TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE REIGNING ECCLESIASTICISM IN POLITICS.
THERE can be nothing more remarkable to the secularist, assuredly there is nothing much more remarkable even to non-secularist politfrians, than the ecclesiastical turn which public affairs have taken all over Europe. The great military power which guides the policy of Europe discusses little now- adays in any of its constituent States but questions of ecclesiastical or anti-ecclesiastical interest, of Falck laws, civil marriage, " Old-Catholic " rights, and religious or non-religious education. In Switzerland it is the same. The struggle between the Democracy and the Catholic Bishops, the popular election of the Cures, the rights of the party of Father Hyacinthe, the collisions between the Swiss Government and the Bishop of the Ticino Canton, are topics never out of the Swiss journalist's mouth. In Belgium, the chronic struggle which gives interest to politics is that between the Roman Catholic Church and the Radicals. In France, the Republic would have been definitively accepted long ago, but for the rooted belief of the Church party that, sooner or later, the Republic will mean war to the knife against the Church. It is not the Conservatives' dread of Republican forms, but the sacerdotal party's dread of them, which makes the nation stay lingering on the brink, and fear to launch away. Even in Spain, Don Carlos is both supported and opposed in a very different spirit from that in which he would otherwise be sup- ported and opposed, in consequence of his supposed identifica- tion with the Ultramontane cause ; and the recognition of the Government of Marshal Serrano by Germany and England was far more a protest against an Ultramontane candidate for the throne, than one against an insurgent chief. Even in Italy, where, perhaps, since the fall of Rome into the hands of the King, there is least of all of the violent ecclesiastical or even violent anti-ecclesiastical spirit, the breaking-up of the religious Orders and secularisation of Church property have been the chief problems of the last few years. And in England, now for some time back, everything runs to Church. It was the Irish- Church question which brought Mr. Gladstone in, and another Irish-Church question which virtually turned him out. His attempt at the last moment to divert the interest of the nation into a financial channel by suggesting the repeal of the Income- tax was a signal failure. It turned out that, as compared with an ecclesiastical question, the repeal of the Income- tax was held of no account at all by the British Elector- ate. Indeed, Mr. Gladstone's recent article on Ritualism in the Contemporary Review has excited, we suspect, an in- terest a hundred times more eager than ever did the Green- wich address. Education has been discussed from beginning to end, and could hardly but have been discussed, on strictly ecclesiastical or anti-ecclesiastical grounds. Mr. Disraeli came in without the slightest necessity for any ecclesiastical flourish, but his first pronouncement was to predict a great revivification of all ecclesiastical controversies • his first blunder was to make war on the Dissenters ; and his first hit was the manoeuvre by which he took official credit for the Bill " to put down Ritual- ism." Lord Salisbury is Indian Secretary, but for one who knows what he is doing in India, ten discuss eagerly his High- Church predilections. Sir W. Harcourt is a lawyer who has won his chief distinction in discussions on international law, but he is recommended (by a few friends) as the coming Chief of the Liberal party, because he wants to carry out stringently the Act of Uniformity, and boldly attacks Mr. Gladstone's re- spect for canonical law. Even Home-rule questions come at last to discussions as to the best means of preventing Roman Catholics and Protestants from living a cat-and-dog life. You can hardly discuss even the wages of agri- cultural labour without some ecclesiastical question turn- ing up,—without its being said, for instance, that in this matter the clergy have been the farmers' friends, and that as soon as the labourers get the suffrage, they will revenge themselves by helping to disestablish and disendow the Church.
What is the explanation of this great ecclesiastical wave which has swept over Europe ? Is it simply the result of the Vatican Council, and the reaction to which the Vatican Council gave rise ? Or is there some deeper cause to which the sum- mons and the definitions of the Vatican Council must them- selves be referred I We think it clear that we must say No' to the former question, and' Yes' to the latter. The ecclesi- astical phase began long before the notion of the Vatican
Council was broached. Father Dalgairns, in a memorable article in the Contemporary Review, declared that it was the number of heretical theologies springing up within the Church, in the Universities of Germany and elsewhere, which had rendered it a positive duty for the Church not only to speak out, but to define the infallibility of a power always in session, and always ready to judge between: falsehood and truth, to which might be entrusted the task of opening the eyes of loyal Catholics after the Council was dissolved. And who can doubt that, in regions out- side the Church, the wave of religious and ecclesiastical criticism had set in long before the Vatican Council f In France, Renan's life of Christ had given a new tone to popular scepticism long before the time of the Council. In Germany, ecclesiastical thought had been undergoing rapid decomposition during the whole life of Strauss. And in England the publication of " Essays and Reviews " had drawn the startled attention of the whole nation to the forms of doubt which sheltered themselves under Anglican formulae nearly a decade sooner. The Ritualistic movement, again,, which represented the reaction against the Rationalistic, was long anterior to the Vatican decree. Once more, the craving in High-Church quarters for some reunion between the various branches of the Church,—a craving which gave birth to Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon," and produced that remarkable Encycli- cal from the Synod of Lambeth held three years before the Council of the Vatican, and a year at least before any rumour of it,—dates from a much older period. We take it there can be no question but that in all quarters of Europe,—excepting, we suppose, Spain and Russia—there arose some ten years ago a disposition amongst the middle-class to question itself as to the ulti- mate grounds of spiritual authority, a kind of interroga- tory which, of course, led at one and the same time to very sharp internal controversies amongst the members of Churches which had been long asleep, and to a consequent craving for sympathy and union with such external Churches as embodied and sustained the newly controverted faith. The Lambeth Encyclical was an almost pathetic illustration of this tremulous appeal for help from rationalism within, to ortho- doxy outside, the Anglican Church. And the recent Bonn Conference is a new and less curious illustration of the same wistful desire. It will be observed that the real ecclesiastical agitation of the last decade has turned uniformly on that one question,—the question of the nature of spiritual authority and its seat. The discussions in " Essays and Reviews " and in " Ecce Homo," and like books, turned on the authority of the Bible. The famous " Oxford Declaration" was an attempt to bolster up the verbal infallibility of the Bible. The chief French school of scepticism attempted to substitute a shadowy sentimentalism for the historical authority it repudiated. The German heresies calmly proposed leaving a vacuum in the place of the historical authority they ridiculed. Englishmen were all engaged in trying for a via media. And Rome set her foot down, with the view of showing that she, at least, was on firm ground,—exactly what it now seems that she did not show. Even the politico-ecclesiastical conflicts all turned on the same pivot. Germany maintained that Omar must have his due first, before any discussions arose as to what the Church re- quired. In the struggle as to the Irish Church, the English enthusiasm was sensibly greater than the Irish, and was chiefly due to the assumption, appreciated here, but hardly appreciated there, that there was a sort of sacrilege in giving a false appearance of authority to a religion which held no real authority over the people's hearts_ It was almost the same feeling which made us sym- pathise so heartily with Italy in her struggle for Rome, and sympathise so" heartily with Ireland as, almost unasked, to depose the Church of the minority. In both cases alike the notion was apparent that an authority which does not really make itself heard in the people's conscience and heart is an unnatural authority not deserving to be obeyed. Indeed, every ecclesiastical conflict of the last few years has been a conflict be- tween the relative claims of different kinds of authority ; that of the Church and that of the nation, that of the nation and that of the individual, that of the law and that of the conscience, that of the Bible and that of the Church. Nor has the victory always gone the same way. Indeed, latterly there has been a definite tendency perceptible, both abroad and at home,—in despair, we suppose, of obtain- ing any unanimity of individual conviction,—to place the autho- rity of the law and of the national. will, above the authority of conscience and of individual conviction. Ii the absence of
a real belief, the indirect representation of personal wishes implied in a national law and a national statesman, attracts to itself some of the enthusiasm of individual conviction. You may see this tendency not only in the strange prostration with which a universal denier like Strauss turned to the national Government as the next thing to a religion and a God, but in the suggestion not long ago made with some success in England, that in the absence of anything better to rever- ence, the full development of the average English layman's view of what is good and what is evil in life, what noble and what ignoble, will afford no bad substitute for a practical religion.
Is this wave of feeling, which is bringing all Europe to the consideration of what it is that authority,—spiritual, and therefore also secular,—really rests upon, likely to last ? If so, we may be sure that it will unsettle a great many things, both political and ecclesiastical, before it fairly resettles any. It is, of course, very difficult to judge. For the moment, almost all Europe is in the Conservative mood, in which, to prevent further progress down the inclined plane, an arbitrary basis of authority is assumed, people saying to themselves, "Let this be sacred to us, even though," as they add under their breath, " it is not really so." That is the feeling which has established the Septennate in France, and which is trying to establish an equally unmeaning ad interim Government in Spain. That is the phase also of our present English Con- servatism,—of the victory of Mr. Disraeli, and of the Act of Uniformity, and of the authority of existing Rubrics. People do not like the prospect of what is before them, if they go on too far in the course of sounding the depths of authority, political, moral, or spiritual ; and so they pull themselves up suddenly, and resolve to rest in the institutions they have, however imperfect, and not to look too curiously into the warrant for them. This dull and despondent state of mind seems to us at the bottom of most of the ecclesiastical Conservatism of the time,—and almost all the Conservatism of the time is either ecclesiastical, or is based on fear for the rights of property,— and we do believe that it will have its day, and perhaps a long and sluggish day. But it is not a permanent basis for human nature to rest upon ; and whenever people are again tired of assuming that there is a sacred authority where they don't really feel any,—we suspect that the revolution- ising investigation into its foundations will start again with rapid strides.
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