THE RELIGION OF KINGS.
-WHAT with the growth of population and its victories in South America, the Papacy has probably as many devotees as it ever had, but it has not been fortunate among the Rvalties. It has of late years only gained one small throne, that of Roumania, while it has lost the Bourbon thrones of France and Naples, the Braganza throne of Brazil, and quite a number of thrones in Italy. The Kings of Saxony and Bavaria have ceased to be completely independent, while the Prince of Bulgaria, who is a King in all but name, has allowed his son to be brought up as an avowed heretic. Only two Monarchs of first-class States, Austria and Italy, are now Roman Catholic, while of these one has remained for two generations excommunicated and impenitent The thrones which have risen to the top of the world, the British, the German, and the Russian, belong to the Protestant or the Greek Churches, while among the smaller Princes those of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Bavaria, Saxony, and Roumania are rivalled or outweighed by the Princes of Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Wurtemburg, Hesse, Baden, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro. No Catholic ecclesiastic whatever is now a Sovereign Prince actually ruling in his terri- tories, and no Government whatever except, perhaps, that of Ecuador, which does not signify much in the world, maintains laws that are completely in accordance with the ideas and wishes of the Holy See.
It is natural under such circumstances that the Papacy should watch with a jealous eye against the intrusion of heretic Princes or Princesses into the families which still remain faithful, and should insist, when such incidents occur, upon " conversions " which it can hardly believe to be entirely sincere ; but we rather wonder that the Greek Church should be equally arbitrary, and wonder very much that general European opinion should be so entirely indifferent or favourable. If a private person changed his creed or that of his child out of ambition, or for a fortune,. or for convenience, as Royalties have done within the last three years in Russia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro, the public would regard him as guilty of a serious offence against his conscience for the sake of worldly advantage, and would probably suspect him of a want of principle fatal to implicit confidence. It does not quite like, we fancy,
even conversions which are clearly conscientious, manifesting occasiotally a most curious prejudice in favour of a man remaining within the creed in which he was brought up— witness a score of articles published when the Marquis of Ripon entered the Roman Catholic Church—and if it smells self-interest in the affair it is apt to be positively malignant. That is not the tone, however, with regard to Royalties, Princes and Princesses being ex,pected, as it were, to adopt the faith of their subjects as they adopt their laws, without the slightest reference either to their inner consciences or to their intellectual convictions. We have read many comments on the conduct of Bernadotte in deserting Napoleon and declaring war on France, but we do not remember so much as an observation on his change of creed; and Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria is despised much more heartily for submitting to Russia than for exposing his son to what he must conceive to be at least an extra risk of final damnation. Even when, as in the case of the forthcoming Italian marriage, the bride is expected not only to renounce but to denounce the errors of her own Church, opinion is not moved to severity ; and the Princess Royal of Italy will be judged in future, even by Greeks, without any reference to what in an older state of society would have been regarded as apostasy. The dominant idea seems to be that a Prince ought to be of the same shade of religion as his subjects, and that for him to maintain a theological or ecclesiastical conscience of his own is something of an impertinence, a queer state of feeling among good people distinctly traceable in many comments on our own James the Second, and on the dynasty of Saxony, which has for generations remained Catholic amidst a Protestant population.
One would like to know, as an element in their history, what the Royal families think of the matter themselves. We take it, very little. Kings are very rarely atheists, or indeed, in any very definite way, agnostics. There is some reason to suspect that our own Norman Kings, two of whom, Rufus and John, were open blasphemers, held a secret creed in which there was very little religion indeed, and Frederick the Great professed himself, at all events, a Secularist, but impiety, or even total disbelief, has not been usual upon a throne. The Kings have felt the limits on their own action too keenly, and being unable as Western men to accept the notion of a blind Fate, have adhered to that of an overruling and sentient Power. "Who is this," moaned the crowned barbarian, "who breaks the strength of the strongest Kings ?" and a King prostrated by sickness must feel with unusual depth the contrast between his apparent grandeur and his actual powerlessness. The idea, too, that the crown has come to them from above has always been pleasant to their minds, as setting a mystic seal upon their claims, and enabling them to avoid acknowledging that they reign either by the will of the people or because of some ancestral sword. It is probable, too, that they actually feel the necessity for something to rely on stronger than themselves, something which shall be in the universe what they are, or think themselves, in their own States. Kings are not usually pious persons, but one can hardly imagine a King to whom the desire for prayer has never presented itself, at least as an emotion, or who could heartily despise the prayers of a whole people offered up on his behalf. Kings at any rate are very rarely atheists, but we fancy that as a rule, and allowing for individual exceptions, their creed as a caste approximates closely to Theism. They admit subjection to the super- natural, and are even willing to allow that they will receive reward or punishment for their acts as Kings, but they are indifferent to revelation, and no system of theology really bites their minds. They seldom govern their private conduct by the rules of any Church, and almost never regard eccle- siastics as nearer God than themselves. This is true even of Roman Catholic Sovereigns, who grow highly indignant when Rome opposes them, even when the opposition is clearly within their own theoretical admissions as to Papal rights. They do not care much about Churches as corporations, and are apt to think of doctrines, especially peculiar doctrines not accepted by the whole of Christianity, very much as they think of laws, as expressions of a general conviction liable to be changed. They feel a little above the details, and would, but for decorum, worship in one church as readily as another. Our own Queen worships habitually in churchca of widely different organisation, and, on points like the descent of orders, of widely different belief, and the world noticed with some surprise that the Czar at Balmoral attended a Presbyterian service. Kings hold, in fact, that God governs, and there, in their own hearts, they are dis- posed to leave the question of religion, not rejecting, but not much respecting, any dogma whatever. They are priests, they hold, in a sense, and consecrated, as much as any priests or other interpreters of the faith. To men with such views a "change of faith" cannot appear to be of overwhelming importance, for the sufficient reason that there is no change, that such faith as they have is independent not only of ecclesiastical formulas, but of all but a few primary dogmas, of all indeed substantially except one. A certain popular recognition of this fact, the result of instinct rather than of study, is probably one reason for the readiness of nations to ask from Princes and Princesses declarations which, but for the I hal it at ions of Royal faith, would be incredible basenesses. They believe that Kings do not care, and so believing, fail to see why, in respect to their apparent faiths, they should remain separate from the majority, or at least why they should not bring up their children to believe as their subjects do. The thin faith of the Kings is also the reason, we imagine, why conversions on the throne to unpopular creeds have in modern times been so excessively rare. There were several during the first fervour of the Re- formation, but since then the only case we can recall is that of the two Stuazts, who, though bred as Protestants, adopted, and sooner or later professed, the Roman Catholic faith. Kings would change their Churches like other people but that, their true faith being Theism, the arguments for change never seem to them quite real.
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