A Short History of Christianity / Second Edition, Revised, With Additions

by J. M. Robertson

§ 2. Protestant Christianity

The failure of Protestantism to gain any ground in Europe after the sixteenth century had naturally the effect of increasing the zeal of its adherents within their own sphere; and though nowhere did Protestant organization compare in energy with that shown by the Society of Jesus and the Roman College of Propaganda, the system of popular education in several countries—as Switzerland, Scotland, and parts of Germany—was raised much above the popular Catholic level. Presbyterians in particular felt the need of popular schools for the maintenance of their polity. The result was, after a time, a certain improvement in the capacity and conditions of the common people where other causes did not interfere. Thus the Protestant cantons of Switzerland have in general been noted for a greater material prosperity than that of the Catholic cantons; and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Presbyterian Scotland, though naturally much the poorer country, admittedly turned out a larger proportion of men qualified for responsible positions than did episcopalian England.

All the while, the influence of a Presbyterian clergy, in touch with the people and able to ostracize socially those who avowed unbelief, maintained in the Calvinistic countries a higher average of professed orthodoxy, the normal effect of higher education being thus checked on the side of religion. Scotland contributed little to the earlier deistic movement of the eighteenth century, Smith and Hume having taken it up after it had flourished for a generation in England; and at no time was rationalism socially avowed to the same extent in the north as in the south, the enlightenment of the lay authors being confined to a small town circle.

On the moral and æsthetic side, however, popular Presbyterianism tended to be hard and joyless, with the natural result, seen alike in Geneva and in Scotland, of breeding much licence. On the other hand there arose a higher reaction, towards intellectual interests; and the Switzerland of the eighteenth century produced a remarkably large proportion of scientific men; while in Scotland, where centuries of theological life and strife set up even in the Church a notable spirit of “moderation,” both the physical and the moral or social sciences were conspicuously cultivated. Popular freethinking was beginning to follow in both cases, when the reaction against the French Revolution arose to arrest it. When in the next generation there began in Scotland the ecclesiastical struggle which ended in the formation of the Free Church (1842) a new impulse was given to doctrinal fanaticism, which the competition of three rival Presbyterian Churches was well fitted to maintain.

Thus, though Scottish scholars have contributed largely to the “higher criticism,” the middle and working classes of Scotland all through the nineteenth century have been at least outwardly more orthodox than even those of England. They, too, however, have begun to exhibit the common critical tendencies. As the results of Biblical criticism become more generally known, church attendance tends to fall off, despite the economic pressure Churchmen are able to use in small communities. It is perhaps as much on account of the common need as by reason of the growth of liberality that the two chief dissenting Scottish Churches, the Free and the United Presbyterian (Voluntary), have latterly amalgamated. Were it not that a large proportion of the more energetic and stirring youth of the country leave it for England and the colonies, the more conservative staying at home, the process of change would probably be more rapid.

In the small communities of Protestant Switzerland a democratic church polity had equally served to maintain a greater stress of orthodox belief and practice than was seen in surrounding countries; and the appointment of Strauss to a chair of theology at Zurich by a Radical Government in 1839 led to an actual insurrection, set up and led by fanatical clergymen. Catholic cantons later showed themselves no less medieval. Nothing, however, avails to shut out critical thought; Zeller received a chair at Berne in 1847; rationalism has ever since steadily progressed; the number of theological students as steadily falls off; and among the Swiss theologians of to-day are some of the most “subversive” of the professional writers on Christian origins. Popular rationalism necessarily begins to follow, though less rapidly than in countries where the people and the clergy do not ecclesiastically govern themselves.

In Protestant Holland and the Scandinavian States, of late years, the decline of Christian faith has been still more marked. All are considerably influenced by German culture; and in Protestant Germany orthodoxy is gradually disappearing. There the long depression of civilization begun by the troubles of the Reformation, and clinched by the vast calamity of the Thirty Years War, was favourable to a sombre religious feeling; and this, under the name of Pietism, actually prevailed in the latter part of the seventeenth century, triumphing over a movement of spontaneous freethinking. Peace and the development of universities thereafter built up a learned class, who especially cultivated ecclesiastical history; and as we have seen, German theology had become in the primary sense rationalistic by the end of the eighteenth century. After the fall of Napoleon there began in earnest the education of the Prussian common people; and though to this day the learned class are more apart from the general public in Germany than in most other countries, the latter half of the nineteenth century has seen a great development of popular secularism.

In 1881 the church accommodation in Berlin sufficed for only two per cent of the population, and even that was not at all fully used. This is the social aspect of Protestant Germany; and it effectively confutes the periodic statements as to revivals of orthodoxy in the universities. Such revivals are officially engineered and financially stimulated: the mass of the people of Protestant Germany, at least in the towns, have practically given up the Christian creed, even when they do not renounce their nominal membership in the State Church; and the great Socialistic party, which contains over three millions of adult males, is pronouncedly rationalistic. In Scandinavia the literary influence of such masters of drama and fiction as Ibsen and Björnson creates a freethinking spirit on a very wide scale among the middle classes, though the clergy are still illiberal; and in Holland, where the churches are increasingly latitudinarian, there has been a more competent journalistic propaganda of rationalism than in almost any other country.

That the same general movement of things goes on in England may be proved by reference to the almost daily complaints of the clergy. Rationalism and secularism have advanced in all classes during half a century, until their propaganda is accepted as a quite normal activity; such writers as Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and Clifford being read by the more studious of all ranks. In recent years the cheap reprints of the Rationalist Press Association have had millions of readers. Churchgoing constantly declines in the towns; agnosticism becomes more and more common among the educated classes; the average of the workers in the large towns are fixedly alienated from the Church; and the latter-day propaganda of the Salvation Army affects only the less intelligent types even since, after refusing for twenty years to deal with material problems, it has sought to establish itself as a charitable organization for dealing with the “lapsed masses.” As regards the general influence of the churches it is observable that whereas fifty years ago there were many clergymen and prelates noted as important writers on non-theological matters, and whereas even a few years ago there were still several bishops distinguished as scholars and historians, there is now none so describable. So, in the department of fine letters, there is scarcely a poet or novelist of high standing who can be called a believing Christian. In the last generation some distinguished men who were openly heterodox, as the late Mr. Matthew Arnold, or very dubiously orthodox, as Mr. Lecky, were wont to profess themselves good members of the Church of England; but the normal tendency of rationalists is now to give the churches up. The leading names in serious and even imaginative literature, with a few exceptions which stand for popularity rather than weight, are those of known unbelievers. In that category stood the late Mr. George Meredith.