FREE CHRISTIAN UNION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Your correspondent "H. F." charges the promoters of the Free Christian Union with a misapprehension of religious dogma, and even religion itself.
I am not sure if I fully understand him, but he appears to me to put this dilemma. Either this proposal is addressed to those outside all Churches,—a construction which it will not bear, —or it is addressed to those who hold orthodox dogmas ; in which case it is utterly futile and inadequate, as it offers to substitute for a vital and complex growth of living and edifying belief, a sterile blank page inscribed with the mere words "God and man."
If this were so, it is plain that such an invitation would be indeed nugatory. It would be a call from the garden into the desert.
But is not your correspondent strangely mistaking the real aim of this movement? Is not his classification of beliefs singularly deficient ? Surely, besides those who are "without all Churches" and those who "hold orthodox dogma," there is a large third class, daily increasing in numbers, influence, and importance. These are the men who do outwardly belong to these Churches, who would perhaps hesitate to openly disavow any of the leading orthodox dogmas, and that more from a modest uncertainty than from any fear of condemnation, and yet who are very far from being satisfied with their position. They are many of them men of culture and intelligence, men imbued with the spirit of science, a spirit of conscientious search and unquenched doubt and slow conviction,--men conversant with all that discussion and patient study has done within the last twenty years to alter the very basis of religions controversy. To them the dogmas, which they still are loth to abandon altogether, can no longer supply any spiritual sustenance. The doubt as to miracles, the doubt of Christ's Divinity, the doubt of the Resurrection, the doubt of the Inspiration (in any really weighty sense) of the Scriptures ; all these doubts have spread wide and deep into the minds of thousands of earnest and noble-minded men, to whom a religion founded on the Creeds is no longer possible. And yet a religion of some sort is necessary to them ; and so they cannot quite break with their Church. To pray, to repent (in the true Christian sense) of sin, to live a true, deep religious life, a life of the soul with God; to war for ever with evil, to strive for ever after Christ's uuattainable ideal with never flagging, passion- ate aspiration,—all this they have in common with the orthodox sons of the Church in which they have been born, and for this they will not leave it. In essentials, they say, they are at one with all the truly religious, whatever dogmas they may hold ; to join another sect would only be to change one unsatisfactory creed for another, and incur, besides, the just stigma attaching to a half-hearted convert ; while, to take a stand "outside all Churches," is to forego one-half of the real meaning of religion. It is to such as these, I take it, that the Free Christian Union is offered ; and such as these can surely ill afford to reject it in any summary or ungracious manner. And it is not a new sect that they are asked to form ; in no sense are they aggressive, competitive, or even protestant. These men are placed constautly, as sceptics in the midst of unhesitating believers, in a position of unsought but inevitable antagonism. They are always contending with superstition. They arc always destroying. They are always, if I may so phrase it, in the Opposition. It is a situation which cannot fail to have a saddening if not a demoralizing effect ; as they themselves feel deeply and often bitterly. They want no new sect, no new dogmas, no new church. But they do de- sperately want the contagion of radical sympathy, and that apt and adequate encouragement which the enthusiasm of other souls similarly placed can alone give.
The Free Christian Union deserves all the deepest respect and consideration, for I believe it is an attempt to supply this need.— I am, Sir, &c., A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
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