/UR. DISRAELI AS HEAD OF THE CHURCH.
WE have at last got, we will not exactly say a theolo- gian, but a man of a highly speculative turn of mind, who has always considered theology as one of the highest subjects of speculation, at the head of the Church. Mr. Disraeli has, not certainly a conviction, but a view,' on most great subjects, and amongst those which have always interested him more than most has been the greatest of all sub- jects,—Theology. His curious and active intellect will now have the duty of selecting for recommendation to the Queen -the names of the ecclesiastics who are to fill the highest offices in the Church. It is, of course, far from certain that -Mr. Disraeli's own speculative views will in any way influence him in the fulfilment of this duty. He may look to his politi- cal exigencies, and select the man whose promotion will bring the greatest strength to his party, or most tend to relax the personal animosity of hostile factions. But, on the other band, it is never safe to exclude the influence of personal views over one who holds great power in his own hands. It may be held in check by other considerations, and yet flash out on the most important occasion ; and -this is especially the case where the view in question is at all a deep-rooted one. So far as Mr. Disraeli -has any definite impressions in his character at all, they -appear to be in very intimate connection with certain theo- logical ideas. He has told the world in one of his novels, with as much seriousness as he ever shows on topics of the highest kind, that "the Church of England, mainly from its deficiency of Oriental knowledge and from a misconception of -the priestly character which has been the consequence of that want, has fallen of late years into great straits ; nor has there -ever been a season when it has more needed for its guides -men possessing the higher qualities both of intellect and dis- position." He ridiculed, in the work to which we refer, the practise of seeking "for the successors of the Apostles, for the stewards of the mysteries of Sinai and Calvary, among third-rate hunters after syllables ;" and he denounced the 'elevation to the Episcopal Bench of "mitred nullities" whose voice never "influenced public opinion, touched the heart of nations, or guided the conscience of a perplexed people." It is true that this opinion was expressed some twenty-four ortwenty- five years ago ; but we doubt whether Mr. Disraeli would in his heart admit any great change for the better; and now at last he has the power, if he has the will, to do something towards changing an ecclesiastical condition of things so eminently disas-
trous. It is not, therefore, a matter of trivial interest at the pre- sent moment to inquire what Mr. Disraeli has most consistently thought and affirmed on ecclesiastical subjects, and to ask what, if any, result his views may have on his mode of wielding his present great ecclesiastical patronage.
Mr. Disraeli has touched on theology in many of his books and speeches, and on one or two points with remarkable co- herence and consistency. The views which he advanced dramatically in Tattered, he repeated, for instance, in his own name and with curious identity of phrase, in his life of Lord George Bentinck. And he reiterated one or two of these views again with great emphasis in his great speech on Church questions at Oxford in November, 1864. Mr. Disraeli, if he believes in anything, believes in race,—and, moreover, is dis- posed to hold that the most successful and constraining re- ligious ideas have a certain vital relation, not only to the organization of a particular race, but to the physical qualities of certain geographical regions from which those races have sprung. "I have conferred," says Tancred to Sidonia, "with one who is esteemed its [our Church's] most eminent pre- late, and I have left him with a conviction of what I had for some time suspected, that inspiration is not only a divine, but a local quality." "You and I have some reason to believe so," re- plies Sidonia ; "I believe that God spoke to Moses on Mount Horeb, and you believe that he was crucified in the person of Jesus on Mount Calvary. Both were, at least carnally, children of Israel; they spoke Hebrew to the Hebrews. The prophets were only Hebrews. The apostles were only Hebrews. The Churches of Asia which have vanished were founded by a native Hebrew ; and the Church of Rome, which says it shall last for ever . . . . was also founded by a native Hebrew. Therefore, I say your suspicion or your conviction is at least not a fantastic one." The same idea is more elaborately en- forced in the revelation made to Tancred on the summit of Sinai. "The thoughts of all lands," says the divine voice, "come from a higher source than man, but the intellect of Arabia comes from the Most High. Therefore, it is that from this spot issue the principles which regulate human destiny." In the life of Lord George Bentinck the same prin- ciple is even more seriously enforced. "No one has ever been permitted," says Mr. Disraeli in that book, "to write under the influence of the Holy Spirit except a Jew,"—a doctrine which some members of our Church will consider highly orthodox, but which seems to us as quaint a contradiction of its teaching that the Holy Spirit has been granted to all Christians as their permanent and immanent guide, as was Lord Palmerston's famous doctrine, that "all children are born good" of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Nor has Mr. Disraeli failed to reiterate his doctrine that theo- logy has a specific physiological organ in the brain of a special race, and a specific geographical centre in the territorial and climatic influences of a special country, much later than even in his remarkable chapter on "the Jewish question" in his life of Lord George Bentinck. In his speech at Oxford, in 1864, he rehearsed the same view with vaguer and less offensive emphasis, but a meaning not less obvious to those who knew his earlier writings. Speaking of the enormous changes resulting from the great explosion of the French Revolution and the diffusion of scepticism which brought about that chaos, he said :—" When the turbulence was over, when the shout of triumph and the wail of agony were alike stilled, when, as it were, the waters had subsided, the sacred heights of Sinai and of Calvary were again revealed; and amid the wreck of thrones and tribunals, of extinct nations and abolished laws, mankind, tried by so many sorrows, purified by so much suffering, and wise with such unprece- dented experience, bowed again before the Divine truths that Omnipotence in His ineffable wisdom had entrusted to the custody and the promulgation of a chosen people." Neither the climax of emphasis on the organ of revelation, the race, nor the geographical illustration taken from the heights of Sinai and Calvary as standing out alone from this new flood of in- fidelity, was without its specific meaning to the special students of Mr. Disraeli's speculative theology. Our new Prime Minister has not shrunk from an even more technically theological confession than these. The readers of Tancred will remember how strongly the thesis is maintained that "Expiation" is a truly Jewish idea. His Jewish heroine says, "A sacrificial Mediator with Jehovah,—that expiatory intercessor born from the chosen house of the chosen people, yet blending in his inexplicable nature the divine essence with the human elements, appointed before all time, and purifying by his atoning blood the myriads that preceded and the
myriads that will follow us, without distinction of creed or clime,—this is what you believe. I acknowledge the vast con- ception, dimly as my brain can partially embrace it,"—but, as the sacrifice was preordained by the Creator for countless ages, "where was the inexpiable crime of those who fulfilled the beneficent intention ? The holy race supplied the victim and the immolators. What other race could have been entrusted with such a consummation ? Was not Abraham prepared to sacrifice even his son 2 You raise statues to the hero who saves a country. We have saved the human race, and you persecute us—for doing it." And this same view is emphatically repeated by Mr. Disraeli as his own in his life of Lord George Bentinck. "If the Jews had not prevailed upon the Romans to crucify our Lord, what would have become of the Atonement ? But the human mind cannot contemplate the idea that the most important deed of time could depend upon human will. The immolators were preordained, like the victim, and the holy race supplied both. Could that be a crime which secured for all mankind eternal joy,—which vanquished Satan, and opened the gates of Paradise ?" Mr. Disraeli's view is that theology is the secret of a particular race and a particular clime, and that being thus a matter conditioned absolutely by physical orga- nization, it follows, like all other developments of physical organization, a necessary law and a principle of destiny or fatality. The Jews were utterly irresponsible for their re- jection and crucifixion of our Lord. They were in this, just as in furnishing the conditions of His external life and His physical body, the instruments of that divine compulsion which makes their race the organ of revelation.
The third great feature of Mr. Disraeli's view on these matters, is his belief that "the Semitic principle," as he calls this effluence from the Jewish race and the Arabian peninsula, is essential to the order of human society. Civilization and progress are proclaimed by Sidonia in Tancred to be "an affair of race. A Saxon race, protected by an insular position, has stamped its diligent and methodic character on the cen- tury. And when a superior race with a superior idea to Work and Order advances, its state will be progressive, and we shall, perhaps, follow the example of the desolate countries.
All is race,—there is no other truth. Because it includes all others,' said Lord Henry. You have said it.'" Each race has its genius, but the Jewish race holds the secret which is necessary to the order and progress of each and all. Each country has its angel, but "the intellect of Arabia comes from the Most High." This is strongly enforced in the life of Lord George Bentinck. "It may be observed that the decline and disasters of modern communities have gene- rally been relative to their degree of sedition against the Semitic principle. Since the great revolt of the Celts against the first and second testament at the close of the last century, France has been alternately in a state of collapse or convulsion. Throughout the awful trials of the last sixty years, England, notwithstanding her deficient and meagre theology, has always remembered Sion. The great Transatlantic Republic is intensely Semitic, and has pros- pered accordingly. This sacred principle alone has consoli- dated the mighty Empire of all the Hussies. How omnipotent it is cannot be more clearly shown than by the existence of Rome, where it appears in its most corrupt form. An old man on a Semitic throne baffles the modern Attilas;"—and so on. The Semitic principle, Mr. Disraeli has since told us, is "on the side of the angels," and against Darwinian theories of species which connect man with the lower animals. "That truth is the only security for civilization, and the only guarantee of real progress."
Such, then, is Mr. Disraeli's theological view. Each race has a secret peculiar to its own proper climate and its own physical organization ; but the secret of the Semitic race and the Arabian peninsula is the secret of man,—without which civilization and order are impossible. All these secrets are matters of physical organization, and therefore of necessary development, wholly unconnected with the will of man. "Sal- vation is of the Jews," and is shown to be so as much by that great contribution to the salvation of mankind which was given by the Jewish enemies of the Saviour,—enemies who persuaded the Romans to crucify Him, as by that of our Saviour Himself, who took a Jewish body and sprang from a Jewish race and country. Finally, without an infusion of this Jewish principle into the order of society established by other races, no other race can prosper, or even remain. It is not difficult to say, then, what kind of Bishop Mr. Disraeli should select, if he would not add to the number of what he calls "mitred nullities." He should get Hebrew blood, if he can,—which may be difficult,—Hebrew scholar- ship and Oriental research in any case. He should prefer a man with the "local quality of inspiration,"—i. e., one who has been in personal contact with the soil of the Arabian penin- sula, if it may be. He should almost insist on predestinarian views, and a positive scorn for the doctrine that the Jews drew down any curse upon their race by bringing about the crucifixion of our Lord. He should incline, however, to priests with a strong belief in absolute expiation,—i. e., the blood shed to reconcile not merely man to God, but God to man,—never forgetting, however, that that Expiation had always formed part of the Omnipotent decree. Finally, he should favour decidedly those priests who have the most pro- found belief in the influence of spiritual truth over civil order, and are least disposed to leave to Parliament and secular agencies the direct control of civil life. "I go to a land," said Tan- cred, "that has never been blessed by that fatal drollery called a representative Government, though Omniscience once deigned to trace out the polity which should rule it." "It cannot be denied," says the same hero, "that society was- once regulated by God, and that now it is regulated by man. For my part, I prefer divine to self-government, and I wish to- know how it is to be attained." And, evidently, Mr. Disraeli should prefer Bishops with the same preferences. Are there any priests with a creed of these general features in England, —who look upon inspiration as given not to the souls of all men, but the physical organization of a special race, and as- liable to be specially augmented in a special climate,—whor regarding the Atonement as the key of salvation, hold it to- have been predestined by a divine Fate, and hold all the in- struments of that fate to have been instruments of equal honour,—who would try to govern mankind directly through the Church, and regard "the political equality of a particular- race as a matter of political arrangement," in no way derogat- ing from the divine law of aristocracy amongst races, aris- tocracy of blood ? If there be such priests amongst us,—and there may be those who hold almost all these three principles,. the race principle, the fatalistic principle, the anti-Erastian principle, though, perhaps, not all three simultaneously,—it- is to them that Mr. Disraeli should, if he be sincere, entrust the duty of raising up again the English Episcopacy from a Bench of "mitred nullities" to one of masterly evangelists- of "the Semitic principle."
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