THE CHURCH FOR VAGUE CHRISTIANS. T HE most remarkable of the
moral symptoms of the present day is the great craving for religious sympathy and co- operation amongst those who have hardly any common intellectual convictions on the subject of religion, except the conviction that the foundations are crumbling away under the old Christian Churches, and that it is extremely difficult to find new foundations which are not doomed to crumble away too. The letter and circular contained in the Pall Mall Gazette of Monday evening concerning the Christian Theists who are going to set up their abode for a time in the northern wing of University Hall, Gordon Square, are convincing proofs that at the present time, no less than eighteen or nineteen centuries ago, men are "feeling after God if haply they may find him," and are saying to each other in subdued tones, that in that search they must not expect too much, and at all events must make very large deductions from the faith of those who recognised in Jesus Christ. that " unique revelation " of God whom the modern critics find it needful to disown. The new religious
Society is to be the rallying-point " for all those to whom Christianity, whether by inheritance or process of thought, has become a system of practical conduct, based on faith in God and on the inspiring memory of a great teacher, rather than a system of dogma based on a unique revelation." And after explaining that the intention is to give popular teaching in the Hall on the results of the modern criticism of the Old and New Testaments, as well as to find a common ground for religious action on the misery and irreligion of West-Central London, they go on to say :—
" In conclusion, we appeal for help in carrying out such a scheme to all those who have at heart the adaptation of the faith of the past to the needs of the present,—who desire to live their lives in, the faith and fear of God, and in the memory of His noblest ser- vants on earth,—while holding with a firm conviction that God is manifest, not in miracle or special revelation, but in law and in the ever-widening experience of the conscience ; not in the arbitrary selection of individuals or nations as special channels of grace, but in the free communication of Himself, through the life of reason and the spirit, and under lower or higher forms of faith, to all His creatures. But every religious conviction requires a corresponding form of action, or it is apt to become starved and withered. Men want the help of their fellow-men, they need to feel themselves members one of another, heirs of a common hope and faith. It is in the desire of doing something to meet this need among those especially who are still wandering and drifting, without the direction or help which comes from associated life, that the scheme above described has been suggested."
This appeal is signed by Mr. Stopford Brooke,—is it he, by- the-way, who is to be " the Warden " of the new Society P- Lord Carlisle, Dr. Martineau, Dr. Drummond, Mr. Cope- land Bowie, Mr. F. Nettlefold, Mr. Blake Odgers, Pro-
fessor Estlin Carpenter, Miss Cobbe, the Dowager Lady Russell, and Mrs. Humphry Ward. The very vague state- ment of principles appears to be more negative than positive. There is to be a " firm faith " that God is mani- fest, "not in miracle or special revelation, but in law and the ever-widening experience of the conscience," and " not in the arbitrary selection of individuals or nations as special channels of grace, but in the free communication of Himself, through the life of reason and the spirit, and under lower or higher forms of faith, to all His creatures." It is noticeable that not even the belief in human immortality is included in this profession of faith. Theists who decline to accept Christ's most characteristic teaching will be admissible, we should judge, even amongst "the Council and Residents" of the new Society, so long as they reject miracle and all " special " revela- tion. We should explain that there is apparently to be no
unwillingness to co-operate in practical work even with those who are out of sympathy with these negative views, though so
far as regards "the Warden, Council, and Residents," there is to be required "a general harmony of thought and aim," the limits of which are left quite undefined. We suppose, how- ever, that they do include the negation of belief in miracle and special revelation, on which some stress is laid, and do not include faith in the personal immortality of man, which
is not even glanced at. If we are right in so thinking, it is evident that a Church is being formed on an irreducible mini mum" of spiritual creed, which it may be found very difficult before long to discriminate clearly from the religious faith of the Positivists in the " Human Providence " and the " posthumous immortality " of the soul. The mediaeval question, how many angels could stand on the point of a needle, will become almost practical again in the shape of the question, how many religious men can take their point of practical departure from an almost purely abstract faith in God. We call it an abstract faith in God, because the new Church is apparently warned off the belief that God communicates specially with any one race or any one man. Nothing is to be legitimate that is of the nature of " unique " or " special " revelation. " Law and the ever-widening experience of the conscience " are to be the only authorised fields of revelation. And as, to our minds at least, a law which excludes freedom is as unintelligible as a conscience which excludes " special " and " unique " commands,—commands to this man under given conditions to act in one way, while a different man is commanded under other conditions to act in another way,—we feel sure that " Law and the ever-widening experience of the conscience" will turn out to be an ever-dwindling and exhaling experience of the conscience. If the conscience is not to be allowed to admit that any one race has been chosen by God to be specially trained by him in personal knowledge of his nature and righteousness, and if no special individuals among that race are to be admitted to have been special channels of that know- ledge, then, so far as we can judge, the whole experience of the conscience must be too abstract and generalised to be of any real use to the human race at all. The new Church, by its dread of what is " unique " and " special," will be drawn away from everything that is concrete and fruitful, and will waste away in the rarefied atmosphere of general law and universal order. Surely it is of the very essence of all revelation to be " unique " and " special." We cannot conceive a religious lesson that is otherwise. The conscience of every man is the organ of a unique and special relation between himself and God, a relation which depends on unique and special gifts, unique and special graces, unique and special sins and humiliations. That dread of miracle and love of law which the new Church sets itself to inculcate, is really a disguised form of the dread of individual relations between God and the soul. Dr. Martineau, who is the greatest living authority on the subject of free-will and its relation to the moral law, would, we are sure, bear us out in saying that free- will in the moral world is inconsistent with any really universal order in the sense in which the scientific mind asks us to believe in universal order,—in other words, the universal uniformity of antecedents and consequents. And we have always understood him as teaching that his difficulty in accepting physical miracles is not in the least of an a priori kind, but simply inability to recognise the evidence for miracles as adequate,—a view in which we believe him to be mistaken, —but nevertheless one not in the least excluding special and unique revelations to special and unique races and to special and unique men. In this, indeed, we think that we could find the amplest evidence in Dr. Martineau's writings that he heartily believes ; so that we see with some surprise his signature to this singular assertion that special and unique revelations are to be regarded as untrustworthy. To our mind, a revelation which is not made special to Socrates, or Abraham, or Isaiah, or St. Paul, is not a revelation at all ; to assert the contrary is even less reasonable than to assert that a geometrical proposition which cannot be brought home to the individual intelligence of any individual mind, may nevertheless be a general and universal truth. There is, of course, this difference, however, between the world of the conscience and the world of the mere under- standing, that every man's duty varies with his external con- ditions and gifts, and with that special sense of obligation which in some measure depends on these external conditions and gifts ; while the conditions of geometrical truth are the same for all minds of intelligence clear enough to take them in : so that it is much more absurd to maintain that no revelation made to men by a holy and righteous being can be true unless it affects all men alike, than it is to maintain that no geometrical doctrine can be true which does not affect all intelligences alike. The individual conscience, we supppse, is in very large measure the instrument of God's guidance of the individual life and conduct, and it is as fatal to any true revelation to insist on the exclusion of all individual elements from the conscience, as it would be fatal to the higher art to
insist on the exclusion of all individual elements from the treatment of human countenances or human gestures. The air of generalisation and abstraction in which it seems that the Warden and Council of the new Church intend drawing their breath, will hardly prove of the kind necessary for the support of any true religious life. That faith in a real relation between God and man, which is, however, pledged to be jealous of special relations between God and special races or special men, is a kind of faith doomed to certain atrophy.
And we think we can see the way in which the one germ of reality in the new Church,—we mean its Theism,—is likely to die out. The Council will soon find themselves embarked in discussions as to what Theism should mean. In " Robert Elsmere," the thoroughly religious-minded hero comes, before his death, to agree completely with Herbert Spencer that " personality " and " intelligence " have no real meaning as applied to God. " We no sooner attempt to define what we mean by a Personal God," he says, "than we lose ourselves in labyrinths of language and logic. But why attempt it at all P I like the French saying : Quand on me demande ce que c'est que Dieu, je rignore ; quand on ne me demande pas, je le axis tres bien.' No ; we cannot realise Him in words,—we can only live in Him and die to Him." Those of the Council who happen to agree with that doctrine (and they will hardly be able, we imagine, to get Dr. Martineau to concur with them), will not find it a very effective kind of Theism to preach to the outcasts of West-Central London. The man who knows what he means by God only when he is not asked the question, does not mean very much by God, and would probably work just as well among the poor if he did not mean anything. No doubt kindness and sympathy, whether they proceed from abstract theists or from mere agnostics, will exert a certain healing influence on human misery ; and no doubt purity and righteousness, whether they proceed from abstract theists or from mere agnostics, will exert a certain purifying influence upon impurity and greed. But we should not expect much help from the difference between a Theism which does not venture to impute either personality or intelligence to God, and the barest Agnosticism. The Church of vague Christians will probably be founded on a caput nwrtuum of abstract faith which is not easily distinguishable from Mr. Frederic Harrison's religion of Humanity. With its jealousy of any special relation between God and particular races and individuals, with its neutral attitude towards immortality, and with its probable reluctance to insist on the personality and intelligence of God, it will not find that it can take much hold of those whose life has been desolated by fierce passions, and who are groping after the mighty arm and outstretched hand of a righteous Saviour.
What we have said, however, is not said from any wish to dis- courage those who are convinced that they can do no better than join a Church of vague Christians. After all, the question of creed is, for the present age, a question of degree. And we quite admit, and even contend, that the great value of the Church of the nation is that it is more or less a Church which can satisfy the needs of Christians who do not see their way to any theology so definite as that of the Roman Catholic Church, or that of the Calvinistic Church, or that of the Lutheran Church, and who yet believe that Christ's claim to unity with God was a true claim. We are far from discouraging any attempt to build a breakwater, however feeble, between utter no-religion and the hearts of those who combine positive religious enthusiasms with negative critical judgments ; but we think we can predict that the feeble breakwater will not prove very serviceable, and will not be of very long duration. Let it stand, however, as long as it may, Perhaps it will end in helping a few to discover that their negative criticism is not very trustworthy ; and so long as it protects any soul from utter wreck, it will do good and not harm.
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