RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT.
MITE Rev. Harry Jones, Rector of St. George's-in-the-East, must be a chip of the very soundest wood in the block from which the English Establishment was cut. His manifesto against the Mission of this week displays all the best characteristics of the English Church, and not unnaturally its extreme limitations also. Good-sense, manly sobriety, directness of manner, a steady, hearty dislike of anything strained or affected or effeminate or hysterical in religious feeling, a profound belief that religion is a matter of principle and will, not of exalted emotions, a whole- some dread of the artificial confidences which are born of religious excitement, and a preference for the policy of straightforward disap- probation as compared with anything like concession to the views or purposes of those who got up this London are the main features of the explanation which be gives of his reasons for not permitting any special services during the week in St. George's- in-the-East. He disapproves of all spasms of religious excitement; he specially disapproves of all appeals for private confessions of spiritual condition,—to whatever party in the Church those con- fessions and requests for advice may be made,—and on the whole, nothing shall make him budge from his ordinary weekly routine. "It may be asked," he says sturdily, " If you do not feel justified in joining in the Mission as thus understood, why do you not have some milder services during the "mission week," and so avoid the appearance of standing out ? ' My reply is, I do stand out.' Such services in any case would be a mere apology. They would be worse. They would be rightly, counted as a lame subjection to religious pressure. They would be construed as an attempt to satisfy those who advocate the ' Mission ' in its intensity, and at the same time to escapes from the charge of encouraging sensation- alism. They would open me justly to the sentence, 'He does not like it, but he dare not say so.' And I should like to know what blessing I could expect upon services thus grudgingly or timidly held." We should reply, Certainly none ; but where is the necessity, except in that strong English dislike to anything which might be misconstrued into submission to dictation, for any grudgingne.ss or timidity in the matter, for any want of daring in saying openly that you disapprove of what is being done in other places, while you do not disapprove but cordially approve of what you are doing yourself ?' It is curious how soon Mc. Jones's reasons for not doing what he thinks right, while others are doing what be thinks wrong, gradually pass over into reasons for not doing what may be "construed," i.e., misconstrued into attempts to satisfy both those who approve of the sensa- tionalism and those who detest it. No doubt Mr. Jones, in his horror of any appearance of trimming, concedes, without reason, as we hold, that any middle course might be rightly construed into such appearance. But that surely is a weak distrust of himself. If he seriously thinks,—as he appears to do,—that special attempts may rightly be made at given times to penetrate the hard, worldly, indifferent, self- interested, pleasure-loving view of life, which makes light of sin and throws doubts upon conscience, why should he be so afraid of being 'construed' into submitting to religious pressure, when he is perfectly at liberty in every attempt he makes to guard his people especially against the false view that religious excitement, not followed by higher habits of life, is any good at all, and even, — if this be his own opinion,— against the view that religious excitement is anything but a danger and a delusion, tending to false tastes and artificial practices, and unnerving the character instead of strengthening it. That is not ow view, as we shall presently explain. We believe that though religious excitement is absolutely useless for its own sake, and positively mischievous when it is relied on as an habitual stimulant of daily life, it may be perfectly natural and inevitable at certain Crises of almost every one's life, and may be turned to good use in the hands of wise men. But whether this is so or not, it seems clear to us that the Rev. Harry Jones thinks a great deal too much of how his motives may be construed,' and a good deal too little of 'le best thing to be done, whether his motives are rightly construed Jr not. He has a very wholesome hatred of the sensationalism of re- vivals. He dreads, very wisely, the practice of encouraging religious confidences, and believes the introduction of anything like habitual confession into the English Church a grave mischief. And think- ing thus,---as we conceive very justly,—he can't endure the notion of being supposed to yield to religious pressure, and therefore objects to do anything even in his own way, and under the most explicit protests against what he deems mischievous, to achieve the end which he himself admits that he has in common with the people who set on foot this movement. We do not call that wise courage, but excessive English individualism and insularity of view. Nor can we hold with some of our contemporaries who have heartily praised Mr. Jones, that all movements which are likely to result in a certain amount of religious excitement, are there- by self-condemned. We believe that the original Wesleyan move- ment, for instance, was on the whole one of the noblest and best in the last century. We believe that almost all men who are worth anything do pass through some period in which, in one form or another, the sense of the wretched lowness of their own aims, the blending of what is thoroughly evil with all their motives and purposes, the horror of sin, and the desire for God, makes new men of them, and we hardly see how such a period can come and go without at least something of what it is just now the fashion to brand as enervating religious excitement. Sobriety, inward and outward, is an excellent ideal of human conduct. But there is such a thing as the vanity of sobriety, and we know writers who seem to us guilty of it. It is the merest vanity of sobriety, to our minds, to regard character as independent of some of its own most important elements,—to look at convic- tions as if they were always the natural growth of individual thought and tendencies, and not in a great degree of moral opportunity and external influence,—to treat principles as if they were the in- evitable fruit of the stock from which they spring, and not rather the fruit of the graft of external influence on that stock, and of the free choice made amongst a variety of offered alternatives. It seems to us the very vanity of sobriety to say, for instance, as has been said very lately :—" To try to alter a religion worthy of the name is to try to alter a man's character; and it is about as reasonable to try to put him through Medea's cauldron. Wisdom in regard to religion, as in regard to so many other things, appears to us to consist in taking men as you find them and doing as well as you can, on the basis that what they are, that they will remain. To try to alter them fundamentally is like trying to make a crooked stick straight. You take a deal of trouble, and after all do more harm than good." We are not sure, from the context, whether this is meant to apply not only to altering "a religion worthy of the name," but also to altering a no-religion or an irreligion worthy of the name ; but as it seems to assume that character pursues its own line of develop- ment independently of all efforts to change it, we imagine it does.
Now we hold, on the contrary, that the true doctrine of the use and abuse of religious excitement was long ago laid down by Dr. Newman in those noble Oxford sermons in which a nature of the severest reticence gave sparing and restrained, but for that -very reason the more powerful, expression to some of the deepest of spiritual feelings and convictions. Dr. Newman's doctrine, when he was yet a Protestant, used at all events to be, perhaps still is, that religious emotions are generally very useful if repressed as mere feelings but promptly acted upon, very dangerous if indulged as feelings, and valued for their own sakes. In his fine verses in the "Lyra Apostolica " he says,—
n Prune thou thy words the thoughts control That o'er thee swell and throng; They will condense within thy soul, And change to purpose strong.
But he who lets his feelings run In soft, luxurious flow, Shrinks when hard service must be done, And faints at every woe.
Faith's meanest deed more favour boars Where hearts and wills are weighed, Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, Which bloom their hour and fade."
The use, as Dr. Newman taught more than once, in the strong feelings natural to the period when men first feel the intimate mingling of evil in their motives and the keen desire for a life in
God, is to bear them over the first difficult transition to a higher type of life. The, intensity of the feeling not only will pass away, but must pass away, and ought to pass away, for it is not the feeling itself which is good, but only the higher level of action to which, under certain conditions, it may help us. But the change is very difficult without some initial impulse to start us, some new motive power just to help us out of the old track into the new, and this is the sole use of such moments of deep emotion. Calmness and steadfastness and rational and sober fixity of purpose
are the right and best characteristics of the inner life ; passionate feeling, if coveted for its own sake, is utterly misleading and de- praving; but as a high-tide wave, it may be of the greatest value if it is used just to take us over the bar which separates the lotver from the higher level of spiritual conduct. "Nor be surprised," he said, "though you obey them" [the excited impulses of the first moments of religious feeling], "that they die away ; they have done their office, and if they die, it is but as blossom changes into the fruit, which is far better. They must die. Perhaps you will have
to labour in darkness afterwards Still be quite sure that resolute, consistent obedience, though unattended with high transport and warm emotions, is far more acceptable to Him than all those passionate longings to live in His sight, which look more like religion to the uninstructed. At the very best, these latter are but the graceful beginnings of obedience, graceful and becom- ing in children, but in grown spiritual men indecorous as the sports of boyhood would seem in advanced years." That seems to us good sound teaching, avoiding at once that affectation of masculine sobriety which regards man as completely independent of spiritual emotion,—for at certain moral crises of men's life very few men, if any, are thus independent,—and also that enervating delight in it which makes excitement the test of true religion. No doubt the latter delusion often leads men, as Dr. Newman says, "to follow strange teachers in order that they may dream on in this their artificial devotion, and may avoid that conviction which is likely sooner or later to burst upon them, that emotion and passion are in our power, indeed, to repress, but not to excite ; that there is a limit to the tumults and swellings of the heart, foster them as we will; and when that time comes, the poor misused soul is left exhausted and resourceless." But because the abuse is bad, it does not follow that there is no use for these feelings. And it is almost inevitable that if pleasure-loving, low-aiming, worldly men ever "come to themselves," at all, they usually come to them- selves with a start, a surprise, and an emotion, the proper use of which is to help them to make a great change in the whole direction of their thoughts and aims. We do not see why, because foolish and sensational devotees are doing much mischief with a good intention, Mr. Harry Jones could not have made his own wiser and more temperate effort to bring about this change in his own way. It is quite certain, as he himself admits, that there are plenty of men and women in St. George's-in-the-East, as in all other parishes in London, whose lives need a great change, and not only need it, but are susceptible, under the right influence, of receiving it. If sin be a reality, and God be a reality, that is a change which it must always be right to try to effect by every wise and healthy means, and if the Christian faith be, in any view of it, true, as it is, the set- ting forth of that view must be of the greatest possible moment for the effecting of the change. Why Mr. Harry Jones should be so afraid of seeming to submit to pressure, as to refuse all common action with men who seek the same end as he by foolish means, we are at a loss to say. But it appears to us exceedingly charac- teristic of the somewhat limited and insular character of the English Establishment,—healthy as its general tone undoubtedly is,—that it should be so.
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