THE Ml TIDE OF LIFE.* "introduction " to this little
volume is, in sonic respects, of greater interest than any of the four sermons it contains. It is a paper read at Oxford on the 27th of last May, at the invita- tion of the Missionary Committee of New College, in which Mr. Stubbs urges that the social questions of the day, the questions how to organise labour so as to avoid the constant feuds between employers and employed, how to prevent pauperism in the village uo less than in the town, how to keep out physical disease and the degradation of the mind due to unwholesome habits of life, and how to brighten and beautify the life of the poor, whether in cities or villages, are, in the strictest sense, questions for the Christian clergy, questions of religion. In the four sermons named, we think rather inappropriately, from the one preached on the parable with which Plato concludes his Republic, " the Myth° of Life," Mr. Stubbs presses home the teaching that religion is inseparable from the true order of life,—iu fact, that whoever contributes to that true order con- tributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth ; while whoever does not contribute to it, whatever he may believe, is not and cannot be in any true sense religious. The essence of his volume, however, is in the introduction to which we have referred, which states the case for the mission of the Church iu relation to the questions named with a force im- possible to ignore. This is what Mr. Stubbs, as a rum-al vicar, says of the nature of the problem as to the preventio a of pauperism in the village :—
" Let me illustrate it, however, from my own present experience as the vicar of a rural parish. To a country parson, the question of * The Mothe of We. roar Sermons, with an Introduction on the Social Mission of the Uhorth. By Charles William Stubbs, M.A. London : Macmillan and Co. the prevention of pauperism comes home in a very practical manner indeed. I am the vicar of a country parish in which more than Seventy per cent of the population are potential paupers,—that is to say, that out of some seventy families in the village, more than fifty are either actual or prospective recipients of the bounty of the Poor- law. I have not a single labouring man past work in my parish who is not either in the workhouse or in receipt of out-door relief. When I lived among Sheffield workmen, I used sometimes to come across people who asserted that they would rather starve than receive parish pay. I have never even heard of such a case in Buckingham- shire. 1 fear I have hardly a labourer in my parish who, if he were sick or out of work, would not welcome the visit of the relieving officer. Failing the wages of work,' tho Bucks labourer learns to think of ' the wages of the parish' as his of right. It is a standing grievance with him just now that the Board of Guaidians should 'compel a man in full pay to contribute towards the support of his in- digent parent. The fact is not surprising, when one thinks of the physical conditions under which even such apparently elementary virtues as filial obedience and parental love must find their nourish- ment. Wo have fifty cottages in the village, but we have not one labourer's home with three bedrooms. We have seventeen with only one. Our death-rate, which is generally so accurate an index of social condition, sounds satisfactory ; it is only eighteen per 1,000; but, then, one-third of our deaths are infants under the age of one. I need not, however, multiply deplorable statistics of that kind. I merely mention these as an explanation of the kind of stand-point from which, as a country parson, one comes to the consideration of this question, What can 1 do to improve the social condition of my people ? How shall I encourage habits of thrift ? How discourage pauperism ?' "
And Mr. Stubbs is very happy in his application of the remark that the saving and thrifty classes are, almost exclusively, those which have, in their own callings, the means of investing 'their savings to good advantage. "The people who can' turn- over their money,' save ; the people who can only lay-by their money,' do not." That being so, he thinks the imagination of the rural labourers will only be " fired " by finding them an investment in which they can " turn over " their money, and not merely "lay it by." And this he discovers in some solution of the land. question which shall give the labourer the chance of investing whatever he can save from his wages in the land. Of Blackley's insurance scheme, he says :-
" Mr. Blackley's scheme of national insurance is admirable. It seems possible that some day it may even be carried out, for it has evidently succeeded in firing the imagination of the Poor-law re- former. But one thing, I am afraid, it does not succeed in doing,— it does not fire the imagination of the agricultural labourer. The 'opportunity of occupying land does, and therefore, as it seems to me, it is in providing that opportunity that we find the natural starting- point, in any successful scheme for the depauperisation of the labouring population. After all, land is the most natural savings' bank of the rural labourer. It is a bank which ho understands. He is familiar with its working. He knows something of its system of deposits, its method of exchange, the nature of its reserve fund, of its risks, of the rates of interest which it offers, the value of its securities. In these days of land agitation, it may, perhaps, be well to guard myself against any misapprehension. I have no sympathy with revolutionary methods of land reform. Glad as I should be to see the agricultural labourers of England in possession of that in- centive to thrift, which is created in the bosom of the French or Belgian peasant by the sense of landed possession ; anxious as I um 'to see such a reform of our land laws as may very largely widen the circle in which the responsibilities of landed property may be exer- cised; firmly as I believe in the valuable conservative forces which result to any State from a wide extension of property in the soil—still, I have no belief in the success of any scheme for the compulsory 'establishment of peasant-proprietorship. At the same time, it does 'seem to mo little loss than absurd that when we are seeking for means of developing the virtue of thrift in our labouring population, we should shut our eyes to the means by which that virtue has been 'created in the most thrifty race in Europe. I think we country 'clergy have a special responsibility in this respect. By our position the majority of ua are, if not landlords, at least landholders. We form, in fact, I believe, about a fourth of the resident landed pro- prietors of the country. Like Tennyson's Northern Farmer, therefore, we owe a duty to the land.' Would it not be possible for us, 'therefore, I would ask, so to manage the property of which wo are 'trustees, that we might give to the rural labourer once more that responsibility of property, from which ho has gradually been divorced by the combined action of our land customs and our poor-law ?"
And Mr. Stubbs's remarks on the sanitary duties of the Church, and the duty imposed on her of beautifying the life of the work- ing-classes as far as she can, without relation to mere religious teaching, are full of vigour and force. He would make the .elementary schools, as well as the churches, of the nation places to touch the imagination, and to raise the people through their imagination,—places to which the parents might be attracted, when. the rooms were not occupied by the children, and where they might see some of the really great objects of Art, or repre- sentation s of them vivid enough to give the people the conception of what they are. " We live,'" quotes Mr. Stubbs from Words- worth, " by admiration, hope, and love,' and yet where in the
soil of the day-labourer's life is there room for these root-graces of spiritual existence ?" The introduction to this little volume is a thoroughly practical essay, suggesting to the Church one of the aspects of her mission which of late years and in England the Church has little understood.
In the sermons themselves, however, Mr. Stubbs pushes home the absolute identity of religious and moral life beyond the point to which we could entirely go with him r-
" I happened to be talking the other day to an exceedingly good and amiable lady, when she startled me by the following curious and naïve remark :—‘ I don't think I am in the least what you would call a really religious person • to be frank, 1 don't feel a bit religious. And yet I don't feel as if I were very wicked. I am sure I should be very miserable if I were to do an untrue or dishonest thing. I wouldn't hurt a living creature by deed or word, if I could help it.' Now, it is quite plain that iu that lady's idea religion is in itself something quite different, quite distinguishable, at any rate, from what the world would ordinarily call goodness." To be good' and ' to be religious' were evidently not regarded as anything like identical phrases. Now, is that a very uncommon idea ? To say that any one is religious no doubt carries with it some idea of a character for goodness. But to say that a man is a good man does not equally carry with it as a necessity an idea of religion. The state of salvation' which belongs to the religious man is evidently regarded as something in its nature different to the state of goodness which belongs to the simply good man. There is something radically wrong in this distinction. Is it not a course most unreal and mis- leading to speak of perfectly similar character or perfectly similar actions as religious' on the one hand, and simply good' or ' moral' on the other, as one is speaking of the characters or actions of Christ- ians or non-Christians, intending those terms to carry with them, moreover, a clear indication of relative merit as apparent to the eye of God ? When will people really understand that what Christ came into the world to do, was not to teach men a now way of being good, or doing good, but to supply us with a now and powerful motive for both being and doing good in the old way ? Religion has been de- fined by Mr. Matthew Arnold as morality tinged with emotion,' and we may accept the definition, if he will allow us to further define `emotion' as the energising motive to right action which is supplied by the constraining love of Christ.'" Now, we cannot help thinking that the lady here quoted, amiable as she was, was very likely right in pronouncing
herself to be " not a bit religious." Nor can we agree with Mr. Stubbs in thinking that Christ came, "not to teach us a new way of being good or doing good, but to supply us with a new and powerful motive for both being and doing good in the old way." Religion is a great deal more than morality supplied with a new motive. It is in a very true sense a specifically higher kind of morality. It is a morality of which the essence is not like that of Mr. Stubbs's friend, horror of doing wrong, but the desire for life in God. Is it possible correctly to describe this as simply the old morality with a now motive for it P How does Christ describe it, but as a new life, as a grafting into himself ? How do the Apostles all describe it, except as a spiritual new birth P St. Paul calls it becoming a " new creature." To him, at least, it was not merely pursuing the old end with a new and more potent motive. And true as it is that there is no such thing as genuine religion which does not include in the largest sense, the old morality, surely it is equally true that the old morality, however pure, does not necessarily include in the least, that desire for life in God, which is of the very essence of religion. Indeed it is obvious that obedience to that deeply-implanted warning instinct which keeps men from falling into sin, is a totally different thing from surrender to that divine attraction which creates a new end for life, as well as a new motive for living it well. Religion is not " morality tinged with emotion," but morality first rendered possible by trust, and so transformed into a life of love for him in whom the trust is placed. Mr. Stubbs quotes, as his motto for his last sermon, a little poem by Mrs. Butler, nee Fanny Kemble, —whose authorship he does not appear to recognise, for be quotes his fragment iucorrectly,—a poem which has reference to trust in its purely human aspect, and, therefore, as a venture, which iu religion it is not. This is Mrs. Butler's poem as she wrote it :-
" Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving ; Than doubt one heart, that if believed, Had blessed one's life with true believing.
Oh, in this mocking world, too fast, • The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth ; Rather be cheated to the last, Than lose the blessed hope of truth."
But though this may be a wholesome enough lesson for cynical young people, it is hardly in the strain of the teacher whose text Mr. Stubbs takes for his sermon, " Charity believeth all things." " Charity believeth all things," not because it is better to risk being cheated than to lose all belief, but because the a self-denying and most meritorious life from boyhood to ex- soul knows the impossibility of being cheated by him who puts treine old age, and died in the affecting act of touching signifi- into us the spirit of charity. The deepest charity is quickest, ca.ntly the ring which he had placed fifty years before on the not slowest, to discover the true cheat and impostor, though we hand of his beloved wife.. Why was not the record of that quite admit that it often transmutes the doubtful character, righteous life and worthy death glorified by a few rays of hope. —the character halting between loyalty and disloyalty,—into and faith, not wholly ending in the grave in Westminster its own purer metal. However, we have referred to this subject Abbey P
only to enter our protest against the conception that religion is The singular "constitution," with " trial by jury," given by merely morality with a new motive. It is, to our minds, morality the Hills to the boys of their celebrated school, which they held with a new object, rather than a new motive,—morality with life consecutively at Hill-top, Hazelwood, and Bruce Castle, has in God for its object of desire, instead of morality with only been the subject of innumerable publications and much debate. the fair-dealing with men ,for its object of desire. With this The originality and boldness of the plan, and the ability with reservation, which does not run very deep into the moral effect which Rowland Hill worked it out, come into strong relief in of those sermons, we strongly commend the excellent little the interesting account of it in these volumes. By 1825, there- volume before us, and its admirable introduction, to all those were already 117 boys making the experiment at Hazelwood ; among the Clergy who see how much the Church still misses, in and in the following year the school was moved to Bruce
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