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Chapter XIII - ReligionChapter XIII - Religion
Chapter XIII - Religion
No people, at the present day, can be explained by their national
religion. They do not feel responsible for it; it lies far outside of them.
Their loyalty to truth, and their labor and expenditure rest on real
foundations, and not on a national church. An English life, it is evident,
does not grow out of the Athanasian creed, or the Articles, or the Eucharist.
It is with religion as with marriage. A youth marries in hastes; afterward,
when his mind is opened to the reason of the conduct of like, he is asked what
he thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the
sexes? "I should have much to say," he might reply, "if the question were
open, but I have a wife and children, and all question is closed for me." In
the barbarous days of a nation, some cultus is formed or imported; altars are
built, tithes are paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure of the
country take that direction, and when wealth, refinement, great men, and ties
to the world supervene, its prudent men say, why fight against Fate, or lift
these absurdities which are now mountainous? Better find some niche or crevice
in this mountain of stone which religious ages have quarried and carved,
wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt anything ridiculously and dangerously
above your strength, like removing it.
In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say, as to-day, in
front of Dundee Church tower, which is eight hundred years old, "This was
built by another and a better race than any that now look on it." And,
plainly, there has been great power of sentiment at work in this island, of
which these buildings are the proofs: as volcanic basalts show the work of
fire which has been extinguished for ages. England felt the full heat of the
Christianity which fermented Europe, and drew, like the chemistry of fire, a
firm line between barbarism and culture. The power of the religious sentiment
put an end to human sacrifices, checked appetite, inspired the crusades,
inspired resistance to tyrants, inspired self-respect, set bounds to serfdom
and slavery, founded liberty, created the religious architecture, - York,
Newstead, Westminster, Fountains Abbey, Ripon, Beverly, and Dundee, - works to
which the key is lost, with the sentiment which created them; inspired the
English Bible, the liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of Richard of
Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and translated the sanctities of
old hagiology into English virtues on English ground. It was a certain
affirmative or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. Man awoke, refreshed
by the sleep of ages. The violence of the northern savages exasperated
Christianity into power. It lived by the love of the people. Bishop Wilfrid
manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found attached to the soil.
The clergy obtained respite from labor for the boor on the Sabbath, and on
church festivals. "The lord who compelled his boor to labor between sunset on
Saturday and sunset on Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The priest came out
of the people, and sympathized with his class. The church was the mediator,
check, and democratic principle in Europe. Latimer, Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham,
Antony Parsons, Sir Harry Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the democrats,
as well as the saints, of their times. The Catholic church, thrown on this
toiling, serious people, has made in fourteen centuries a massive system,
close fitted to the manners and genius of the country, at once domestical and
stately. In the long time, it has blended with everything in heaven above and
the earth beneath. It moves through a zodiac of feasts and fasts, names every
day of the year, every town and market and headland and monument, and has
coupled itself with the almanac, that no court can be held, no field ploughed,
no horse shod, without some leave f,om the church. All maxims of prudence, or
shop, or farm, are fixed and dated by the church. Hence, its strength in the
agricultural districts. The distribution of land into parishes enforces a
church sanction to every civil privilege; and the gradation of the clergy, -
prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor, - with the fact that a
classical education has been secured to the clergyman, makes them "the link
which unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual advancement of
the age."^1
[Footnote 1: Wordsworth]
The English church has many certificates to show of humble effective
service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding,
healing, and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the noblest
books; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same secular merits,
nothing cheap or purchasable.
From this slow-grown church important reactions proceed; much for
culture, much for giving a direction to the nation`s affection and will to -
day. The carved and pictured chapel, - its entire surface animated with image
and emblem, - made the parish-church a sort of book and Bible to the
people`s eye.
Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular
tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. In York minster, on the
day of the enthronization of the new archbishop, I heard the service of
evening prayer read and chanted in the choir. It was strange to hear the
pretty pastoral of the betrothal of Rebecca and Isaac, in the morning of the
world, read with circumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th January, 1848,
to the decorous English audience, just fresh from the Times newspaper and
their wine; and listening with all the devotion of national pride. That was
binding old and new to some purpose. The reverence for the Scriptures is an
element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved
and is preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of Genesis, and a leader
in the Times.
Another part of the same service on this occasion was not insignificant.
Handel`s coronation anthem, God save the King, was played by Dr. Camidge on
the organ, with sublime effect. The minster and the music were made for each
other. It was a hint of the part the church plays as a political engine. From
his infancy, every Englishman is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the
Queen, for the royal family and the Parliament, by name; and this lifelong
consecration of these personages cannot be without influence on his opinions.
The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, and
their first design is to form the clergy. Thus the clergy for a thousand years
have been the scholars of the nation.
The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition
of its church; the liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the good
company, the connection with the throne, and with history, which adorn it. And
whilst it endears itself thus to men of more taste than activity, the
stability of the English nation is passionately enlisted to its support, from
its inextricable connection with the cause of public order, with politics, and
with the funds.
Good churches are not built by bad men; at least, there must be probity
and enthusiasm somewhere in the society. These minsters were neither built nor
filled by atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious, or devoted
men; plenty of "clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, would turn their
backs on no man."^2 Their architecture still glows with faith in immortality.
Heats and genial periods arrive in history, or shall we say, plentitudes of
Divine Presence, by which high tides are caused in the human spirit, and great
virtues and talents appear, as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of genius
and piety.
[Footnote 2: Fuller]
But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels, Beckets; of the
Latimers, Mores, Cranmers; of the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts; of the
Sherlocks, and Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have made it
impossible that men like these should return, or find a place in their once
sacred stalls. The spirit that dwelt in this church has glided away to animate
other activities; and they who come to the old shrines find apes and players
rustling the old garments.
The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the
continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador`s chapel, and
put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed hat, one cannot help
feeling how much national pride prays with him, and the religion of a
gentleman. So far is he from attaching any meaning to the words, that he
believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, and that it is very
condescending in him to pray to God. A great duke said, on the occasion of a
victory, in the House of Lords, that he thought the Almighty God had not been
well used by them, and that it would become their magnanimity, after so great
successes, to take order that a proper acknowledgment be made. It is the
church of the gentry; but it is not the church of the poor. The operatives do
not own it, and gentlemen lately testified in the House of Commons that in
their lives they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church.
The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous English
understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in one brain. Their
religion is a quotation; their church is a doll; and any examination is
interdicted with screams of terror. In good company, you expect them to laugh
at the fanaticism of the vulgar; but they do not: they are the vulgar.
The English, in common perhaps with Christendom in the nineteenth
century, do not respect power, but only performance; value ideas only for an
economic result. Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he can be an army
chaplain - "Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good sense, got the
better of Methodism, which had appeared among the soldiers, and once among the
officers." They value a philosopher as they value an apothecary who brings
bark or a drench; and inspiration is only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical
aid.
I suspect that there is in an Englishman`s brain a valve that can be
closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. The most sensible and well
- informed men possess the power of thinking just so far as the bishop in
religious matters, and as the chancellor of the exchequer in politics. They
talk with courage and logic, and show you magnificent results, but the same
men who have brought free trade or geology to their present standing, look
grave and lofty, and shut down their valve, as soon as the conversation
approaches the English church. After that, you talk with a box-turtle.
The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit
of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a saint
or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not
know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other churches, but
the Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. They say, here, that,
if you talk with a clergyman, you are sure to find him well-bred, informed
and candid. He entertains your thought or your project with sympathy and
praise. But if a second clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end: two
together are inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it comes to action,
the clergyman invariably sides with his church.
The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms,
by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches is, "By taste are ye
saved." It keeps the old structures in repair, spends a world of money in
music and building; and in buying Pugin, and architectural literature. It has
a general good name for amenity and mildness. It is not in ordinary a
persecuting church; it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, is
perfectly well-bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper occasions. If you
let it alone, it will let you alone. But its instinct is hostile to all change
in politics, literature, or social arts. The church has not been the founder
of the London University, of the Mechanics` Institutes, of the Free School, or
whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. The Platonists of Oxford are as
bitter against this heresy, as Thomas Taylor.
The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of England. The first
leaf of the New Testament it does not open. It believes in a Providence which
does not treat with levity a pound sterling. They are neither
Transcendentalists nor Christians. They put up no Socratic prayer, much less
any saintly prayer for the queen`s mind; ask neither for light nor right, but
say bluntly, "Grant her in health and wealth long to live." And one traces
this Jewish prayer in all English private history, from the prayers of King
Richard, in Richard of Devizes` Chronicle, to those in the diaries of Sir
Samuel Romilly, and of Haydon the painter. "Abroad with my wife," writes Pepys
piously, "the first time that ever I rode in my own coach; which do make my
heart rejoice and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me, and continue
it." The bill for the naturalization of the Jews (in 1753) was resisted by
petitions from all parts of the kingdom, and by petition from the city of
London, reprobating this bill, as, "tending extremely to the dishonor of the
Christian religion, and extremely injurious to the interests and commerce of
the kingdom in general, and of the city of London in particular."
But they have not been able to congeal humanity by act of Parliament.
"The heavens journey still and sojourn not," and arts, wars, discoveries, and
opinion go onward at their own pace. The new age has new desires, new enemies,
new trades, new charities, and reads the Scriptures with new eyes. The chatter
of French politics, the steam-whistle, the hum of the mill, and the noise of
embarking emigrants had quite put most of the old legends out of mind; so that
when you came to read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was almost
absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old costumes.
No chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize a religion. It is
endogenous, like the skin, and other vital organs. A new statement every day.
The prophet and apostle knew this, and the nonconformist confutes the
conformists, by quoting the texts they must allow. It is the condition of a
religion, to require religion for its expositor. Prophet and apostle can only
be rightly understood by prophet and apostle. The statesman knows that the
religious element will not fail, any more than the supply of fibrine and
chyle; but it is in its nature constructive, and will organize such a church
as it wants. The wise legislator will spend on temples, schools, libraries,
colleges, but will shun the enriching of priests. If, in any manner, he can
leave the election and paying of the priest to the people, he will do well.
Like the Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of priests, and
create opportunity and expectation in the society, to run to meet natural
endowment, in this kind. But, when wealth accrues to chaplaincy, a bishopric,
or rectorship, it requires moneyed men for its stewards, who will give it
another direction than to the mystics of their day. Of course, money will do
after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the
people to whom it was bequeathed. The class certain to be excluded from all
preferment are the religious, - and driven to other churches; - which is
nature`s vis medicatrix.
The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid. This abuse draws
into the church the children of the nobility, and other unfit persons, who
have a taste for expense. Thus a bishop is only a surpliced merchant. Through
his lawn, I can see the bright buttons of the shopman`s coat glitter. A wealth
like that of Durham makes almost a premium on felony. Brougham, in a speech in
the House of Commons on the Irish elective franchise, said, "How will the
reverend bishops of the other house be able to express their due abhorrence of
the crime of perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God, that when
they are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of 4000 pounds a year, at
that very instant, they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and
administration thereof, and for no other reason whatever?" The modes of
initiation are more damaging than custom-house oaths. The Bishop is elected
by the Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. The Queen sends these gentlemen a
conge d`elire, or leave to elect; but also sends them the name of the person
whom they are to elect. They go into the cathedral, chant and pray, and
beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them in their choice; and, after these
invocations, invariably find that the dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with
the recommendations of the Queen.
But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with
conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there
is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he
shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink
into the class of counterfeits. Besides, this succumbing has grave penalties.
If you take in a lie, you must take in all that belongs to it. England accepts
this ornamented national church, and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh,
gives the voice a stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the
receivers.
The English church, undermined by German criticism, had nothing left but
tradition, and was led logically back to Romanism. But that was an element
which only hot heads could breathe: in view of the educated class, generally,
it was not a fact to front the sun; and the alienation of such men from the
church became complete.
Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious persons are driven out of
the Established Church into sects, which instantly rise to credit, and hold
the Establishment in check. Nature has sharper remedies, also. The English,
abhorring change in all things, abhorring it most in matters of religion,
cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully given to cant. The English
(and I wish it were confined to them, but `tis a taint in the Anglo-Saxon
blood in both hemispheres), the English and the Americans cant beyond all
other nations. The French relinquish all that industry to them. What is so
odious as the polite bows to God, in our books and newspapers? The popular
press is flagitious in the exact measure of its sanctimony, and the religion
of the day is a theatrical Sinai, where the thunders are supplied by the
property-man. The fanaticism and hypocrisy create satire. Punch finds an
inexhaustible material. Dickens writes novels on Exeter-Hall humanity.
Thackeray exposes the heartless high life. Nature revenges herself more
summarily by the heathenism of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury calls the
poor thieves together, and reads sermons to them, and they call it "gas."
George Borrow summons the Gypsies to hear his discourse on the Hebrews in
Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles` Creed in Romany. "When I had
concluded," he says, "I looked around me. The features of the assembly were
twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful squint: not an
individual present but squinted; the genteel Pepa, the good-humored
Chicharona, the Cosdami, all squinted: the Gypsy jockey squinted worst of
all."
The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has nothing left but
possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads fatal
interrogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him.
False position introduces cant, perjury, simony, and ever a lower class of
mind and character into the clergy: and, when the hierarchy is afraid of
science and education, afraid of piety, afraid of tradition, and afraid of
theology, there is nothing left but to quit a church which is no longer one.
But the religion of England,-is it the Established Church? no; is it
the sects? no; they are only perpetuations of some private man`s dissent, and
are to the Established Church as cabs are to a coach, cheaper and more
convenient, but really the same thing. Where dwells the religion? Tell me
first where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought, or gesture. They do not
dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot be made fast, mortared up and ended,
like London Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know where to find it,
and keep it fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore; it is
passing, glancing, gesticular; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a
secret, which perplexes them, and puts them out. Yet, if religion be the doing
of all good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, souffrir de tout le
monde et ne faire souffrir personne, that divine secret has existed in England
from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence
Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame.
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