MR. GLADSTONE ON UNDENOMINATIONAL RELIGION, M R. GLADSTONE has written a
very interesting paper in the Nineteenth Century, which is hardly, however, in the main, one on "heresy and schism." Its chief drift is to maintain, or rather perhaps to suggest, that the breaking-up of modern Christianity into hundreds of frag- ments is by no means the great calamity which it must have been if it had occurred at an early stage in the history of the Church, and indeed that it is compensated by one groat advantage,—namely, the evidence which has been afforded by the concurrence of almost all the sects,—while bitterly opposed to each other,—in the two great mysteries of the Christian faith,—the Trinity and the Incarnation. If we understand him rightly, he thinks the forms of Church government on which Episcopalians and non-Episcopalians differ so profoundly, matters of very secondary importance, and rather the scaffolding, without which the faith of the Gospel could never have been firmly established, than an essential part of the structure itself. Even the Sacraments, —on the importance and underlying principles of which Christians who agree in these great and mysterious truths differ fundamentally,—he regards as of very secondary moment to the doctrinal kernel of the Gospel ; and so long as undenominational Christianity means Christianity that retains its grasp firmly on the Trinity and the Incarnation, he is disposed to esteem that partly undenominational creed common to Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Inde- pendents, Baptists, and the rest, as quite sufficient for salva- tion, and even perhaps,—but here we are interpreting rather the spirit than the letter of his language,—better than any- thing like strict sectarian teaching. It must always be understood, however, that unsectarianisra or undenomimt- tionalism does not mean, in Mr. Gladstone's mind, a loose hold on the two great doctrines we have named, without which he conceives that the Gospel itself loses its mystery and trans- forming power.
We hold, then that Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Stopford Brooke's interpretations of undenominational Christian teach- ing are vitally and essentially different. Mr. Stopford Brooke, whose violent tirade against dogmatism of any kind last Sunday, is by far the most narrowly dogmatic piece of invec- tive we have read for a long time, considers all definite doctrine, we are not even quite sure that he would except Theism itself as being part and parcel of spiritual Christianity, though we conclude that even his liberalism would hardly accept as Christianity any religion without God,-013 anathema mare- naths, a violation of charity which is worse than indifference to truth. Mr. Gladstone holds that nothing can contain the essence of the Christian Gospel which does not take its stand on the doctrines established in the first four centuries of the Church's existence, and claims the concurrence of the Latin and the Greek Church, of Anglicanism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and all the various creeds of orthodox dissent, in these two great doctrines, as something more than a compen- sation for that bewildering division of Christendom which he admits to be in strange contrast to the unity of the Church as it was in the days of the Apostles, and even for more than two hundred years after them. The following passage con- tains, as we understand it, the essence of Mr. Gladstone's 'view " do not know on earth a more blessed subject of contemplation than that which I should describe as follows. There are it may be, upon earth four hundred and fifty millions of professing Christians. There is no longer one fold under one visible shepherd : and the majority of Christians (such I take it now to be, though the minority is a large one) is content with its one shepherd in heaven, and with the other provisions He has made on earth. His flock is broken up into scores, it may be hundreds, of sections. These sections are not at peace but at war. Nowhere are they too loving to one another, for the most part love is hardly visible among them. Each makes it a point to understand his neighbours not in the best sense, but in the worst : and the thunder of anathema is in the air. But they all profess the Gospel. And what is the Gospel P In the old-fashioned mind and language of the Church, it is expressed as to its central truths in very few and brief words ; it lies in those doctrines of the Trinity, and the Incarnation of Christ, which it cost the Christian flock in their four first cen- turies such tears, such prayers, such questionings, such struggles, to establish. Since those early centuries men have multiplied upon the earth. Disintegration within the Church, which was an. accident or an exception, has become a rule : a final, solid, and it- exorable fact, sustained by opinion, law, tendency, and the usage of many generations. But with all this segregation, and not only division but conflict of minds and interests, the answer givEn by the four hundred and fifty millions, or by those who were best entitled to speak for them, to the question what is the Gospel, is still the same. With exceptions so slight, that we may justly set them out of the reckoning, the reply is still the same as it was in the Apostolic ago, the central truth of the Gospel lies in the Trinity and the Incarnation, in the God that made us, and the Saviour that redeemed us. When I consider what human nature and human history have been, and how feeble is the spirit in its warfare with the flesh, I bow my head in amazement before this mighty moral miracle, this marvellous concurrence evolved from the very heart of discord."
This is the undenominational Christianity, to the teaching of which, in Mr. Gladstone's opinion, even Roman Catholics or Anglican Episcopalians might not unjustly be expected to submit their children, as containing all that is most important in Christian teaching. We cannot agree with Mr. Gladstone that this would really be otherwise than a most unreasonable expectation from any Church that regards its sacramental and ecclesiastical doctrine as of the very essence of Christianity ; but none the less it is evident that Mr. Gladstone must agree rather with the majority than with the minority of the London School Board, in relation to the great controversy of the moment. The majority have never contended for the inclusion of any sacramental or ecclesiastical doctrine as part and parcel of the proper Christian teaching of Board- schools. They have insisted upon nothing but the inclusion of Trinitarian doctrine, especially singling out the Incar- nation, as of the essence of the Christian creed ; and their antagonists, though many of them are themselves convinced Trinitarians, have opposed a most vehement and almost frantic resistance to this conception of undenominational teaching. Mr. Gladstone, however, rests his whole case on the assumption that even "undenominational religion" must be taken to in- clude these great central mysteries of the Christian faith in which all Churches, "with exceptions so slight that we may justly set them out of the reckoning," agree. Nothing can be clearer than that Mr. Gladstone would set Arians and Unita- rians "out of the reckoning," leaving them to claim the pro- tection of the conscience-clause, and to absent themselves from teaching with the very essence of which they differ. But that is not what the minority on the School Board understand by "undenominational religion." Mr. Gladstone's paper would be simply full of self-contradictions, if he does not agree with the Chairman of the School Board and with Mr. Athelstan Riley, as to what, for the purposes of School Board instruc- tion, "undenominational religion" should mean.
But when we come to the question how far it is safe to accept Mr. Gladstone's opinion that the concurrence of nine- tenths of the numerous Christian Churches and sects in the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation may be regarded as securing these doctrines against the insidious attacks of modern scepticism, it would be absurd not to take into account the new tendency of nominally orthodox Churches and sects to treat these doctrines as properly denominational, and to refuse to consider them as essential to Christianity. That is just the way in which doctrine leaks out of a Church, being regarded first as true but not essential, and afterwards as not even true. The value of the supposed compensation for the divided state of Christendom, on which Mr. Gladstone insists, depends entirely on the firmness and confidence of belief in the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation with which the multitude of nominally orthodox Churches hold these doctrines. Our own impression is that there is a very much greater decline in that firmness and confidence, on the part of most of the Protestant Churches at all events, than there is in the number of those who would accept them, or think that they accepted them. When we find clergymen and. ministers of orthodox Churches professing their belief in these doctrines, and yet their perfectveillingness to entrust childrento the care of Christian teachers who ignore them, we cannot help thinking that they stand in a very different position towards these doctrines from that in which the Christian teachers of the same Churches in the last generation stood towards them. We should expect to find a very large proportion of those who still hold these doctrines, holding them doubtfully, and quite as deeply conscious of the difficulties involved in them as of the considerations by which these difficulties are, in their own minds, overcome,—to find them, in a word, reduced to the condition in which they would rather be esteemed sorry to deny these doctrines, than willing to assert them with hearty and en- thusiastic belief. If this be so, as we believe it is, we cannot regard Mr. Gladstone's thankfulness for the wonderful testi- mony to the truth of these doctrines, which the concurrence of such a vast number of Christian Churches affords, as a very safe subject of congratulation. Is that concurrence one of stable or of unstable equilibrium P If of the latter, is it not likely enough that the consensus, on which Mr. Gladstone relies for replacing the authority of the early Church, will prove only a temporary phenomenon, and that we shall have even these orthodox Churches undermined before long by a half-conscious half-unconscious agnosticism, under the influence of which the practical effectiveness of their creed will soon crumble away ?
Previous page
