EPISCOPAL OPTIMISM.
11HE feature in the present Church Congress which im- presses us, more especially in the proceedings of the first day, is a certain change of tone, the development of a spirit which we must term, for want of a better word, Optimism. Time was when the leaders of any gathering of the kind in- variably bewailed themselves and the world, talked of the decadence of society, described the spread of immorality, spoke with bitter force of growing infidelity, deplored the general indifference or practical secularism of mankind, and anticipated still greater evils, to be met only by still greater self-sacrifice and exertion. That, indeed, was their first reason for summon- ing religious men to battle, lest, for a time at all events, Evil should conquer Good. "The world sinks deeper into sin. Rescue it !" That was the general drift of exhortation in all such assemblies, just as the immense spread of some particular evil is always the ground-note of the oratory at a philan-
thropic or charitable meeting. The Archbishop would lament the spread and increasing coldness of the Deistic heresy ; the Bishop would speak mournfully of some heresiarch who had assailed Inspiration ; the Dean would be sharp upon the prevailing ignorance of true doctrine ; and the simple clergyman would lament the extension of vice or its provocatives. This time there is a change. In all the first speeches, especially those of the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Durham, there is, we are glad to see, a distinct recog- nition that the heresy to be fought with in our time is, in one shape or another, the denial of the supernatural; but there is also an impression, tinging every sentence with a faint but perceptible colour, that this heresy is a passing phenomenon, sure to vanish, and one of which it is unworthy to be afraid. Dr. Lightfoot points to the fact—quite true, and very curious— that astronomy was dreaded by the Catholic divines as the most heretical of sciences, and is now decidedly the one most allied with theology, and says we may take encouragement from that. He thinks geology is changing sides in the same way ; and expects that "biology," in which he specially includes all theories of evolution, will by-and-by range itself also on the side of the Empernatural,—religion, and even the organised Church, surviving all these alarms, and the passing phases of thought they generate. Dr. Thomson, who took Secularism for his subject, was even more hopeful. He quite admitted the spread of Secularism, "Atheistic, Republican, Malthusian Secularism "—he might have omitted "Republican," which has nothing to do with the matter, religion being at least as safe with a Garfield as with any king—but thought it would prove a very temporary phenomenon. Man, he said, never accepts Hedonism or Epicureanism for any long time. The re- ligious emotion is instinctive, and cannot be suppressed, any more than, whether under the theory of Deity or the theory of cause and effect, it can be entirely aimless. If evolution is true, belief in the supernatural is part of the self-developed mental armour of mankind. Is the Secularist prepared to remake human nature so that it shall "be free of the recurrent fits of that need of religion which has certainly characterised all the past." There is nothing to be alarmed at, for religion will survive.
We are not sure that we quite like this tone. We do not object to it as unusual, for we desire, above all things, that Bishops and all clerical leaders shall say what they have to say out, and shall not confine themselves to what the decorous expect ; and it is quite possible that the Clerical world is frightened too much, and thereby losing energy. The Bishops must know the tone around them, and may very well perceive that what the Church needs just now is encouragement, a promise from her leaders of ultimate victory. That Truth must always prevail, besides being true, is often in its place a valuable argument, but still we are not quite contented. Is the Episcopal optimism well-founded ? That it will be found true at the long-last, as the Germans say, is our conviction as profoundly as it is theirs, for neither science, the modern source of scepticism, nor human impatience of suffer- ing, the ultimate root of secularism, can alter or affect an ulti- mate truth ; but organised Churches must think of nearer futures, and consider such trifling periods of time as centuries, and within time—as statesmen calculate time,—both scepticism and secularism may become very serious phenomena. Science
will not kill Religion, but it may very profoundly modify not only its outward form and organisation, but for a time part of its very essence. Astronomy and geology have very profoundly altered even the Church's conception of the origin and destiny of Man—a conception very important to any creed—and biology may do more than that. We should say that if science became diffused so far that all men, even the reli- gious, believed the unbroken continuity of effect and cause to be proved, proved like the multiplication-table, the effect of that conviction on the Church would be tremendous. It would not destroy faith in God, but it certainly would destroy faith in present Christian teaching as to the methods of His action-- The belief in prayer, for example, would cease, as Sir Henry Thompson says it has ceased in him, or would be so profoundly modified by the ascription to prayer of subjective efficacy only, that prayer-,would, for its present purpose, be disused. And we - see no good ground for the Bishop of Durham's certainty that such a change could not occur and endure for ages. If it lasts through one good man's lifetime, as undoubtedly happens- witness Littre's case, detailed in our own columns—why should it not last through many men's lifetimes ? While if it can seize on a whole society, as we take to be the case at this moment with the cultivated men of Paris and Berlin, why should it not seize on the whole of a society, with all its consequences The death of belief in the direct government of God would be a very great event, even if it lasted only one generation, and did not affect the belief either in His existence or His ultimate sovereignty. There would be a chasm between the thoughts of the fathers of that generation and those of the sons of that genera- tion, even if both were believers, and only the intermediate per- sons deniers, which would be nearly immeasurable. All France believed in some fashion up to 1790, say. All France believed in some fashion in 1815. But all keen observers perceive that the effect of the twenty-five years during which belief was in abeyance, or under paralysis, and could not either talk or act, was tremendous,—so great, that it is hardly possible for a race in which the mental chasm or mind-slip has not occurred to understand popular French views on religion. They are the views of men whose fathers either disbelieved or had forgotten the whole matter. We do not think that such a mind-slip is probable in England, where the people are not much moved to action by speculative doubt ; but it might happen in certain fields of thought. Indeed, we are not quite certain whether it is not happening, and whether Dr. Lightfoot would not be startled if he inquired into the extent of the change which has passed over multitudes as to the kind of utility found in prayer, a change due mainly to certain scientific aphorisms. We know that a few years since, when an article on prayer in this journal brought us reams of letters, we were utterly amazed at the extent to which a new view—as we think, a wrong view, as Dr. Lightfoot would certainly think, a heretical view—had seized on religions men.
Again, as to Secularism, is Dr. Thomson's argument irre- fragable ? He says the belief in the supernatural is universal and of all ages, and therefore there will always be "fits of the need of religion." That may be true, but is no answer to the agnostic secularist, who replies that worlds may or must exist beyond our universe, but as we can never know them, the devo- tion of life to inquiry about them is imbecility ; or, to the scoffing secularist, who says such fits must 'be prevented ; or to the ordinary English secularist, who says that belief in the supernatural is a form of the quality of fear, is as universal as fear, or selfishness, or greed, and is neither more inextinguishable nor more to be respected. Is the Archbishop sure that those arguments can never take a hold of a whole people, or a great body of people, for a longtime? We confess we are not. We doubt greatly, as regards the special and most important article of belief, which the Archbishop so rightly puts in the forefront, the belief in a future state, if the Jews up to the Captivity believed it—though their great minds did— or if a majority of them believe it now. Average Jews always seem to us Deistic Secularists. Whole masses of men in Germany and Southern Europe disbelieve it utterly, and the Arch- bishop's own doubt as to the outcome of Buddhist belief is put away much too summarily. The Buddhist creed contains a future life, it is true, though souls lose their identity, and are thrown into spiritual hotchpot—a horrid idea, which is making way in England—and the intelligent look for absorption into the universal and reigning Spirit, but the body of the people neither believe in a future life nor care about it. They look for
annihilation. The Chinese Buddhists are as true Secularists as Asiatics, with their perception that the blind forces of Nature are too strong for them, and their consequent fear of the un- known, can ever become. We could conceive of the Secularist theory, with its promise of earthly happiness, and its apparent ' common-sense," and its alliance with utilitarian morality, taking a strong hold for several generations of the English masses, just as strong a hold as the doctrine of Maya did of Hindoos, and exercising the most profound effect. A tenth of our people, at least, are Secularists now, only they do not know it, and would repudiate the designation. If, in a town like Northampton, the Secularists have a majority, why not in many Northamptons, or why cannot the son of a Secularist be a Secularist too ? The Archbishop may be right—is right, as to ultimate truths—but for Bishops, as for statesmen, "short views" are very useful; and taking a short view, we cannot think quite so cheerily about Secularism,—even in the good form in which the Rev. Harry Jones, the Vicar of St. George's- in-the-East, tells the Congress he meets it—as the Archbishop does. No negative creed has had more success on the Conti- nent, and no one is more likely to take hold of English people. They have not, fortunately, the hunger for physical ease which marks some classes in the capitals of the Continent, and which made the Berlin lecturer deny the possibility of God, because in twenty years He had never helped her children to bread, but left it to her to provide ; but they have little readiness in be- lieving ideas, and immense power of concentrating themselves on the work in hand, and may carry that inclination too far. We doubt if it is safe to wait "till this phase passes," and though the Archbishop did not mean to inculcate that lesson— indeed expressly repudiated it—a good many of his audience will draw that pleasing conclusion. The swell of a torrent into a mighty rush of water is, of all occurrences, the most -transitory ; but the calm looker-on, being mortal, may be .drowned in its rush.
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