THE DEBATE ON THEOLOGICAL TESTS.
NO reasonable man can- help seeing that there are two sides to the debate on theological tests, though one side may have, and we think has, more to say for itself than the other. if instead of talking about theological tests, concerning which there is a sort of passion in the air, we were to ask ourselves what we should do if it were proposed in all our Colleges to have a chair of what we -might call dogmatic politics, in which our children should be taught what they ought to believe in relation to the great party questions of the day, we should realise better how difficult the question is. How would a Liberal,— say, a hearty Gladstonian,—like to have his son taught to despise democratic politics and to abhor the policy of separate sectional self-control for parts of a great political whole ? How would a good Conservative like to have his son taught that State Churches are a gross in- justice, and that no man can attach the true value to truth who is prepared to let the State administer a reward such as Establishments are supposed to provide for the adhesion to one form of theology rather than another ? If both Liberal and Conservative would feel such a condition of things an outrage, and would vehemently cry out that no son or daughter of his should be indoctrinated by political teachers whom he held to be utterly in the wrong, we can see at once what difficulty there must be in the minds of earnest believers, or, for that matter, earnest unbelievers too, in having teachers of theology provided for their children who might sedulously assail in their children's minds all the convictions which their parents had carefully implanted there. And if that is not to happen, what guarantee can be taken against it which would not in some form or other involve a security that the teacher in question should practi- cally support the same conclusion as that which the parent dictated? That, however, is a theological test, and is, -of course, inconsistent with the attitude of a mind which is simply bent on looking for truth, and is not bound to look more earnestly for it in one direction than in any other. Of course, the analogy with pure science which Professor Huxley is always urging, is a very im- perfect one. In all controversies in which a bias of the will is involved,—and must be involved,—in which at bottom every man has to choose between one type of loyalty and another type of loyalty,—and this is certainly the case in the region both of political and of religious faith,—quite as much must depend on the moral ideal which the mind accepts, as on the mere evidence of fact. It is not a question of pure science whether a man shall place greater trust in the impulsive and frequently, we may hope, unselfish, though frequently also rash instinct of the people at large, than he shall place in the carefully trained but too timid, and perhaps even cowardly judgment of the professional classes. It is not a question of .pure science whether a man shall place more trust in the self-condemning judgments of his own conscience and the horror of sin which he finds implanted in him, than in the arguments which go to show that every state of mind is that which its antecedents have made it, and that there is no more real respon- sibility for the fall of the will than there is for the fall of the leaf. In all these matters there is an element of volun- tary choice involved which perplexes the whole question, and separates the region of pure science by a very broad gulf from those mixed sciences in which the conclusion drawn depends more or less on the bias of the moral nature, whether in the region of politics or in that of religion. It seems to us impossible that parents should not wish, and should not rightly wish, to have what they think the reasons for their own deepest convictions so stated to their children as to give them the best chance of securing the adhesion of their children ; and yet it is not easy to admit that any security can be taken that this shall be so, without involving all the mischiefs which undoubtedly have followed the imposition of political or theological tests • on those who are engaged in the investigation of this class of subjects. It seems to us very undesirable that a serious student of any subject should be told beforehand what conclusion he is to arrive at. And, again, it seems to us very undesirable that the parents of any class of students should be exposed to the danger of having their children deliberately submitted to a class of influences which they believe to be misleading and dangerous, and likely to distort their moral natures. It is perfectly true that most of those who are deliberately Christian would hesitate greatly to send their sons to M. Renan's lectures on Hebrew literature. And it is also perfectly true that to exact from a teacher a pledge that he shall resign, so soon as he finds his mind moving in the direction of M. Renan's conclusions, is a great evil which tends to embarrass his studies, and even to make him, if he is a conscientious man, over- scrupulous and disposed to attach more importance than he ought to M. Renan's sceptical arguments.
On the whole, we are disposed to think that the best way out of the difficulty would have been to abolish tests altogether, not only as the Scotch Universities Bill does abolish them, for all the secular chairs,—in which it is quite unnecessary to suppose that a judicious Professor will seek to undermine the theological faith of his pupils,— but also in relation to the theological chairs ; but at the same time, to give every facility for the appoint- ment of the Professor by the class of persons who will best know what the Scotch parents . believe, and. what would tend to undermine their confidence in the Professor. That this will operate as an indirect test, we are perfectly well aware. But we do not agree with those who say that an indirect test is worse than an ex- plicit one. At all events, it is much less injurious to the teacher himself. He will be chosen, no doubt, in the Scotch Universities, because he is a convinced Presbyterian, and not either an Anglo-Catholic or a Congregationalist ; and that implies that' he will be chosen because be believes a certain creed and rejects other creeds. Still, be has himself adopted his own creed, and the fact that he has a creed of his own is no encroachment on his liberty, and does not humiliate him as a deliberate pledge to adhere always to that creed would humiliate him. And if, after satisfying those who know what Scotch parents will wish for in the teacher of their sons, the teacher so chosen should "fall away," as the phrase goes, from the faith of his earlier days, and lose the confidence of the parents, we see no remedy for it that would not do more harm than good. No doubt it would be well that a considerable part of his remuneration should always depend on the number of his pupils, so that he may have but little .temptation to stay in an office where his pupils are very few. But we see no mode of applying any further security which would not be sure to fail. We all know how willingly in our English Universities men accept tests in a non-natural sense, and how much mischief that taking of false pledges,—for false it is so to take them,— has clone. Nor is it much less mischievous if the test is applied to a scrupulous man, and pushes him perhaps to conclusions which he would never have reached had it not been for a morbid feeling that as he will suffer by accepting them, he is too likely to underrate the intellec- tual reasons whicli tell in their favour. So far as we can see, tests have done a great deal. more harm than good, though we fully understand why they have been applied, and are perfectly aware that they seem to be the only guarantees we can apply against a kind of teaching which would either empty the lecture-room, or fill it with young people who would be in conflict with their parents on some of the most important questions of life. The issue seems to us •a very difficult one, far more difficult than either side admitted in Tuesday's debate. But while we heartily admit that it is far from desirable to establish chairs for teaching young people religious doctrines of the whole drift of which their parents are likely to disapprove, we hold that there will be compara- tively little danger of that result, if the patronage of the professorships is placed in the hands of discreet men who desire to see the teaching a success ; and we are deeply impressed with the mischief and hollowness which have resulted from the free use of dogmatic teats as a security against any teaching of which parents would be likely to disapprove.
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