THE RIGHT AND WRONG OF PROSELYTISM.
THE affair at Cardiff, the so-called " abduction " of a young Jewess by a bigoted Welsh Calvinist, who thought she was doing God and her Church service by aiding a hot-tempered and rather unscrupulous young woman to quit her home, has roused -once again the old controversy as to the just limit of Proselytism. How far is it right for any person to try to change the faith of any other, when that change involves secular as well as spiritual consequences? According to the Times, which in this matter expresses a feeling extremely common among the cultivated claws, the spirit of proselytism is, on the whole, a very vulgar and inconvenient form of unreasoning fanaticism, fanaticism which public opinion ought carefully to repress. Why can't decent people let each others souls alone ? Of course, if human beings of mature age are so weak as to change their " faith," that is, the conventional form of belief with which it suits them to cloak their real opinion upon spiritual subjects, why, those around them must submit to their vagaries, with a shrug of their shoulders at the weakness of human nature, though there are exceptions even to that slightly contemptuous tolerance. If the convert is a marquis with /200,000 a year, and immense " influence " in society, a change of faith, particularly a change from a popular to an unpopular creed, shows a want of any becoming sense of his responsibilities to his position which cannot be too highly reprehended. A Peer who changes his creed ought almost to be expellei the House of Lords, as an unconditioned person who might do anything. But to try and make proselytes, still more to make them in defiance of the views of the majerity, is to be guilty of a breach of the ties which bind society together, to prove yourself a meddlesome person, devoid of com- mon-sense, one whom it is expedient for opinion, as represented by juries and newspapers, incontinently to put down. Hindooism is in this view the perfect creed, for though it does make converts by the hundred thousand, it in theory repudiates them ; and next to that comes Judaism, for although the Jews are not quite such silly theologians as to deny that Judaism ought to be universal, still they are by no means anxious to receive outsiders into a covenant which they feel, though they do not exactly think, ought to be re- served to the seed of Abraham. Above all, the conversion of Jews to Christianity is to be condemned. Jews are most respectable people, who make money and do not make riots, and are getting on very fast in the world, and their faith is clearly therefore quite as good as that of anybody else. it is not a very promising or pleasant opinion this, comfortable as it looks, for even admitting all faiths to be equally true or equally false, still unity of belief is an ideal dear to statesmen, and violent difference is a bore, which interferes with a great many philanthropic projects, such as national education, which Galli°, with a mental reservation in favour of advancing slowly, still cordially approves. To men who are not Gallios, who believe that there is such a thing as Truth,— or, which is commoner nowadays, that truth is an object of pur- suit which one is bound to follow, even at the cost of an occasional "purl," more or less severe,—the opinion is something more than unpleasing, is one of the very few which rouse them to a vulgar and un-Christian rage of earnestness. What on earth are men for, say the " fanatics " of all sects, if not to proselytize, to diffuse in the minds of the dark the light which is in their own? What is the meaning or use of a church, or a ministry, or preaching, or writing,—what is the raison d'être of the Times itself, and all its immense machinery, if it be not that? The Times in its own sphere is trying to perform that function every day, and surely, even if all religions are false, the question which is the falsest or least false is, at all events, as important as the best means of administering a parish or a country. Such men would probably assert that the first duty of every man is to prosely- tize, to convert as many people as he can to his own view of thinking on spiritual affairs, that to despise that work is to de- spise truth, that to be slack in that work, from fear of human opinion or from dread of consequences, is to be guilty of about the basest cowardice of which human nature is capable. The Comtist says and thinks that just as much as the Christian, and so very often, though not always, does the sceptic, who, doubting if truth is attainable, still does not doubt that such little glimpses of it as he can obtain it is his duty to communicate to other men. We have known a good many sceptics of all kinds in our time, men fretted with all manner of doubts, from doubts whether God existed, or existing ought to be obeyed, to doubts whether candles on the altar ought or ought not be lighted ; but we never met one yet who on one subject, the duty of tolerating his doubt, was not a propagandist, and a fierce one, willing to fight and to endure. No scepticism we ever heard of quite comes up to that of the Times, which would doubt its own existence to-morrow, if that were a popular form of uncertainty ; but, still, on that particular point, the duty of tolerating its own opinion, the Times would, we do not question, be as violently propagandist as the very nar- rowest Dissenter or high Sacramentarian could be. It would sincerely think it had light, and would diffuse it.
We need not say with which form of opinion the Spectator sympathizes. As it seems to us, a faith which does not desire to spread itself, desire that more than anything else, is a dead faith, which is not only unworthy to live, but has no power of living in any true sense of the word "life." Either such a creed is not real, that is, those who profess it do not at heart believe it, or it can be held by men who do not care whether other men have light or not, and stands condemned by its com- patibility with that lowest and dirtiest form of selfishness. The only conceivable exception to that rule is in the case of the "pedigree creeds," of which there are, by the way, only two in the world,—where a man believes that the very essence of religious hope, the one faculty necessary even to the power of receiving light, consists in the incommunicable quality of birth, and even in these the selfishness is found to give way before the pressure of faith. The haughtiest Brahmin will give the barbarian a place in Hindooism which, low though it be, suffices to make redemption possible, and the sternest Rabbi denies to the outsider nothing save the possibility of being a progenitor of the Messiah. To diffuse the light in one if there be any light seems to us as inevitable as for the light to diffuse itself, to be the one proof that there is light, and we can no more form an idea of a non-proselytizing creed than of a light devoid of rays. The torch may go out, but while it burns its rays cannot be concentrated wholly on itself. Nevertheless, we do not question, and the strongest adherents of every faith in all ages have always allowed, that there are limits to the spirit of proselytism, that there are circumstances under which it is not morally right to change the faith of another, acts which ought not to be done to ensure the grand result. Of course, if one holds a creed in which the first dogma is that there is no salvation outside it, and the second, that salvation can be secured by acts from with- out, the limits are very wide, but still the limits exist. Very few sincere Catholics would deny, we suspect, that the Pope, having the power, was right in seizing the little Mortara, the secret doubt whether persecution ever changes opinion not applying to children ; and we do not quite see how a Protestant, if he honestly held the same opinion, could deny it either. The only offence in the matter from the Papal point of view is the cruelty to the father, a cruelty an English court would commit unhesitatingly if the father were bringing up his child, say, to make his bread by theft. Yet the sincerest Catholic would hardly assert that the Pope would be right, say, in slaughtering the entire population of the Ghetto in order to save that child, any more than the Calvinist would affirm that the
Thomases were right in telling all manner of falsehoods in order to make Esther Lyons a Christian. There is a duty and there is a limit to it, but what is the boundary? The Welsh jury evidently thought that one boundary was the parental right, for they fined Mr. Thomas £50 for helping a woman of nineteen to run away from her father in order to become Christian, while if he had helped her to make a runaway love match they would not have fined him a penny. They clearly thought him wrong to interfere, but surely if he thought, as he did think, or rather as his wife did think for him, that the girl's soul was in question, he was quite in the right. There was no question of age in the matter. A girl of nineteen, in the judgment of Welsh Calvinists, and indeed of three-fourths of the Christian world, can hold a faith which will damn her, and if so, the man or woman who alters that faith, whether in defiance of her unbelieving father or not, is surely doing what, in motive at all events, is a highly commend- able act. St. Paul would not have stopped preaching because some neophyte's father believed that his son had offended Jupiter by desertion. To talk of parental authority in such a case is all nonsense. No parent has any authority to send his child's soul to bell, any more than he has authority to send its body to the grave by refusing sufficient food. The emergency is too great to justify vespect to any human right, and the divine right of the parent, if there be such a thing, is denied in the very terms of the proposi- tion. Every law, whether God-made or man-made, refuses it him. We confess that for men who honestly entertain a creed of this sort we can see but one distinct limitation. They must not violate their own belief by committing what they themselves condemn as crime in order to make proselytes. Mr. Thomas, for instance, while quite excusable in sheltering Esther Lyons from her father if he thought her soul in question,—we should all admit that if the girl, for example, were being deliberately trained to im- morality, and in Mr. Thomas's creed immorality is not such a reason for despair as misbelief,—was utterly wrong in telling lies in order to shelter her. He, so to speak, in telling them disobeyed in order to obey, and was as false to his own law as to the law by which he was, secularly speaking, bound. The Pope in seizing the little Mortara did not break his • own law, our notion that he did arising from a fixed impression that the law of nature which gives a parent custody of his child is above any revealed law, which is not the Catholic notion by any means, is in fact an impression wholly opposed to the first prin- ciples of any system which holds that nature is radically bad ; but if the Pope had lied to obtain control of the child, then he would lave broken it. Of course, we are not disputing the expediency -or necessity of depriving the Pope, or Mr. Thomas, or anybody else .of thepower to carry out his own view in defiance of social well-being, but merely of his own moral responsibility in the matter. To hold -that salvation is confined to one form of belief, and deny the right to spread that belief by any means consistent with itself, is incon- sistent weakness.
This limit, however, though it seems to us clear, can apply only to the extreme case quoted, that of a man honestly believing that a change from one faith to another can avert everlasting damnation. If he does not believe that, but only that conversion is an immense step nearer to the ultimate end, unity of will with the Creator, the limit, we think, must be drawn somewhat closer. He is still /bound, if he believes his creed, to proselytize, bound to make con- verts, but we do not see that he is bound, or indeed permitted, to use any other means than persuasion. The difference between the two cases is this, that in the first he has time, and in the second, not. The little Mortara may die before he is baptized, and then there is, in the eyes of an Ultramontane or extreme Calvinist no hope, but in the eyes of the Universalist, or indeed of any moderate Protestant, there is hope ; nothing is lost but time ; for even in the event of death, the Almighty, as the orthodox put it, is merciful, or, as we should put it, the probationary life does but enter upon another stage. It may be quite justifiable to ride a horse to death to save human life, when it would be most unjustifiable to do so merely to shorten ordinary pain. It clearly could not be right, for example, for such a man to press his views upon an immature mind in de- fiance of the express and legal decision of the parent,—the admis- sion at the root of every conscience clause. It could scarcely be right to break the law of the land, unless, indeed, that law, as in some Mohammedan and Catholic countries, absolutely prohibited -conversion, in which case the duty of any sincere man would be to resist it and take the consequences, as Stephen, for example, did. And above al1,4it could not be right, as in the former case, and much more deceiddly than in the former case, to break the law which the teacher acknowledges to be binding on him, to do as the Thomases and their friends did, to prevaricate and in- trigue, and insult alike parental feeling, and a genuine though different religious faith. In fining Mr. Thomas for helping a wilful woman of nineteen, tired of her father's shop, to go where she liked, the Welsh jury seem to us, as they seemed to the judge, guilty of an absurdity ; but so far as their verdict implied a sense that the Thomases had misbehaved, their instinct was correct. The hard Welshwoman, with her passionate eagerness for the con- version of all mankind, seems to us a far higher figure than the most Sadducean of her critics ; but still she did utterly wrong, broke her own law of truthfulness, and broke it in the very way most strictly forbidden by her own creed, namely, to avoid some small amount of temporal inconvenience.
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