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 RELIGIO LAICI 
 
 A SERIES OF STUDIES ADDRESSED 
 TO LAYMEN 
 
 BY THE REV. 
 
 H. C. BEECHING, M.A. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL THEOLOGY AT KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, AND 
 CHAPLAIN TO THE HON. SOC. OF LINCOLN'S INN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1902 
 
 (All rights reserved)
 
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 LONDON AND BECCLES.
 
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 AMICUS AUCTOR
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN writing these papers at various times during the 
 past five years, I have had in view not the trained 
 thinker and theologian, but such persons of general 
 intelligence and education as tend to create the 
 main body of opinion about religious matters ; in a 
 word, the readers of the weekly and monthly reviews. 
 The arguments they contain are aimed at certain 
 prejudices that I have heard expressed in conversa- 
 tion, or that seem to be implied in the attitude of 
 such persons to current views and controversies. Thus 
 the first essay endeavours to meet the too prevalent 
 idea that Christianity is nothing but a refined system 
 of morals, a new Stoicism " touched with emotion," 
 upon which the clergy have grafted an alien and 
 unnecessary system of dogmas. The second 
 attempts to define and defend the special charac- 
 teristics of the Church of England among other 
 religious bodies. As an appendix to that, I have 
 added a paper written as a protest against an attack 
 made of course, in good faith by two well-known 
 men of letters upon the reputation of one of our 
 most famous Jacobean divines and one of our best- 
 loved and most typical seventeenth-century laymen.
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 In the fourth essay I have drawn out, as clearly as I 
 could, the indictment that " the man in the street " is 
 apt to prefer against the clerical order, urging in 
 reply what apology seemed possible ; and I have 
 supplemented this, in the fifth, by a general defence 
 of modern clerical ideals in England. Finally, I have 
 ventured to address an appeal to the laity for further 
 consideration of three questions that are crying out 
 for wise settlement the financial position of the 
 clergy, the controversy about ritual, and the place of 
 religion in elementary education. 
 
 Several of the essays have appeared already in 
 magazines, and I have to thank the editors of the 
 National Review, the Monthly Revieiv, and the 
 Corn/till Magazine for leave to reprint them. The 
 essay on the English Church was contributed to a 
 volume called "Church Problems," edited by Canon 
 Hensley Henson, and published by Mr. Murray, to 
 whom a similar acknowledgment is due. In re- 
 issuing these, and adding those that appear for the 
 first time, I may be allowed to express the hope 
 that they will help in a humble way towards that 
 wise and steady judgment in matters of religion which 
 cannot be reached without patient thought and the 
 abandonment of superficial prejudice. 
 
 H. C. BEECHING. 
 
 KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, 
 January i, 1902.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM ... ... ... i 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH, AS EXHIBITED IN 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 33 
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE ... ... ... 87 
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO I. ... ... ... 125 
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO II. ... ... ... 149 
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY ... ... 181 
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY ... ... 209 
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ... 235
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 
 
 THE question is always being asked nowadays, and 
 it cannot fail to be worth asking, What precisely does 
 the world owe to Christianity? Horailists are apt 
 to answer the question by exhibiting a picture of 
 Roman manners in the first century, drawn from the 
 highly coloured pages of Juvenal, and bringing into 
 contrast with it the lovely scene of Christian worship 
 and brotherly love, as we find it, for the first time, in 
 the record of Justin Martyr. But to go to Juvenal 
 for a general picture of first-century morals is, as 
 Renan reminds us, like going for a picture of the 
 seventeenth century to Mathurin Regnier and 
 Boileau. 1 And we may remind ourselves that 
 Christian England, no less than Christian France, 
 has had its satirists. It is far more instructive to 
 look at decaying Paganism on its brightest side, 
 not in the vices of Nero, but in the virtues of his 
 victims, of his wife Octavia, his tutor Seneca, and 
 the long line of martyrs that live in the pages 
 of Tacitus ; again, not in the wild Persian and 
 
 1 Les Apdtres, p. 307, note. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Cappadocian mysteries of Ma and Mithra which 
 flowed into Tiber from the Orontes, but in the 
 crabbed protests of Persius, the austere self-discipline 
 of Epictetus, the passionate aspiration of Marcus 
 Aurelius. 
 
 In the chapter of Les Apotres already referred 
 to, Renan collects from Pliny and Suetonius many 
 touching examples of domestic virtue and chivalrous 
 honour. " Wives accompanied their husbands into 
 exile, others shared their noble deaths. The ancient 
 Roman simplicity was not lost ; the education of 
 children was painstaking and serious. ... In the 
 majority of the provinces there was a middle class, 
 where goodness, probity, conjugal fidelity were widely 
 spread ; " and he waxes eloquent over the bourgeois 
 bonhomie 'and sweetness of Plutarch's life at Cheeronea. 
 Moreover, philanthropy was cultivated ; " care for the 
 poor, universal sympathy, almsgiving had become 
 virtues." 1 Again, he points out that although 
 paternal legislation, as we might call it, did not 
 flourish to any great extent till Nerva and Trajan, 
 there was already in the first century, even in hard- 
 hearted Rome, help given to children, distribution of 
 food, etc., while in the East charitable relief was more 
 or less organized. What was good and growing 
 better in this Roman world came undoubtedly from 
 the Stoics, who were the first school of moralists to 
 
 1 He quotes such epitaphs as " hominis boni, misericoidis, amantis 
 pauperes," which at any rate prove an ideal.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 5 
 
 bring Greek philosophy home to the business and 
 conscience of mankind. The great Greek moral 
 philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, had finally 
 and once for all established the truth that "the 
 good " of which mankind was in search was, in fact, 
 " goodness ; " showing itself on this and that occasion, 
 now as fortitude, now as temperance, now as justice ; 
 but being in every case not something exterior to 
 the man, but simply the full and free exercise of the 
 faculties of his soul in human society. But the Stoics, 
 partly from the circumstances of their age, which 
 after the conquests of Alexander left little scope for 
 active political life, partly from the fact that the 
 founders of the school were not Greek but Semite, 
 gave the preponderance in their system to the inner 
 life of the individual soul, and thus introduced a new 
 degree of earnestness. Let us shortly sum up the 
 religious ideas of the Stoics at their best, leaving 
 aside the mere paradoxes and formulae at which 
 genial satirists like Horace found it easy enough to 
 raise a laugh ; in this way we shall best see how far 
 it fell short, if fall short it did, of the religion founded 
 by Christ. 
 
 I. The first note of Stoicism was its inivardness ; 
 it threw a man back on what he was in himself, and, 
 like King Lear, regarded all else as "lendings." 
 The Stoics drew a distinction between things in a 
 man's power and things not in his power : in his 
 power was the will and all that the will implied ;
 
 6 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 beyond his power were such external things as 
 accidents to the body, fame, wealth, etc., which, 
 because they were beyond his power, were therefore 
 to be beyond his interest. A wise man would with- 
 draw his care from such indefensible outworks, and 
 concentrate himself in his impregnable citadel. 
 Happiness, they said, must not be suffered to depend 
 upon what chance can remove ; virtue alone is happi- 
 ness. The Church historian Eusebius thus states 
 this doctrine, which he terms "divine:" "Virtue is 
 a thing strong and exquisitely fair, never lacking 
 anything for happiness, never parted from it ; but 
 though poverty, disease, disgrace, torments, burning 
 pitch, and the cross, and all sufferings of tragedy 
 should pour upon him at once, still the just man is 
 happy and blessed." We cannot but share Eusebius's 
 enthusiasm ; for the paradox that virtue is happiness, 
 that the just man though poor is yet alone rich, 
 though a slave is yet alone free and a king, has been 
 familiar to us from childhood in the pages of St. 
 Paul, who borrowed it from the Stoics. 1 And just 
 as St. Paul pointed to the pattern of his Master, so 
 the Stoics pointed to Heracles, a son of Zeus, and 
 asked if a god despised pleasures and undertook so 
 
 1 St. Paul, who was born at Tarsus, a chief seat of the Stoical 
 philosophy, uses their technical term self-snjficingness (avrdpKeta). " I 
 have learned," he writes to the Philippians (iv. n), "in whatsoever 
 state I am, therein to be self-sufficing;" and to the Corinthians, " In 
 everything always having all self-sufficiency" (2 Cor. ix. 8). See 
 Lightfoot's Philippians, St. Paul and Seneca, p. 303.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 7 
 
 many labours for our sake, whether pain and poverty 
 could be reckoned undivine. 
 
 2. A second great conception of Stoicism was that 
 of moral progress by the exertion of the will. It 
 followed from this that the Stoics were the great 
 educators of antiquity. It became the fashion at 
 the close of the Republic and under the Empire for 
 the great Roman houses to have a Stoic philosopher 
 in their service, much as great Roman Catholic houses 
 have their confessor, and great Protestant houses 
 their chaplain. Such was Athenodorus in the house 
 of Cato the younger ; another Athenodorus, author 
 of a book "with an eminently Stoical title, Earnest- 
 ness and Education" * was invited to Rome by 
 Augustus and appointed tutor to the young Claudius ; 
 Seneca himself was tutor to the young Nero. It is 
 in the voluminous letters of Seneca that we find this 
 idea of moral progress most fully developed and 
 exemplified. Seneca is for ever analyzing his con- 
 duct, now blaming his failures, now cheered by some 
 success, and no less of course stimulating his corre- 
 spondent Lucilius to persevere along the difficult 
 road. " I myself so immoderately wept for Annaeus 
 Serenus that I must rank among the bad examples 
 of those who have been overcome by grief" (63). "I 
 have made but little progress as yet ; I dare not yet 
 openly assume frugality. I mind the opinions of 
 
 1 Grant's Ethics of Aristotle, vol. i. p. 344, from which several 
 quotations are borrowed.
 
 8 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 passers-by " (87). " It is a great part of advance to 
 will to be advancing. Of this I am conscious to my- 
 self ; I will to advance ; nay, I will it with my whole 
 heart " (71). In his treatise " On Anger " (iii. 36) he 
 relates his practice, after the example of Sextius, in 
 the matter of self-examination : " We ought each day 
 to call upon our soul to give up its accounts. So 
 Sextius did. His day ended, before surrendering 
 himself to repose, he would inquire of his soul : Of 
 what fault hast thou this day been healed? What 
 passion hast thou subdued ? In what art thou 
 better ? . . . What is more comely than this habit 
 of thus reviewing the whole day ? What sleep sur- 
 passes that so won ? So calm it is, so deep, so free 
 when the soul has borne her secret witness and sub- 
 mitted to her judgment in praise or blame. Thus 
 do I myself, and call myself before my own judgment- 
 seat. When the light has been removed from my 
 chamber I pass under review my whole day with 
 its words and deeds. I blink no unpleasant fact, 
 I pass nothing over. For why should I fear to face 
 any one of my faults when it lies in my power to 
 say, ' For to-day I pardon thee ; but sin no more ' ? " 
 This idea of self-examination does not play much 
 part in the writings of St. Paul, for reasons that we 
 shall better understand presently, but he uses the 
 technical word for " progress" (TTPOKOTT?';), and expresses 
 the idea, very much as Seneca does, in such passages 
 as the following : " Not that I have already attained
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 9 
 
 but I follow after. One thing I do ; I press for- 
 ward." 
 
 3. If we examine the catalogues of virtues in which 
 progress is to be made, we find them not unlike those 
 with which we are familiar in St. Paul's epistles. 
 " Speak to me," says Seneca, " of piety, of justice, of 
 temperance, of chastity." " This is the road to heaven, 
 frugality, temperance, resignation." " Keep thyself," 
 says Marcus Aurelius, " simple, good, pure, serious, 
 free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper 
 of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper 
 acts." " I have found nothing better in life than 
 justice, truth, temperance, fortitude." " Show the 
 qualities thou hast in thy power, sincerity, gravity, 
 endurance of labour, aversion to pleasure, content- 
 ment with thy fortune and with few things, benevo- 
 lence, frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from 
 trifling, magnanimity." " The only thing worth living 
 for is to keep one's soul pure." Nor is that peculiarly 
 Christian virtue of forgiveness lacking. " You do not 
 love men ; it is not enough to pardon them. You 
 must love those who injure you. Against injury 
 and ingratitude God has given you the power of 
 sweetness." 
 
 4. Another notable Stoic conception was that of 
 the "city of God," which dissolved all earthly dis- 
 tinctions, and included among its citizens barbarian 
 and Scythian, bond and free. When we recollect 
 that the founder of Stoicism was contemporary with
 
 IO RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Alexander the Great, we shall understand how the 
 idea of " a citizen of the world " could spring up 
 owing to the absorption of the small independent 
 Greek states into the one kingdom of Macedon ; 
 while the still more majestic unity of the Roman 
 Empire gave it, as years went on, a still more perfect 
 realization. We smile at the glibness with which the 
 old gentleman in the Terentian comedy excuses his 
 curiosity on the plea of his universalism : " I am a 
 man, and so take an interest in everything human ; " 
 but that Graeco- Roman universalism was a pregnant 
 idea, capable of bearing fruit on many other sides 
 than that of curiosity. It was, however, more than 
 a kingdom of Man in which the Stoics declared each 
 man to be a citizen ; it was a kingdom of God. The 
 will of God was to them the one law of the world ; 
 to discover this will and submit to it must be the 
 whole duty of man, because man is the "child of 
 God," and in such submission man finds perfect free- 
 dom. This idea of equal citizenship in the one divine 
 kingdom necessarily brought with it the idea of 
 mutual service in a word, of charity. And so we 
 find Seneca laying it down : " Nature bids us assist 
 men ; and whether they be bond or free, gentle or 
 freedmen, what matters it ? Wherever there is a man 
 there is opportunity for doing good " (De Vit. Beata, 
 ii. 24). Again : " What is a Roman knight, or a 
 freedman, or a slave, but names born of ambition 
 or injustice?" (Ep. 31). The idea finds abundant
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. II 
 
 illustration in the " Meditations " of Marcus Aurelius : 
 " The poet says ' dear city of Cecrops ; ' shall I not 
 say ' dear city of God ' ? " 
 
 How St. Paul caught up and gloried in this idea 
 of a " city of God " is well known. " Our citizenship 
 is in heaven." " Therefore ye are no more strangers 
 and sojourners, but fellow-citizens of the saints, and 
 of the household of God." " There is neither Jew 
 nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
 neither male nor female ; for ye are all one in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 5. The idea of a " city of God," interpreted, as the 
 Stoics interpreted it, of the whole universe, seemed 
 sometimes to bring with it the doctrine of immor- 
 tality. Thus Seneca writes of death as " a day when 
 his soul delivered from the prison of the body shall 
 return to God who gave it ; " of the future life as " a 
 state in which all secrets of nature shall be revealed, 
 and friends know each other and be happy." But 
 he is not always so hopeful, sometimes he vacillates : 
 " Death is either an end or a transition ; it must be a 
 gain or nothing ; " and sometimes he despairs. In 
 fact, this doctrine of immortality brings us for the 
 first time to a sharp contrast between Stoical and 
 Christian ideas. When St. Paul preached at Athens, 
 he pursued his usual custom of being all things to 
 all men for the sake of winning some, and went as far 
 as he could on Stoical lines, quoting their great 
 poet Cleanthes, or perhaps Aratus, and carrying his
 
 12 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 audience with him in his denouncement of popular 
 idolatry and his exposition of the providence of God ; 
 but when he spoke of the resurrection of the dead 
 some mocked (perhaps, but not necessarily, the 
 Epicureans), others said, " We will hear thee again 
 on this matter." For this was a question on which 
 there was difference of opinion. The better minds 
 revolted from the uncompromising tenets of the 
 founders of the faith. Stoicism was in its origin a 
 materialistic pantheism ; the supreme principle was 
 fire, and back again into this fire must all things 
 be once more resolved. To speak of a second life 
 was absurd : the most that was possible was a longer 
 interval for the elect before the final cataclysm. But 
 as Stoicism became more and more a force in the 
 world it became more and more eclectic, and the best 
 of its borrowings was that of the soul's immortality 
 from Plato. It was Plato's " Phsedo," not a Stoical 
 treatise, that Cato read at Utica before his suicide. 
 Still the doctrine never became a necessary part of 
 Stoicism. Epictetus surrendered it : " Come, but 
 whither ? To nothing dreadful, but only to what is 
 near and dear to thee, to the elements from which 
 thou hast sprung" (Hi. 13, 14). And Marcus Aurelius 
 follows Epictetus : " Thou hast existed as part of a 
 whole ; thou wilt be absorbed into that which gave 
 thee birth." 
 
 St. Paul laid his finger on the weak place of 
 Stoicism when he took for his text the inscription
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 13 
 
 he had seen upon an altar, " To the unknown God." 
 It is true that the Stoical writings abound with pious 
 phrases which at the first glance seem to be borrowed 
 from some Christian manual, but on nearer acquaint- 
 ance we discover that the resemblance is illusory. 
 " God is near thee," writes Seneca, " nay with thee, 
 nay within thee ; no one is good without God " (Ep. 
 41). " God is author of all ; obey him without mur- 
 muring" (Ep. 107). " It is not that I obey God only. 
 I agree with him, following him not of necessity 
 but gladly ; if such be the will of God, so be it." 
 Occasionally this acquiescence becomes even pas- 
 sionate. " What can I do," says Epictetus, " I old 
 and lame, if it be not to praise God ? If I were a 
 nightingale, I would do a nightingale's part ; if I 
 were a swan, a swan's part. I am a rational creature, 
 therefore I must praise God " (Disc. i. 16). But the 
 God they worshipped, or spoke of worshipping, was 
 merely Nature ; God's will was but a devout name for 
 the ascertained laws of the universe, which will take 
 their course irrespective of our concurrence, but which 
 it is the part of a wise man to concur with. This 
 concurrence is possible because God is no abstract 
 law but the spirit of the universe pervading all things, 
 and man in a special sense, inasmuch as man alone 
 of the creatures shares in reason ; hence man, being 
 a fragment of God, " God's offspring," can and should 
 co-operate with God. But it is plain that if on this 
 theory it is meet and right to worship God, it is no
 
 14 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 less meet and right to worship one's self. God is 
 great and man is little, "a piece of him," but there 
 the difference ends. And so, as a matter of fact, 
 the worship a Stoic offered to God was no different 
 in kind from the respect he paid to the leaders of 
 his own sect. It was a saying of Sextius which 
 Seneca quotes with approval that God is not better 
 than a good man ; he is but richer and longer-lived 
 
 (E P . 73). 
 
 Now, Christianity meant primarily a revelation of 
 God. " Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I 
 unto you." And if we may believe the Church, 
 which Christ founded to be a witness to Him, His 
 good news for mankind consisted in the declaration 
 of the fact that there was an only-born Son in the 
 bosom of God, and that He had become incarnate ; 
 facts which entailed a multitude of consequences 
 for thought, and three pre-eminently first, that 
 inasmuch as in the Godhead itself there existed a 
 Son, God is essentially "the Father," essentially 
 " Love ; " secondly, that as God existed before all 
 worlds, a self-conscious Mind, not requiring the 
 universe as the object of His love and thought, man 
 is no part of God, but a creature, though made " in 
 God's image ; " and, thirdly, that as the Son could 
 take flesh, the whole of human nature could be lifted 
 up into the spirit of Sonship. These are the root- 
 ideas of Christianity, and it is not difficult to see 
 of what immense force they are capable. To be
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 1 5 
 
 convinced that God is, that He is not " the shade cast 
 by the soul of man," or the conjectured Whole of which 
 man is a part ; to be convinced that in His proper 
 nature He is " Love and nothing but Love," love 
 given and returned ; finally, to be convinced that at 
 a certain point of time the Son came into the world 
 to show men the Father and to share with men this 
 spirit of love to the Father, man having by birthright 
 a certain freedom of will these are ideas that cannot 
 be entertained without making a revolution in men's 
 lives as, in fact, they did, and do. 
 
 But, it may be said, these are not religious but 
 theological ideas, and the public has been taught of 
 late by popular essayists and novelists to distrust 
 such ideas. Is not Christianity something altogether 
 simpler than this ? Have not all dogmas been suc- 
 cessfully dissolved by literary tact ? Is not religion 
 just " morality touched with emotion," just precepts 
 of good living, only " heightened and lit up by feel- 
 ing " ? Well, that Stoicism answered more or less 
 to this description we have already seen ; it was a 
 system of morals that at times put on an emotional 
 dress and masqueraded as a religion, and by stripping 
 off this dress we lose no characteristic feature : we 
 lose only that curious dream, 
 
 " penible a concevoir, 
 
 Genante pour le coeur comme pour la cervelle, 
 Que 1'Univers, le Tout, soit Dieu sans le savoir." ' 
 
 1 Sully-Prudhomme, Les Epreuves.
 
 1 6 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 And it may be so also with Christianity. But then 
 the fact must not be dogmatically asserted ; it must 
 be demonstrated either from the present faith and 
 worship of the Church, which is obviously impossible, 
 or from the earliest records. Now, the most remark- 
 able feature of Christ's teaching as exhibited in the 
 Gospels is that He professed to bring a new reve- 
 lation of the nature of God. This revelation He 
 summed up in the word "Father," not using that 
 word in the conventional sense of " creator," in which 
 it is common to all religions, but in a sense from 
 which could be inferred all manner of loving-kindness. 
 " If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
 your children, how much more shall your Father in 
 heaven give good gifts to them that ask Him?" 
 " But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw 
 him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his 
 neck, and kissed him." And the name is solemnly 
 employed in the prescribed prayer. But it was not 
 a mere name or definition that Christ came to reveal, 
 but a character, and this character was to be seen 
 in Himself. He declared Himself to be in some 
 unique sense the Son of God, who was alone capable 
 from his intimate knowledge of revealing the Father. 
 " All things are given unto Me of My Father, and 
 no man knoweth the Son save the Father, neither 
 knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he 
 to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." " Come 
 unto Me, and I will give you rest." " I and the
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 17 
 
 Father are one." " I am come that they may have 
 life, and may have it abundantly ; and this is life 
 eternal, to know Thee the only true God." It is 
 incredible that any one reading these passages, and 
 there are many others like them, could imagine that 
 a Christianity which denied that Christ came from 
 the Father with a revelation of His character, could 
 remain Christianity at all. But Christ Himself puts 
 the matter in plain terms : " I am come in My 
 Father's name, and ye receive Me not. If another 
 should come in his own name, him ye would receive;" 
 and it was of course this claim to be Son and 
 Revealer of God in a unique sense which provoked 
 the fury of the Jews and led to the crucifixion. 
 Moreover, if Christ were merely the preacher of 
 morality that Mr. Matthew Arnold declares Him to 
 have been, what becomes of the question at Caesarea 
 Philippi that Great Divide in the life of Christ 
 the answer to which was the foundation-stone of the 
 Church ? " Who say ye that I am ? " Mr. Arnold, 
 so far as I know, ignores the question. But it cuts 
 the ground away from his position that Christ called 
 Himself by any or all of the current names for the 
 Messiah with perfect indifference, because He wanted 
 to interest people not in theology which would do 
 them no good, but in morality. To Mr. Arnold, 
 God is not a " person " l at all who can be known, 
 
 1 Theological terms can always be made to seem ridiculous if they 
 are not explained, and this term of " Person " as applied to God 
 
 C
 
 1 8 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 and therefore, if Jesus said He came to reveal Him, 
 He could not have meant what He said ; He was 
 speaking in a popular way, and meant He had come 
 to give improved moral laws. For when the Jews 
 said " God," all they meant was the law of their being 
 at its best, the better self in all the nation ; it was 
 language "thrown out at a not fully grasped object 
 of the speaker's consciousness." It is enough to say 
 here that there is no sign in the Bible that either the 
 Jews or Jesus Christ ever used the word God in any 
 such way. 
 
 Let us now proceed to examine shortly what 
 difference Christianity makes to the Stoical ideas 
 described above. 
 
 i. We saw that the first note of Stoicism was its 
 
 "the blessed truth that God is a Person " has provoked the hilarity 
 of Mr. Arnold and perhaps of some of his readers. But if religion is 
 to mean what to ordinary people it does mean, it cannot exclude 
 worship, and worship must have a possible object, and no God is 
 possible for man who is not Mind and Will, i.e. " Personal." Anyone 
 who is interested in Mr. Arnold as a theologian and in his description 
 of God as a stream of tendency making for righteousness, will find some 
 criticisms in Mr. F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies^ p. 284. Here 
 only one sentence can be quoted : " ' Is there a God? ' asks the reader. 
 'Oh yes,' replies Mr. Arnold, 'and I can verify Him in experience.' 
 ' And what is He, then ? ' cries the reader. ' Be virtuous, and as a 
 rule you will be happy,' is the answer, ' Well, and God?' 'That 
 is God,' says Mr. Arnold ; ' there is no deception, and what more do 
 you want?' I suppose we do want a good deal more. Most of 
 us ... want something they can worship ; and they will not find that 
 in an hypostatized copy-book heading, which is not much more adorable 
 than 'Honesty is the best policy,' or 'Handsome is that handsome 
 does,' or various other edifying maxims, which have not yet come to 
 an apotheosis."
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. IQ 
 
 inwardness, its care for inward thoughts and motives. 
 Now, Mr. Arnold, following up his idea that Chris- 
 tianity is only Stoicism "touched with emotion," 
 makes this inwardness " the essence of Christianity," 
 "the very ground-principle in Jesus Christ's teach- 
 ing." 1 But every moral teacher must lay stress on 
 the motives and thoughts; and to seek here the 
 essence of Christianity is to seek it in what is common 
 to all advanced schools of ethics. So soon as we 
 look at the special mark of the Stoic inwardness, its 
 principle of self-sufficingness, we are at once reminded 
 by contrast of as definite a principle of Christianity 
 which directly conflicts with it. It is not only that 
 Stoicism tended to arrogance, while Christ enjoined 
 humility. Too much, perhaps, has been made of the 
 Stoic arrogance ; after all, arrogance is less a matter 
 of system than of individual temper ; and we cannot 
 accuse of it either Marcus Aurelius or Thraseas, whom 
 Tacitus describes as " gentle, modest, fearing to hate 
 vice too much lest he should hate men." A more 
 real difference is that Stoicism is a principle of self- 
 absorption, while Christianity bids men " lift up their 
 hearts to the Lord." Let us look at Mr. Arnold's 
 thesis in its more expanded form. He speaks of 
 Christ's method of " self-examination," His secret of 
 "self-renouncement," the element of "mildness" in 
 which He worked. " Self -examination, self-renounce- 
 ment, and mildness were the great means by which 
 
 1 Literature and Dogma, pp. 63, 65, Pop. Ed.
 
 2O RELIGIO LAICT. 
 
 Jesus Christ renewed righteousness and religion." 1 
 The three words have certainly all of them a religious 
 sound, but the perspective seems wrong ; the stress is 
 laid in the wrong place ; they leave out of sight the 
 fact that Christ came, according to His own state- 
 ment, to recall men to God by calling them to Him- 
 self. If we take our Christianity from the New 
 Testament, for self-examination we must read " trust 
 in God," for self-renoiincement-wo. must read "devotion 
 to Christ's service," for mildness it would be safer to 
 read the " spirit of the Son," the filial spirit of love 
 and worship to the Heavenly Father. 
 
 As to self-examination, it will be allowed that 
 there are precepts which make it a part of Christian 
 duty. But the main direction of Christ's teaching 
 is to urge that the soul's rest comes not from self- 
 occupation, but from faith in God ; that what we 
 can do for ourselves is as nothing compared with 
 what God can do for us. "I would have you 
 without carefulness." "Which of you by care can 
 add a cubit to his stature?" The gradual change 
 that came over the eleven chosen disciples was not 
 the result of introspection, but of living with their 
 Master, talking to Him, seeing Him work and pray, 
 bringing Him their difficulties, pondering the words 
 of truth that came as the answer to their thoughts. 
 Their desires grew divine because they were "lift 
 upward." To quote Mr. Arnold himself, it was " no 
 
 1 Literature and Dogma, p. 68. 

 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 21 
 
 grand performance or discovery of a man's own to 
 bring him thus to joy and peace, but an attachment ! 
 the influence of One full of grace and truth ! " * 
 Surely this is a truer description of Christ's method 
 than " self-examination." What Christ sought every- 
 where was " faith," faith in Himself ; and where He 
 found faith, though quite in germ and undeveloped, 
 He pronounced all things to be possible. For trust 
 and love are the great conductors of influence. To 
 take but one instance from the sacred story. Who will 
 deny that the poor woman who threw herself at the 
 feet of Christ in Simon's house saw herself in all the 
 naked deformity of her sin ? But how did she reach 
 her penitence ? Was it by a long process of self- 
 examination ? We know that it was by attraction to 
 Christ. How the attraction befell we are not told, 
 but her faith, however kindled, soon flamed into a 
 passionate love, which lit up her past dark life in its 
 true colours, and made her seek forgiveness. The 
 second characteristic of Christianity, its " secret " ac- 
 cording to Mr. Arnold, is self -renouncement. Here 
 again the word has a Christian sound, and we are 
 tempted to accept it without challenge ; but the array 
 of maxims from pagan writers by which its validity 
 is supported gives us pause. To be told that "self- 
 renouncement " was equally the secret of Stobasus, of 
 Horace, and of Goethe, makes us a little incredulous 
 of its being peculiarly Christian, and it is not easy to 
 
 1 Literature and Dogma, p. 146.
 
 22 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 understand how a secret so widely diffused can be a 
 secret at all. On examination it proves to be nothing 
 more than the discovery, as old as morality itself, that 
 if a man wishes in any matter to do right he must 
 surrender the pleasure of doing wrong. But what 
 Christ meant when He said, " If any man will come 
 after Me, let him deny (or renounce) himself and 
 follow Me," was that following Him would certainly 
 lead to persecution and death, but that death need 
 not be feared because beyond it lay everlasting life. 
 Here, too, the precept was as little self- regarding as 
 possible ; the attention is fixed not on one's self, but 
 on Christ, not on the death that is to be despised, but 
 on the immortality beyond. And the same is true of 
 all Christ's precepts about what is now called " self- 
 denial." Self-denial is only a secondary considera- 
 tion to the following of Christ, a necessary incident 
 in self-devotion, but not to be considered apart from 
 it, and not to be magnified above it. To preach 
 " self-denial " as a peculiar doctrine of Christianity is 
 to err by a false abstractness ; such denial in itself is 
 well characterized by St. Paul ; l it is valuable only 
 in view of some paramount object of desire. In the 
 same way Christianity did not affront experience by 
 saying, as the Stoics said, " The just man is happy 
 in himself, whatever happens ; " it said, " He who 
 believes in God, he who has Christ for his master, he 
 who carries about with him the Paraclete, is happy, 
 
 1 Col. ii. 23.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 23 
 
 whatever happens." When St. Paul speaks of self- 
 sufficingness, it is with the significant addition, " I can 
 do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" 
 " God is able to make all grace abound to you " an 
 addition of something more than emotion. Mr. 
 Arnold's third term is "mildness." This seems to 
 err in the same way through abstractness. Christ 
 described Himself as "meek" (or "mild") and 
 "lowly in heart" under the yoke of God's service, 
 because God was His Father ; so that the temper He 
 requires in His followers would be better described 
 as the filial spirit the spirit of trust and rever- 
 ence and love to God, made possible by the gift to 
 men of the spirit of the only Son. The " element " 
 in which Christ moved was really not an element of 
 " mildness " unless that word can be extended to 
 include fierce rebuke and anger but it was pre- 
 eminently an element of obedience, of devotion, of 
 prayer. " My meat is to do the will of Him that 
 sent Me, and to finish His work." "Jesus continued 
 all night in prayer to God." 
 
 2. The second great Stoical idea, that of moral pro- 
 gress by the exercise of the will, is one that Christi- 
 anity cannot fail to acknowledge as true, so far as it 
 goes ; but taken alone for the whole truth, it was found 
 necessary to brand it as heresy. The will must be 
 put forth if progress is to be made ; but the will, 
 according to Christianity, works in a divine medium, 
 which at a wish can react upon it. And the Christian
 
 24 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 faith has addressed itself especially to weak wills ; it 
 says to them, " Wilt thou be made whole ? " " Be- 
 lieve ; all things are possible to them that believe." 
 
 3. If the position taken up in this paper be 
 admitted, viz. that the revelation given by Jesus 
 Christ was theological and dynamic rather than 
 moral that is to say, that it professed to give men 
 for the first time certainty as to the nature of God, 
 a confirmation of the truths that the Word had 
 whispered in men's hearts since the beginning of the 
 world, together with a new spring of life to carry 
 them into active realization it will not be anticipated 
 that the Christian virtues will add much in their 
 number or definition to those already given from the 
 Stoics. And we have seen that the lists closely 
 agree. True it is that we have seen " the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ," and that must give 
 a peculiar depth and intensity to what we mean by 
 love and meekness and forgiveness ; but we dare not 
 pretend that these Christian virtues are different in 
 kind from those so ardently desired by the Stoic 
 emperor. The motives, however, will be new; the 
 range of exercise will be wider ; and the possibility of 
 fulfilling them will be enormously increased. More- 
 over, they will be seen to rest in what is their proper 
 ground, the character of God. And does not this 
 make a difference ? In his essay on Marcus Aurelius, 
 Mr. Arnold takes the great doctrine of forgiveness, 
 and asks why it became more effective from the lips
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 25 
 
 of Jesus than from Epictetus, and he gives his usual 
 answer that it was due to the " emotion " with which 
 the former presented it. " Epictetus says : ' Every 
 matter has two handles, one of which will bear 
 taking hold of, the other not. If thy brother sin 
 against thee, lay not hold of the matter by this, that 
 he sins against thee ; for by this handle the matter 
 will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold of 
 it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate ; and 
 thou wilt take hold of it by what will bear handling.' 
 Jesus, being asked whether a man is bound to forgive 
 his brother as often as seven times, answers : ' I say 
 not unto thee, Until seven times : but, Until seventy 
 times seven.' Epictetus here suggests to the reason 
 grounds for forgiveness of injuries which Jesus does 
 not ; but it is vain to say that Epictetus is on that 
 account a better moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, 
 the emotion of Jesus's answer fires His hearer to the 
 practice of forgiveness of injuries, while the thought 
 in Epictetus's leaves him cold. So with Christian 
 morality in general : its distinction is not that it pro- 
 pounds the maxim, ' Thou shalt love God and thy 
 neighbour,' with more development, closer reasoning, 
 truer sincerity, than other moral systems ; it is that 
 it propounds this maxim with an inspiration which 
 wonderfully catches the hearer and makes him act 
 upon it. ... That which gives to the moral writings 
 of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius their peculiar 
 character and charm is their being suffused and
 
 26 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 softened by something of the very sentiment whence 
 Christian morality draws its best power'' Of the 
 question whether there is more warmth and emotion 
 in the one sentence than the other, Mr. Arnold, 
 with his exquisite sense of style, was probably a 
 better judge than most of us, but that Jesus did not 
 trust to any such sentimental efficacy in His words 
 any reader may assure himself who will be at the 
 pains to refer to the passage in St. Matthew's Gospel 
 (xviii. 20) from which the sentence is quoted. He 
 will see that our Lord at once follows up His moral 
 dictum by the parable of the Two Debtors, which 
 rests the case for forgiveness on the ground of our 
 having been freely forgiven by God an intolerable 
 debt. " O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all 
 that debt, because thou desiredst Me : shouldest not 
 thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, 
 even as I had pity on thee ? ... So likewise shall 
 My heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from 
 your hearts forgive not every one his brother their 
 trespasses." The motive here is plain : Be ye there- 
 fore merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful. It 
 must be noted also under this head that, though the 
 Stoics speak not of faults only but of sins, a term 
 which implies a righteous will that has been dis- 
 obeyed, the sense of sin in the world has been im- 
 measurably deepened since the cross of Christ has 
 been accepted as the witness at once to the power of 
 sin and the love of God.
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 2J 
 
 4. The idea of the " city of God " is one of the 
 noblest in antiquity, but it remained an idea, barren 
 and inoperative, until the Christian Church gave it 
 form and reality. Seneca may have dined with his 
 slaves ; Epictetus, himself a slave, had little influence 
 in the world and little chance of making his ideas 
 tell ; with Marcus Aurelius the dream of Plato was 
 fulfilled, and a philosopher became king, and no 
 doubt he succeeded in making converts among his 
 courtiers ; but though he may thus have opened the 
 gates of a city, it suffered no violence from the press 
 of those who thronged into it ; the masses received 
 no invitation and remained outside. " Men exist 
 for the sake of one another, teach them and bear 
 with them ; " will the masses not be attracted by 
 teaching and forbearance ? " It is a satisfaction to 
 a man to do the proper works of a man ; now it 
 is a proper work of a man to be benevolent to his 
 own kind." Will not the masses, then, consent to 
 allow the emperor to do towards them the proper 
 works of a man ? Will they not themselves realize 
 their own proper manhood in benevolence to each 
 other ? " Alas ! " cries the emperor, " who can change 
 men's principles ? " " Come quick," he cries, " O 
 death, lest I should become like those ! " Now hear 
 Christ : " Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's 
 good pleasure to give you the kingdom." " Come 
 unto Me, and I will give you rest" " The Spirit of 
 the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to preach
 
 28 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the gospel to the poor, He lias sent Me to heal the broken- 
 Jtearted, to preach deliverance to tJie captives and recovery 
 of sight to the blind, to release the bruised, to preach ttie 
 year of the grace of the Lord to-day is this scripture 
 fulfilled in your ears." Christ stands with hands out- 
 stretched, offering to all the world gifts from the 
 Heavenly Father ; He has gifts for all according 
 to their need forgiveness, healing, strength, life. 
 " What wilt thou that I should do to thee ? " " Be- 
 hold, thou art made whole ; sin no more, lest a worse 
 thing come on thee." " Come out of the man, thou 
 unclean spirit." " Daughter, be of good comfort ; 
 thy faith hath made thee whole." " If thou knewest 
 the gift of God, thou wouldest have asked, and He 
 would have given thee living water." To some it 
 is said, " Ye would not come to Me, that ye might 
 have life," but "to as many as received Him, He 
 gave power to become the sons of God." He sends 
 out into the highways and hedges and compels the 
 beggars to come in to His feast ; they are all to be 
 admitted to free citizenship, to equal sonship. Why ? 
 Simply because the Father loves them. And so they 
 come from the east and the west, the north and the 
 south, and the publicans and harlots come before 
 the Pharisees as having nothing of their own to sur- 
 render. The point to notice is the point St. Paul noticed, 
 that it was " all of grace." The attracting call was the 
 good news of God's fatherly love preached, and still 
 more exhibited, by Christ ; this and this only enabled
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 29 
 
 them to rise out of their fallen state, and love Christ 
 in return ; then they were given the wedding garment 
 of baptism, of regeneration, forgiveness of the past, 
 and a new spring of hope, and so sat down to the 
 feast which gave them strength for the new life in 
 the new kingdom, the life of mutual love. The three 
 words " in Christ Jesus," which in the quotation given 
 above (p. n) from St. Paul distinguish his heavenly 
 city from that of the Stoics, made all the difference. 
 
 5. Lastly, there is the idea of immortality. In the 
 Christian Church this passed from a faint hope, an 
 esoteric mystery, into one of the most assured of 
 certainties. St. Paul, at Athens, preached "Jesus 
 and the Resurrection," Jesus who by His resurrection 
 had brought life and immortality into the light of 
 common day, and who had been signalized thereby 
 as the very Son of God. It was the resurrection a 
 fact of which the apostles were witnesses, and which 
 itself witnessed to their gospel and not any body of 
 moral notions, however excellent in themselves, and 
 however emotionally presented, 1 that founded the 
 Christian Church. For it restored to the disciples, 
 and through them to the world, that figure, whom 
 having once seen with their eyes, and handled with 
 their hands, and loved with all their hearts, they 
 
 1 "It maybe remarked what a small part in the Divine economy the 
 gift of eloquence plays. Moses had no utterance, the speech of Paul 
 was contemptible, and the apostles can, indeed, say what needs saying, 
 but have not the gift, so infinitely valued by the Greek, of leading men 
 captive by persuasive words." Latham, Pastor Pastorum, p. 250.
 
 30 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 knew now to be seated at the right hand of God, 
 gone to prepare a place for them, and yet by His 
 Spirit always with them, as He had promised, even 
 to the end of the world. It was one of the many 
 practical paradoxes of Stoicism that while it pro- 
 fessed to be happy here in despite of circumstances, 
 it yet advocated and largely practised suicide, whereas 
 on the contrary the Christian Church, which definitely 
 proclaimed that its home was not here, but " above 
 where Christ is," repudiated suicide as cowardice, and 
 set about ordering life here ; making, indeed, philan- 
 thropy a new thing by the extension given to it. 
 This was because the " flaming ramparts of the world " 
 had ceased to be ramparts at all ; Christ and Chris- 
 tians were there as well as here, here as well as there. 
 It was one kingdom though it embraced two worlds, 
 and in which of the two worlds the individual Chris- 
 tian soldier was set to keep his guard or fight his 
 fight depended not upon his inclination but upon his 
 Captain's word. 
 
 The Christian religion, then, unlike Stoicism, centres 
 in a divine Person. Its precepts of morality are 
 excellent, its law of love to all mankind is such that 
 it makes it possible and easy to keep them all but 
 how will it be found possible to keep the law of love ? 
 The answer is, through love to Christ. This, and not 
 " inwardness," not " self-renouncement," was Christ's 
 method and secret We love Him because He first 
 loved us, and in Him we love our brethren. We can
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM. 31 
 
 love them because we believe them to be made in 
 His image, and capable of infinite degrees of approxi- 
 mation to His likeness ; but still more because it is 
 His Spirit that both in them and in us strives with 
 infirmity, is pleased with success or grieved at failure, 
 and looks up to God the Father. But Christ as He 
 is, not in us or our brethren, but in Himself, we not 
 only love but worship, because His love that so 
 wonderfully draws us is the love of God. Only it is 
 well to be on our guard that in our worship we do 
 not forget our love. If the worship of Christ becomes 
 divorced from the recollection of what He was and 
 therefore is, if it becomes the worship of a name 
 emptied of everything but abstract qualities, it ceases 
 to be worship at the same time that it ceases to be 
 love.
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE ENGLISH 
 CHURCH, AS EXHIBITED IN 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE 
 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH, 
 AS EXHIBITED IN THE LITERATURE 
 OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 MANY people must have felt that there is about the 
 best religious writings of the Church of England a 
 tone and temper proper to it, and distinguishable 
 from those of other communions. Whether this 
 temper can be precisely described as well as dis- 
 tinguished, whether in any attempted analysis so 
 volatile a spirit would not escape, is another matter. 
 The attempt at least to indicate it seems worth 
 making, because at the present day there prevails in 
 some quarters a disposition to deny to our Church 
 any peculiar characteristics of its own, other than a 
 certain cold formalism, due to its connection with 
 the State ; which Erastian coldness it is considered 
 to be the duty of loyal Churchmen to qualify by an 
 infusion from the literature and ritual of warmer 
 climes. Against such ill-instructed loyalty the 
 following pages may serve as a protest. Their aim 
 is to call attention, in the literature of the great 
 period when our Church started upon her independent 
 
 D 2
 
 36 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 career, to the reasonable faith, the wide intellectual 
 sympathy, the reserved enthusiasm, the reverent piety, 
 which inspire those writings ; qualities which were 
 no merely accidental reaction against Romanism on 
 the one hand and Puritanism on the other, though 
 they define themselves constantly by reference to 
 those, but an ideal that was framed by a study of 
 Scripture and the primitive Church ; and reflected 
 as it was in the dignified simplicity of the reformed 
 ritual, was found capable of satisfying the instinct 
 alike for conduct, belief, and worship of the best 
 Englishmen in that generation. 
 
 It was remarked many years ago by a writer in 
 Tracts for the Times, that our English Prayer-book 
 was pitched in a much more sober key than the 
 Latin services from which it was compiled ; and he 
 hazarded the opinion that this was a providential 
 disposition to adapt the Prayer-book to the days of 
 the Anglican revival, when a graver and more peni- 
 tential spirit was abroad in the churches. A simpler 
 suggestion would be that at all times when the spirit 
 of a Church is deeply stirred or comes to itself after 
 a period of slumber, its mood is grave, and requires 
 a serious expression ; because, though "joy in the 
 Lord " is beyond doubt the true expression of a 
 Christian's perfected faith, there is a joy springing 
 from much nearer the surface which may have to be 
 sacrificed for the sake of what lies deeper. Selden 
 tells us in the Table Talk, " There never was a merry
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : THE AGES OF FAITH. 37 
 
 world since the parson left conjuring ; " and it is not 
 difficult to imagine how life, for all but the best 
 spirits, might pass without anxiety if the only chance 
 of things going wrong in the next world was a sudden 
 death which would deprive the Churchman of the 
 effectual ministrations of his priest in articulo mortis. 
 The English race in the "ages of faith" was in its 
 childhood, and it is natural to childhood to be merry 
 and unconcerned. Writing on St. Nicholas' Day, I 
 am reminded of that curious business, so incredible 
 to us now, of the boy-bishop, which gave a note of 
 gaiety, almost of farce, to what we now account the 
 solemn season of Advent. The picturesque mummery 
 must have served in its day some useful purpose, so 
 far as the boys were concerned, or Colet would not 
 have approved it in his statutes for St. Paul's School ; * 
 but its popularity clearly indicates the childish gaiety 
 of the pre-Reformation religious spirit, just as the popu- 
 larity of St. Nicholas himself, proved by the number 
 of churches dedicated to him, shows the childish 
 appetite for marvel. The temper of mind which the 
 Oxford Movement in the last century laboured to 
 correct and deepen, while it had not the excuse of 
 childishness, was as superficially at peace with itself. 
 It had narrowed down religion to respectability, 
 
 1 " All these chyldren shall every Chyldermasse day come to paulis 
 church and here the Chylde Bisshoppis sermon and after be at the hye 
 masse, and eche of them to offer a j d to the childe bisshopp." The 
 boy-bishop was abolished by Henry VIII., restored by Queen Mary, 
 and finally abolished by Elizabeth.
 
 38 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 qualified by a formal assent to the doctrine of the 
 Atonement and a regular hearing of sermons upon 
 it ; so that religion had become, in a different sense, 
 a matter of the parson's conjuring, and the lay people 
 could afford to have easy minds. It will be under- 
 stood, then, why one recognizable note of Angli- 
 canism, whether of the seventeenth or the nineteenth 
 century, is its seriousness. It is the note of times 
 when it has been seen that religion lays its claim 
 upon the whole life, and is not a matter that can 
 satisfactorily be deputed to a factor, whether priest 
 or preacher. 
 
 This note of gravity, however, was common to all 
 parties alike in the religious movement of the Re- 
 formation. The peculiar distinction of Anglicanism 
 lay in three points. The first was that the English 
 Church deepened its seriousness into devotion. The 
 natural outcome of years of religious controversy is 
 the decay of reverence and godly fear. When the 
 deepest mysteries of religion are debated at every 
 street corner, however serious the intention, the 
 result must be that the object of such ceaseless 
 speculation ceases to be an object of worship. From 
 our recent experience in England of the disastrous 
 effect that a polemical handling of sacred subjects 
 has upon the spirit of religion, we are able to 
 sympathize more keenly with the endeavour of Bishop 
 Andrewes and those who followed him to emphasize 
 worship as being the first duty of a Churchman, and
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : THREE NOTES. 39 
 
 to ensure that the public services of the Church should 
 be orderly and befitting. 
 
 In the second place, the seriousness of Anglicanism 
 took the form of a patient investigation into the creed 
 and ritual of the primitive Church. All that common 
 sense and the light of nature could do in exposing 
 the corruptions and abuses of the Roman system had 
 already been done. It was not possible, without 
 going back to antiquity, to distinguish what in the 
 Roman creed was Catholic from what was merely 
 mediaeval or modern. Accordingly, while the Puritan 
 was content to oppose the ipse dixit of Calvin to the 
 definitions of the Council of Trent, English Church- 
 men set to work to study the Fathers. The effect of 
 this new learning may be seen by the most cursory 
 glance at any catena of Anglican authorities on points 
 of doctrine. Much of their effort is devoted to show- 
 ing that the passages quoted from time immemorial 
 in favour of Roman doctrines had, in their original 
 context, no such bearing. In this way the appeal 
 to antiquity, as against the dogmas of both Rome 
 and Geneva, became part of the recognized apologetic 
 of the Church of England. This care for primitive 
 authority co-operated with the care for worship in 
 reinspiring in the minds of Churchmen the spirit of 
 reverence. The state of mind in religious matters 
 of the ordinary Englishman of the upper class at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century was apt to be 
 one of aggressive independence, as of a man who
 
 40 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 had freed his neck from an intolerable yoke, and was 
 in no mood to bend it beneath any other. It was 
 the part of the English Church to teach him, first, 
 that there is a service which is perfect freedom, and 
 then that there is no slavery in loyal submission to 
 a Church which makes its rule of faith only what 
 has been received from primitive times, and can be 
 defended out of Scripture. 
 
 A third distinction of Anglicanism lay in the fact 
 that it did not, in its new devotional spirit, lose the 
 reasonable and practical mind which is a characteristic 
 endowment of Englishmen. This was shown in 
 several ways. For example, it refused to become 
 bigoted and partisan. It endeavoured, as long as 
 possible, to find terms of communion with Rome and 
 with the Presbyterians. Again, in its definitions, it 
 preserved a sense of proportion, making an effort to 
 " rightly divide the word of truth " ; distinguishing 
 what was of faith, and so of absolute consequence, 
 such as an article of the Apostles' Creed, from what 
 was only secondary, such as a particular theory of 
 the Eucharist ; whereas both Rome and Geneva were 
 as sensitive at the extreme verge of their spider's 
 web as they were at the centre, and as zealous in 
 anathematizing. 1 In general, we may say that 
 
 1 Mr. Ottley, in his excellent sketch of Bishop Andrewes (Leaders of 
 Religion series), has some very good remarks on this point (pp. 194-196). 
 Mr. Hutton, in his no less excellent sketch of Archbishop Laud (in the 
 same series), quotes some passages from Laud, indicating his breadth 
 and tolerance (pp. i$i, 152). See also a passage from Donne, quoted 
 below, p. 59.
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : CRANMER. 41 
 
 Anglicanism kept its eyes upon the real facts of life. 
 The stamp of the broad English temper lies upon 
 the first document that belongs to the English as a 
 national Church after its separation from Rome 
 that Litany, unequalled in any other communion, 
 which we owe to the liturgical genius and wide 
 human sympathies of Archbishop Cranmer. Anxious 
 as Cranmer always showed himself to ask counsel 
 of foreign reformers, he was yet every bit as anxious 
 to use the treasures of past ages ; and he found his 
 way among ancient types and modern suggestions 
 with a fine skill and courage and instinct for reality 
 which has made his Litany and the Prayer-book in 
 which it was presently included a book dear to the 
 hearts of educated Englishmen. But the Roman 
 reaction under Mary, with its pitiful Smithfield fires, 
 which lost none of their lurid horror in the dramatic 
 pages of Foxe, inevitably drove a large body of the 
 simpler sort into the arms of those Reformers, inspired 
 from the Continent, who advocated a total surrender 
 of every form, or rite, or ceremony that had ever had 
 upon it the mark of anti-Christian Rome ; and the 
 appeal for greater simplicity was rendered a hundred- 
 fold stronger by the new popular reading of the 
 Bible, especially in the Genevan version with com- 
 ments in the sense of Calvin. The question arose in 
 every market-place, Where in the New Testament 
 is there any mention of the cross in baptism, or of 
 kneeling at the Lord's Supper ? Where is there any
 
 42 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 mention of prelatical bishops ? Where of copes, or 
 of surplices? The question of dress was canvassed 
 with special zeal. Why should our ministers don 
 this " idolatrous gear " ? And the more the Queen, 
 in her headstrong Tudor way, pressed for uniformity 
 on the lines of the Prayer-book, the more did the 
 obstinate English spirit of the middle-class traders 
 labour, by open defiance and secret conspiracy, to 
 bring in the new Presbyterian discipline ; being 
 abetted in their opposition by the great Lords, who 
 saw in the subversion of the English Church an 
 opportunity for plunder that would have eclipsed even 
 the golden age of the dissolution of the monasteries. 
 The new constitution seemed so simple and claimed 
 to be so scriptural, and the view of it, seen in the 
 distance at Geneva, shone with such New Jerusalem 
 glories, that there is little wonder it should have 
 enchanted the imagination of the uneducated, espe- 
 cially as the zeal of its preachers contrasted only too 
 manifestly with the apathy and ignorance of so many 
 of the clergy, ordained in somewhat wholesale fashion 
 to fill up the gaps made by the wholesale ejections 
 that followed the death of Mary. "Now I pray 
 thee," says a character in Spenser's Shepheards 
 Calender 
 
 " Now I pray thee let me thy tale borrow 
 For our Sir John to say to-morrow 
 At the kirk when it is holiday ; 
 For well he means, but little can say." 

 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 43 
 
 But the English Church was saved to do its peculiar 
 work by the characteristic caution of its best spirits, 
 who were content to repair or even reconstruct the 
 city that already existed, and refused to pull it down 
 in exchange for one yet to build. Those combats 
 in the pulpit of the Temple Church between the 
 Master and the Reader, of which Walton tells us, 
 really represent the typical English mind, with its 
 innate conservatism and respect for tradition, in 
 conflict with the heady enthusiasm of the travelled 
 young man who has fallen in love with continental 
 novelties. While, however, foreign fashions in dress 
 might be ridiculed, foreign fashions in religion which 
 posed as the absolute truth were not to be so lightly 
 dismissed. The Temple strife long hung doubtful, 
 and the Master, it is said, was overmatched in pulpit 
 skill by the Reader. But if Hooker could not preach 
 to effect, he could write as none in England before 
 him, and few since ; and retiring into the country 
 he produced his book of T/ie Laws of Ecclesiastical 
 Polity a work that, if Cranmer's Litany must rank 
 as the first literary monument of Anglicanism, is as 
 certainly the second, and only second to it in influence ; 
 for while the former breathes, and by breathing 
 diffuses, the spirit of reasonable and earnest devotion 
 that we claim as our Church's peculiar heritage, the 
 other, for the first time, put into words, and perhaps 
 it would be true to say into thought, the very prin- 
 ciples upon which the English Church rests. That the
 
 44 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 English Church had any genuine vitality of its own 
 seemed to the Presbyterian theorists hardly credible. 
 They looked upon it as a dying stock that had been 
 lopped of its main branches in preparation for the 
 final work of the axe at its root ; and therefore the 
 attempt to prove that what had been cut away was 
 really parasitical, and that what remained held within 
 itself a vital principle, which could throw out branches 
 and bear fruit, needed no small courage and no little 
 insight. But this is what Hooker attempted and 
 carried through, and the history of the Church of 
 England as we have known it since is the best testi- 
 mony to the truth of his reasoning. 
 
 The delicate position of the English Church as to 
 controversy lay and lies in this, that against Rome 
 it pleads the authority of the Scriptures, and against 
 Puritanism the authority of tradition. Hence logicians 
 on both sides have been inclined to make merry at 
 what has come to be called the English Via Media. 
 Only, just as Aristotle insists that, while Virtue may 
 be truly defined as a mean between extremes, it is, 
 nevertheless, in respect of goodness an extreme ; 1 so 
 we must hold that the English Church is not com- 
 promised by deflections to the right and left. Hooker 
 and the defenders of our Church who have followed 
 him have refused to allow that a Church which 
 appeals to a double principle is necessarily inferior 
 to those which rest more simply upon a single one, 
 
 1 a/cpoT7jy, Nic. Eth., ii. 6, 7.
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 45 
 
 since simplicity is not an attribute of Nature. In 
 order to show that simplicity is not of the essence of 
 Revelation either, 1 Hooker analyzes the notion of 
 divine law, and his general conclusion, as against 
 the Puritan idolization of Scripture, may be summed 
 up in the following memorable sentence : " Wisdom 
 hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. 
 As her ways are of sundry kinds, so her manner of 
 teaching is not merely one and the same. Some 
 things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture ; 
 some things by the glorious works of Nature ; with 
 some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual 
 influence ; in some things she leadeth and traineth 
 them only by worldly experience and practice. We 
 may not so in any one special kind admire her that 
 we disgrace her in any other ; but let all her ways 
 be according unto their place and degree adored " 
 (Eccl. Pol, II. i. 4). 
 
 It may be said generally that Hooker's great 
 achievement was to vindicate the English Church 
 against the Puritan position on the ground of its 
 
 1 " If we are to fix on any fundamental position as the key of 
 [Hooker's] method of arguing, I should look for it in his doctrine, so 
 pertinaciously urged and always implied, of the concurrence and co- 
 operation, each in its due place, of all possible means of knowledge for 
 man's direction. Take which you please, reason or Scripture, your own 
 reason or that of others, private judgment or general consent, nature or 
 grace, one presupposes -it is a favourite word with him the existence 
 of others, and is not intended to do its work of illumination and 
 guidance without them : and the man who elects to go by one alone 
 will assuredly find in the end that he has gone wrong." Church's 
 Hooker, book I. p. xvii.
 
 46 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 reasonableness, its philosophical truth, and the 
 correspondence of its principles with the broad facts 
 of human life. Here was a Church that was content 
 not to deny nature because it believed in grace, not 
 to refuse tradition because it accepted the Scriptures, 
 not to disobey human law because it acknowledged 
 the existence of divine law. This reasonableness and 
 breadth and veracity are exemplified in Hooker's 
 own style. It is entirely free from those gross per- 
 sonalities common at the period, which disfigure, 
 for instance, the Marprelate writings. What Walton 
 says of Hooker's sermons is equally true of his 
 treatise ; its design was " to show reasons for what 
 he spake, and with these reasons such a kind of 
 rhetoric as did rather convince and persuade than 
 frighten men." In the preface to the Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, speaking of Cartwright's Defence of tlie Admoni- 
 tions, Hooker says, " There will come a time when 
 three words uttered with charity and meekness shall 
 receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand 
 volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit." 
 That he practised what he preached we may see 
 not only in his contribution to the general con- 
 troversy, the moderation of which we are apt to 
 underrate because we cannot now regard his victory 
 as anything but a foregone conclusion, but even 
 more clearly in that particular part of it which most 
 nearly touched his own person. Many people who 
 know the story of the bickerings at the Temple, and
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 47 
 
 how, in Fuller's words, " the pulpit spake pure Canter- 
 bury in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon," 
 may not have read the detailed history of the conflict 
 as it is set out in Travers's Supplication to the Council 
 against his inhibition by the Archbishop, and 
 Hooker's answer to the charges it contained against 
 himself. They are worthy of perusal by any one who 
 would see in miniature a picture of the tempers of 
 the two contending Churches ; for there is far more 
 in the difference than one between two individuals. 
 Hooker set before him, here as elsewhere, that ideal 
 of moderation and meekness which he and the lead- 
 ing Churchmen of his day held to be " primitive " ; * 
 Travers is full of that aggressive self-sufficiency of 
 spiritual office which marked all the leaders of his 
 party. A short extract from each pamphlet will 
 enable the reader to form a judgment both as to 
 the matter controverted and the methods of the 
 two advocates. After stating his resolution, on 
 Hooker's being appointed Master, "constantly to 
 seek for peace with him," Travers proceeds 
 "Which my resolution I so pursued that whereas 
 I discovered sundry unsound matters in his doctrine 
 (as many of his sermons tasted of some sour leaven 
 or other), yet thus I carried myself towards him. 
 
 1 Cf. Sir Henry Wotton's character of Whitgift : " He was a man 
 of reverend and sacred memory, and of the primitive temper ; such a 
 temper as when the Church by lowliness of spirit did flourish in highest 
 examples of virtue."
 
 48 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Matters of smaller weight, and so covertly delivered 
 that no great offence to the Church was to be feared 
 in them, I wholly passed by ; for others of great 
 moment and so openly delivered as there was just 
 cause of fear lest the truth and Church of God 
 should be prejudiced and perilled by it, and such 
 as the conscience of my duty and calling would not 
 suffer me altogether to pass over, this was my course ; 
 to deliver, when I should have just cause by my 
 text, the truth of such doctrine as he had otherwise 
 taught, in general speeches, without touch of his 
 person in any sort, and further at convenient oppor- 
 tunity to confer with him on such points. According 
 to which determination, whereas he had taught 
 certain things concerning predestination otherwise 
 than the Word of God doth, as it is understood by all 
 churches professing the gospel. ... I both delivered 
 the truth of such points in a general doctrine without 
 any touch of him in particular, and conferred with 
 him also privately upon such articles. In which 
 conference, I remember, when I urged the consent 
 of all churches and good writers against him, that 
 I knew ; and desired, if it were otherwise, to under- 
 stand what authors he had seen of such doctrine: 
 he answered me, that his best author was his own 
 reason." 
 
 To which charge Hooker replies first, that as 
 Travers held it unlawful in the pulpit to cite any 
 particular authority, lest it should seem to cast a
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 49 
 
 doubt on the sufficiency of Scripture, but only 
 allowed himself to say, on the one hand, "the 
 Painims think this, or the heathen that," and on 
 the other to quote " all churches " and " all good 
 writers," he had not thought it worth while "to 
 control this over-reaching speech by sentences out 
 of Church confessions, together with the best-learned 
 monuments of further times, and not the meanest 
 of our own : for what had this booted me ? . . . I 
 alleged therefore that which might under no pre- 
 tence be disallowed, namely reason ; not meaning 
 thereby mine own reason as now it is reported, but 
 true, sound, divine reason ; reason whereby those 
 conclusions might be out of St. Paul demonstrated 
 and not probably discoursed of only ; reason proper 
 to that science whereby the things of God are 
 known ; theological reason, which, out of principles 
 in Scripture that are plain, soundly deduceth more 
 doubtful inferences, in such sort that being heard 
 they neither can be denied, nor anything repugnant 
 unto them received, but whatsoever was before 
 otherwise by miscollecting gathered out of darker 
 places is thereby forced to yield itself, and the true 
 consonant meaning of sentences not understood is 
 brought to light." 
 
 To appreciate the passages given above, it must 
 be remembered that Travers was reputed one of 
 the greatest preachers and most learned men of 
 his day on the Puritan side, and that most of the 
 
 E
 
 50 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Benchers, and even Lord Burleigh, had wished to 
 make him Master instead of Hooker. If he and his 
 party had triumphed, it is evident that the Institutio 
 and Commentaries of John Calvin would have held a 
 place in the English Church higher even than that 
 from which the Summa of Thomas Aquinas had 
 been deposed ; there would have been no appeal 
 from them; for it is perfectly clear that by "all 
 churches " and " all good writers " Mr. Travers had 
 meant the churches in union with Geneva, and the 
 preachers who followed Calvin. One other passage 
 may be quoted from this instructive controversy for 
 the light it throws upon the attitude of the two 
 parties to the Church of Rome. 
 
 " When as [Hooker] had taught 'That the Church 
 of Rome is a true Church of Christ, and a sanctified 
 Church by profession of that truth which God hath 
 revealed unto us by His Son, though not a pure and 
 perfect Church ' ; and further ' That he doubted not 
 but that thousands of the Fathers which lived and 
 died in the superstitions of that Church were saved 
 because of their ignorance which excused them ' ; 
 misalleging to that end a text of Scripture to prove 
 it (i Tim. i. 13): the matter being of set purpose 
 openly and at large handled by him, and of that 
 moment that might prejudice the faith of Christ, 
 encourage the ill-affected to continue still in their 
 damnable ways, and others weak in faith to suffer 
 themselves easily to be seduced to the destruction of
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 5 I 
 
 their souls ; I thought it my most bounden duty to 
 God and to His Church, whilst I might have oppor- 
 tunity to speak with him, to teach the truth in a 
 general speech in such points of doctrine. At which 
 time I taught, ' That such as die, or have died at any 
 time in the Church of Rome, holding in their ignorance 
 that faith which is taught in it, and namely justifica- 
 tion in part by works, could not be said by the 
 Scriptures to be saved. . . .' Mr. Hooker, the next 
 Sabbath, leaving to proceed upon his ordinary text, 
 professed to preach again that he had done the day 
 before, for some question that his doctrine was drawn 
 into, which he desired might be examined with all 
 severity. So proceeding, he bestowed his whole time 
 in that discourse, confirming his former doctrine, and 
 answering the places of Scripture which I had alleged 
 to prove that a man dying in the Church of Rome is 
 not to be judged by the Scriptures to be saved. In 
 which long speech, and utterly impertinent to his 
 text, under colour of answering for himself, he im- 
 pugned directly and openly to all men's understanding 
 the true doctrine which I had delivered ; and adding 
 to his former points some other like (as willingly one 
 error follows another) that is, 'That the Galatians, 
 joining with faith in Christ circumcision as necessary 
 to salvation, might be saved ; and that they of the 
 Church of Rome may be saved by such a faith 
 of Christ as they have, with a general repentance 
 of all their errors, notwithstanding their opinion of
 
 52 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 justification in part by their works and merits ' ; I 
 was necessarily, though not willingly, drawn to say 
 something to the points he objected against sound 
 doctrine . . . which my answer, as it was most 
 necessary for the service of God and the Church, so 
 was it without any immodest or reproachful speech 
 to Mr. Hooker : whose unsound and wilful dealings 
 in a cause of so great importance to the faith of 
 Christ and salvation of the Church, notwithstanding 
 I knew well what speech it deserved, and what some 
 zealous, earnest men of the spirit of John and James, 
 surnamed Boanerges, Sons of Thunder, would have 
 said in such case, yet I chose rather to content 
 myself in exhorting him to revisit his doctrine, as 
 Nathan the prophet did the device, which, without 
 consulting with God, he had of himself given to 
 David concerning the building of the Temple ; and 
 with Peter the Apostle to endure to be withstood in 
 such a case, not unlike unto this ? " 
 
 It would be tedious to give Hooker's answer in 
 detail ; l but it may be interesting to give here a short 
 
 1 It is a happiness to be able to point out that all the great Anglicans 
 demurred in strong terms to the damnation so lavishly distributed by 
 both Romanists and Puritans ; thus Laud, speaking of the Calvinist 
 doctrine of Reprobation, says : " Which opinion my very soul 
 abominates ; for it makes God, the God of all mercies, to be the most 
 fierce and unreasonable tyrant in the world." And so Chillingworth, 
 against the Roman position that disagreeing Protestants must be 
 damned since some of them must needs deny revealed truth, says : 
 " Let all such errors be as damnable as you please to make 'em, in the 
 meanwhile if they suffer themselves neither to be betrayed into their
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HOOKER. 53 
 
 passage from the Ecclesiastical Polity, in which he 
 expresses in a lucid sentence what should be the 
 attitude of any true Church, and is the attitude of 
 the Church of England, towards the Church of Rome : 
 " To say that in nothing they may be followed which 
 are of the Church of Rome were violent and extreme. 
 Some things they do in that they are men ; in that 
 they are wise men and Christian men some things ; 
 some things in that they are men misled and blinded 
 with error. As far as they follow wisdom and truth 
 we fear not to tread the self-same steps wherein they 
 have gone, and to be their followers. Where Rome 
 keepeth that which is ancienter and better, others 
 whom we much more affect, leaving it for newer and 
 changing it for worse ; we had rather follow the per- 
 fections of them whom we like not, than in defects 
 resemble them whom we love " (v. xxviij. i). 
 
 From what has been quoted the reader will probably 
 agree that, if Hooker may be taken as representing 
 the special genius of the English Church, we may 
 claim for that Church a breadth of view, a devotion 
 to truth wherever found, and a faith in right reason 
 which sharply distinguish her from Puritanism on the 
 one side and Romanism on the other. One of the 
 
 errors, nor kept in them, by any sin of their will ; if they do their best 
 endeavour to free themselves from all errors, and yet fail of it through 
 human frailty ; so well am I persuaded of the goodness of God that if 
 in me alone should meet a confluence of all such errors of all the 
 Protestants in the world that were thus qualified, / should not be so 
 mtich afraid of them all as I should be to ask pardon for them. "
 
 54 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 beautiful vignettes which Walton gives us in his life 
 of Hooker is the picture of that pastor tending his 
 few sheep in the common field while he reads the 
 Odes of Horace. Between the temper of mind which 
 speaks of " all the Painim writers," and that larger 
 humanity which can appreciate, as Newman says, 
 " the sad earnestness and vivid exactness of lines, the 
 birth of some chance morning or evening among the 
 Sabine Hills," the English nation has chosen, and, as 
 most of us think, chosen wisely. The larger humanity 
 that we find in Hooker we find no less in the other 
 great leaders of the Church at this period. Among 
 the friends of Bishop Andrewes was numbered Francis 
 Bacon, who submitted to his judgment The Advance- 
 ment of Learning, and dedicated to him the unwritten 
 Holy War ; a specially intimate friend was the great 
 scholar Isaac Casaubon, who found in the English 
 Church a love of learning and reverence for antiquity 
 for which he had looked in vain among Calvinists 
 and Huguenots. I will not attempt any examination 
 of Andrewes' Sermons, because they are to-day little 
 read, and perhaps can hardly be reckoned as living 
 literature ; 1 but I will call attention to some qualities 
 
 1 There is an eloquent eulogy of them in a paper by Dean Church 
 (Masters in English Theology, p. 95), from which a short passage may 
 be extracted, especially as it calls attention to one feature of them which 
 is typically Anglican. After speaking of the preaching of the previous 
 generation, he says : " In Andrewes you feel as if he had broken bounds. 
 You see at once a wider horizon, objects of faith and contemplation at 
 once more real, more personal, more august ; you become aware of 
 your relation to a vaster and more diversified world, a world full of
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT: ANDREWES. 55 
 
 of his Devotions, which still, perhaps more than ever, 
 live in the hands and on the lips of English wor- 
 shippers. I would notice, first of all, that characteristic 
 which is so prominent in Hooker the recognition of 
 the work of reason in the world as an ordinance of 
 God 
 
 " O King of nations, unto the ends of the earth ; 
 strengthen all the states 
 of the inhabited world, 
 as being Thy ordinance, 
 though a creation of man," etc. 
 
 (First Day Intercession.} 
 
 In the second place, one remarks the breadth of 
 their sympathy in intercession, and of their acknow- 
 ledgment in praise, and how both praises and inter- 
 cessions mirror life sanely and truly. For an 
 
 mystery, yet touching you on every side. Doctrine you have, dogmatic 
 teaching as precise and emphatic as anywhere ; but it is doctrine as wide 
 as the Scripture in its comprehensiveness and variety, reflecting at every 
 turn the unutterable and overwhelming wonders which rise before us 
 when we think of what we mean by the creeds, corresponding in its 
 dignity, in its versatile application, to the real history of man, to the 
 deep and manifold wants of the soul, its aspirations, its terrible sins, 
 its cruel fears, its capacities for hope and delight, the strange fortunes 
 of the race, and of the story of each individual life. His theology 
 was instinct with the awful consciousness of our immense and hopeless 
 ignorance of the ways and counsels of God "with that shrinking from 
 speculation on the secret things of the most High which he shared with 
 Hooker, and which, as a professed law of divinity, was something ncis in 
 the theological world of the day. "For these sixteen years since I was 
 ordained priest," he says in his judgment on the Lambeth Articles, 
 " I have never, publicly or privately, disputed or preached on these 
 mysteries of predestination."
 
 56 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 example, consider the Intercession for the Second 
 Day, which, to save space, I will write down, except 
 for one specially important passage, in continuous 
 prose (following Newman's version) : " Let us pray 
 God for the whole creation ; for the supply of 
 seasons, healthy, fruitful, peaceful ; for the whole 
 race of mankind ; for those who are not Christians ; 
 for the conversion of Atheists, the ungodly ; Gentiles, 
 Turks, and Jews ; for all Christians ; for restoration 
 of all who languish in faults and sins ; for confirma- 
 tion of all who have been granted truth and grace ; 
 for succour and comfort of all who are dispirited, 
 infirm, distressed, unsettled, men and women; for 
 thankfulness and sobriety in all who are hearty, 
 healthy, prosperous, quiet, men and women : 
 
 for the Catholic Church, its establishment and 
 
 increase ; 
 
 for the Eastern, its deliverance and union ; 
 for the Western, its adjustment and peace ; 
 for the British, the supply of what is wanting in it, 
 the strengthening of what remains in it ; 
 
 for the episcopate, presbytery, Christian people ; for 
 the states of the inhabited world ; for Christian 
 states, far off, near at hand ; for our own ; for all in 
 rule ; for our divinely-guarded King ; the queen and 
 the prince ; for those who have place in the court ; 
 for parliament and judicature, army and police, 
 commons and their leaders, farmers, graziers, fishers,
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : ANDREWES. 57 
 
 merchants, traders, and mechanics, down to mean 
 workmen, and the poor ; for the rising generation ; 
 for the good nurture of all the royal family, of the 
 young ones of the nobility ; for all in universities, in 
 law colleges, in schools in town or country, in appren- 
 ticeships ; for those who have a claim on me from 
 relationship, for brothers and sisters, that God's 
 blessing may be on them, and on their children ; OR 
 from benefit conferred, that Thy recompense may 
 be on all who have benefitted me, who have ministered 
 to me in carnal things ; OR from trust placed in me, 
 for all whom I have educated, all whom I have 
 ordained ; for my college, my parish, Southwell, St. 
 Paul's, Westminster, Dioceses of Chichester, Ely, 
 and my present [Winchester] clergy, people, helps, 
 governments, the deanery in the chapel royal, the 
 almonry, the colleges committed to me [as Visitor] ; 
 OR from natural kindness, for all who love me, though 
 I know them not ; OR from Christian love ; for those 
 who hate me without cause, some too even on account 
 of truth and righteousness ; OR from neighbourhood, 
 for all who dwell near me peaceably and harmlessly ; 
 OR from promise, for all whom I have promised to 
 remember in my prayers ; OR from mutual offices, 
 for all who remember me in their prayers, and ask 
 of me the same ; OR from stress of engagements, for 
 all who on sufficient reasons fail to call upon Thee ; 
 for all who have no intercessor in their own behalf; 
 for all who at present are in agony of extreme
 
 58 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 necessity or deep affliction ; for all who are attempt- 
 ing any good work which will bring glory to the 
 Name of God or some great good to the Church ; 
 for all who act nobly either towards things sacred 
 or towards the poor ; for all who have ever been 
 offended by me either in word or in deed." 
 
 Side by side with this may be placed one of the 
 Acts of Thanksgiving, that for the Fifth Day : " O 
 Lord, my Lord, for my being, life, reason ; for nurture, 
 protection, guidance ; for education, civil rights, 
 religion ; for Thy gifts of grace, nature, fortune ; for 
 redemption, regeneration, catechizing ; for my call, 
 recall, yea many calls besides ; for Thy forbearance, 
 long-suffering, long long-suffering to me-ward ; many 
 seasons, many years, up to this time ; for all good 
 things received, successes granted me, good things 
 done ; for the use of things present, for Thy promise, 
 and my hope of the enjoyment of good things to 
 come ; for my parents honest and good, teachers 
 kind, benefactors never to be forgotten, religious 
 intimates congenial, hearers thoughtful, friends sincere, 
 domestics faithful ; for all who have advantaged me 
 by writings, homilies, converse, prayers, patterns, 
 rebukes, injuries ; for all these, and all others which 
 I know, which I know not ; open, hidden ; remem- 
 bered, forgotten ; done when I wished, when I wished 
 not ; I confess to Thee, and will confess ; I bless 
 Thee, and will bless ; I give thanks to Thee, and 
 will give thanks, all the days of my life."
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : ANDREWES. 59 
 
 We cannot fail to notice that these world-wide 
 praises and intercessions became possible on no 
 narrower basis than the Church's Creed. Such a 
 thanksgiving, for instance, as that just quoted could 
 not have been written by any one who held the 
 doctrine of the " Lambeth Articles " upon predestina- 
 tion. Finally, the Devotions bring clearly into view 
 the type of character which Andrewes sets before 
 himself as an ideal. From the Prayer for Grace on 
 the Fourth Day let me extract two petitions which 
 seem typically English in their common sense and 
 honesty, and also in their combination of saintly 
 qualities of mind with the practical recognition that 
 poverty is not in northern climes a bride to be 
 wooed 
 
 " Give me 
 
 humility, pitifulness, patience, 
 
 sobriety, purity, contentment, ready zeal. 
 
 * * * * # 
 
 Grant me a happy life 
 
 in piety, gravity, purity, 
 
 in all things good and fair, 
 
 in cheerfulness, in health, in credit, 
 
 in competency, in safety, in gentle estate, in quiet ; 
 
 a happy death, 
 a deathless happiness." 
 
 Next in order, after Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity 
 and Andrewes 1 Devotions, among the evidences which
 
 60 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 exhibit and the influences which helped to shape 
 the peculiar temper of the English Church, must be 
 placed the writings we associate with the great names 
 of John Donne and George Herbert. They were 
 both men in the foremost intellectual rank of their 
 day scholars and gentlemen, even courtiers ; both 
 fought long and hard against the divine decrees 
 which were urging them to the ministry ; but both, 
 when their decision was once made, threw themselves 
 heart and soul into their new profession, and by their 
 zeal and genius created, we may almost say, a new 
 type the one of a town preacher, the other of a 
 country parson. Their influence upon their own age 
 was exercised in Donne's case by his sermons ; in 
 Herbert's through his poems ; and both these in- 
 fluences still operate. But it is probable that the 
 impression their character has exerted upon later 
 generations is quite as much due to the portraits of 
 them which have been handed down by the religious 
 genius of Izaak Walton, who may himself be said to 
 have first exhibited in English literature the type 
 of the Anglican layman as we know him to-day 
 devout, reasonable, modest. Readers of Walton's 
 delightful biographies will recall his fondness for the 
 appeal to antiquity, "those first and most blessed 
 times of Christianity ; " they will remember that he 
 justifies Donne and Herbert for writing sacred poems 
 by the example of Prudentius, and the use of Church 
 music from St. Augustine's love of it ; that his
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : WALTON AND WOTTON. 6 1 
 
 highest epithet of praise is " primitive," and that it 
 is commonly found with the words "humility" or 
 "charity." Another trait that he is never tired of 
 emphasizing in the characters of the worthies he had 
 known and loved is their averseness from controversy. 
 In his sketch of the life of Sir Henry Wotton, the 
 distinguished ambassador of James to Venice, after- 
 wards Provost of Eton, a Churchman and angler after 
 Walton's own heart, he collects various anecdotes, 
 some of which may find a place here, as they throw 
 a light on the way in which the current controversies 
 were viewed by those who had a zeal for the true 
 welfare of the Church. 
 
 " He was a great enemy to wrangling disputes of 
 Religion, concerning which I shall say a little, both 
 to testify that and to show the readiness of his wit. 
 Having at his being in Rome made acquaintance 
 with a pleasant Priest, who invited him one evening 
 to hear their Vesper music at church, the Priest, 
 seeing Sir Henry stand obscurely in a corner, sends 
 to him by a boy of the choir this question writ in a 
 small piece of paper : ' Where was your religion to 
 be found before Luther?' 1 To which question Sir 
 Henry presently underwrit : ' My religion was to be 
 found tfien where yours is not to be found now, in 
 
 1 Donne's answer to this stock question may be quoted : " They that 
 ask now Where was your Church before Luther ? would then have asked 
 of the Jews, Where was your Church before Esdras ? That was in 
 Babylon, ours was in Rome." Second sermon on Ezek. xxxiv. 19.
 
 62 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the written Word of God.' The next Vesper Sir 
 Henry went purposely to the same church, and sent 
 one of the choir boys with this question to his honest, 
 pleasant friend, the priest : ' Do you believe all those 
 many thousands of poor Christians were damned, 
 that were excommunicated because the Pope and the 
 Duke of Venice could not agree about their temporal 
 power, even those poor Christians that knew not why 
 they quarrelled ? Speak your conscience.' To which 
 he underwrit in French : ' Monsieur, excusez-moi.' 
 To one that asked him ' Whether a Papist may be 
 saved ? ' he replied, ' You may be saved without 
 knowing that. Look to yourself.' To another, whose 
 earnestness exceeded his knowledge and was still 
 railing against the Papists, he gave this advice : 
 'Pray, sir, forbear till you have studied the points 
 better ; for the wise Italians have this proverb : " He 
 that understands amiss concludes worse." And take 
 heed of thinking the farther you go from the Church 
 of Rome, the nearer you are to God.' " 
 
 The last two stories, and others of the like sort to 
 be found in Walton, explain the feeling which made 
 Wotton, in Walton's phrase, " choose for the epitaph 
 on his tombstone only this prudent, pious sentence 
 to discover his disposition and preserve his memory 
 
 ' Hie jacet hujus sententire primus Author : 
 Disputandi pruritus, ecclesiarum scabies ; ' 
 
 which may be Englished thus : ' Here lies the first
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : DONNE. 63 
 
 author of this sentence : The itch of disputation will 
 prove the scab of the Church.' " 
 
 Donne was eminently fitted to be an advocate of 
 the via media, seeing that he had won his way to it 
 from the Roman faith, to which his mother's family 
 had supplied martyrs and confessors. While still 
 a layman Donne had made himself very learned in 
 the controversy between the Churches, helping 
 Morton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, in his po- 
 lemical works, and himself contributing a book, 
 the Pseudomartyr, on the question of the Oath of 
 Allegiance ; and in his sermons he steers his way 
 between the two parties with a fine religious tact, 
 being equally on the alert to press home points in 
 which he considered the Roman Church to have gone 
 astray, and to expose the pretensions of Calvinistic 
 omniscience ; but refusing to be deterred by any 
 shibboleths from welcoming truth wherever he recog- 
 nized it. He says in one place : " Beloved, there are 
 some things in which all religions agree : the worship 
 of God, the holiness of life. Therefore, if when I 
 study this holiness of life, and fast, and pray, and 
 submit myself to discreet and medicinal mortifications 
 for the subduing of my body, any man will say, 
 ' This is papistical ! Papists do this ! ' it is a blessed 
 protestation, and no man is the less a Protestant or 
 the worse a Protestant for making it : 'I am a Papist ! 
 that is, I will fast and pray as much as any Papist, 
 and enable myself for the service of my God, as
 
 64 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 seriously, as sedulously, as laboriously as any Papist.' 
 So if, when I startle and am affected at a blasphemous 
 oath as at a wound upon my Saviour, when I avoid 
 the conversation of those men that profane the Lord's 
 Day, any other will say, ' This is puritanical ! Puritans 
 do this ! ' it is a blessed protestation, and no man is 
 the less a Protestant nor the worse a Protestant for 
 making it : ' Men and brethren, I am a Puritan ! that 
 is, I will endeavour to be pure as my Father in heaven 
 is pure, as far as any Puritan ' " (i. 493). 
 
 We notice in Donne how, like Hooker and 
 Andrewes, he resented the fierce controversial style 
 of the day. In one of his letters, speaking of a book 
 written on the Anglican side against Rome, he says 
 it is written " for religion, without it ; " and in a 
 sermon preached before the Court (ii. 254) he takes 
 occasion, in pointing out how loth St. Augustine was 
 to accuse Tertullian of heresy, to deprecate the abuse 
 of that term to every difference between the churches. 
 "I would Saint Augustine's charity might prevail 
 with them that pretend to be Augnstinianissimi, and 
 to admire him so much in the Roman Church, not to 
 cast the name of heresy upon every problem, nor the 
 name of heretic upon every inquirer of truth. St. 
 Augustine would deliver Tertullian from heresy in 
 a point concerning God, and they will condemn us 
 of heresy in every point that may be drawn to con- 
 cern, not the Church, but the Court of Rome ; not 
 their doctrine, but their profit. I shall better answer
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : DONNE. 65 
 
 God for my mildness than for my severity. And 
 though anger against a brother, or a Raca, or a Fool 
 will bear an action, yet he shall recover less against 
 me at that bar whom I have called weak or misled 
 (as I must necessarily call many in the Roman 
 Church) than he whom I have passionately and per- 
 emptorily called heretic. For I dare call an opinion 
 heresy for the matter a great while before I dare call 
 the man that holds it an heretic. For that consists 
 much in the manner. It must be matter of faith 
 before the matter be heresy ; but there must be 
 pertinacy after convenient instruction before that 
 man be an heretic." 
 
 As Donne's sermons are now little known, I may 
 be excused for quoting a few passages to exhibit the 
 importance which he, like the other Anglican leaders, 
 attached to reverence in all offices of devotion. First, 
 as to the reasonableness of ritual : " Quench not the 
 light of nature, suffer not that light to go out ; study 
 your natural faculties, husband and improve them ; 
 and love the outward acts of religion, though an 
 hypocrite and though a natural man may do them. 
 He that cares not though the material church fall, 
 I am afraid, is falling from the spiritual. For can 
 a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his 
 house be burnt, or to preserve his faith if the outward 
 exercises of religion fail ? He that undervalues out- 
 ward things in the religious service of God, though 
 he begin at ceremonial and ritual things, will come 
 
 F
 
 66 RELTGTO LAICI. 
 
 quickly to call Sacraments but outward things, and 
 Sermons and Public Prayers but outward things in 
 contempt. As some Platonic philosophers did so 
 over-refine religion and devotion as to say that 
 nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a 
 devout heart were fit to serve God in ; if it came to 
 any outward action of the body, kneeling, or lifting 
 up of heads, if it came to be but invested in our words, 
 and so made a prayer, nay, if it passed but a revolving, 
 a turning in our inward thoughts, and thereby were 
 mingled with our affections, though pious affections, 
 yet, say they, it is not pure enough for a service to 
 God ; nothing but the first motions of the heart is 
 for Him. Beloved, outward things apparel God ; 
 and since God was content to take a body, let us 
 not leave Him naked nor ragged " (ii. 330). 
 
 In regard to keeping set times of devotion, Donne 
 has a few careful sentences in a sermon on the text, 
 "For this shall every one that is godly make his 
 prayer unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest be 
 found " : " This time is not those Hora stattvce, Hor<z 
 Canonica, those fixed hours in the Roman Church 
 where men are bound to certain prayers at certain 
 hours. Not that it is inconvenient for men to bind 
 themselves to certain fixed times of prayer in their 
 private exercises ; and though not by such a vow as 
 that it shall be an impiety, yet by so solemn a purpose 
 as that it shall be a levity, to break it " (i. 569). 
 
 But he has no toleration for the practice of treating
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : DONNE. 67 
 
 prayers as so much matter to be got through ; for 
 such a notion conflicts with the very idea of prayer 
 as devotion, which even when we do our best is sure 
 to be imperfect : " We have not leisure to speak of 
 the abuse of prayer in the Roman Church ; where 
 they will antedate and postdate their prayers ; say 
 to-morrow's prayers to-day, and to-day's prayers 
 to-morrow, if they have other uses and employments 
 of the due times between ; where they will trade and 
 make merchandise of prayers by way of exchange ; 
 my man shall fast for me, and I will pray for my 
 man ; or my attorney and proxy shall pray for us 
 both at my charge ; nay, where they will play for 
 prayers, and the loser must pray for both ; to this 
 there belongs but a holy scorn, and I would fain 
 pass it over quickly. But when we consider with a 
 religious seriousness the manifold weaknesses of the 
 strongest devotions in time of prayer, it is a sad con- 
 sideration. I throw myself down in my chamber, 
 and I call in and invite God and His angels thither, 
 and when they are there, I neglect God and His 
 angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, 
 for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same 
 posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, 
 as though I prayed to God ; and if God or His angels 
 should ask me when I thought last of God in that 
 prayer, I cannot tell ; sometimes I find that I had 
 forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget 
 it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures,
 
 68 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my 
 knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an 
 anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimsera in my brain, 
 troubles me in my prayer. So certainly is there 
 nothing, nothing in spiritual things, perfect in this 
 world "(i. 820). 
 
 A very interesting passage upon ceremonies in 
 general, arising out of a discussion on the question 
 of lights, comes in a sermon on the Purification : " It 
 is in this ceremony of lights as it is in other cere- 
 monies ; they may be good in their institution and 
 grow ill in their practice. So did many things, which 
 the Christian Church received from the Gentiles in 
 a harmless innocency, degenerate after into as pesti- 
 lent superstition there as amongst the Gentiles them- 
 selves. For ceremonies, which were received but for 
 the instruction and edification of the weaker sort of 
 people, were made real parts of the service of God 
 and meritorious sacrifices. To those ceremonies 
 which were received as signa commonefacientia, helps 
 to excite and awaken devotion, was attributed an 
 operative and an effectual power, even to the cere- 
 mony itself; and they were not practised as they 
 should be, significative but effective, not as things 
 which should signify to the people higher mysteries, 
 but as things as powerful and effectual in themselves 
 as the greatest mysteries of all, the Sacraments them- 
 selves. So lights were received in the Primitive Church 
 to signify to the people that God, the Father of lights,
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : DONNE. 69 
 
 was otherwise present in that place than in any other, 
 and then men came to offer lights by way of sacrifice 
 to God. And so that which was providently intended 
 for man, who, indeed, needed such helps, was turned 
 upon God as though He were to be supplied by us. 
 But what then? Because things good in their in- 
 tention may be depraved in their practice ' Ergone 
 nihil ceremoniarum rudioribus dabitur ad juvandam 
 eorum imperitiam?' Shall therefore the people be 
 denied all ceremonies for the assistance of their 
 weakness ? ' Id ego non dico ' ; I say not so, says 
 he. 1 'Omnino illis utile esse sentio hoc genus 
 adminiculi ' ; I think these kinds of helps to be very 
 behooveful for them 'Tantum hoc contendo'; all 
 that I strive for is but moderation ; and that modera- 
 tion he places very discreetly in this, that these cere- 
 monies may be few in number, that they may be 
 easy for observation ; that they may be clearly un- 
 derstood in their signification. We must not there- 
 fore be hasty in condemning particular ceremonies, 
 for in so doing in this ceremony of lights we may con- 
 demn the Primitive Church that did use them, and 
 we condemn a great and noble part of the Reformed 
 Church which doth use them at this day " (i. 80). 
 Donne not unfrequently in his sermons takes 
 
 1 The authority here adduced by Donne is that of Calvin, whose 
 reputation at this time in England stood very high, and whom Donne 
 always refers to with respect, and quotes very happily against those 
 who counted themselves his followers.
 
 7O RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 occasion to defend the English Church for its assiduity 
 in preaching, but at the same time he is careful to 
 warn the clergy against mere appeals to the emotions 
 which do not touch the reason and conscience : " If 
 they [the Roman Catholics] deride us for often 
 preaching, and call us fools for that ; as David said, 
 ' He would be more vile,' he would dance more, so 
 let us be more fools in the foolishness of preaching, 
 and preach more. If they think us mad, since we 
 are mad for your souls (as the apostle speaks) let us 
 be more mad. Let him that hath preached once do 
 it twice, and him that hath preached twice do it 
 thrice ; but yet not thus, by coming to a negligent 
 and extemporal manner of preaching" (i. 325). 
 
 He points out that though extemporal sermons 
 may have been justified in primitive times on account 
 of the greater ignorance of the people, the advance 
 in education in his day laid a greater claim upon 
 the preacher. On the other hand, he calls attention 
 to the fact that those sectaries who exalt preaching 
 out of its place into the sole means of grace soon 
 come to treat it as a merely human ordinance, which 
 they may attend and criticize without any feeling 
 of reverence. He adds that unlearned preaching is 
 the first step to heresy, and leads ultimately to 
 schism. The sense of the following paragraph must 
 be judged apart from its relevance to the text from 
 which it is educed : " When the apostle says, Study 
 to be quiet (i Thess. iv. u), methinks he intimates
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT: DONNE. 71 
 
 something towards this, that the less we study for 
 our sermons, the more danger is there to disquiet 
 the auditory ; extemporal, unpremeditated sermons 
 that serve the popular ear, vent for the most part 
 doctrines that disquiet the Church. Study for them 
 and they will be quiet ; consider ancient and funda- 
 mental doctrines, and this will quiet and settle the 
 understanding and the conscience. Many of these 
 extemporal men have gone away from us, and vainly 
 said that they have as good cause to separate from 
 us as we from Rome. 1 But can they call our Church 
 ' a Babylon, confusion, disorder ' ? All that offends 
 them is that we have too much order, too much 
 
 1 The justification of the English breach with Rome is handled 
 earlier in the same sermon in a curious passage that may be quoted as 
 a specimen of the wit that made Donne famous in the days before his 
 ordination, though it is rare in his sermons (ii. 214). 
 
 " They vex us now with the question, Why if your fathers, when they 
 eat our trodden grass and drunk our troubled waters, were sound and 
 in health and continued sheep, and God's sheep and God's flock, His 
 Church with us, why went they from us? They owed us their 
 residence, because they had received their baptism from us. And 
 truly it is not an impertinent, a frivolous reason that of baptism, where 
 there is nothing but conveniency and no necessity in the case. But if 
 I be content to stay with my friend in an aguish air, will he take it ill 
 if I go when the plague comes ? Or if I stay in town till twenty die of 
 the plague, shall it be looked that I should stay when there die one 
 thousand ? The infection grew hotter and hotter in Rome, and their 
 may came to a must ; those things which were done before de facto 
 came at last to be articles of faith and de jure, must be believed and 
 practised upon salvation. They chide us for going away, and they 
 drove us away ; if we abstained from communicating with their poisons 
 (being now grown to that height) they excommunicated us ; they gave 
 us no room amongst them but the fire, and they were so forward to 
 burn heretics that they called it heresy not to stay to be burnt."
 
 72 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 regularity, too much binding to the orderly and 
 uniform service of God in His Church" (ii. 216). 
 
 I have illustrated by these few passages the general 
 line which Donne took in matters debated in his day, 
 so as to show his notion of the Anglican ideal ; but, 
 for the most part, his sermons come up to the type 
 which George Herbert lays down for all sermons, 
 "that their main character should be not contro- 
 versial but holy, the words and sentences being 
 dipped and seasoned in the heart of the preacher 
 before they come into the mouth." 
 
 The book from which that sentence comes A Priest 
 to the Temple ; or, the Country Parson, his Character 
 and Rule of Holy Life is an invaluable document 
 for letting us see what the best spirits in the 
 second generation of Anglican divines thought of 
 their office and its duties and the Church in which 
 they ministered. 
 
 "A Pastor," Herbert begins, "is the deputy of 
 Christ, to reduce [bring back] man to the obedience 
 of God. Out of this charter of the priesthood may 
 be plainly gathered both the dignity thereof and the 
 duty : the dignity, in that a priest may do that which 
 Christ did, and by his authority, and as his vice-gerent ; 
 the duty, in that a priest is to do that which Christ 
 did, and after his manner, both for doctrine and life." 
 
 " The Country Parson," he continues, " is exceed- 
 ingly exact in his life, being holy, just, prudent, 
 temperate, bold, grave in all his ways. . . . To put
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HERBERT. 73 
 
 on the profound humility and the exact temperance 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, with other exemplary 
 virtues of that sort, and to keep them on in the sun- 
 shine and noon of prosperity, he findeth to be as 
 necessary, and as difficult at least, as to be clothed 
 with perfect patience and Christian fortitude in the 
 cold midnight storms of persecution and adversity." 
 
 In the conduct of public worship what Herbert 
 most dwells upon is the necessity for reverence. 
 "The Country Parson being to administer the 
 Sacraments, is at a stand with himself how or what 
 behaviour to assume for so holy things. Especially 
 at Communion times he is in a great confusion, as 
 being not only to receive God, but to break and 
 administer Him. Neither finds he any issue in this, 
 but to throw himself down at the throne of grace 
 saying, ' Lord, Thou knowest what Thou didst when 
 Thou appointedst it to be done thus; therefore do 
 Thou fulfil what Thou didst appoint, for Thou art 
 not only the Feast but the way to it.' For the 
 manner of receiving, as the parson useth all reverence 
 himself, so he administers to none but the reverent. 
 The Feast indeed requires sitting because it is a 
 Feast ; but man's unpreparedness asks kneeling. 
 He that comes to the Sacrament hath the confidence 
 of a guest, and he that kneels confesseth himself 
 an unworthy one, and therefore differs from other 
 feasters ; but he that sits or lies, puts up to an 
 apostle. Contentiousness in a feast of charity is more
 
 74 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 scandal than any postiire. At Baptism, being himself 
 in white, he requires the presence of all, and bap- 
 tizeth not willingly but on Sundays or great days. 
 He says that prayer with great devotion where God 
 is thanked for calling us to the knowledge of His 
 grace, Baptism being a blessing that the world hath 
 not the like. He willingly and cheerfully crosseth 
 the child, and thinketh the ceremony not only inno- 
 cent but reverent. . . . The Country Parson, when 
 he is to read divine services, composeth himself to 
 all possible reverence ; this he doth, first, as being 
 truly touched and amazed with the majesty of God, 
 before whom he then presents himself; yet not as 
 himself alone, but as presenting with himself the 
 whole congregation, whose sins he then bears and 
 brings with his own to the heavenly altar to be 
 bathed and washed in the sacred laver of Christ's 
 blood. Secondly, as this is the true reason of his 
 inward fear, so he is content to express this out- 
 wardly to the utmost of his power, that being first 
 affected himself he may affect also his own people, 
 knowing that no sermon moves them so much to a 
 reverence, which they forget again when they come 
 to pray, as a devout behaviour in the very act 
 of praying. . . . The character of his sermons is 
 /witness ; it is gained first by choosing texts of devo- 
 tion, not controversy, moving and ravishing texts, 
 whereof the Scriptures are full." 
 
 As reverence is to be the predominant note of
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HERBERT. /5 
 
 the parson and people, so decency and order are 
 to prevail in the church and its furniture. " The 
 Country Parson hath a special care of his church, 
 that all things there be decent and befitting His 
 Name by which it is called. Therefore first he 
 taketh order that all things be in good repair : as 
 walls plastered ; windows glazed ; floor paved ; seats 
 whole, firm, and uniform ; especially that the Pulpit 
 and Desk, and Communion Table and Font be as 
 they ought for those great duties that are performed 
 in them. Secondly, that the church be swept and 
 kept clean, without dust or cobwebs, and at great 
 festivals strawed and stuck with boughs, and per- 
 fumed with incense. . . . And all this he doth, not 
 as out of necessity, or as putting a holiness in the 
 things, but as desiring to keep the middle way 
 between superstition and slovenliness, and as fol- 
 lowing the apostle's two great and admirable rules 
 on things of this nature : the first whereof is, Let all 
 things be done decently and in order; the second, Let 
 all things be done to edification" 
 
 The same idea of the English ritual as a mean 
 between those of Rome and Geneva is found in 
 Herbert's poem of TJte British Church 
 
 " A fine aspect in fit array, 
 Neither too mean nor yet too gay, 
 
 Shows who is best. 
 
 Outlandish [i.e. foreign] looks may not compare, 
 For all they either painted are 
 
 Or else undrest.
 
 76 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 "She on the hills, which wantonly 
 Allureth all, in hope to be 
 
 By her preferr'd, 
 
 Hath kis^'d so long her painted shrines, 
 That e'en her face, by kissing, shines 
 For her reward. 
 
 " She in the valley is so shy 
 Of dressing, that her hair doth lie 
 About her ears ; 
 
 While she avoids her neighbour's pride, 
 She wholly goes on th' other side, 
 
 And nothing wears." 
 
 But if the note of reverence is plainly struck all 
 through The Country Parson, the other Anglican 
 note of reasonableness is no less prominent. In his 
 remarks on Preaching, Herbert is in advance of the 
 practice of his day. " A sermon," he says, " should 
 consist of a plain and evident declaration of the mean- 
 ing of the text," followed by " some choice observa- 
 tions drawn out of the whole text as it lies entire and 
 unbroken in the Scripture itself." To crumble a text 
 into small parts " hath in it," he says, " neither sweet- 
 ness nor gravity, since the words apart are not 
 Scripture but a dictionary." In another place he 
 adds that a text must be considered "with the 
 coherence thereof, touching what goes before and 
 what follows after," as also the place where it comes 
 in the canon. The same reasonable temper justifies 
 both the appeal to the Fathers and the use of the 
 preacher's own judgment. "As he doth not so study 
 others as to neglect the grace of God in himself and
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HERBERT. // 
 
 what the Holy Spirit teacheth him, so doth he assure 
 himself that God in all ages hath had His servants 
 to whom He hath revealed His truth, as well as to 
 him." The like spirit of sanctified common sense is 
 displayed in his treatment of Fasting, upon which 
 subject his remarks are worth attention at the present 
 day, when reason in such matters seems in some 
 quarters at a discount. The passage is too long to 
 quote ; it will be found in the chapter entitled " A 
 parson in his house." To Private Confession he has 
 the following short reference : " In his visiting the 
 sick or otherwise afflicted he followeth the Church's 
 counsel, namely, in persuading them to particular 
 confession, labouring to make them understand the 
 great good use of this ancient and pious ordinance, 
 and how necessary it is in some cases." 
 
 On turning to Herbert's poems, the reader finds 
 little, notwithstanding their title of TJie Temple or 
 Church, that has upon the surface any immediate 
 reference to the Church of England. Besides The 
 British Church, quoted above, there is a lament upon 
 Church Rents and Schisms, an apology for declining 
 the invocation of Saints (To all Saints and Angels), 
 a passing reflection upon the Roman doctrine of 
 merit in Judgment, some lines upon Church Music, 
 and a very sad forecast, which has happily been 
 falsified, of the decay of English religion in the 
 poem called The Church Militant. Besides these, 
 and a few poems upon his own ordination, it may
 
 /8 RELIGIO LATCI. 
 
 seem at first sight as if there were nothing in the 
 volume to determine it to any one Communion. But 
 a more attentive consideration reveals the fact that 
 a large proportion of the poems are poems of personal 
 devotion, acts of faith, acts of praise exercises which 
 Puritanism was inclined to rank as idle ; and further, 
 that the devotional poems are pitched in a key whose 
 reserve contrasts strikingly with the fiery ardours 
 and ecstasies characteristic of the Roman Church. 
 Mr. Shorthouse, in an interesting preface to the 
 facsimile reprint of The Temple (Unwin, 1883) a 
 preface which, among much that is fantastic and 
 uncritical, contains several penetrating comments 
 lays it down that it was the peculiar mission of 
 Herbert and his fellows to reveal to the uncultured 
 and unlearned "the true refinement of worship." 
 The phrase seems to be an eminently happy one. 
 For just as in their ordinary social life Englishmen 
 value taste above mere profusion and display, and 
 reticence above self-abandonment to exuberant feel- 
 ings, so in divine worship we associate reverence with 
 the prophet's veiled lips rather than with the gush of 
 sensibility, however eloquent. We approach the altar 
 with " reverence and godly fear " ; we should wish 
 our feelings there to be calm, sober, contemplative. 
 It is this temper, serious, solemnized, and humble 
 with the dignity of a child of God, to which Herbert 
 has given so perfect an expression. It passes through 
 many moods praise, expostulation, penitence, longing,
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : HERBERT. 79 
 
 love but they are all touched with the same grave 
 restraint. How full of dignity is the deprecation 
 of the poem called Discipline ! 
 
 " Throw away Thy rod, 
 Throw away Thy wrath, 
 
 my God ! 
 Take the gentle path. 
 
 " For my heart's desire 
 Unto Thine is bent ; 
 
 1 aspire 
 To a full consent. 
 
 " Though I fail, I weep ; 
 Though I halt in pace, 
 
 Yet I creep 
 To the Throne of grace. 
 
 " Throw away Thy rod ! 
 Though man frailties hath, 
 
 Thou art God ! 
 Throw away Thy wrath." 
 
 The same calm and confident faith inspires the 
 well-known poem called Praise, which begins 
 
 " King of glory, King of peace, 
 I will love Thee." 
 
 And there are many others in the same key. Even 
 the poems to our Lord, where more effusion is 
 naturally in place, are entirely lacking in that tone 
 of familiarity which is so distressing in many devo- 
 tions used by Romanists and our own dissenters. 
 We find a rare sweetness indeed, but no want of 
 delicacy or refinement. What could be more humble
 
 80 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 in spirit, with all its affection, than the piece called 
 Dialogue, which opens 
 
 " Sweetest Saviour, if my love 
 Were but worth the having " ? 
 
 or that exquisite verse on the Resurrection 
 
 " I got me flowers to strew Thy way ; 
 
 I got me boughs off many a tree : 
 
 But Thou wast up by break of day, 
 
 And broughtst Thy sweets along with Thee " ? 
 
 The difference between the Anglican and Roman 
 spirit in these matters may be seen by putting a 
 verse from Herbert side by side with one from Crashaw, 
 choosing from the latter not poems like Tlie Flaming 
 Heart or The Assumption of the Virgin, with the 
 subjects of which we should be out of sympathy, but 
 a direct address to our Lord that might be made by 
 any Christian, such as the following " Song " : 
 
 " Lord, when the sense of Thy sweet grace 
 Sends up my soul to seek Thy face, 
 Thy blessed eyes breed such desire 
 I die in Love's delicious fire. 
 
 Love, I am Thy sacrifice ; 
 
 Be still triumphant, blessed eyes ! 
 Still shine on me, fair suns, that I 
 Still may behold, though still I die. 
 
 "Though still I die, I live again, 
 Still longing so to be still slain ; 
 So gainful is such loss of breath, 
 
 1 die even in desire of death. 
 Still live in me this longing strife 
 Of living death and dying life ; 
 For while Thou sweetly slayest me, 
 Dead to myself I live in Thee."
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT: HERBERT. 8 1 
 
 The nearest poem to that in point of subject 
 among Herbert's is the poem called TJie Glance, 
 which contains the same general imagery of eyes and 
 sun, but is written in a tone that would never allow 
 itself such an epithet as " delicious." 
 
 " When first Thy sweet and gracious eye 
 Vouchsafed, even in the midst of youth and night, 
 To look upon me, who before did lie 
 
 Weltering in sin, 
 I felt a sugar'd, strange delight, 
 Passing all cordials made by any art, 
 Bedew, embalm, and overrun my heart, 
 And take it in. 
 
 " Since that time many a bitter storm 
 My soul hath felt ; ev'n able to destroy, 
 Had the malicious and ill-meaning harm 
 
 His swing and sway. 
 But still, Thy sweet, original joy, 
 Sprung from Thine eye, did work within my soul, 
 And surging griefs, when they grew bold, control ; 
 And get the day. 
 
 "If Thy first glance so powerful be, 
 A mirth but open'd and sealed up again ; 
 What wonders shall we feel when we shall see 
 
 Thy full-ey'd love ! 
 When Thou shall look us out of pain ; 
 And one aspect of Thine spend in delight 
 More than a thousand suns disburse in light 
 In heaven above." 
 
 No consideration of Herbert's Temple, however 
 slight, must omit mention of that long and elaborate 
 poem which he entitles The Church Porch, a series of 
 gnomic quatrains on the conduct to be expected of a 
 
 G
 
 82 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Christian gentleman. While so many of the Puritan 
 preachers and lecturers in Herbert's day were de- 
 lectating their flocks with curious points of doctrine, 
 " reasoning high," like Milton's philosophical devils 
 
 " Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate 
 Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute ; 
 And found no end in wandering mazes lost " ; 
 
 with the result, to quote Milton again, that "their 
 hungry sheep looked up and were not fed, but swollen 
 with wind, rotted inwardly," 1 Herbert tasks himself 
 to apply to the particular faults of his own class a 
 particular remedy. Sager and more appealing dis- 
 suasions from the sins of the flesh, sounder and more 
 generous counsels on the conduct of life, were surely 
 never penned. What could be better than this ? 
 
 " Art thou a magistrate ? then be severe ; 
 If studious, copy fair what time hath blurr'd, 
 Redeem Truth from his jaws ; if soldier, 
 Chase brave employments with a naked sword 
 Throughout the world. Fool not ; for all may have, 
 If they dare try, a glorious life or grave." 
 
 I could wish that TJie Church Porch were printed 
 separately and given to every boy in our public 
 schools ; it would advantage him more than hearing 
 sermons. At any rate, TJie Church Porch is among 
 
 1 The Italian ambassador of the day observed that "the common 
 people of England were wiser than the wisest of his nation, for here 
 the very women and shopkeepers were able to judge of predestination." 
 As a natural consequence we have many testimonies to the decay of 
 morals.
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : FERRAR. 83 
 
 the best witnesses to the reasonable and practical 
 spirit the tTnet'iceta and awfypoavvii characteristic of 
 our communion. 
 
 I will call but one more witness George Herbert's 
 " dear and deserving brother," Nicholas Ferrar, who, 
 the son of a merchant, and himself enjoying a wide 
 reputation for skill in the management of affairs, 
 took deacon's orders at the age of thirty-four, and 
 retired with his mother and a large family of kinsfolk 
 to the manor house of Little Gidding in Huntingdon- 
 shire, in order to live a life of prayer, contemplation, 
 and alms-deeds. He had been allowed his degree 
 at Cambridge before the statutory age in recognition 
 of his mature scholarship, and had given special 
 attention to Church history. Afterwards he travelled 
 through Germany, Italy, and Spain, studying every- 
 where the customs of the Churches, and the effect 
 of the customs upon life and manners ; and he came 
 back to England with clear convictions upon two 
 points first, that the soul of the Church was the 
 worship of God, and that worship in England had 
 been almost extinguished by controversy ; secondly, 
 that the Roman Mass did not, as its defenders 
 alleged, 1 tend to real worship, but, on the contrary, 
 was in its results even anti-Christian. His brother 
 
 1 Cardinal Newman, in Loss and Gain, revived this specious plea, 
 contending that Anglican worship was only invocation of God, whereas 
 Roman worship was an evocation ; but if God is a Spirit, why should a 
 substantial presence be more worshipped than a spiritual presence ?
 
 84 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 records a saying of his about the Roman Mass, that 
 if it were celebrated in his house he would pull down 
 the room in which it had been said and build it up 
 again. Nevertheless, Ferrar did not escape the charge 
 of Popery ; it was enough that he lived in a religious 
 community, " an Arminian nunnery," as it was called. 
 On the other hand, he was also taunted with Puri- 
 tanism from the temperate mode of life practised at 
 Gidding, so much at variance with the lavishness of 
 the time, which reduced many old families to poverty. 
 A very interesting letter has been preserved from a 
 Mr. Lenton of Gray's Inn, who, like many other 
 curious observers of the day, paid Gidding a visit, 
 in which he gives a full description of the chapel and 
 the service there. We learn that the holy table was 
 not placed altarwise ; l that the prayer-desk was made 
 of the same height as the pulpit, in order that prayer 
 might not be degraded below preaching in the estima- 
 tion of the worshippers, as it too commonly was in 
 those days ; Walton tells us that George Herbert 
 made the same arrangement in the church he restored 
 
 1 Mr. Shorthouse, who in his delightful romance of John Inglesant 
 follows Lenton's letter closely, does not notice this detail ; I should say 
 he is justified in ignoring it, because the position of the table would 
 have no controversial bearing. The point argued between the Roman 
 and Anglican Churches at the time was not as to the fact of the 
 Eucharistic Sacrifice, but as to its nature, whether commemorative or 
 repeated and substantial. The east window, with the picture of the 
 crucifixion, which is made to play a part in influencing Inglesant, is 
 modern. The only painted glass in the church in Ferrar's day was a 
 representation of the royal arms.
 
 THE ANGLICAN SPIRIT : FERRAR. 85 
 
 at Leighton ; and that the chapel was " fairly and 
 sweetly adorned with herbs and flowers, and with 
 tapers on every pillar." On the communion table 
 stood "some plate, as a chalice, and candlesticks 
 with wax candles." What most impressed the visitor 
 was Ferrar's reverence in the church. " At the enter- 
 ing thereof he made a low obeisance ; a few paces 
 further a lower ; coming to the half-pace (which was 
 at the east end, where the table stood) he bowed to 
 the ground, if not prostrated himself," giving after- 
 wards as a reason that " God was more immediately 
 present while we were worshipping Him in the 
 Temple." 
 
 Ferrar's view of the peculiar position and tenets 
 of the Church of England is indicated in the report 
 preserved by his brother of the farewell discourse 
 he addressed to the household at Gidding upon his 
 death-bed: "Sunday [Nov. 5, 1637] he received the 
 Communion which Mr. Groose administered, and 
 before it made a most solemn and comfortable con- 
 fession of his faith according to the Church of Eng- 
 land, acknowledging his salvation to depend only 
 upon the sweet and infinite mercies and sufferings 
 of his most dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
 excluding all other dependencies, saying, 'when all 
 men had done all they could, they must wholly 
 acknowledge and confess themselves most unworthy 
 servants.' So with great desire and devotion he 
 received the Blessed Sacrament with much joy ; and
 
 86 RELIGIO LAIC1. 
 
 during all his sickness his speech tended to nothing 
 but exhortations to love, fear, and serve God, as the 
 only comfort and happiness of this world and [?] to 
 the better. He often would exhort the family that 
 ' they should steadfastly and constantly adhere to 
 the doctrine of the Church of England, and to con- 
 tinue in the good old way, and in those they have 
 been taught out of the Word of God, and in what 
 he had accordingly informed them of, for it was the 
 true, right, good way to heaven ; that they should 
 find oppositions and means used by those that they 
 did not expect it from to withdraw them, to hinder, 
 to divert them. But,' said he, ' I forewarn you to be 
 constant, to be steadfast in the good old way. You 
 will find danger and trouble, but shrink not, rely upon 
 God, and serve Him in sincerity of devotion, both in 
 souls and bodies ; God will have both, He made both, 
 and both must worship Him in revei'ence and fear. 
 He is a great Lord God, as full of mercy, so of 
 majesty. I am now going before Him, to give an 
 account of what I have said to you and instructed 
 you in. I again say, what I have taught you is 
 according to His good will and heavenly Word, and 
 out of it. Be you steadfast, and of good cheer ; if 
 you continue to serve Him, He will be your shield 
 and defence to preserve you.' " * 
 
 May the words of the dying Ferrar find an echo in 
 the hearts of all English Churchmen to-day ! 
 
 1 Mayor's Ferrar, p. 97.
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF 
 DONNE
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 
 
 SINCE the death of Matthew Arnold there has been 
 no literary critic to whose appearances in print the 
 majority of educated people look forward with such 
 assurance of satisfaction as to those of Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen. His essays are always first-hand studies, 
 giving the result of reading and reflection, and an 
 insight which " looks quite through the deeds of 
 men," while they are written in a style as sinewy as 
 the thought, with no preciosity of phrase and no word 
 to spare. If they are sometimes disappointing, it is 
 because he sometimes elects to treat of people who 
 interest him only on some particular side, while the 
 rest of their character or achievement finds him cold 
 or hostile. Such a person evidently is Donne, the 
 famous Dean of St. Paul's, whom Mr. Stephen has 
 lately discussed in a very brilliant article in the 
 National Review? taking occasion by Mr. Gosse's 
 new Life and Letters. Donne was a puzzle, and 
 therefore attractive to the psychologist, but he was 
 also a poet and a preacher ; and those people who 
 value him in either of these aspects are not likely 
 
 1 December, 1899.
 
 90 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to rise from the perusal of Mr. Stephen's paper in a 
 very contented frame of mind. It is, however, only 
 incidentally about Donne that I wish to speak in 
 this humble remonstrance ; the brief I have taken 
 up is not on his behalf, but on behalf of his biographer 
 Izaak Walton. Still, as the facts of his life form 
 the material of Walton's biography, in vindicating 
 the one I shall be vindicating the other. 
 
 After a dubious compliment to Walton's life of 
 Donne as a prose idyl like The Vicar of Wakefield, 
 " a charming narrative in which we have as little to 
 do with the reality of Donne as with the reality of 
 Dr. Primrose," Mr. Stephen puts his case against 
 the book in a sentence : " There are two objections 
 to the life if taken as a record of facts. The first is 
 that the facts are all wrong, and the second that the 
 portraiture is palpably false." The judgment could 
 not be more severe, and if Mr. Stephen were treating 
 directly of Walton it would have great weight, for it 
 would then mean that he had investigated the ques- 
 tion of Walton's trustworthiness for himself. As it 
 is, I incline to think he has not done so, from the 
 palpably false portraiture of the sentence which 
 follows: "As we read we imagine Walton gazing 
 reverently from his seat at the dean in the pulpit, 
 dazzled by a vast learning and a majestic flow of 
 elaborate rhetoric, which seemed to the worthy 
 tradesman to come as from an ' angel in the clouds,' 
 and offering a posthumous homage as sincere and
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 91 
 
 touching as that which, no doubt, engaged the con- 
 descending kindness of the great man in life." That 
 sentence contains a radically false view of Walton's 
 character and capabilities, and the relations of the 
 two men to each other. To begin with, Mr. Stephen 
 has not, perhaps, been aware that the phrase "an 
 angel in the clouds," which he quotes from Walton, 1 
 is not Walton's own, but taken from one of Donne's 
 poems, and is employed by Walton to express, not 
 the preacher's relation to his flock, but the heavenly 
 authority of his message. If that is recognized, the 
 phrase, though it remains exaggerated, ceases to be 
 ridiculous. Then, as for the " worthy tradesman." 
 Undoubtedly Walton is often spoken of as " worthy " 
 by his friends, and undoubtedly he had been a 
 " tradesman," but his capability of appreciating Donne 
 is not adequately summed up in the compound 
 phrase ; any more than the secret of the charm of 
 the Compleat Angler is conveyed in Mr. Gosse's title 
 of the "immortal piscatory linendraper." 2 Walton's 
 marriage register declares him to have been an iron- 
 monger. He was a freeman of the Ironmongers' 
 Company, of which Donne's father had once been 
 warden ; and this fact may have implied a certain 
 freemasonry in their relations. It is more important 
 
 1 " Preaching the Word so, as showed his own heart was possessed 
 by those very thoughts and joys that he laboured to distil into others ; 
 a preacher in earnest : always preaching to himself, like an Angel/row 
 a cloud but in none." 
 
 2 Gosse's Life of Donne, ii. 253.
 
 92 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to insist that Walton was a man of education. His 
 handwriting is beautiful and scholarlike, and his 
 composition (like that of Shakespeare, who was also 
 of yeoman descent and country schooling) might put 
 to the blush a good deal for which a university has 
 been answerable. He was a poet, and a friend of 
 poets. A better proof that he was not a "worthy 
 tradesman " in Mr. Stephen's unworthy sense is 
 afforded by his friendship with country gentlemen of 
 the stamp of Charles Cotton, who are not the least 
 sensitive of men to distinctions of class, and who are 
 not professionally obliged to meekness like the clergy, 
 though even the Bishops of Winchester are not in the 
 habit of offering free quarters in Farnham Castle to 
 worthy tradesmen. A remark of Cotton's may be 
 quoted as sufficient once for all to free Walton's 
 character from any suspicion of servility : " My father 
 Walton will be seen twice in no man's company he 
 does not like, and likes none but such as he believes 
 to be very honest men, which is one of the best 
 arguments, or at least, of the best testimonies I have, 
 that I either am or that he thinks me one of those, 
 seeing I have not yet found him weary of me." 
 Donne became Vicar of St. Dunstan's, the parish in 
 which Walton lived, in 1624, and assuming, as we 
 may, 1 that they became acquainted at that date, 
 
 1 Mr. Gosse, for reasons which he does not give, " conjectures " that 
 Walton did not enjoy the Dean's intimacy till 1629 or 1630 (Pref. 
 p. xii.).
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 93 
 
 there were still seven years remaining before Donne's 
 death, in which Walton would have had opportunities 
 of studying his vicar from other points of view than 
 from below the pulpit ; and, indeed, their intimacy 
 is proved by his receiving one of Donne's memorial 
 seals, 1 and by his presence at Donne's bedside when 
 he breathed his last. I plead, therefore, that Walton 
 was a person capable of painting Donne's portrait, 
 and with ample opportunities of studying his subject. 
 In the next place I will endeavour to show that 
 the likeness is a good one ; in other words, that the 
 salient facts are all right, and the character accurately 
 drawn. For this purpose, it will be convenient to 
 desert Mr. Stephen for the moment, and turn to Mr. 
 Gosse on whom he has relied, so as to examine any 
 charges Donne's most recent biographer has to make 
 against his predecessor. " In the days of Walton," 
 says Mr. Gosse, " of course what we now call con- 
 scientious biography was unknown." Again he says, 
 Walton's life is "too rose-coloured and too inexact 
 for scientific uses." 2 And again, the inaccuracies 
 are "so many, that it is beyond the power of mere 
 annotation to remove them." I cannot think that by 
 " conscientious biography " Mr. Gosse means what 
 I should mean by that expression, and I do not know 
 what the " scientific uses " of a biography may be, 
 
 1 Other recipients were Sir Henry Wotton, the Bishops of Norwich, 
 Salisbury, and Chichester, and George Herbert. 
 z Pref. p. viii.
 
 94 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 so that I will not attempt any discussion on this part 
 of his indictment ; but in regard to his other charges 
 a direct issue can be joined. I will, therefore, make 
 a summary of the inaccuracies Mr. Gosse has pointed 
 out in Walton, to see if they indeed transcend the 
 power of annotation to correct, and then I will ex- 
 amine the question of " rose-colour." 
 
 1. In his account of Donne's marriage and con- 
 sequent dismissal from Sir Thomas Egerton's secre- 
 taryship, Walton speaks of Egerton as Lord Elles- 
 mere, which he did not become till later. Also 
 he represents the father-in-law, Sir George More, as 
 asking his sister, who was Egerton's wife, to interfere 
 and get Donne discharged, whereas she died in the 
 year before Donne's marriage. This is undoubtedly 
 a blunder of Walton's. I suspect the appeal to Lady 
 Egerton to effect Donne's dismissal, of which Walton 
 must have been told, referred to the early days of 
 Donne's courtship, and strengthens Walton's asser- 
 tion, which Mr. Gosse unreasonably doubts, that Sir 
 George More " had some intimation " of what was 
 going forward. 
 
 2. Walton gives the cause of Sir Robert Drury's 
 excursion to the continent, on which Donne was his 
 companion, as "a sudden resolution to accompany 
 Lord Hay on an embassy to the French King Henry 
 IV.," whereas it appears from Chamberlain's corre- 
 spondence with Carleton that Sir Robert did not 
 travel till the year after Henry's assassination.
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 95 
 
 3. Walton believed that the University of Cam- 
 bridge gave Donne his doctor's degree with "glad- 
 ness ; " but we learn from a letter of Carleton's that 
 the Vice-Chancellor did not consent without much 
 pressure from the King. 
 
 4. Walton misdates the Autumnal, a poem written 
 by Donne upon George Herbert's mother. The point 
 of the poem is that the lady was in the autumn of 
 her beauty pukhrorum autumnus pulcher, as Bacon 
 says and of this Walton is not oblivious, for he says 
 "both he and she were then past the meridian of 
 man's life." But he connects the poem with their 
 first meeting at Oxford, which could not have been 
 later than 1600, when Magdalen Herbert would have 
 been only thirty-two. Mr. Gosse, it may be remarked, 
 does some violence to the poem itself by dating it 
 as late as 1625, when she would have been fifty- 
 seven ; for Donne himself gives fifty as the age he 
 had in his mind for the autumn of life. 
 
 5. This must be given in Mr. Gosse's own words : 
 " One of the most curious facts about the life of 
 Donne as written for us so charmingly by Izaak 
 Walton is the extraordinary tissue of errors, circum- 
 stantially recorded, in the pages where he describes 
 the poet's entrance into holy orders. . . . The page 
 in which Walton describes the circumstances of 
 Donne's ordination contains scarcely a statement 
 which is historically correct ; neither the date, nor 
 the conditions, nor the company are those which
 
 96 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 are given us by contemporary documents." But 
 immediately after these very sweeping charges Mr. 
 Gosse adds : * " And yet it is probable that in the 
 attitude of the King to Donne, and in the conversa- 
 tions recorded, we may safely follow Walton. These 
 would seem to Donne himself to be the really 
 essential matters" (ii. 57). Certainly, and to us 
 also. We may note, however, that for the King's 
 attitude to Donne we are not left to the testimony 
 of Walton, for Donne himself, in the eighth expos- 
 tulation of his Devotions, tells us in the plainest 
 language that the King " first of any man conceived 
 a hope that I might be of some use in [the] Church, 
 and descended to an intimation, to a persuasion, 
 almost to a solicitation that I would embrace that 
 calling." But to come to Mr. Gosse's apparently 
 specific, but very puzzling, charges of inaccuracy as 
 to the " date, conditions, and company " [?] of 
 Donne's ordination. Date in Walton there is none 
 at all. He says only that Donne deferred his 
 ordination for " almost three years " after the interview 
 
 1 One remarkable virtue of Mr. Gosse as a biographer is his candour. 
 I shall have in what follows to quote him against himself more than 
 once. Another case in which bis conscience has obliged him to with- 
 draw a serious charge immediately after making it occurs in i. 96 ; the 
 italics are mine : " The complexion which Donne, looking back from the 
 sanctity of old age to this period of his youth, desired to be thrown upon 
 the compromising episode of his clandestine courtship is no doubt re- 
 flected by Izaak Walton. The letters of Donne from prison in 1602 
 confirm in the main his later recollections." In the Preface (p. xii.), 
 where Mr. Gosse makes the same charge at greater length, he forgets to 
 withdraw it.
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 97 
 
 in which the King urged it ; and he puts this inter- 
 view at some unspecified time "after" 1610. As 
 Donne was ordained in January, 1615, this important 
 interview must therefore, according to Walton, have 
 taken place in 1612. It seems to be this date that 
 Mr. Gosse finds fault with. He has discovered a 
 letter of December 3, 1614, in which Donne, men- 
 tioning an interview he has just had with the King 
 at Newmarket, says : " I have received from the 
 King as good allowance and encouragement to 
 pursue my purpose as I could desire." Mr. Gosse 
 thinks this interview must have followed imme- 
 diately upon the important one referred to by 
 Donne and Walton, which he accordingly dates 
 "about the 2Oth Nov. 1614" i.e. two years later 
 than Walton puts it. 1 But the supposition is 
 altogether gratuitous ; and, what is more, it does 
 not fit the expressions of Mr. Gosse's new document, 
 in the interest of which it is made. If Donne, after 
 hearing the King's advice, had, as Mr. Gosse suggests, 
 asked for a few days to think the matter over, and 
 had then returned with his scruples for the King 
 to overrule, he would not have spoken of receiving 
 " as good allowance to pursue my purpose as I could 
 desire" While admitting, then, that Walton's 
 account of these events would be improved by a 
 
 1 Walton's chronology is clearer in his first edition. In the second 
 he somewhat confuses his narrative by introducing the story of Can's 
 summoning Donne to Theobalds into a parenthesis. 
 
 H
 
 98 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 few dates, I cannot see that Mr. Gosse has pointed 
 out any error in it. His own account is an imagina- 
 tive piece of work, which is supported by no evidence, 
 and breaks down where it can be tested. 
 
 6. Another accusation Mr. Gosse brings against 
 Walton is that he overcharges the picture of the 
 scene at the funeral sermon which Donne preached 
 over his wife. This is what Walton says : "His 
 first motion from his house was to preach where 
 his beloved wife lay buried in St. Clement's Church, 
 near Temple Bar, London and his text was a part 
 of the prophet Jeremy's Lamentation : ' Lo, I am 
 the man that have seen affliction' And, indeed, his 
 very words and looks testified him to be truly such 
 a man ; and they, with the addition of his sighs and 
 tears, expressed in his sermon, did so work upon 
 the affections of his hearers as melted and moulded 
 them into a companionable sadness." On which Mr. 
 Gosse comments as follows: " The printed copy which 
 has come down to us says that it was delivered 
 at St. Dunstan's. . . . An examination of the 
 sermon itself reveals no such emotional or hysterical 
 appeals to sympathy as the sentimental genius of 
 Walton conceived." Mr. Gosse's examination of 
 the sermon preached at St. Dunstan's ought to have 
 revealed the fact that it is not a funeral sermon at 
 all, and so cannot have been the one that Donne 
 preached over his wife, which was probably not 
 written down. That Donne was likely to apply the
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 99 
 
 passage in Lamentations to himself we may see from 
 his poetical version of it. And it is uncritical to 
 charge Donne's tears upon Walton's sentimentality, 
 when Walton tells us in his Life of Herbert that he 
 saw Donne "weep and preach [Lady Danvers's] 
 funeral sermon " in 1627. If Donne wept at his 
 friend's sermon of commemoration, he may be 
 credited with weeping at his wife's. 
 
 7. Walton thought Donne succeeded Dr. Gataker 
 as Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, but Dr. Holloway 
 came in between. 
 
 8. Mr. Gosse dismisses as incredible Walton's 
 story, that Donne was offered fourteen benefices 
 "in the first year of his entering into sacred orders;" 
 but we know that when Nicholas Ferrar was made 
 deacon he was offered benefices on all hands, and 
 Donne had many friends. 1 
 
 Such, then, being Walton's alleged errors, some of 
 which are proved, it will be seen that these are of 
 the sort which were inevitable when there were no 
 dictionaries for verifying dates within reach of the 
 hand ; and there is nothing in them " beyond the 
 power of mere annotation to remove." They do not 
 affect the portrait. The further question remains, 
 
 1 There is good reason for always, in such cases, giving Walton the 
 benefit of any doubt. It used to be said, for example (as by Dr. 
 Gardiner, vii. 268), that Walton was misinformed in his assertion that 
 George Herbert took deacon's orders some years before he became Rector 
 of Bemerton. But in 1893 documents were discovered which showed 
 that there was an interval of four years between the diaconate (1626) 
 and the priesthood (1630).
 
 IOO RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 whether Walton has not robbed that of its truthful- 
 ness by a lavish use of madder, or by leaving out 
 " the warts." Mr. Gosse thinks he has ; and his 
 charges in this respect must now be considered. 
 
 I. "Walton in his exquisite portrait of his friend 
 has nothing at all to say of the stormy and profane 
 youth which led up to that holy maturity of faith 
 and unction. He chose to ignore or to forget any- 
 thing which might seem to dim the sacred lustre of 
 the exemplary Dean of St. Paul's." This is a cate- 
 gorical statement; but, having made it, Mr. Gosse's 
 literary conscience turns restlessly in its dreams, and 
 he adds : " Yet even Walton admitted that Donne 
 ' was by nature highly passionate/ and doubtless he 
 was well aware that below the sanctity of his age 
 lay a youth scored with frailty and the injuries of 
 instinct " (i. 63). Doubtless he was well aware ! It 
 is not till sixteen pages further on that Mr. Gosse's 
 conscience quite wakes up, and he quotes from Walton 
 what Walton himself says about Donne's youth : 
 " It is a truth that in his penitential years viewing 
 some of those pieces that had been loosely (God knows 
 too loosely} scattered in his youth, he wished they had 
 been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes had 
 witnessed their funerals." To call a man's age 
 " penitential," if words have any meaning, is not " to 
 ignore" his youth, but to sharply characterize it. 
 But this is not all that Walton has to say about it. 
 He characterizes it in still plainer terms to all persons
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 101 
 
 of education in the following sentence : " Now the 
 English Church had gained a second St. Austin ; for 
 I think none was so like him before his conversion, none 
 so like St. Ambrose after it ; and if his youth had the 
 infirmities of tlie one, his age had the excellencies of 
 the other." He also contrasts Donne's position as 
 Preacher at Lincoln's Inn with his wild conduct there 
 as a student : " In this time of sadness he was im- 
 portuned by the grave Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, who 
 were once the companions and friends of his youth, 
 to accept of their Lecture of which he accepted, 
 being most glad to renew his intermitted friendship 
 with those whom he so much loved, and where he had 
 been a Saul, though not to persecute Christianity or 
 to deride it, yet in his irregular yoiith to neglect the 
 visible practice of it, there to become a Paul, and 
 preach salvation to his beloved brethren." And even 
 that is not all, for Walton records the reason that 
 Donne himself gave to Morton, afterwards Bishop of 
 Durham, for declining to take orders in 1607 : " I dare 
 make so dear a friend as you are my confessor. Some 
 irregularities of my life have been so visible to some 
 men, that though I have, I thank God, made my 
 peace with Him by penitential resolutions against 
 them, and by the assistance of His grace banished 
 them my affections, yet this which God knows to be 
 so, is not so visible to man, as to free me from their 
 censures, and it may be that sacred calling from a 
 dishonour."
 
 102 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 It seems to me that a biographer could not be 
 expected to go further than this in laying in the 
 shadows. But how was he to do so even if he 
 wished ? Mr. Gosse has elected to go further by 
 treating the " loose " poems of Donne's youth as bio- 
 graphical material, and has fared worse by discovering 
 a mare's nest. 1 
 
 2. A second wart that Mr. Gosse has represented 
 in realistic colours is the story of Donne's relations 
 with the King's favourite, Carr, Earl of Somerset. 
 Probably all that Walton knew of these relations was 
 the story already referred to, which he added in his 
 second edition, of Carr's summoning Donne to Court 
 and promising him the vacant place of Clerk to the 
 Council. Mr. Gosse, following Dr. Jessopp, 2 has 
 printed several letters from Donne to Somerset, which 
 leave no doubt that Donne sought his patronage and 
 accepted his pay ; and that Carr for a time deterred 
 
 1 It is impossible in a short compass to examine the love story that 
 Mr. Gosse has concocted out of Donne's elegies and lyrics. It may be 
 sufficient to point out that the dramatis persona which he borrows from 
 the first elegy the lover, the married woman, and the jealous husband 
 do not recur in the others. In only two elegies out of twenty is there 
 mention of a husband, while in the fourth there figures an " hydroptic 
 father," who, as third actor in such a domestic drama, is plainly incon- 
 sistent with the "jealous husband," since a woman cannot be both 
 married and unmarried. The elegies, in fact, are entirely independent 
 of each other ; one is the famous Autumnal addressed to George 
 Herbert's mother. It may also be pointed out that Mr. Gosse depends 
 for the climax of his story upon a mistaken paraphrase of a passage in 
 the thirteenth elegy. 
 
 2 Life of Donne {Leaders of Religion series), an excellent sketch. See 
 PP. 74> 8 1.
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 103 
 
 him from taking orders by the promise of some 
 diplomatic appointment. Now these are undoubtedly 
 new facts. But how do they affect Walton's portrait ? 
 Already in Walton, Carr figures as a patron, and' as 
 patron seeking to dispense lay preferment, while the 
 King insists that any preferment Donne receives shall 
 be clerical. Mr. Gosse's accusation of having devilled 
 for Somerset in the miserable business of the Essex 
 divorce has been already shown by a writer in the 
 A thentzum * to rest upon a confusion with Sir Daniel 
 Donne, the Dean of Arches. 
 
 3. A third accusation that Mr. Gosse makes against 
 Donne, of which Walton certainly gives no hint, is 
 that he took orders from unworthy motives. Mr. 
 Gosse does not hold that all Donne's clerical life 
 was a sham ; he believes that his wife's death two 
 years after his ordination had a transfiguring effect 
 upon his character. In this matter I confess to pre- 
 ferring the psychology of Mr. Stephen. "In 1617," 
 
 1 Atfunaum, December 16, 1899. It is almost incredible that the 
 sole basis for this very serious charge should be the following reference 
 in Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Report, pt. iii. p. 22b : " Earl of Ashburn- 
 ham's MSS. No. 95. Miscellaneous legal collections. A quarto of 
 300 written pages of the reign of Charles II., containing amongst other 
 matters Dr. Donnas compendium of the whole course of proceeding in 
 the nullity of the marriage of the Earl of Essex and the Lady Frances 
 Howard, 1613." Happily, the compendium exists among the Harleian 
 MSS. (39/. 416). Mr. Gosse, though he gives the reference (ii. 28), 
 does not seem to have looked at the MS., which is headed " A discourse 
 written by Sr. Daniell Dunn, doctor of the civill lawe." But the mis- 
 take was originally made by Dr. Jessopp (Diet, of Nat. Biog., xv. 228), 
 from whom Mr. Gosse has borrowed it.
 
 104 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 he says, " the patient suffering wife was taken from 
 him ; and Donne was a man to feel the whole force 
 of the blow. Preferments and success and life itself, 
 he knew too well, would be henceforth sad and 
 colourless." That seems to me to express exactly 
 the effect a loss of the kind would have upon a 
 middle-aged man of the character Mr. Gosse describes. 
 It would take the taste out of success, but it would 
 not make him a saint ; and Mr. Stephen consistently 
 holds that Donne never was a saint, or anything near 
 it. Mr. Gosse's evidence for his view, as he resumes 
 it in the A then&um (December 9, 1 899), is as follows : 
 "In every word that I find written by or about 1 
 Donne from January 1615 to the winter of 1617, 
 I discover a decency, but no ardour ; a conventional 
 piety, but no holy zeal ; no experience of spiritual 
 joy ; no humility before God. After the death of his 
 wife I find all these gifts in their full fruition. I am 
 therefore forced to conclude that in the winter of 
 1617 Donne passed through a crisis of what is called 
 ' conversion ; ' that he became sanctified and illumi- 
 nated in a sense in which he had not been sanctified 
 before." Well, that seems a plain enough statement ; 
 the only difficulty in examining it lies in the paucity 
 of literary matter that can safely be attributed to that 
 
 1 I take " about '' to be a rhetorical flourish. At any rate, the sole 
 contemporary reference to Donne for that period quoted by Mr. Gosse 
 is a rude sneer in a letter of John Chamberlain, the Horace Walpole of 
 those days, which Mr. Gosse himself deprecates (ii. 84).
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 105 
 
 interval. I have shown elsewhere l that the letters to 
 Donne's private friends assigned by Mr. Gosse to 
 those years must be earlier. There remains, how- 
 ever, a letter to his mother " comforting her after the 
 death of her daughter " (Gosse, ii. 88). That letter is 
 altogether too sacred to bandy about in controversy, 
 but a critic who should label it " conventional " and 
 " decent " would put himself out of court. I can only 
 think that it had slipped Mr. Gosse's memory as he 
 wrote. Of sermons before Mrs. Donne's death there 
 remain very few one preached in 1615, one in 1616, 
 and two or perhaps three in the early part of 1617. 
 Now, sermon-writing is an art, which, like any other, 
 requires time and practice for its acquisition ; and 
 when a man takes orders late in life, however skilful 
 he may have been in other ways, he finds he has to 
 serve an apprenticeship to his new craft. One notices 
 this in schoolmasters who take orders. As was to be 
 anticipated, then, Donne's earliest sermons are some- 
 what stiff and over-methodical too full of divisions, 
 of authorities, of illustrations from Donne's legal 
 learning. Still they are not wanting in passages of 
 as earnest a piety as we find later. I had marked 
 certain places to extract when I came upon a passage 
 in Mr. Gosse's book (ii. 115) which acquitted me of 
 the labour, for with his usual candour he characterizes 
 one of them that preached at St. Paul's Cross, 
 March 24, 1617 as "a singularly dignified and 
 
 1 Athenaum, December 2, 1899.
 
 106 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 impassioned appeal for purity and cleanness of 
 heart." Now, if an impassioned appeal for purity is 
 to be reckoned " conventional piety," the more of such 
 conventions we have the better. Before passing from 
 this subject of Donne's alleged conversion in the 
 winter of 1617, I may point out that the Holy 
 Sonnets, which Mr. Gosse assigns to that date, lend 
 no support to his theory. Mr. Gosse says they 
 " attribute his condition of mind, softened and crushed 
 so as to receive the impress of God's signet, to the 
 agony caused by his bereavement." 1 But here, as 
 earlier in his memoir, 2 Mr. Gosse has allowed his 
 theories to blind him to the plain meaning of words, 
 and his paraphrases cannot be accepted. The 
 following is the sonnet Mr. Gosse has in mind : 
 
 " O ! might those sighs and tears return again 
 Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent, 
 That I might in this holy discontent 
 Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain. 
 In my idolatry what showers of rain 
 Mine eyes did waste ? what grief my heart did rent ? 
 That sufferance was my sin, now I repent 
 Because I did suffer, I must suffer, pain. 
 Th' hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief, 
 The itchy letcher, and self-tickling proud, 
 Have the remembrance of past joys for relief 
 Of coming ills. To poor me is allowed 
 No ease ; for long yet vehement grief hath been 
 Th' effect and cause, the punishment and sin." 
 
 The general sense is that in old days he wept long 
 and vehemently in his passions of unholy love, but 
 
 1 Gosse, ii. 107. * Ibid. i. 70.
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 107 
 
 such weeping was sin, and though it was also suffer- 
 ing, it must be punished by more suffering, namely, 
 long and vehement sorrow for his sin. And he ex- 
 presses the wish that all the tears he once spent so 
 idly might be returned to him, to be spent now with 
 profit. Mr. Gosse, however, paraphrases as follows : 
 " He fears lest this natural affection [for his wife] may 
 have taken an excessive fleshly form, may have been 
 'idolatry.' Yet this temporal sorrow has wrought 
 in him a 'holy discontent/ which is obviously 
 salutary." I do not think there is any reference here 
 to Donne's wife ; the phrase " in my idolatry " must 
 be construed as the same phrase in the thirteenth 
 sonnet 
 
 "as in my idolatry, 
 I said to all my profane mistresses," etc. 
 
 There is one sonnet, it should be mentioned, first 
 printed by Mr. Gosse, which does make clear mention 
 of Donne's wife, but it attributes Donne's conversion 
 to her influence in life, not to grief at her death 
 
 " Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt 
 To Nature, and to her's and my good is dead, 
 And her soul early into heaven vanished, 
 Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set. 
 Here the admiring her my mind did whet 
 To seek Thee, God ; so streams do show their head ; 
 But tho' I have found Thee, and Thou my thirst hast fed, 
 A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet." 
 
 I must say, then, that I do not think Mr. Gosse 
 has made out his case for any such fundamental
 
 108 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 change as he describes in Donne, subsequent to and 
 in consequence of his wife's death. Walton's picture 
 of the effect of that blow, the greatest that can befall 
 any man, is far more convincing. And if this theory 
 of Mr. Gosse's, like his other novelties, falls to the 
 ground, it follows that while his volumes must always 
 be valuable for their work upon the letters, and the 
 critical essays with which they conclude, we must still 
 betake ourselves for a portrait of the " real Donne " 
 to the unconscientious and unscientific Walton. 
 
 It remains to inquire whether Mr. Stephen, in 
 places where he is not merely following Mr. Gosse, 
 but giving his own independent judgment, supplies 
 any adequate reasons for doubting Walton's skill as 
 a draughtsman. Mr. Stephen makes two or three 
 criticisms about which a word must be said. 
 
 i. The first concerns Walton's comment upon 
 Donne's marriage. I quote from Mr. Stephen. 
 " ' His marriage,' says the worthy Walton, ' was the 
 remarkable error of his life.' In spite of his ability 
 in maintaining paradoxes, he was 'very far from 
 justifying it,' and, indeed, 'would occasionally con- 
 demn himself for it.' To us who are at a different 
 point of view, it is the one passage in Donne's life 
 which gives us an unequivocal reason for loving him." 
 Having administered this snub to poor Walton, Mr. 
 Stephen goes on himself to qualify Donne's marriage 
 as a "clandestine match with a girl of sixteen who 
 lived in his patron's house." Now, it is perfectly
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 109 
 
 evident in the context that the " worthy Walton " 
 means exactly what Mr. Stephen means, that it was 
 an indefensible error to make a clandestine match 
 with your patron's ward, an error that in the event 
 drew after it a lifelong misery. Walton recognizes, 
 as heartily as Mr. Stephen, that Donne's love was no 
 error. He says of him in one place, " He / dare not 
 say unhappily fell into such a liking, as with her 
 approbation increased into a love ; " and in another 
 place, " God blessed them with so mutual and cordial 
 affections as in the midst of their sufferings made 
 their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the 
 banquets of dull and loiv-spirited people." Thus the 
 "worthy Walton." Could even Mr. Stephen have 
 put the point better ? 
 
 2. A second criticism concerns Walton's report of 
 the reasons which Morton alleged were given him by 
 Donne for declining his advice to take orders in 1607 \ 
 they have been in part quoted above (p. 101). Mr. 
 Gosse will not accept them because they interfere 
 with his theory that Donne had no religion till ten 
 years later ; Mr. Stephen will not accept them, partly 
 because he thinks Morton's account too circumstantial 
 to be true * " The more ' circumstantial ' an old 
 
 1 Walton tells us that Morton was ninety-four in 1658, when he was 
 preparing his second edition of Donne's Life ; he does not say he was 
 ninety-four when he gave him this report. The probability is rather 
 that corrections and additional facts would be communicated to Walton 
 immediately after the appearance of his first edition in 1640, when 
 Morton would have been only seventy-six ; and at seventy-six bishops 
 are credible witnesses.
 
 110 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 gentleman of ninety-four is about events half a 
 century old, the less I believe in his exactness "- 
 partly because he considers Donne's reason was 
 merely the fear of adverse comment " His obvious 
 thirst for sympathy and respect would naturally make 
 him shrink from a step certain to be misinterpreted ; 
 if, indeed, we should not rather say, to be too truly 
 interpreted." A sufficient answer to which specula- 
 tion seems to be, first, that though old men forget, their 
 memory is always more accurate about events half 
 a century old than about those nearer their own age ; 
 and the kind of thing an old man would not forget 
 would be the reason his brilliant young friend had 
 given him for not taking his advice ; and secondly, 
 that though Donne no doubt dreaded adverse com- 
 ment, for according to the account in question he 
 said so (and we know that when he did take orders, 
 it came as he foresaw), there is nothing, except the 
 resolute refusal to allow Donne any religion, to show 
 that the other reasons he gave had not equal weight 
 with him. I confess I cannot help wondering at a 
 critic of Mr. Stephen's exactness following Mr. Gosse 
 so trustfully as to say, apparently on no authority 
 but his, that at this time Donne "showed but little 
 religious feeling." For it happens, curiously enough, 
 to be a time at which we have unusual and quite 
 remarkable evidence of his religious feeling. First 
 of all, there are a series of private letters to his most 
 intimate friend, Sir Henry Goodyer, from whom
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. in 
 
 nothing was to be gained by any pose, which show, 
 if words mean anything, a very real earnestness. 
 Here is a passage from one written in 1607 : "You 
 know I never fettered nor imprisoned the word re- 
 ligion, not straitening it friarly ad religiones factitias 
 as the Romans call well their orders of religion, not 
 immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittenburg, or a Geneva ; 
 they are all virtual beams of one sun, and whereso- 
 ever they find clay hearts, they harden them and 
 moulder them into dust ; and they entender and 
 mollify waxen. . . . Religion is Christianity, which 
 being too spiritual to be seen by us, doth therefore 
 take an apparent body of good life and works ; so 
 salvation requires an honest Christian. These are 
 the two elements ; and he which is elemented from 
 these hath the complexion of a good man and a fit 
 friend." 
 
 Here is a passage upon controversy : " To you 
 that are not easily scandalized, and in whom, I hope, 
 neither my religion nor morality can suffer, I dare 
 write my opinion of that book [a book of controversy 
 on the Anglican side] in whose bowels you left me. 
 It hath refreshed and given new justice to my ordi- 
 nary complaint, that the divines of these times are 
 become mere advocates, as though religion were a 
 temporal inheritance ; they plead for it with all 
 sophistications and illusions and forgeries, and herein 
 are they likest advocates, that though they be feed 
 by the way with dignities and other recompenses,
 
 112 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 yet that for which they plead is none of theirs. They 
 write for religion without it." 
 
 Here is a passage about a gentleman's sudden 
 death : " A chaplain came up to him, to whom he 
 delivered an account of his understanding, and I 
 hope of his belief, and soon after died. Perchance 
 his life needed a longer sickness, but a man may go 
 faster and safer when he enjoys that daylight of a 
 clear and sound understanding than in the night or 
 twilight of an ague or other disease. And the grace 
 of Almighty God doth everything suddenly and 
 hastily except depart from us ; it enlightens us, 
 warms us, feasts us, ravishes us at once. Such a 
 medicine, I fear, his inconsideration needed, and I 
 hope as confidently that he had it." 
 
 And here is a salutation at the close of a letter 
 from his sick bed : " Sir, you would pity me if you 
 saw me write, and therefore will pardon me if I write 
 no more; my pain hath drawn my head so much 
 awry, and holds it so that mine eye cannot follow 
 mine hand. I receive you therefore into my prayers 
 with mine own weary soul, and commend myself to 
 yours." 
 
 These passages are all from letters to Sir Henry 
 Goodyer in the years 1607-8. Milton tells us that 
 only one eye can penetrate hypocrisy, and no one, 
 therefore, can assert that these passages may not ba 
 the well-turned periods of a hypocrite ; but hypocrisy 
 has some end to serve, and until I can be shown what
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 113 
 
 end it could serve in Donne's case, I shall believe 
 that he was writing to his dearest friend what was 
 really in his heart. In addition to these letters to 
 Sir Henry Goodyer, we have one of July n, 1607, to 
 George Herbert's mother enclosing certain "holy 
 hymns and sonnets." Walton tells us that the 
 hymns even in his day were lost, but says nothing 
 as to the sonnets. They may have been some of 
 those which we still possess, for no ingenuity can 
 fit these into a series. As Mr. Gosse, however, dates 
 them all after 1617, 1 will not contest the point, which 
 cannot be determined, but will instance instead some 
 verses which he himself allows to be of this time, and 
 censures as "frigid," as "ingenious exercises in metrical 
 theology," " clever," but " without unction." As one 
 of them, the Litany, was composed on what Donne 
 took to be his death-bed, we may hesitate to accept 
 Mr. Gosse's description. 1 But as in any case it 
 would be impolite, as well as futile, merely to put 
 my opinion against his, I will call in Dr. George 
 MacDonald, who in questions of religious poetry is 
 the best critic we have. It happens that the very 
 poem, that on The Resurrection, which Mr. Gosse 
 
 1 It may be interesting to see how the Litany impressed a con- 
 temporary. Izaak Walton writes of it 
 
 " Did he fit for such penitents as she 
 And he to use leave us a Litany 
 Which all devout men love, and doubtless shall, 
 As times grow better, grow more classical ? "
 
 114 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 picks out for censure, Dr. MacDonald chooses as a 
 specimen "of Donne's best, and at the same time 
 of his most characteristic mode of presenting fine 
 thoughts grotesquely attired." l Especially he notices 
 the line, 
 
 " He was all gold when he lay down, but rose 
 All tincture," - 
 
 which so offends Mr. Gosse (i. 264), as "almost 
 grand ; " and we may add that if the use of so 
 chemical a figure is to convict Donne of a want of 
 genuine religious feeling, it must be allowed the same 
 efficacy against George Herbert who borrows it. 
 
 3. A further criticism of Mr. Stephen's relates to 
 the change which, according to Walton, came over 
 Donne at his ordination. Mr. Stephen seems to 
 understand Walton to say that the change was some- 
 thing miraculous. "Donne," says Mr. Stephen, "the 
 wit, the poet, and the courtier, was transformed at 
 a bound into the saint, and a burning and shining 
 light of the Church. Are we to reduce or qualify 
 this ardent panegyric ? It shows what Donne became 
 in the eyes of Walton. Was there a corresponding 
 change in the man himself?" It will be safer in 
 answering Mr. Stephen's question to have the whole 
 
 1 England's Antiphon, p. 124. 
 
 2 Tincture was a substance which could transmute baser metals into 
 gold ; so that the sense of the line is, in Dr. MacDonald's words, 
 " Entirely good when he died, he was something yet greater when he 
 rose, for he had gained the power of making others good."
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 115 
 
 " ardent panegyric " before us in Walton's own words. 
 He says : " And now all his studies, which had been 
 occasionally diffused, were all concentered in Divinity. 
 Now he liad a neiv calling, new thoughts, and a new 
 employment for his wit and eloquence. Now all his 
 earthly affections were changed into divine love ; and 
 all ttie faculties of his own soul were engaged in the 
 conversion of others ; in preaching the glad tidings 
 of remission to repentant sinners and peace to each 
 troubled soul. To these he applied himself with all 
 care and diligence ; and now such a change was 
 wrought in him, that he could say with David, O 
 how amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord God of 
 Hosts ! Now he declared openly that when he 
 required a temporal, God gave him a spiritual bless- 
 ing. And that he was now gladder to be a door- 
 keeper in the House of God than he could be to 
 enjoy the noblest of all temporal employments." 
 
 Of this " panegyric," which is really no panegyric 
 at all, Mr. Stephen quotes only the sentences I have 
 italicized. I do not think even by themselves they 
 could bear the interpretation he puts upon them. 1 
 Certainly in their context they cannot. There is no 
 suggestion that Donne was " transformed at a bound 
 nto the saint." The change described is a change 
 not of character but of interest and employment. 
 
 1 Perhaps Mr. Stephen understood divine love to mean " love of 
 God," but the context shows the sense to be "spiritual affection for 
 
 men."
 
 Il6 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Like George Herbert afterwards, Donne had thought 
 that his talents would find their best scope in some 
 secular office ; but also, like Herbert, when he made 
 up his mind to take orders, he threw himself into his 
 new calling heart and soul, and soon found that it 
 suited his powers better than he had feared. He did 
 not regret his decision, but was thankful for it, 
 though it was come to with some reluctance. That 
 is all that Walton says. Mr. Stephen's criticism 
 would really imply that there is no such thing as 
 a religious layman. 
 
 4. Perhaps the unkindest cut that Mr. Stephen 
 makes at Donne's character is to twit him with his 
 dependence upon patronage and his keen eye for the 
 main chance. Of course Mr. Stephen says nothing 
 brutal. He is a master of the art of damning with 
 the faintest possible dispraise ; and recommends to 
 mercy in the very act of putting on the black cap. 
 He knows all the facts, makes every allowance, 
 acknowledges that the seventeenth-century conditions 
 of life differed from our own, and that Donne's 
 "prospects depended entirely upon his power of 
 attracting patrons," and yet, for all he can do, his 
 virtue will ooze out of him in such sentences as " the 
 story is not altogether attractive," " a process which 
 involved some trial of self-respect," "the weakness 
 becomes something worse." Let us recall the facts. 
 Here was a man, by birth and breeding a gentleman, 
 thrown upon the world by an imprudent marriage ;
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 117 
 
 trained for the law but far more interested in theology, 
 and yet by his Romanist antecedents and also by a 
 wild youth held back from taking orders ; how was 
 he to live ? He was a poet, but poetry had no 
 market. There were then no reviews to edit or write 
 in. The only possible chance was to obtain some 
 private post from a private patron, or some public 
 post by conciliating the King's favourite courtier. 
 Pride should have withheld him ? What right has 
 a man to pride who has a wife and seven children ? 
 But he did dirty work for Somerset ! No, that is a 
 fable of Dr. Jessopp's and Mr. Gosse's, which it will 
 take long to kill. At least he wrote two panegyrics 
 in memory of a young girl whom he had never seen ? 
 That is true ; they are hyperbole run mad, so mad 
 that they cease to be panegyrics of any human being ; 
 but though Donne's eccentric taste in writing them 
 may be censured, no moral blame can be imputed. 
 They were his rent to the girl's father for house and 
 home ; and they contain some of the finest lines in 
 the English language. Surely the only allowable 
 attitude to insufferable dependence of this sort is pity. 
 
 " Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, 
 What hell it is in suing long to bide, 
 To lose good days that might be better spent, 
 To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; 
 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, 
 To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow ; 
 To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares ; 
 To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs ; 
 To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, 
 To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
 
 118 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Spenser, who wrote that in the comparatively 
 spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, was certainly more 
 fortunate than Donne in the type of courtier upon 
 whom he depended, but he was every bit as dependent 
 as Donne and liked dependence as little, and was as 
 much or as little to blame for its necessity. In those 
 days nothing but a private fortune could keep a 
 man's back as erect as he would have wished it to be, 
 and as Mr. Stephen and every one else would wish 
 it to have been. 
 
 After Donne took orders, Mr. Stephen's high moral 
 superiority over the poor courtier's effort to keep 
 his family from starvation becomes reinforced by the 
 perennial layman's sneer at the mercenariness of 
 the clergy. " Donne," he says, " did not throw over 
 the world to retire to a cloister. He accepted pre- 
 ferments, and though we must of course admit the 
 normal reference to the 'standard of the age,' he 
 does not appear to have been more or less averse 
 than other clergymen of the day to a comfortable 
 addition to his income involving no increase of duty. 
 According to one of Walton's anecdotes, he rejected 
 a profitable bargain, because it involved something 
 like sacrilege. Biit Donne oddly adds, tJtat he rejects 
 it because he is dangerously ill, and will thankfully 
 accept it if Jie recovers? Oddly, indeed ! If Mr. 
 Stephen's contempt for Walton and readiness to 
 believe any meanness of Donne had permitted him 
 to read a second time the anecdote to which he
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 119 
 
 refers, he must have seen that he had completely 
 failed to understand it ; and if he had understood 
 it he would have seen that he might have cancelled 
 his admission of " the normal reference to the standard 
 of the age ; " since the only point of the anecdote 
 is that Donne was more averse than other clergymen 
 of his day to drawing professional payment for 
 services which he did not render. The story is this. 
 A lease of some property belonging to the Canons 
 of St. Paul's had fallen in, and the amount of the 
 fine to be paid for its renewal was under discussion, 
 when Donne fell ill. As the tenant was well-to-do, 
 the Chapter (including Donne) had rejected his first 
 offer as inadequate ; but when the seriousness of 
 Donne's illness was known, the senior canon came 
 to him (for Donne, it must be remembered, was a 
 residentiary canon as well as dean, and so pecu- 
 niarily interested in the question), suggesting that 
 the proposed fine should be accepted if the tenant 
 could not at once be induced to increase it, rather 
 than Donne's chance of sharing in it should be im- 
 perilled by prolonging the negotiation. We have to 
 bear in mind that the value of property then lay 
 much more in these fines than in the rent, which was 
 usually low ; so that while it would have been un- 
 doubtedly generous of the remaining residentiaries 
 to abate some of their claim rather than Donne's 
 estate should suffer, it would not have been unreason- 
 able in Donne to have expected them to do so.
 
 120 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Donne, however, declined the offer, on the ground 
 that to accept it would be (for him) of the nature 
 of sacrilege ; not, of course, in the ordinary sense of 
 the word, in which it means the holding of Church 
 estate by laymen, but in a sense of Donne's own. 
 He had asked himself, so he told Dr. King, who 
 came with the proposal, what the primitive clergy 
 meant by their dread of committing sacrilege, and 
 the answer he had given himself was, " It is sacrilege 
 to accept Church emolument without performing 
 service for it." Of course Donne would mean by 
 deputy, if not in person. In this case, if he should 
 not recover, he would be receiving the money not for 
 himself, but for his heirs, who could do no service 
 in the cathedral. But all this is quite obvious on the 
 surface of the anecdote, and how both Mr. Gosse and 
 Mr. Stephen should have entirely missed it is very 
 puzzling. The passage from Walton is too long to 
 quote, but a paragraph from it is given below, 1 for 
 
 1 " Our times abound with mat that are busy and litigious about trifles 
 and Church ceremonies, and yet so far from scrupling sacrilege, that they 
 make not so ?nuch as a queer e what it is : but 1 thank God I have ; and I 
 dare not now upon my sick-bed, when Almighty God hath made me use- 
 less to the service of the Church, make any advantages out of it. But if 
 He shall again restore me to such a degree of health as again to serve at 
 His altar I shall then gladly take the reward which the bountiful bene- 
 factors of this church have designed me ; for God knows my children and 
 relations will need it. In which number my mother, whose credulity and 
 charity has contracted a -very plentiful to a very narrow estate, must not 
 be for gotten. But Dr. King, if I recover not, that little worldly estate 
 that I shall leave behind me, that very little, when divided into eight 
 parts, must, if you deny me not so charitable a favour, fall into your
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 121 
 
 the sake of the proof it affords that Donne, notwith- 
 standing that he had, as Mr. Stephen says, " accepted 
 preferments," had not very effectually feathered his 
 nest I think the reader will agree that the very 
 ring of the words ought to have saved Donne from 
 the shameful imputation of being ready to commit 
 sacrilege as soon as he was well enough. I may add 
 that the anecdote must have come from Dr. King 
 himself, who, when Bishop of Chichester, signs him- 
 self in a letter to Walton, "Your ever faithful and 
 affectionate old friend." 
 
 There are not a few other points in Mr. Stephen's 
 picture of Donne to which exception might be taken. 
 For example, the exaggerated reverence of the Jaco- 
 bean clergy for the King is not a matter that can be 
 dismissed in a sentence with a light suggestion of 
 insincerity ; its explanation lies a good deal in the 
 substitution of the Royal for the Papal supremacy as 
 the keystone of the ecclesiastical building ; but in 
 those days kings were almost worshipped even by 
 laymen. Is it quite fair, too, because in a sermon on 
 the text " He that loveth pureness of heart, the king 
 shall be his friend," Donne presses purity on the 
 courtiers before him, not only on the highest grounds, 
 but as a recommendation for the service of the State, 
 
 hands, as my most faithful friend and executor, of -whose care and justice 
 I make no more doubt, than of God's blessing, on that which I have 
 conscientiously collected for them ; but it sfiall not be augmented on my 
 sick-bed ; and this I declare to be my unalterable resolution"
 
 122 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to turn round on him and say, " Nobody knew better 
 than Donne what was the moral purity of the favour- 
 ites who had been rewarded by James's friendship " ? 
 We are too apt to suppose that all the information 
 we have now gleaned from State papers and private 
 letters and memoirs was at the service of those who 
 lived in the thick of the events. It would be a hard 
 matter to prove Donne's acquaintance with the cha- 
 racter of Somerset before his fall. That in his youth 
 Donne wrote general satires against the Court proves 
 nothing. But allowing him to have been exception- 
 ally well informed, could he have found a better text 
 than this for preaching at King as well as courtiers 
 without risk of treason ? 
 
 This apology, however, is already too long, and I 
 must only slightly touch upon the final point in 
 which Mr. Stephen is inclined to doubt Walton's 
 testimony, especially as he does so with unusual diffi- 
 dence. Referring to Walton's description of Donne's 
 preaching, he says, "Such performances might be 
 amazing feats of intellectual juggling ; but could 
 they produce ' raptures ' and ' tears ' ? I can manage 
 to believe it, though I confess I have rather to take 
 it on trust." Mr. Stephen's analysis of the merits of 
 these sermons on the intellectual side, the contrast 
 he suggests with the poems, and with the sermons of 
 Andrewes and Taylor, his clear description of the 
 qualities of their style, their rhetorical devices, their 
 analogies, their subtleties and eccentricities, not least
 
 IZAAK WALTON'S LIFE OF DONNE. 123 
 
 their melancholy, go to form by far the best criticism 
 they have yet received. And Mr. Stephen does not 
 altogether shut his eyes to their deeper merits, though 
 he dwells with more zest upon their defects. He 
 allows Donne "depth of feeling;" he admits that 
 occasional passages "glow with genuine fire." But 
 though he refers to the famous peroration of the 
 seventy-sixth sermon, he does not recognize that the 
 amazing force of that passage does not lie in its 
 rhetoric, or even in its emotion, but in the imagi- 
 native intensity with which it realizes the being of 
 God. This, in a word, is the secret of Donne's effect. 
 A preacher with a faith in God that is hardly re- 
 moved from sight cannot fail of conveying his belief 
 to his audience; even though the matter in hand be 
 dry and metaphysical, an emphasis, a parenthesis, 
 which in print attract no attention, may in speaking 
 have had the effect of a revelation ; for a fire that is 
 always smouldering will sooner or later break out. 
 That seems to be the secret of the " tears " and 
 "raptures" that were at the command of the crabbed 
 Donne, and were not at the command of the rich 
 eloquence and graceful fancy of Jeremy Taylor.
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO 
 
 I
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 
 
 WE have lately been informed in many quarters, so 
 that the remark is becoming a commonplace in the 
 daily and weekly newspapers, that the clergy of this 
 generation, in their pursuit of novelty, have broken 
 away from the severe and sensible religion of their 
 forefathers in the venerable Church of England. 
 Hence, it is said, matters are approaching a serious 
 crisis. The road taken by the great bulk of the 
 clergy is more and more diverging from the narrow 
 way in which the laity have always walked and 
 mean to walk, and soon the two parties will be out 
 of eyeshot and earshot. Against such a contention 
 it is of no avail to point to the fact that there is a 
 House of Laymen which sits periodically along with 
 Convocation, because it is a recognized fact that this 
 House is not sufficiently representative. Equally 
 idle is it to point out that the English Church Union, 
 the society supposed to be heading the migration 
 into the desert of newfangledness, is presided over 
 by a layman, and numbers among its members far
 
 128 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 more laity than clergy ; because it is replied that the 
 clerical layman is a genus by himself, and a worse 
 enemy to true religion than the most clerical of the 
 clergy. So that the indictment has to be amended 
 into a charge not against the clergy but the clericals. 
 Let me begin by saying that I frankly agree with 
 the plaintiff, whom for convenience I will call the 
 layman, that even in a democracy truth cannot be 
 ascertained by counting heads. I cheerfully admit 
 that because the numbers of a society are increasing 
 by leaps and bounds, as we are assured is happening 
 to the English Church Union, it is not thereby 
 proved to be in possession of the whole truth. But 
 if I do this, I must ask him to make me the same 
 admission. I must claim that the opinions of the 
 irreligious and merely careless, which are always 
 proffered against the Church on a favourable oppor- 
 tunity, shall not be allowed in evidence, and that the 
 contempt of the rabble shall not be held to prove 
 that the clergy are contemptible. There is a beati- 
 tude on those who are persecuted for righteousness' 
 sake which seems to imply that persecution is not 
 an improbable event ; and such persecution may be 
 carried on by the innuendoes of peers of the realm 
 as well as by the less polished ribaldry of the British 
 workman in a third class smoking-carriage. 
 
 The fundamental difference of view between the 
 two parties will perhaps be best appreciated with 
 reference to the subject of worship ; about which,
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. I2p 
 
 indeed, most of the public controversy arises. With 
 the one party worship is an end in itself, with the 
 other only a means to an end. The one looks 
 upon the worship of God as the highest duty of the 
 creature; the other regards "church-going" only in 
 its reflex influence upon the character of the '' church- 
 goer." Hence, while the one side is inclined to 
 multiply services, and to employ upon them the 
 highest faculties of human nature, in music and 
 painting and arts allied to these, the other is apt to 
 regulate its acts of devotion by the mental and moral 
 stimulus it feels necessary for the system at the 
 moment, and to prefer the directly receptive method 
 of preaching to the more roundabout method of 
 prayer. I do not think such a difference in men's 
 attitude towards worship is misstated. It is no doubt 
 true that there are High Churchmen still who, like 
 some of the early Tractarians, prefer that worship 
 shall be simple; and there are as certainly Broad 
 Churchmen who have a taste for the fine arts, and, 
 now that the battle has been won, make their build- 
 ings and services as splendid as they can. But the 
 cathedrals of which we are so justly proud, and the 
 painted windows that were once an additional glory 
 to them, and the music that was written to be sung 
 there, were all in their origin inspired by the theory 
 that worship was due from man to God, and should 
 be as magnificent as man could make it ; and the 
 revival of this magnificence followed very closely on 
 
 K
 
 130 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the revival of the idea of worship. But when the 
 case is stated so, I do not see how an unprejudiced 
 judge could avoid deciding that the clerical point of 
 view is the only defensible one as long as the Church 
 of England holds by its creeds. Granted that the 
 facts of the creed are as they are stated, and in this 
 controversy they are not supposed to be in dispute, 
 for our aggrieved layman is a member of the Church 
 of England, then there is ample warrant for this 
 clerical insistence upon worship for its own sake, as 
 " very meet, right, and our bounden duty." 
 
 But it is just this necessary content of his Church- 
 manship that the layman too often ignores. Since 
 he reached manhood he has never been asked to 
 subscribe to any creed, and he remembers very 
 vaguely what was promised for him in his baptism. 
 He reckons himself a Churchman chiefly because he 
 more or less frequently goes to church, and does not 
 go to conventicles. But probably, if pressed to define 
 his position more exactly, he would say he was a 
 Churchman without dogmas. Now, it is worth while 
 to look such a position as this fairly in the face, and 
 see its meaninglessness. There can be no religion 
 without dogmas. The existence of God is a dogma 
 quite as much as the Incarnation. Certain philoso- 
 phies have, it is true, laid down the necessity of a 
 spiritual principle to explain the universe we know ; 
 but the idea of God as a God of love and righteous- 
 ness, which is after all what the layman means by
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 131 
 
 God, comes to him not from philosophy but through 
 the Christian revelation. If he accepts this notion 
 of a Creator on the authority of Scripture, confirmed 
 by such evidence as he himself may have been im- 
 pressed by, in the course of history, or the beauty of 
 nature, or the happiness that right conduct brings, 
 he has given in his assent to the first article of the 
 Christian creed, and is to that extent a dogmatist ; 
 for what has convinced him falls very far short of 
 proof. He will then have to settle with his conscience 
 how far he can accept such an all-important state- 
 ment as this concerning the Divine nature, upon the 
 authority of Christ, and leave aside others as being 
 inconceivable. The layman sometimes occupies the 
 position of one who accepts all the teaching of Christ 
 that concerns our duty to each other, based as this is 
 upon His revelation of the character of God, while 
 neglecting all Christ's teaching about Himself; or 
 again, of one who accepts the doctrine of immortality 
 for the race without accepting the fact of the resur- 
 rection of Christ, which first brought it home to men's 
 hearts, and is indeed our sole evidence accredited by 
 witnesses for any resurrection at all. The crucial 
 point then to determine, the articulns stantis aut 
 cadentis ecclesice, for men now, as it was for the 
 apostles, and as it has been in all ages of the 
 Church, is the possibility of worshipping Christ. It 
 was St. Peter's declaration of our Lord's Messiahship 
 at Caesarea Philippi that was hailed by Him as the
 
 132 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 foundation-stone of the Church ; and all the endless 
 controversies since have in reality turned on the 
 same point. Humorists, for example, have been 
 pleasant over the fact that a vowel, as between the 
 Homoousiasts and Homoiousiasts, could rend the 
 Church into parties, but the vowel meant worship 
 or no worship; since to worship anything lower 
 than God is idolatry. Undogmatic Christianity, 
 therefore, is a meaningless phrase; and the test of 
 Christianity is worship ; so that the clergy are 
 amply justified in laying upon worship all the stress 
 they do, 
 
 But when that is allowed, it is far from settling 
 the whole question in favour of the clericals. We 
 read with horror of all the desecration that befell our 
 churches under the unscrupulous and sacrilegious 
 orders of King Edward the Sixth's lay counsellors ; 
 we shudder at the narrow escape of Westminster 
 Abbey ; but if we are candid we must admit that 
 if the worship that had gone on in these churches 
 had been all that it ought to have been, the spoilers 
 would have found no help and little mercy among 
 the worshippers. As we know, what was largely 
 lacking in the pre-Reformation worship was the 
 element of the intelligence. The creed was supposed 
 to be symbolized by the ritual; but the symbolism 
 was not explained ; preaching was perfunctory and 
 ignorant ; and the doctrines that were most zealously 
 taught were not articles of the Catholic faith at all,
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 133 
 
 but accretions which had accumulated in times of 
 ignorance, and which therefore the new scholarship 
 that came in with the study of Greek was bound to 
 expose. One great danger, then, that the layman 
 feels, even when he has accepted as paramount the 
 idea of worship, is the possibility, nay, the certainty, 
 that worship will degenerate and become supersti- 
 tious, unless it can take up into itself the intellect 
 as well as the emotions. And the layman roundly 
 asserts that among the clericals some are obscurantist, 
 and too few supply in their churches such preaching 
 as can uplift the mind of the educated Englishman 
 and help to clear away the difficulties that beset his 
 faith. Speaking broadly, and not forgetting con- 
 spicuous exceptions, I should be tempted to say he 
 is right. There has been too much tendency among 
 the rank and file of the High Church clergy to think 
 and speak of preaching as a " Protestant " and not a 
 " Catholic " ordinance. Such a view was very natural 
 as a reaction from the view current earlier in the 
 century, which elevated the sermon into the sole 
 means of obtaining Divine grace. The Puritan has 
 always had a very insufficient idea of the meaning 
 and duty of worship, and an exaggerated idea of the 
 advantage likely to accrue from hearing sermons. 
 But though one extreme may account for another, it 
 does not justify it. If some of my younger brethren 
 are tempted to think that preaching came in with 
 the Reformation, and may therefore be esteemed
 
 134 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 lightly, I would ask them to pay a visit to such 
 churches as Burford or Oundle, where the pulpits 
 date from the fifteenth century ; and if they still 
 hesitate to admit its true catholicity, I would advise 
 a course of St. Augustine's or St. Chrysostom's 
 homilies. But even supposing it were a Protestant 
 innovation, it is at present enjoined by rubric and 
 cannot be avoided ; and if that is so, and if men will 
 be drawn to hear if the preacher gives them of his 
 best, it is worse than idle to abuse the opportunity, 
 as is sometimes done. The cleric says, " Come to 
 church and worship " ; the layman replies, " Well, at 
 any rate I will come and hear what you have to say. 
 I quite recognize that six days' preoccupation with 
 finance may tend to materialize my view of things ; 
 besides, there are not a few moral questions that I 
 should like to hear straightened out. ' Be fructuous,' 
 then, ' and that in little space.' " If the layman thus 
 replied to St. Paul, could one imagine that great 
 ecclesiastic replying, " Oh, I am a priest, not a 
 preacher ; my business is to christen and confess 
 you, and so forth ; if you want preaching, there is 
 plenty, I believe, at the meeting-house opposite " ? 
 I should like to ask my brethren the plain question, 
 Can the laity be blamed for requiring that at least as 
 much pains should be spent upon preaching in the 
 English Church as is spent among the dissenters ? 
 Surely they are justified in their demand. Why^ 
 because we think preaching of less importance than
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 135 
 
 worship, should we preach as badly as we do ? And 
 it is really not of less importance. Worship, apart 
 from the instruction of the mind and conscience, must 
 be partial and tend to be perfunctory. It is charac- 
 teristic of George Herbert, whom we all unite to 
 honour as a typical English Churchman, that in the 
 church he restored at Leighton Ecclesia he ordered 
 the reading-pew and pulpit to be of an equal height, 
 " for he would often say, ' They should neither have 
 a precedency or priority of the other ; but that 
 Prayer and Preaching, being equally useful, might 
 agree like brethren, and have an equal honour and 
 estimation.'" 1 
 
 But our layman's case against the present conduct 
 of public worship is not limited to the sermon. He 
 will tell you that, accepting the principle of worship, 
 he nevertheless hates grovelling, which is un-English 
 and undignified, and that he thinks the Ritualistic 
 vestments ridiculous. Here there is, perhaps, some- 
 thing to be said for him. The cleric will say : " I 
 have come, as I sincerely believe, into the nearer 
 presence of my Maker and Redeemer ; no recog- 
 nized posture of humility could under those circum- 
 stances be degrading to me, even though I am, as 
 you say, an Englishman. I read that the saints in 
 Scripture fell on their face when they realized God's 
 presence ; why should you expect me to do less ? " 
 To which I can conceive the layman replying : 
 
 1 Walton's Life of Herbert.
 
 136 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 " Moses put off his shoes at the bush, and Orientals 
 still do so when they enter their churches ; we do 
 not. With us the accustomed attitude of humility 
 is kneeling, and this is the posture prescribed in the 
 Book of Common Prayer. I do not see why you 
 should go beyond it." In his reference to rubrical 
 prescription the layman certainly scores his point ; 
 in the conduct of public worship no private motions 
 are in place ; at the same time it is hard to understand 
 the layman's horror at more profound obeisances. 
 Again, the layman is plainly within his right in 
 objecting to the too mechanical ritual drill that vexes 
 the heart in some churches. It is hard to conceive of 
 the ceremoniarius as figuring among St. Paul's list 
 of spiritual officers. It is quite true that there is a 
 right and a wrong way of doing everything, and that 
 there is a prescription of antiquity as well as of 
 rubric; but what angers the layman (and in many 
 of us clergy also the layman is not completely oblite- 
 rated) is the too dapper performance of ceremonies, 
 without dignity and without reverence, as though the 
 ceremony were a feat of skill, and the officiating 
 clergy members of a revived college of Salii per- 
 forming round the Ara Maxuma. The objection to 
 vestments, though perhaps equally characteristic of 
 the modern Englishman, is not so successful in giving 
 reasons for itself. The layman sometimes speaks 
 about Ritualists as though they got themselves up at 
 the theatrical costumier's in whatever gaudy trappings
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 137 
 
 pleased their vagrant fancy. He might with equal 
 justice and equal success make fun of his Majesty's 
 judges. It seems to me conduct on no higher level 
 than that of street Arabs to take exception to the 
 historical dress of a profession, every part of which 
 has a history of centuries, on the ground that ab- 
 stractly it is ridiculous. Abstractly, what dress is 
 not ridiculous ? The question of clerical vestments 
 can only be fairly argued historically, in reference to 
 the rubric which prescribes such as were in use in 
 the second year of Edward VI. 
 
 Our layman, however, is careful to point out to us 
 that it is not only the " advanced " clergy who cause 
 him to stumble in his worship ; even their very 
 " moderate " brethren can give him scandal, and 
 perhaps by nothing so frequently as the professional 
 voice in which they think it right to read the prayers. 
 Nee vox hominem sonat would sum up the criticism 
 one most often hears. It is unmanly and affected. 
 I am told that one of the most successful features 
 in an entertainment at a fashionable watering-place 
 this summer was an imitation of a curate giving out 
 the Notices in church. One is grateful to the mimic 
 for avoiding profanity by confining his parody to the 
 Notices. But why should we, as a profession, indulge 
 in the luxury of a professional voice? There are 
 other clerical tricks that must be equally amazing 
 to the angels. I heard a young man, only last month, 
 read Evensong as though it were an exercise in the
 
 138 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 importance of the preposition of. Each of was em- 
 phasized, and in the " Prayer for all conditions of 
 men " he was in an ecstasy, they came so thick and 
 fast. It will be said these things are trifles ; but they 
 are not. Nothing that hinders worship is a trifle ; 
 and everything that makes the clergy ridiculous 
 hinders the cause of the religion of which they are 
 the professed advocates. 
 
 Clerical affectation, however, is regarded by the 
 layman as only one form of clerical arrogance ; and 
 so we come to the gravest charge of all against the 
 profession its growing sacerdotalism. One might 
 accumulate a good deal of evidence to justify the 
 layman's fears. I will relate here a single incident 
 to show the sort of needless and foolish offence that 
 is often given. I was in a church at Brighton with 
 a lay friend, an artist, who wished to inspect the 
 reredos, a painting by Burne-Jones. We made appli- 
 cation to the sister in charge, who explained that no 
 layman could be allowed in the chancel. We pleaded 
 the special circumstances, but she was inexorable ; 
 so I, who had no strong interest that way, was 
 allowed to pass within the screen and view so much 
 of the picture as was visible between the serried files 
 of wax tapers ; but my friend was forced to be 
 content with a view of the brass lectern, which the 
 good sister, to remove any feelings of jealousy, kind- 
 heartedly uncovered for him. Now, if this does not 
 mean that the clergy (including the men and boys of
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 139 
 
 the choir who may be understood to have received 
 the minor order of exorcists) are holier than the 
 laity, what does it mean ? A choir separate from 
 the nave in an abbey church for the special use 
 of the religious, who by their vows are separate from 
 the world, is intelligible ; but in a parish church the 
 separation cannot amount to more than a practical 
 convenience, and to insist upon it is merely silly. It 
 is far from uncommon, however. Only the other 
 day, in Boston Church, I found a cord fastened across 
 the entrance to the choir warning back the profa- 
 num vulgns, although the most interesting objects 
 in the church are the misereres of the choir-stalls. 
 Happily, the damsel in charge here had some com- 
 mon sense, and did not insist on dividing up our 
 party. I do not believe the clergy who shut up their 
 chancels in this manner do it after reflection; is it 
 too much to ask that they shall weigh carefully what 
 such a veil of partition really implies ? 
 
 For it is absurd attempts, like these, at misunder- 
 stood and purposeless medievalism which give the 
 impression, shared at this time by many of the laity, 
 of our growing professional arrogance. I believe the 
 idea is a mistake. I believe that no profession is 
 really less professional or more eager to be of use 
 in the community. The sacerdotalism which the 
 clergy would admit comes to no more than this : 
 that they are ordained to a special office in the 
 Christian Church, and that they believe they have
 
 140 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 received Divine grace to enable them rightly to 
 minister in it. As no layman ever wishes to deny 
 that the clergy were solemnly set apart, with the 
 prayers of the whole community, in order to perform 
 special functions, those who deny them any special 
 gift corresponding to their function ought, if they 
 are consistent, to deny that any Higher Power ever 
 intervenes in any act of religion. If the act of Ordi- 
 nation is simply the act of the presiding Minister, so 
 is the act of Marriage ; so is the act of Baptism. If 
 in the case of Ordination the prayer for special 
 blessing is not answered, neither is it answered in 
 the case of the other solemn dedications, nor again 
 is there any answer when the layman prays alone in 
 his chamber. In short, prayer must be one of two 
 things : either a means of receiving God's grace 
 when the prayer is according to His will ; or else, 
 a sort of exercise for our emotional system ; and 
 what it is in one case it must be in all. The protest, 
 therefore, against sacerdotalism so explained and 
 this is the only sacerdotalism known, in theory, to 
 the English Church comes with an ill grace from 
 English Churchmen, who, in supporting the cry, are 
 helping to do the work of the sceptic and the 
 Romanist. A Church clergyman, when the question 
 is raised as to the validity of Dissenting orders, must 
 needs say that he believes the episcopal constitution 
 of his own Church to be in harmony with the will of 
 God, as expressed in the Bible, and that therefore he
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 141 
 
 is justified in believing in his own orders ; but if he 
 is wise and candid he will add that to pronounce 
 upon others is outside the scope of his commission. 1 
 No doubt he will have an opinion, and a strong one, 
 as to the intention of Christ to found a single visible 
 Church, " a city set upon a hill ; " an opinion also as 
 
 1 I take the opportunity afforded by the reprinting of this paper to 
 quote two passages upon this subject from the Ordination Addresses 
 of the late Bishop Stubbs of Oxford (Longmans, 1901), who held with 
 the firm faith of a trained historian that the Church of England in- 
 herited the apostolical commission: "The loyal Churchman does not 
 brand as sinful schism the sects or the members of the sects that, 
 following the authorities by which they have been led into the religion 
 they love, are really showing a loyalty that is like his own, a loyalty 
 that may deserve to be led right. He will not multiply or retaliate 
 charges of heterodoxy or heresy. But neither will he derogate from 
 the honour of the ideal and fact of his love by pretending to regard 
 such differences as have caused discussion, as being unimportant in 
 themselves and in their bearings. The sovereignty of truth may tolerate 
 but will not condone error ; the loyalty of the man of faith may endure 
 but will not acquiesce in contradictions. And he who loves his Church 
 will not cast in his lot with those who hate, or at all events say that 
 they hate her. . . . The loyalty of the Churchman is well accustomed 
 to be called bigotry, because he will not condescend to treat the 
 things that are inseparably bound up with his spiritual life as matters 
 to be lightly accounted of, in comparison with the professions of 
 religious equality, or quasi-religious co-operation and unity. But he 
 knows that the securing and defining of unity is a part of the work and 
 purpose of God, that his own work is to hold fast the truth that God 
 has granted him to see, and to do the duty that God has honoured him 
 by allotting him" (p. 115). 
 
 Again, " We do not assume to limit God's gifts, we do not claim to 
 exclude those who have not the privilege that we believe ourselves 
 to have ; but we do not, because they have it not, declare that we do 
 not care about it, or do not believe in it. The clergyman of the 
 Church of England has in his apostolic commission a record and 
 character which, although it may be no sin in the outsider to deny, 
 it is a sin in him to ignore " (p. 70).
 
 142 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to the havoc wrought in the mission field, at home 
 and abroad, by the divisions of Christendom ; he 
 will probably entertain little respect for the current 
 apology made for division, that it is a sign of growth ; 
 an apology borrowed from Milton's eloquent parody 
 of the Parable of the Vine and its branches ; but he 
 will not imitate Roman arrogance by " unchurching " 
 any community of Christians. Even Newman, in 
 the militant mood in which he put together the 
 Lyra Apostolica, writing upon schism, forbade railing 
 at dissenters, and insisted that 
 
 " Christ's love o'erflows the bounds His prophets trace 
 In His revealed design." 
 
 But our layman has not yet emptied his quiver. 
 By sacerdotalism, he will tell us, he does not mean 
 merely a belief that the clergy are the organs of the 
 Christian society for specific purposes ; he means, 
 further, the belief that those specific purposes are 
 miraculous and supernatural. In particular, he is 
 inclined to object to any view of the Lord's Supper 
 which raises it above the level of a Commemorative 
 or Guild Feast, and he is certainly convinced that an 
 attempt is being made in England to go behind the 
 Reformation and reintroduce teaching which was 
 at that time deliberately rejected. If he is told 
 that English doctrine about the " real presence " as 
 stated, e.g. by Dr. Pusey differs entirely from Roman 
 doctrine by the fact that it denies any substantial 
 change in the elements, he will reply that the Marian
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 143 
 
 martyrs did not give their lives for a subtle distinc- 
 tion ; and he will point to the growing use of the 
 word "Mass" as an index that the distinction is 
 meant to be of the slightest, and point further to 
 the constant, if slow, stream of clergy who pass over 
 from a section of our own Church to the Church of 
 Rome. With the layman, on this point, it is difficult 
 not to feel very strong sympathy. I, for one, should 
 go with him a long way. I should agree that a small, 
 and possibly a growing, party among both clergy 
 and laity have entirely lost respect for the Protestant 
 character of our Reformed Church ; that Roman 
 ways and Roman dress were being imitated for no 
 other reason than that they are Roman, and that the 
 self-sacrifice of our once revered Marian bishops was 
 held by them as a vain expense, if not as a de- 
 served punishment for heresy. I should agree with 
 him that it is a lamentable fact that men who have 
 seen with their own eyes in foreign countries the 
 disastrous effects upon religion and morality which 
 a mechanical system tends to induce, should allow 
 themselves to be hypnotized by some phrase into 
 making that system their own. There is no more 
 astonishing instance than the famous one of John 
 Henry Newman. To read his letters from abroad 
 and then to read the story of his conversion is to 
 wonder whether there is such a thing in the world 
 as a matter of fact. But the journey once made, 
 with whatever difficulty and labour, by a great
 
 144 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 leader, his followers with no difficulty at all, but 
 merely following the lead of his great name, when 
 they reach a certain pitch of excitement, " pave after 
 him a broad and beaten way." 
 
 But, while allowing that, we must beseech our lay 
 friend not to imagine that all distinctions are idle 
 because, to those who are not experts, they appear to 
 be subtle ; and also to take the pains to be quite clear 
 what the points were to which our martyrs sealed 
 their testimony with their life. 
 
 The articles that Cranmer and Latimer and Ridley 
 were called upon to sign asserted that " in the Sacra- 
 ment of the Altar there was really the true and 
 natural body of Christ present which was conceived 
 of the Virgin Mary, and that, after consecration, no 
 substance remained either of bread or wine ; and also 
 that in the Mass was the life-giving sacrifice of the 
 Church, which is propitiatory for the sins of quick 
 and dead." That is to say, they were required to 
 subscribe to the mediaeval doctrines of Transub- 
 stantiation and Purgatory ; and, whatever may have 
 been the exact opinions at last held by these re- 
 formers and they varied from themselves at different 
 times it was for refusing these Roman doctrines 
 that they suffered. It would not be unfair to say 
 that, in regard to the presence in the Eucharist, which 
 they preferred to speak of as "spiritual," they re- 
 jected a miraculous, but upheld a supernatural, 
 presence ; and any catena of opinions from English
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 145 
 
 theologians would, on the whole, support this dis- 
 tinction. Let me give a short passage from Cranmer's 
 Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacra- 
 ment, written in 1550, not as being an authoritative 
 treatise, but as showing in what estimation that 
 zealous reformer held the Christian feast. " Although 
 He sit in heaven, at His Father's right hand, yet 
 should we come to this mystical bread and wine with 
 faith, reverence, purity, and fear, as we would do if 
 we should come to see and receive Christ Himself 
 sensibly present. For unto the faithful, Christ is at 
 His own table present with His mighty spirit and 
 grace, and is of them more fruitfully received than if 
 corporally they should receive Him bodily present. 
 And therefore they that shall worthily come to this 
 God's board, must after due trial of themselves con- 
 sider, first, who ordained this table, also what meat 
 and drink they shall have that come thereto, and how 
 they ought to behave themselves thereat. He that 
 prepared the table is Christ Himself. The meat and 
 drink wherewith He feedeth them that come thereto 
 as they ought to do, is His own flesh and blood." x 
 The difference, therefore, between the Roman and 
 the English view would not to an agnostic seem 
 worth the price of blood ; but looked at by Church- 
 men with a regard to the effect upon worship, there 
 is an essential difference, which shows itself by certain 
 results in the two communions. In the English 
 
 1 Quoted from Dr. Mason's Life of Cranmer, p. 131. 
 
 L
 
 146 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 doctrine, the point insisted upon is that Christ is 
 certainly present, according to His promise ; the 
 mode is not defined ; and the imagination is left 
 free to picture Him as it can best : probably in the 
 imagination of many Churchmen no picture is so 
 often present as that feast at Emmaus, when He 
 Himself was seen to take bread and bless and break. 
 In the other case the mind must be fixed simply upon 
 certain particles of matter, and though faith may 
 repeat to itself that the matter is not matter, yet of 
 such a question the senses remain imperious judges, 
 and in the last resort the only credible witnesses ; and 
 though faith may be very valiant and still assert that 
 the wafer is changed into the substance of Christ's 
 body, yet the imagination finds it impossible to relate 
 this to His person. Adoration, therefore, remains the 
 adoration of matter not of spirit, at best of a body 
 not of a character ; and so it becomes inevitably, if 
 not idolatrous, yet of the nature of a magical rite, 
 which has no necessarily uplifting effect upon the 
 soul. It has no correspondence to the worship we 
 should pay to Christ if He were again to walk in our 
 streets. The anxiety therefore displayed by our 
 untheological layman at the revival of the word 
 " mass " for the service of Holy Communion, does 
 not seem misplaced ; for such a revival is an obvious 
 sign of sympathy with Roman doctrine. The wonder 
 is that the word has so long been tolerated by 
 those in authority, for it was dropped in the second
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 147 
 
 Prayer-book, and not restored in any later revision. 
 Speaking for myself, I would far rather allow incense 
 and processional lights, which are ancient and 
 harmless customs, and susceptible of mystical inter- 
 pretation, than I would allow the word " mass " to be 
 used in a church belonging to the Church of England ; 
 for the meaning of a word is not its etymological 
 meaning, but the sense it has come to bear by use. 1 
 
 If the layman, not content with the banishment of 
 the miraculous, still protests against any supernat^^ral 
 element being allowed to cling to the Eucharist, is he 
 quite clear where this protest will lead him ? Will it 
 not compel him to believe that the Sacrament was 
 originally instituted, not for the sake of feeding the 
 flock, but merely to keep alive a fading memory as 
 long as possible in a world where all things come to 
 an end ? In that case he must banish the super- 
 natural element from religion altogether. And then, 
 what is left ? It would be some guide to the clergy 
 if those laymen who are at the present moment most 
 active in protest and invective, like Lord Portsmouth, 
 would formulate for us the creed which they them- 
 selves hold ; or if that is an impertinent question 
 then the creed they wish to see held in the National 
 
 1 Bishop Cosin tell us that the word, though in itself ancient and 
 harmless, was deliberately cut out of the English Prayer-book because 
 it had acquired a secondary and Roman sense, and while it was allowed 
 to remain in Edward VI. 's first book, was interpreted in this depraved 
 sense by papistically minded people: "ob hanc causam ab Ecclesia 
 Anglicana ipsum etiam vocabulum rejicititr" (Works, V. 301).
 
 148 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Church. We should then know better how far it 
 would chime with our present creed and articles. It 
 may be that what they require in the clergy is simply 
 a force of black dragoons to help keep order in the 
 State by policing the populous districts and preaching 
 respect for property. I saw lately two very suggestive 
 allegories of such a reformed Church of England. 
 One was at the seaside. The sea on that part of the 
 coast was encroaching, and it had already washed 
 away the nave and chancel of the church. But the 
 local board, not liking to lose so venerable a monu- 
 ment as the ivy-clad tower, and thinking it might, 
 if looked to, do service as a breakwater, built it 
 into the sea-wall, where it was found both useful 
 and picturesque. The other was a market cross in 
 Northamptonshire. The cross, indeed, was gone 
 from the top of the shaft, but that remained, and by 
 a little ingenious ironwork had been converted into 
 both a lamp and a sign-post.
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO 
 II
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 
 II. 
 
 IN the paper to which this is an annex, I made an 
 attempt to collect the various charges that from time 
 to time I had heard alleged against the clerical 
 order, to examine what element of truth they con- 
 tained, and to offer what defence seemed possible for 
 myself and my brethren. My present object is to 
 touch upon some parts of the clerical ideal, which 
 were not there referred to, and to suggest that, with all 
 our shortcomings, we of the English clergy have been 
 remarkably true to our best national traditions, and 
 have indeed, under superficial differences, preserved 
 a type that was vigorous before the Norman Con- 
 quest, and is vigorous to-day. For the persistence 
 of type I do not claim credit to ourselves ; it may be 
 due to a certain stiffness of original clay in our Eng- 
 lish constitution. But I do wish to lay stress upon 
 it, because at the moment it is being lost sight of, 
 and attention is being directed instead to another 
 trait, more superficial and apparently antagonistic, of 
 which I will speak presently. 
 
 i. It must have struck every one who has read
 
 152 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Chaucer's beautiful description of the parson in the 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, that the picture in 
 its essential lines might have been drawn from not 
 a few parsons known to ourselves. The learning, 
 the generosity, the activity in visiting, the patience 
 in teaching, the general fatherliness with capacity 
 for sharp rebuke upon occasion, are all characteristics 
 as familiar to us as to Chaucer. And they are dis- 
 coverable in every age, especially when some calamity 
 befalls that brings the simple parish priest into the 
 light of history. Such was Rowland Taylor, whose 
 biography we owe, with that of not a few others, to 
 the pen of the Martyrologist Fox, who, with all his 
 partisan credulity, was a good judge of character ; 
 such was "the apostle of the north," Bernard Gilpin ; 
 such was George Herbert during his few years at 
 Bemerton ; such were Samuel Wesley of Epworth, 
 and Fletcher of Madeley. These are conspicuous 
 examples in the memory of every one, but they are 
 no more than specimens of their class. 
 
 And not only is the parochial ideal of duty a 
 constant, or at least a perpetually recurring one, 
 but we find from the earliest times evidence of 
 characteristic preferences in the wider field of Church 
 politics. One such constant characteristic is a strong 
 apathy, becoming at intervals a strong antipathy, 
 towards the Roman see, and a correspondingly strong 
 sense of the necessary attachment between the Eng- 
 lish Church and State. In Saxon times the bishops
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 153 
 
 and clergy had rank and duties in the body politic, 
 independently of a place in their own ecclesiastical 
 synods. All through mediaeval times bishops were 
 great officers of State ; and even now the ordinary 
 Englishman is pleased that they should have a seat 
 in the Upper House of Parliament. As to the early 
 existence of anti-papal feeling, Dr. Cutts 1 points out 
 that the canons sent by Boniface to Cuthbert, and 
 considered by the Council of Clovesho (A.D. 747), were 
 all passed, with the exception of the two preliminary 
 canons formally acknowledging the supremacy of 
 Rome. "The omissions," he adds, "are the most 
 important part of the document." The anti-papal 
 acts of the parliaments of Edward I., following upon 
 the papal extortions under John and Henry III., are 
 numerous ; and those in Henry VIII.'s reign, although 
 dictated by the King, were far from being unpopular. 
 Another characteristic that we meet in Saxon days, 
 and constantly afterwards, is a sense of the importance 
 of reading the Scriptures and preaching, and the 
 reasonableness of saying divine service, if not in the 
 mother tongue, yet so as it might be heard and followed 
 by the congregation. Translations of Holy Scripture 
 into English go back as far as King Alfred and the 
 Venerable Bede. By canons of the synod of Clovesho 
 already referred to, priests are instructed to be care- 
 ful about explaining to their people the meaning of 
 the Sacraments and the symbols used ; to translate 
 
 1 Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages (S.P.C.K.), p. 61.
 
 154 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the words used in the prayers, and teach the Creed 
 and Our Father ; and to use simple plain-song for 
 the service, or else read it distinctly. This insistence 
 upon worshipping with the understanding as well as 
 with the spirit has been first and last a typical trait 
 of the English Church, and as characteristic of the 
 clergy as of the laity. A third noticeable feature 
 in English Churchmanship from the earliest days is 
 an aversion to discipline. The English have always 
 retained a barbarian love of freedom and a hatred of 
 being regulated, which people who have borne for a 
 longer period the yoke of Roman law do not mani- 
 fest. The Norman dominion, which for so long held 
 the nation in a frame of iron, was no doubt good for 
 us in the main ; but even that did not succeed in 
 taming the wild English spirit. There are two insti- 
 tutions familiar in continental Churchmanship which 
 were never deeply rooted in English soil, because 
 they interfered too greatly with individual liberty. 
 The first was clerical celibacy ; the second, monas- 
 ticism. Of the first I need not speak, because the 
 feeling against it is as strong now in England as 
 ever it was. 1 Monasticism stands on a somewhat 
 different footing. The monasticism that Englishmen 
 thoroughly understood was the missionary centre for 
 
 1 I heard it said the other day that there are two points in regard to 
 the clergy upon which English laymen have made up their minds : 
 first, that they shall be married men ; and secondly, that they shall 
 be paid as though they were celibate.
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 1$5 
 
 the evangelization of a district, or the college of like- 
 minded men engaged in similar work. The Bene- 
 dictine monastery for contemplation and devotion 
 was foreign to their national ethos. In Wakeman's 
 History of tJie Church of England there is an interest- 
 ing passage about Harold's foundation of a college 
 for secular canons at Waltham at the very moment 
 when Edward the Confessor was founding his monas- 
 tery of St. Peter at Westminster : " In ecclesiastical 
 matters he was out of sympathy with a predominant 
 thought of his time ; though by no means irreligious, 
 in his religious policy he was national even to the 
 verge of being insular. When the best thought and 
 noblest devotion of Christendom were embracing the 
 monastic ideal, when Herlwin, and Lanfranc, and 
 Anselm, and Wulfstan were monks, Harold ostenta- 
 tiously set his face against monasticism, and in his 
 own beloved foundation of Holy Cross at Waltham 
 deliberately preferred a secular constitution " (p. 80). 
 National to tJie verge of being insular, that is no 
 unfair characterization of Englishmen ; and perhaps 
 it is no very shameful characterization of a church 
 and polity, which are the church and polity of Eng- 
 lishmen. One feels sometimes that if a certain small 
 section of the clergy could be content to be a little 
 more insular ; if, like their rude forefathers, they would 
 look upon the association of Church with State as a 
 national institution to be made the most of instead 
 of derided ; if they would consider the English love
 
 156 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 of preaching as a characteristic to be appealed to 
 for a good end ; and if they would revive the life of 
 missionary communities without wearing a habit and 
 adopting disciplinary practices that revive all the 
 English distaste for foreign monasticism they would 
 find the national and insular laity more sympathetic. 
 2. And that brings me to speak of the remarkable 
 inconsistency, referred to above, which occasionally 
 shows itself in English nature, I mean the suscepti- 
 bility to foreign fashions. The trait is superficial, 
 and is related to our superficial humility, but every 
 now and then it gets the better of our common sense. 
 One well-known occasion in Church history was the 
 period immediately preceding and succeeding the 
 Norman Conquest, when, under the inspiration first 
 of St. Dunstan and afterwards of Lanfranc and 
 Anselm, monasteries to the number of three hundred 
 sprang up over England on the Benedictine model. 
 The enthusiasm which reared those magnificent piles 
 soon died down, because it was not an enthusiasm 
 of which the practical English nature was for long 
 capable ; and although the monasteries became 
 model landlords, and some of them renowned seats 
 of learning, they showed by so becoming that in 
 heart they were "secular" rather than "religious," 
 using those words in their technical sense. Chaucer's 
 monk is a good-humoured country gentleman, and 
 his prioress the accomplished head of a girl's high 
 school, both excellent people, but not excellent
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 1 57 
 
 after the type of Cluny. Hence no one can much 
 blame Henry VIII. for determining upon the dis- 
 solution of the Houses, but only for appropriating 
 and wasting the Church's money which they held in 
 pious trust. A second remarkable instance of the 
 Englishman's attraction to foreign fashions in 
 religion was the passion for the Calvinistic form of 
 Church doctrine and government that swept over 
 England in the reign of Elizabeth. The English 
 conservative tradition seemed to contract itself into 
 the single person of the Queen, and a few philosophers 
 like Hooker. By dint of browbeating the bishops, 
 Elizabeth succeeded in maintaining episcopacy ; but 
 under a more susceptible monarch it is doubtful if 
 that order would have survived the brief frenzy. 
 Bancroft, in a book published in 1 593 called Dangerous 
 Positions and Proceedings under Pretence of Reforma- 
 tion, called attention to a widespread attempt to 
 introduce the Calvinistic organization into England 
 by the device of insisting upon a presbyterian call to 
 pastorates, while allowing episcopal ordination as a 
 purely civil rite. 1 Certain counties were actually 
 divided up into presbyteries, the first being erected 
 at Wandsworth in 1572. Not the least interesting 
 of the stories preserved to us about this matter is 
 that of the attempt made by Travers, the Reader at 
 
 1 The best modern account of this Presbyterian plot will be found in 
 the present Bishop of Oxford's Introduction to the Fifth Book of 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity.
 
 158 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the Temple Church, to persuade Hooker, when he had 
 been appointed Master by the Crown, not to preach 
 until the congregation had sealed his appointment 
 by a solemn call. 1 A third instance of this singular 
 imitativeness, though on a much smaller scale, we 
 have all witnessed during the past quarter of a 
 century in the wholesale adoption of services, cere- 
 monies, and ornaments from modern Rome. There 
 is no need to go into particulars, and happily the 
 epidemic shows signs of abating, for there has sprung 
 up in recent years a school of ritualists, who, with 
 more learning and greater patriotism, have pointed 
 out to these Italianate clergy a more excellent way. 
 
 3. Such fashions, however, although violent while 
 they last, have been only occasional and of short 
 duration, and they have never been allowed to inter- 
 fere with the deep-seated ideal of clerical duty. As 
 elements in this ideal, it is interesting to note certain 
 qualities which, under forms varying with the various 
 constitutions of society, have consistently maintained 
 themselves. To speak first of what to many has 
 seemed a purely modern development, the interest 
 taken of late years in the improvement of the social 
 conditions under which the poorer classes live, whether 
 in town or country. In regard to the towns, this is 
 an endeavour to mitigate the new slavery that has 
 
 1 There is an interesting parallel in the recent Puritan attempt to 
 convert the ancient ceremony of Confirmation of bishops into a Court 
 of Triers ; the Crown in each case standing for freedom.
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 159 
 
 followed in the wake of the industrial revolution of 
 last century ; in the villages it has been part of the 
 millennial effort to persuade the yeomen that the 
 labourers are their brethren in Christ. Those who 
 are interested in maintaining brutalizing conditions 
 of labour, because they are found to be profitable, 
 naturally view with dislike any interference on the 
 part of the Church ; on the other side, it has some- 
 times been held, even by Churchmen, that in attempt- 
 ing to deal with economic problems, the Church has 
 gone beyond her province. It is useful, therefore, 
 to look back to the Middle Ages and see how, at a 
 time when an exact faith was not undervalued, the 
 clergy found time and opportunity for interest in the 
 secular life of their people, and made themselves felt 
 as champions of righteousness and mercy in an age- 
 long conflict with the tyranny of feudalism. Bishop 
 Hobhouse, in a most valuable preface contributed to 
 the fourth volume of the Somerset Record Society's 
 publications, has drawn out clearly the share taken 
 by the Church in alleviating the lot of the serfs on 
 the manorial estates : " The religious conditions of 
 the community stood in strong contrast to the civil. 
 The spiritual authority was strong enough to control 
 all orders and degrees of men in their mutual rela- 
 tions. The Church regulated the festal and work 
 days. It claimed for the servile population to be 
 free from the demands of service on the days set 
 apart as Holy Days of obligation. These days were
 
 I6O RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 not only the Lord's day and the great Christian 
 feasts, but also days of local observance, e.g. the 
 dedication day of the Parish Church, the day of the 
 local Saint or of the principal guild-patron. On all 
 these days the labourer, though born in serfdom, was 
 free, only bound to the service of his Divine master. 
 He donned his best clothes, he joined his fellow 
 guildsmen, he marched under banners to the church 
 as the common home of the highest and the lowest. 
 
 "After Divine service, there were amusements 
 provided at the Church House, or on the village 
 green. Somebody had given a tavern of ale [i.e. 
 holy ale to be consumed] and invited the parishioners 
 of the next parish ; or there was a return revelry at 
 the Church House of that parish, or the guild of 
 Webbers and Hogglers was holding its ' ale,' or Robin 
 Hood was mustering his men at the Butts, or the 
 young men or the maidens were keeping Hockday. 
 The bulk of the parishioners were, I conceive, engaged 
 through their various associations in planning their 
 amusements. They were not spectators or partakers 
 merely, but also managers, sharing in the pageant 
 and in the costs ; and thereby the bonds of social 
 fellowship were tightened, and the barrier lines 
 between servile and free, which seem to the student 
 of our law books to be so impassable, were melted 
 away by the warmth of kindly fellowship. Certain 
 it is that in these documents no trace is found of 
 any class disfranchised by bondage from the even
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. l6l 
 
 enjoyment of the privileges, spiritual or social, 
 which attached to the religious community. 
 
 " If we glance at a manor court-roll of the day, the 
 condition of the civil community as there seen stands 
 in strong contrast to the condition of the religious 
 community (the very same persons be it remem- 
 bered) as shown in the Church accounts. In the 
 civil document the community is divided into sharply 
 defined classes, the lord of the soil and his tenant, 
 the tenants into bond and free, the villeins again 
 subdivided according to the size of their holdings. 
 The relative duties of class to class are sharply 
 defined too, and are involuntary. They are all en- 
 forceable and enforced by fine and penalty. But in 
 spite of this harsh look there are traces to be seen 
 of a gradual blending of classes and interests, and of 
 a continual softening of the earlier barrier lines. . . . 
 
 "The great blending force is, I conceive, to be 
 found in the Church, not only in its master precepts 
 of brotherly love and mercy, but in the peculiar form 
 which it adopted of social action, a form which its 
 lofty authority then enabled it to carry out. It was 
 able to mitigate the rigour of the landlord's demands 
 upon the servant of the soil, whom serfdom would 
 else have doomed to an unceasing round of labour. 
 It was strong enough to say to the master, ' Thy ser- 
 vant shall rest on the days that are marked as holy. 
 Thou and thy servant together shall on those days 
 resort to the house of your Divine Master, as fellow 
 
 M
 
 1 62 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 servants, and there pay your united homage of prayer 
 and praise.' It was in this way that the Holy Day 
 of the Church became the holiday of the people." J 
 It is a significant comment on the Bishop's words 
 that when, in the time of Edward VI., the Church 
 lay prostrate under the feet of the English landlords, 
 one of their first complaints was of the number of 
 holidays still left after Henry's reduction, and one 
 of their first legislative acts to reduce them still 
 further. Plainly, then, in mediaeval times it was part 
 of the everyday business of the parish clergyman in 
 the name of the Church deponere superbos de sede et 
 exaltare humiles. The Church in each parish was a 
 branch of the great Christian Social Union. 
 
 4. Another ideal of the modern parish clergyman, 
 closely allied to his interest in economic questions, 
 is an endeavour to organize charitable relief so as to 
 diminish its pauperizing effects. This also has been 
 objected to by many devout minds, as though it were 
 an infringement of the Divine command, "Give to 
 every one that asketh of thee." It is notorious that 
 the Roman Church looks favourably upon the practice 
 of giving alms to beggars, and some of those in our 
 own communion who sympathize with Roman doctrine 
 have been apt to resent the effort to raise almsgiving 
 out of the region of mere impulse. But mediaevalists 
 least of all men have a right to do so. If they would 
 
 1 See also two interesting essays by Dr. Jessopp on Parish Life in 
 England before the Great Pillage (Fisher Umvin).
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 163 
 
 study the methods of their own mediaeval forefathers, 
 they would find that almsgiving in the Middle Ages 
 was thoroughly and admirably organized. In those 
 days there was no relief given by the State, and it 
 is astonishing to discover that there were no alms 
 collected in church. " The audit sheets," says Bishop 
 Hobhouse, "do not show a single eleemosynary item." 
 How, then, were the poor relieved ? The answer is 
 that almost everybody was a member of some gild ; 
 these gilds being established either amongst mem- 
 bers of a particular trade or amongst residents at 
 a particular place for a special religious purpose. 
 The members subscribed to a common fund, from 
 which payments were made for the special object of 
 the association, whether to keep a bridge in repair, 
 or to celebrate a pageant, or maintain a school ; and 
 while a portion of the annual income went to support 
 the chaplain who said mass at a special altar, other 
 portions, as in modern benefit clubs, were assigned 
 to sick and burial funds, and to relieve the poorer 
 members. It was usual for members, both rich and 
 poor, to make bequests to these gild funds, so that 
 there was money to draw upon in time of need ; and 
 this money was dispensed by officers who knew all 
 the circumstances of those who might apply for 
 help. Dr. Cutts, in the chapter on "Gilds," in his 
 fascinating book to which I have already made 
 reference, quotes from the rule of the Ludlow Gild : 
 "If any of the brethren or sisters be brought to
 
 164 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 such want that they have not enough to live upon, 
 then once, twice, thrice, but not a fourth time, as 
 much help shall be given them out of the goods of 
 the gild, as the rectors and stewards, having regard 
 to their deserts and to the means of the gild, shall 
 order. ... If any brother or sister be wrongfully 
 cast into prison, the gild shall do its utmost, and 
 spend money, to get him out. ... If any fall into 
 grievous sickness they shall be helped, both as to 
 their bodily needs and other wants, out of the com- 
 mon fund of the gild, until their health is renewed 
 as before. If any one becomes a leper, or blind, 
 or maimed, or smitten with any incurable disorder 
 (which God forbid), we will that the goods of the 
 gild shall be largely bestowed on him. ... If any 
 good girl of the gild cannot have the means found 
 her by her father, either to go into a religious house 
 or to marry, whichever she wishes to do, friendly and 
 right help shall be given her out of our means, and 
 our common chest, towards enabling her to do which- 
 ever of the two she wishes " (p. 474). 
 
 No doubt there was room, outside the work of the 
 gilds, for benevolence on the part of landlords and 
 masters, and Chaucer implies that his country parson, 
 poor as he was, found opportunities for almsgiving 
 
 " Full loth were he to cursen for his tithes, 
 But rather would he given, out of double, 
 Unto his poore parishens about 
 Of his offering, and eke of his substance. 
 He coud in litel thing have suffisance."
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. l6$ 
 
 Still, the main business of relieving the poor fell 
 to the gilds, and it was conducted on business-like 
 principles, and with a view, as we can see from the 
 Ludlow rule, to the spiritual benefit of those who 
 were relieved. All this excellent work came to an 
 end in 1545, when the Defender of the Faith, having 
 absorbed the monasteries, seized upon the property 
 of the gilds, on the plea that they countenanced 
 prayers for the dead, and with Edward VI. begins 
 the reign of the poor law. It is possible, then, by 
 English precedent of many centuries standing, to 
 justify those clergymen who plead that an interest 
 in economic questions is right and necessary for 
 parish priests. 
 
 5. But though this economic interest is a very 
 conspicuous element in our modern parochial ideal, 
 no Churchman would allow it to claim the highest 
 place. We cannot agree with a popular essayist 
 that while we have to make ourselves good, our duty 
 to our neighbour is limited to making him happy. In 
 general terms there would be no difference of opinion 
 among Churchmen as to the highest duty of the 
 clerical office ; and it might be stated now, with 
 certainty of general acquiescence, in the terms 
 employed by any Church Synod since the Church 
 of England was founded. A priest's duty is defined, 
 for example, in the canons of Edgar, as (i) devoutly 
 to serve and minister to God and intercede for all 
 Christian folk, and (2) to be ready to help others
 
 1 66 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 both Godward and manward. Of so much of the 
 first branch of the ideal as relates to worship I have 
 spoken already in the first part of this apology, and 
 I need not repeat what is there said ; of intercession 
 I will say a word by-and-by. In regard to the 
 second branch, it is plain that social work comes 
 under its second division, the helping of others man- 
 ward ; and there remains the first division, or helping 
 men Godward, which, again, is usually divided into the 
 two ministries of the Word and the Sacraments. In 
 regard to the latter of these ministries, although the 
 significance of the Sacraments has been, and still is, 
 variously interpreted by parties in the Church, there 
 has never been any cessation in the ministry itself ; 
 but, in regard to the former, although the ideal has 
 remained, practice has been curiously uncertain. 
 During the Middle Ages, if preaching fell into neg- 
 lect here and there, the fault lay with the individual 
 priest or bishop. During the Reformation period, 
 it too often lay with the sovereign, who, finding 
 himself unable to tune the pulpits as he pleased, 
 was apt to prohibit preaching altogether except by 
 special licence, so that Bucer could speak of parishes 
 which had not heard a sermon for six years. But 
 the English ideal has never ceased to recognize 
 preaching as an important part of clerical duty ; and 
 while successive canons all through the Middle Ages 
 press it upon the clergy, we see, from some interesting 
 returns to episcopal visitation articles, that the laity
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 167 
 
 were not inclined to go without their rights. These 
 passages have been several times referred to of recent 
 years, but perhaps they will bear quoting again ; 
 they are from Bishop Stapledon's Visitation of the 
 diocese of Exeter in I3OI. 1 Some of the parishes 
 had no fault to find with their clergyman on this 
 head, and say so : " Dicunt quod vicarius bene et 
 honeste se habet et optime informat eos in spiri- 
 tualibus. Dicunt quod bene instruit eos ; " and these 
 are the most numerous of the cases reported. The 
 return from Colebrook says that Sir William preaches 
 in his own way, and explains the gospel on Sunday 
 as well as he can (quatenus novit\ but does not give 
 them much instruction on the Creed, or the Com- 
 mandments, or how to avoid Deadly Sin. The same 
 expression, quatenus novit, which must have been 
 technical, is used by the parishioners of Colyton 
 about their Sir Robert, but they add that they do 
 not find his teaching sufficient. Moreover, they 
 complain that he does not call in the friars, as his 
 predecessors used, to give them instruction for the 
 good of their souls. 2 
 
 1 Edited by Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph. See pp. 109, 130, 
 J 94 337> 347> 37^ etc - The points in clerical duty on which most 
 stress is laid are preaching and prompt visitation of the sick (" festi- 
 nanter visitat infirmos "). The parson of Colebrook is objected against 
 for having his gate so far from the hall that a person calling outside is 
 not heard, which is dangerous in cases of sickness (p. 109). 
 
 - " Dicunt quod Dominus Robertus Vicarius eorum probus homo 
 est et predicat eis quatenus novit, set non sufficienter, ut eis videtur. 
 Dicunt eciam quod predecessores ejus consueverunt vocare Fratres ad
 
 168 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 This reference to the friars reminds us of one 
 epoch in the history of our Church when the ministry 
 of the Word rose to its full apostolic energy. And 
 the extraordinary success of the friars may suggest 
 to us how that ministry, if only it could to-day be 
 embraced with kindred devotion, would repeat the 
 miracle of the thirteenth century, and bring into 
 the fold of the Church our vast populations, who are 
 made of the same responsive flesh and blood as their 
 forefathers. Can we see at all what would be the 
 necessary conditions of such a success ? Plainly 
 there would need, now as then, to be two orders corre- 
 sponding to the Dominicans and Franciscans, one 
 of which should be trained for preaching to the 
 educated, the other for preaching to the poor. It is 
 very rarely that the same man has the double power. 
 Neither Whitefield nor Wesley, whose achievement 
 approaches nearest to that of the friars, had much 
 success among the educated classes, because their 
 methods were not such as to appeal to them. To 
 speak, therefore, first about the possibility of a modern 
 order of friars minor. Of devotion now as then 
 there is no lack ; of capable leaders there is no lack 
 either, though no movement of the sort ever has 
 been successful on a large scale without the one 
 supreme leader of genius, capable of inspiring enthu- 
 siasm, and convinced that he has a mission to do 
 
 instruendum eos super salutem anime, set iste non curat de eis, et si a 
 casu venerint, non recipit eos nee praebet eis viatica."
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 169 
 
 this one thing and this one thing only. But until 
 he arrives, what paralyzes more ordinary effort is 
 the lack of money to ensure to those who give them- 
 selves to the work the bare necessaries of life. The 
 idyll of St. Francis and his bride, the Lady Poverty, 
 is one that touches all our hearts, but poverty may 
 mean many different things. 
 
 " The Lady Poverty was fair : 
 But she has lost her looks of late, 
 With change of time and change of air. 
 Ah, slattern, she neglects her hair, 
 Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no state 
 As once when her pure feet were bare. 
 
 " Or almost worse, if worse can be 
 She scolds in parlours ; dusts and trims, 
 Watches and counts. Oh, is this she 
 Whom Francis met, whose step was free, 
 Who with Obedience carolled hymns, 
 In Umbria walked with Chastity ? 
 
 " Where is her ladyhood ? Not here, 
 Not among modern kinds of men j 
 But within starry fields, where clear 
 Through the thin trees the skies appear ; 
 In delicate spare soil and fen, 
 And slender landscape and austere." l 
 
 In plain prose, an ideal needs translation into 
 details of circumstance, and in this translation even 
 St. Francis failed failed even in his own age. It is 
 admitted that what wrecked the friars was their 
 custom of begging. To live on alms is a possible 
 
 1 Later Poems t by Alice Meynell.
 
 I/O RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 principle, but the line between that and mendicancy, 
 though in principle they belong to different regions, 
 is in practice of the finest, and is inevitably over- 
 stepped when the first enthusiasm of the laity cools. 
 But the laity do not like beggars, and they are right ; 
 begging degrades character. When Chaucer begins 
 his description of the friar by saying he was " the 
 beste beggar of his house," we know that the 
 character to follow will not be flattering. Our 
 modern order must not make this blunder ; they 
 must not beg. But how, then, shall we feed them ? 
 A pound a week each might suffice for men living 
 in community, but that means fifty guineas in the 
 year ; for a hundred men to live in poverty we should 
 require an income of five thousand pounds. How 
 can we get it? I do not think we must look to 
 millionaires. Money flows in a stream only through 
 channels already made; and if our English millionaires 
 would but emulate their Scotch compeers and help 
 to re-endow the parochial clergy, of whose continued 
 existence they are understood to approve, they would 
 work a great work, and no one would look to them 
 to make experiments. An order of poor brothers 
 to evangelize the poor must depend in the first 
 instance on the faithful alms of a few men who see 
 the need. 
 
 Perhaps few of my lay readers are aware that an 
 experiment on the lines indicated has been carried 
 on now for a dozen years with results that are entirely
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 17 1 
 
 satisfactory so far as they go ; only, unfortunately, 
 from lack of funds, they go as yet so little way. At 
 Mildenhall, in Suffolk, the Rev. Herbert Kelly pre- 
 sides over a school for Christian ministers, which is 
 a model in little of what on a large scale the Church 
 so greatly needs that is to say, a home for the 
 thorough training of selected candidates without 
 private means for missionary work in our large 
 centres of population. Mr. Kelly has lately printed 
 a short tract setting out his system of education, 
 and giving details of expense ; and I would venture 
 to commend it to the attentive reading of my brethren 
 among the laity who have at heart the present 
 horror of heathenism in England. When we recall 
 how many of the great Churchmen of old days 
 including about a dozen Archbishops of Canterbury 
 were of humble birth, and owed their education 
 in sacred studies to the generosity of patrons, we 
 cannot avoid the reflection how little is done to-day 
 to secure for the Church the talents and the vocation 
 that must be lying unrecognized in hundreds of the 
 youths who pass every year out of our elementary 
 schools into occupations that make no call on their 
 true capacities. I could wish the idea, so common 
 with our forefathers, of helping poor " clerks," might 
 again revive among us ; as it is, when our gratitude 
 to God is stirred and we seek some object for 
 our generosity, our thoughts seem unable to rise 
 higher than a subscription to an hospital. But when
 
 1/2 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the healing of the sick has become the care of the 
 whole nation, Churchmen might well give their first 
 thought to the healing of the soul. Tu autem vade 
 et annuntia regnum Dei. 
 
 6. To pass on to the consideration of preaching on 
 its more learned side that is to say, the reconcilia- 
 tion of the claims of the Christian faith with those 
 of the current criticism and philosophy it is obvious 
 to remark that this is work which the ordinary lay- 
 man is apt to exact from his parish clergy, while the 
 ordinary parochial clergyman, to do him justice, is 
 generally willing to undertake it, quatenus uovit. But 
 a moment's reflection will show that the demand is 
 unreasonable, and that the supply cannot, as a rule, 
 be satisfactory. It is true that the Church of England 
 has been accustomed to make its boast of a learned 
 clergy, and except at certain unfortunate periods of 
 her history, the boast has been justified that is to 
 say, the clergy have been trained in the liberal arts, 
 and have been capable of interpreting the sacred 
 writings by reference to the Vulgate, or later, to the 
 Greek and (perhaps) Hebrew. Such learning, being 
 specialized on the sacred writings, would enable them 
 to instruct the laity in faith and morals ; but since it 
 could not be other than the current learning of the 
 day, it could not suffice for the handling of new 
 problems either in philosophy or criticism. The 
 opposition always offered by the general body of the 
 clergy to new theories has long been a byword of
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 1/3 
 
 reproach against them in the mouths of their enemies ; 
 but it is inevitable under the circumstances, being 
 indeed paralleled in every profession, and it serves 
 the same useful function in the region of theology 
 as the veto of the House of Lords in politics ; it 
 prevents unconsidered innovations. But the Church, 
 while not committing the defence of the Faith to the 
 parochial clergy, should yet secure that the recognized 
 results of criticism be made available for the laity, 
 who have not time or training for following the 
 intricate course of controversy in the learned treatises 
 of theologians. We need a certain number of clergy 
 who could be set free from parochial labour for the 
 purpose of preaching to educated laymen on the 
 defence of the Faith. When such sermons are 
 announced in London, the congregations that crowd 
 to hear show how widely the need is felt. But no 
 London pulpits could be surrendered to apologetic 
 preaching of this kind, because all have fixed con- 
 gregations. This is so even at the Inns of Court 
 chapels. And at our cathedral church and at West- 
 minster Abbey, where the clergy are endowed, and 
 so have leisure for study, the congregations are so 
 mixed of all classes that the sermons cannot be 
 technical. It would be well, therefore, if a certain 
 number of Dominican brothers could be set apart 
 to perambulate the country, giving at each centre 
 the results of recent studies in a form capable of 
 assimilation. The Community of the Resurrection
 
 174 RELIGIO LAICI, 
 
 shows how a brotherhood with this object might be 
 established among clergy who have enough private 
 means for maintenance. And as the need for 
 evangelists is still greater than that for apologists, 
 we must make all our public effort at present for 
 a Franciscan order and leave the Dominican order 
 to private adventure. 
 
 7. Preaching does not, of course, exhaust the spiritual 
 means by which the English parish priest seeks to 
 build up the life of faith. He has in all ages shown 
 a disposition to encourage his parishioners to unite in 
 small societies, with some particular rule to observe or 
 some pious practice to carry out in common. I have 
 already made mention of the mediaeval gilds and the 
 good work they accomplished for the relief of their 
 poor and sick members. But these gilds had also a 
 distinctive devotion to a patron saint, at whose altar 
 they worshipped, and usually some specific religious 
 duty corresponding. Some of the greater gilds were 
 instituted with a primarily religious intention, such 
 as the Corpus Christi Gild at York, founded in 
 honour of the Sacrament, and the Gild of the Lord's 
 Prayer, whose members pledged themselves " to 
 illustrate the scorn of vice and the praise of virtue, 
 and to shun unworthy company and business." Such 
 societies are useful as ministering to human infirmity 
 of will, and they seem to have peculiar attraction for 
 Englishmen ; for we find them springing up in most 
 periods when there has been a deep and general
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 175 
 
 revival of religion. Under Elizabeth they took the 
 form of meetings to read and discuss the Scriptures, 
 " prophesyings " as they were called ; and the Queen's 
 ruthless suppression of these on the ground that they 
 were seed-plots of Presbyterianism, as perhaps they 
 were, offended the religious mind of England. There 
 is a curious reference to this suppression in Spenser's 
 Shepherds Kalendar, where the fate of Archbishop 
 Grindal, suspended by the Queen for his protest 
 against her high-handed proceeding, is oddly enough 
 compared to that of ^Eschylus, who was slain by an 
 eagle dropping a shell-fish on his head. At the end 
 of the seventeenth century, again, we find such 
 meetings organized under the name of "religious 
 societies." The prime mover in their foundation was 
 Dr. Horneck, of the Savoy Chapel, and he was 
 seconded by Dr. Beveridge, and that focus of en- 
 thusiasm, Dr. Bray, to whom the Church owes its 
 flourishing Societies for Promoting Christian Know- 
 ledge and for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
 Foreign Parts. The following is Canon Overton's 
 account of these religious gilds : 
 
 " The societies were conducted most strictly on 
 the lines of the Church's teaching. None were to be 
 admitted as members except young men above six- 
 teen years of age who had been confirmed. They 
 were to choose a clergyman to direct them, and their 
 meetings were to be strictly devotional. They were 
 to use no prayers at their meetings except those of
 
 1/6" RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the Church, and ' none that peculiarly belong to the 
 minister, as the absolution.' The minister whom 
 they chose was to 'direct what practical divinity 
 was to be read.' After prayer and reading they 
 were 'to have liberty to sing a psalm.' And after 
 all this was done, if there was any time left, 'they 
 might discourse with each other about their spiritual 
 concerns,' but this was ' not to be a standing exercise 
 which any should be obliged to attend unto.' After 
 many other excellent practical rules, the last is, that 
 they were ' to love one another, when reviled not to 
 revile again, speak evil of no man, wrong no man, 
 pray if possible seven times a day, keep close to the 
 Church of England, etc.' They were to meet once a 
 week, and at every meeting ' consider the wants of 
 the poor, and each member was to bring a weekly 
 contribution proportionate to his means.' " 
 
 By 1710 there were, says Canon Overton, no less 
 than forty-five "religious societies" in London and 
 Westminster, besides a great number in the various 
 large towns in the kingdom. One great part of their 
 effort was spent in increasing the number and devout- 
 ness of religious services ; another in works of charity, 
 such as founding schools, helping poor scholars at 
 the university, setting free prisoners, etc. In both 
 respects they present a close parallel to the mediaeval 
 gilds. It is obvious, therefore, to remark that the 
 custom which has grown up in late years of establish- 
 ing such religious societies with a rule of life is a
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 177 
 
 native English practice, and amply warranted by 
 experience, as well as by the nature of the case. 
 Gilds seem, indeed, an ordinance of nature for 
 young men, because the influence of example, so 
 potent at that time of life and so often used against 
 religion, is thus enlisted in its service. One such 
 society, which in America has flourished exceedingly, 
 called the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, imposes upon 
 each of the brotherhood the responsibility of enlisting 
 one new member. It might be feared that our shyer 
 English nature would recoil from such direct prosely- 
 tizing were it not for the historical fact that the rapid 
 growth of the Queen Anne societies was directly due 
 to this very same rule. 
 
 8. There is one more element in the clerical ideal 
 that must not be overlooked even in so brief a sketch 
 as the present. It is one for which the layman 
 should be specially grateful, but, as a matter of fact, 
 it is that to which he most frequently fails to do 
 justice ; I mean, the practice of intercession. Our 
 English rubric directs the parochial clergy to say 
 the daily office in church unless hindered by reason- 
 able cause ; but the layman, who has his own business 
 to attend to on the week-days, is sometimes apt to 
 resent the parson's reading service in his absence. 
 But the parson surely might reply in the words of 
 Hamlet 
 
 " Every man hath business and desire 
 Such as it is, and for mine own poor part, 
 Look you, I'll go pray." 
 
 N
 
 178 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Prayer is in a special sense his business. He says 
 the daily prayers in church rather than at home, in 
 order that the "two or three" devout people who 
 have leisure may join him ; but he says them even 
 though he is alone, pointing out to the layman, who 
 is inclined to regard his own " assistance " as neces- 
 sary for the validity of an act of intercession, that 
 on similar reasoning he ought never to pray for 
 absent friends. 
 
 No one comprehends the rationale of prayer, and 
 for Christians it should be enough that they have the 
 command and the example of Christ, and the practice 
 of twenty centuries of Christendom. But in pro- 
 portion as people come to understand themselves 
 and each other, in that proportion their respect for 
 prayer grows. We are coming more clearly to 
 recognize the existence of innumerable subtle and 
 spiritual links binding men together, and binding all 
 men to God, and experience teaches that to dwell 
 upon these mysterious bonds, to give them emphasis, 
 is in some way to strengthen them. To bring before 
 God our people's needs is, in some inscrutable way, 
 to incline their hearts Godward. The great English 
 poet of the Victorian era, although he held himself 
 loose from the Church's dogmatic creed, was pro- 
 foundly convinced of the reality of this chain of 
 sympathy. In the Morte d? Arthur, he makes his 
 dying king say 
 
 " For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain,
 
 APOLOGIA PRO CLERO. 179 
 
 If knowing God they lift not hands in prayer 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
 For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 We may recollect, too, an interesting piece of ex- 
 perience recorded in General Gordon's diary : " Pray- 
 ing for people ahead of me whom I am about to 
 visit gives me much strength ; and it is wonderful 
 how something seems already to have passed between 
 us when I meet for the first time a chief for whom I 
 have prayed." With these two testimonies from lay- 
 men of more than average sensitiveness to reality, 
 I commend the subject to the consideration of my 
 lay brethren. And I conclude this imperfect state- 
 ment of our ideals with the thought it suggests, that 
 perhaps a sufficient apology for the clerical order is 
 the witness it bears before the world by such inter- 
 cessions to the existence of a sphere of interests 
 beyond those which are on every hand so obvious 
 and engrossing. 1 
 
 1 Since writing the above I have read an essay by Mr. F. W. Head, 
 Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in The Heart of the Empire, 
 written with too little regard for facts and logic, but with much of the 
 enthusiasm and the v&pts irfiraiSev/xeVTj proper to the junior members 
 of a university, and so engaging to us who are growing old. The essay 
 paints the Church as it is and as it might be. The blot upon the 
 Church at present is that it does not attract the working classes, who 
 are declared to be simple materialists, and the plausible advice is given 
 to modify the ancient gospel into something that the materialist may 
 find attractive. In the other section of the essay, however, it is laid 
 down that the great function of the Church is to "witness to the 
 unseen ; " but it is not explained how this, its ancient function, is to be
 
 l8o RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 combined with the new policy of attracting the materialist, or indeed 
 with the new constitution proposed for it. The new Church is to have 
 no creed but philanthropy. " The work which the hospitals are doing 
 seems to be as sacred as that of district visitors " (p. 274). At any 
 rate, it can hardly be said that hospitals " witness to the unseen." The 
 membership of the new Church is to include the secularist and the 
 agnostic (p. 290) ; for it is to be coextensive with the nation. In other 
 words, it will "witness to the unseen " by vanishing. Every one must 
 agree with the writer of this spirited essay that one way of compelling 
 people to come into any society is so to enlarge its borders as to include 
 them willy-nilly ; but members so admitted are not likely to be among 
 the most effective. It is, perhaps, worth saying plainly that so far as 
 the Church is failing at present, it is for lack of sufficient staff, and not 
 from any inherent vice in message or method. There are oases every- 
 where in the desert, and they are growing, and rapidly growing. In a 
 church in Birmingham this February 1902, I saw a regular congrega- 
 tion of five hundred enrolled working men, the five years' harvest of 
 one curate's work, not one of whom had been drawn by materialistic 
 attractions. But the best reply to Mr. Head is furnished by an essay 
 in the same volume by Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, who says plainly that 
 the philanthropic Church, as represented by the secular settlement, has 
 been tried and has failed, and that the future is with the old Church if 
 workers can be found.
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE 
 CLERGY
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 THE story goes that once at the dinner-table of the 
 late Master of Balliol, an eloquent dignitary of the 
 Church was inveighing against the apathy of laymen 
 in the matter of Church charities. " It is degrading 
 that we should have to go round and beg hat in hand 
 for what the charity of laymen should spontaneously 
 supply." The social barometer had been falling 
 degree after degree during the indictment, and when 
 it was concluded, the small, piping, husky voice of 
 the Master was heard to say : " Yes, what is degrading 
 is, that the clergy should have to exaggerate." The 
 whole company felt that the Master had saved the 
 situation, if he had not indeed turned the tables. 
 The dignitary was silenced, and the social barometer 
 rose again. Then, having done his duty by his 
 guests, the Master recollected that he also was a 
 clergyman, and owed something to his cloth, and 
 so continued : " I never exaggerate ; but then I never 
 get any money." Every one who has endeavoured
 
 1 84 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to raise money for charitable objects will sympathize 
 with the eloquent dignitary of this authentic anecdote, 
 and every one whose pockets have been attacked 
 will sympathize with the Master's rejoinder. The 
 fact remains that a very good cause may languish 
 for want of support if it cannot be made to appeal 
 vividly to the feelings through the imagination ; and 
 that man is wise in his generation who knows how 
 to enlist on the side of conscience such universally 
 responsive emotions as those which the French 
 politely named for us amour propre and esprit de 
 corps. Jowett, it may be mentioned, did himself 
 injustice when he disclaimed success as a col- 
 lector of subscriptions ; it is true he did not 
 exaggerate ; his method was to write begging 
 letters to old members of his college with his own 
 hand, a compliment that recognized the market 
 value of an autograph, and was not without its 
 reward. 
 
 Of the more important funds that were opened in 
 1897 as thankofferings for Queen Victoria's long 
 and prosperous reign, that for the London hospitals 
 was rendered auspicious by the Prince of Wales's 
 inauguration, and that for the nurses by the Queen's 
 own particular interest ; and apart from such loyal 
 considerations, everybody felt and feels that nurses 
 and hospitals are necessities of life, about the value 
 of which there cannot be two opinions. But when 
 our alms were solicited for the clergy, as they
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 185 
 
 were by the institution of the Queen Victoria 
 Fund, the response was not so ready, as the 
 published lists of subscriptions clearly show, 
 although the Church in its corporate capacity re- 
 commended the fund to the charity of its children 
 as its own peculiar thankoffering. What was the 
 reason ? 
 
 First of all the fact may not be admitted, but it 
 is true the clergy, although they may be individually 
 popular, are not now in England, and perhaps never 
 have been, popular as a class. The popular uniforms 
 are red or blue, hardly black. The touch of anti- 
 nomianism that exists in everybody, parsons and 
 all, Protestant and Catholic, is ever ready to rebel 
 against an institution which exists to be a check 
 upon our natural instincts. The feeling would not 
 often obtain such vivid expression as in the Berkshire 
 farmer's lament, "Us'll never be prosperous till us 
 have fewer of they black parsons, and more o' they 
 black pegs ; " it would probably never be expressed 
 at all in higher circles, unless in the smoking-room ; l 
 but the feeling is real enough to check the first 
 impulse of the fingers towards the purse-strings. 
 
 1 See, however, the essay already referred to (p. 179). "The 
 problem [of clerical poverty] really seems to be that of a fair wage. 
 The difficulty baldly stated is this the clergy have one measure of 
 their own value, the nation another. Demand and supply will always 
 in the end correspond. If, therefore, the clergyman is not paid for, it 
 means that his functions are not worth the price he puts upon them." 
 When Cambridge fellowships drop in value owing to the same cause, 
 viz. agricultural depression, does Mr. Head draw the same conclusion ?
 
 1 86 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 And then there comes in to reinforce this feeling 
 another, also rarely expressed, and not easily ex- 
 pressible by the well-to-do, that poverty becomes 
 the clergy. " Is there not a beatitude upon the poor 
 a beatitude to which the clergy are zealous in 
 calling our attention ? Is not the danger of riches 
 one of the commonplaces of the pulpit ? Well, then, 
 let the clergy practise what they preach ; an ounce 
 of example is worth a pound of precept." It is 
 always worth while to examine such general feelings 
 as this, because in the last analysis they usually 
 reveal some saving grain of truth. The contrast 
 between the fishermen of Galilee, who, as Michael 
 Angelo said to the Pope, "wore no gold on their 
 garments," and their successors the bishops, whether 
 of Rome or England, has been a text of satire since 
 the dawn of modern literature. And no doubt from 
 time to time the satire has been richly deserved. 
 But satire can never be the last word on any subject, 
 because it must, if it is to be pointed, omit a great 
 many circumstances that a just estimation must take 
 into account. For example, the argument from the 
 apostles to an English clergy cannot be complete 
 until it has weighed differences of climate, differences 
 of work, differences of social organization. When- 
 ever it has been found possible to revive again the 
 life of Christ "after the flesh," as it was lived 
 " beneath the Syrian blue," it has been in countries 
 like Italy, where comparatively little food suffices
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. l8/ 
 
 to support life, and where a natural shelter is all that 
 is required for the greater part of the year ; and 
 further, it has been where the work to be done was 
 of a missionary character, among a simple peasantry, 
 and where mendicancy was an approved mode of 
 subsistence. 
 
 In England, however, at least in country places, 
 and with these alone I am here concerned, the work 
 of the clergy is that of a settled pastorate ; its cir- 
 cumstances have nothing idyllic about them ; there 
 can be little enthusiasm excited by their labours 
 among the objects of them, and there is no disposi- 
 tion to support the clergy by free-will offerings. 
 Those, then, who think it well, in the abstract, that 
 a Christian clergy should be poor have to remember 
 that this poverty must at least be construed as it is 
 understood in England, and in the England of to- 
 day, where " a living wage " has become a political 
 term. There are, no doubt, at present many clergy- 
 men with private incomes ; but by far the greater 
 number of these have not an income large enough 
 to dispense with a stipend : some ^"300 of private 
 income, with as much from a benefice, will enable a 
 man to bring up his family as he himself was brought 
 up ; without a stipend he could not do so. It might 
 be possible, if the clergy were all celibate, to obtain 
 year by year a certain number of men of birth and 
 education, who would forego in the good cause the 
 life they have been accustomed to, just as there are
 
 1 88 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 always volunteers for the mission field. But English- 
 men, especially English villagers, prefer a married 
 clergy, and to offer them an artisan's wages is to ask 
 men who have themselves enjoyed the education of 
 gentlemen to be content to disclass their own chil- 
 dren. This is what the sentimental preference 
 for a poor clergy really comes to when put into 
 words ; and there is no person, whether simple 
 or gentle, who would not shrink from it as a base 
 piece of selfishness so soon as it is put into words 
 for him. 
 
 But, again, I have heard it said it was said by a 
 clergyman of my acquaintance who has considerable 
 private means, and the thought may be in the minds 
 of others "There seems a natural fitness that the 
 clergy should suffer with their parishioners. The 
 landowners and farmers are become, at least com- 
 paratively, poor men, and the clergy by operation of 
 the same causes have become poor also. This will 
 promote sympathy, and no doubt help rather than 
 hinder their ministrations." There is a certain 
 element of truth in this reflection. People are drawn 
 together by common misfortunes. But the circum- 
 stances are not really alike in the two cases. The 
 landlord and the farmer trade in the produce of the 
 land and must expect to be subject to the ordinary 
 rules of trade, among which are to be reckoned 
 fluctuations of the market ; but it is really an acci- 
 dent that the stipends of the clergy should depend
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 189 
 
 upon agriculture. The clergy, it is true, or their 
 predecessors, reaped the advantage when prices were 
 high, and so, it may be said, they have no right to 
 grumble now that prices are low. As a rule, they do 
 not grumble. But to say that the clergy have already 
 experienced both advantages and disadvantages from 
 their dependence upon land is not to justify that 
 dependence. And there is a very practical difference 
 between their position and that of the squires and 
 farmers. These others can turn their hand to what- 
 ever at the time is the more profitable branch of 
 their employment. Perhaps it is stock that for the 
 moment commands a high price, perhaps dairy 
 produce or fruit, but none of these things affect tithe 
 rent-charge, which is calculated only upon cereals. If 
 things come to the worst, the farmer can go into 
 another trade, turn bailiff or even butcher ; the 
 squire can let his house or his shooting, and it is 
 not probable that all his eggs are in one basket ; 
 above all, he has leisure and skill to manage his 
 affairs. The parson, on the other hand, is not by 
 training a man of business ; and when, through 
 causes for which he is not responsible, he finds his 
 income dwindling year after year, he has no resource. 
 If he endeavours, as he sometimes does, to speculate 
 in stocks, for all the joint-stock companies send him 
 their prospectuses, he very promptly comes to grief. 
 Every one cannot take pupils, or sell lithographed 
 sermons, or review for the Guardian, and the
 
 190 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 bishops are chary of giving leave to let the glebe 
 house ; there are, in short, no ways by which the man 
 who is a parson and nothing more can make up for 
 this collapse in his income. And when laymen 
 reflect that no life requires so much devotion of 
 time and interest, so much quiet thought, so much 
 freedom from personal cares as the clerical life, 
 they at least cannot regret that there should be 
 this disability. But then it follows that the parson, 
 not being a business man, must not be treated as if 
 he were, and be left to rise and fall with the market ; 
 he should be set free from such outside anxieties to 
 pursue his proper work unhindered. 
 
 Are things, then, it will be asked, getting very 
 bad? The answer is, They are already very bad 
 indeed. Any one who opens Crockford will find the 
 income of each living given in two forms, its value 
 and its gross income, with a considerable difference 
 between them. Let me illustrate from the living, a 
 good one, which I myself held until recently. Its 
 value is put down as 395 in tithe rent-charge (i.e. the 
 sum fixed by the commissioners in 1836 to be paid 
 by the landowners in lieu of tithes in kind), together 
 with the rent of fifty-six acres of glebe. Tithe rent- 
 charge was arranged to vary each year with the 
 average price of certain cereals for the seven previous 
 years. In 1883 it was exactly at par, and my pre- 
 decessor in that year received the whole sum of 
 ^395 > when I came to the living at the end of 1884,
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 191 
 
 the rent-charge was at 98 6s. 2d. per cent. ; in 
 1900 for each 100 I received only 66 15^.9!^.; 
 and the whole tithe rent-charge was 263 \6s. 6d. in- 
 stead of ^"395. The glebe rents, as to arable land, have 
 fallen from twenty-five shillings to twenty shillings 
 in some cases, in others to fifteen shillings an acre. 
 In parishes where the income is derived not from 
 tithe rent-charge but altogether from the rent of 
 glebes, the fall in value has been much greater, and 
 where the farms will not let it has reached vanishing 
 point. 
 
 But when the present value of the living has thus 
 been ascertained, this does not at once give the sum 
 at the parson's disposal for housekeeping expenses. 
 In other words, it is gross and not net income. Like 
 his lay brethren, the parson has to pay taxes and 
 rates, and though the latter have, since the Tithe 
 Rating Relief Act, been reduced by a half, they are 
 sufficiently heavy ; and there are besides a number 
 of charges to be met, varying with each diocese and 
 parish, which considerably reduce the residue. I am 
 allowed to submit two or three balance-sheets drawn 
 from different parts of the country, for the statements 
 in which I have authority, in order that the reader 
 may have some insight into the actual state of clerical 
 finances. But, first, as I have given one side of my 
 own professional balance-sheet, I will add the other. 
 It is for 1900, the year in which I vacated the 
 benefice :
 
 192 
 
 RELIGIO LAICI. . 
 
 Dr. 
 
 EXAMPLE I. 
 
 Tithe rent-charge . 
 Glebe rents ... 
 
 *. 
 
 .. 263 16 
 69 16 
 
 d. 
 6 
 6 
 
 ^333 13 
 
 
 
 Poor rate ... ... 
 
 School rate (voluntary) 
 
 Archdeacon's fees ... 
 
 Queen Anne's Bounty 2 
 
 Fire insurance on 
 chancel, 3 house, etc. 
 
 House duty 
 
 Land tax 
 
 One year's share of 
 zoj i6s. 3d. paid 
 for dilapidations 
 incurred in last five 
 years* 
 
 Cr. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 20 14 6 
 
 5 o 
 
 13 
 
 1 9 
 
 3 I' 
 
 41 
 
 79 6 2 
 Balance 254 6 10 
 
 ;333 13 o 
 
 It thus becomes evident that a living whose normal 
 value is 500 is worth to-day, when income tax has 
 been paid, less than half that sum. It offers, in fact, 
 the amount that kind-hearted people are accustomed, 
 when they discuss this question, to fix upon as a 
 reasonable minimum stipend. Most people would 
 argue that .250 is a sum upon which a clergyman 
 
 1 In Board districts the school rate will be double or treble this, and 
 the voluntary subscriptions will have to be paid in addition. 
 
 2 This is a fund to augment poor benefices, instituted by Queen 
 Anne, who surrendered to it her right, once the Pope's, to first-fruits 
 and tenths. From this fund grants are made equal to the amount 
 raised locally. In 1895 a capital sum was granted of ,35,800 in aug- 
 mentation of 138 benefices, i.e. the incomes of these livings were raised 
 about 7 each. 
 
 3 The rector is liable for the repair, insurance, etc. , of the chancel. 
 
 4 This sum constitutes a considerable rent. In addition to it an 
 annual sum of from ,12 to 15 had been spent in the previous years 
 of the quinquennium for repairs.
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 193 
 
 with a small family might be able, with economy, to 
 live in the country. But then it must be well under- 
 stood that by this is meant 250 net. House- 
 keepers may find it interesting to divide up this sum 
 among the various necessary heads of expense ; 
 such as butcher, grocer, dairy, garden seeds, coals 
 and wood, clothes and boots, washing, servants (?), 
 odd man or boy (?), pony (?), newspaper, stamps, 
 books (?), schooling, holidays, doctor and drugs, wine 
 for the influenzic, life insurance, subscriptions (coal 
 club, treats, flower show, etc.), charities. But to pro- 
 ceed with the balance-sheets 
 
 Dr. EXAMPLE II. 
 
 Cr. 
 
 s- d. 
 
 
 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Tithe rent-charge ... 152 13 6 
 Glebe rents 54 o o 
 
 Poor rates 
 Archdeacon's fees and 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 Queen Anne's Bounty 
 
 i 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 Repairs to chancel . . . 
 
 4 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 House duty ... 
 
 i 
 
 i? 
 
 
 
 
 Land tax 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 Expenses of tithe col- 
 
 
 
 
 
 lection * 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Life insurance 3 
 
 4i 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 
 Balance 
 
 138 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 206 13 6 
 
 206 13 6 
 
 1 The expenses of tithe collection are of course lighter or heavier 
 according as the payers are few or many. In some parts of the country 
 a dinner is expected. 
 
 2 Objection may be taken to the inclusion of a life insurance policy 
 in this balance-sheet as not being a necessary charge. But I venture 
 to say that for a clergyman without private means, such a charge is 
 necessary. In this case it is large in proportion to the income, but it 
 must be observed the income has sunk more than 100 since the policy 
 was taken out. Nothing is entered here for fire insurance, which 
 
 O
 
 194 
 
 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 In this case a sum of 138 6s. is the available 
 income of the clergyman of the place. He has six 
 children of an age to require education. There are 
 happily schools partially endowed, in order to help 
 the poorer clergy in this matter, but even in them 
 the expense per head does not fall below 15, and 
 maybe 20. If four of the six children are at school 
 at one time, this would leave a balance of 76, i.e. 
 thirty shillings a week, for food and clothing. 
 
 Dr. EXAMP 
 
 '. d. 
 Tithe rent-charge ... 81 7 6 
 Glebe rent 166 i 6 
 Way leave 30 o o 
 
 LE III. Cr. 
 
 s. d. 
 First-fruits 1 15 15 u 
 Tenths i u 6 
 Clergy Pension Fund * 4 9 3 
 Poor rates 3 3 13 9 
 Life insurance ... 1312 I 
 House and paddock 
 repairs ... ... 2 18 4 
 Income and property 
 tax 8 17 gj 
 Voluntary school rate I 3 Si 
 
 52 2 I 
 
 Balance 225 7 u 
 
 277 o o 
 
 277 9 o 
 
 is a dangerous omission ; nor for house and glebe repairs. These last, 
 if neglected till the living is vacant, would become a first charge upon 
 the life insurance. 
 
 1 These first-fruits and tenths are the payments to Queen Anne's 
 Bounty Fund, the former, as its name implies, being paid the first year 
 only of enjoying a benefice. 
 
 * The Clergy Pension Fund has been lately established to pay an 
 annuity of ,15 l$s. on reaching the age of sixty-five on every annual 
 payment of two guineas begun at the age of twenty-four. 
 
 3 The poor rates are small in proportion to the income, because as 
 most of this is from glebe rents, the rates will be paid by the occupier. 
 The fire insurance here, too, seems to have been dropped.
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 195 
 
 In this case there are eight children whose ages 
 run from four to sixteen years. I will exhibit one 
 more balance-sheet because it contains a few new 
 features. It is for the year 1897. 
 
 Dr. EXAM 
 
 '- d. 
 Tithe rent-charge ... 12 14 o 
 
 Glebe rent 261 o o 
 
 Fees 220 
 
 Grant from charity ... 20 o o 
 
 295 16 o 
 
 PLE IV. 
 
 C 
 
 ;-. 
 
 
 
 
 
 s. 
 
 J. 
 
 Queen Anne's Bounty 
 
 
 i 
 
 3 
 
 Poor rates 
 
 3 
 
 16 
 
 ii 
 
 Life insurance 
 
 S3 
 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 Fire insurance 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 IO 
 
 River Maintenance 
 
 
 
 
 rate 
 
 i 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 Annual payment for 
 
 
 
 
 repair of buildings, 
 
 
 
 
 and collection of 
 
 
 
 
 income 
 
 28 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 House repairs . . 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 Tithe not recovered . . 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 Rent not recovered . . 
 
 32 
 
 16 
 
 8 
 
 Land tax 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 School rate and church 
 
 
 
 
 expenses ... 
 
 6 
 
 i 
 
 3 
 
 
 157 
 
 19 
 
 ii 
 
 Balance 
 
 137 
 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 '295 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 The interest of this last case is that, while the 
 apparent net income is only a few pounds short of 
 300, this is reduced more than .100 further by 
 losses in rent and by necessary charges, so that when 
 the life insurance is paid there remains for household 
 expenses only a sum of .137 i6s. id., or less than 
 the wage of a head gardener. The clergyman whose 
 balance-sheet this is has six children. 
 
 But it will perhaps be urged, these are exceptional
 
 196 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 cases, with which existing charities, if properly sup- 
 ported, should be competent to deal. Alas ! it is 
 not so. Charities such as the Corporation of the 
 Sons of the Clergy and the Poor Clergy Relief 
 Corporation have done and are doing excellent work, 
 as their several reports show, but the present distress 
 is far beyond their means to cope with. Two of the 
 cases I have adduced are average cases, and one is 
 - even above the average, and they are quoted for 
 that reason. I have said nothing of benefices whose 
 annual net value is below 100. Of these there are 
 1491 in England and Wales, and they, we must hope, 
 would only be held by persons of sufficient private 
 means. There comes a time, however, in the life of 
 a curate when he longs to settle down ; vicars, he 
 knows, prefer young men ; and when a living of this 
 sort offers, and such may usually be had for the 
 asking, he is tempted to think too much of the rent- 
 free house, which is really not rent-free, of the possi- 
 bilities of the garden, 1 of pupils, or of literature in 
 odd moments, and so to embark on a fight with 
 fortune which cannot but have a disastrous issue. I 
 have known cases of this sort, but they are too pain- 
 ful to dwell upon, and for my present purpose they 
 are almost beside the point. For I wish to make 
 
 1 The garden, if he cannot be his own gardener, will cost him many 
 times the value of the vegetables it supplies. I know of one clergyman 
 who, when through ill health he could no longer work his garden him- 
 self, turned it into a rabbit warren, and so found a substitute for the 
 butcher's meat he could no longer afford.
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 197 
 
 clear not that there are livings in England which 
 are starvings that is an old story but that the 
 average living, which twenty years ago might have 
 supported a careful housekeeper in decency, is now 
 altogether insufficient for this purpose, and needs 
 augmentation. Omitting all further mention of 
 the lowest class of living, I will refer my readers 
 to a table drawn up by Canon Burnside, and printed 
 at the conclusion of this paper, from which it will 
 be seen that there are 4704 benefices, the income of 
 which is over 100 and under 200, the average net 
 value being only ;i54- 
 
 I shall assume, then, that the fact of a prevailing 
 clerical poverty is now granted, and proceed to speak 
 of various proposals to deal with it. The solution 
 that first presents itself to the ordinary letter-writer 
 in the journals is a general redistribution of Church 
 property. It is idle to deny that the State which 
 has more than once contemplated disendowment, has 
 the abstract right to carry out a scheme of redistribu- 
 tion. To a certain extent such work is familiar to 
 us in the action of the Ecclesiastical Commission 
 in regard to episcopal incomes. But in regard to 
 benefices the matter is different. While the right 
 of presentation to the better endowed benefices 
 remains in private hands, any such redistribution by 
 the Church is impossible, and by the State it would 
 not be attempted. Nor can it be said to be really 
 desirable. The princely incomes which were for a
 
 198 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 little while enjoyed by the vicars of such rapidly 
 growing manufacturing towns as Leeds or Rochdale 
 have already been distributed among the new district 
 churches that have sprung up around them ; and 
 where the income of a living in the country makes 
 an imposing appearance in the Clergy List, it will 
 generally be found that the area of the parish is very 
 large, with perhaps two or three hamlets, each having 
 its chapel-of-ease, and requiring the permanent service 
 of a curate-in-charge. The best-endowed country 
 living of which I have any personal knowledge used 
 to be returned at the gross value of ;i6oo ; the 
 present value is about ,1200. Out of this a quarter 
 of the old gross income, i.e. .400, is drawn by the 
 late vicar as a retiring pension, and with the remainder 
 the present vicar, after paying all dues and rates, has 
 to serve four hamlet churches, besides the church of 
 his parish. But even if the vicar could depend upon 
 so large an income for his own purposes as 750, is 
 there anything in this to outrage public sentiment ? 
 Is it degrading to a clergyman to be free from money 
 anxieties, to be able to educate his children at the 
 cheaper grammar schools, to occasionally buy a book, 
 or occasionally take a holiday, and have a margin 
 for charity ? Is it unreasonable in him to wish to 
 do such things unless he happen to have private 
 means ? If the Churchman in the street would not 
 have allotted this sufficient income to the parson of 
 his own parish, need his eye be evil because some
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 199 
 
 old lord of the manor took a more generous view of 
 a clergyman's deserts ? Let us by all means ensure 
 that none of the beneficed clergy shall have a less 
 stipend than 250 a year, but let us not grudge to 
 others their better fortune and forbid any living to 
 exceed this sum. 1 However, as I have said, the 
 scheme is not one of practical politics, because 
 many of the larger livings are in private patron- 
 age. 
 
 Again, it is sometimes asked, would it not meet 
 the case to revive Easter offerings ? The rubric 
 provides that "yearly at Easter every Parishioner 
 shall reckon with the Parson, Vicar, or Curate, or his 
 or their Deputy or Deputies, and pay to them or him 
 all Ecclesiastical Duties accustomably due, then and 
 at that time to be paid." Well, there are many 
 reasons why such a revival would in most country 
 places be impracticable. To begin with, it requires 
 some violence to modern habits and feelings for a 
 parson, vicar, or curate, to send round the alms-bag 
 for his own needs. He recognizes, no doubt, that 
 
 1 The argument for keeping larger benefices as rewards for service is 
 often urged, and as often ridiculed. Coleridge in his Table Talk dis- 
 cusses the point, and rightly lays down that the obvious fact that many 
 have not in time past been given for merit is no argument against 
 endeavouring to use them so more generally. St. Paul seems to favour 
 the practice in I Tim. v. 17 : " Let the elders that rule well be counted 
 worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in the word and 
 in teaching. For the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox 
 when he treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his 
 hire." The quotations imply that the "honour" referred to was 
 honorarium.
 
 200 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 the labourer is worthy of his hire, and that the ox 
 should not be muzzled. He does not forget that 
 one quarter of the offertory sentences relate to the 
 duty of maintaining the ministry ; but for all that 
 to " sing an offertory " for himself while the church- 
 wardens went from pew to pew would be intolerable 
 to any self-respecting person. And strong reasons 
 would reinforce the natural distaste. It would very 
 much interfere with the clergyman's freedom of 
 remonstrance with the poorer parishioners if he were 
 in the habit of receiving their alms. If dissenters 
 envy Churchmen the independence they derive from 
 endowments, Churchmen are likely to think twice 
 before surrendering this independence. But, it will 
 be said, all who come to country churches are not 
 peasants. No; but then it is just these others who 
 are hardest hit by agricultural depression. Tithe 
 rent-charge has fallen low, but not low enough to 
 content the yeoman. He cannot be expected to 
 remember that this charge was a charge on the land 
 when he bought it, and therefore does not come out 
 of his own pocket. If he pays his tithes a half-year 
 or a year after they come due, he thinks he has 
 already done for the clergyman more than could 
 reasonably be expected of him. The country squires, 
 too, are in no position to be generous. It would 
 certainly be a good thing to revive the old idea that 
 Easter offerings are due to the clergy, and let them 
 be given to the local branch of a general Sustentation
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 2OI 
 
 Fund. But the sums collected in most country 
 parishes could not be large. 
 
 If then it be admitted, as all must admit who will 
 pay attention to the facts, that the Church needs a 
 large measure of re-endowment, and if it be admitted 
 also, as by Churchmen it will not be denied, that the 
 support of the clergy is as much a Christian duty as 
 the building of churches or maintenance of hospitals, 
 there should need but few words to commend the 
 Queen Victoria Clergy Fund to the alms of the faith- 
 ful. The history of the fund, its methods of work, 
 and how far they have hitherto succeeded in their 
 object, may be ascertained from the Annual Reports. 1 
 The aim of the fund is naturally to collect money 
 from all quarters, and apply it where there is the 
 greatest need. It proceeds, therefore, to organize 
 in every diocese a branch fund which affiliates itself 
 to the central fund by the payment of one-fifth of its 
 annual income. In this way, while the bulk of the 
 money raised in each diocese goes to the support 
 of its own incumbents, and so local patriotism is 
 stimulated, the central fund is enabled to help the 
 poorer districts, not only from funds paid directly 
 to it, but from the contributions of the more wealthy 
 dioceses. At present the rich diocese of Liverpool 
 is holding aloof, but it is hoped that more generous 
 counsels will by-and-by prevail The grants made 
 
 1 The office of the Society is at Church House, Dean's Yard. The 
 secretary is C. Guise Mitford, Esq.
 
 202 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to the several dioceses are given in block, and are 
 distributed by the local organizations at their dis- 
 cretion ; and they are employed because of the 
 present distress in augmentation of the income of 
 benefices, not by way of permanent endowment, 
 which is the method of Queen Anne's Bounty, though 
 the fund is prepared to hold and apply sums which 
 are specially so dedicated. The Report for 1900 
 says that " the amount received by the central fund 
 in donations, etc., during 1899 for the purpose of 
 annual grants was 9343 7s. $d. In addition to this 
 sum 5623 gs. gd. was contributed by the affiliated 
 Diocesan Organizations, as one-fifth quota of money 
 raised in 1898 for annual grants, thus making a total 
 of 14,966 i?s." In the previous year the total was 
 nearly half as much again, viz. 21,619 14^. nd. 
 What will it be in 1901 P 1 When it is known that 
 Lord Egerton of Tatton estimates that a million a 
 year is needed to raise all the poor benefices to 250 
 it will be understood that a good deal remains to be 
 done. In fact, Churchmen have to learn over again a 
 lesson which our forefathers understood, and which 
 their munificence has enabled us to forget, that it is "a 
 clearly defined Christian duty" to contribute towards 
 the support of the clergy. Dissenters recognize this, 
 but to the present generation of Churchmen the idea is 
 
 1 The answer, as appears from the Fifth Annual Report issued as this 
 paper passes the press, is ^14,308 qs. &d. a constantly diminishing 
 fund to meet a constantly increasing poverty.
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 203 
 
 strange. I once knew a gentleman who apologized for 
 having been mistakenly supposed to take the liberty of 
 so contributing. The appeal must lie to the wealthy, 
 but it need not lie to them exclusively. Annual 
 subscriptions of five shillings would soon tell in the 
 total. But, of course, to the wealthy the appeal must 
 lie especially, and the wealthy at present are those 
 engaged in commerce. It may be pointed out to 
 them that, as the first endowment of the Church 
 came from the new heritage of landowners in Eng- 
 land, so the second endowment should come from 
 England's new commercial wealth. Mr. Gladstone, 
 speaking on behalf of the St. Asaph branch of this 
 fund, put very pointedly a fact that needs to be 
 remembered that the commercial classes have 
 actually gained by the very depression of agriculture 
 under which the landowners and the country clergy 
 are at present suffering. From that speech I take 
 leave to quote a few sentences 
 
 " It is not landlords nowadays in whose hands the 
 great bulk of the wealth of the country is placed. 
 Reference to the return of the Income Tax will show 
 you that the landed income of the country now forms 
 a very small proportion of the total income, not of 
 the nation at large, but of those who must be con- 
 sidered the wealthy classes of the nation. The 
 wealthy classes of the nation have in no respect been 
 injured by the pressure that has come upon the land- 
 lords and upon the clergy. On the contrary, the
 
 204 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 wealthy classes of the nation have largely benefited 
 by that pressure, because they have enjoyed the 
 whole advantage of the cheapness of commodities 
 of the first necessity, which has been such a blessing 
 to the country. . . . The wealth of the country lies 
 mainly with the commercial classes, and the com- 
 mercial classes are aggregated in the great towns. 
 It is in London, in Liverpool, in Manchester, in 
 Leeds, in Birmingham, in the great centres of popu- 
 lation, that wealth has been accumulated ; and it is 
 upon the laity of those dioceses that we are especially 
 entitled to make a call, and to conjure them to 
 stretch out the hand of Christian bounty, I might 
 almost say of Christian decency, for the purpose of 
 relieving the straits and hard necessities under which 
 the clergy of the rural parishes are now living." 
 
 CANON BURNSIDE'S REPORT UPON THE VALUE OF 
 CLERICAL INCOMES. 
 
 " This report, representing the value of clerical 
 incomes, has been prepared by careful and detailed 
 examination of the Annual Statistical Returns 
 furnished by the parochial clergy at the request of 
 the Bishops. 
 
 " The net value in each case is given, and this has 
 been arrived at by making certain deductions from 
 the gross value as follows :
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 2O5 
 
 " The gross income is derived from all available 
 sources. (i) Tithe rent-charge, the average for 
 the year being taken. (2) Rent of glebe for year. 
 (3) Pew rents. (4) Church collections and Easter 
 offerings. (5) Fees and Easter dues. (6) In- 
 terest on funded property, etc. (7) Annual in- 
 come from Ecclesiastical Commissioners and other 
 sources. 
 
 "The net value is ascertained by making the fol- 
 lowing deductions : (i) Parochial rates and taxes 
 (not income tax). (2) Insurance of chancel, glebe pre- 
 mises. (3) Tenths, mortgage dues, etc. (4) Cost of col- 
 lection of income. (5) A pension under Resignation 
 Act (6) Any other annual payment chargeable 
 upon the benefice. (7) Necessary repairs to glebe 
 premises. (8) Amount of stipend paid to assistant- 
 clergy by the incumbent out of his own income, but 
 only when the population, number of churches, and 
 services necessitate the employment of such addi- 
 tional help. 
 
 " Upon this basis of calculation, and making full 
 allowance for all the advantages conferred by the 
 reduction of rates under the recent Tithe Rating 
 Relief Act, the average net value of a benefice in 
 England and Wales for the year ending Easter, 1900, 
 is 248 ; to this must be generally added the value 
 of a parsonage-house, though in many cases this 
 provision does not exist. There are no sources of 
 information to which we can refer to ascertain the
 
 2O6 
 
 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 present average value of a glebe house. In a report, 
 however, furnished to Parliament in the year 1890, 
 touching the revenues of the . Church of England, 
 the parsonage-houses are there represented as being 
 assessed at the total sum of 518,054. Now, if we 
 accept this as our basis of calculation, the average 
 value of a parsonage-house would be 37, and this 
 being added to the average income, 248, would 
 make the total net annual value of a benefice 285. 
 "In presenting their report to Parliament in 1890 
 upon ecclesiastical revenues, the Commissioners 
 pointedly drew attention to the following facts, that 
 more than two-thirds of the cost of the parsonage- 
 houses may be regarded as derived from private 
 benefactions and from the payment of the clergy 
 out of their incomes." 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF BENEFICES IN THE DIOCESES 
 OF ENGLAND AND WALES, THEIR AVERAGE NET VALUE, AND 
 RELATIVE POPULATION. 
 
 At Net Value. 
 
 .. V 
 
 V 3 
 
 M^ 
 g> 
 
 s i 
 
 % a o 
 
 '? 
 
 No. of Benefices at the Specified Values, with a 
 Population varying as follows, i.e. under 
 
 
 |j 
 
 6 o p 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Over 
 
 
 % 
 
 izi^fi, 
 
 200 
 
 400 
 
 600 
 
 800 
 
 1000 
 
 2000 
 
 4000 
 
 60006000 
 
 Under jioo 
 
 67 
 
 1491 
 
 549 
 
 384 
 
 164 
 
 74 
 
 63 
 
 no 
 
 81 
 
 20 
 
 37 
 
 200 
 
 154 
 
 4704 
 
 918 
 
 "95 
 
 6 S i 
 
 4" 
 
 267 
 
 S7& 
 
 351 
 
 i6s 
 
 170 
 
 300 
 
 245 
 
 4577 
 
 39 
 
 725 
 
 603 
 
 39 
 
 309 
 
 625 
 
 S70 
 
 44 S 
 
 S93 
 
 400 
 
 339 
 
 2001 
 
 07 
 
 227 
 
 286 
 
 105 
 
 "5 
 
 237 
 
 2S3 
 
 228 
 
 423 
 
 500 
 
 442 
 
 725 
 
 18 
 
 68 
 
 96 
 
 65 
 
 69 
 
 "5 
 
 
 67 
 
 1,6 
 
 600 
 
 544 
 
 374 
 
 8 
 
 19 
 
 34 
 
 48 
 
 35 
 
 6s 
 
 S4 
 
 40 
 
 
 700 
 
 644 
 
 160 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 14 
 
 IS 
 
 26 
 
 27 
 
 26 
 
 32 
 
 Over 700 
 
 906 
 
 210 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 9 
 
 30 
 
 32 
 
 37 
 
 60 
 
 Totals ... 
 
 248 
 
 14242 
 
 1881 2632 
 
 1860 
 
 1185 
 
 882 
 
 1784 
 
 1459 
 
 1037 
 
 1522
 
 THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY. 
 DIOCESES OF THE SOUTHERN PROVINCE. 
 
 2O7 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF BENEFICES IN THE DIOCESES OF 
 THIS PROVINCE, THEIR AVERAGE NET VALUE, AND RELATIVE 
 POPULATION. 
 
 At Net Value. 
 
 No. Bene- 
 fices in Pro- 
 vince. 
 
 1 
 
 No. of Benefices at the Specified Values, with 
 a Population varying as follows, i.e. under 
 
 200 
 
 523 
 839 
 286 
 62 
 18 
 7 
 4 
 8 
 
 400 
 
 600 
 
 800 
 
 336 
 327 
 140 
 58 
 37 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 1000 
 
 2000 
 
 IOC 
 
 460 
 
 470 
 
 1 80 
 
 99 
 54 
 20 
 
 24 
 
 4000 
 
 69 
 
 244 
 382 
 
 60 
 38 
 
 21 
 31 
 
 986 
 
 6OOO 
 
 25 
 128 
 
 277 
 
 133 
 46 
 26 
 22 
 23 
 
 Over 
 6000 
 
 29 
 126 
 363 
 195 
 75 
 49 
 20 
 
 39 
 
 Under 100 ... 
 
 200 ... 
 
 300 ... 
 400 ... 
 500 ... 
 600 ... 
 700 ... 
 Over 700 ... 
 
 1370 
 
 393 6 
 3478 
 1415 
 559 
 216 
 
 122 
 15 
 
 *7 
 
 153 
 
 244 
 
 338 
 
 441 
 
 544 
 642 
 885 
 
 347 
 1049 
 632 
 
 202 
 
 57 
 
 14 
 
 4 
 J 
 
 2313 
 
 538 
 500 
 258 
 
 87 
 28 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 216 
 
 241 
 
 94 
 59 
 33 
 
 9 
 
 Totals ... 
 
 II3I6 
 
 234 
 
 1747 
 
 '579 
 
 985 
 
 723 
 
 1407 
 
 680 
 
 896 
 
 DIOCESES OF THE NORTHERN PROVINCE. 
 
 TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF BENEFICES IN THE DIOCESES OF 
 THIS PROVINCE, THEIR AVERAGE NET VALUE, AND RELATIVE 
 POPULATION. 
 
 At Net Value. 
 
 No. Bene- 
 fices in Pro- 
 vince. 
 
 ti 
 P 
 
 h 
 
 No. of Benefices at the Specified Values, with 
 a Population varying as follows, i.e. under 
 
 200 
 
 26 
 79 
 23 
 
 5 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 400 
 
 '600 
 
 800 
 
 5 
 75 
 7i 
 25 
 7 
 ii 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 200 
 
 ICOO 
 
 2000 
 
 4000 
 
 12 
 107 
 
 188 
 
 IO2 
 31 
 
 16 
 6 
 ii 
 
 6000 
 
 4 
 37 
 168 
 
 95 
 
 21 
 14 
 
 4 
 14 
 
 Over 
 6000 
 
 8 
 
 44 
 230 
 228 
 61 
 
 22 
 12 
 21 
 
 Under jioo ... 
 
 200 ... 
 
 300 ... 
 400 ... 
 500 ... 
 600 ... 
 700 ... 
 Over 700 ... 
 
 121 
 768 
 1099 
 586 
 166 
 88 
 38 
 60 
 
 66 
 156 
 248 
 
 34i 
 448 
 
 546 
 650 
 960 
 
 37 
 146 
 
 93 
 
 25 
 ii 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 14 
 
 "3 
 
 103 
 28 
 9 
 
 281 
 
 5 
 Si 
 68 
 
 21 
 IO 
 2 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 116 
 
 155 
 
 57 
 16 
 ii 
 6 
 6 
 
 Totals ... 2926 
 
 271 
 
 34 
 
 319 
 
 159 
 
 377 
 
 473 
 
 357 
 
 626
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL 
 CONTROVERSY
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL 
 CONTROVERSY. 
 
 i. THE most conspicuous of the many fallacies 
 that are distinguishing the controversy about ritual 
 in the Church is the assumption borrowed from Sir 
 William Harcourt that it is nothing but the ancient 
 and fundamental antinomy between clerk and lay- 
 man. If that were indeed so, it would undoubtedly 
 have been difficult for the party Sir William cham- 
 pions to secure a more redoubtable protagonist ; 
 for his sentiments towards the clergy seem to be 
 those of angry contempt, and his vocabulary of 
 vituperation is unrivalled. Of course, the fact is 
 that the struggle is not between clergy and laity at 
 all f or a struggle of that nature could not last for 
 five minutes it is a struggle between laymen on one 
 side and laymen on the other, each party being con- 
 vinced that it has behind it both the intelligence of 
 England and the formularies of the Church, and the 
 Church being for the moment without a final court 
 of appeal whose decisions both parties will accept as 
 binding. Sir William Harcourt found it expedient 
 to ignore this plain fact, although, with Lord Halifax 
 
 P 2
 
 212 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 playing the corresponding rdle to his own, he must 
 have found it difficult to do so. But to recognize 
 that the laity of England is divided would have com- 
 pelled him to greater politeness in his philippics, 1 for 
 laymen are apt to resent abuse ; it would have re- 
 quired him also to deal less in denunciation and more 
 in argument ; and, more than all, it would have 
 destroyed an invaluable appeal to popular prejudice, 
 for the "average sensual man" is not fond of the 
 clergy, and easily believes ill of a class with whom 
 he seldom comes in close contact. The fallacy, then, 
 though so patent, is worth a moment's consideration 
 because of its controversial value. Relying upon it, 
 Sir William Harcourt has filled his letters to The 
 Times with such equivocal sentences as this : " The 
 time has arrived when the laity t who are the Church, 
 of which the clergy are the ministers, are, I believe, 
 fully resolved to assert and maintain the rights which 
 are secured to them by the Constitution of the National 
 Church." But if Sir William Harcourt will only pro- 
 secute his ecclesiastical studies a little further, 2 he will 
 find that the rights of the laity are insisted upon with 
 even greater passion than his own by the party on 
 whom he seeks to fix the obnoxious name of "clerical." 
 It is an interesting fact, familiar to those who 
 study Church history, that whenever things have been 
 
 1 A series of letters to The Times, reprinted as a pamphlet entitled 
 Lawlessness in the English Church. 
 
 2 See Essays on Church Rtform, edited by the Bishop of Worcester.
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 213 
 
 pushed to extremes, either of excess or defect, 
 whether in doctrine or ritual, it is not the clergy 
 but the laity who have been the prime movers. The 
 clergy do not make good leaders of a party. A 
 successful leader should know his own mind and 
 not too much besides ; he must not be hampered by 
 a capacity for seeing both sides of a question, nor 
 must he be the ready prey of scruples. The ordinary 
 person wants to be told that he is right and that 
 everybody else is wrong, and that is what only a 
 layman has the audacity to tell him. In every pro- 
 fession you will find laymen ready to rush in where 
 the trained expert treads very cautiously. So it has 
 been of late in the ritual controversy. So it has 
 probably been in the matter of ritual excess. If the 
 cases where illegal rites or ceremonies have been used 
 were investigated, I am confident it would be generally 
 found that the motive power has been supplied by 
 laymen, with their strong sense of logic, their im- 
 perious will, their very scanty and partial information 
 on the law of the Church and the history of the 
 particular usage, and their very profound contempt 
 for any view of the question but their own, not least for 
 that of the Ordinary. In the late Bishop of London's 
 last address to his Ruridecanal Conferences, he lays 
 it down that the Church of the Middle Ages went 
 astray through its constant desire to meet the demands 
 of popular devotion. In other words, it was the lay- 
 men who led, and the clergy who, in their benevolence,
 
 214 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 did not sufficiently resist. 1 But then, as now, it was 
 the laymen of the other side who, when the inevitable 
 reaction came, led the persecution, and hounded on 
 the reluctant bishops ; 2 and now, as then, it is the 
 clergy who have to bear the brunt of the struggle 
 between the opposing factions. Mr. Kensit's lambs 
 are in direct succession from the London prentices 
 who mobbed Convocation in the first year of Edward 
 
 1 Here is a characteristic story : " The new service book was used 
 throughout England for the first time on Whit-Sunday, the gth of June 
 [1549]. On Whitsun Monday the parish priest of Sampford Courtenay, 
 a village of Dartmoor in Devon, was going into his church for the 
 morning prayers, when a group of his parishioners, among them a 
 tailor named Underbill, and Hegar, a labourer, came about him asking 
 ' what he would do and what service he would say.' That ' he would 
 say the same service that he had said the day before, according to the 
 law set forth," was the answer of the priest. But the villagers replied, 
 ' We will keep the old and ancient religion, as our forefathers before us 
 have done," etc. The priest yielded, put on his vestments, and said 
 mass in the old language with all the customary ceremonies." Dixon's 
 History of the Church, iii. 45. 
 
 2 Canon Dixon has shown this in regard to the Marian persecution. 
 An interesting case on the Protestant side is found in the Memoirs of a 
 certain Edward Underbill. He brought the Vicar of Stepney in King 
 Edward's days, for interrupting the Protestant preachers in his church, 
 before Archbishop Cranmer ; "who was too full of lenity. A little 
 he rebuked him, and bade him do no more so. ' My lord,' said I, 
 ' methinks you are too gentle unto so stout a Papist.' ' Well,' said he, 
 ' we have no law to punish him by.' ' We have, my lord,' said I. 'If 
 I had your authority I would be so bold to un- Vicar him, or minister 
 some sharp punishment unto him, and such other. If ever it come to 
 their turn, they will show you no such favour.' 'Well, 'said he, 'if 
 God so provide, we must abide it.' ' Surely,' said I, ' God will never 
 give you thanks for this ; but rather take the sword from such as will 
 not use it upon His enemies.' And thus we departed. The like favour 
 is showed now [i.e. in Elizabeth's days], and, therefore, the like plague 
 will follow." Arber's English Garner, iv. 86.
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 215 
 
 VI., and if Sir William Harcourt finally triumphs, it 
 will be seen whether he will not emulate the Protector 
 Somerset in hanging "ritualistic" vicars from their 
 own steeples. 
 
 I may, perhaps, be asked how it happens, if the 
 laymen of the Church, properly so called, are at 
 present ranged under two banners, that a " Laymen's 
 League " has been formed in order to carry through 
 Parliament a particularly drastic measure for the 
 ejection of " ritualistic " clergy. The answer is partly 
 that given above, that the name of " layman " is a 
 good righting name ; but, further, that the league 
 is more exactly styled the "Liverpool Laymen's 
 League," and the Liverpool layman, speaking roundly, 
 has marked characteristics. The type, which runs 
 with degrees of refinement through all classes except 
 a few families of hereditary culture, and some others 
 which are reactionary, is most simply described as 
 Orange. A reminiscence, if I may be pardoned the 
 egotism, will explain what Orangeism means in its 
 lowest terms, and to-day it is the lowest expression 
 of an idea that is apt to exercise the greatest political 
 influence. 1 Nineteen years ago I was attached as 
 assistant curate to St. Thomas's Church, Liverpool 
 Docks, then in the patronage of Mr. Gladstone. The 
 vicar, who had been lately appointed, found the parish 
 
 1 As I revise this paper for republication, I observe that a Mr. Wise, 
 who is the Mr. Kensit of the Noithern Counties, has been returned at 
 the head of the poll for the Liverpool School Board !
 
 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 entirely neglected and the church without a con- 
 gregation, except upon one day in the year when 
 the Orange lodges assembled to protest against the 
 Pope. This unauthorized commination service the 
 new vicar would not allow, and then a persecution 
 was organized. It was resolved to give him, for a 
 thorn in the flesh, an Orange churchwarden. The 
 church was a district church of the vast parish of 
 Walton, so that it seemed the simplest matter possible 
 to order up a few lodges of Orangemen to swamp 
 at the Easter vestry whatever congregation the vicar's 
 energy had succeeded in getting together. Luckily, 
 after the first meeting, which was attended in force 
 by the Orangemen, and adjourned by the vicar at 
 midnight, it was discovered that the electors to the 
 office of churchwarden were, in that particular church, 
 not the parishioners, but the seat-holders. So the 
 Orangemen had to be content with sending deputa- 
 tions to the Sunday services to face west at the 
 creed, and stamp out of church if the word " altar " or 
 " sacrifice " occurred in lessons or sermon. The cere- 
 monial at the church during my vicar's incumbency 
 was of the normal type, with no vestments, or other 
 " rags of Popery " except the choir surplices, to object 
 to. I tell this trifling story because no one who has 
 not lived in Liverpool can have an idea how entirely 
 political and unreligious these so-called " Protestant " 
 organizations are. It needs but a spark to kindle 
 a street row between them and the Irish Roman
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 2 1/ 
 
 Catholics. On Orange Day the Protestant children, 
 if they are not well looked after, lie in wait for the 
 Roman children, who have their revenge on St. 
 Patrick's Day. The Members for Liverpool, who 
 to save their seats had to bring in a ridiculous 
 Discipline Bill, deserve all commiseration. 
 
 2. A second set of fallacies, equally patent and 
 equally noxious, has been industriously propagated 
 in a book written by a Mr. Walter Walsh, and called 
 The Secret History of the Oxford Movement. The 
 book might compendiously be described as an enor- 
 mous example of the fallacy a dicto secundum quid. 
 It comes to this : Because secret (political) societies, 
 such as those of Carbonari, are dangerous to a state, 
 therefore secret religions societies are dangerous. It 
 remains, then, to prove that certain well-known High 
 Church societies are "secret" For this purpose, 
 passages are collected from their printed reports in 
 which members are requested not to use postcards in 
 writing upon the society's business, or are cautioned 
 against allowing the society's papers to lie about 
 for inquisitive eyes. Mr. Walsh's modesty prevents 
 his drawing the obvious conclusion that it was only 
 from such as he, the spies of a prosecuting society, 
 in the active days of the Public Worship Regulation 
 Act (1874), that there was any need for concealment. 1 
 
 1 It is significant that most of Mr. Walsh's stories of secret conclaves 
 belong to the seventies. His quotations in the Appendix, " What the 
 Ritualists teach," are for the most part as antiquated. There are no 
 doubt silly manuals still issued (such as one now lying before me, which
 
 218 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 And then comes in Mr. Walsh's second great fallacy : 
 Because the Church Association exists to defend the 
 Reformed Church of England, it follows that every 
 point, either in doctrine or ritual, that is distasteful 
 to the Church Association, must be of the nature of 
 treason to the Reformed Church. Hence all High 
 Churchmen are traitors, and every distinctively High 
 Church doctrine is " Romanizing." Mr. Walsh ignores 
 the fact that the Prayer-book was settled after the 
 Savoy Conference in an Anti-Puritan sense, and 
 ingeniously mixes up doctrines then definitely allowed 
 in our Church with those against which it still pro- 
 tests. He treats the doctrine of the " Real Presence " 
 in the Sacrament as identical with " Transubstantia- 
 tion ; " he everywhere implies that " Prayers for the 
 Dead " are inseparable from the doctrine of " Purga- 
 tory." No doubt Mr. Walsh has produced a quotation 
 from a sermon which justifies him in this latter 
 identification ; l just as, in all his researches, he has 
 
 advises those who are "unbaptized, excommunicate, or possessed with 
 devils " to leave church after the sermon), and it would be a boon to 
 the Church if the publication of these could be restrained. But one 
 would think more of Mr. Walsh's sincerity if in all his forty pages he 
 had quoted a single living writer of eminence, and more of his judgment 
 if he had distinguished between what is Roman and what is English 
 and Catholic. 
 
 1 It does not follow because a Roman word is used that a Roman 
 doctrine is taught. Most Christians believe in "an intermediate 
 state," and few would care to deny that it may be a state of purification. 
 But to call it " Purgatory," though the word denotes no more than 
 this, is in Protestant ears to imply the Romish doctrine of Indul- 
 gence ; just as to use the word "Mass," though the word itself is
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 2 19 
 
 discovered one case of scandal arising from the 
 practice of private confession. Then he employs 
 a useful method in induction, and treats the excep- 
 tional case as typical. But his most far-reaching 
 fallacy, considering the half-educated class at which 
 he aims, is innuendo, which may be reckoned a very 
 fruitful branch of the argumentum ad populum. He 
 tells, with many capitals and italics, the story of 
 Newman's secession to Rome ; roundly asserts that 
 he was always Roman in sympathy, which those 
 who have read the two volumes of his letters know 
 to be untrue ; and hints that all High Churchmen 
 are as insincere. He hints also at other vices. I 
 don't know how he does it, but somehow Mr. 
 Walsh manages to convey the impression that both 
 absolution and celibacy are breaches of the seventh 
 commandment. I wonder if he would accuse St. 
 Paul of " celibacy " ! 
 
 3. A third common fallacy, though of a much less 
 harmful nature, is the idea, sometimes defended, but 
 more often assumed, that unity in creed must neces- 
 sarily be accompanied by uniformity in ritual. This 
 argument is put with admirable precision in the 
 following sentence from one of Sir William Har- 
 court's letters : " An establishment is designed for 
 all, and therefore must by the nature of things have 
 
 meaningless, is to imply the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Church- 
 men who use these degraded words have themselves to blame if they 
 are misrepresented.
 
 220 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 one rule and measure for all " ! 1 In its original 
 context this Procrustean aphorism hardly arrests 
 attention, embedded as it is among insults to the 
 Episcopal Bench and threats to unfrock the clergy. 
 It is all in that fearless old sixteenth-century fashion, 2 
 and ought to have been printed in black letter and 
 emphasized by full-blooded oaths like " By my 
 halidom." But when we withdraw it from its own 
 page, and look at it in the dry light of to-day, it 
 looks less satisfactory. The modern spirit would 
 suggest as an alternative : " An establishment is 
 designed for all ; and therefore must by the nature 
 
 1 Lawlessness in the National Church, p. 82. 
 
 2 And yet the highest wisdom of the sixteenth century had already 
 declared against the policy with which Sir W. Harcourt has recently 
 identified himself. Bacon, in his Advertisement touching the Con- 
 troversies of the Church, gives excellent counsel, which should be 
 read and taken to heart by statesmen to-day. "The present con- 
 troversies," he says, " do not concern the great parts of the worship of 
 God, of which it is true that there will be kept no unity in believing 
 except it be entertained in worshipping ; but we contend about cere- 
 monies and things indifferent ; in which kind if we would but remember 
 that the ancient and true bonds of unity are 'one faith one baptism,' 
 and not one ceremony one policy ; if we would observe the league 
 among Christians penned by our Saviour, ' He that is not against us is 
 with us ' ; if we could but comprehend that saying, l The diversities of 
 ceremonies do set forth the unity of doctrine? and that other, ' Religion 
 hath parts which belong to eternity and parts which pertain to time ; ' 
 and if we did but know the virtue of silence and slowness to speak 
 commended by St. James, our controversies of themselves would close 
 up and grow together ; but most especially if we would leave the over- 
 weening and turbulent humours of these times, and revive the blessed 
 proceedings of the Apostles and Fathers of the primitive Church, and 
 say, ' Brother, if that which you set down as an assertion you would 
 deliver by way of advice, there were reverence due to your counsel, 
 whereas faith is not due to your affirmation.' "
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 221 
 
 of things have a latitude capable of comprehending 
 all." It has been the tardy wisdom of our generation 
 to recognize that all men are not framed by " one 
 rule and measure," and therefore that, within neces- 
 sary limits, as wide a diversity as possible should be 
 tolerated. It is too crude and unhumorous a piece 
 of affectation for any single person, even though it 
 be Sir William Harcourt, to pose as the normal 
 Churchman, with all his religious instincts and desires 
 trimmed into the one perfect pattern by some private 
 Act of Uniformity, which is to be enforced upon the 
 rest of us. We have already a better model in St. 
 Paul, who ranked charity the highest of the Christian 
 graces, and "became all things to all men, if he 
 might win some." 
 
 Moreover, it is merely a forensic fallacy to charge 
 the Church of England with Congregationalism for 
 allowing some diversity in usage to suit the mental 
 capacity and aesthetic cultivation of various wor- 
 shippers. Who would wish the service in every 
 country parish to be as elaborate as that in St. Paul's, 
 or that in St. Paul's to be simplified to the point at 
 which it could be appreciated by a Berkshire 
 labourer? Need they, then, be all alike in cities? 
 Great scorn was heaped upon the late Bishop of 
 London by Dr. Guinness Rogers for telling Mr. 
 Kensit, after the ritual at St. Ethelburga's had been 
 reduced within legal bounds, that if he still objected 
 to the service he might find one elsewhere more
 
 222 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 congenial to his taste. Dr. Rogers is naturally 
 scornful of such " endowed Congregationalism." But 
 to leave words and look at facts, is it not the case 
 that all Londoners are, and must be, in this sense 
 " Congregationalists " ? There are two or three recog- 
 nized types of worship, all allowable under the Act 
 of Uniformity, arranged to suit two or three recog- 
 nized types of worshippers ; and it is not to be 
 expected that all worshippers of one type should 
 be found living in one parish. The age of Ghettoes 
 is past in England. As each parishioner must count 
 for one, and not even Mr. Kensit for more than one, 
 common sense, as well as Christian charity, would 
 suggest that they should sort themselves instead 
 of quarrelling, and let the vestry or church council 
 in every case, of course within legal limits, decide 
 the ritual by a majority of votes. But as I under- 
 stand Sir William Harcourt, he would have the ritual 
 in all churches reduced to one level, and have this 
 level fixed by the most Puritanical person who can 
 be found in, or introduced into, the parish ; and that 
 because the Low Churchman is a " layman " in some 
 esoteric sense in which a High Churchman is not. 
 Sir William Harcourt is fond of that fine-sounding 
 sentence from Edward VI. 's First Prayer-book about 
 the different " uses " of Salisbury and Hereford, and 
 York and Lincoln, which the use of " England " was 
 to supplant, but he appears not to have understood 
 that the difference of " use " referred to is a difference,
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 22$ 
 
 not of ceremony, but of office, and that the offices are 
 still the same at the regular services in all English 
 churches, high or low, and no one proposes to alter 
 them. There may be an impertinent Ritualist here 
 and there who has gone back to the " use of Sarum," 
 but if so, he has doubtless by this time been ad- 
 monished. Anyhow, it is idle to pretend that the 
 " use of all England " is in peril. But accepting that 
 use as common to all the churches, there is nothing 
 inconsistent with it in a certain variety of cere- 
 monial. The rubrics themselves contemplate variety 
 by allowing psalms and canticles to be sung or said. 
 Now, it happens that a diversity of usage has grown 
 up in things not essential, owing partly to a real 
 uncertainty as to the construction of the ornaments 
 rubric, partly to a great development of hymnody ; 
 it seems therefore a pity suddenly to curtail this 
 variety, and to disfranchise one or other party. So 
 long as the Low Churchman is not compelled to see 
 his own minister arrayed in anything but surplice, 
 stole, and hood, why should he deny to his brother 
 the vestments which he considers of obligation, 
 especially as the stole, which the Low Churchman 
 has elected to wear for choir offices, is a sacramental 
 vestment, and must stand or fall with the chasuble ? 
 About incense I dare not speak, for it seems capable 
 of exciting an asthma of angry feelings quite unin- 
 telligible to me ; I would only say of it, first, that it 
 seems to come well under our Church's definition of
 
 224 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 allowable ceremonies, " such as be apt to stir up the 
 dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty 
 to God, by some notable and special signification ; " 
 and further, that it was used on festivals, though 
 doubtless not, as it is called, "ceremonially," by 
 George Herbert, who would perhaps be accepted 
 by the large majority of Englishmen as a typical 
 Church of England parson. 
 
 4. To turn to a question upon which more rhetoric 
 has been wasted than on most others, that of clerical 
 obedience. Naturally, those who have reason to think 
 the majority of bishops would give judgment on their 
 side have made much of the lawlessness of the clergy, 
 and even Sir William Harcourt, who has no respect 
 for a bishop, still less for an archbishop, does not 
 disdain to use their pastoral staves to cudgel their 
 " insubordinate priests." The fallacy that runs through 
 most of the accusations of disobedience is that they 
 are made general, whereas what symptoms of recal- 
 citrancy have shown themselves have been restricted 
 to one or two definite particulars, upon which a large 
 body of the "ritualistic" clergy are convinced that they 
 have a good case. The public has but a short memory, 
 and agitators have every reason for not reminding it 
 that several points of ritual, for practising which High 
 Churchmen used once to be called law-breakers, have 
 now, after a closer investigation, been pronounced 
 lawful. In other words, the protest (in some cases 
 it may have been the disobedience) of the Ritualists
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 22$ 
 
 was vindicated. Who, then, can be surprised if they 
 cherished the hope that they might be as successful 
 when questions still in dispute were as patiently 
 debated ? Hence the widespread satisfaction which 
 greeted the Archbishop's proposal to hear appeals on 
 these ritual and ceremonial acts by counsel before 
 ordering their discontinuance. No doubt the clergy 
 in question would have preferred to plead before the 
 canonical Church Court ; but this being in abeyance, 
 just as Bishop King decided to plead before Arch- 
 bishop Benson sitting without assessors in a revived 
 Court of Canterbury, so Lord Halifax strongly urged 
 the clergy of his union to plead before the two Arch- 
 bishops sitting in a Court improvised from the 
 direction in the Prayer-book touching the inter- 
 pretation of the rubrics. The latter judgments have 
 not been as welcome to High Churchmen as were 
 those of Archbishop Benson ; but, except in a very 
 few cases, they have been obeyed. Perhaps a word 
 should be added here on the shallow and fallacious 
 wit, which jeers at the distinction High Churchmen 
 have insisted on between absolute and canonical 
 obedience to their own ordinaries. One would 
 have thought that the distinction could hardly be 
 unintelligible to a nation which prides itself on its 
 loyalty to the Crown, while it restricts the Sovereign's 
 voice to a constitutional mouthpiece. But controversy 
 acquaints parties, political and ecclesiastical, with 
 strange bedfellows ; and it must be gratifying to the 
 
 Q
 
 226 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 ghost of Laud, if he ever walks from Tower Hill as 
 far as Fleet Street, to see the recent spread of the 
 doctrine of passive obedience through the newspaper 
 offices. Still, he must not presume too much upon 
 one symptom. Passive obedience, when preached 
 by Englishmen, invariably concerns other people. 
 Ritualists used to preach it to Anti-Vaccinators till 
 these were whitewashed ; Anti-Vaccinators to the 
 Peculiar People ; and in the Nineteenth Century for 
 March (1899) a respected Harrow master achieved 
 the triumph of patting Mr. Kensit on the back and 
 accusing the Ritualists of " mob-law " in one and the 
 same paragraph. In fact, there is no little truth in 
 the judgments recorded of Englishmen by the clever 
 French undergraduate who has recently obliged us 
 with his memories of Oxford, that we are " creatures 
 of will rather than of intelligence," and that " super- 
 vision is incompatible with the peculiar independence " 
 of our character. 
 
 5. It is admitted on all hands that the most 
 important points at present in dispute concern the 
 Reservation of the Sacrament and Auricular Con- 
 fession. Reservation is virtually forbidden by the 
 sixth rubric at the end of the Communion office ; 
 but, notwithstanding, it has for a long time been 
 practised and tolerated in the poor districts of large 
 cities, where the number of sick is too great to admit 
 of repeated celebrations, and the conditions are such 
 that a reverent celebration is impossible. Any one
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 22/ 
 
 who has worked in a poor parish knows what these 
 conditions are. Sir William Harcourt may be right 
 in his suggestion that the dwellings of the poor are 
 no more incommodious to-day than they were in the 
 sixteenth century, when the practice of celebrating 
 in private houses was introduced ; but they are 
 certainly more numerous, and, what is still more to 
 the point, the nature of contagious disease is better 
 understood ; and further, the clergy now are more 
 zealous than they have been at any time since the 
 date of the rubric (1662) to 'give the poorest what is 
 their due as members of the Church. The rubric, 
 it is well understood, was made to prevent what 
 remained of the consecrated bread being put to 
 profane uses, and was not directed against Reserva- 
 tion ; nevertheless, it actually forbids it ; and the 
 objection to its being allowed to lapse like other 
 antiquated rubrics, lies in the probability that some 
 of the Romanizing clergy would introduce the services 
 of Benediction, and Visiting the Sacrament, and 
 similar practices forbidden in our Twenty-eighth 
 Article. The best solution of the practical difficulty 
 is that which has already been adopted by several 
 bishops ; while forbidding Reservation generally, to 
 license it in certain crowded parishes, under re- 
 strictions which should make it serve its real purpose, 
 and no other. 
 
 The subject of Confession is more difficult to 
 handle temperately than that of Reservation, because
 
 228 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 its abuse must necessarily be more far-reaching in 
 its results. But, at least, it is possible for every one 
 to understand what our Church allows and what it 
 forbids ; and nothing in the end can be gained by 
 false witness. The Low Churchmen are plainly 
 right in their contention that the English Church, 
 by introducing public Confession and Absolution 1 
 into the Reformed Service, intended to supersede 
 private Confession as the general rule, while still 
 prescribing an opportunity for the latter in cases of 
 sickness. 2 Further, in an exhortation in the Com- 
 munion Office, the minister is directed to suggest to 
 any one who cannot quiet his own conscience that 
 he should go to some discreet and learned minister 
 of God's Word and open his grief, "that by the 
 ministry of God's Holy Word he may receive the 
 benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel 
 or advice." Sir William Harcourt in his reference 
 to this passage (Lawlessness, etc., p. 39) sees fit to 
 omit the words in italics ; but any person who will 
 read the exhortation without prejudice, cannot but 
 
 1 This is no place to debate what is meant by priestly absolution ; 
 but that some function is laid by the English Church upon its ministers 
 is shown by the office for the Ordering of Priests, where the Bishop is 
 enjoined to say : " Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of 
 a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the im- 
 position of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; 
 and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." Sir William 
 Harcourt's sneer, therefore, about "priests who claim" this power is 
 unjustifiable. 
 
 2 See the Order for the Visitation of the Sick : " Here shall the sick 
 person be moved," etc.
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 22Q 
 
 allow that a minister of the English Church has no 
 choice but to give absolution to a penitent, when he 
 asks for it. So that it is idle to talk of putting down 
 private Confession by process of law. An unprejudiced 
 reader of the homily will admit no less clearly that 
 a minister is not empowered to suggest private 
 Confession to any but such as cannot quiet their 
 own consciences ; much less is he empowered to 
 press it generally upon his flock. It follows that in 
 the English Church private Absolution is a right 
 that may be claimed, but private Confession is not 
 a duty that may be urged. This somewhat paradoxical 
 position is not the weakness but the strength of the 
 English system ; and if it could be loyally observed, 
 it would reconcile the contending factions. 
 
 Admirable, however, as it undoubtedly is in theory, 
 the English system presents not a few difficulties in 
 practice. To begin with, the exhortation in the 
 Communion Office is at present very seldom read, 
 so that numberless congregations grow up in 
 ignorance that their Church has made for them 
 any provision of the sort which is not fair ; and, in 
 the second place, parish clergymen who have no 
 experience in hearing confessions would probably 
 fail in the necessary " learning " and not improbably 
 in the necessary " discretion." Moderate Churchmen 
 undoubtedly express the Anglican theory when they 
 speak of private Confession as medicine and not food ; 
 but medicine is useless unless it is known to exist,
 
 230 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 can be obtained when needed, and is efficiently 
 administered. Probably few religious people have 
 come to mature life without having passed through 
 a period when to go to Confession would have been 
 of the greatest service to them ; but the unfamiliarity 
 of the idea, if it occurred to them at all, was sufficient 
 to prevent its execution. This must be reckoned a 
 weakness of the system. The suggestion has more 
 than once been made that the Bishops should license 
 a certain number of experienced clergy to hear con- 
 fessions. There would be advantage in this, both as 
 recognizing that private Confession has its own place 
 in the Anglican system, and as preventing young and 
 unfit persons from taking the duty upon them. 
 
 Lord Halifax has recently denied that in any case 
 known to him has Confession been compelled ; and 
 compulsory Confession, being quite illegal, may be 
 disregarded as a mere bogey. What disquiets many 
 persons is not this, but the enjoining of habitual 
 Confession as a religious duty, which is far from being 
 a mere bogey ; and the result of which is apt to be 
 not, as might be pleaded, an increase of scrupulous- 
 ness, but a more mechanical view of religion. Once, 
 at the seaside, I was accosted in the street by a lady, 
 who asked if I were a priest, explaining that she 
 meant a Catholic priest, and by that a Roman 
 Catholic. Her confessor was out for the day, and 
 she very much wanted to go for a sail, but did not 
 like to take the risk of accidents unless her conscience
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 231 
 
 could be cleared before she embarked. I need not 
 repeat the conversation that followed ; to the lady 
 the moral of the interview was the inconvenience of 
 our unhappy divisions ; to me, I fear, it was the 
 degradation of a valuable ordinance by its mechanical 
 use. 
 
 6. There is a fallacy frequently employed by 
 agitators on which I should have deemed it un- 
 necessary to touch in a paper written for educated 
 people, but for the recent experience of a visit to a 
 meeting at Brighton, addressed by Mr. Kensit At 
 this meeting a drawing of the St. Paul's processional 
 cross was exhibited, and received with hisses and 
 cries of " Shame " by people who, to judge from their 
 dress, belonged to the intelligent classes of society. 
 On the platform there were several military officers. 
 The speaker pledged himself to protest against the 
 introduction of such an " idolatrous " image into the 
 chief cathedral of our National Church, and his 
 promise was welcomed with loud applause. He then 
 proceeded to charge the Dean and Chapter of St. 
 Paul's, and the clergy generally, with removing the 
 Ten Commandments from their chancels in order 
 that such breaches of the Second Commandment 
 might not be brought home to them ; and this 
 astounding accusation was also greeted with cheers. 
 Now, it is undoubtedly true that the Commandments 
 have ceased of late to be employed as the principal 
 decoration on the east wall of churches. In one's
 
 232 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 youth they were stencilled on the white plaster in 
 black with rubricated initials, or else painted in light 
 blue on a chocolate ground, and either way their 
 effect was not very magnificent, while they were 
 totally illegible, so that architects have been inclined 
 in recent years to substitute curtains or a reredos. 
 But it is church architects and not the clergy who 
 must bear what blame has been incurred, and any 
 protest should be addressed to them. Anyhow, Mr. 
 Kensit should be relieved to hear that the Second 
 Commandment is still read in the Communion 
 Office, and taught from the Catechism in Church 
 schools. 
 
 The charge, revived from Puritan days, that to 
 make any representation of Our Lord whatever, 
 whether on canvas or glass or metal, is a breach of 
 the Second Commandment, may have at first sight 
 a plausible look ; but it really rests on the fallacy 
 that the Commandments are to be interpreted as the 
 Law Courts interpret an Act of Parliament. The 
 principle that the spirit was of more importance than 
 the letter was laid down by Our Lord in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and illustrated by His own practice in 
 regard to the Fourth Commandment. The Pharisees 
 were perpetually accusing Him of breaking the 
 Sabbath, as on Mr. Kensit's principle they were 
 quite justified in doing, and His defence was that 
 "the Sabbath was made for man." That is to say, 
 that in interpreting the Commandment regard was
 
 FALLACIES IN THE RITUAL CONTROVERSY. 233 
 
 to be paid to its use and purpose. Now, one great 
 purpose of the Second Commandment if we may 
 judge from the result which it accomplished was 
 to prevent the Jews from forgetting God's highest 
 attributes of righteousness and mercy by employing 
 symbols that could not suggest them. An ox 
 might represent a god whose chief attribute was 
 power ; a bird, one whose chief attribute was omni- 
 presence. But Jehovah was revealed as a God 
 " merciful and gracious, and who would not clear the 
 guilty." Hence it was far better for the people to 
 have no representation of God at all than to have 
 one which by its emphasis on what was of less 
 consequence tended to obscure what was of greater 
 consequence. But how is it possible to plead that 
 any picture or statue of Christ must so inevitably 
 misrepresent His character as to do harm to those 
 who use it ? If it be replied that what is objected 
 to is not the mere representation but the worship 
 of the representation, all that need be said is that 
 there is really no danger of this, for in an age of 
 universal School Boards no English laymen are so 
 ill-instructed as to mistake a statue, much less a 
 figure on a processional cross, for a living person, 
 or even to credit them with miraculous powers.
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMEN- 
 TARY EDUCATION
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 ONE advantage, among not a few disadvantages, that 
 have attended the removal of English education from 
 the control of the National Church, has been the 
 greater study given to education as a subject apart 
 from religion ; and one outcome of this independent 
 study has been the clear conviction, in the minds of 
 such students, that the most important work educa- 
 tion has to perform is the moulding of character, 
 and that to do this work effectually religion is indis- 
 pensable. Our Trades Union Congress, indeed, in 
 its fear of German competition, has recently passed 
 a unanimous vote in favour of enlarged education by 
 means of universal secular School Boards ; but the 
 Congress should take note of the fact that in Ger- 
 many, which is the home of the science of education, 
 the most advanced schemes now provide for religious 
 teaching side by side with what is secular. We may 
 hope that by our upper classes the need for a religious 
 basis in education is already recognized, and if so, 
 no one need grudge the thirty years that have been
 
 238 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 spent in learning the lesson ; and least of all should 
 the Church repine. For besides the fact that the 
 lesson tells wholly in her favour, she herself is much 
 better equipped than at any former period for the 
 task it lays upon her ; not indeed in wealth, but 
 in public confidence, and in zeal for educational 
 work. From the Report of the National Society 
 one learns that while the sum spent by the English 
 Church upon education in the sixty years between 
 1811 and 1870 was ,15,149,938, or a little more 
 than 2 50,000 a year, in the thirty years since 1870 
 it has been ^28,275,260, or nearly 950,000 a year. 
 
 Perhaps the present generation of Churchmen do 
 not realize how much of the opportunity they have 
 enjoyed of making up arrears they owe to the fact 
 that the first Minister of Education was not only a 
 religious man the Premier, Mr. Gladstone, was that 
 in an eminent degree but also a man who was 
 prepared to sacrifice to his religious convictions even 
 his own personal popularity and advancement. 1 The 
 educational tradition in England had, it is true, 
 always been religious, and for many years the 
 Government grant was dispensed through the two 
 great religious societies, the National Society and 
 the British and Foreign School Society. In 1853, 
 
 1 "It does rest much with me just now whether or no the State 
 shall decree against religion decree that it is a thing of no account. 
 Well, with my assent the State shall not do this, and I believe I can 
 prevent it, though very probably by my own ostracism ; but that does 
 not matter." Life of IV. E. Forster, by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i.
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 239 
 
 for example, the Committee of Council refused a 
 grant to an exclusively secular school. But the 
 Government which passed the Education Act of 1870 
 came into power upon the radical votes liberated by 
 Mr. Disraeli's new household franchise, and the 
 middle-class Nonconformists of Birmingham, Leeds, 
 and other manufacturing towns, led by the veteran 
 John Bright, thought they saw their long-cherished 
 hope of disestablishing the Church at last about to 
 be realized. The Birmingham Educational League, 
 which had the support of the leading Dissenters 
 throughout England, had formulated its plans for 
 covering England with free schools which should be 
 entirely secular ; and this scheme was urged upon 
 the Government with perfect confidence that it would 
 be adopted. Mr. Forster, however, although himself 
 a Radical and a Dissenter, would have nothing to do 
 with the Birmingham scheme, partly, as he said, on 
 the ground that it would quickly undermine the 
 existing schools and drive out of the field most of 
 those who cared for education ; but chiefly because 
 of the high value he attached to religious training. 
 He cared for religious equality as much as any of his 
 Dissenting friends, but he preferred religion even 
 before religious equality ; and he refused to have 
 anything to do with a proposal that would have 
 sacrificed the religious education of England to the 
 mere jealousies and prejudices of sectaries and par- 
 tisans. A short passage from Mr. Forster's speech
 
 240 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 on the second reading of the Bill, in reply to an 
 amendment promoted by the Birmingham party, will 
 show the spirit in which the first Education Act was 
 framed ; and although consistency is not a political 
 virtue, there may be advantage in reminding the 
 present Liberal party that in advocating religion as 
 the most prominent factor in any new proposals for 
 popular education, they would not be running counter 
 to the principles underlying the initial measure. 
 
 " Our opinions," said Mr. Forster, " in religion may 
 be different, but I think we all of us agree, the enor- 
 mous majority of the country agrees, that the standard 
 of right and wrong is based on religion ; and that 
 when you go against religion you strike a blow 
 against morality; and if we could solemnly by Act 
 of Parliament tell the parents of children to be 
 educated that religion is a subject not to be men- 
 tioned in the schools, they would suppose that we 
 cared little about religion ourselves, and that in our 
 opinion it were best left alone. . . . Surely the time 
 will come when we shall find out how we can agree 
 better on these matters, when men will find out that 
 on the main questions of religion they agree, and 
 that they can teach them in common to their chil- 
 dren. Shall we cut off from the future all hope of 
 such an agreement, and say that all those questions 
 which regulate our conduct in life and animate our 
 hopes for the future after death, which form for us 
 the standard of right and wrong, shall we say that
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 241 
 
 all these are to be wholly excluded from the schools ? 
 I confess I have still in my veins the blood of my 
 Puritan forefathers, and I wonder to hear descendants 
 of the Puritans now talk of religion as if it were the 
 property of any class or condition of men." 
 
 In another speech he said, "If religion is to be 
 separated by Act of Parliament from any part of 
 the daily life of Englishmen, much more of English 
 children, it shall not be done by me ; nor, if I can 
 help it, by any one else." 
 
 As every one knows, the outcome of the lengthy 
 discussion on the religious difficulty was the adoption 
 of a clause proposed by Mr. Cowper Temple, Presi- 
 dent of the Education Union, which prohibited " the 
 use of any catechism or formulary distinctive of a 
 denomination" in the newly constituted Board 
 Schools, but imposed no other restriction upon their 
 religious teaching. It is interesting, however, to learn, 
 as we may from Mr. Forster's life, what was the 
 original idea of the Government, and why it was 
 superseded. In a memorandum sent to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, Mr. Forster says 
 
 "Our proposal that the majority should have what 
 religious teaching it pleases, while the minority is 
 protected, is logical and impartial in theory and 
 would work well in practice. Can we not, then, carry 
 it ? Yes, with the help of the Opposition ; but I fear 
 a majority of our side of the House would vote against 
 it. All the Radicals not merely men like Fawcett, 
 
 R
 
 242 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 but earnest supporters of the Bill like Mundella all 
 the Dissenters, from Baines to Richards, would find 
 themselves forced to oppose us ; and they would be 
 followed, or rather led, into the lobby by the Whigs, 
 by Sir George Grey and Whitbread ; and all our best 
 friends like Brand would beg us to prevent a division 
 which would break up the party." 
 
 I should like to call attention to one other proposal 
 of the original Bill. School Boards were empowered 
 to grant assistance to voluntary schools in their 
 districts, provided that all such schools, to what- 
 ever denomination they belonged, received support 
 on equal terms. But the Birmingham party, recog- 
 nizing that the British and Foreign Schools, although 
 they were denominational and so would have profited 
 under the proposal, could, without injury to their 
 religious teaching, accept the Cowper-Temple clause, 
 and merge themselves in the new Board Schools, 
 raised once more the old cry of " No Church rates ; " 
 and Mr. Gladstone, not further to irritate the Non- 
 conformist conscience, substituted the proposal to 
 give denominational schools an increased grant 
 from the exchequer. 
 
 This slight excursion into ancient history has 
 been undertaken for the purpose of exhibiting three 
 points in the attitude of the framers of the original 
 Education Act: (i) That they were resolutely de- 
 termined to continue the English tradition of re- 
 ligious education ; (2) that they acknowledged the
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 243 
 
 equitableness of allowing English parents to choose 
 the religious teaching that should be given to their 
 children, although at the time the exigencies of 
 party politics obliged them to abandon their con- 
 victions; (3) that they recognized that denomina- 
 tional schools had an equal claim upon rates with 
 those managed by local boards, provided that the 
 education given was satisfactory. If these three 
 elementary principles could even now be acquiesced 
 in by the general public, the "religious difficulty," 
 as it is called, would speedily vanish from educa- 
 tional politics, and leave the field open for the 
 introduction of much-needed reforms. I propose, 
 therefore, to set down a few simple considerations 
 on each of these heads. 
 
 i. We owe it, as I have said, to special good 
 fortune to use no stronger term that the secular- 
 izing policy of the Dissenters was overruled in 1870. 
 That policy relied for what principles it could boast, 
 first, upon an exaggerated estimate of the moral 
 influence of mere knowledge ; and secondly, upon 
 the notion that religion was too sacred a matter 
 for a secular State to interfere with. 
 
 The first of these cherished beliefs has at last 
 yielded, even among Dissenters, to the logic of facts. 
 Since 1870 the experiment of an education entirely 
 secular has been tried in France, and the results, 
 as formulated by French economists, have not been 
 so satisfactory as to encourage our own statesmen
 
 244 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 to introduce the system here. It has been tried 
 also in some of our own colonies. The present 
 Bishop of Manchester, who had previously been 
 Bishop of Melbourne, gave to the Church Congress 
 at Folkestone in 1892 a carefully guarded statement 
 of the result of this secular policy in the colony 
 of Victoria; and his words, in view of the recent 
 resolution of the Trades Union Congress, are worth 
 reproducing. 
 
 " In the colony with which I am well acquainted, 
 the Australian colony of Victoria, the education is 
 entirely in the hands of the Government. It is 
 drily secular, and it has swept into its net the 
 whole population. If we except a small number 
 of schools which with noble fidelity the Roman 
 Catholics have maintained, there are very few 
 schools of a denominational character which have 
 been established to counteract the influence of the 
 secular system. I know that if I proceed to cite 
 the criminal statistics of the colony I shall be met 
 with the observation, 'After all, you may be neg- 
 lecting some special and very important circum- 
 stances in the colonial life.' Well, I may. I think 
 that I have as little confidence in statistics as any 
 of those who distrust them. But what are we to 
 do ? The secular educationalist will admit no other 
 evidence. Therefore, we are obliged to make the 
 best of statistics, and to do all that we can to give 
 them their true value.
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 245 
 
 " I must say that I do not think that in this case 
 there are many possible causes of error ; for, first 
 of all, the Government have, as I said, swept all the 
 children into the secular schools ; and secondly, 
 the system has been long enough at work to reveal 
 its true consequences, for it was established on the 
 1st of January, 1873, and thus it will have been 
 twenty years in operation on the first day of next 
 year. In the third place, the system has accom- 
 plished all that its most enthusiastic supporters 
 hoped it would accomplish. It has attained a result 
 which, as far as I know, is almost unexampled, 
 making the Victorian people perhaps the most 
 completely educated people of our race throughout 
 the world. For what are the facts ? Of the children 
 of school age in the colony of Victoria 99*56 out of 
 every 100 are being educated. That is to say, only 
 one child of school age out of 200 is out of school. 
 That is a most significant fact, because we were 
 always told that as soon as secular education became 
 universal we should see that it produced a striking 
 effect in the diminution of crime. Therefore nobody 
 can find fault with us if we take these gentlemen 
 at their word, and say, 'Since secular education 
 has become universal, we have a right to ask, has 
 it, according to your promise, greatly diminished 
 crime ? ' 
 
 " I find that the male population in this colony 
 has increased in the last decade by less than a third
 
 246 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 of what it was in 1880. I may just as well say that 
 I am citing from the year-book of the colony of 
 Victoria for 1890-91, which very recently came into 
 my hands. In the same period the male criminals 
 who were summarily convicted or held to bail were, 
 in 1880, 12,469 ; in 1890 they were 20,189. They 
 had increased by more than one-half. Again, if 
 we consider the commission of more serious crimes 
 we get a result not very dissimilar, only, alas ! not 
 in favour of secular education. There were in 1880 
 thirty-six persons convicted of murder and man- 
 slaughter. There were in 1890 fifty-six persons 
 convicted. This class of criminals had thus increased 
 by nearly two-thirds. Again, if we look at the 
 crime of robbery with violence we find that in 1880 
 245 persons were convicted of that crime, and in 
 1890 465 were so convicted, or nearly double. That 
 is to say, criminals have increased in number out 
 of all proportion to the increase of the population. 
 Secular education is universal. It was predicted 
 that it would diminish crime. It has been totally 
 powerless to do so. And there is this sad and most 
 important statement to be made, that the most 
 serious crimes are committed by the best educated 
 criminals. I am sure that some of you must have 
 thought in your minds as I went on reading this 
 awful list, ' But, perhaps, after all, the criminals 
 to whom you have referred consist of the small 
 selvedge of the population that has not received
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 247 
 
 a complete secular education.' Alas! the results 
 leave us no such option. They tell us that in 1880 
 seventy- four out of 100 criminals were able to read 
 and write. In 1890 eighty-nine out of 100 were able 
 to read and write. In other words, not only has 
 the number of criminals increased, but the educa- 
 tion of the criminals has also increased ; and, as 
 I said before, the most serious statement, perhaps, 
 made by the Government statist of Victoria is 
 that amongst all the criminals the best educated 
 are those that commit the most serious offences." 
 
 The bishop goes on to add that while in 1887 
 the attendance at Sunday schools was 71^ per 
 cent, of the children of school age, in 1890 it was 
 only 39 per cent, half the children having carried 
 out their parents' view to its logical conclusion 
 that what is not worth teaching is not worth 
 learning. 
 
 In regard to the more specifically Nonconformist 
 idea that the State may not lay profane hands upon 
 religious education, it will be sufficient to point out 
 that in the last thirty years the general conception of 
 the State and its duties has, among all classes of the 
 nation, broadened and become more socialistic ; so 
 that Liberal working men now find it impossible to 
 believe that their hero, Mr. Bright, could ever have 
 denounced a Factory Act The chief theoretical 
 hindrances, therefore, in the way of religious education 
 in schools under State management no longer exist.
 
 248 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 2. But the removal of these abstract objections has 
 not everywhere resulted in a frank acknowledgment 
 that the religion which should be taught in the 
 State schools is the religion professed by the parents 
 of the children. Not the least evil of the local board 
 system must be reckoned that it brought into exist- 
 ence a race of educational " experts " who devised 
 for the schools under their management a new type 
 of universal religion, generally known as " undenomi- 
 nationalism ; " which " universal" religion, nevertheless, 
 assumed a new shape and a different substance with 
 every locality ; 
 
 " If shape it might be called that shape had none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, 
 Or substance might be called that shadow seemed." 
 
 The idea of such a religion was arrived at in the 
 following manner. " Observe," said the experts, 
 "how religious sects differ among themselves. All 
 call themselves Christian, but all profess some tenet 
 which the others disallow. Abstract, then, the tenets 
 peculiar to each sect, and you will have a residuum 
 common to all, which is the undenominational Chris- 
 tianity of which we are in search." To appreciate 
 the sophistry underlying this proposal, it is, perhaps, 
 necessary that a man should himself hold definitely 
 some form of the Christian creed ; for then he would 
 understand that the differences between sects are 
 usually differences respecting the precise interpreta- 
 tion of some doctrine or rite which is acknowledged
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 249 
 
 by all, and to which all attach a high degree of 
 importance ; so that to omit the rite or the doctrine 
 altogether would destroy the religion. And even 
 when the doctrine is held by one body of Christians 
 in such an individual way that it becomes almost a 
 peculiar doctrine, all the more is it for them the 
 articulus stantis ant cadentis ecclesice ; it is the article 
 which for them illuminates the whole faith, and 
 indeed represents it; it is "the master-light of all 
 their seeing," the spring of action, the match that 
 lights the train, the electric spark that makes a new 
 creation out of a chaos of elements. To make 
 abstraction of that would be to leave them poor 
 indeed. Now, the doctrinaires who advocate this 
 caput mortuum of all the sects as a sound working 
 system are precisely those who value religion, not for 
 its truth, but for its effect as a stimulus upon conduct ; 
 and yet they do not see that it must be ineffectual 
 for such a purpose, because it has been created by 
 the process of eliminating the very elements which 
 have in experience proved capable of exercising this 
 power of stimulus. 
 
 But it may be said, " After all we are dealing with 
 children ; and the sanctions of morality which un- 
 doubtedly inhere in religious dogmas would not 
 appeal to them, if they were taught. They would 
 get them by heart, and think no more about them. 
 We, at least, are preparing the ground for the after 
 work of the churches by teaching the text of Scripture,
 
 250 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 especially the facts of the life of Christ." One 
 of the best pleas I have ever seen for what is called 
 " Christian truth free from sectarian dogma," conies 
 in an essay written in 1868 by a clergyman of some 
 experience as an inspector of schools, the Rev. W. L. 
 Clay. The essay is interesting as a forecast, by a 
 competent observer, of what would be the result to 
 Church Schools of the impending Education Act ; 
 but I refer to it now because it puts into very clear 
 and indeed eloquent language a plea for "unde- 
 nominational " religious teaching. 
 
 " In order to educate the conscience there is no 
 method of teaching comparable to that by which 
 God Himself taught the world I mean the historical 
 method. If you teach a child that he is bound to 
 believe such and such a thing, the idea of disputing 
 your authority never for a moment crosses his mind. 
 But there the matter ends ; there has been no spiritual 
 education. The conscience is untouched. To reach 
 that you must excite his interest, reverence, worship. 
 You must not tell him what to believe, but present 
 something in which he will spontaneously believe 
 or rather, some person. The child's homage, no 
 more than the man's, can be fully evoked by 
 abstract goodness. It needs goodness incarnate to 
 command his worship. In a word, what the child 
 needs to know thoroughly is the life of Christ. With 
 every particular of that biography he should be 
 rendered familiar. He should be taught how the
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 251 
 
 Old Testament history leads up to Christ, how the 
 history of the Apostles and of the early Church 
 looks back to Christ. All should be made to centre 
 in Christ ; the whole effort of the teacher should be 
 directed to give the scholar a vivid conception of 
 Christ. Such teaching would be a constant appeal 
 to the conscience. Once presented to the children, 
 Christ Himself will do the rest. He will win them, 
 draw them ; they will worship Him. For even young 
 children can do much more than 'say prayers' 
 they can really worship. They will learn to connect 
 all their thoughts of God with Jesus, and in their 
 conscious cravings ' to be good ' (and under right 
 training such cravings come early to children), they 
 will really appreciate and welcome the ' good news ' 
 that Jesus can and will send a Spirit like His own 
 into those who pray for it. National School children 
 so taught and I have known such children so taught 
 will never need a dogma about the Trinity in 
 Unity; for they believe not profoundly, of course, 
 but still genuinely in the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost." 1 
 
 Without entering into a discussion of " the historical 
 method," which does not seem to have been the 
 method employed by our Lord Himself or any of 
 His Apostles, who taught " with authority," we should 
 all probably agree that the kind of religious teaching 
 here sketched is the teaching we should wish for our 
 
 1 Essays on Church Policy, edited by the Rev. W. L. Clay, p. 221.
 
 252 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 own children a teaching neither vague nor abstract, 
 but centred upon devotion to Christ Himself; but 
 we should hardly agree to call it undenominational 
 or " undogmatic ; " for it could not be given by a 
 teacher who did not himself hold the doctrines of the 
 Apostles' Creed. There is no doubt that catechisms 
 and formularies of all sorts may be used by bad 
 teachers as a substitute for instruction, instead of as 
 a summary of instruction already given, and so may 
 be actually harmful ; but the prohibition of them, 
 which is the kernel of the " undenominational " 
 system, must be more harmful still, because it must 
 prevent the conscientious teacher from drawing out 
 the truths which are implied in the Gospel story, and 
 constitute its sole religious value. To teach from a 
 catechism that Christ is God and must be worshipped, 
 without any image before the mind of what Christ is, 
 assuredly is not to teach Christianity; but it is as 
 possible, and much more injurious, to instruct chil- 
 dren in the details of His life without making it clear 
 to them how that life has anything more to do with 
 their own lives than the even more wonderful histories 
 of Elijah and Elisha. If School Board teachers are 
 religious men, I do not doubt for a moment that 
 they find a way of instilling Christian faith in spite 
 of the disadvantages of the system ; but the system, 
 nevertheless, cannot be defended. Religion cannot 
 be taught without a creed. The question, "What 
 think ye of Christ ? " if it is raised at all, must have
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 253 
 
 an answer; and that answer involves the Christian 
 creed. If it is not raised, there is no religion in 
 teaching the mere details of His life. I cannot 
 believe that Mr. Gladstone, when he accepted Mr. 
 Cowper Temple's amendment, regarded the Apostles' 
 Creed as among the formularies distinctive of a 
 denomination which were forbidden ; the Rev. Mr. 
 Clay, from whom I have quoted above, although 
 he declaims against "dogmas" with the best, ex- 
 presses the hope that " unsectarian bigotry will not 
 rob us of that" But unsectarianism has done so in 
 the very large majority of Board Schools, including 
 those under the great Boards of London, Liverpool, 
 Manchester, and Birmingham. 
 
 The "undenominational " system, then, is absolutely 
 indefensible on any ground of theory, and, indeed, its 
 defenders are accustomed to appeal, not to theory, 
 but to its success in practice. But that success is not 
 everywhere conspicuous. The syllabuses of religious 
 instruction furnished by all School Boards to the 
 Royal Commission of 1888, and printed in the Ap- 
 pendix to the Final Report, are far from pleasant 
 reading for those who still wish to think of England 
 as a Christian country. The syllabuses of the greater 
 Boards are generally unexceptionable from the point 
 of view of the Bible history and the moral lessons to 
 be based on it ; but neither in them nor in the speci- 
 men examination papers annexed is there any ex- 
 press recognition of the fundamental articles of the
 
 254 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Christian faith. All one can hope is that the actual 
 teaching goes beyond the syllabus, as it must 
 if the teachers are themselves Christians; and 
 we are generally assured that it does. Of the 
 lesser Board Schools, many follow the lead of 
 the greater Boards, but in many more we come 
 upon evidence of every sort of anti-church and 
 anti-religious prejudice. Exclusive of Wales, 
 which depends largely upon Sunday schools, I 
 counted 496 School Boards which returned them- 
 selves in 1888 as having no syllabus of religious 
 instruction at all. There is no salvation, I willingly 
 admit, in a syllabus ; for it is quite possible for a 
 child's religious training to be in inverse ratio to its 
 Bible knowledge ; but that the absence of a syllabus 
 in the case of these Board Schools does not arise 
 from any religious motive, is proved by the special 
 resolution of the Board upon the religious question 
 recorded in the Government return. Generally it is 
 to the effect that the Bible shall be read for half an 
 hour at the opening of the school, " without note or 
 comment," an ordinance worthy of Laputa ; but 
 eclipsed by one school which orders further that the 
 ten commandments shall be taught without comment. 
 Sometimes the Bible may be read " with comment," 
 and then the nature of the permitted comment is 
 usually specified ; in some cases the teacher is 
 allowed to explain the meaning of words only ; in 
 others the explanation may extend to history,
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 255 
 
 geography, and grammar ; in others he may draw moral 
 lessons. At Northfleet, in Kent, it was resolved 
 "that the Bible be read for the first half hour in 
 the morning without comment, but if any questions 
 be asked by the children of the master, he shall 
 answer them as shortly as possible." The Board at 
 Killamarsh (Derby) passed a resolution " that the 
 Bible be read in the schools so far as is consistent 
 with the Education Act" At Horning (Norfolk) the 
 Board not only left the whole matter to the teacher's 
 discretion, but added that they " took no interest in 
 the subject." At Canterbury, the home of the Chris- 
 tian faith in England, it is ordered " that no allusions 
 be made to the Sacraments." Yelling (Hunts.) 
 and Sherborne (Norfolk) report that they have no 
 religious teaching now through the press of secular 
 subjects. At Shillington (Beds.) the schoolmaster 
 is specially instructed "not to teach the Creed, 
 or give any other denominational teaching ; " and 
 at Wootton, in the same county, "the children are 
 not to be taught to bow at the name of Christ" 
 Of more elaborate attempts to prevent the Bible 
 from doing mischief, it will be sufficient to quote the 
 following specimens : 
 
 OLDHAM (Lane.}. " At the opening of the school in 
 the morning, the head teacher in each department 
 shall lead the singing of a hymn or moral song 
 selected from the book provided by the Board ; shall 
 repeat with the children the Lord's Prayer ; and shall
 
 256 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 read, without note or comment, portions of the Bible, 
 such as may serve to enforce the lessons given, 
 commendatory of kindness, temperance, honesty, 
 truthfulness, industry, obedience to parents, and like 
 virtues ; and condemnatory of cruelty, intemperance, 
 theft, falsehood, profane swearing, disobedience to 
 parents, and like vices." 
 
 TODMORDEN ( York). "The morning school shall 
 be opened in the following manner : The first four 
 verses of the morning hymn shall be sung. The head 
 teacher shall read a few verses from the Bible, without 
 note or comment (the passages selected shall be 
 entered in the log-book) ; after which he shall repeat 
 the Lord's Prayer, in which the children may join. 
 These religious observances s/tall not occupy more titan 
 ten minutes? 
 
 BURSLEM (Staff.}. " In the schools managed bythe 
 Board, the Authorized Version of the Bible shall be 
 read, and portions of the text selected by the principal 
 teacher (but subject from time to time to the direction 
 of the Board) may be committed to memory by the 
 scholars ; but the principal teacher in charge of any 
 school for the time being shall give explanations of 
 an historical, biographical, or geographical nature 
 necessary for the understanding of the narrative, and 
 may explain the modern and generally accepted 
 meaning of any word or phrase, the sense of which 
 has changed since the Scripture translation was made." 
 And then, in case religion should lurk in the too
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 257 
 
 general epithets employed, they are still further 
 defined. "The following is the definition of the 
 terms used above : ' Historical ' pertaining to a 
 narrative of events and facts recorded in the Bible. 
 ' Biographical ' relating to the lives of persons 
 recorded in the Bible. ' Geographical ' relating to 
 a knowledge of places mentioned or referred to in 
 the Bible." 
 
 One other grave objection to undenominationalism 
 as a religion remains to be mentioned, that, as its 
 name denotes, it is not a faith professed by any 
 society. Curiously enough, it makes a boast of 
 this, and no regulation is commoner in School 
 Boards than that phrase in the Act which forbids 
 teachers to attempt "to attach children to any 
 particular denomination." But, surely, it is of the 
 very essence of religion that it is social ; and of 
 religious teaching, that it should attach its members 
 to a Christian society. The Church of England, it 
 is well known, connects in its catechism the child's 
 very name with its Church membership ; and every 
 other form of Christian faith that has been successful 
 in attracting members, such as Methodism and the 
 Salvation Army, has owed its success to the strong 
 sense of solidarity that it has been able to infuse. 
 All experience shows that it is an enormous help to 
 individual virtue to belong to a society; and even 
 if the pride in one's own society is mixed, as it is 
 sometimes in the case of young and ardent spirits, 
 
 S
 
 258 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 with some contempt for other societies so palpably 
 inferior to our own, still such contempt is but skin- 
 deep, and the esprit de corps, which is the larger side 
 of the fact, braces a boy's spiritual muscles and helps 
 to make a man of him. We hear a great deal from 
 School Board rhetoricians about the dangers of the 
 partisan spirit in religion, and they are undoubted ; 
 but, at the present time, the dangers of the opposite 
 vice seem to call for even more watchfulness. I would 
 venture to say, let a man be a good Romanist, or a 
 good Anglican, or a good Methodist or Plymouth 
 brother, as good and strenuous a member of his 
 society as he can be, with a burning zeal for 
 proselytes if he has no zeal for proselytizing, there 
 is a presumption that he is no true member of his 
 society, and had better quit it for another ; but do 
 not let him affect to be an " undenominationalist," 
 and persuade others so; for an "undenominationalist" 
 is merely an abstraction. 
 
 The moral is that religion is best taught to 
 children in schools belonging to the denominations. 
 The child learns religion in a good denominational 
 school as he does in a good denominational home; 
 as much by silent influence as by direct instruction ; 
 and more by deeds than words. Religion wraps 
 him round like an exhilarating atmosphere, and he 
 breathes it with uncritical content. It so happens 
 that for a few months, when I was six years old 
 and recovering from an infantile complaint, I was
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 259 
 
 left in charge of an excellent dame who was mistress 
 of a Church School in a village in Hertfordshire. 
 In order to keep me out of mischief she put me 
 for the time into the school ; and it is pleasant to 
 look back and recall, as I can with vividness, the 
 feelings of a National schoolboy in the early sixties. 
 I remember that we liked the church to which 
 we walked up two-and-two on Sunday mornings ; 
 and liked the service, especially the Psalms and 
 Canticles, and, indeed, everything but the sermon, 
 to which we did not listen ; but, of all things, we 
 liked the christenings, at which it was sure to be 
 the privilege of one of us to hold the vicar's book 
 (unfortunately the wrong way up, but that was 
 unavoidable) while he administered the fascinating 
 and mysterious rite. We liked, too, the Collects 
 that we had to learn on Sunday, some of which 
 I still associate with the warm smell of American 
 cloth in which our school Prayer-books were bound. 
 And we liked the vicar, who patted our heads and 
 was kind, and spoke in an unearthly voice, which 
 we were quite ready to regard as heavenly 
 
 " And felt how awful goodness was, 
 Virtue in her shape how lovely ! " 
 
 I was in the school too short a time to owe to 
 it any large amount either of teaching or discipline, 
 but the system laid a spell upon the imagination. 
 It taught me reverence; and one or two special
 
 200 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 incidents have not been without their particular 
 fruit in my after-life. The texts on the walls still 
 flash their warning into my memory, " Swear not 
 at all," "Lying lips are an abomination to the 
 Lord ; " and if I am not a liar and profane swearer, 
 I should like to acknowledge a debt to those com- 
 manding texts. 
 
 Churchmen, however, will probably not want much 
 convincing that Church Schools are the best sort 
 of schools, and deserve every effort to maintain 
 them. They will also be clear that the village 
 Board School must no longer be allowed to tyrannize 
 over their children by denying them religious teaching 
 altogether or offering them the savourless food-sub- 
 stitute of undenominationalism in its various degrees 
 of insipidity. Churchmen and Dissenters should 
 have no difficulty in coming to terms about the 
 village question ; for the latter, awakening from their 
 secular dream, are complaining that their children 
 cannot get denominational instruction when the 
 Church School is the only school in the neighbour- 
 hood ; and it would be perfectly possible to make 
 arrangement for Nonconformist teaching in Church 
 Schools, on condition that the children of Church 
 parents were allowed Church teaching in schools 
 managed by a local board. One of the very few 
 principles that in this matter of school teaching 
 seem irrefutable is the right of parents to insist 
 that their children, if they are taught religion at all,
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 261 
 
 shall be taught the religion they themselves profess. 
 The difficulty of the situation begins to be felt when 
 it is asked how this principle is to be applied to the 
 schools under the Boards of great cities like London 
 and Liverpool and Manchester ? On the one hand, 
 there are those who propose with a light heart that 
 the clergy should claim admission to the schools 
 and undertake the religious instruction themselves. 
 Considering the fact that almost every large parish 
 is already under-staffed, the proposal does not strike 
 me as sagacious. And, further, it is not only im- 
 possible in practice, but mistaken in theory. In the 
 first place, the clergyman is not a trained teacher ; 
 and in the second, the effect of separating the 
 religious from the secular education, and giving 
 the first to the clergyman and the other to the 
 teacher, would not be to magnify the importance 
 of religion, but to depreciate it ; for the clergyman 
 has no status in the eyes of the children. 1 What the 
 teacher says is law ; what the clergyman says may 
 be gospel, but it carries no weight. It is of the 
 first importance, therefore, that in Board Schools 
 the religious lessons should continue to be given by 
 the regular teacher. I am myself of opinion that the 
 religious teaching in Church Schools also should 
 
 1 We may illustrate from what takes place in public schools as 
 to the teaching of foreign languages. Ideally the best system is to 
 introduce foreign masters who know most about the subject ; in practice 
 it is usually found best to let the form-master teach them.
 
 262 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 be given by the teacher, and that the function of 
 the clergyman should be restricted to a regular 
 catechizing ; but I will not pursue that subject now. 
 
 What changes, then, are required in our present 
 system of religious teaching under the greater 
 School Boards ? There are those, of course, who will 
 insist that no changes whatever are required. I am 
 always hearing reports as to the superiority of the 
 Scripture teaching given in Board Schools to that 
 given in Church Schools, and as the Board Schools 
 can pay better salaries and secure better teachers, I 
 am not surprised that such is the case, for it requires 
 as much trained skill to teach Bible history well as 
 to teach any other history. It is true, we do not 
 maintain Church Schools in order to teach Scripture 
 history, but to inculcate line upon line and precept 
 upon precept the facts of the Christian faith and 
 the consequent duties of the Christian life ; and 
 accordingly we are most concerned that our teachers 
 should be Christian men and women. At the same 
 time we should be glad enough to pay better salaries 
 and so secure better teachers, if only we could. In 
 School Boards the Church can exercise no direct 
 influence upon the choice of teachers ; but we know 
 they are chosen with care, and we know many of 
 them have been trained in Church Training Colleges, 
 and would be in Church Schools if salaries were 
 higher ; so that there is no reason why the Church 
 should not trust them with the education of such of
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 263 
 
 her children as she cannot herself make provision for 
 in Church Schools ; though the latter is, I am pro- 
 foundly convinced, by far the more excellent way. 
 I would suggest, then, that the Church, for the 
 present distress, should not claim to teach in Board 
 Schools by its own ministers, but should limit its 
 demand to the removing of the present taboo from 
 the Apostles' Creed. I do not, as I have said, 
 believe that it was ever meant to include the Creed 
 among "formularies distinctive of a denomination," 
 but as the greater Boards have taken this view, the 
 point should be cleared up. The Church certainly 
 cannot be content with any religious teaching that 
 excludes the definite statement of the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 3. The third principle of which I wish to speak is 
 equality of treatment for Church and Board Schools 
 in regard to national funds. This principle sectarian 
 prejudice has hitherto availed to render inoperative. 
 I have already shown, by quotation from a memo- 
 randum of Mr. Forster's, that it was no part of the 
 original policy of the framers of the first Education 
 Act, to place Church Schools at a disadvantage as 
 compared with Board Schools. It was supposed that 
 the Treasury grant given in lieu of rates would 
 adequately meet their needs. The all-important 
 difference has proved to be that while the Board 
 Schools have been able to respond to the increasing 
 demands of the Vice-President of the Council by
 
 264 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 simply enlarging their precept, which the ratepayers 
 have had no power to resist, the Church Schools have 
 only once in the thirty years been able to convince 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there was any 
 need for an enlarged grant. Now, what reason is 
 there in the nature of things why Churchmen and 
 Dissenters should receive unequal treatment from the 
 State, the Church, which is "established," and so 
 might expect preferential treatment, being not in the 
 better case, but in the worse ? An answer that seems 
 satisfactory to many people, is that the State cannot 
 possibly pay for teaching any religion that is not the 
 religion of the whole people. But to that answer 
 there are several obvious rejoinders. The first is that 
 for nearly forty years the State subsidized Church 
 and Dissenting Schools alike, laying stress on the 
 fact that it was subsidizing the teaching of religion. 1 
 Another is, that the State does at present pay a 
 large part of the expenses of Church Schools, and 
 pays through rates and taxes the whole expense of 
 the religion taught in Board Schools, which is very 
 far indeed from being the religion of the whole 
 
 1 E.g. a Minute of the Committee of Council (September 24, 1839) 
 says : " Their Lordships are strongly of opinion that no plan of educa- 
 tion ought to be encouraged in which intellectual instruction is not 
 subordinate to the regulation of the thoughts and habits of the children 
 by the doctrines and practices of revealed religion." Even as late as 
 1862 Mr. Lowe managed to overcome the opposition to his "Revised 
 Code " by urging that " the religious element underlies the whole system 
 of Privy Council Education, and that the inspectors will continue to 
 inspect the state of religious instruction."
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 265 
 
 people. Moreover, to these rates Churchmen are 
 compelled to contribute, while Dissenters are com- 
 pelled to contribute to Church schools through the 
 taxes. A comprehensible principle, therefore, in the 
 present inequality seems much to seek. What, one 
 may ask, are the educational principles to which the 
 State is in fact committed ? It is committed, first of 
 all, to pay for secular education, because it has made 
 it both compulsory and free ; and it is committed to 
 the policy of allowing such secular teaching to be 
 allied with denominational teaching in religion. It 
 would seem to follow that the only logical course for 
 the State to pursue in regard to its subsidies is, either 
 to bear the whole expense both of secular and religious 
 education in every sort of school, or else to bear the 
 expense of secular education only, and to put the 
 expense of religious teaching upon the particular 
 denominations. But the objections to the latter 
 course are obvious and fatal. It would be extra- 
 ordinarily difficult to separate the cost of the religious 
 from the secular education in Board Schools, and it 
 would be impossible to levy it upon the various 
 denominations. It would be far better for the State 
 to revert to its earlier policy, and not distinguish 
 between the religious education and the secular, but 
 frankly bear the cost of both, since both are of 
 consequence to it It will not be forgotten that this 
 very unfortunate division between the religious and 
 secular teaching in schools dates only from Mr.
 
 266 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 Lowe's "Revised Code" of 1862, into which it was 
 introduced as an inevitable concomitant of his system 
 of payment by results, because it was contended that 
 the results of religious education could not be ap- 
 praised as a fourth R. But now that this vicious 
 system has been discredited and withdrawn, it is not 
 too much to hope that the equally vicious division it 
 introduced may disappear after it. 
 
 The further question, whether the cost of education 
 should be raised by taxes or rates or both, would 
 seem to be a question for financiers, but it has a 
 bearing upon "the religious difficulty." The Dis- 
 senter who at present contributes to the maintenance 
 of Church Schools through the Treasury, is satisfied 
 with the report of H.M. Inspector that the schools 
 are well managed ; on the other hand, if he should 
 contribute through a local rate, even a county rate, 
 he would, it is said, for some unexplained reason, 
 feel insufficiently represented by the inspector, and 
 would demand a direct voice in the management, 
 which it might be difficult, qua Dissenter, to allow 
 him. So that it would evidently save much local 
 friction if the funds for all educational purposes were 
 raised as taxes and not as rates. 
 
 At this point of the discussion, however, the Dis- 
 senter, accustomed to the point of view of his 
 political organs, is apt to break in with the excla- 
 mation, " But your Church Schools are voluntary ! 
 How can you call them ' voluntary ' any longer if they
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 267 
 
 are financed by the State ? " l To which the simple 
 answer is that the voluntariness of Church Schools 
 is not of their essence. There was a time when all 
 schools, those of Churchmen and Dissenters alike, 
 were voluntary. The latter, for the most part, 
 ceased to be voluntary soon after 1870, because they 
 chose to acquiesce in a form of religious teaching 
 repugnant to the principles of Churchmen ; but if the 
 State, after witnessing our struggles for thirty years, 
 were at last to say, " Perhaps it is inconsistent in us 
 to subject you to penalties for refusing to abjure the 
 religion which we ourselves profess ; henceforward 
 we allow Church teaching in all schools " is there 
 any reason why Churchmen should stand stiffly out 
 for the practice of voluntary subscriptions ? Do 
 they in themselves embalm a principle? Or is 
 there any statute of limitations which should 
 prevent our doing in 1902 what most of the British 
 and Foreign Schools did in 1870 and the years 
 following ? 
 
 1 This argument is not imaginary. The chapter in the Minority Re- 
 port of the Commission of 1888 upon ' The Complaints of the Advocates 
 of Denominational Schools,' signed by Mr. Lyulph Stanley, the late 
 Dr. Dale of Birmingham, and other representative Nonconformists, is 
 chiefly a play upon this word " voluntary," e.g. " As to the grievance 
 of contributing to a system they dislike, that is inseparable from the 
 fact that the maintenance of schools has been made a public duty 
 charged on public funds. No man is allowed to take credit for his 
 expenditure in private charity in diminution of the poor rate." As 
 though the education of two millions of children in Church Schools 
 were " voluntary " in the same sense as whether I should relieve a 
 beggar or send him to the workhouse !
 
 268 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 But our Dissenter will perhaps reply, " It is not 
 so much your voluntary subscriptions that I contend 
 for, as your voluntary management that I am jealous 
 of. Ours we have surrendered. And do you honestly 
 think it fair that you Churchmen should be allowed 
 to keep your schools in your own hands as though 
 you were Roman Catholics or Jews co-opt your 
 own managers, and appoint your own teachers, while 
 we have to submit to all the changes and chances 
 of local and periodical election?" To which naif 
 question the reply again surely is, " Why not ? What 
 injury does such voluntary management do to you 
 or to the State ? Our schools are built under trust- 
 deeds, which specify the religious teaching to be 
 given, the qualifications of managers, and so forth, 
 and by them we are bound. You also have such 
 schools, fewer indeed than you once had, but those 
 that remain will serve to illustrate the principle. 
 With those we, for our part, have no wish to inter- 
 fere. And you wrong us if you suppose our voluntary 
 management brings with it no special voluntary 
 effort. There are our school buildings, which require 
 constant repair and constant renovation to suit 
 the aesthetic taste of H.M. Inspector as well as the 
 ever-growing demands of the Vice-President of the 
 Council ; and we shall be eager, besides, to build 
 schools in other places if only we are allowed, as at 
 present we are not. This will be a great saving of 
 expense to the community, for which we might in
 
 THE CHURCH AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 269 
 
 reason expect your gratitude. But for the actual 
 education we give, why should we not claim to share 
 alike with you, and not be treated as privileged 
 people, to be envied an occasional dole from the 
 Treasury, while you are allowed to take whatever 
 funds you require from the local purse ? " There is 
 no doubt, however, that if the Government brought 
 in a Bill to co-ordinate the education in Church and 
 Board Schools, it would exact from the Church a 
 quid pro qtw, just as it exacted a percentage when it 
 made tithe rent-charge recoverable from the land- 
 lord instead of from the tenant. And the National 
 Society is now, it is said, prepared to agree to the 
 representation of the local authority upon the boards 
 of management in Church Schools, provided they do 
 not exceed in number one-third of the whole body. 
 Many of the clergy have long been anxious to 
 enlarge the boards of school management in country 
 districts so as to admit representatives of the parents, 
 chiefly with a view to quickening their interest in 
 the subject of education ; and they would be far 
 from resenting the proposal. 
 
 But it may be asked, " What hope is there that the 
 Church will ever be allowed, what it has so long and 
 with so much justice claimed, an equal treatment 
 with Board Schools in respect of funds, and a right 
 to have its own faith taught to its own children in all 
 the elementary schools of the country ? " The first 
 hope, though it is a cloud no bigger than a man's
 
 270 RELIGIO LAICI. 
 
 hand, is contained in the fact that by the Education 
 Bill of this present year (1901) a new educational 
 authority has been called into being for the super- 
 vision of secondary education ; and the hope is that 
 this devolution of secondary education to a local 
 authority is but the first instalment of the unification 
 of the whole of the national teaching under the local 
 control of municipal authorities, who will deal with 
 all the questions involved, and levy rates or receive 
 grants for all the educational work of the district. 
 To such an authority, cognizant of local needs and 
 elected from all parties, both Church and Board 
 Schools would be subject, and their affairs, it may 
 be confidently affirmed, would be regulated with less 
 partisanship, and with a greater adaptation of ideal 
 requirements to the sublunary laws of space and 
 time. The second hope seems to me to lie in the 
 general dissatisfaction with the present state of 
 things, and the growing conviction among the Dis- 
 senters, of which an unmistakable evidence is the 
 recent Catechism of the Free Churches, that dogma 
 is only another name for creed, and that creed is the 
 necessary basis of character. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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