TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NEW PRUSSIAN STATE RELIGION.
1TE trust that English and Scotch Nonconformists will carefully study the astounding provisions of the new religious legislation of Prussia. That it should be received as it is, with a burst of congratulation by the Prussian Liberals, is one of those political phenomena which make thoughtful men consider whether they themselves are quite sane,—so giddy does it make one to find all the principles which seemed to have been steadily gaining ground in the world for generations back, deliberately reversed amidst rap- turous cheers from the party which seemed to have been the strongest partisan of those principles. The most important of the new Prussian Bills on religion does not so much as mention the Roman Catholic faith, and in discussing its drift we shall follow its example. English public opinion is just now in so morbid a state about the dangers of Romanism, that it is not disinclined to think what it would regard as akin to death and night if aimed at any other faith, as of the nature of life and light when it is only directed against Ultramontane liberties. However, the proposed Prussian legislation is, as we said, entirely impartial. If adopted in this country, it would suppress Wesleyanism, Independence, the Baptist faith, Quakerism, Swedenborgianism, perhaps even Unitarianism,
certainly not less effectually, possibly even more effectually, than Roman Catholicism. It would be a system far more fatal to religious equality and religious liberty than any Estab- lished Church which England has known since the Revolution of 1688. In fact, it would be a system which would make the religious teaching of the people precisely what the State for the time being allows it to be, nothing more and nothing less. Let us look for a moment at the way the proposed Prussian laws would take effect on English Dissenting bodies. As far as we can see, they would probably deprive Mr. Miall of reason, and turn our temperate and sober contemporary the Nonconformist into a paper fiercer than La Lanterne under Rochefort or Le Rappel under Victor Hugo.
The aim of the principal measure of the three just intro- duced is, first, to put the whole training of all religious teachers, —as well theological as literary,—under the control of the State,—and next, to put an absolute veto on the appointment to any office of religious teacher of any person whatever unwelcome to the State. Under these provisions, for instance, if you could suppose a complete organisation of our primary and secondary schools, and the liberal distribution of State Colleges over the British Islands, the foundation of any new Wesleyan, or Baptist, or Free-Church religious training schools would be interdicted,—no new pupils could be re- ceived into those now existing,—and these schools would be shut np at once, unless they absolutely accepted the con- ditions imposed from Downing Street on their managers. Thenceforward all young men destined for religious teachers in any sect would be obliged to produce evidence of having gone through the State schools to the end of the course, and of having then attended for three years the theological faculty of some College approved by the State. A Scotch Free-Church minister, for instance, would be obliged to produce evidence of having attended for three years the lectures of such teachers as the new Edinburgh professor, Professor Wallace, or of Principal Tulloch ; nor would the youth even be allowed to reside during that time in any sectarian College where the guidance of men of his own faith who might encourage a counter-influence to the State teachers, could be secured. This would be expressly forbidden. Only in case there were no theological faculty to the nearest local State College would the thdological candidate be permitted to attend the lectures of a Free-Church theological professor, and not even then unless Downing Street especially certified that such lectures were of a character fitted to supplement the secular teaching of any college,—say Aberdeen or Glasgow,— in which he was studying. Or take an English parallel. Cheshunt College (Independent), New College, and all other such institutions, would be at once subjected to rigid inspec• tion. No theological teacher could be appointed there who had not come out of the State Schools, and passed three years under the theological guidance of teachers of theological science approved by the State,—and these would certainly comprehend plenty of the class represented by our own Essayists and Reviewers. Thus Dr. Davidson, the eminent Rationalist, who was once a Professor in the Lancashire Inde- pendent College, and was compelled by his critical heresies to
depart from that position, would be a type of the least startling Theologians under whom it would then in all probability be compulsory to learn theology ; and even when Cheshunt and New College and all similar institutions had thus been refurnished with certified teachers of theology, they would not be permitted even to " supplement " the secular teaching of such institutions as University College, London, without a certificate from the President of the Privy Council of Education that they were well adapted to do so. And in no case would the students during their attendance at University College be allowed to be " inmates " of theological colleges like those at Cheshunt.
But the nature of these provisions is most startling in
relation to the restrictions on the pastoral office. It is quite certain that under anything analogous to the new Prussian regulations, Mr. Spurgeon, Mr. Binney, Mr. Dale, Mr. Baldwin Brown, Mr. J. Jenkyn Brown, Mr. Crosskey, and most other of the eminent Nonconformist ministers who permit themselves a considerable freedom of speech against the State, would become sheer impossibilities.. For one of the new provisions is that no religious teacher against whom the State objects shall either enter for the first time the office of religious teacher, or exchange- one such office for another. And mind, this has no rela- tion at all to State pay. If one of these eminent men received "a call" from an enthusiastic flock in London, the Privy Council might put in its veto, and the call would be invalid. Not simply would their training and education have been mainly furnished from their infancy upwards by the State, so that nothing alarming or original should, if possible, be turned out, but even after the taking of all these serious precautions against any tendency disagreeable to the State in their teaching, they could not move a step in life without State assent. More still, the congregations which. could not please themselves and the State both, would not even be permitted to keep their pulpits vacant for above a year- without making a permanent appointment. That would be regarded as an attempt to cheat the State into more freedom of congregational action than the State can allow. If a bishop of an Episcopal Church failed to fill up such an appointment within a year, he would be liable to a penalty of £150. If in an Independent Church the congregation kept "candidates" constantly preaching to them, we suppose the fine would be- inflicted on the congregation,—but on some one it would be inflicted, if there were any attempt to attain liberty by using a "provisional " system. Add finally, that all theo- logical teachers and all pastors in England must be English subjects,—that M. de Pressense could not be invited here per- manently by a French Protestant congregation, nor M. Athanase Coquerel by a Unitarian congregation, unless they chose to take out their naturalisation as British citizens, and you have a fair summary of the inconceivable religious martinetism of the proposed law. No doubt such a law could not have been thought of except hr a country where all religions are in some sense established• and under the State, as only one of our faiths is. But even in the Church of England alone, which is Etablished, we can hardly conceive the revolution which this new law would create. No incumbent, no curate, could be appointed anywhere who had not fulfilled the conditions both as to State general education and as to a theological education approved by the State,—nor even then, unless he were personally agreeable to the State, and the Minister failed in making out that he was "unfit from any ground appertaining to his duties as a citizen or as a subject." It stands to reason, of course, that Archbishop Manning, Cardinal Cullen, and the whole Ultramontane hierarchy ministering in both England and Ireland would be at once excluded, Father O'Keefe being probably the only priest in Ireland who would pass muster. But let us keep to the Protestant side of the line. If the State had a veto on every appointment to- either curacies or livings and on every change of office, only conceive the sudden and rapid extinction that would take place- in all varieties of teaching unfavourable to the authority of the State. The effect would be precisely that of making the priesthood of the Church homogeneous with the Episco- pate now,—or rather, infinitely less independent, for now the State, accustomed to respect the variety of theological schools- in the Church, is compelled by public opinion to choose men from all schools for the Episcopal office ; but uniformity of type grows rapidly under the shadow of a single authority, and if the various schools in the Church could be suppressed by State authority, we should soon find that they would be, and that all tendencies in any way hostile to the tendencies,
of the civil administration of the period would soon be outrooted. It is not too much to say that the Prussian legislation is a legislation for the universal suppression of religious independence, that under it not only would all our voluntary sects cease to be, but the State Church itself would become a mere dependent of the Civil Service,—say, something like a religious appendage to the Civil Service Commission. This system would suffocate all spontaneousness of spiritual thought, and subject the higher mind of Great Britain to the influence of the drill-serjeant,—a drill-serjeant, too, who does not even profess to know truth, or to care much for truth, but whose sole object is to make it easier to govern. That such an enterprise should not only be undertaken by Prussia, but undertaken with a shout of approbation from the Liberal party, is to us the moat astounding phenomenon of modern Liberalism. It seems to show that modern thought in Prussia values itself so little, and its hatred of the Roman Church so much, that it will cheerfully commit suicide in order to ensure, as it hopes, the death of its antagonist. How if the result in Prussia should be that it succeeds in this happy despatch, but gives a new and powerful accession of strength and authority to its great rival
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