The Kernel and the Husk/What the Bishops might do
XXXI
My dear ——,
I reminded you in my last letter that ordination or non-ordination must largely depend upon the judgment of the Bishops. This, I suppose, must have always been the case to some extent: but there are reasons why it may well be so now to a greater extent than before. The important change made in the form of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles has supplied a solid and definite ground upon which the Bishops may fairly claim to ascertain from candidates for ordination some details about their religious opinions. In the times when candidates had to assent to every point in every Article, no further examination was necessary: but now that the candidate is allowed (by implication) to dissent from some things in the Articles, the Bishop may surely, without any inquisitorial oppression, say: "Before I ordain you, I should like to know, in a general way, how far your dissent from the Articles extends." Some Bishops may be inclined to shrink from such an interrogation, as though it implied doubt of the candidate's sincerity: and of course such an examination might be abused in a narrow or bigoted or even tyrannical manner. But on the whole, I think, it might be even more useful as a protection and help to the young candidate than to the Bishop. Here and there, perhaps, a young man might be advised to give up, or defer, the prospect of ordination: but others (who would have otherwise been deterred by scruples) might be encouraged to be ordained in spite of some intellectual difficulties; and this fatherly encouragement from a man of authority and experience would be a great help and comfort, strengthening the young man in the conviction that mere intellectual difficulties could not interfere with his faith in Christ. Still more valuable would be the young man's consciousness that he could not be called insincere or hypocritical, since he had concealed nothing from the Bishop, who, after hearing all, had decided that there was nothing to exclude him from ordination.
I would therefore advise any man who desired to be ordained but was deterred by present scruples or the fear of future scruples, to write at an early period to the Bishop at whose hands he would be likely to seek ordination, stating his difficulties frankly and fully, and asking whether they would be considered an impediment. If he felt any touch of doubt on the subject of the miracles, I would have him make them the subject of a special question. In some dioceses I should expect the answer to be unfavourable. From others perhaps the answer would come that the Bishop was "unwilling to undertake so heavy a responsibility; each man must decide for himself whether he can honestly read the services of the Church and the lessons from the Scriptures without believing in miracles." That answer would be, in my judgment, regrettable, though not unnatural or indefensible. But even that answer would be of value, as it would be a record that, at all events, the Bishop had not been kept in ignorance of anything that the candidate ought to have revealed to him: and this in itself would be of great value in lightening for a scrupulous and self-introspective young man the burden of the questions which might sometimes arise in his mind as he read aloud in the congregation the words of the Bible or the Prayer-book. Moreover, I should anticipate that every year would see an increase in the number of those dioceses from which a still more favourable answer might be returned: "If with all your heart you worship Christ as the Eternal Son of God, if you can honestly and sincerely accept the Church services as excellent (though imperfect) expressions of congregational worship; and the Scriptures as super-excellent (though imperfect) expressions of spiritual fact; if you feel that you have a message of good news for the poor and simple as well as for the rich and educated, and that you can preach the spiritual truths which you and all of us recognize to be the essence of the Gospel, without attacking those material shapes in which, for many generations to come, all spiritual truths must find expression for the vast majority of Christians, then I can encourage you to come to the ministry of Christ. I myself am of the old school and believe in the miracles, or if not in all, at all events in most; but I recognize that this belief—though to me it seems safer and desirable—is not essential: come therefore to the ministry, with the miracles if you can, without them if you cannot."
Here indeed is a reasonable criterion of fitness for ordination: and if a man cannot satisfy this, I do not see how he can complain of being excluded. But no other criterion seems likely to be permanently tenable. For imagine yourself to be a Bishop, trying to lay down some short, precise, and convenient test, as regards the belief in the miraculous: where are you to draw the line? A young man, eminently fit in all respects for ministerial work, comes to you and says that he accepts all the miracles but one; he cannot bring himself to believe that Joshua stopped the movement of the sun (or earth). What are you to do? Reject him? Surely not: not even though you were Canon Liddon, raised (as I hope he will be raised) to the episcopal bench. The Universities would join in protest against your bigotry; the whole of educated society would secede from the Church on such conditions: the masses of non-Christian and semi-Christian working men would cry out that such a rejection was a portent of tyranny, and that the men who could accept admission to the priesthood on such terms as these were no better than superstitious dolts and slaves, creatures to be suppressed in a free country! Well, then, you admit him: will you reject his younger brother next year, who finds that he cannot accept the miracle of Balaam's ass speaking with a human voice? Certainly you will admit him too. And now where are you to stop? If you admit a man who denies two miracles, will you accept a man who denies a third, say, the miracle of Elisha's floating axe-head? And if three, why not four? why not five? and so on to the end of the list?
Again, a man comes to you and says that he feels obliged to reject as an interpolation—although willing to read them as part of an erroneous but long cherished tradition—the well-known words at the end of the Lord's Prayer, "for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever:" what will you do to him? Refuse him? Surely not. The Revisers of the New Testament have themselves rejected the addition, and I am quite sure no scholar who valued God's Word, and certainly no Bishop, would wish to reject a man for preferring the New Version of the Bible to the Old. But, if you admit him, what are you to say to his companion, who rejects also the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel? In my opinion, a man must be, Hellenistically speaking, an "idiot,"—a Greek "idiot," what the Greeks call idiotès—to believe in their genuineness. But even though you, being a busy Bishop, may have forgotten a good deal of Greek, you cannot forget the decision of the Revisers. For here again the Revisers are on the young man's side. They have printed this passage as a kind of Appendix, placing an interval between it and the Gospel, and appending this note: "The two oldest Greek MSS. and some older authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end. Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Now if you admit the rejecter of these two passages, will you refuse his companion, who tells you he is compelled to agree with the Revisers also as to a third passage, John vii. 53—viii. 11, where the Revised Version brackets several verses, adding this note, "Most of the ancient authorities omit John vii. 53—viii. 11. Those which contain it vary much from each other"? You must certainly accept him. But if you accept him, what are you to say to young men who go further and reject whole books of the New Testament, for example, the Second Epistle of St. Peter; the genuineness of which has been impeached by a great consent of authorities, and concerning which Canon Westcott says that it is the "one exception" to the statement that the combined canons of the Eastern and Western Churches would produce "a perfect New Testament"? And if we let him pass, under Canon Westcott's wing, how shall we deal with the next candidate, who reminds us that Luther rejected the Apocalypse and the Epistle of St. James, and declares that he cannot help agreeing with Luther? What lastly is to be the fate of those who avow that they cannot shut their eyes to the traces, even in the Synoptic Gospels, of considerable interpolations or late traditions, especially in those portions which contain miraculous narrative? Perhaps we might feel inclined to say, "We will take our stand on Westcott and Hort's text, or on the text of the Revised Version, and will refuse any candidate who rejects a word of the New Testament that is contained in either of these texts; the line must be drawn somewhere, and we will draw it there." What! Shall we reject a candidate for ordination because he does not accept the Gospel according to Westcott and Hort, or the Gospel according to an unauthorized though scholarly knot of men called the Revisers? Impossible! all Christendom would cry shame upon us. On the whole, we seem driven to the conclusion that no candidate for Anglican ordination can be reasonably rejected for believing that parts of the Bible are spurious or un-historical, provided that he is willing to read in the presence of the congregation the portions of Scripture appointed by the Church.
If the test of miracles fails, and if the test of an infallible book fails, so too does failure await the test of an infallible Creed. It would be, at all events, departing strangely from the spirit of the Reformers and from the spirit of the Articles, to allow men laxity as regards the interpretation of the Scriptures, which are regarded as specially inspired, and yet to pin them to the letter of the Creeds, which are regarded as being authoritative because they are based on the Scriptures. If a candidate were to tell you, his Bishop, that "he accepted the Resurrection of Christ, and even of Christ's body, but that he could not honestly say that Christ rose on the third day; for Christ was buried on the evening of Friday, and rose early on the morning of Sunday, that is to say, on the second day," you would perhaps reason with him, and say that it was the Jewish way of reckoning; and if he were then to reply to you that to the greater part of the congregation this way of reckoning was unknown, and that the phrase might therefore convey a false impression—what would you say to this ultra-conscientious young man? This probably: that "the Creeds of Christendom could not be disturbed on account of the eccentricities of well-meaning individuals; that, if this was his only obstacle, you, his Bishop, could take upon yourself to justify him in repeating these words as the mouthpiece of the congregation; that it was quite open to him to explain the true meaning of the words from the pulpit; and that little misunderstandings of this kind, if indeed there was danger of any, were insignificant as compared with belief in the essential fact that Jesus rose from the dead."
When the young man goes out—probably satisfied, unless he is very obstinate, and you a little impatient—let us suppose that another man comes in, with a different objection to the same clause. He accepts the essential fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and he does not object to the words, "the third day," but he does not believe that the material body of Jesus rose from the tomb. He believes that Jesus Himself, that is to say, His spirit, rose from the dead, and that He manifested Himself to His disciples in a spiritual body, which, in accordance with some law of our human spiritual nature, was manifested to those, and only to those, who loved Him or believed in Him.[1] This is a more serious objection by far: for you have to consider, first, whether the young man is likely to hold fast his belief in the spiritual Resurrection of Jesus, when based on such evidence as this; and secondly whether he can preach the Gospel of the risen Saviour without raising all sorts of questions and difficulties in minds unprepared to grapple with them. At this point, then, I cannot blame your episcopal judgment if you take time to decide, and if, before deciding, you do your best to ascertain what manner of man you have to deal with, and, in particular, whether his stability is equal to his ability. "Doubts and difficulties" may sometimes betoken, not so much a mind that thinks for itself, as a disposition to affect singularity and to strain after constant novelty. But if you are satisfied on this point, I think you would do well to admit him to ordination. I would not exclude from the ministry any one who can conscientiously worship Christ in accordance with the services of the Church of England, and preach the Gospel without shaking the faith of the masses.
Perhaps I shall seem to you (not now in the temporary episcopal capacity which you have occupied during the last few paragraphs, but as plain ) very illiberal in excluding from the broad boundaries of the National Church those who are unable to worship Christ. But I am not prepared to alter the Nicene Creed or the Church Services; and if I could not worship Christ, I cannot think that I myself should desire to be included in the Church of England, as long as that Creed and the Church Services remained in use. For how could I offer prayer to Jesus? or say, in any sense, "I believe in Jesus Christ, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God"? No plea of metaphor would ever enable me to repeat these words with any honesty, as long as I found myself unable to worship Christ. I confess to a secret feeling that many of those who at the present time think they do not worship Christ, do in reality worship Him; and I have good hopes that some of them may, in time, when they search out their deepest feelings, find out that they have long been unconsciously worshipping Him, and that they can accept, with a spiritual interpretation, some things that have hitherto appeared to them inadmissible.[2] But to demand that the Creeds and Church Services may be remoulded, is a very different thing from asking to be allowed to put a metaphorical interpretation on one or two phrases in them. When Parochial Councils are established, it may be found ultimately possible to give some larger latitude in the modification or multiplication of Services so as to make them more inclusive: but, after all, congregations meet for worship, not for the sake of being liberal and inclusive; and the inclusion of non-worshippers of Christ can hardly be demanded from a Church that worships Christ. Nor must the inclusion of "advanced thinkers" be carried to such an extent as to exclude the great mass of ordinary believers.
I myself, deeply though I sympathize in all essential matters with the Church of England, should nevertheless be willing not only to be excluded from it, but also to see excluded all who may take the same views as I take, rather than that the simple faith in Christ entertained by the great body of Christians should be injured by the premature disruption of those material beliefs and integumentary illusions with which, at present, their spiritual beliefs are inseparably connected. And this brings me to another side of the question. If I were publishing an appeal to the Bishops, I should certainly add an appeal to the younger Broad Church clergy. It ought not to be asking too much from a young preacher who is an "advanced thinker," to remember that some reverence is due to the simpler members of his flock. Many of those whom he authoritatively instructs are older, wiser at present, of larger experience in life, some of them perhaps more spiritually minded, than he is. What if their deepest and most cherished religious convictions, right in the main, are tied to certain expressions and narratives that may not be historically accurate? Does it follow that their feelings are to be outraged at any moment by assaults upon the ancient forms and expressions of their belief from the lips of a young man who professes to accept these forms, and takes the money of the Church for accepting them? Such attacks upon the forms are at present worse than useless, because they are sure to be construed into attacks upon the spirit. In time a change will come, and even now a minister may do something to prepare the way for the change. He may institute Bible lectures to which he may invite the attendance of those alone who wish to study the Bible critically, and those whose reading and attainments qualify them to criticize, or to follow criticism. But, from the pulpit, matter of this kind should be altogether excluded.
Nor need the preacher fear lest such restriction should shackle his liberty and take the life out of his sermons. In almost every case one invariable rule can be laid down which will give ample scope to him and no offence to his hearers: "Always preach what you believe to be true, and never go out of your way in order to attack what you believe to be untrue." For example, your flock believes that Christ's body (the tangible body) was raised from the grave; you do not. Well then, do not attack their material belief; but preach your spiritual belief. Teach them that Christ's Resurrection implies a real though invisible triumph over the invisible enemy death; a real, though invisible, sitting at the right hand of God; a real, though invisible, presence in the heart of every one who loves and trusts Him. Thus you may teach the habit of reverence, simultaneously with the habit of inquiry; a love of the old forms, combined with a still deeper love of the new truths that may be discovered beneath them; thus you will not shake the faith of a single child; you will be impressing upon all alike unadulterated, precious truth without sacrificing a tittle of your own convictions; and at the same time you will be insensibly preparing the younger portion of your flock to detach the material part of their belief from the spiritual, and to retain the latter when the time may come that shall force them to give up the former. In a similar spirit you should deal with the Ascension and the Incarnation, not pointing out the difficulties involved in the material belief of those dogmas, nor saying a word to disparage those who believe in them, but doing your utmost to bring out the spiritual truths and invisible processes which are represented by those dogmas. Surely such a self-restraint as this is not more than may fairly be demanded from any honourable man, I will not say from a Christian, but from a gentleman. Your congregation are in their own parish church; they are bound by conventional respect and by deeply-rooted reverence for tradition and for the House of God, not to manifest any such open disapprobation of your teaching as would be freely permissible at a public meeting; you are their servant, and the servant, the paid servant, of the National Church; and yet you have them at your mercy while you stand in the pulpit. Profound consideration may fairly be expected from you for their prejudices, as you may please to call them; and all the more because they are, as it were, in possession of the church, while you are an innovator, holding what must—at all events for some time to come—appear to the multitude an entirely new doctrine: they "stand on the old ways."
If the teachers of natural or non-miraculous Christianity could be trusted to preach in this spirit, they might, I think, do a good work as ministers in the Church of England, without injury to themselves, and with much advantage to the nation. If not, they must come out of the Church for the purposes of teaching; and that, I fear, would result in mischief both for the Church and for the State. I believe that not a few of the educated clergy are either suspending their belief about miracles, or have decided against them; and if these were suddenly to be banished, or gradually to drop out of the clerical ranks without receiving any successors of their way of thinking, the gulf would be widened between the clergy and the educated laity. The men who might discover new religious truth and prepare the way for new religious development, having henceforth to earn their living in other ways, would find little leisure for critical study. The end would be that the nation would be for a time divided between superstition and agnosticism; and sober religion would go to the wall.
Not indeed that the destinies of the Gospel of Christ are to be supposed to be permanently determinable by the fate of a fraction of the Broad Church section of the English clergy! The attraction of the natural worship of Christ—strange, nay, impossible though it may seem when first presented to the miracle-craving mind—is far too great to admit the possibility of its ultimate failure. But first there must come a vast and depressing defection on the part of those nominal Christians who have hitherto worshipped Christ on the basis of an infallible Church, or on the basis of an infallible Book, or on the basis of indisputable Miracles. Perhaps this collapse will be precipitated by the discovery of a copy of some Gospel of the first century, turned up when Constantinople is evacuated by the Turks. You cannot have forgotten how this year (1885) the educated religious world in England held its breath in horrible suspense when the correspondent of the Times telegraphed that among the Egyptian manuscripts recently purchased by an Austrian arch-duke, there had been disinterred a fragment belonging to a Gospel preceding, and differing from, any now extant. From this terrible discovery orthodoxy was delivered, for this once, by the learning of Professor Hort: but who shall guarantee that a Professor Hort shall be able, or even willing, to deny the proto-evangelic claims of the next-discovered manuscript from the East? And then, what will become of some of us!
In any case, with or without such discoveries, the present word-faith, and book-faith, and authority-faith in the Lord Jesus, must sooner or later collapse; and people must be driven to the conclusion that the Lord Jesus Himself must somehow be worshipped through Himself—Jesus through the Spirit of Jesus, that Spirit which is apparent in families and nations and Churches as well as in the New Testament, the Spirit of Love whence springs that mutual helpfulness which in the New Testament we call "fellowship" and in the newspapers "socialism." This and this alone will help us to apply our science to settle land questions, Church questions, and war questions, policy domestic and foreign, and to establish concord in the world, the nation, and the human heart. I do not say that a time will ever come when there will be no obstacles to faith in Christ. Moral obstacles will still exist to make faith difficult: but some at least of the intellectual difficulties by which we now shut ourselves out from Christian hope will then be dissipated. Odium theologicum will become meaningless. There will have arrived at last that blessed time, predicted (1603) by Francis Bacon (shall we say just three hundred years too soon?), bringing with it "the consumption of all that can ever be said in controversies of religion;" and henceforth there will be no "controversies," only discussions and discoveries.
Then, with its mind freed from superstitious terrors and full of an unquenchable hope, the human race, owning its allegiance to the Eternal Goodness, and accepting as its captain the Working Man of Nazareth, will address itself steadily to the work of Christian socialism, honouring and encouraging labour without unwise and spasmodic pampering of it, dishonouring and discouraging idleness without unwise and direct recourse to forcible suppression of it; remembering always that, as the ideal Working Man was subject to law, so must they be subject to law, and as He bore suffering for the good of others, so must they be prepared to suffer as well as to work. This is true socialism and this is true Christianity. Do you deny it, and say, "This is not the Christianity that has been current for eighteen centuries"? I reply, Perhaps not; and, if it is not, we can call it by some other name. You remember the saying of Lessing, that after eighteen centuries of Christianity, it was high time to try Christ. Let us then amend our phrase and say that true socialism will not be "the Christian religion" but something better. It will be the Christian Spirit.
We are taught by our Scriptures that it has been sometimes God's method to teach the wise in this world by means of those whom the world calls foolish, and the strong and the rich in this world by those whom the world calls weak and poor. If history is thus to repeat itself, it may be reserved for the semi-Christian or non-Christian working man, for the heretic or agnostic socialist, to guide orthodox and religious England into a higher and purer and more spiritual form of Christianity. Yet on the other hand, since intellectual movements come often from above, though moral movements come from below, I cannot give up the hope that it may be reserved for the clergy of the Church of England to do something towards the removal of those merely intellectual difficulties which are at present keeping multitudes of the workers, and not a few of the thinkers, in our country, from recognizing their true Deliverer.
- ↑ For the apparent exception of St. Paul, see above, p. 244.
- ↑ You should look at a most interesting and instructive article by Dr. Martineau in the Christian Reformer (vol. i. p. 78), in which he points out that, in a certain sense, the faith professed by Trinitarians "in the Son, is so far from being an idolatry, that it is identical, under change of name, with the Unitarian worship of Him who dwelt in Christ. He who is the Son in one creed is the Father in the other; and the two are agreed, not indeed by any means throughout, but in that which constitutes the pith and kernel of both faiths."