THE INHERENT DIFFICULTIES OF VOLUNTARYISM. T HE tendency—though, of course, there
are exceptions —of most lay Churchmen who discuss the Church in public, is to speak of its faults, to urge it to be less devoted to form, or to point out that it has never yet con- quered the masses of the people. The tendency of lay Dissenters, on the other hand, when discussing Dissent, is to point out the merits and services of Nonconformity, and to urge their audiences to regard their ecclesiastical system, if not as divine, at least as super-excellent. The tendency in each case has its origin in history, the earnest Churchman always fearing lest the Establishment should grow sluggish in its security, and dreading lest words of approval should sound in the popular ear like words of triumph ; while the Dissenter, in his own mind, is always pleading against the strong, and therefore specially puts forward his claims to popular toleration and regard. Nothing, our history being regarded, can be more natural, but we confess we sometimes wish that now that circum- stances are so changed, that the Church is on the defensive and Nonconformity is no longer oppressed, the tone of lay speaking on the Churches would change a little too. The rain of depreciative criticism from within impairs the courage of the Church ; the shower of laudation prevents discussion on the evils inherent in the special methods of Nonconformity. Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, on Wednesday, in his speech at Birmingham, dwelt strongly on the services English Dissent has rendered to the cause of political freedom ; and, indeed, if Unitarians are to be included among Dissenters instead of among heretics, to freedom of thought in every direction. That is perfectly just, though the devotion of Nonconformists to freedom was not conspicuous in their temporary dominance during the Great Rebellion, or in the early history of the American Colonies, but we wish he had added a word on the draw- backs with which that passion for freedom has been accompanied. Three, at least, of those drawbacks are serious in the eyes of many of the best Nonconformists themselves ; and believing as we do that Dissent has, among other good work, acted on the Church as a powerful anti- septic, we wish we saw a little more anxiety to discuss and to mitigate their evils.
The first of these drawbacks, in our eyes incomparably the most important, is the relation of the Nonconformist clergy to their flocks. The teachers are, as a body, kept too dependant on the taught. It is an essential idea of English Dissent—which naturally, in asserting the value of ecclesiastical freedom, chose the method already familiar in politics—that its spiritual teachers should be elective, should be chosen by those who are to learn from them, should be paid by them, and should be dismissable by them at their will. There are modifications in theory in particular churches, especially as to the right of dismissal, and, of course, in practice it is rather the influential members—which too often means the rich members— who appoint and remove ; but Dissent is, as a whole, ecclesiastically democratic, and the unpopular minister
cannot live. We entirely admit the incidental occasional
advantage of that system, the friendship and community of thought and feeling between teacher and taught, the quick comprehension, the solidarite, in short, which it often produces in the life of a congregation ; but it is impossible that it should be a sound method. It must often be the first duty of a religious teacher to be un- popular, to offend his audience as. Christ offended the Pharisees, to denounce the very practices whereby they live, to preach ideas because he believes them, which stir up his hearers to intellectual wrath. It cannot be either wise or right to prohibit this duty from being done under penalty of dismissal, to compel the teacher to remain permanently on the level of the taught, to make of the preacher the delegate not of any one or any thing supernatural, but of a group of ordinary persons not always too anxious for spiritual advance. It cannot be even expedient,-from the point of view of sincere believers, to make it impossible for preachers in the Southern States to condemn slavery, or in East London to dwell on the Christian teaching about contract, or in most of the Churches of England and America to state franklywhat they think of the popular theory of inspira- tion. The Established clergy, it may be, tend to become a caste, but the voluntary clergy tend to become delegates; and the latter is, if the Churches hope for spiritual ha- provement, at least as grave a drawback to efficiency, perhaps even a graver one, because it is the practice of English Nonconformity to attach such weight to the sermon,—that is, to the preacher's spoken thought. We are quite aware that in practice this evil is greatly modified by the instinctive English respect for the independent mind, and for the man who has an opinion ; but is there a Nonconformist Minister of eminence who will deny that it limits the teaching, that it fetters the teachers, that it dwarfs, or paralyses, or weights the intellectual aspira- tion of the entire order ? We cannot even conceive how it can be otherwise, or how, human nature being what it is, a dependent preacher can help shaping his discourse, as a popular candidate shapes his dis- course, by the impression it makes upon his audience. The effect is bad enough in politics, though in that region a man may conceivably regard it as his duty to be mouthpiece, and so remain honest ; but in religion that never can occur. The teacher is the mouthpiece, or wishes to be the mouthpiece of the original revealer, and in sub- stituting the thoughts of his hearers, or thoughts pleasant to his hearers, must feel a certain degradation and sense of slavery. That evil, always limiting the advance of the Churches, springs directly from those Churches' devotion to what they think freedom ; it is capable, if not of cure, at least of mitigation—it is mitigated in a rough way in Presbyterian churches—but in speeches on Nonconformity it is rarely so much as -pointed out. Everybody outside the Establishment descants on the good inherent in Voluntaryism, which we, for our part, cordially acknow- ledge ; but no one lifts a finger to remove the great evil by which that good is adulterated. It is a slighter evil, perhaps, though a definite one, that under the voluntary system ability in teaching tends always towards those fields where it is least wanted. The strongest congregations draw irresistibly the ablest men, and the weakest are left to the teaching of the weak.. That, though it occurs, we quite admit, within the Estab- lishment also, seems a terrible waste of power, and the only remedy as yet applied—the internal missionary organisation—is, curiously enough, the negation of the voluntary system, as understood in England. The State does not, indeed, pay the missionary or the " deputed " teacher; but of all human beings, the man, white or dark, who is taught by a missionary, has least of a vote in choosing him. He did not appoint him and cannot remove him. That teacher, often the most effec- tive of all, comes from the outside as completely as if he had been nominated by a patron and inducted by a Bishop. Indeed, any territorial system—any system, that is, in which the teacher holds himself bound to all within his reach—is fatal to perfect voluntaryism, for only the con- gregation which pays can possibly elect, and outsiders must accept what they get as implicitly as if they were labourers in a Dorsetshire pariah. If Nonconformist churches stood alone in England to-morrow, the majority of the population would still be in the position of Church- men, compelled to go without religious aid or take it from those whom they did not elect and could not remove. That is not, perhaps, a very grave evil, for a land might be covered with an unpaid pastorate elected by congrega- tions too poor to maintain them, without any spiritual suffering, and indeed many excellent country churches are so served, but we cannot believe that the wiser Nonconformists are blind to the loss as well as the gain involved in the segregation of their churches. That segregation has its own advantages, but it in- volves also losses, grave losses, which are scarcely ever admitted. Apart altogether from the great ecclesiastical question of the value of an unbroken " Church," applicable in theory at all events to all mankind, if a con- gregation is good, so must a collection of congregations be good, if only to secure a proper distribution of evangelising strength. If it is good, as Nonconformists say, that the minister should feel the pressure of opinion from his congregation, it must be good also that he should feel it from his fellow-ministers, with whom he must have at least professional sympathy. We cannot see a reason for a Parliament which is not also a reason for a Synod, and there is nothing in a Synod contrary either to the ideas of Geneva taken broadly, or to the ideas of English Non- conformity. Synodal union is mere organisation to prevent loss of power, and the aberrations of individualism, and one would fancy would, with men trained like English Dissenters, be almost instinctively popular. Yet we fail, it may be from ignorance, to discern any tendency in the non-Established Churches towards less isolation. If we understand the Methodist reformers, they wish to relax rather than strengthen the strictness of their organisation, and tend to bestow on the congregations power at the expense of the Legal Hundred. Outside Methodism the " unions " certainly do not grow stronger, while of plans for fusion, or even federation, we do not hear a word. Surely it must 1* some drawback to the desire for freedom of which Mr. Chamberlain boasts, and boasts from many points of -view with reason, that it so strongly resists the organisation which in every other department of life is found to be so valuable and so needed. Is it a merit in dust that you cannot make bricks of it, or is it a defect ? We will not answer the question ; but some one, when praising English Voluntaryism for the great results it has accomplished, should at least allude to the risks inherent in the system, its tendency to make the teachers of religion dependent upon popular suffrage, its tendency to the neglect of the unconverted classes of the community, and its tendency to fling away great means alike of influence and of culture for the sake of a needless segregation.
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