The Kernel and the Husk: Letters on Spiritual Christianity

by Edwin Abbott Abbott

APPENDIX

XXX
MINISTERIAL TESTS

My dear——,

Excuse my delay in answering your letter of last month. The fact is I have not so much leisure as I had. I was glad indeed to hear from you (last Christmas, I think) that you could not so lightly put away the worship and service of Christ as you had felt disposed, or compelled to do, some eighteen months before; that the question appeared to you now a deeper one than you had then supposed, not to be decided by mere historical evidence but, to some extent, by the experience of life; and that you were inclined at least so far to take my advice as to wait a while, to stand in the old ways, and to adhere—so far as you honestly could—to old religious habits, including the habit of prayer and attendance at public worship. This was as much as I could reasonably hope. I could not expect that a few letters from one who is quite conscious that he does not possess the strange and sometimes instantaneous influence exerted by a strong religious character, would do all that will, I trust, be done for you by patience, by a prayerful and laborious life devoted to good objects, and by cherishing habits of reverence for the good, and of thoughtfulness for all. I had been in the habit of regularly giving my Sundays, and occasionally some hours on week days, to our theological correspondence: but when I received that announcement from you, I felt that my time might now be devoted to other objects, and I made arrangements accordingly. Hence, when your recent letter reached me, I was not quite at leisure to reply to it immediately. But you pressed me to answer “one last question,” which I should rather call two questions (for they are quite distinct, although you combine them so closely as to leave me uncertain whether you recognize the wide difference between them): “Can a man who rejects the miraculous element in the Bible remain a member or a minister in the Church of England?”

Your first question I should answer with an unhesitating affirmative. The Church of England does not require from its lay members any signature of the Articles or any test but a profession of belief in the Creed at the time of baptism, renewed in the Catechism and Confirmation service; and I cannot think that any sincere worshipper of Christ ought so far to take offence at one or two expressions in the Creed—which may be interpreted by him metaphorically, though by others literally—as to separate himself on that account from the national church. Grant that his interpretation may be a little strained, nay, grant even that he is obliged to say “I cannot believe this;” yet I should doubt the necessity, or even wisdom and rightness, of cutting himself off from the Church of England because of one or two clauses in the Creed, as long as he feels himself in general harmony with the Church doctrine and services. There would be no end to schisms, and no possibility of combining for worship, if every one separated himself from every congregational utterance with which he could not heartily agree in every particular. On this point I find myself obliged to remember for my own sake, and to apply to myself, the advice I once gave a very little child many years ago. We were singing a hymn, and had come to the words:

“Ah me, ah me, that I

In Kedar’s tents here stay:

No place like that on high,

Lord, thither guide my way.”

“I suppose,” said the child (who was young but somewhat old-fashioned in thought and expression), “that these words mean that you want to die, if they mean anything. But I don’t want to die. So I don’t think I ought to say them.” In my own mind I sympathized very much with the objector; but I endeavoured to meet the objection. “Hymns,” I said, “are written not for single persons but for congregations. In a whole churchful you will find all sorts of people of different ages and ways of thinking. Some are glad and strong, others sad and weak. Some rejoice in life and look forward eagerly to labour. These are mostly the young; but the older sort are sometimes tired of life and longing for rest. Now when we are singing a hymn we must all do our best, young and old, happy and sad, to enter into one another’s feelings, and we must not expect that every word in every hymn will precisely represent our own particular feelings at the moment: the time will perhaps come when the words that now seem meaningless to us will exactly represent our deepest feelings, and we shall wonder how we could have ever failed to feel them; but for the present we must not be disposed always to be asking, ‘Do I agree with this? Do I exactly feel that?’ Of course if it occurs to you that these or those words are so opposite to what you think, that you would be telling a lie to God in uttering them, why then you must not utter them: but you ought not to suppose that in a church service God exacts from you a rigid account for every word of the congregational utterances in which you take part: if you can heartily join in the greater part of the service, do not be afraid; He accepts your prayers and praises.” Many years have passed away since I spoke thus: and, since then, I have found myself often obliged to repeat to myself, for my own guidance, the advice which I then gave to guide another. In a public service one must give and take, and I see no reason at all why a believer in non-miraculous Christianity should not find himself in harmony with the services of the Church of England. His interpretation both of the Bible and of the Prayer-book will be different from that of most of the congregation; but he will accept both the Bible and the Prayer-book as the best books that could be used for their several purposes, and would be sorry to see them replaced by anything that could be devised by himself or by those who think as he does.

So far I can speak confidently; but I am more doubtful as to the answer that should be given to your second question, “Can a believer in non-miraculous Christianity remain a minister in the Church of England?” Looking at the Articles, if I were forced to assume that every one of them is binding on a Church of England minister, I should say that a belief in the miraculous is necessary for every one who can honestly sign an assent to the Article on Christ’s Resurrection, which asserts that, “Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, wherewith He ascended into heaven.” These words distinctly declare the Resurrection of Christ’s material body; and as I do not believe in the fact, I cannot assent to the words, nor do I see how any believer in non-miraculous Christianity can assent to them.

Perhaps you may think, in your innocence, that this disposes of the question, arguing logically thus: “The Church of England appoints certain Articles as tests of belief for her ministers; A cannot assent to one of these Articles; therefore A has no right to remain a minister: there is no loophole out of this logical statement of the case.” There is not: and if the Church of England were governed in accordance with logic, I (and a good many others) ought to have left the ranks of her ministers as soon as we found that we had been forced to reject a single clause of a single Article. But the Church has not been fur several generations governed in this logical way. Besides practically and generally allowing among its members a great degree of freedom and latitude, it has enlarged that latitude during the last generation by a specific and authoritative alteration of the terms of subscription to the Articles. When I signed them—which I did, with perfect honesty and sincerity, some three or four and twenty years ago—we were obliged to “assent and consent” to “each and every” Article in each particular: I forget the exact terms, but I know they were as stringent as they well could be. But in 1865 the Clerical Subscription Act introduced a new form:—“I assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and to the Book of Common Prayer.... I believe the doctrine of the Church of England as therein set forth to be agreeable to the Word of God.” Now if “therein” meant “in each and every clause of each and every Article,” that would have been tantamount to a mere repetition of the old requirement. Obviously therefore this alteration implies an obligation of the subscriber to assent, no longer to “each and every Article” in particular, but to the Articles as a whole, regarded as an expression of Anglican doctrine. Consequently, at present, the necessity of subscription need not repel any one unless he finds himself unable to accept “the doctrine of the Church of England as set forth,” not in detail, but generally, in the Articles and the Prayer-book; and I need not say that a believer in non-miraculous Christianity by no means occupies a position of such dissent as this.

The only obstacle therefore for a scrupulous minister will be in the services of the Church and in the reading of the Bible: and here I admit that there is a very considerable obstacle, though it appears to me to be less than it was a dozen years ago, and each year lessens it still further. The difficulty lies, not in the scepticism of the minister (who may be a more faithful worshipper of Christ than any one in his flock) nor in any congregational suspicion or alarm (for his advanced views lie quite beyond the horizon of the thoughts of any country congregation, and any but an exceptional congregation elsewhere) but almost entirely in the minister’s own uneasy sense of a difference between himself and his people; in his fear that he may be acting hypocritically; in his consequent loss of self-respect; and in a resulting demoralization affecting all his work.

Clearly this is a difficulty which would be diminished, if not altogether removed, by publicity; but as long as it is not publicly recognized that widely different interpretations of the Scripture are possible and compatible with the worship of Christ, the difficulty is a very serious one. Whenever such a man reads the Bible in the discharge of his public duty, he is liable to be haunted with the consciousness that he is two-faced. He conveys to his congregation an obvious meaning and they assume that he accepts that meaning himself; but he does not. Suppose, for example, he reads the story of the battle of Beth-horon: his congregation believes that it is listening to the most stupendous miracle that the world has witnessed; the minister believes that he is reading an account of one of the twenty, or more, decisive battles of history. Similarly, in the New Testament, if he reads the narrative of the feeding of the 4,000 or 5,000, he reads it as a religious legend, curiously preserving a deep spiritual truth, but of no value except for its emblematic meaning; but his congregation listens to him as if he were reciting one of the most important proofs that Jesus was no mere man, but truly the Son of God. I do not wish to exaggerate the difference between the rationalizing minister and the literalizing congregation. Both he and they believe that in the battle of Beth-horon God was working out the destiny of Israel and preparing for Himself a chosen people; both he and they believe that Jesus Christ was the true Bread of Life; and similarly, as regards many other miraculous narratives of the Scriptures, the congregation and the minister, though divided as to the acceptance of the historical fact, will be united in accepting the spiritual interpretation which is the essence of the narrative. Moreover, every year is probably increasing the number of the laity who take the same esoteric view as the minister takes about many of the miracles. In any educated congregation there must be a large number of men, and there will soon be a large number of women, who do not believe in the literal stories of Balaam’s ass, Elisha’s floating axe-head, and Samson’s exploit with the jaw-bone. Unless educated people are kept out of our churches, or separate themselves from the Church, this number must soon increase. Thus the gulf between the rationalizing minister and the congregation tends yearly to diminish through the action of the congregation; and if only both the esoteric and the exoteric interpretation of the Scripture were generally recognized as being compatible with the faithful worship of Christ, I do not see why the minister should not claim for himself, without any sense of constraint or insincerity, the same freedom of interpreting the Bible which is accorded to the laity.

There still remains however the clause in the Creed stating the Miraculous Conception, which to me appears the greatest difficulty of all. It is one thing, in my judgment, to repeat the prayers of the Church and to read passages from the sacred books of the Church, as the mouthpiece of the congregation, and rather a different thing to stand up and say—not only as the mouthpiece of the congregation, but in your individual character, as a Christian, and as a priest as well—“I believe this, or that,” and to take money for so saying; while all the time you are saying under your breath, “But I only believe it metaphorically.” Here, again, my scruples would be removed, if it were only generally understood that the metaphorical interpretation was possible and permissible. As regards the Athanasian Creed, for example, I should have no scruples at all. For the tone and spirit, as well as for the phraseology, of that Creed, I feel the strongest aversion. Yet I should repeat it as the mouthpiece of the congregation without any hesitation, because they would all know that the Church of England, so far as it can speak through the archbishops and bishops, has signified that the repulsive clauses in the Creed may all be so explained as practically to be explained away. I do not in the least believe that this mild interpretation of the damnatory clauses explains their original meaning; but that matters little or nothing. Provided there be no suspicion of insincerity, I am willing to make considerable sacrifices of personal convictions in so complex a rite as congregational worship. The clergyman whom I most respect has not read the Athanasian Creed for thirty years: for my own sake, as a participator in the worship of his church, I rejoice; but all my respect for him did not prevent me from doubting sometimes whether he was right in this matter, until I found that his action had been prompted by an expression of feeling on the part of some representative members of his congregation. For if one clergyman is justified in omitting the Athanasian Creed whenever he likes, I do not see why another is not justified in reading it whenever he likes: the liberty of the clergy might easily become the slavery of the laity. I should therefore be ready to read the repugnant Athanasian Creed because every member of my congregation would know (and I should feel justified in letting them know from the pulpit) that I read it in obedience to the law and in spite of my convictions. But I am not so ready, at present, to read the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed, although I cordially accept them except so far as concerns the one word which expresses the Miraculous Conception. My reason is, that I should not like to leave my congregation under the impression that I accepted that dogma, and on the other hand I should not feel justified in using a pulpit of the National Church to explain why I rejected it.

Here again, as in the previous instance, I feel that times are rapidly changing, and the freedom of ministers in the Church of England is rapidly increasing. For scruples as to the use of the Creeds, no less than for scruples as to the reading of the Scriptures, publicity is the chief remedy wanting to dissipate scruples; and time is on the side of freedom. Belief in miracles now rests on an inclined plane; friction is daily lessening, the downward motion is rapidly increasing; in a few more years the authorities of the Church of England may recognize, not with reluctance but with delight, that there are some young men who know enough of Greek, and of history, and of evidence, to be convinced that the miracles are unhistorical, and who, nevertheless, are worshippers of Christ on conviction, with a faith not to be shaken by anything that science or criticism can discover, and with a readiness to serve Christ, as ministers in the English Church, if they can do so without sacrifice of their opinions and without suspicion of insincerity.

Personally, I have not felt these scruples very acutely. Circumstances have placed me where nothing has been required of me which might not have been done as well by a Nonconformist as by a member of the Church of England. To help a friend, or do occasional work in an unofficial way, has never caused me the least misgiving; for I have always remained in cordial accord with the forms of worship current in the Church of England. The only difference that my views have made in my clerical action has been this, that I have preferred for a time not to place myself in any position where ministerial work might officially be required of me. Yet even these scruples have been doubtfully entertained, and would vanish altogether if ever I were to publish a volume of such letters as I am now writing to you, so that I could be sure that my opinions were no secret from my Bishop and from such members of my congregation as were likely to understand them.

The advice which I have given to myself, I should also be inclined to give to others who are already ministers in the Church of England, and who have scruples of conscience in consequence of some divergence from orthodox views: “Stay where you are, as long as you feel that you can sincerely worship Christ as the Eternal Son of God, and as long as you can preach a gospel of faith and strength, not only from the pulpit but also by the bedside of the dying. If you can do this, you may stay, though you are obliged to interpret metaphorically some expressions in the Creed. If you cannot do this, go at once, even though you can accept every syllable in all the Creeds in the most literal sense.”

To young men who have not yet been ordained and who incline to “rational” views of Christianity, I have been disposed hitherto to give different advice: “Wait a while. The fashion of men’s opinion is rapidly changing; the excessive fear of science on the part of the Clergy—many of whom come from Public Schools where they have received no training in the rudiments of science or mathematics—is, strange to say, predisposing all but extreme High Churchmen to welcome the adhesion of any who are firm believers in Christ, even though they may doubt or reject the miracles. It would be a miserable thing to be ordained, and to undertake the task of preaching a doctrine implying the highest conceivable morality, and presently to find yourself condemned by those to whom you should be an example as well as an instructor, for what appears to them patent insincerity—condemned by others, and perhaps not wholly acquitted by yourself. In a few years you may perhaps find it possible to be ordained not upon tolerance but with a hearty reception, and then there need be no concealment of your opinions.”

Such is the language that I have hitherto used on the very few occasions when I have been consulted, generally advising delay. But now I am inclined to think that the time has come when young men with these opinions ought not to wait, but ought at least to set their case before the Bishops, leaving it to them to accept or refuse them as candidates for ordination. Schisms and prosecutions are very objectionable things, but there are worse evils even than these. There is the danger of hypocrisy, spreading, like an infection, from oneself to others. The hour has perhaps come for authorizing or condemning the extreme freedom of opinion which some of the Broad Churchmen have assumed. Proverbs and texts might be quoted in equal abundance to justify action or inaction in the abstract; but two important practical considerations appear to me to dictate some kind of action without delay.

On the one hand, we hear the complaint that the ablest and most conscientious men are deterred by scruples from entering the ministry in the Church of England, even when they feel a strong bent for clerical work. If this scarcity of able candidates for ordination continues for many more years, we shall have bad times in store for us. Already I think I have noted, among some ministers who are conscious of but little intellectual and not much more spiritual power, a disposition unduly to magnify their office, the ritual, the mechanical use of the sacraments, parochial machinery, processions, sensational hymns, church salvation-armies, and church-routine generally, because they feel they have no evangelic message of their own, no individual inspiration. In some degree, such a subordination of self is good and may argue modesty; but in many cases it is not good, when it leads young men to materialize and sensualize religion, to suppose that the preaching of Christ’s Gospel and the elevation of the souls of men can be effected by ecclesiastical battalion drill; to dispense with study, thought, and observation; to acquiesce in the letter of the collected dogmas of the past, and to hope for no new spiritual truth from the progress of the ages controlled by the ever fresh revelations of the Spirit of God.

On the other hand, there is the opposite evil, on which I have already touched—I mean the danger that some of the more intellectual among the clergy, those who do not sympathize with sacerdotalism and are popularly reckoned among the “Broad Church,” may not only be suspected of insincerity in professing to believe what they, as a fact, disbelieve, but may also become actually demoralized by self-suspicions and hence indirectly demoralize their congregations. I confess my sympathies are very much with a man in that position. He has been sometimes the victim of cruel circumstances. In his youth, the religious problems of the present day lay all in the background. Before he was ordained, he may very well have discerned no difficulties at all in the career before him, nothing but the prospect of a noble work, to which he felt himself called. His life was probably spent in a public boarding-school, where he scarcely ever had a minute to himself for thought and meditation; it being the ideal of the educator so to engross the time and energy of each pupil in studies or in games that the average youth might be kept out of moral mischief and the clever youth might get a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge. When he came to the University he found himself expected to devote himself to “reading for a degree,” and there was little or no time for theology; after taking his degree he found himself under the necessity of earning his living, and if he was intending to become a clergyman he naturally desired to be ordained as soon as possible. If he was very fortunate, he may have contrived (as I did) to get a year’s reading at theology while he supported himself by taking pupils; but that was probably the utmost of his preparation. Soon after reaching his twenty-third year he was ordained. And now, for the first time, leaving school and college, he begins to realize what life means, and to think for himself. Can we wonder that this “thinking for himself” produces considerable changes of thought? If he is healthy, and active in his parish, and has not much time for reflection and reading, the changes will be long deferred, and he will be scarcely conscious of them: but if he has any mind at all in him, and gives it the least exercise, it is hardly possible that an able and honest student of the Bible at the age of forty-six, when he comes to compare the opinions of his manhood with those of his youth, will not find that he has ceased to believe, or at all events to be certain of, the historical accuracy of a good deal which he accepted with unquestioning confidence at the age of twenty-three.

Changes of this kind are inevitable, and they ought not to be feared. Yet perhaps the fear of them deters some of the more thoughtful young men from presenting themselves for ordination. They know that they believe in such and such facts now, but, say they, “Many sincere and thoughtful persons dispute the truth of these facts; and what will be my position some ten years hence if I find that I am driven to deny what I now affirm?” What one would like to be able to reply, in answer to such an appeal, would be, that the worship of Christ does not depend upon the truth of a few isolated and disputable pieces of evidence, but upon the testimony of the conscience based upon indisputable (though complex) evidence; so that, if the man’s conscience remains the same, he need not fear lest the fundamental principles of his faith will be shaken by any historical or scientific criticism. From the terrestrial point of view, Christ is human nature at its divinest. Whoever therefore in the highest degree loves and trusts and reveres human nature at its divinest, he naturally worships a representation of Christ, even though he may never have heard of the name. Now life will bring a young man many disappointments and disillusions and paradoxes: but no one, who has once worshipped Christ in this natural way, need fear (or hope?) that life will ever bring him anything more worthy of representing human nature at its divinest, anything therefore more worthy of worship, than Jesus of Nazareth. The only danger is, that one may cease to be able to love and trust and revere the objects that deserve these feelings. There is indeed that danger, just as there is the danger that one may cease to be able to be honest. But what young man, in mapping out his future, would make insurance against such a moral paralysis? A man ought no more—a man ought still less—to contemplate the possibility of becoming unable to worship Christ, than the possibility of becoming unable to revere a kind father or love affectionate children. If then our candidate for ordination regards Christ in this spirit, one would like to encourage him to present himself for ordination even though he may already doubt the Biblical narrative on some points, and though he may be pretty certain that he will change his mind on many others by the time he is twice as old as he is now. However it rests very much with Bishops to settle this question; and the question as to what the Bishops might do is so important as to demand a separate letter.

P.S. Since writing the above remarks about the reluctance of the ablest men at the Universities to be ordained, I have been told that the state of things is even worse than I had conceived at Cambridge. There, at the two largest colleges, Trinity and St. John’s, I am told that of the Fellows who took their degrees between 1873-9 only eight, out of sixty or thereabouts, took holy orders; and of those who took degrees between 1880-6, only three out of sixty. Trinity is conspicuous; of the sixty Fellows who took degrees from 1873-86 only two have been ordained.

XXXI
WHAT THE BISHOPS MIGHT DO

My dear ——,

I reminded you in my last letter that ordination or non-ordination must largely depend upon the judgment of the Bishops. This, I suppose, must have always been the case to some extent: but there are reasons why it may well be so now to a greater extent than before. The important change made in the form of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles has supplied a solid and definite ground upon which the Bishops may fairly claim to ascertain from candidates for ordination some details about their religious opinions. In the times when candidates had to assent to every point in every Article, no further examination was necessary: but now that the candidate is allowed (by implication) to dissent from some things in the Articles, the Bishop may surely, without any inquisitorial oppression, say: “Before I ordain you, I should like to know, in a general way, how far your dissent from the Articles extends.” Some Bishops may be inclined to shrink from such an interrogation, as though it implied doubt of the candidate’s sincerity: and of course such an examination might be abused in a narrow or bigoted or even tyrannical manner. But on the whole, I think, it might be even more useful as a protection and help to the young candidate than to the Bishop. Here and there, perhaps, a young man might be advised to give up, or defer, the prospect of ordination; but others (who would have otherwise been deterred by scruples) might be encouraged to be ordained in spite of some intellectual difficulties; and this fatherly encouragement from a man of authority and experience would be a great help and comfort, strengthening the young man in the conviction that mere intellectual difficulties could not interfere with his faith in Christ. Still more valuable would be the young man’s consciousness that he could not be called insincere or hypocritical, since he had concealed nothing from the Bishop, who, after hearing all, had decided that there was nothing to exclude him from ordination.

I would therefore advise any man who desired to be ordained but was deterred by present scruples or the fear of future scruples, to write at an early period to the Bishop at whose hands he would be likely to seek ordination, stating his difficulties frankly and fully, and asking whether they would be considered an impediment. If he felt any touch of doubt on the subject of the miracles, I would have him make them the subject of a special question. In some dioceses I should expect the answer to be unfavourable. From others perhaps the answer would come that the Bishop was “unwilling to undertake so heavy a responsibility; each man must decide for himself whether he can honestly read the services of the Church and the lessons from the Scriptures without believing in miracles.” That answer would be, in my judgment, regrettable, though not unnatural or indefensible. But even that answer would be of value, as it would be a record that, at all events, the Bishop had not been kept in ignorance of anything that the candidate ought to have revealed to him: and this in itself would be of great value in lightening for a scrupulous and self-introspective young man the burden of the questions which might sometimes arise in his mind as he read aloud in the congregation the words of the Bible or the Prayer-book. Moreover, I should anticipate that every year would see an increase in the number of those dioceses from which a still more favourable answer might be returned: “If with all your heart you worship Christ as the Eternal Son of God, if you can honestly and sincerely accept the Church services as excellent (though imperfect) expressions of congregational worship; and the Scriptures as super-excellent (though imperfect) expressions of spiritual fact; if you feel that you have a message of good news for the poor and simple as well as for the rich and educated, and that you can preach the spiritual truths which you and all of us recognize to be the essence of the Gospel, without attacking those material shapes in which, for many generations to come, all spiritual truths must find expression for the vast majority of Christians, then I can encourage you to come to the ministry of Christ. I myself am of the old school and believe in the miracles, or if not in all, at all events in most; but I recognize that this belief—though to me it seems safer and desirable—is not essential: come therefore to the ministry, with the miracles if you can, without them if you cannot.”

Here indeed is a reasonable criterion of fitness for ordination: and if a man cannot satisfy this, I do not see how he can complain of being excluded. But no other criterion seems likely to be permanently tenable. For imagine yourself to be a Bishop, trying to lay down some short, precise, and convenient test, as regards the belief in the miraculous: where are you to draw the line? A young man, eminently fit in all respects for ministerial work, comes to you and says that he accepts all the miracles but one; he cannot bring himself to believe that Joshua stopped the movement of the sun (or earth). What are you to do? Reject him? Surely not: not even though you were Canon Liddon, raised (as I hope he will be raised) to the episcopal bench. The Universities would join in protest against your bigotry; the whole of educated society would secede from the Church on such conditions: the masses of non-Christian and semi-Christian working men would cry out that such a rejection was a portent of tyranny, and that the men who could accept admission to the priesthood on such terms as these were no better than superstitious dolts and slaves, creatures to be suppressed in a free country! Well, then, you admit him: will you reject his younger brother next year, who finds that he cannot accept the miracle of Balaam’s ass speaking with a human voice? Certainly you will admit him too. And now where are you to stop? If you admit a man who denies two miracles, will you accept a man who denies a third, say, the miracle of Elisha’s floating axe-head? And if three, why not four? why not five? and so on to the end of the list?

Again, a man comes to you and says that he feels obliged to reject as an interpolation—although willing to read them as part of an erroneous but long cherished tradition—the well-known words at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever:” what will you do to him? Refuse him? Surely not. The Revisers of the New Testament have themselves rejected the addition, and I am quite sure no scholar who valued God’s Word, and certainly no Bishop, would wish to reject a man for preferring the New Version of the Bible to the Old. But, if you admit him, what are you to say to his companion, who rejects also the last twelve verses of St. Mark’s Gospel? In my opinion, a man must be, Hellenistically speaking, an “idiot,”—a Greek “idiot,” what the Greeks call idiotès—to believe in their genuineness. But even though you, being a busy Bishop, may have forgotten a good deal of Greek, you cannot forget the decision of the Revisers. For here again the Revisers are on the young man’s side. They have printed this passage as a kind of Appendix, placing an interval between it and the Gospel, and appending this note: “The two oldest Greek MSS. and some older authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end. Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel.” Now if you admit the rejecter of these two passages, will you refuse his companion, who tells you he is compelled to agree with the Revisers also as to a third passage, John vii. 53—viii. 11, where the Revised Version brackets several verses, adding this note, “Most of the ancient authorities omit John vii. 53—viii. 11. Those which contain it vary much from each other”? You must certainly accept him. But if you accept him, what are you to say to young men who go further and reject whole books of the New Testament, for example, the Second Epistle of St. Peter; the genuineness of which has been impeached by a great consent of authorities, and concerning which Canon Westcott says that it is the “one exception” to the statement that the combined canons of the Eastern and Western Churches would produce “a perfect New Testament”? And if we let him pass, under Canon Westcott’s wing, how shall we deal with the next candidate, who reminds us that Luther rejected the Apocalypse and the Epistle of St. James, and declares that he cannot help agreeing with Luther? What lastly is to be the fate of those who avow that they cannot shut their eyes to the traces, even in the Synoptic Gospels, of considerable interpolations or late traditions, especially in those portions which contain miraculous narrative? Perhaps we might feel inclined to say, “We will take our stand on Westcott and Hort’s text, or on the text of the Revised Version, and will refuse any candidate who rejects a word of the New Testament that is contained in either of these texts; the line must be drawn somewhere, and we will draw it there.” What! Shall we reject a candidate for ordination because he does not accept the Gospel according to Westcott and Hort, or the Gospel according to an unauthorized though scholarly knot of men called the Revisers? Impossible! all Christendom would cry shame upon us. On the whole, we seem driven to the conclusion that no candidate for Anglican ordination can be reasonably rejected for believing that parts of the Bible are spurious or un-historical, provided that he is willing to read in the presence of the congregation the portions of Scripture appointed by the Church.

If the test of miracles fails, and if the test of an infallible book fails, so too does failure await the test of an infallible Creed. It would be, at all events, departing strangely from the spirit of the Reformers and from the spirit of the Articles, to allow men laxity as regards the interpretation of the Scriptures, which are regarded as specially inspired, and yet to pin them to the letter of the Creeds, which are regarded as being authoritative because they are based on the Scriptures. If a candidate were to tell you, his Bishop, that “he accepted the Resurrection of Christ, and even of Christ’s body, but that he could not honestly say that Christ rose on the third day; for Christ was buried on the evening of Friday, and rose early on the morning of Sunday, that is to say, on the second day,” you would perhaps reason with him, and say that it was the Jewish way of reckoning; and if he were then to reply to you that to the greater part of the congregation this way of reckoning was unknown, and that the phrase might therefore convey a false impression—what would you say to this ultra-conscientious young man? This probably: that “the Creeds of Christendom could not be disturbed on account of the eccentricities of well-meaning individuals; that, if this was his only obstacle, you, his Bishop, could take upon yourself to justify him in repeating these words as the mouthpiece of the congregation; that it was quite open to him to explain the true meaning of the words from the pulpit; and that little misunderstandings of this kind, if indeed there was danger of any, were insignificant as compared with belief in the essential fact that Jesus rose from the dead.”

When the young man goes out—probably satisfied, unless he is very obstinate, and you a little impatient—let us suppose that another man comes in, with a different objection to the same clause. He accepts the essential fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and he does not object to the words, “the third day,” but he does not believe that the material body of Jesus rose from the tomb. He believes that Jesus Himself, that is to say, His spirit, rose from the dead, and that He manifested Himself to His disciples in a spiritual body, which, in accordance with some law of our human spiritual nature, was manifested to those, and only to those, who loved Him or believed in Him.[^[39]] This is a more serious objection by far: for you have to consider, first, whether the young man is likely to hold fast his belief in the spiritual Resurrection of Jesus, when based on such evidence as this; and secondly whether he can preach the Gospel of the risen Saviour without raising all sorts of questions and difficulties in minds unprepared to grapple with them. At this point, then, I cannot blame your episcopal judgment if you take time to decide, and if, before deciding, you do your best to ascertain what manner of man you have to deal with, and, in particular, whether his stability is equal to his ability. “Doubts and difficulties” may sometimes betoken, not so much a mind that thinks for itself, as a disposition to affect singularity and to strain after constant novelty. But if you are satisfied on this point, I think you would do well to admit him to ordination. I would not exclude from the ministry any one who can conscientiously worship Christ in accordance with the services of the Church of England, and preach the Gospel without shaking the faith of the masses.

Perhaps I shall seem to you (not now in the temporary episcopal capacity which you have occupied during the last few paragraphs, but as plain ——) very illiberal in excluding from the broad boundaries of the National Church those who are unable to worship Christ. But I am not prepared to alter the Nicene Creed or the Church Services; and if I could not worship Christ, I cannot think that I myself should desire to be included in the Church of England, as long as that Creed and the Church Services remained in use. For how could I offer prayer to Jesus? or say, in any sense, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God”? No plea of metaphor would ever enable me to repeat these words with any honesty, as long as I found myself unable to worship Christ. I confess to a secret feeling that many of those who at the present time think they do not worship Christ, do in reality worship Him; and I have good hopes that some of them may, in time, when they search out their deepest feelings, find out that they have long been unconsciously worshipping Him, and that they can accept, with a spiritual interpretation, some things that have hitherto appeared to them inadmissible.[^[40]] But to demand that the Creeds and Church Services may be remoulded, is a very different thing from asking to be allowed to put a metaphorical interpretation on one or two phrases in them. When Parochial Councils are established, it may be found ultimately possible to give some larger latitude in the modification or multiplication of Services so as to make them more inclusive: but, after all, congregations meet for worship, not for the sake of being liberal and inclusive; and the inclusion of non-worshippers of Christ can hardly be demanded from a Church that worships Christ. Nor must the inclusion of “advanced thinkers” be carried to such an extent as to exclude the great mass of ordinary believers.

I myself, deeply though I sympathize in all essential matters with the Church of England, should nevertheless be willing not only to be excluded from it, but also to see excluded all who may take the same views as I take, rather than that the simple faith in Christ entertained by the great body of Christians should be injured by the premature disruption of those material beliefs and integumentary illusions with which, at present, their spiritual beliefs are inseparably connected. And this brings me to another side of the question. If I were publishing an appeal to the Bishops, I should certainly add an appeal to the younger Broad Church clergy. It ought not to be asking too much from a young preacher who is an “advanced thinker,” to remember that some reverence is due to the simpler members of his flock. Many of those whom he authoritatively instructs are older, wiser at present, of larger experience in life, some of them perhaps more spiritually minded, than he is. What if their deepest and most cherished religious convictions, right in the main, are tied to certain expressions and narratives that may not be historically accurate? Does it follow that their feelings are to be outraged at any moment by assaults upon the ancient forms and expressions of their belief from the lips of a young man who professes to accept these forms, and takes the money of the Church for accepting them? Such attacks upon the forms are at present worse than useless, because they are sure to be construed into attacks upon the spirit. In time a change will come, and even now a minister may do something to prepare the way for the change. He may institute Bible lectures to which he may invite the attendance of those alone who wish to study the Bible critically, and those whose reading and attainments qualify them to criticize, or to follow criticism. But, from the pulpit, matter of this kind should be altogether excluded.

Nor need the preacher fear lest such restriction should shackle his liberty and take the life out of his sermons. In almost every case one invariable rule can be laid down which will give ample scope to him and no offence to his hearers: “Always preach what you believe to be true, and never go out of your way in order to attack what you believe to be untrue.” For example, your flock believes that Christ’s body (the tangible body) was raised from the grave; you do not. Well then, do not attack their material belief; but preach your spiritual belief. Teach them that Christ’s Resurrection implies a real though invisible triumph over the invisible enemy death; a real, though invisible, sitting at the right hand of God; a real, though invisible, presence in the heart of every one who loves and trusts Him. Thus you may teach the habit of reverence, simultaneously with the habit of inquiry; a love of the old forms, combined with a still deeper love of the new truths that may be discovered beneath them; thus you will not shake the faith of a single child; you will be impressing upon all alike unadulterated, precious truth without sacrificing a little of your own convictions; and at the same time you will be insensibly preparing the younger portion of your flock to detach the material part of their belief from the spiritual, and to retain the latter when the time may come that shall force them to give up the former. In a similar spirit you should deal with the Ascension and the Incarnation, not pointing out the difficulties involved in the material belief of those dogmas, nor saying a word to disparage those who believe in them, but doing your utmost to bring out the spiritual truths and invisible processes which are represented by those dogmas. Surely such a self-restraint as this is not more than may fairly be demanded from any honourable man, I will not say from a Christian, but from a gentleman. Your congregation are in their own parish church; they are bound by conventional respect and by deeply-rooted reverence for tradition and for the House of God, not to manifest any such open disapprobation of your teaching as would be freely permissible at a public meeting; you are their servant, and the servant, the paid servant, of the National Church; and yet you have them at your mercy while you stand in the pulpit. Profound consideration may fairly be expected from you for their prejudices, as you may please to call them; and all the more because they are, as it were, in possession of the church, while you are an innovator, holding what must—at all events for some time to come—appear to the multitude an entirely new doctrine: they “stand on the old ways.”

If the teachers of natural or non-miraculous Christianity could be trusted to preach in this spirit, they might, I think, do a good work as ministers in the Church of England, without injury to themselves, and with much advantage to the nation. If not, they must come out of the Church for the purposes of teaching; and that, I fear, would result in mischief both for the Church and for the State. I believe that not a few of the educated clergy are either suspending their belief about miracles, or have decided against them; and if these were suddenly to be banished, or gradually to drop out of the clerical ranks without receiving any successors of their way of thinking, the gulf would be widened between the clergy and the educated laity. The men who might discover new religious truth and prepare the way for new religious development, having henceforth to earn their living in other ways, would find little leisure for critical study. The end would be that the nation would be for a time divided between superstition and agnosticism; and sober religion would go to the wall.

Not indeed that the destinies of the Gospel of Christ are to be supposed to be permanently determinable by the fate of a fraction of the Broad Church section of the English clergy! The attraction of the natural worship of Christ—strange, nay, impossible though it may seem when first presented to the miracle-craving mind—is far too great to admit the possibility of its ultimate failure. But first there must come a vast and depressing defection on the part of those nominal Christians who have hitherto worshipped Christ on the basis of an infallible Church, or on the basis of an infallible Book, or on the basis of indisputable Miracles. Perhaps this collapse will be precipitated by the discovery of a copy of some Gospel of the first century, turned up when Constantinople is evacuated by the Turks. You cannot have forgotten how this year (1885) the educated religious world in England held its breath in horrible suspense when the correspondent of the Times telegraphed that among the Egyptian manuscripts recently purchased by an Austrian arch-duke, there had been disinterred a fragment belonging to a Gospel preceding, and differing from, any now extant. From this terrible discovery orthodoxy was delivered, for this once, by the learning of Professor Hort: but who shall guarantee that a Professor Hort shall be able, or even willing, to deny the proto-evangelic claims of the next-discovered manuscript from the East? And then, what will become of some of us!

In any case, with or without such discoveries, the present word-faith, and book-faith, and authority-faith in the Lord Jesus, must sooner or later collapse; and people must be driven to the conclusion that the Lord Jesus Himself must somehow be worshipped through Himself—Jesus through the Spirit of Jesus, that Spirit which is apparent in families and nations and Churches as well as in the New Testament, the Spirit of Love whence springs that mutual helpfulness which in the New Testament we call “fellowship” and in the newspapers “socialism.” This and this alone will help us to apply our science to settle land questions, Church questions, and war questions, policy domestic and foreign, and to establish concord in the world, the nation, and the human heart. I do not say that a time will ever come when there will be no obstacles to faith in Christ. Moral obstacles will still exist to make faith difficult: but some at least of the intellectual difficulties by which we now shut ourselves out from Christian hope will then be dissipated. Odium theologicum will become meaningless. There will have arrived at last that blessed time, predicted (1603) by Francis Bacon (shall we say just three hundred years too soon?), bringing with it “the consumption of all that can ever be said in controversies of religion;” and henceforth there will be no “controversies,” only discussions and discoveries.

Then, with its mind freed from superstitious terrors and full of an unquenchable hope, the human race, owning its allegiance to the Eternal Goodness, and accepting as its captain the Working Man of Nazareth, will address itself steadily to the work of Christian socialism, honouring and encouraging labour without unwise and spasmodic pampering of it, dishonouring and discouraging idleness without unwise and direct recourse to forcible suppression of it; remembering always that, as the ideal Working Man was subject to law, so must they be subject to law, and as He bore suffering for the good of others, so must they be prepared to suffer as well as to work. This is true socialism and this is true Christianity. Do you deny it, and say, “This is not the Christianity that has been current for eighteen centuries”? I reply, Perhaps not; and, if it is not, we can call it by some other name. You remember the saying of Lessing, that after eighteen centuries of Christianity, it was high time to try Christ. Let us then amend our phrase and say that true socialism will not be “the Christian religion” but something better. It will be the Christian Spirit.

We are taught by our Scriptures that it has been sometimes God’s method to teach the wise in this world by means of those whom the world calls foolish, and the strong and the rich in this world by those whom the world calls weak and poor. If history is thus to repeat itself, it may be reserved for the semi-Christian or non-Christian working man, for the heretic or agnostic socialist, to guide orthodox and religious England into a higher and purer and more spiritual form of Christianity. Yet on the other hand, since intellectual movements come often from above, though moral movements come from below, I cannot give up the hope that it may be reserved for the clergy of the Church of England to do something towards the removal of those merely intellectual difficulties which are at present keeping multitudes of the workers, and not a few of the thinkers, in our country, from recognizing their true Deliverer.