CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS.
WE have recently been occupied in the attempt to answer the question whether that scheme of society known as Socialism derives any special sanction from Christianity. We would to-day return upon the relation between polities and re- ligion from a wider point of view, and attempt to answer the ques- tion which several recent utterances must have suggested to our readers,—In what relation does political duty stand to Christian teaching? The noble protest against the notion that religion stands out of relation to political duty, which was elicited from the Warden of Keble College, by Mr. Harrison's account of the Posi- tivist worship in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette, must have met with a welcome from many who felt indignant at having it assumed that this was a specially Christian notion: although they may have been quite ready to allow both that the behaviour of many Christians has encouraged it, and also that the behaviour of most Positivists is an excellent rebuke to it. And the wish recently expressed in Mr. Seeley's lectures on the "Expansion of England" that history should become more political, must have carried many thoughts in the same direction, if not exactly to the same goal. How far can those who consider that the most important truth is that which concerns the relation of God to man join in the wish that a record of human life should ally itself with the political spirit It must be admitted at once that if by Christianity we mean something of divine origin, and if by Politics we mean a theory of the relation between the governors and the governed, the idea that any connection exists between these two things would be confuted by history. There is no disputable theory of government which has not been defended by true Christians, and also opposed by them, at some time or other. If we confine our attention to our own time, it is, of course, possible to fancy that some such connection exists. We live on the edge of a great uprising against authority which was combined with a rejection of Christianity, and it is natural that two things opposed together should be remembered together ; but if we had lived in the England of 200 years ago, we should have seen an uprising against authority which was com- bined with a strong and marked assertion of Christianity, and should have been inclined to look upon religions enthusiasm as dangerous to civil order and secular rule rather than to liberty. And if in the fifteen centuries since Christianity was dominant it has oftener been in alliance with the spirit of authority than the spirit of freedom, that fact tells us nothing whatever of its own character, only of the tendency of mankind to mix the assertion of truth with claims for their own authority. About the result of any scheme of government Christian men are, it is plain, promised no supernatural illumination. They may be mistaken about what tends to true Liberty, as they may be mistaken about what tends to true Order. But they are as much the less Christians if they fail in sympathy with liberty, as if they fail in sympathy with order. We cannot say that one principle is more sacred than the other. The Christian teacher should most urgently insist on that, whichever it be, which Christians are most likely to forget, and he may be as much mistaken on that point as any one else may.
Nevertheless, to allow that Christianity had no influence on politics would be simply to allow that Christianity was false. Does our duty to our neighbour need a less potent sanction when its object changes from one to many ? Do we require a divine wisdom to enlighten us as to the duties which concern the happiness of two or three, and can we dispense with it when we come to duties which concern the happiness of millions ? The question answers itself. If a man be not a better citizen for being a Christian, then Christianity is a dream. It might be argued, with much plausibility, and not without some truth, that no other relation affords so sure a test of a man's moral condition as does that which he holds to the community of which he forms a part. Before we condemn a man who has failed, however unquestionably, as son or husband, we have to learn the character of the other member of the relation ; but if he is a bad citizen, he cannot ex- pect the community to divide the blame with him. We do not mean to deny that other points in the comparison suggest an opposite conchision ; but still it is true, on the whole, that while few duties are so important as political duties, there are none in which a man's responsibility is so abso- lute, as far as it goes. To ask whether political duty should be influenced by religion is like asking whether Scotland is a part of Great Britain. But if we defined Great Britain as stopping short at Edinburgh, and Scotland as bounded on the south by the Grampians, Scotland would form no part of Great Britain. And the ordinary conception of Christianity is not a more shrunken fragment of the region which that word should mark out than is the ordinary conception of politics. "General Christians," as Lord Palmerston called them, are no better illustrations of the meaning of Christianity, than is the ordinary Tory or Radical of that science which deals with the duties of a citizen. Our participation in the relations of civil life varies greatly, but not more than our participation in in- dividual relations does, and it would not be easy to decide which are the most important of the two. Conceive, for instance, the change that would come over the world if only one single political duty were rightly fulfilled, if no one either gave or withheld his gift for any needy claimant without a sense of responsibility. So miserably has the very idea of politics shrunk, that it will sound odd to reckon our duty to the poor as a political duty ; yet of all the duties that belong to a. polity, surely it is the one to which ordinary individuals would do best to give heed.
We are far from urging that the ordinary meaning of Politics refers to something unimportant. It may be the duty of every man of influence to stand by that party whose principles, on the whole, he deems nearest the truth, and whose influence, on the whole, appears to him most useful to the com- munity. And the straggle between the two armies whose watchwords are respectively " Freedom " and "Order," however we may regret it., is one which we are forced to regard as a permanent incident of national life. Although between the ideas of freedom and of order themselves there is no opposition, yet, as the whole of history shows us that the men who make each of these things their object are actually enlisted under different banners, this battle seems a part of the system of things, which we have to accept and make the beat of. Loyalty to a Party is, in many cases, a duty ; and there is no doubt that it may be sacrificed to many things much lower than itself. But it may be at once confessed that this is a duty which .Christianity tends to make more difficult. Christian belief has no tendency to endow a man either with political knowledge or political ability, any more than it has a tendency to endow him with arithmetical accuracy. It makes him wish to be an honest man, and, so far, it helps him to keep his accounts accurately,—and that wish is a real help. And so it is a real help towards party loyalty, to a certain extent. But a religions faith tends to increase the claimants on a man's loyalty ; and no true claimant to loyalty—and we fully allow the claim—comes so low down in the scale as a party does. No kind of valid claim is so much subject to revision from the side of considerations that spring from Christian ground. Christ- ianity is, in reference to what many people call politics, a dis- turbing element. The attitude which a profoundly Christian mind is apt to take towards party questions was well illus- trated in all the political utterances of Mr. Maurice. He would always seek for the true principle at the root of any outgrowth of party feeling, would point out the dis- tortion to which it was liable, and the failure which awaited it just so far as it admitted any influence from this dis- tortion, and there he would stop. He never led his hearers to see that one side was right and the other wrong. And that is just what a politician has to see,—a politician, that is to say, in this narrow sense of the word, which we are Obliged to give in to, even while we protest against it.
However, in all this there is nothing specially characteristic of Christianity, except so far as Christianity has been the moral faith which men have felt most earnestly. All such faith originates sympathies and beliefs which tend to confuse and trouble party union. The very protest from which we have taken our text fully allows that Christians owe to Comtists a most valuable reminder. of that side of their political duties, however we name it, by which party feeling is cast into the shade. No body of men have done more to uphold the claims on politicians of "morality touched with emotion" than the Positivists have ; and if they have not bad to meet the accusa- tion of "humanitarianism," "want of patriotism," and the like, it is only because it has not been felt worth while to make it. They have shown the truest patriotism in urging the duties of their country on those who represent its external action, and are as much bound to consider its duties as each one of us is to con- sider our own duties ; but they have shown also exactly that interference of religions feeling with party feeling which pro- vokes most hostility on the part of politicians. We may call it religious feeling, since it is their religion, though its object is humanity ; and we may call the feeling with which it interferes party feeling, though its object is a country ; for patriotism sinks to the level of party feeling when our country is regarded as a corporate being with claims, and without duties. And if Christians had been as true to their creed as Positivists had been to theirs (they are no worse men, but the task has been more difficult), they would have been better politicians in the larger sense, and worse in the narrower sense. Humanity is not the object of their worship. But it is the object of sympathies touched with new life from their creed, and of duties taking a new sanction from the same source. Who can doubt, for instance, that if Christianity had been a living, predominant influence, the anti-slavery move- ment would have been a distinctly Church movement ? And who doubts now, whatever be his political creed, that the aboli- tion of slavery was a great political step, and that every one who helped it on was not only a better Christian, bat a better politician,—a soldier fighting on the right side, even if you mean by the right side nothing but the side which is going to win P At the same time, it must have happened more than once that this question weakened a party, even when a party was working for good. Nothing in Macaulay's prosperous life is so interest- ing as the sacrifices which he made to his father's principles, but at the time it must have seemed to many, and, perhaps, sometimes even to himself, as if he were sacrificing not so much his interest to his duty, as his political feeling to his personal feeling. -Yet now there is no act of his life which would be felt so con- spicuously right, in a political sense, by every one..
There is no subject which more distinctly exhibits the difference between the amalgam of Christian belief with ecclesiastical feel- ing which represents Christianity to the world, and its true spirit, as the history of slavery does. We must confess that
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there have been men who would have laid down their lives to make other men Christians, and did all they could to keep them slaves ; perhaps this must be said, for instance, 'of Whitefield. Of course; the very motives which make men cowardly about giving offence and careful of preserving their in- fluence take strength from sources that call themselves Christian. But there can be no doubt in an unprejudiced mind what has been the influence of Christianity on slavery. " Ce n'est pas fipartacus qu i a sup prime resclavage, c'est bien plutOt Blandine," says a historian whose testimony to anything Christian will not be received with suspicion,—M. Renan. It is surprising that that tribute to the martyred slave-girl has not aroused more attention. It is a tribute not to this or that form of Christianity, but to the teaching of Jesus. He said, " Resist not evil." We say, " That is an unpractical, exaggerated doctrine; we must pare down its meaning to some much smaller, before we can make any use of it. M. Renan says this was the teaching that put an end to slavery. A pagan hero refused to be "butchered to make a Roman holiday," fired his oppressed brethren with the passion for liberty, and taught slaves to die in the strength of that passion. We cannot say that the genius and courage which it taxed the utmost strength of Rome to subdue did anything towards ending slavery. The quelled revolt of Spartacus rivetted the chains of his brethren, sharpened the scourge under which they groaned, and hardened against them the heart of the most humane of the Romans. Then came a faith which appealed Svith special promise to the slave, which offered duties he could 'fulfil and rights that he could claim ; he accepted it, he believed the words of Christ literally, he feared not them which could kill the body, and after that had no more they could do; he accepted death and torture at their hands with unresist- ing hope, and when the storm of persecution was past slavery had become impossible. Slaves had taught freemen how to die, they were enrolled among the Saints, and it was im- possible that humanity could continue to recognise a distinction which was thrown into the shade as much by common memories as by common hopes. We do not say that this is the way all historians 'would narrate the facts, but certainly the one from whom we have taken this view is not a prejudiced advocate of Christianity.
The records of history might be made to yield very different answers to our question, no doubt. The worst crimes it com- memorates have been committed in the service of something that the criminals sincerely believed to be Christianity, and it is no unnatural inference to conclude that its teachings were not intended to be applied to the region where they were capable of so hideous a distortion. At times every Christian student of his- tory must have felt an enormous relief in turning from modern to ancient history, and escaping from the atmosphere of something -which calls itself by the name of his faith, but which must have seemed to him more nearly a complete antithesis to everything to which his faith bears witness than any kind of belief and feeling that was in the world before it existed. And then, of course, it is easy to go on to the wish that men should live politically as they did live before it existed, that the whole world of political relation should remain as untouched by the aims associated with Christianity as is the life of the men one reads of in Thacydides. At times, indeed, it appears as if this aim were to be realised in our day. We do not believe it can be realised in any day. Bat what we may say decidedly is that it will be something new in the world if it ever does come to pass that Christianity gives no colour to political life. History shows us an endless corn- -plenty of alliance between Christian feeling and that against which Christian feeling should be a perpetual struggle ; but the modern idea of private life regulated by one code, and public by another,—this, whatever else there is to be said for it, is not a conception that can be illustrated from the life of the past. History may help us to understand how it arose. The Church was born in an age when civil virtue was as impossible as to an individual is filial piety in old age. It became the rival, not the ally, of a life which was younger than itself. A national life grew up beneath its shelter, and was not easily recognised as its equal. Yet it is the most theological of all poets, and the one in whom the spirit of the Middle Ages is most -completely expressed, who gives a most emphatic sanction to the belief that these powers are equals. No ideal of life is more political than Dante'. The Emperor and -the Pope are correlative authorities, performing functions equally sacred, alike agents in giving Christendom a unity which in this medireval ideal it was to possess in a much higher
degree than our modern thinkers dare to dream of. From this point of view, the modern condition of a congeries of States struggling through some vague conceptions of international law to attain a certain approximation to the organic unity which was, according to the earlier view, to be something coherent and definite, would appear an enormous retrogression, a process the very reverse of Evolution. It may be said that this ideal was never realised ; nevertheless, it remains an important fact that it existed. The religious conception of European civilisation was a far more organic thing than is that of our secular age. And whether or not any one can hope for the return of any similar ideal, whether or not we may believe that faith shall ever again be a bond of national union, we must surely allow that in this function it has no obvious rival ; and that the unity of Christendom, if it is not to be achieved by Christian faith, seems likely, from all we can see, to remain a mere dream.
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