OUR able contemporary, the Pall Mall, has now for a
long
such. States to insist firmly on proper obedience being paid to Germany and Prussia, and which Switzerland, following in his
their laws whenever they happen to come into collision with the steps with almost slavish admiration, is now asserting for the narrow Protestant majority of her people. The Pall Mall has never gone further in this direction than in the article of Wednesday last in which it apparently contended that lay poli- ticians are far better judges of moral and spiritual truth than ecclesiastics, that the age is rapidly awakening to this truth, and that it is perfectly right therefore that statesmen should assert their spiritual competence by prescribing what is to be and what is not to be taught in the Churches on spiritual sub- jects, if not quite as freely as they do what is to be taught in primary schools, yet with all the freedom they themselves from time to time think fit. That we may not exaggerate the view, let us quote our contemporary's own words :—
" rt would in fact, though not in name, establish a new religion, for the effect of it would be that the old religions would have to be taught under such conditions as the State chose to impose upon them, and therefore in such a sense as the State might choose to attach to them. Many persons see in such enterprises nothing more than an apotheosis of the system of bureaucracy. It appears to them to be monstrous and Unnatural that politicians, ordinary men of the world, should assume the task of regulating the teaching of moral and religious subjects. Such matters should be left, if not to some kind of priesthood organised for that special purpose, at least to the voluntary efforts of spiritually minded persons. It appears to many men that there must of necessity be something coarse and secular in the way in which the common run of statesmen would deal with subjects affecting the conscience and the will. It appears to us that whether this is so or not is and always must be emphatically a question of fact. The government of human beings, especially the government of their minds, falls to the share of those who have the power to govern. The man who not only is, but is recognised by the nation at large as being, stronger and wiser than his neighbours is its natural leader ; and if in a given age real strength and wisdom are to be found rather in statesmen and soldiers and men of business than in priests and in what, for fault of a better name, we may call the spiritual classes generally, the government and direction of men in their most important affairs will fall to the lot of the statesmen, soldiers, and men of business, to the exclusion of the priests and the spiritual classes. It is by no means matter of surprise to us that a thoughtful and serious people, looking at the different matters before them, and considering more or less consciously and distinctly the question who are the leaders best worth following and most capable of leading, should be of opinion on the whole that, whatever may have been the case in other times, the laity in these days of ours are superior to the clergy ; that there is more wisdom, more vigour, more of everything that becomes man, to be found in courts and council-chambeA, in camps and public offices, than in churches, convents, hospitals, and other strongholds of religious emotion ; and that they should act in accordance with that view. Whether they are right or wrong the results alone can show, but it is to us at least difficult to doubt that this is the sentiment which under- lies the German ecclesiastical legislation."
Now, no one will accuse this journal of a preference for clerical views of things, or of any respect for the law as administered by ecclesiastics, either in Rome or in so-called "Free Churches," like the Free Church of Scotland. We have always held strongly that Erastian Churches, Churches more or less governed by the State, are far the most rea- sonable and just, though certainly not usually the most life- stirring Churches, and we have never seen reason to change our opinion. We have always held still more strongly that when ecclesiastics try to administer justice in ecclesiastical affairs, they invariably fail, and usually fail so disgracefully, that even in their own interests it would be far better for them to hand over the administration of their own law to lay judges. But these positions are very different indeed from those of the certainly by no means "commonplace Liberalism" which our contemporary preaches. And we will try to state shortly why we hold the practical doctrine of the Pall Mall on this subject to be based on exceedingly mis- leading historical suggestions, to be very mischievous in relation to England and America to which it is evidently our contemporary's view that the new doctrine should be applied, and to be, in relation to the political drift of modern affairs, in the highest degree dangerous and unseasonable.
And first, as to the recent events which evidently encourage our contemporary to hope for a great development of the State autocracy in relation to spiritual affairs. It is obvious enough, we suppose, that the stimulus which has been THE NEW LIBERALISM ON CHURCH AND STATE. recently applied to the authority of States in this direction, is due to the Syllabus and the declaration of Papal Infallibility
by. the Vatican Council on the one hand, and to the time been preaching down what it calls that " Common- s.kilful use made by Prince Bisznarck of the reaction place Liberalism" which advocates the common theory of in Germany .against this teaching and the whole theory protecting the liberty of all religions,— the Liberalism
of sacerdotalism, on the other. Now, we have never doubted which the English and American peoples have deliber- for a moment that at a hundred points the teaching of the ately adopted, and which the Italians have expressed by the Syllabus, interpreted by the declaration of the Pope's Infalli- formula, " A Free Church in a Free State,"—and asking us yity, does threaten most seriously the proper moral autho- to substitute for it something of that spiritual autocracy nty of every well-governed State, nor that it is the duty of in the State which Prince Bismarck has lately put in force in
such. States to insist firmly on proper obedience being paid to Germany and Prussia, and which Switzerland, following in his
their laws whenever they happen to come into collision with the steps with almost slavish admiration, is now asserting for the
authority arrogated to itself by that imperium in imperio, the Roman Church. No one with the least knowledge of history has ever doubted that the Roman Church, far more than any other Western Church, is a polity as well as a Church ; and that it is impossible, therefore, for any State in which the Roman Church is exceedingly powerful to avoid serious colli- sions with it. The only question for statesmen is how best to deal with such conflicting authority. And what we main- tain is that the teaching of modern history has practically solved the problem, and shown that it is best to deal with it, not on the old and, in these matters, mischievous principle,— the principle of the Roman Church itself,—of Obsta iwincipiis, but, on the contrary, on the plain, statesmanlike habit of taking your stand firmly at the point where mischievous teach- ings issue into practical dangers to the social order of the State, and of ignoring the sources of such dangers. The wiser and stronger States do this now, even in relation to direct political doctrine that would once have been regarded as treasonable. No sensible statesman would dream of straining the law of sedition to prosecute Mr. Bradlaugh or Mr. Odger, or much more distinguished teachers of theoretical republican- ism, so long as they did not attempt actual rebellion. Arid what has proved so sound and wise in relation to political teaching is a fortiori sound in relation to religious teaching. So far is the proclamation of the Pope's infallibility by the Vatican Council from suggesting any necessary exception to this principle, that it seems to us the best justification of it. That decree has always been defended by the Romanist teachers,—we believe quite sincerely,—as a defensive measure. Heresy was spreading at so rapid a rate and was infecting the Church so deeply in Germany and else- where, that a swifter and more definite authority on the subject of heresy was felt by her teachers to be needed, and hence the decree. Is that a reason why Protestants should be dissatisfied, and suddenly change the policy which has led to this result ? Not only is it not such a reason, but everybody who has studied Prince Bismarck's speeches and policy knows perfectly well that he at least never mistook it for such a reason. The Pall Mall in holding up Prince Bismarck as a great applier of its own principle, is entirely on a false historical track. Prince Bismarck has confessed again and again, in the most perfect con- formity with all he had ever done and said in his previous career, that he was not less anxious after the Vatican decree tolean upon the support of the Conservatives and the Catholic Conservatives amongst the number, than he was before ; that he made the greatest efforts to get the strong support of Rome for the new Empire, and that it was only when he failed (through the influence mainly of the Bavarian and South-German Particularists with the Holy See) that he turned to the Liberals, and declared that if he could not find help from the Conservatives, he must find it with their foes. As it happened, the most popular thing he could do, without weakening the power of the Crown or the Army, which he was determined not to do, was- to head the crusade against Rome, a crusade popular both because the Ultramontanes were Particularists, and because the whole of Germany is honeycombed by that sceptical creed and bitterly anti-sacerdotal spirit which makes an attack on the most dogmatic and sacerdotal of all Churches a fierce joy to the people. But we deny entirely that Prince Bismarck himself ever adopted this policy on its merits, in the sense in which the Pall Mall admires it. On the contrary, as a statesman we believe that he distrusted it seriously, and has even now little confidence in its success. It was for him a pis- alter, not a policy of his own choice. We believe that it will result in giving anew stimulus to Roman Catholicism, and that the fanatical vehemence with which the German people have adopted it is a sufficient evidence of the rash and ill-considered character of the policy itself. Already the Protestant sects are feeling the gravity of their mistake, and fretting under the curb which they have consented to fasten on their opponents.
But still less does English and American history justify this strange freer of retrograde Liberalism. It is perfectly true, we believe, that the English and.Scotch Erastian Churches, in spite of very serious defects in them, are some of the best in the world, but that is, in great measure, due to the free spiritual competition by which they are surrounded, without which there is every evidence that they would be in a state of deep stupor. Wesley- anima, Evangelicalism, the High and Broad Church move- ments, all of them movements originating in the National Church, have all been results of the free spiritual competition around it. Does anyone suppose for a moment that with the monstrous and iniquitous martinetism of the new Prussian law to keep the veto of a bureaucratic Home Office on every fresh spring of religious fervour, any of these movements would have renewed the energy of the English Church ? It may be true —we think it is true —that on the whole the laity of the present day keep a level of judgment higher in all Churches than the clergy. But this is very much due to the modest limi- tation of their functions, and their refusal in modern times to deal directly with the matters with which the Pall Mall would charge them. There is a vein of enthusiasm in all true re- ligious teaching which is very apt to disqualify the judgment for dealing well with worldly matters,—just what St. Paul called "the foolishness of God." We are much mistaken if Prince Bismarck or his subordinates would under the new law permit a new St. Paul to preach at all in Prussia. But that is no reason for letting the State trample clown all spiritual origi- nality at its own coarse discretion. Quite the reverse. The tem- perance and sobriety of English and American statesmen have been due in great measure to the free development of spiritual powers around them which they have never even wished or made pretence to control. Indeed, statesmen are often know- nothings on such matters, and there is something even ludicrous in the idea of putting ourselves spiritually into the hands of Lord Palmerston or Mr. Disraeli, to say nothing of Mr. Gladstone. Is an age of the world in which few men know what is truth, or whether there be truth, one in which you would ask statesmen to determine its limits ? We suspect that a race of statesmen armed with such powers as Prussia is now giving to her officials would soon cease to show their present temperance and sobriety, and grow into a caste of civilian ecclesiastics of harder, drier, and lower mould than any of the ecclesiastics they had to put down.
Lastly, what can be more dangerous in times when demo- cratic principles are beginning to take 80 arrogant an attitude towards even the most private regions of human action, when it is claimed that a majority of his fellows shall decide for a man precisely on what terms he shall work, with wham he shall be on friendly and unfriendly terms, or whether he shall drink beer or water, than to try, as the Pall Mall is now doing, to break down all the guarantees which still protect the freedom of the spiritual and intellectual life ? Is this a da:Y. in which to maintain that politicians should have much more power than they now have to control and stimu- late the intellectual and spiritual movements of the people ? To our minds, the absolutism of the Vatican Council is a trifling danger compared with the growing absolutism of the democratic temper, which is now being pushed into almost every department of human conduct. The only region of human life still carefully guarded against its intrusion is the region of spiritual and intellectual thought, and the barriers which protect even that the German Empire is throwing down, and the Pall Mall apparently wishes to see us throwing down also. Is it easy to conceive political teaching the issues of which would be more disastrous ?
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