MR. DISRAELI ON THE CHURCH.
MR. DISRAELI has been trying to comfort the soul of Lord Shaftesbury and the souls of Lord Shaftesbury's friends. Since he old days when Lord Palmerston was talked of in that circle as "the man of God," and when Mr. Disraeli made fun of Lord Shaftesbury, who, at the time of the Slough speech in 1858, would not have been at all averse to "hew him in pieces before the Lord," since those old days when Mr. Disraeli described how " Gamaliel himself came down with his phylacteries on his forehead" to attack the Conservative Go- vernment of that year for its great Indian blunder, there has been a great change in the aspirations of truly Evangelic hearts. Now Mr. Disraeli is, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson called him, the Luther of our modern Reformation, and the Low-Church clergy look to him to pull down the graven images on the high places and to destroy the priests of Baal. And Mr. Disraeli re- sponds willingly to the call. There was a time when Mr. Disraeli looked upon "the Orangeman as a pure Whig, the only professor and practiser of unadulterated Whiggism." But now he is glad enough of Orange support, and if he still holds the same view, he evidently thinks that there is no reason at all why "the only professors and practisers of pure and unadulterated Whiggism " should not be enthusiastic sup- porters of the Government of a Tory democrat. Accordingly, he has assured Lord Shaftesbury that he sympathises heartily with the Evangelical memorial presented to him through his hands, in the desire expressed in it for the cure of three great evils. The first, the insubordination of the Clergy to the law of the land, may, he hopes, be cured by the "Public Worship Regulation Act" which passed last Session, after the memorial (which dates back as far as July) had been signed. The second evil, the want of cordial relations between the clergy and laity, is, he hopes, in process of cure,—referring, we suppose, to the various Diocesan Synods in which a certain amount of rather peculiar lay opinion has got itself feebly ex- pressed. For the remedy of the last evil, the great growth of our city populations beyond the bounds of our parochial system, Mr. Disraeli has only the expression of a hope and a belief. The hope is vague,—that under the provisions of "existing legislation" there may be a certain extension of the parochial system, to meet the needs of the rapidly-growing population ; the belief is vaguer,—" I have ever myself been of opinion that it was in the great cities the Church would effect in this age its most signal triumphs," which is rather like say- ing to a man who complains of the state of the streets in the English metropolis, that you have always been of opinion that it is in the metropolis that in this age the science of the road-maker will effect its highest triumphs. It is a comfort, no doubt, to Lord Shaftesbury and his friends to be assured that Mr. Disraeli quite agrees with them as to what the Church may achieve in this age in the great cities. Only as she does not achieve these triumphs, and does not seem to be on the way to do so, what Lord Shaftesbury probably wanted was a suggestion as to the best mode of supplying the missing agency by which Mr. Disraeli's cherished expectations may be fulfilled, in spite of what seems for the present their complete discom- fiture. There must be something a little tantalising in the virtual assumption of Mr. Disraeli that no such suggestion is wanted, that it is quite enough for the depressed Churchmen to know that he (Mr. Disraeli) has anticipated a condition of things of which as yet there is no other sign. Even Millennialists will hardly be inclined to regard a prophecy of Mr. Disraeli's as ensuring its own fulfilment. Even though it were true, as Mr. Disraeli has assured us in his "Life of Lord George Bentinck," that "no one has ever been permitted to write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit except a Jew," it does not follow, conversely, that every man of that race who has made a prophecy, has written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Even Mr. Disraeli's confidence is a bad equivalent for some earnest of success.
The oddest side of Mr. Disraeli's reassurances to the Evangeli- cal party, at least for those who are tolerably familiar with all the most distinctive expressions of his mind, is perhaps this,— that a great part of Mr. Disraeli's confidence that the Church will win its chief triumphs in the great cities, must in all probability be due to a conviction that the population of the great cities is not yet fit for a less "deficient and meagre theology" than that which in his opinion the Church of England supplies. In his "Life of Lord George Bentinck " Mr. Disraeli has given us his own views on the subject, and has shown where he considers the theology of modern England to be chiefly "de- ficient and meagre." Had he told Lord Shaftesbury not what he thought likely to win triumphs in the great cities of Eng- land, but what he thought suited to master the reason and the imagination of wide-minded men, he would have described a creed very different from that of the Church of England, and one which would have produced a good deal of dismay amongst Lord Shaftesbury's adherents. The creed which, according to Mr. Disraeli, should win its greatest triumphs, we do not say in great-English cities, but among imaginative thinkers of any age or race,—in Mr. Disraeli's view, by the way, the "imagination" is one of the chief tests, not perhaps exactly of truth, but of that power over men which he looks upon as the highest characteristic of a creed,—would be something like what we are about to describe,—and, we venture to say, it would profoundly horrify Lord Shaftesbury. First, it would teach the great principle that neither religiously nor politically is there any . such thing as "the natural equality of man." There is no such equality. One race is superior to another by virtue of the ever- lasting law. "The mixed persecuting races disappear, the pure persecuted race remains." The Jewish race is the highest of all races, and its genius is the organ of God for the eleva- tion of mankind. Christianity is Judaism completed in doctrine, but injured by its loss of the principle of purity of race. Now doctrine is a matter in many respects secondary in importance to the people by whom and through whom it is taught. Jews still teach all sorts of false doctrine, head all sorts of movements which are alien to the true genius of their race, but show no loss of power in this perversion of their energy. "The fiery energy and the teeming resources of the children of Israel" can do more with unsound ideas and pernicious movements than any mixed race can do with sound ideas and wise traditions in their hands. The "Semitic principle" is great, but the Semitic race is greater still, and without the Semitic race the Semitic principle would have been comparatively powerless. "The natural equality of man now in vogue, and taking the form of cosmopolitan fraternity, is a principle which, were it possible to act on it, would deteriorate the great races and destroy all the genius of the world." Again, as to the very secondary point of the creed which the Semitic hoe might properly proclaim, Mr. Disraeli has described it thus. The morality of the Christian Gospel is nothing but the morality of the Mosaic law. "There cannot be two moralities ; and to hold that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity could teach a different morality from that which had been revealed by the First Person of the Holy Trinity, is a dogma so full of terror, that it may perhaps be looked upon as the ineffable sin against the Holy Spirit." Hence Christ came "not to teach, but to expiate." Not only was the expiation pre- ordained, but the instruments of the expiation. "The im- molators were preordained like the victim, and the holy race supplied both." In fact, the Pharisees who wagged their heads at Christ, and the crowds who cried," Crucify him, crucify him 1" were acting sacred parts in a great sacrificial act, parts even more essential than that of those who stood by in grief and consternation, and haraly less so than his who "at the same time solicited and secured forgiveness" for the acts which in- volved the show of hatred and the display of scorn. Again, it is part of Mr. Disraeli's creed that the political bias of the chosen race,—though one often perverted by the effects of persecu- tion,—is one towards "religion, property, and natural aristo- cracy ;" and it is only when Jews are embittered by wrong into playing the part of visiting retribution on their oppressors, that they throw an artificial life into the secret societies which espouse atheism, communism, and the levelling doctrine of universal equality. Their traditional bias is to guard "the Semitic principle," though none can attack the Semitic principle with the brilliancy and partial success of its natural guardians, the Semitic race. To sum up, Mr. Disraeli's creed, as ex- pounded by himself, would come to something like this :— ' I believe in the immutable distinctions of race, and I do not believe that of one blood God has made all the nations upon earth. I believe in the duty of keeping a high race pure, and especially in that of guarding the purity and sacredness of the Semitic race. I believe that the Semitic race is greatest when dwelling on the soil of Arabia, and that there are special geographical conditions in the mountains of the Sinaitic peninsula which favour the inspiration of the greater members of the Semitic race who resort thither. I believe in the Semitic principle, which asserts the mystical authority of a supreme God, the sacramental character of the Semitic organisation, the sanctity of property, and the rights and duties of all aristocratic castes. I believe that the Semitic race, even when in custody of an incomplete creed like that of Moses or Mohammed, is superior in power and in capacity for civilisation, to any inferior race, even though in custody of a complete Semitic creed. I hold Christianity to be the com- plete creed of the Semitic race, but so far from believing that it implies any slur or blame upon those of the Semitic race who rejected Christ, I regard them as having thereby discharged the part divinely assigned to them and predicted for them in the great sacrificial drama of the earth, and that in their fidelity to that part they incurred not blame, but praise. I believe that the Christian Jew ought to have guarded his purity of blood as anxiously as the Jews who did not accept Christ, and that by not doing so he has endangered the claim of Christianity to prescribe the rule of faith to the rest of the world.' That is, we believe, a fair summary of the doctrines which Mr. Disraeli would think necessary to complete the "deficient and meagre" theology of England ; and that if he could prescribe to the Archbishops and Bishops what they should teach, it would run very nearly in those lines. We do not say that he would think the great cities of England ripe for such doctrines yet. Possibly he regards what he holds to be the "deficient and meagre "theology of Eng- land, as better adapted at present for great cities thronged by so mixed and impure a race as ours,—though we doubt even that. But assuredly man's justification by faith is not in his creed,— man's justification by descent,rather, or by his functional adapta- lion to the tasks which he attempts. If Mr. Disraeli would but explain to "dear Lord Shaftesbury" this view of his as to the mode in which the Church might best supplement its 'deficient and meagre' theology so as to win over the intellectual aristo- cracy first, while preaching an exoteric form of it to the population of the great cities, what an impulse might he not impart to the ecclesiastical world !
As it is, we fear his "historical conscience" will hardly justify the deficient and meagre letter which he has just published. It reminds us more than anything else of that almost too practi- cal Buckinghamshire speech, in which he described the three great requisites of a labourer's cottage,—a tank, an oven, and a porch. So he're he enumerates the three practical defi- ciencies of the Clergy,—deficient obedience to the law, deficient sympathy with the laity, and deficient parochial machinery. With so deep a sense as he has of the deficiency and meagre- ness of the theology itself which the Clergy ought to preach, such a letter is hardly worthy of him. Why did he not instruct Gamaliel in the weightier matters of the law, instead of insist- ing thus emptily on the shortcomings of the Clergy in the mint, anise, and cumin of ecclesiastical morality and parochial administration ?
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