PROSELYTES AND CONVERTS.
DIFFERENT as are the aims and methods of the various Churches in regard to their missionary labours, there is one feature which is common to all of them. It may be described in a sentence as their pre- ference for proselytism over conversion. As proselytism is a word of very uncertain meaning, it is necessary to define the sense in which it is here used. By proselytism then, we understand the desire to gain converts from other religions, rather than from the world outside. We do not claim for this sense either etymological or historical accuracy. All that we say is' that the two processes are distinct ; that it is convenient to denote each by a specific term ; and that when we speak of proselytism, we have in view the former of the two. No doubt the force of the preference is greater or less, according to circumstances. In England and Ireland, for example, it is strong ; in the United States, we imagine, it is weak. Probably it flourishes best where there is an Established Church, because in this case there is a disposition to regard the adherents of other religions as wanderers who have to be reclaimed. But everywhere it is present, in a greater or less degree. In the great English towns, one of the most frequent signs of religious vitality is controversy. But with whom is this controversy carried on ? For the most part, with other Christians. The Anglican is building up the faith against the assaults of Roman Catholicism on the one side, and of Dissent on the other. He is defending the validity of his orders, or maintain- ing that the Fathers of the fourth century, could they be recalled to life, would differ in nothing—nothing, that is, which is of importance—from the Anglican Bishops of the nineteenth, or vindicating the superiority of the parochial system over the congregational. The Roman Catholic is doing precisely the same thing. He is in- sisting on the virtual rejection of the Anglican orders by the rest of Christendom, or arguing that the supremacy of the civil power here in matters ecclesiastical is so well established as to deprive the Anglican Establishment of all claim to be reckoned as a part of the Catholic Church, or drawing comparisons between the unity of the Roman Episcopate and the many voices of the English Bishops. What, again, is the chief material of Nonconformist apolo- getics ? The deadening influence of a religious Establish- ment, or the mischievous aping of Rome by Ritualists in the Church of England ? -Unless Dublin or Belfast are very unlike other large cities, there are masses of people in them who are outside religious influence of any kind. But no appeal for help in converting them would have a chance of being listened to in England. We should say that we had enough to do in this way at our own doors. But when the appeal is made for help in converting Irish Roman Catholics—men and women who have a religion of their own—it easily finds a response in England. Or go fur- ther afield and ask the purpose of the various English agencies that carry on missionary work on the Continent of Europe. Is the object of their care the atheistic masses who fill the towns ? Not at all. The scanty record of their successes tells invariably of the light brought to some superstitious Papist who once be- lieved in his priest or in his saint, and has now ceased to believe in either. Or take the work of the Church Mi3sionary Society in Palestine. In theory the mission is maintained for the conversion of Mahom- medans and Jews. In fact, it exists almost entirely for the conversion of Greek Christians. It is this that makes it a specially popular branch of the Society's work. Jews and Mahommedans, when they can be got—which, it must be confessed, is very seldom—are interesting enough. But a brand snatched from- the Orthodox Church has a far greater attraction for subscribers at home, and the mission is maintained in spite of remonstrances and difficulties of various kinds for the cultivation of this particular type of convert. We might multiply instances among ourselves, and a wider acquaintance with other 'forms of Christian belief would doubtless enable us to -.eultiply them outside our own Church and country.
If we look for the reasons of this preference, we find them in part in the super/ice mbse of the process. Christians are separated widely enough in all conscience ; but the gulf between a Roman Catholic and a Baptist is small in com- -parison with the gulf that separates a Baptist from an Atheist. Thus the proselytiser begins his work with an immense advantage over the converter. The one is like a man who has to build his lighthouse on a rock, the other is like a man who has to build his lighthouse in mid- channel. Years of work may have to be gone through, before the foundations in the latter case are visible above water, and when they are, the builder is no further forward than his rival was at starting. The mere fact of belonging to one form of Christianity does, in a sense, dispose a man to listen to what can be said in favour of another form. He can at least under- stand the language in which the preacher speaks ; the terms employed are familiar to him ; the convictions appealed to are in part his own. A second explanation lies in the greater irritation we feel against people who go a certain way with us and then stop short, as compared with those who refuse to take a single step in our company. They seem to us so much less consistent, so much more illogical. We can understand the man who denies the existence of a God better than the man whose conception of a God is altogether different from our own. It is a characteristic element in this irritation, when it is found in religious people, that it ordinarily generates a strong desire to make converts from among the objects of it. They seem so near us in name, and yet so far removed in fact. We cannot persuade ourselves that the difference which keeps them and us apart is anything more than an accidental twist, which if we can only bring them to see it can at once be removed. The work of proselytism is not only easier than that of conversion, it is also more agreeable. The rude shocks which are inseparable from intercourse with an atheist are absent. There are dif- ferences enough in point alike of number and gravity, but there are also some common beliefs from which to start, and a habit of belief on which to work. The missionary has not to wander forth into a moral wilderness, he recog- nises some at least of the landmarks which those to whom he preaches have already set up.
And yet the field of proselytism seems badly chosen. Even when the work is most successful, those engaged in it must feel an occasional regret that it does nothing to enlarge the area which Christianity covers. That remains the same, no matter what may be the redistribution of its internal boundaries. If all the efforts that have been made in the last half-century to turn Roman Catholics into Protestants, or Protestants into Roman Catholics, had been directed against the common enemy, it is hardly possible that the description which Cardinal Vaughan gives of London should have been as true in substance as it is to-day :—" Beyond our own, there is a population to be counted, perhaps by millions, that has fallen away from Christ." Strictly speaking, this expression is not quite accurate. The millions of our great cities can hardly be said to have fallen away from one of whom they have scarcely heard. But the Cardinal's meaning is plain enough, and there is no reason to find fault with it. The largest part of the population of London is altogether outside religious influences of any kind. "The work to be undertaken among them is like that of a foreign mission to the heathen." Let us imagine that for the next half-century the whole strength of religion in this country were directed to winning over this popula- tion to Christianity, that no section of the Christian Church knowingly trespassed upon any part of this vast field which was already adequately occupied by any other section, that each confined itself to the care of its own people and to the conversion of those outside masses,—what might not be looked for in the way of results ? At all events the experiment has never been tried. Money and labour have been spent in abundance, but they have been constantly diverted in other directions. Quite apart from the consideration of the change that such a sustained effort might make in the religious condition of our great towns, there is the lower consideration what a demonstration it would be of the vitality of the Churches which stood the test best. Here, at all events, there would be for the missionary a fair field and no favour. At the end of the time fixed we should only have to compare the numbers of each creed, when the period opened, with the numbers to which each had mounted when the period closed. In these simple figures would be the most convincing testimony to the ecclesiastical machinery of which they were the outcome. The more faith each denomination has in itself,—in its vitality, its power of impressing others, its adaptation to the wants of mankind,—the more content it would be to restrict its missionary enterprise in the way we have suggested. We shall be specially glad if Cardinal Vaughan should be the first to enter upon this field of labour. He rightly calls it "an Apostolate in the highest sense," and it is one infinitely more worthy of him than those controversial letters which have had no other visible effect than that of evokiir g equally controversial and far longer lectures from the Bishop of Manchester. We cannot promise the Cardinal that Protestant zeal will at once follow his example. But proselytism is certainly contagious, and if the supply of it came to an end in one Church, it miglit die out by degrees in others. We will not speculate by what road Cardinal Vaughan has come to realise the true enterprise that lies before Christians. But if he can but impress it upon his clergy, we feel sure that the effect will eventually be seen in a corresponding change in other communions.
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