THE CHURCH CONGRESS ON THE STATE.
THE Church Congress at Norwich take, as might be expected, a very humble view of the functions of the State in connec- tion with the Church. Sir R. Phillimore says " the real diffi- culty in connection with the relations of the Church with the State arose when questions of temporal property had to be con- eldered, and this was as old as the days of Constantine." We need not say that this view seems to have been accepted as a matter of course by the Congress at large. Even Archdeacon Denison, who in his Church and State Review is very anxious to assume higher ground for the connection between Church and State, is unable to look upon the State as anything but the physical body of the Church, and teaches us solemnly that, as a disembodied spirit cannot communicate with men except through the physical organs of mouth, and hands, and ears, and eyes, so also, even the most perfectly spiritual Church cannot communicate with mankind without the physical medium of State powers and authority—whence it appears, if the Archdeacon's reasoning is true, that Truth needs force for its organ—which we should have called rather a low view. We must say, if Sir R. Phillimore and his friends are right, that the State is called into relation with the Church only by the necessity of settling the claims connected with temporal pro- perty,—or if Archdeacon Denison's view is correct, that Truth needs the swords and staves of physical authority to disseminate it, we should think our ' Liberation Society' friends had much the best of the argument. The facts, however, of history are at issue with both Sir R. Philli- more and Archdeacon Denison. It is far from being true that the State's earliest connection with" the Church was connected with questions of property. Unquestionably Con- stantine's first interferences with the Church after he became a Christian, were precisely of the same kind with his inter- ferences with both Catholic and Pagan religious before he became a Christian. The protection he early extended to the Christians of Gaul was given not in the interest of any pro- prietary rights, but in the interests of so-called 'secular' justice —and the first great effort he made after he was a declared Christian to bring the different sections of Chris- tians to an understanding, was, again, not made in the interests of any proprietary claims, but of secular catholicity and justice. Constantine'a edict of universal toleration was the most characteristic interference of the State power in the affairs of the Church, and well would it have been for the world if the State had always controlled the Church by its clearer sentiment of justice, and its stronger insight into the influence of character upon belief, as Constantine, with the imperial traditions in his mind, was disposed to control it! The truth seems to us so plain that we are simply amazed at the blindness of Churchmen to the greatest privilege of a State Church,—which we conceive to be the privilege, not of endowment, but of alliance with a spiritual power no less in- herent in a good State than is the spiritual power of dis- cerning and spreading truth in a good Church,—namely, the power of self-command, which deals out equal justice to intellectual antagonists, and regards the law as pro- tecting the rights even of falsehood and of error. All history has shown that a "Free Church," so called,— in other words, a church which has but one end, the dissemination of truth,—becomes very soon a hindrance to the discovery of truth and to the attainment of the highest of all the intellectual virtues, pure intellectual sincerity. The episcopal government of a Church separated from the State, as is that of the Roman Church, is the most powerful exist- ing organization for intellectual and moral despotism, and could scarcely have failed to become so. The popular government of a Church separated from the State, is the most powerful existing organization for an intellectual democracy,—a form of oppression which on intellectual matters is just a shade worse and more oppressive than an intellectual despotism. The great vice of all " free " churches's that they have no freedom. Indeed, the use of the
word implies this. For " free" in connection with a church always means free of all restraints on the power of enforcing rigid intellectual consistency, free of all that moderating influence which prevents the bitterest construction of formulas and creeds, free of that habit of regarding liberty as the rule, and restriction as the point requiring evidence and proof, which is the normal habit of free men's minds in all depart- ments of thought except the ecclesiastical.
We are not casting up this difficulty in doing justice and conceding liberty, which all free' churches, including alike the Roman and the Presbyterian, clearly feel, as any discredit to these Churches. On the contrary, we believe no man who holds truth eagerly, and has given half his life to medi- tating upon it, can or ought to be—such is the limitation of our nature—devoid of habits of mind unfavourable to perfect justice and perfect liberty. There is work for the thoroughly convinced man who has devoted himself to the cause of Truth, which could not be done perhaps equally well by any one who had more power of sounding the depths of the outlying doubt. But we do say that the State,—with those habits of mind with regard to justice and the rights of others' con- sciences which it is no credit to it to have acquired, any more than it is a credit to the Church to have acquired special habits of mind with regard to truth and its absolute divine unity— lends to a Church with which it allies itself an indispensable moral and spiritual aid, not merely temporal aid or what is called the ' arm of the law." It is a distinct spiritual gain to the character of the Church to be obliged to lean on the State, and this for exactly the same reason for which it is a distinct gain to believers of all classes, that half their habits of mind are moulded by secular duties and pleasures which are falsely supposed not to be spiritual. But unfortunately this last is not enough check on the engrossing fascination of dogmatic zeal. A true dogmatist will far more easily forget the impression of life's general lessons when he has to inculcate dogmas, than he will be likely to forget his dogmas in dealing with the general purposes of life. A Church without the State in- variably loses breadth, and, with it, intellectual freedom. The only denomination in England which even professes to give its religious teachers anything like the breadth of the National Church is the Unitarian, and its breadth is all in the sceptical direction. Notwithstanding their professed liberality, no Unitarian Church would allow its pastor to pro- fess his belief in the Incarnation for three months without dismissing him. No doubt there are Unitarians truly liberal enough to do so, but probably no group .of Unitarians large enough to form a congregation. The long and short of the matter is that the province of a church, as a church, is to disseminate a faith, and the habit of doing this is seldom favourable to those deeper conceptions of equity which oblige men to respect the exercise of their neighbours' liberty, and to profit by it in using their own. It is of course equally true that the State, qud State, is indifferent, and, like Gallio, " cares for none of these things." And which of the two faults cuts deeper into the spiritual nature we do not know. But we are sure that an alliance between the engrossing and enthusiastic spirit of faith and the balancing, distributive spirit of justice produces a far more humane and lasting institution than can ever spring from what are falsely called " free " churches. No doubt an established church will have less enthusiasm, less even of the characteristic good of enthusiasm, than the "purely" spiritual organizations. You cannot combine the judicial with the disseminating habit of intellect without in nine cases out of ten diminishing the force and verve of the latter. But then it will also have less of that intolerance which is the cha- racteristic vice of enthusiasm, and indeed, in an, but very large characters, almost inseparable from it. The Church Congress talks as if the Church had all the spiritual gifts, and the State none but the physical ones. We believe it to be wholly false, and that the Church stands quite as deeply in need of the spirit of equity embodied in a good State, as does the State of the spirit of Truth embodied in a good Church.
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