influences." And Mr. Gladstone in an earlier page had already noted some of these deteriorating and dis- qualifying influences,—namely, that " the rapidity of the movement of the time predisposes to novelty," i.e., of course, to novelty for the sake of novelty where the claims of the old are otherwise greater than the claims of the new; and next, that " the multiplication of enjoyments, though the progress of commerce and invention enhances the materialism of life, strengthens by the forces of habit the hold of the seen world upon us, and leaves less both of brain-power and of heart-power available for the unseen." And assuredly it seems to us that this age is about as well fitted for judging of the worth and value of Christian theology from its own special point of view, as the ninth or tenth century was for judging of the worth and value of physical science, then in its infancy, from its own point of view,—perhaps even less so, for, as Mr. Gladstone justly hints, ours being an age which has really done very great things indeed in the material order, has been thrown off its balance by these achievements, and tempted by the pride it takes in them to undervalue as much the spiritual achievements of earlier ages, as the Roman Empire was tempted by its wonderful achievements in war and jurisprudence to undervalue the spiritual teaching which came from the East. Rome measured Christian teaching by the standard of her physical power, and mis- judged it, despising the enemy which ultimately overthrew her. Many of us measure Christianity by the standard of our scientific power, and equally misjudge it, thinking lightly of the power which cannot, indeed, overthrow science,—for true knowledge is true knowledge for all time,—but which can show that it has greater significance and a deeper foundation in human nature than any amount of scientific knowledge, however massive. Probably. indeed, the reason why Christian theology has made so unsatisfactory a fight against the modern world, is that it has not pressed home the true Christian teaching of detachment from the things of the world,—the teaching that " life is a discipline everywhere and in all its parts," as Mr. Gladstone puts it, with anything like the ardour with which Christianity in its greater days has always pressed home that teaching. The truth is, that modern civilisation has obtained an even more imperious hold over the human imagina- tion than the ancient civilisation of Rome and Greece had obtained at the time of the first appearance of our religion, and that, fortified as it is by the much more formidable array of the new sciences and arts, it has a much more substantial position as a rival to the teaching of purely spiritual truths, than the polished and beautiful but somewhat thin and less elaborate art of the classical civilisations could claim. Yet it is certain that the Greek intellect, with all its subtlety, delicacy, and simplicity of vision, had nothing substantial in it that could compare with the spiritual teaching of Christianity as the ultimate stay and stronghold of human reason, and that the highly organised Roman valour and justice gave no steady support to the minds of thinking beings when they examined themselves and looked at the world in which they found themselves, and asked for what purpose they were there and what they ought to make of the singular power conferred upon them. The great poet whom we have just lost has told us truthfully enough how in that great day the East secured her spiritual triumph over the embattled and victorious West :— " So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey ; A conquering new-born joy awoke, And filled her life with day.
`Poor World,' she cried, so deep accurst, That runn'st from pole to pole To seek a draught to slake thy thirst, Go, seek it in thy soul !'
She heard it, the victorious West, In crown and sword arrayed ; She felt the void which mined her breast : She shivered, and obeyed.
She veiled her eagles, snapped her sword, And laid her sceptre down ; Her stately purple she abhorred, And her imperial crown.
She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports, Her artists could not please ; She tore her books, she shut her courts, She fled her palaces.
Lust of the eye and pride of life, She left it all behind, And hurried, torn with inward strife, The wilderness to find.
Tears washed the trouble from her face, She changed into a child !
'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,—a place Of ruin,—but she smiled !"
And so it will be again with this richer and fuller, and, intel- lectually at least, much more boastful civilisation. There is nothing in science and the arts to slake the thirst of men for eternal life. They are useful just as the humbler science and the purer arts of the early world were useful, as instruments of a higher spirit and tools of a diviner purpose. Apparently, modern thinkers,—such thinkers as the author of " Robert Elsmere,"—imagine that this higher spirit and this diviner purpose can be severed from the whole body of inspired teaching with which it is connected, and turned loose into the world as a new religion. But in the very attempt to effect this purpose, the new religion begins to dry up at its source. The whole teaching of " Robert Elsnaere " depends on faith, on a living faith in God; but having cut itself loose from revealed truth, this is what the faith in a living God dwindles to, and that even in the very book which is to expound its depth and beauty to the world :— " I often lie here, wondering at the way in which men become the slaves of some metaphysical word,--personality, or intelligence, or what not ? What meaning can they have as applied to God ? Herbert Spencer is quite right. We no sooner attempt to define what we mean by a Personal God than we lose ourselves in laby- rinths of language and logic. But why attempt it at all ? I like that French saying,—` Quand on me demands ce que c'est que Dieu, je l'ignore; quand on ne me demande pas, je le sais tree- bien.' No, we camnot realise Him in words,—we can only live in Him and die to Him."
As if one could in any true sense live and die to any Being of whom it is as true to say that he is unintelligent as that he is intelligent, or that no personal character can be properly attributed to him at all, as that he ie righteousness and love in one. The moment religion professes to set up on its own account, and to deny the divine Revealer to whom alone a true religion can be traced, it vanishes in a mist of this kind which sets the soul free from the grasp of obligation, and leaves the mind without even the sense of awe, for true awe cannot be felt except to what is higher and purer than oneself.
Christianity, whenever it has been a great power in the world, has claimed to treat everything,—even the most splendid array of intellectual and physical apparatus which ever ministered to the mind and body of man,—as utterly secondary and inferior to the spirit of life which Jesus Christ explicitly revealed. Christianity detaches the mind from the pride not merely in great possessions, but in great ideas, not merely in great ideas, not merely in great imaginations, but in great affections, and declares that all these things are nothing worth compared with the life in God to which they should minister ; and that if they are not subordinated to that spiritual life, if they steal away the soul from that spiritual life, they are mischievous and not desirable. All true interpreta- tions of Christianity have preached this, from whatever school, whether Roman Catholic, or Anglican, or Evangelical, they have come. But modern Christianity too often preaches it with a hesitating and dubious assent. It does not mean what it says. It does not enforce as Thomas h Kempis, or John Bunyan, or Cardinal Newman does, the real significance of what it says. It is a Christianity for days of misery and sick- ness, not a Christianity which in days of happiness and health warns us that we are not to merge ourselves in the beautiful, or stately, or dear details of our daily life. As Newman said in that wonderful sermon on " The Apostolical Christian" which marked the highest point of his Oxford career :—" Bear to look at the Christianity of the Bible ; bear to contemplate the idea of a Christian traced by inspiration, without gloss, or comment, or tradition of man. Bear to hear read to you a number of texts ; texts which might be multiplied sevenfold ; texts which can be confronted by no others ; which are no partial selection, but a specimen of the whole of the New Testament." And yet all these texts proved that the Apos- tolical Christian who was moulded by Christ was one whose life was detached from the glory of earthly civilisation, and who used that glory only for the purpose of magnifying what was greater than anything which the sciences, or the arts, or the literatures, or the political fabrics, or even the domestic affections of the world could of themselves produce. Surely it is evident that any religion which makes such a claim as this must have its sources deep in the express com- mands of the infinite Being who reveals it, and cannot be cut loose from that source without losing all its confidence, all its authority, all its sureness of communication with the unseen world. Mr. Gladstone is quite right. Those new and earnest evangelists who desire to consecrate the Christian morality while dropping the Christian dogma, will not long retain either the one or the other. They cannot retain the ascetic side even of the Christian morality, for- that is not to be defended by the light of Nature alone, or by anything short of inspired wisdom. But the ascetic side of the Christian morality once dropped, the whole fabric will soon collapse, for it is not Christian morality that can be built up out of the niceties of utilitarian sentiment. Sever it from that deep sense of discipline which prepares the soul for the unseen world, and you must drop, here, an absolute negative, there an imperious affirmative, here a law of marriage, there a law of charity, till at last you fall away into poor Benthamite sanctions and the rose-water of nineteenth-century sentiment
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