LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE EDUCATION CONTROVERSY AND THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT.
[TO TUB EDIrOR Or TUB " SPBOTATOR."
SIE,-If there were many of our Anglican clergy of the same spirit as your correspondent the Rev. F. D. Cremer (Spectator, June 2nd), we might rest assured that the children of England would be brought up in a Christian atmosphere. We may or may not approve his procedure; his temper towards Noncon- formists is beyond praise, for it is the mind of Christ. In religion, as in everything else, it is a terrible truth that " where there is a will there is a way." I say " terrible," for in our Church we hear a loud shouting that there is no way of
union with the Nonconformists.
It is surely time that we who lay such emphasis on the corporate side of religion should apply to it the known facts of corporate psychology. These facts are the conditions of the life to which God has called us ; and if He has shown us natural things and we believe not, have we any claim to be shown the heavenly way ? How has every real social and religious reform been accomplished ? Not by any one perceiving beforehand how it could be done, but by what we call the genius of the corporate mind. In the deter- mination to do, and in the doing, the wisdom came. We who do not believe in individualism, do we doubt that the promise of wisdom which our Lord gave for the corporate mind was for an obedient Communion only ? Do any of us think that God will thrust instruction on a disobedient body ? We who believe that Christ is the Word of God in a larger and more profound sense than are the moral precepts that Christ could put into human words, are we in danger of forgetting that He distinctly taught that obedience to His precepts, individual and corporate, lies at the beginning of all spiritual insight ? We are plainly told that we must love our fellow-Christians; our neighbours, and our enemies. NonConformists certainly' come under one or other of these heads ; and it is few of our Anglican clergy who love them
or are teaching their flocks to love them. "If any man will do his will, he shall know." If any Anglican will actually and really love his brother, the Nonconformist, he will surely soon know how to unite with him in the eternal things of the heart. When this love is exercised by a number sufficient to make it a corporate love, we have every reason to believe that we shall understand corporate union. The effort has not been made.
We have lately been told in the House of Commons by a champion of our Church that while "the morality of the Sermon on the Mount would be accepted by almost every one," it was " grotesque to say" that it was "fundamental Christianity"; such teaching was "worthless from the point of view of Christianity." We agree that the precepts of Jesus only mark out the path to the truth He came to impart, but, at the same time, they mark out the only path to that truth, and it is certain that as a Church we have not accepted it. We all acknowledge, even the most ardent Churchman amongst us, that our Church has come far short of a single-eyed effort to obey the precepts of Jesus in love to Nonconformists.. In the past, when in power, she was tyrannous and, what was worse, snobbish ; she has never been meek under persecution ; she has cherished anger, and has hit back whenever she was able. Yet, slowly as grind the mills of God, we all know that there is for any corporate institution no choice between obedience to His will and destruction. If we do not bring forth the fruit of obedience, God is able of these stones to raise up a Church which shall inherit the promises.
The path of love for the Churchman in this case is not plain. When we hesitate to start under the shadow of dark clouds that bar our vision of the end, our difficulty is real. The ablest theorists do not help us. Our sin as Christians lies in our con- viction that what is, reasonably speaking, impossible to man is also impossible to God. Yet, as we have just seen, we all know that the deepest problems of life must be worked out in action,— not only individual but corporate action. Philosophy or theology is but a reasonable account " after the event." The greatest contributions to the working principles of the race before they justified themselves were only stumbling-blocks to the theologians and foolishness to the philosophers. Such was monogamy when all the world practised polygamy ; such was the education of the serf ; such was the freedom of the slave ; such, above all, was trust in the Cross. And to-day, when we cannot see how agreement between the Anglican and Free Churches can be brought about, our sin does not lie in our blindness, but in our determination to say we see and to walk by sight. We clamour about our rights and our wrongs, and cry that it is impossible to treat those who threaten our liberties with heartfelt affection. In so saying we become infidels. We are practically denying the divinity of our Lord,—i.e., His right to the obedience of faith, and His wisdom to see the results of that obedience. If his divinity does not mean this to us, it means nothing ; and it is surely better to deny His authority openly than to do it with the kiss of Christian pro- fession.
On Whit-Sunday we prayed for peace and fellowship. Out of what condition does that prayer arise in our Church? We have two common types among our clergy, although, thank God, there are very many who do not belong to either. The men of the first have arrived at their cordial dislike of all Nonconformists by the honest inheritance of class prejudice. They are more polite to Nonconformists than was Yfelston, of whom Miss Bronte wrote, but their feeling remains much the same. They would rather their daughters married men of bad characters than Noncon- formists; they bring up their children to despise both trade and Nonconformity. They speak of the chapels in their parishes as "the opposition,"—a phrase which they do not apply to institu- tions which encourage dishonesty or other vices. They will ally themselves with any party in the community sooner than with the men who are in fact, though not in appearance, fighting shoulder to shoulder with them against irreligion and vice of all sorts. The clergyman of this type is often a man who has no other un-Christian quality than his refusal to love his religious neighbour. They are men of devotion ; they bring their gift to the altar,—very often the gift of their whole fortune and their whole life ; they try in holy quiet to forget how much they have against their brother, the Nonconformist ; they never think that he has aught against them. It is difficult to tell who is to blame for their sin and their impenitence. The other, and perhaps larger, class arrives at the same attitude towards Non- conformists by doctrinal argument. I am not speaking of the attitude toward Nonconformity, but of the schismatic temper which they cherish and exercise towards Nonconformists. Their theological education has imbued their minds with the Anglican doctrines of the visible Church and the apostolic priesthood, and because these are imperfectly held by their fellow-countrymen, they have come to dwell upon them more than upon any other doctrines of the faith. They are poor because they have no thought for themselves, but their life is rich in self-sacrifice. Their zeal grows year by year more lusty ; their enthusiasm makes them attractive. In their parishes they are the first to welcome the new-born babe, and the last to kneel by the dying ; they bring about many a marriage where love would otherwise have resulted in tears and shame. These activities sink deep into the heart of the common people, and they confer a sanction on a man's opinions which his intelligence may not warrant. These men, when they read at all, are apt to pore over the books of theologians who have grasped the doctrines of the Oxford Movement, but have not attained to the profound piety or learning of its leaders. They always try to behave well to Non- conformists, but their hearts are wrong ; they are bad dis- semblers; they do not succeed. The pity of it is that in the /minds of men of both these types class prejudice and doctrine act and react upon each other, to the exaggeration of the schismatic temper.
It is to such men as these that the excitement of a partisan crowd is poison. There are, we know, only two great, simple passions between man and man,—love and hate. All other emotions have one or other of these as a propelling force. In solitary reflection a man may have an emotion which appears to be compounded of love and hate,—e.g., what is commonly called "Christian love" toward enemies and opponents, which, in spite of the cynic, includes a modicum of love. This complexity-is not possible in an excited crowd. Let me confirm this by three brief quotations from the French psychologist, Gustave Le Boa :—" The feelings of a crowd, good or had, are very simple and very exaggerated." "A suspicion transforms itself, as soon as announced in a crowd, into incontrovertible evidence." " Dis- approbation, which in the case of an isolated man would not gain strength, becomes, when that man is one of a crowd, great hatred." What deceives religious men when they attend partisan meetings is that the enhanced hatred of their opponents in their minds is overshadowed by what they suppose to be enhanced love for their Lord and His Church. But the love thus engendered is only the love of abstractions, not of the concrete. If one of their fellow- clergymen became a Radical to-day, they would not love him ; if Jesus Christ came to them disguised as a Nonconformist to-day, they would not love Him. Human love requires a concreto object, as does human hate, and, unfortunately, their hatred towards many concrete objects is greatly increased. Our house is built on the sand of paradox : we are attempting to serve God by stirring up hate. In many of our parishes to-day there is but one thing to be said about this prayer for fellowship : " This people lumoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."
[We publish this striking letter, but we must not be held responsible for the views it contains. We think it, indeed, far too severe in its condemnations. At the same time, the call to those who are now in the thick of the education battle to remember that they profess the religion of love is one which needs attention. It is only just to remark, however, that those who are censured are not the whole, or even the majority, though they may be for the moment the most conspicuous section, of the clergy. There are plenty of clergy- men who have no need to be reminded of the first and greatest of a Christian's duties towards his fellow-men. Again, it must be remembered that all that is said by our correspondent of the turbulent, love-denying Churchman applies also to the militant Nonconformist who brings an equal bitterness and an equal negation of Christianity to the present strife. The author who uses the signature " Einem Respice " would, we are sure, be the first to admit this—as much was said in the previous letter so signed—but it is only just to point it out again, Needless to say, we do not suggest that the bigotry and violence of the Nonconformists when they demand their pound of flesh are any excuse for the Churchman who persuades himself he is doing God's work when he fans the fire of prejudice and hate.—En. Spectator.]
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