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We may illustrate our view of the policy which Governments ought to pursue with
respect to religious instruction, by recurring to the analogy of a hospital.
Religious instruction is not the main end for which a hospital is built; and to
introduce into a hospital any regulations prejudicial to the health of the
patients, on the plea of promoting their spiritual improvement, to send a
ranting preacher to a man who has just been ordered by the physician to lie
quiet and try to get a little sleep, to impose a strict observance of Lent on a
convalescent who has been advised to eat heartily of nourishing food, to direct,
as the bigoted Pius the Fifth actually did, that no medical assistance should be
given to any person who declined spiritual attendance, would be the most
extravagant folly. Yet it by no means follows that it would not be right to have
a chaplain to attend the sick, and to pay such a chaplain out of the hospital
funds. Whether it will be proper to have such a chaplain at all, and of what
religious persuasion such a chaplain ought to be, must depend on circumstances.
There may be a town in which it would be impossible to set up a good hospital
without the help of people of different opinions: and religious parties may run
so high that, though people of different opinions are willing to contribute for
the relief of the sick, they will not concur in the choice of any one chaplain.
The High Churchmen insist that, if there is a paid chaplain, he shall be a High
Churchman. The Evangelicals stickle for an Evangelical. Here it would evidently
be absurd and cruel to let an useful and humane design, about which we are all
agreed, fall to the ground, because all cannot agree about something else. The
governors must either appoint two chaplains and pay them both; or they must
appoint none; and every one of them must, in his individual capacity, do what he
can for the purpose of providing the sick with such religious instruction and
consolation as will, in his opinion, be most useful to them.
We should say the same of Government. Government is not an institution for the
propagation of religion, any more than St. George's Hospital is an institution
for the propagation of religion: and the most absurd and pernicious consequences
would follow, if Government should pursue, as its primary end, that which can
never be more than its secondary end, though intrinsically more important than
its primary end. But a Government which considers the religious instruction of
the people as a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will,
we think, be likely to do much good and little harm.
We will rapidly run over some of the consequences to which this principle leads,
and point out how it solves some problems which, on Mr. Gladstone's hypothesis,
admit of no satisfactory solution.
All persecution directed against the persons or property of men is, on our
principle, obviously indefensible. For, the protection of the persons and
property of men being the primary end of Government and religious instruction
only a secondary end, to secure the people from heresy by making their lives,
their limbs, or their estates insecure, would be to sacrifice the primary end to
the secondary end. It would be as absurd as it would be in the governors of a
hospital to direct that the wounds of all Arian and Socinian patients should be
dressed in such a way as to make them fester.
Again, on our principles, all civil disabilities on account of religious
opinions are indefensible. For all such disabilities make Government less
efficient for its main end: they limit its choice of able men for the
administration and defense of the State; they alienate from it the hearts of the
sufferers; they deprive it of a part of its effective strength in all contests
with foreign nations. Such a course is as absurd as it would be in the governors
of a hospital to reject an able surgeon because he is an Universal
Restitutionist, and to send a bungler to operate because he is perfectly
orthodox.
Again, on our principles, no Government ought to press on the people religious
instruction, however sound, in such a manner as to excite among them discontents
dangerous to public order. For here again Government would sacrifice its primary
end to an end intrinsically indeed of the highest importance, but still only a
secondary end of Government, as Government. This rule at once disposes of the
difficulty about India, a difficulty of which Mr. Gladstone can get rid only by
putting in an imaginary discharge in order to set aside an imaginary obligation.
There is assuredly no country where it is more desirable that Christianity
should be propagated. But there is no country in which the Government is so
completely disqualified for the task. By using our power in order to make
proselytes, we should produce the dissolution of society, and bring utter ruin
on all those interests for the protection of which Government exists. Here the
secondary end is, at present, inconsistent with the primary end, and must
therefore be abandoned. Christian instruction given by individuals and voluntary
societies may do much good. Given by the Government it would do unmixed harm. At
the same time, we quite agree with Mr. Gladstone in thinking that the English
authorities in India ought not to participate in any idolatrous rite; and indeed
we are fully satisfied that all such participation is not only unchristian, but
also unwise and most undignified.
Supposing the circumstances of a country to be such, that the Government may
with propriety, on our principles, give religious instruction to a people; we
have next to inquire, what religion shall be taught. Bishop Warburton answers,
the religion of the majority. And we so far agree with him, that we can scarcely
conceive any circumstances in which it would be proper to establish, as the one
exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. Such a preference
could hardly be given without exciting most serious discontent, and endangering
those interests, the protection of which is the first object of Government. But
we never can admit that a ruler can be justified in helping to spread a system
of opinions solely because that system is pleasing to the majority. On the other
hand, we cannot agree with Mr. Gladstone, who would of course answer that the
only religion which a ruler ought to propagate is the religion of his own
conscience. In truth, this is an impossibility. And as we have shown, Mr.
Gladstone himself, whenever he supports a grant of money to the Church of
England, is really assisting to propagate not the precise religion of his own
conscience, but some one or more, he knows not how many or which, of the
innumerable religions which lie between the confines of Pelagianism and those of
Antinomianism, and between the confines of Popery and those of Presbyterianism.
In our opinion, that religious instruction which the ruler ought, in his public
capacity, to patronize, is the instruction from which he, in his conscience,
believes that the people will learn most good with the smallest mixture of evil.
And thus it is not necessarily his own religion that he will select. He will, of
course, believe that his own religion is unmixedly good. But the question which
he has to consider is, not how much good his religion contains, but how much
good the people will learn, if instruction is given them in that religion. He
may prefer the doctrines and government of the Church of England to those of the
Church of Scotland. But if he knows that a Scotch congregation will listen with
deep attention and respect while an Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and that a glimpse of a surplice or a
single line of a liturgy would be the signal for hooting and riot and would
probably bring stools and brickbats about the ears of the minister, he acts
wisely if he conveys religious knowledge to the Scotch rather by means of that
imperfect Church, as he may think it, from which they will learn much, than by
means of that perfect Church from which they will learn nothing. The only end of
teaching is, that men may learn; and it is idle to talk of the duty of teaching
truth in ways which only cause men to cling more firmly to falsehood.
On these principles we conceive that a statesman, who might be far indeed from
regarding the Church of England with the reverence which Mr. Gladstone feels for
her, might yet firmly oppose all attempts to destroy her. Such a statesman may
be too well acquainted with her origin to look upon her with superstitious awe.
He may know that she sprang from a compromise huddled up between the eager zeal
of reformers and the selfishness of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving
politicians. He may find in every page of her annals ample cause for censure. He
may feel that he could not, with ease to his conscience, subscribe all her
articles. He may regret that all the attempts which have been made to open her
gates to large classes of nonconformists should have failed. Her Episcopal
polity he may consider as of purely human institution. He cannot defend her on
the ground that she possesses the apostolically succession; for he does not know
whether that succession may not be altogether a fable. He cannot defend her on
the ground of her unity; for he knows that her frontier sects are much more
remote from each other, than one frontier is from the Church of Rome, or the
other from the Church of Geneva. But he may think that she teaches more truth
with less alloy of error than would be taught by those who, if she were swept
away, would occupy the vacant space. He may think that the effect produced by
her beautiful services and by her pulpits on the national mind, is, on the
whole, highly beneficial. He may think that her civilizing influence is usefully
felt in remote districts. He may think that, if she were destroyed, a large
portion of those who now compose her congregations would neglect all religious
duties, and that a still larger portion would fall under the influence of
spiritual mountebanks, hungry for gain, or drunk with fanaticism. While he would
with pleasure admit that all the qualities of Christian pastors are to be found
in large measure within the existing body of Dissenting ministers, he would
perhaps be inclined to think that the standard of intellectual and moral
character among that exemplary class of men may have been raised to its present
high point and maintained there by the indirect influence of the Establishment.
And he may be by no means satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away,
the place of our Sumners and Whatelys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls.
He may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained, or might,
if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained, without any
sacrifice of the paramount objects which all Governments ought to have chiefly
in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an institution, so deeply fixed in the
hearts and minds of millions, could not be subverted without loosening and
shaking all the foundations of civil society. With at least equal ease he would
find reasons for supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the
necessity of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two
religious establishments with one Government. He would think scruples on that
head frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both Dr.
Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he would gladly
follow out his principles much further. He would have been willing to vote in
1825 for Lord Francis Egerton's resolution, that it is expedient to give a
public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of Ireland: and he would deeply regret
that no such measure was adopted in 1829.
In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy himself
that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish the Church, either
of England or of Scotland.
But if there were, in any part of the world, a national Church regarded as
heretical by four-fifths of the nation committed to its care, a Church
established and maintained by the sword, a Church producing twice as many riots
as conversions, a Church which, though possessing great wealth and power, and
though long backed by persecuting laws, had, in the course of many generations,
been found unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its
ground, a Church so odious, that fraud and violence, when used against its clear
rights of property, were generally regarded as fair play, a Church, whose
ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their
lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets, such a Church, on our principles,
could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the State which allied
itself with such a Church postponed the primary end of Government to the
secondary: and that the consequences had been such as any sagacious observer
would have predicted. Neither the primary nor the secondary end is attained. The
temporal and spiritual interests of the people suffer alike. The minds of men,
instead of being drawn to the Church, are alienated from the State. The
magistrate, after sacrificing order, peace, union, all the interests which it is
his first duty to protect, for the purpose of promoting pure religion, is
forced, after the experience of centuries, to admit that he has really been
promoting error. The sounder the doctrines of such a Church, the more absurd and
noxious the superstition by which those doctrines are opposed, the stronger are
the arguments against the policy which has deprived a good cause of its natural
advantages. Those who preach to rulers the duty of employing power to propagate
truth would do well to remember that falsehood, though no match for truth alone,
has often been found more than a match for truth and power together.
A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without hesitation that
a Church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up.
Further than this we will not venture to speak for him. He would doubtless
remember that the world is full of institutions which, though they never ought
to have been set up, yet, having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled
down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of
an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to
destroy.
We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the
courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions, but we
admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that
he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him, as to leave
him no leisure for literature and philosophy.
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