Their object, next to their own spiritual improvement—for that seems the great aim of modern Christianity—is to commend the Gospel to those who have it not—to win over to hearts of men to the authority of Christ—to induce them to accept to the free offers of reconciliation with God made through to Saviour, and evermore live in His likeness. They will readily acknowledge that religion is founded upon love, and adapted to call forth to willing homage of grateful souls; and that the spontaneous, cheerful surrender of self to God, the preference of His will to ours, the cordial reliance upon Him for “every good and every perfect gift,” is the very essence of Christianity. Institutions, forms, and ceremonies, are but the media for expressing this truth, and are worse than useless without it. Sympathy between man and his Creator is religion—to awaken that sympathy in others, will be the aim of all who have felt it for themselves.
How, then, do Evangelical Christians commend this living truth to those who do not profess allegiance to it? To a great extent they conceal its benign character. They build a wall around it, and make it appear to be an exclusive property. Oftentimes they refuse to acknowledge it in others unless associated with certain forms, symbols, and institutions. They overlay it with the claims of this and that interest, or make it speak in the language of this or the other ism. They proclaim that the Gospel is omnipotent to save—that Christ’s kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and His reign in the heart of man—but, alas! practice and belief do not correspond. They are, to a great extent, afraid to trust Christianity to its inherent power. For the propagation of the truth, or the extinction of unbelief, they will often have recourse to means not in harmony with their convictions. “The end sanctifies the means”—often, unconsciously, forms their rule of conduct, and quiets their scruples in trying to make men religious by irreligious means, in claiming the aid of the magistrate’s sword in putting down error, in demanding that the incitements to sin be removed by the strong arm of compulsion, yea, sometimes, in attempting to coerce the indifferent into the reception of to truth. How greatly does this want of confidence in the power of the Gospel contrast with that scriptural faith which is able “to remove mountains!”
A State religion is, no doubt, the greatest obstacle to a proper appreciation of Christianity by the working classes—for through that medium it is reflected as simply an elaborate machinery to provide comfortable incomes for an army of priests—a gigantic establishment based upon selfishness. But even this dead weight upon the progress of religion would be greatly lightened if Evangelical Christians rightly commended it to the affections of the people—if, instead of bowing down to the great imposture, and drinking into its spirit, they unceasingly displayed the benign and disinterested character of the Gospel. Whatever the religious organizations of the present day accomplish—and it is not denied that they do something—they do not seem to be capable of evangelizing the masses. To this objection it is no reply to urge that they never have, except to a small extent, effected that purpose. If true religion be what the religious world say it is, there must be, irrespective of all former experience, some lamentable deficiency in the mode of presenting its great and omnipotent truths to the people. For it is a notorious fact that the bulk of our working population do not care for religion, scarcely come within range of its teachings, and, for the most part, dislike its professional representatives. Is there not here something more than the natural aversion to superior goodness, and the preference for self-gratification?
Every one will have fresh in recollection a touching episode in that eminently religious book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in which are detailed the successive steps in the training of a little outcast negro. Miss Ophelia undertook the benevolent task, and performed it only too conscientiously. No pains, no sacrifices, were spared in educating the benighted Topsy. The system of the Northern lady was perfect in its mechanism. Instruction, exhortation, reproof, punishment, followed in due order. The young mind exhibited unusual quickness and aptitude in the acquisition of knowledge. One element alone was wanting—the moral influence of the teacher. That being absent, all the rest seemed comparatively valueless. Between the upright New Englander, with her unflinching sense of duty and her prejudice against colour, and the hardened negro girl, there was no connecting link—an entire absence of affection and sympathy. Yet that moral waste on which the lady of strong sense and set rules could make no impression, was reclaimed by the kindness of a child. Topsy’s heart, steeled to Miss Ophelia’s exhortations, melted at Eva’s sympathy.[18]
This story fitly illustrates the present relationship of the Church and the world. Organised religious communities may establish their societies, may erect their places of worship, may give their lectures with the object of reclaiming the masses from vice and irreligion, may proclaim the sinfulness and the duties of men—and yet their labours may achieve only partial success. The means may be admirable, but the spirit that breathes through them may be defective. There may be a great show of concern, the conscientious performance of a duty, but an absence of that cordial, hearty interest which is requisite to kindle sympathy. Surely there is a philosophy in the use of religious agencies as in ordinary affairs. In our efforts to evangelize the poor—to whom originally the Gospel was preached, and amongst whom, it should never be forgotten, were its greatest triumphs—we are bound to consider the probable results of the means put in operation, as well as the end sought, unless we expect God to work a miracle. Otherwise, with all the elements of success, we may make no progress; and, perchance, pull down with one hand while we are building up with the other.
Is it reasonable, or at all in accordance with experience, to suppose that the way to reach the hearts of the people is to put ourselves into direct antagonism to their rights, habits, or wishes? Do we commend the Gospel to them by fostering the notion that men may be made religious by Act of Parliament, or the fiat of the Crown—by insisting that they shall “keep” the Sabbath according to our notions, not their own—by clamouring to curtail the means of obtaining pure air and recreation one day out of seven, because we consider it “sinful?” The religious world is absorbed with its “causes” and “interests,” “enjoyments” and “privileges;” and, while thus systematically turning its attention inwards, and calculating every pulsation of the great world around in relation to itself, is too apt to forget that there is a moral law whose foundations lie deep in the principles of revealed truth—and that any violation of the precepts of that law, whether by abrogating natural rights, dictating the actions and occupations of others, or coercing them into an apparent piety of heart and life, is altogether foreign to the genius of Christianity. Our Lord has given his followers an injunction to preach the Gospel—the power of which over the heart none who have felt it can mistrust. If by this agency, and this alone, the affections of man are to be changed and a new life created within him—if, in a word, the world is to be won over to the cause of truth, by the exhibition of God’s love—surely it indicates a want of worldly wisdom as well as distrust of the Divine power and promises, for the disciples of Christ to be calling to their aid extraneous help;—at one time relying upon the sword of the civil magistrates—at another on Parliamentary legislation. If its professors are to be believed, Christianity is ever in imminent danger. Between the encroachments of Popery and the progress of Infidelity, we are always in a state of chronic alarm for organized religion. Really it would seem, that if it were not for the frequent exercise of a little authority—that is, physical force, an occasional crusade against Popery, a persecution by society of free inquiry, the religious world would lose all confidence—Samson must inevitably be overcome by the seductions of Delilah or the hosts of the Philistines. It may safely be concluded that, where this faithlessness obtains, the power of the Gospel is deficient. Christianity is essentially aggressive, but, according to the experience of its degenerate disciples, it is hard work to act upon the defensive. Does not the outside world take note of these things? What more natural than that the sceptic and indifferent should doubt the alleged power of religion when such are its apparent manifestations—when, positively, any particular discovery of great advantage to mankind, such as the application of steam to locomotion, or any special event promising social benefit, such as the opening of the new Crystal Palace, fills its adherents with apprehension, because it seems to disturb their particular interests?
How is the great gulph that separates the masses of the people from religious institutions to be bridged over? Here is a problem worthy of the anxious consideration of the religious world. To treat so great a subject would require the compass of a volume instead of a pamphlet. Indeed, it has already been discussed in extenso by others; so that it is superfluous to do more in these pages, than refer to one or two points directly bearing on the question in hand. It may then be remarked, that to secure the required end it is needful not only to do, but that much must be left undone —especially in the direction of the poor man’s pleasures. If the Gospel be not taken to them they were better left alone; for interference with their rights only irritates them, and widens the gulph. The two forces will, as things go, move on like parallel lines, but never unite. The bulk of the people are far beyond the reach of such delusive palliatives as stopping Sunday trains, and shutting up tea-gardens and public-houses. The preacher’s voice rarely reaches them, and Christianity itself wears, in their eyes, the stigma of being a middle-class religion, not adapted to the poor, to whom originally it was “glad tidings of salvation.” They are, besides, almost ostracised from our religious assemblies. Talk of Sabbath desecration! Suppose working-men—say, for example, the 10,000 pleasure-seekers on the Croydon line—were to flock to our places of worship? What is to be done with them? There is at present no room for them in the system. It requires time and money to erect and consecrate steepled buildings, fashion pews, make cushions, choose a professional minister, and organize collections, &c. And when done, how does it suit the tastes and sympathies of the poor? Do they not feel themselves out of place, and suspect the means are made of importance disproportionate to, and even obstructive of, the end? Christianity appears to them entrenched behind a barricade of forms and creeds, and genteel requirements, which its followers have erected. The world without catches but a distant and imperfect glimpse of its benign features. Religious men prefer standing behind their entrenchments to an aggressive movement in front, or if they do advance it is with incumbrances great as those which impede an English army marching over the plains of India. Costly temples, with elegant spires, are becoming increasingly necessary to the proclamation of Divine truth, and, in not a few cases, pious men half sink under the sacrifices thus incurred, or the load of debt contracted. There is something quite affecting in the fact, that while the masses of the people are getting farther and farther off from the agency of religious institutions, Christians who are ever denouncing the external pomp and show of Popery are, as it were, concentrating their attention on genteel and elegant places of worship, and in all their arrangements for the celebration of religion approximating to the Romanist standard. And this—when a portion of such superfluous expenditure would provide means for carrying the Gospel into the ranks of the poor—is boasted of as a mark of taste—of Christian earnestness—of religious progress! Fatal delusion![21]
Men’s susceptibilities are the same as ever they were—but how to awaken them? The religious world will find it in the career and directions of their great Exemplar, not in the bearing of the Pharisees. The grand truth embodied in the aphorism of our great dramatist—
“One touch of Nature Makes the whole world kin,”
has a spiritual as well as a social meaning. To recur to our former illustration. A child with love in her heart and sympathy in her eye, may subdue the will when reason and authority utterly fail. By approaching the masses in this spirit, the religious world may gain access to their affections, and will, no doubt, find that the Gospel retains its pristine omnipotence. But if they are to be treated as the patrimony of organized religious societies and institutions, to be “cribbed, cabined, and confined” at their pleasure, and admonished from afar off on the sinfulness of Sunday recreation—if the enormities of Popery are more zealously denounced, and hair-splitting differences agitated, by ministers and their flocks, than THE TRUTH preached “ in the love of it ”—farewell to all hopes of making any substantial progress in evangelizing the great bulk of the working classes![22]