DEAN STANLEY ON STATE-CHURCHES.*

NOTHING that Dr. Stanley has written on ecclesiastical politics shows more of the political strength, wisdom, and sagacity which

are so rarely found in combination with such beauty and earnest- ness of mind as the Dean of Westminster carries into all his religious discussions, than this pamphlet. And we especially rejoice that it should appear at the very moment when the political duty of disestablishing the Irish Church is pressing upon us all, for nothing could be better timed to teach us why the Irish Establish- ment has failed to effect, what established Churches ought to possess, and usually possess, a special qualification to effect ; and why, therefore, the doom which has been pronounced upon it should be not only no unfavourable omen, but perhaps even a positive encouragement, for those who love our own national Establishment, and see in it, as Mr. Disraeli says, "the chief means of our civilization, and the only security for our religious liberty." Dr. Stanley lays down as the only essential conditions of an established Church (1) that the State should recognize and support "some religious expression of the community;" (2) that "this religious expression should be controlled and guided by the State." Now it is obvious that the second of these conditions applies to the present Established Church of Ireland, while the first does not; moreover, that if we had estab- lished Roman Catholicism according to Lord Russell's suggestion, — which we, too, have always regarded favourably, had the condition of Roman Catholic opinion itself been well disposed,—then, though the first of Dr. Stanley's conditions for an established Church would have been fulfilled, the second would have been impossible. In other words, by far the greatest element in the British nation being Protestant, it is possible for the State, for Parliament, to

regulate a Protestant establishment, but it is not possible to make any Protestant religion a "religious expression" of the mind of a Catholic community. On the other hand, if we were to establish Roman Catholicism in Ireland, the religion so estab- lished would be the expression of the mind of the com- munity ;—but then it would not be any longer possible for the State "to control and guide" that expression, since the Roman Catholics would not accept as a true expression of their religious convictions any religion the form of which was in any degree so controlled or guided. In any case, therefore,

the chief advantages of an established religion are inapplicable to our government of Ireland. If we retain the advantage of State control and regulation, we sacrifice the most essential of all essential conditions, that the religion itself should express the spiritual faith of the community ; if we satisfy this most essential of all essential conditions, we sacrifice the greatest of all incidental advantages, the State control over the Ecclesiastical Government. Only a Catholic State can, with any adequate advantage, establish the Catholic religion ; for, as the Dean very powerfully shows, the chief advantage of State control lies in this,—that the State is in reality the Church itself organized in its most complete form,—the Church in which the laity are the vast majority, and the clergy the mere leaders, so far as they have the power to be leaders, of the lay masses. And where the Church and people are both Protestant, or the Church and people both Roman Catholic, this is undoubtedly true, and a very important truth, —but it necessarily fails to be true where the vast majority of the people who constitute the State are mainly of one cast of faith, and the religion established by the State is of a widely different cast. This will be seen in a moment, if we quote the admirable passage in which Dr. Stanley defends the rule of the State as the truest form of ecclesiastical self-government. "How," asks the Dean, "how can the real voice and mind of the Church be arrived at?" We give a portion of the answer :—

" Not by what is called the lay element in Church synods. The lay- men who, as a general rule, figure in such assemblies do not represent the true lay mind of the country. They are often excellent men, given to good works, but they are also usually the partizans of some special clerical school ; they are, in short, clergymen under another form rather than the real laity themselves. Where and how, then, can the true voice of the laity be found for the Church V Surely in the same manner as it is found in other spheres. Whatever is the motive guiding force that rules the intelligence and the conscience of the whole country, by whatever means that force is called forth, that lathe lay element which in our age corresponds to the early Assembly of the Christian Church. And this, in its highest form, is what we call the Government or the State. It is no disparagement to the clergy, because, drawinginto itself * An Address on the Connection of Church and Stale. Delivered at Sion College on February 15, 1868, By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westraltuder. London: Macmillan.

the essence of the whole community, it includes the clergy as well an the laity. Like everything human, the State is essentially imperfect ; but it is not more imperfect than the purely clerical governments. No. Princes of secular States have led more abandoned lives than some of the Roman Pontiffs; no Parliaments have, except in the wild times of revo- lution, committed more unchristian acts than those perpetrated by the

Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Constance The supremacy of the Crown, that is, of the law, over all causes, and over alt persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil, is the supremacy of the whole nation over its own concerns, spiritual as well as temporal. It is no encroachment on that which does not belong to it. It is the direct. expression of the laity and the clergy, through the best organs which the experience and wisdom of a thousand years have been able to con- trive, on matters which touch them more immediately than any other- interests in the world. Cultivate independence, repress servility, cheek centralization, reform the representation, amend the division of labour in its different departments, elevate the press, purify public opinion ;.but it is by improving these, not by creating new institutions drawn fvom small sections of other communities, that you will ever get a tam government for the Church of this great nation."

Now, it is obvious at once that though this is quite true, and profoundly true of a Protestant people governing a Protestant Church, or of a Catholic people governing a Catholic Church,

it is by no means true of a people chiefly Protestant governing a Church wholly Catholic, or vice versa. It follows, therefore, that,

the greatest of all advantages of a State Church would not apply to a Catholic establishment in Ireland, for it could not properly be in any degree controlled by the only State there is,—a State

chiefly Protestant. Still less does the present Establishment answer the Dean's conditions, as it is in no sense an expression ok the religious feeling of the Irish community.

Admirably does the Dean expose the false and hollow notion, that the spiritual kingdom of Christ can be separated from the temporal life of man, and can be safely ruled by a distinct class of authorities from those which rule that temporal life. It is quite true, no doubt, that as a Protestant State we may fairly satisfy the demands of our Catholic fellow subjects in Ireland, but

even so, only on the same principle on which we rule India, by a. very considerable concession to their views of life and duty, on the

statesmanlike principle that a people in a wholly different phase of intellectual and moral development,—whether higher or lower, of coarse, would be differently decided by Catholic or Protestant

thinkers,—are only injured, not benefited by being forced to con- form even to a higher conception than their own, if they them- selves do not so deem it. But then if we grant as much as this with regard to Ireland,—and no statesman can help doing so,— we give up entirely and ipso facto the Dean's doctrine that.

the Church and State for Ireland are one. For the State does not, in this case, impose its own conceptions of moral and social and religious life on Ireland ; but, on the contrary, intentionally and conscientiously adapts itself to the best Irish Catholic standards of life and duty ; in other words, surrenders altogether the attempt, to which it feels itself unfit, to interpret by its own conscience the conscience of our Irish fellow subjects. In the sense, then, in which the State is the best exponent of the Church, the State of the United Kingdom

is not the best exponent, and confesses that it is not, of the Irish Catholic Church. The Irish Catholics, therefore, are our fellow

subjects in a sense intermediate between that in which the Parsees or Mahometans of India are our fellow subjects, and the sense in which Scotch Puritans and English Dissenters are our fellow sub- jects. For we attempt to govern the former by their own con-

science, —not taking our conscience as the best means of interpret- ing theirs,—the latter, on the contrary, we consider as practically

so completely at one with us on all the deeper ethical and spiritual assumptions, that we regard Parliament as practically interpreting their moral and spiritual faith on all matters except those of sectarian theology. For these, therefore, even though Dissenters, the State does in some respects do the duty of a Church, except on matters of technical theology. But the Irish Catholics are in an inter- mediate position. There are points on which Catholicism and Protestantism approach each other nearly enough for legislation even of a delicate moral nature to proceed from the same prin- ciples. Yet there are many others on which we must, if we would govern Ireland justly, go by Catholic consciences, not by Protes- tank—and here, therefore, the United Kingdom must not so much

govern Ireland, as try to rule her as she would, if not a part of the United Kingdom, rule herself,—try to rule her more as we rule a dependency of different faith, less as we rule a constituent element of our own society.

It will be seen that the Dean practically admits the mass of the English and Scotch and Welsh Nonconformists into the body of what he calls the National Church,—i.e., the State which ought to control the Establishment. Of course he does not hold that the , theological faith of the Church should be rendered a mere blank in order to cover all the differences of theological opinion in the State. He assumes, as he may well do, that even those parts of the nation which have too wide or too narrow, too big or too little a faith themselves, to join the worship of the Church, will prefer that that worship should still be something definite and concrete, or else it would not be in any degree "a religious expression " of the mass of the community. Still, the Dean justly thinks that the Church establishment should be as comprehensive as possible,— how comprehensive he himself thus shows :—

"And I would here venture to suggest one particular remedy which would be at once practicable and efficient. Reunion, absorption, inter- communion, or the like, may be desirable or not. These must be the end, and not the beginning, of close approximation. But larger com- munity of preaching—the permission to our Nonconforming brethren of England, and our Presbyterian brethren of the Scottish Church, to preach in our pulpits, under whatever restrictions they or we might desire— would be an unmixed good. It would be but giving to Nonepiscopalians what we have, within the last few years, granted to the Episcopalian Nonconformists of America and Scotland. It would be but restoring to Presbyterians the sympathy and the rights which they enjoyed in the Church of England during the first hundred years after the Reformation. It is all but legal, if it is not altogether legal now. This would indeed be an endeavour to make the Church really national ; to draw the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers ; to atone for the injuries, to heal the bitterness, and to repair the lost opportuni- ties, of the past."

With this noble and liberal language we altogether concur,— adding only this condition, that a State Church to be an effective expression of the conscience of the State, cannot afford to merge all the depth and character of its worship in mere width and exten- sion. If it is to be a worship at all capable of civilizing the waste places of society, and representing the divine compassion for sin and sorrow,—it must be a faith with a central Christ, an incarnate love, an illumined cross. There is no Christianity without Christ ; and there can be no State religion so wide as to include at once those to whom Christ is the light of the world, and those to whom Christ is the representative figure of a Semitic superstition.

There is wit as well as wisdom and beauty in Dr. Stanley's address, which should induce all our readers to obtain it for themselves. His discussion of the Erastianism of St. Paul and the first Christian Church, and the important illustrations of his subject taken from that able and thoughtful book, Mr. Taylor Innes's Law of Creeds in Scotland, are parts of his address to which we can only earnestly draw the attention of our readers.