III
It remains now to turn to another most potent motive which has affected the fortunes of religion in the nineteenth century. It may be called Nationalism, meaning by the term that higher conception of the life of the state or nation, slowly but most effectively asserting itself throughout the nineteenth century, never apart from religious convictions, always indeed in their support and furtherance. In illustration of this point, we turn again to the French Revolution, as giving the momentum, both directly and by way of reaction, to the conception of the sacredness of the state, as an ultimate fact in God’s government of the world. In that fearful outburst of the French people, their long pent-up indignation was vented no less against the state than against the Church—the one a device of kings and lawgivers for holding mankind in subjection, as the other was a scheme for the same end by a designing priesthood. The humanitarian sentiment received in consequence at this impressive moment a direction of antipathy to nationality as an evil to be overcome, or at least to be kept in subjection to some higher principle, if the rights of man were to be secured. Something even of this negative mood entered into the formation of the American Constitution, where there is to be noted a singular omission of any reference to Deity as the author and preserver of the national life. On the continent of Europe there was the phenomenon of Napoleon building on the ruins of the French Revolution, while yet preserving the destructive motives which inspired it. Napoleon revived the dream of empire, in whose expansive embrace the nations of Europe were to be subordinated, if not suppressed altogether. He proposed to reconstruct the map of Europe, as though nationalities and crowns were purely human artificial arrangements to be disposed of at his sovereign pleasure.
The failure of the French nation, its demonstrated inability to do the proper work of a state, as well as the fact that the career of a Napoleon was possible, indicates inherent weakness in all the nations of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They existed either in repose, and even stagnation, after the long turmoil of the age of the Protestant Reformation, averse to change, distrustful of enthusiasm, or were content to strive for purely selfish aims. In accordance with the principle that the people existed for the state, rulers followed their personal whims, indifferent to moral sanctions, heedless of the growing evils calling aloud for redress. Such in particular was the condition in France. It was better in England, but even there the same tendency existed, manifested in the unnecessary alienation of the American colonies. However this may be, there has been a reaction against nationality during the nineteenth century. The nations have been forced to struggle against this opposition, and through the struggle they have attained their rebirth, their purification.
The subject is connected with the fortunes of religion in many ways. The indifference to nationality, the distrust of the nation as incompetent for the exigencies of life, the placing of an abstract humanity as an ideal above nationality, so that to labor directly for the interests of humanity apart from the well-being of the nation, and even in its defiance, became the motive of reformers—these characteristics, when seen in the religious sphere, have led to a reaction against the various forms of Protestantism, and especially as represented in the state Churches. The Roman Catholic Church, which in all its history has subordinated national distinctions to the higher interests of a common Christendom, had fallen into inefficiency in the eighteenth century, and was no longer reckoned a force worthy of consideration, either by religious thinkers or by statesmen. But in the first third of the nineteenth century there came a change, when the Roman Church arose from its lethargy to meet the demand imposed upon it by the timid fears of statesmen and ecclesiastics, as the safeguard of religion and morality, where national Churches or particular Churches were thought to have failed. The Napoleonic aspiration after universal empire and the frantic effort to realize it by rearranging or suppressing nationalities has its counterpart in the religious world in the effort to restore a Christian empire with the Papacy at its head, as in the Middle Ages. The effect of this ambition may be seen in Germany and other countries, but is most clearly manifest in England, where the Oxford Movement (1833) appears as an unnational, if not anti-national, uprising in behalf of some imperfectly conceived cosmopolitan Church designated as “Catholicity.” The date of the “Movement,” as Newman fixed it, was Keble’s sermon on the “Apostacy of the National Church.” This same feeling, that national existence is inferior in importance to humanitarian reforms or to the expression of religion in some other shape than in any particular or national Church, has been shown in the break with the Established Church in Scotland, or in the difficulties experienced in Germany in consolidating the forms of Protestantism in a strong state Church, or in the aspirations after some universal form of religion to be accomplished by a parliament of religions. Beneath these various schemes there is the common principle that humanity is a worthier object of devotion than the state, and constitutes a higher ideal in whose cause to labor. This conviction, it may be added, has been strengthened vastly by the extraordinary way in which, during the nineteenth century, the whole world has been brought together by the material forces of steam and electricity.
That there is here a great truth no one can deny, but the point to be noticed now is that nationality has been at a disadvantage in the competition with humanity. Out of the necessities of the situation there has been born the spirit of a deeper inquiry into the place and significance of the nation as the indispensable medium by which the highest result can be secured for the world at large. Thus we have the studies in this direction of German students, Hegel and Stahl, Trendelenburg and Bluntschli, Maurice in England, and in America Mulford in his book The Nation, all of them combating the motive of Comte and setting forth the essential, even the eternal, significance of nationality. The ancient doctrine is still preserved that the people exist for the state, but it is justified on the ground that the state also exists for the people, for the freedom of the individual man, so that through the state the rights of man are better subserved and more securely guaranteed than by an exclusive one-sided devotion to the cause of an abstract humanity.
As the nineteenth century drew to its close, it became increasingly apparent that the nations had emerged from the depression in which they were found when the century opened. America may be said to have attained the consciousness of nationality in its highest form in consequence of the Civil War, and to have entered from that time upon a new career. In that awful conflict, whose origin dates back to the rise of the anti-slavery movement, may be discerned the issue of the century—humanitarianism, on the one hand, contending for the rights of man, careless, if need be, for the national unity if only a great reform could be secured; and on the other hand, the nation, slowly realizing that slavery was a force hostile to national unity and integrity, and on this ground demanding its suppression. The two attitudes in this instance appear organically related, while yet they spring from distinct and separate motives. In 1870 Germany and Italy took their places in the family of nations. Nor should there be omission to mention Greece, which, after its subsidence for hundreds of years, again attained its national independence.
It has become further apparent that it is to the Protestant nations, America, England, and Germany, that the leading place must be conceded, together with the determination of the world’s fortunes. And to these must be added Russia, which is also outside the pale of Latin Christianity. Those nations remaining in alliance with the Papacy are, for the present at least, in an inferior position.
The triumphant assertion of the spiritual significance of nationality in the latter part of the nineteenth century has made it further apparent that the forces working for religion, and especially for its Protestant forms, were stronger than the forces in opposition. The nation enters the arena of the controversy as a spiritual force, assuming as a first principle the existence of God and His supernatural government of the world. Never was this truth more impressively illustrated than in the experience of Lincoln, who, when he became President of the United States in the supreme crisis of its history, ceased to be indifferent to religion and passed into a devout belief in the mysterious control of the destiny of the nation by a sovereign, omnipotent hand. As the indifference to nationality was among the causes of religious doubt and of the weakness in the Churches in the middle of the century, so the triumphant assertion of nationality has contributed to turn the tide towards theistic belief and the Christian faith.
To give a full exposition of the inner relationship of the nation to religion and the Churches is not possible here, but some remarks may be offered which will tend to illustrate their organic connection.
(1) In any large historical survey the nation appears as guided by religious leaders. Religion is seen to have flourished in proportion as the nation is conscious of its strength and destiny. When the Roman Empire broke down the nationalities and merged them in a large composite unity, it broke down also religious faiths, and its own religion as well, till scepticism was the result and a consequent immorality. All attempts to build up religion on the basis of empire, as distinct from nationality, ended in failure.
(2) The Christian religion tended from the first to break up the empire and to restore nationality. Ultimately it became manifest that the cause which undermined the Roman Empire and accomplished its downfall was the Christian Church. In its Eastern half the empire was resolved into nationalities. In the West a Church, Latin Christendom, rose upon its ruins, but within this Latin Christendom the spirit of nationality began at once to work, forcing its way against the opposition of the Papacy, till, in the age of the Protestant Reformation, when nationality was felt as a conscious motive, it sundered Latin Christendom into fragments.
(3) The Old Testament in its form as a whole is simply the history of a nation from its birth through all its fortunes. Never did religion rise to a diviner and fuller expression than under the realization of the conviction that God was protecting the nation and determining its career. The Hebrew prophets were primarily statesmen, devoted to the nationality, as the incarnation of the divine will, in whose fortunes were revealed the divine purpose. Any nation which has not the similar conviction that it is the chosen people of God, and called to some important task, cannot maintain its independence and integrity, and has no future. This conviction to-day inspires the leading nations of the world.
(4) The nation mediates between humanitarianism and individualism. In serving its own ends and seeking to accomplish its mission, it works for the good of all, and also for the freedom of the individual man. The tendency of humanitarianism as a motive apart from the higher life of the state, or apart from its impersonation in Christ as its head and leader, is to weaken individualism and to defeat the very end it wishes to subserve, the achievement of the rights of man. Humanity as a whole lacks the visible, tangible embodiment of the nation. It has not yet the consciousness of itself nor of its unity. It cannot respond to the needs it awakens. It does not, as a whole, realize its relationship to God, nor is it placed in such a position as to make it feel the need of God. It is in danger of becoming an abstraction in so far as it exists without relationships. But the nation is close at hand, near, and felt as a moral personality or being, seeking ideal ends which are also within the bounds of possibility. Humanity as a whole undertakes no enterprises which make it tremble as it comes to unknown, trackless seas. But when the nation comes to great crises, where human wisdom is powerless to direct its course, it falls back instinctively and by necessity upon the belief in the guidance of God. Thus the nation as a whole appears in a higher form of personality than individual men can achieve, even the greatest men, and so prepares the way for the belief in the still higher, the invisible, infinite personality of God.
(5) The nation as a moral personality and depending upon God becomes the safeguard of morals. If there has been a decline in morality in the nineteenth century, as some maintain, shown in the general weakening of moral sanctions, or by the increase of divorce and indifference to the sacredness of family life, it must be attributed in some measure to the indifference to nationality from the time that political liberalism resting on an abstract humanitarianism, or in combination with a scientific naturalism, gained the ascendency. So far as this tendency has in any degree invaded the Christian Church it has been powerless to effect a change for the better. The great men whom humanity is directed to worship do not constitute a moral standard, nor can scientific postulates be made a basis for moral culture; for nature is at least unmoral, if not, as some assert, immoral, and it is only as acted upon by man that nature gives response to the increasing purpose of the world. Religious truths—the personality of God, His creation and government of the world, immortality, and the freedom of the will—these are shattered, we are told, “by the great eternal iron laws of the universe,” or “are in hopeless contradiction with the most solid truths of empirical science.” And so, it must be added, are the sanctions of ethics and moral law. It is when we turn to the state, to the moral personality of the nation, that we encounter other laws and living forces which restore what an empirical science or a transcendental humanitarianism has broken down. Here the supreme test is spiritual—the well-being of the nationality. The state must build upon the family as its corner-stone; it must enforce those moral laws which the history of nations, as well as human experience in its best estate, reveal to be the inmost expression of the normal life of man.
The beginning of a new century may seem like an artificial division of time, but the self-consciousness with which the nineteenth century closed, the efforts at introversive estimates of its place in history and of the work it had accomplished, indicate something more than a conventional barrier to be passed. Prophecies in regard to the new age may be futile, for God reserves to Himself the knowledge of the future. But it is much if we can to any extent read the meaning of the past and detect the sources of its strength and weakness. And for the rest, Christian faith and hope are inextinguishable, looking forward to the fulfilment of the Christian ideal—that higher unity where Christ appears as the embodiment of humanity and the voice of its yearning for a perfect brotherhood; where the nation also acknowledges Him as its overlord, so that, in the words of Christian prophecy, the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. In that ideal conception, the dominium belongs to the state, and the ministerium to the Christian Church.
Alexander V. G. Allen.
THE JEWS AND JUDAISM
The opening years of the nineteenth century found the Jew blinded by the light of a new sun, the rays of which were beating upon the Ghetto and were forcing him to take off, one by one, the many garments with which he had clothed himself during the hostile Middle Ages. For the Jew these Middle Ages did not end with the Reformation and the Renaissance; but only disappeared in the transformation brought about gradually by the French Revolution. The beginning of the twentieth century sees him putting on some of these garments again, and trying to save his own warmth from being lost in the coldness of the outside world. During this period the Jew has passed through more upheavals than many nations have during three or four times the number of years. What outward struggles has he not been called upon to experience; through what alternating seasons of joy and sorrow has he not passed! What changes even within his own body has he not sustained! The modern European and American world has had a hard fight to find its way into its present changed condition; but much harder by far was the task laid upon the Jew; and, whether he has succeeded or not, he has made an honest fight. Evidences of the struggle abound on every hand, and the road is strewn with many a dead hope and many a lost opportunity. The Jew was bound more firmly to ancient traditions; and so interwoven were these ancient traditions with his whole being that the new life into which he came had of necessity to be blended with the old. The tale of the Jew of the nineteenth century is a record of his endeavor to do justice to the two demands which were made upon him: the one from the outside world—to fit himself to take his place worthily and do his work side by side with the other citizens of the state in which he lived; the other from within his own ranks—to harmonize his religious belief with his new point of view and to adapt his religious exercises to modern social conditions.