LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE RECENT JUDGMENTS AND MR. MAURICE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:] Sirs,—Three of your correspondents, Lord Lyttelton, " A. C.,"' and a " Nonconformist," have spoken of me with great kindness,. and have raised objections to some of my acts or statements. I wish, in expressing my gratitude for their friendly words, which, are as pleasant as they are undeserved, to explain as far as I can. anything which has given them offence.
I can assure Lord Lyttleton that I value his good opinion too much to deprive myself of it 4 by a stroke of my pen.' I am not " A London Incumbent," and, of course, did not call my- self one. I had not spoken recently about " children of wrath," and I had no reason to suppose that any interpretation of that phrase had been adopted from me. But as mine was the only name which occurred in his letter, I did certainly suppose that for " the shifts and subtleties," moral or intellectual, to which he alluded; I was responsible. And it seemed to me cowardly to- let other people have the credit of them when I was aware that I had used the very expressions which the Voysey judgment was. supposed to condemn, and that Mr. Voysey himself had, in his- defence, affirmed statements of mine to be at variance with the- formularies of the Church. I cannot throw the blame upon any one else of saying what I have said again and again, what I say continually,—that all mankind have been redeemed by Christ ; that no man who has been so redeemed can be addressed as a. child of nature or a child of wrath, however evil his nature may be, whatever wrath it may suffer or deserve ; that the sin- of Adam is not the ground of our theology ; that Christ is the- head of every man ; that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all, be made alive. If these are shifts and subtleties, intellectual or- moral, I ought to be condemned for them, since they touch not. the accidents, but the essence of my teaching. That was the- only excuse for the egotism of my last letter. Broad Churchmen. (as such) are not committed to any of the opinions which I have expressed. Their warfare is of a different kind from mine. They have a great dread of obsolete school dogmas. Without being: indifferent to that danger, I have always feared far more the cur- rent dogmas of the club, the platform, the coterie, the exchange._ These, I think, have defiled our theology and philosophy ; these have- raised a barrier between God and the people ; names, which, like- Mazzini, I would always desire to connect together, though the bond of the union seems to me, as it does not seem to him, One who, having: the nature of God, took the nature of Man, and so entered into sym- pathy with the people of all countries and all ages. Many of what- are called popular opinions should be called commercial opiuions, opinions that have been formed upon a commercial basis, and cir- culate freely and rapidly in a commercial age, among the re- spectable classes. They establish themselves as the dialed of religious society. They link themselves to texts in the Bible and articles in the Creed which had an entirely different origin. By degrees, complex and artificial as they are, they pass for the only simple explanation of these texts and articles. Sensible men shrug their shoulders and smile contemptuously if any other is suggested. The discriminating faculty of a lawyer exercised in its own sphere -would separate the chaff from the wheat ; the learning of an ecclesiastic, if it had free scope, would trace the different elements to their source, and show how they have been combined. When 'lawyers and ecclesiastics meet to decide upon an extreme case, which some representative of prevalent religious opinion has brought before them, they are too likely to endorse that opinion, 'whatever it is, and so give it a temporary stability. But com- -menta opinionum delet dies—dies being God's daylight, not merely a new time effacing the old—even if the commenta should be iden- tified by lawyers and ecclesiastics with Judicia Naturx.
I can assure " A. C." that no " generous " desire to defend -opinions which are not my own led me to apply a different rule to the Parches Judgment from that which I apply to the other. My wish is to enforce rigidly a maxim which St. Paul laid down for the treatment of all cases of this nature, and which cannot be -departed from without danger to the order and existence of the -Church. It is not a maxim of compromise. It does not rest -upon an agreement that A shall give up something to B, on -condition that B shall give up something to A. It rests upon the law of charity, whereof compromise is the Devil's counter- feit. A confesses that he has no right to enforce his own modes and fashions upon B, because there is a Master to whom they must both stand or fall, because it is an evil thing to break up the unity of a Church for the sake of a mode
• or fashion, because those who profess to look above these and to grasp what is substantial are more bound than others to -endure what offends their tastes. I can sympathize with " A. C." in his dislike to certain fashions about the Communion which are prevalent in our day. They torment me as much as they can 'him. But I say to myself, " If I really believe this Communion Ain Christ to be higher than all modes and fashions, ought not I to rise above any that are most disagreeable to me when I receive at? And if certain dogmas are attached to those fashions by the ,persons who practise them, am I, who think the Communion greater than all dogmas, and who on that account protest against the High- • Churchmen's limitations of its meaning, to imitate them by imposing one of my own ? It is a hard rule to practise, I know ; how often 1 break it I know a little. Still I am sure from my very trans- gressions of it that it is a true one. I am sure that if we insist -upon any terms or conditions as necessary to the Sacrament, we -destroy the nature of it, we make of it, what it has been so terri- bly, a symbol of division, not a bond of fellowship.
"A. C." puts a strong case. He supposes himself master of a -school ; his boys are in danger, as well as himself, from the parish minister, who is a Ritualist. I accept the hypothesis ; but regard- ing him in that character, I must credit him with some knowledge -of boy-nature. If he persuades his bishop to drive away his parish minister for Ritualism, does he not know in his heart that half his boys and some of the cleverest will become Ritualists? Is that a snore comfortable thought, because it is highly probable that by the time they come to college, or soon after, they will be tired of Ritualism, and will try infidelity? Might it not have been as well 'to bear with the postures and genuflections which he dislikes, and 'to show his boys how the Communion might meet the practical temptations of their school life, might help them to aim at true boyhood and manhood? Would not that be a better cure for -affectations (if they are only such), than the forcible banish- anent of them from the Church, at the risk of enlisting the -sympathies of boys—to say nothing of girls—in their favour?
I should show most imperfectly the gratification which the 4' Nonconformist's " letter has given me, if I merely thanked thim for what he has said of me personally. It is a -much greater delight to me that he so frankly adopts my -doctrine respecting the essence of the episcopal character, and -appears, if I do not mistake him, to think that in it lies the -correction of that prelatical assumption against which the Cove- nanters in Scotland and the Puritans in England protested. Their protest, in much of which I can heartily sympathize, was ,marred, it has always appeared to me, by the refusal to recognize -any father in God, which accompanied it. The mere teacher or preacher became all in all; the old Christendom title which had kept -alive the belief of an actual Father in heaven and an actual family on earth, in the midst of all Papal tyranny, of all sacerdotal tyranny in particular nations, was obliterated. Henceforth the mere Kirk in Scotland, some particular society of believers in Christ, Presbyterian or Independent in England, was to all intents and purposes, for its members, the Church of the living God, the only one which, except in a sort of 'compliment, they could own. Your 4' Nonconformist," correspondent is, I hope, a little weary of this
contradiction. He is not more content—I do not ask him to be—. with us; but he thinks if there were fathers, if the name was not a fiction, there would be a universality, a geniality in our church life, which Dissenters would at once recognize.
I do hope he will dwell upon that thought, and will let it ripen in his mind. He asks me, if I cherish it, to join in depriving the Bishops of their lordly titles and their revenues. I do not believe that any such change of circumstances would restore the belief in fatherhood, which lies far deeper than any circumstances. If Church and State were separated, according to the scheme of Mr. MiaU and the Liberation Society, I conceive that two consequences would follow, neither of which strikes me as desirable. (1.) The whole of that witness which the Covenanters and the Puritans bore for the sacredness of the State, for its covenant with God, must be formally and directly set aside. The atheism which is, I think, sufficiently diffused among statesmen already would be ratified and established. (2.) The ecclesiastics would be deprived of the salutary reminders which they receive continually from the State that their revenues are not their own ; that their power is not their own; that if they claim a consecration from above for either, this consecration involves the acknowledgment of obligations and duties which are not nominal, which must be performed. The State assuredly can- not teach the Bishops to be fathers, if they are determined to be only prelates. It can show them the need which it has of fathers, the incapacity which it has of supplying them. It can show how certain prelacy is to be cast aside as a curse, if a living fatherhood does not sustain it.
My plebeian associations and habits would lead me to conclude that the fatherly temper is more likely to dwell in men who have won their way to the Bench by their talents, as scholars, as theological experts, as powerful preachers, than in those whose chief claims are those of birth and family. I cannot honestly say that experience bears out this anticipation. The instance to which I referred in my last letter is one among many which interfere with it. The fact must be admitted, whether we can account for it or not, that there is a certain graciousness in some of those whom the " Nonconformist " would rank as mere lords, which gives them an influence over men who are the least swayed by external accidents ; a certain ungraciousness in some, with a very studious, oratorical, and religious reputation, which makes it difficult to consult them as fathers, which makes one fancy, as they seem to fancy, that they were only born to execute decrees. That there is a grace of God from which all human graciousness flows, and which can correct all ungraciousness in noble or peasant, I inwardly believe. To that grace, and not to a dis- solution of the union between Church and State, I look for the triumph of fatherhood over mere prelacy.—I am, Sir, &c.,
F. D. MAURICE.
P.S.—Since this letter was written, an answer to the Memorial respecting the Parches case has been published by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Times. The Primate condemns us, as we must have all expected that he would, for asking him to neglect a decree which has been established by the highest ecclesiastical tribunal in the land. At the same time, he intimates very clearly that he is conscious of a higher obligation than that of enforcing the edicts of any Court,—the obligation of being a Father to his Clergy, and.of doing what in him lies to save the whole Church from a schism. That the Times acknowledges no such obli- gation in him—that it supposes all of us who joined in the memorial to have been actuated by the beggarly motive of averting a sentence from ourselves—ce/a va sans dire. It would. be ridiculous to argue any point with an authority so absolute, to plead for any mitigation of its sentence. The episco- pacy of Printing-House Square, whatever be its claims to Apos- tolical descent, I admit at once is not bound to be a paternal one. It boasts that it represents the laity, and in that character endorses the prosecutions of the Church Association. If the. laity wishes for such prosecutions, if it believes that they are the best means of vindicating the principles of toleration and saving us from ecclesiastical tyranny, it will bow to the primacy of the Times. Possible it may hereafter wish for one which has a little more sympathy with the varieties of human feeling and character, which makes less pretension to infallibility.
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