The Kernel and the Husk/Can a believer in Natural Christianity be a Minister in the Church of England?
APPENDIX
XXX
My dear ——,
Excuse my delay in answering your letter of last month. The fact is I have not so much leisure as I had. I was glad indeed to hear from you (last Christmas, I think) that you could not so lightly put away the worship and service of Christ as you had felt disposed, or compelled to do, some eighteen months before; that the question appeared to you now a deeper one than you had then supposed, not to be decided by mere historical evidence but, to some extent, by the experience of life; and that you were inclined at least so far to take my advice as to wait a while, to stand in the old ways, and to adhere—so far as you honestly could—to old religious habits, including the habit of prayer and attendance at public worship. This was as much as I could reasonably hope. I could not expect that a few letters from one who is quite conscious that he does not possess the strange and sometimes instantaneous influence exerted by a strong religious character, would do all that will, I trust, be done for you by patience, by a prayerful and laborious life devoted to good objects, and by cherishing habits of reverence for the good, and of thoughtfulness for all. I had been in the habit of regularly giving my Sundays, and occasionally some hours on week days, to our theological correspondence: but when I received that announcement from you, I felt that my time might now be devoted to other objects, and I made arrangements accordingly. Hence, when your recent letter reached me, I was not quite at leisure to reply to it immediately. But you pressed me to answer "one last question," which I should rather call two questions (for they are quite distinct, although you combine them so closely as to leave me uncertain whether you recognize the wide difference between them): "Can a man who rejects the miraculous element in the Bible remain a member or a minister in the Church of England?"
Your first question I should answer with an unhesitating affirmative. The Church of England does not require from its lay members any signature of the Articles or any test but a profession of belief in the Creed at the time of baptism, renewed in the Catechism and Confirmation service; and I cannot think that any sincere worshipper of Christ ought so far to take offence at one or two expressions in the Creed—which may be interpreted by him metaphorically, though by others literally—as to separate himself on that account from the national church. Grant that his interpretation may be a little strained, nay, grant even that he is obliged to say "I cannot believe this;" yet I should doubt the necessity, or even wisdom and rightness, of cutting himself off from the Church of England because of one or two clauses in the Creed, as long as he feels himself in general harmony with the Church doctrine and services. There would be no end to schisms, and no possibility of combining for worship, if everyone separated himself from every congregational utterance with which he could not heartily agree in every particular. On this point I find myself obliged to remember for my own sake, and to apply to myself, the advice I once gave a very little child many years ago. We were singing a hymn, and had come to the words:
"Ah me, ah me, that I
In Kedar's tents here stay:
No place like that on high,
Lord, thither guide my way."
"I suppose," said the child (who was young but somewhat old-fashioned in thought and expression), "that these words mean that you want to die, if they mean anything. But I don't want to die. So I don't think I ought to say them." In my own mind I sympathized very much with the objector; but I endeavoured to meet the objection. "Hymns," I said, "are written not for single persons but for congregations. In a whole churchful you will find all sorts of people of different ages and ways of thinking. Some are glad and strong, others sad and weak. Some rejoice in life and look forward eagerly to labour. These are mostly the young; but the older sort are sometimes tired of life and longing for rest. Now when we are singing a hymn we must all do our best, young and old, happy and sad, to enter into one another's feelings, and we must not expect that every word in every hymn will precisely represent our own particular feelings at the moment: the time will perhaps come when the words that now seem meaningless to us will exactly represent our deepest feelings, and we shall wonder how we could have ever failed to feel them; but for the present we must not be disposed always to be asking, 'Do I agree with this? Do I exactly feel that?' Of course if it occurs to you that these or those words are so opposite to what you think, that you would be telling a lie to God in uttering them, why then you must not utter them: but you ought not to suppose that in a church service God exacts from you a rigid account for every word of the congregational utterances in which you take part: if you can heartily join in the greater part of the service, do not be afraid; He accepts your prayers and praises." Many years have passed away since I spoke thus: and, since then, I have found myself often obliged to repeat to myself, for my own guidance, the advice which I then gave to guide another. In a public service one must give and take, and I see no reason at all why a believer in non-miraculous Christianity should not find himself in harmony with the services of the Church of England. His interpretation both of the Bible and of the Prayer-book will be different from that of most of the congregation; but he will accept both the Bible and the Prayer-book as the best books that could be used for their several purposes, and would be sorry to see them replaced by anything that could be devised by himself or by those who think as he does.
So far I can speak confidently; but I am more doubtful as to the answer that should be given to your second question, "Can a believer in non-miraculous Christianity remain a minister in the Church of England?" Looking at the Articles, if I were forced to assume that every one of them is binding on a Church of England minister, I should say that a belief in the miraculous is necessary for every one who can honestly sign an assent to the Article on Christ's Resurrection, which asserts that, "Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature, wherewith He ascended into heaven." These words distinctly declare the Resurrection of Christ's material body; and as I do not believe in the fact, I cannot assent to the words, nor do I see how any believer in non-miraculous Christianity can assent to them.
Perhaps you may think, in your innocence, that this disposes of the question, arguing logically thus: "The Church of England appoints certain Articles as tests of belief for her ministers; A cannot assent to one of these Articles; therefore A has no right to remain a minister: there is no loophole out of this logical statement of the case." There is not: and if the Church of England were governed in accordance with logic, I (and a good many others) ought to have left the ranks of her ministers as soon as we found that we had been forced to reject a single clause of a single Article. But the Church has not been for several generations governed in this logical way. Besides practically and generally allowing among its members a great degree of freedom and latitude, it has enlarged that latitude during the last generation by a specific and authoritative alteration of the terms of subscription to the Articles. When I signed them—which I did, with perfect honesty and sincerity, some three or four and twenty years ago—we were obliged to "assent and consent" to "each and every" Article in each particular: I forget the exact terms, but I know they were as stringent as they well could be. But in 1865 the Clerical Subscription Act introduced a new form:—"I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer.... I believe the doctrine of the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God." Now if "therein" meant "in each and every clause of each and every Article," that would have been tantamount to a mere repetition of the old requirement. Obviously therefore this alteration implies an obligation of the subscriber to assent, no longer to "each and every Article" in particular, but to the Articles as a whole, regarded as an expression of Anglican doctrine. Consequently, at present, the necessity of subscription need not repel any one unless he finds himself unable to accept "the doctrine of the Church of England as set forth," not in detail, but generally, in the Articles and the Prayer-book; and I need not say that a believer in nonmiraculous Christianity by no means occupies a position of such dissent as this.
The only obstacle therefore for a scrupulous minister will be in the services of the Church and in the reading of the Bible: and here I admit that there is a very considerable obstacle, though it appears to me to be less than it was a dozen years ago, and each year lessens it still further. The difficulty lies, not in the scepticism of the minister (who may be a more faithful worshipper of Christ than any one in his flock) nor in any congregational suspicion or alarm (for his advanced views lie quite beyond the horizon of the thoughts of any country congregation, and any but an exceptional congregation elsewhere) but almost entirely in the minister's own uneasy sense of a difference between himself and his people; in his fear that he may be acting hypocritically; in his consequent loss of self-respect; and in a resulting demoralization affecting all his work.
Clearly this is a difficulty which would be diminished, if not altogether removed, by publicity; but as long as it is not publicly recognized that widely different interpretations of the Scripture are possible and compatible with the worship of Christ, the difficulty is a very serious one. Whenever such a man reads the Bible in the discharge of his public duty, he is liable to be haunted with the consciousness that he is two-faced. He conveys to his congregation an obvious meaning and they assume that he accepts that meaning himself; but he does not. Suppose, for example, he reads the story of the battle of Bethhoron: his congregation believes that it is listening to the most stupendous miracle that the world has witnessed; the minister believes that he is reading an account of one of the twenty, or more, decisive battles of history. Similarly, in the New Testament, if he reads the narrative of the feeding of the 4,000 or 5,000, he reads it as a religious legend, curiously preserving a deep spiritual truth, but of no value except for its emblematic meaning; but his congregation listens to him as if he were reciting one of the most important proofs that Jesus was no mere man, but truly the Son of God. I do not wish to exaggerate the difference between the rationalizing minister and the literalizing congregation. Both he and they believe that in the battle of Beth-horon God was working out the destiny of Israel and preparing for Himself a chosen people; both he and they believe that Jesus Christ was the true Bread of Life; and similarly, as regards many other miraculous narratives of the Scriptures, the congregation and the minister, though divided as to the acceptance of the historical fact, will be united in accepting the spiritual interpretation which is the essence of the narrative. Moreover, every year is probably increasing the number of the laity who take the same esoteric view as the minister takes about many of the miracles. In any educated congregation there must be a large number of men, and there will soon be a large number of women, who do not believe in the literal stories of Balaam's ass, Elisha's floating axe-head, and Samson's exploit with the jaw-bone. Unless educated people are kept out of our churches, or separate themselves from the Church, this number must soon increase. Thus the gulf between the rationalizing minister and the congregation tends yearly to diminish through the action of the congregation; and if only both the esoteric and the exoteric interpretation of the Scripture were generally recognized as being compatible with the faithful worship of Christ, I do not see why the minister should not claim for himself, without any sense of constraint or insincerity, the same freedom of interpreting the Bible which is accorded to the laity.
There still remains however the clause in the Creed stating the Miraculous Conception, which to me appears the greatest difficulty of all. It is one thing, in my judgment, to repeat the prayers of the Church and to read passages from the sacred books of the Church, as the mouthpiece of the congregation, and rather a different thing to stand up and say—not only as the mouthpiece of the congregation, but in your individual character, as a Christian, and as a priest as well—"I believe this, or that," and to take money for so saying; while all the time you are saying under your breath, "But I only believe it metaphorically." Here, again, my scruples would be removed, if it were only generally understood that the metaphorical interpretation was possible and permissible. As regards the Athanasian Creed, for example, I should have no scruples at all. For the tone and spirit, as well as for the phraseology, of that Creed, I feel the strongest aversion. Yet I should repeat it as the mouthpiece of the congregation without any hesitation, because they would all know that the Church of England, so far as it can speak through the archbishops and bishops, has signified that the repulsive clauses in the Creed may all be so explained as practically to be explained away. I do not in the least believe that this mild interpretation of the damnatory clauses explains their original meaning; but that matters little or nothing. Provided there be no suspicion of insincerity, I am willing to make considerable sacrifices of personal convictions in so complex a rite as congregational worship. The clergyman whom I most respect has not read the Athanasian Creed for thirty years: for my own sake, as a participator in the worship of his church, I rejoice; but all my respect for him did not prevent me from doubting sometimes whether he was right in this matter, until I found that his action had been prompted by an expression of feeling on the part of some representative members of his congregation. For if one clergyman is justified in omitting the Athanasian Creed whenever he likes, I do not see why another is not justified in reading it whenever he likes: the liberty of the clergy might easily become the slavery of the laity. I should therefore be ready to read the repugnant Athanasian Creed because every member of my congregation would know (and I should feel justified in letting them know from the pulpit) that I read it in obedience to the law and in spite of my convictions. But I am not so ready, at present, to read the Apostles' Creed or Nicene Creed, although I cordially accept them except so far as concerns the one word which expresses the Miraculous Conception. My reason is, that I should not like to leave my congregation under the impression that I accepted that dogma, and on the other hand I should not feel justified in using a pulpit of the National Church to explain why I rejected it.
Here again, as in the previous instance, I feel that times are rapidly changing, and the freedom of ministers in the Church of England is rapidly increasing. For scruples as to the use of the Creeds, no less than for scruples as to the reading of the Scriptures, publicity is the chief remedy wanting to dissipate scruples; and time is on the side of freedom. Belief in miracles now rests on an inclined plane; friction is daily lessening, the downward motion is rapidly increasing; in a few more years the authorities of the Church of England may recognize, not with reluctance but with delight, that there are some young men who know enough of Greek, and of history, and of evidence, to be convinced that the miracles are unhistorical, and who, nevertheless, are worshippers of Christ on conviction, with a faith not to be shaken by anything that science or criticism can discover, and with a readiness to serve Christ, as ministers in the English Church, if they can do so without sacrifice of their opinions and without suspicion of insincerity.
Personally, I have not felt these scruples very acutely. Circumstances have placed me where nothing has been required of me which might not have been done as well by a Nonconformist as by a member of the Church of England. To help a friend, or do occasional work in an unofficial way, has never caused me the least misgiving; for I have always remained in cordial accord with the forms of worship current in the Church of England. The only difference that my views have made in my clerical action has been this, that I have preferred for a time not to place myself in any position where ministerial work might officially be required of me. Yet even these scruples have been doubtfully entertained, and would vanish altogether if ever I were to publish a volume of such letters as I am now writing to you, so that I could be sure that my opinions were no secret from my Bishop and from such members of my congregation as were likely to understand them.
The advice which I have given to myself, I should also be inclined to give to others who are already ministers in the Church of England, and who have scruples of conscience in consequence of some divergence from orthodox views: "Stay where you are, as long as you feel that you can sincerely worship Christ as the Eternal Son of God, and as long as you can preach a gospel of faith and strength, not only from the pulpit but also by the bedside of the dying. If you can do this, you may stay, though you are obliged to interpret metaphorically some expressions in the Creed. If you cannot do this, go at once, even though you can accept every syllable in all the Creeds in the most literal sense."
To young men who have not yet been ordained and who incline to "rational" views of Christianity, I have been disposed hitherto to give different advice: "Wait a while. The fashion of men's opinion is rapidly changing; the excessive fear of science on the part of the Clergy—many of whom come from Public Schools where they have received no training in the rudiments of science or mathematics—is, strange to say, predisposing all but extreme High Churchmen to welcome the adhesion of any who are firm believers in Christ, even though they may doubt or reject the miracles. It would be a miserable thing to be ordained, and to undertake the task of preaching a doctrine implying the highest conceivable morality, and presently to find yourself condemned by those to whom you should be an example as well as an instructor, for what appears to them patent insincerity—condemned by others, and perhaps not wholly acquitted by yourself. In a few years you may perhaps find it possible to be ordained not upon tolerance but with a hearty reception, and then there need be no concealment of your opinions."
Such is the language that I have hitherto used on the very few occasions when I have been consulted, generally advising delay. But now I am inclined to think that the time has come when young men with these opinions ought not to wait, but ought at least to set their case before the Bishops, leaving it to them to accept or refuse them as candidates for ordination. Schisms and prosecutions are very objectionable things, but there are worse evils even than these. There is the danger of hypocrisy, spreading, like an infection, from oneself to others. The hour has perhaps come for authorizing or condemning the extreme freedom of opinion which some of the Broad Churchmen have assumed. Proverbs and texts might be quoted in equal abundance to justify action or inaction in the abstract; but two important practical considerations appear to me to dictate some kind of action without delay.
On the one hand, we hear the complaint that the ablest and most conscientious men are deterred by scruples from entering the ministry in the Church of England, even when they feel a strong bent for clerical work. If this scarcity of able candidates for ordination continues for many more years, we shall have bad times in store for us. Already I think I have noted, among some ministers who are conscious of but little intellectual and not much more spiritual power, a disposition unduly to magnify their office, the ritual, the mechanical use of the sacraments, parochial machinery, processions, sensational hymns, church salvation-armies, and church-routine generally, because they feel they have no evangelic message of their own, no individual inspiration. In some degree, such a subordination of self is good and may argue modesty; but in many cases it is not good, when it leads young men to materialize and sensualize religion, to suppose that the preaching of Christ's Gospel and the elevation of the souls of men can be effected by ecclesiastical battalion drill; to dispense with study, thought, and observation; to acquiesce in the letter of the collected dogmas of the past, and to hope for no new spiritual truth from the progress of the ages controlled by the ever fresh revelations of the Spirit of God.
On the other hand, there is the opposite evil, on which I have already touched—I mean the danger that some of the more intellectual among the clergy, those who do not sympathize with sacerdotalism and are popularly reckoned among the "Broad Church," may not only be suspected of insincerity in professing to believe what they, as a fact, disbelieve, but may also become actually demoralized by self-suspicions and hence indirectly demoralize their congregations. I confess my sympathies are very much with a man in that position. He has been sometimes the victim of cruel circumstances. In his youth, the religious problems of the present day lay all in the background. Before he was ordained, he may very well have discerned no difficulties at all in the career before him, nothing but the prospect of a noble work, to which he felt himself called. His life was probably spent in a public boarding-school, where he scarcely ever had a minute to himself for thought and meditation; it being the ideal of the educator so to engross the time and energy of each pupil in studies or in games that the average youth might be kept out of moral mischief and the clever youth might get a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge. When he came to the University he found himself expected to devote himself to "reading for a degree," and there was little or no time for theology; after taking his degree he found himself under the necessity of earning his living, and if he was intending to become a clergyman he naturally desired to be ordained as soon as possible. If he was very fortunate, he may have contrived (as I did) to get a year's reading at theology while he supported himself by taking pupils; but that was probably the utmost of his preparation. Soon after reaching his twenty-third year he was ordained. And now, for the first time, leaving school and college, he begins to realize what life means, and to think for himself. Can we wonder that this "thinking for himself" produces considerable changes of thought? If he is healthy, and active in his parish, and has not much time for reflection and reading, the changes will be long deferred, and he will be scarcely conscious of them: but if he has any mind at all in him, and gives it the least exercise, it is hardly possible that an able and honest student of the Bible at the age of forty-six, when he comes to compare the opinions of his manhood with those of his youth, will not find that he has ceased to believe, or at all events to be certain of, the historical accuracy of a good deal which he accepted with unquestioning confidence at the age of twenty-three.
Changes of this kind are inevitable, and they ought not to be feared. Yet perhaps the fear of them deters some of the more thoughtful young men from presenting themselves for ordination. They know that they believe in such and such facts now, but, say they, "Many sincere and thoughtful persons dispute the truth of these facts; and what will be my position some ten years hence if I find that I am driven to deny what I now affirm?" What one would like to be able to reply, in answer to such an appeal, would be, that the worship of Christ does not depend upon the truth of a few isolated and disputable pieces of evidence, but upon the testimony of the conscience based upon indisputable (though complex) evidence; so that, if the man's conscience remains the same, he need not fear lest the fundamental principles of his faith will be shaken by any historical or scientific criticism. From the terrestrial point of view, Christ is human nature at its divinest. Whoever therefore in the highest degree loves and trusts and reveres human nature at its divinest, he naturally worships a representation of Christ, even though he may never have heard of the name. Now life will bring a young man many disappointments and disillusions and paradoxes: but no one, who has once worshipped Christ in this natural way, need fear (or hope?) that life will ever bring him anything more worthy of representing human nature at its divinest, anything therefore more worthy of worship, than Jesus of Nazareth. The only danger is, that one may cease to be able to love and trust and revere the objects that deserve these feelings. There is indeed that danger, just as there is the danger that one may cease to be able to be honest. But what young man, in mapping out his future, would make insurance against such a moral paralysis? A man ought no more—a man ought still less—to contemplate the possibility of becoming unable to worship Christ, than the possibility of becoming unable to revere a kind father or love affectionate children. If then our candidate for ordination regards Christ in this spirit, one would like to encourage him to present himself for ordination even though he may already doubt the Biblical narrative on some points, and though he may be pretty certain that he will change his mind on many others by the time he is twice as old as he is now. However it rests very much with Bishops to settle this question; and the question as to what the Bishops might do is so important as to demand a separate letter.
P.S. Since writing the above remarks about the reluctance of the ablest men at the Universities to be ordained, I have been told that the state of things is even worse than I had conceived at Cambridge. There, at the two largest colleges, Trinity and St. John's, I am told that of the Fellows who took their degrees between 1873-9 only eight, out of sixty or thereabouts, took holy orders; and of those who took degrees between 1880-6, only three out of sixty. Trinity is conspicuous; of the sixty Fellows who took degrees from 1873-86 only two have been ordained.