ENGLISH NONCONFORMITY.
THE "May meetings," which as usual have begun in April, seem likely to furnish, in their course, a good deal of material by which to test the general correctness of the very full and interesting article on the position of Nonconformity published by the Times last week. So far as can be judged from early indications, the views taken by the writer of that article will obtain a large measure of corroboration. The Presidential Address delivered by the Rev. Mr. Gauge at the meeting of the Baptist Union on Wednesday, for example, exhibited indeed a floridness of metaphor and defects of taste which were happily absent from the very careful, sober, and, towards Anglicanism, kindly communication to the Times. But the difference in tone and manner only adds to the interest of the general coincidence in point of view between the anonymous article and Mr. Gange's "look all round." In both of them we find stress laid upon the steady, and even rapid, assimilation in opinion and practice which has been going on for several years among the principal orthodox Nonconformist bodies. The President of the Baptist Union, it is true, maintains that it is really a matter of fact, and not of opinion, that the Baptist Church " is the original Church as founded by Jesus Christ ; " and that it can only have been by great audacity, supported by subsequent persecution, that, in the first in- stance, the Baptist practice was not only dislodged from use but made to disappear altogether. These convictions, however, do not prevent him from rejoicing in the progressive demolition of the walls of partition by which (Noncon- formist) Christian bodies have been separated, and empha- sising, amid the loud applause of his hearers, the evidence afforded by the establishment of the "National Free Church Council" that Nonconformist "hearts beat in unison." This combination of continued adherence to distinctive denominational principles, as possessing evident primitive authority, with readiness to draw closer to other Christians who read ecclesiastical history differently, is almost precisely what the Times' writer described as mark- ing the Congregationalists, and there seems to be no reason to doubt that a like temper is steadily spreading among the Presbyterians and the various sections of Methodists. Unquestionably this temper, when it springs from an honest readjustment of perspective, and not from mere carelessness of thought, and when it is not concurrent with a lowering in spiritual temperature, must bear many excellent fruits. The Times' correspondent pointed out, among the early results of the movement for the fedeva, tion of orthodox Nonconformist bodies, that "united missions are undertaken on a large scale ; the united force is brought into play against such evils as the gambling habit, intemperate drinking, and licentiousness." At the same time, in the opinion of the same authority, "the multiplication of unnecessary chapels may be said to have ceased." Clearly, all this points to a valuable concentra- tion. and economy of religious effort, which, always assuming the conditions which we have already indicated, cannot fail to exercise an important influence on the moral and social as well as the spiritual life of the nation.
Do those conditions exist ? Is the drawing-together of Nonconformist bodies mainly the result of what we may call a religious amiability, having its root in a growing indisposition to think that any dogmas can matter much,— an indisposition sure, as we think, to be associated with a low level of religious feeling ; or does it arise from a spreading recognition that the differences which have hitherto divided the bodies in question are of slight significance as compared with the great beliefs about God and his relations and revelation to man, on which they are agreed ? So far as the Times' writer touches on this vital matter, his view is a favourable one, but he does not—perhaps in the nature of the case he could not—go very far in his treatment of it. He alludes to the latitudinarian movement by which the late Mr. Spurgeon, among the Baptists, was so much alarmed, and which led the Congregational Union to "proclaim its orthodoxy by a resolution very closely akin to a creed ; " and then observes that "there is now, apparently, a re- action in the orthodox direction. The 'advanced' men seem to have retraced their steps. With few exceptions, they preach the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Trinity, and even in the matter of Biblical criticism they are not so ready as they once were to jump at all the conclusions of the higher critics.' On the other hand, the attitude of the orthodox Dissenters has been distinctly liberalised. They have—speaking generally, of course—abandoned the language of rigid literalism against which the new move- ment was a protest." That is all very interesting, and as an account of the general currents of thought in the Non- conformist bodies we have no information that would enable us, as we have certainly no desire, to dispute the general correctness of the estimate we have quoted. And yet—and yet we feel bound to mention one or two considerations which appear to us to point, we do not at all say de- cisively, but still distinctly, to the view that among Non- conformists intensity of belief, in what they and we would agree in describing as the esssentials of Christianity, is not what it was within the memory of men in pretty early middle life. In the first place, when every possible allowance has been made for the beat of party feeling engendered by educational conflicts, and for the irrita- tions caused, perhaps, by the method in which the ques- tion was raised, we do not believe that thirty years ago it would have been possible for Nonconformists to have received with so much bitter hostility as they actually showed towards it, the circular of Mr. Athelstan Riley. There was not a trace of Anglicanism in that document. There was nothing in it which would not have been supposed to be taught in every orthodox Nonconformist Sunday-school thirty years ago, and for that matter at the time when the controversy arose ; and yet it was fought almost, if not quite, as fiercely by orthodox Noncon- formists as by Unitarians, and there was a general, if not universal, unreadiness outside the Church of England to believe that its supporters had anything in view but the Anglicanising of the Board-schools. Thirty years ago, it is our strong belief that, if not a majority, there would have been a very strong party among the Nonconformists of the country who would have thought that it was worth while running some risks in regard to the professional advancement of otherwise competent teachers, some risks, even if it had been so, of allowing a High Church- man to claim a triumph, for the sake of securing that the poor children of London should learn in their day-schools the fundamental elements of the Christian faith, and that their religious future should not depend on the chance of their parents' desire to send them to a Sunday-school. Again, while admitting that the matter must be largely one of personal impression, we are distinctly of opinion that whereas early in the century a detached person, craving for what may be called a devout atmosphere, would in many parts of the country have been drawn irresistibly to one or other of the Nonconformist bodies, and actually repelled from the Established Church, the balance in a large number of places is now the other way. And we are inclined to associate that fact, so far as it prevails, with that variation in relative religious fervour which, as we hold, almost inevitably goes with variation in relative intensity of belief in what the believers re- spectively regard as points of vital moment.
The President of the Baptist Union more than confirms the indication gives by the Times' correspondent of the strength of the aversion in which what are variously denounced as sacerdotal and sacramentarian doctrines are held among Nonconformist circles. There is apparently an honest inability to understand how any one at once sane and sincere can hold the High Church position, although of course such an attitude condemns a fortiori the great majority of Christians in all ages down to the present. The admirable character of the Anglican revival, and of much of the work it does, is recognised by many Nonconformists. But the fact that its strength lies in the relation of the life of the Church of England to that of the primitive Church is ignored, or treated as an evidence of intellectual, if not moral, perversity. To many minds there is still no practical difference between reverent belief in the value of Catholic tradition, and intention to bring England once more under the Papal yoke. And so we find Mr. Gange going so far as to allege that "all impartial wit- nesses must acknowledge the Established Church to be the sluice-gate through which the black waves of Romanism have almost flooded the country." The height or depth of Orange ferocity thus expressed is, we imagine, now increasingly rare, and possibly rare even in the speaker; but the sober correspondent of the Times tells us, we apprehend quite truly, that to the ordinary Non- conformist a belief in any value in the Apostolical succession of Anglican Bishops "seems on a par with the mediseval belief in the efficacy of magical spells." When we hear of Anglican arrogance, there seems some ground for suggesting that the arrogance is not all on one side. Nonconformists would do well to recognise that the High Church position, however wrong or even absurd they may think it, necessitates a conscientious hesitation, to say the least of it, as to the regularity of the position of the Non- conformist ministry and sacraments. High Churchmen, on the other hand, would do well to recognise that such conscientious hesitation on their part, when it exists, entails in a special degree the duty of profound personal humility on those clergy who have, as they believe, received regular orders, and of courtesy and consideration towards those who honestly differ from them on such points. If these reciprocal duties were more widely observed—and happily their observance is spreading, and is much pro- moted by the example a eminent prelates of the High Church school—the outlook of English Christianity would be greatly improved, and the range, only too wide, of English Paganism would be steadily reduced.
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