Hellenism, in the same way, has its more or less spurious and degenerated sub-forms, products which may be at once known as degenerations by their deflexion from what we have marked as the flower of Hellenism,—'a kind of humane grace and artless winning good-nature, born out of the perfection of lucidity, simplicity, and natural truth.' And from whom can we more properly derive a general name for these degenerations, than from that distinguished man, who, by his intelligence and accomplishments, is in many respects so admirable and so truly Hellenic, but whom his dislike for 'the dominant sect,' as he calls the Church of England,—the Church of England, in many aspects so beautiful, calming, and attaching,—seems to transport with an almost feminine vehemence of irritation? What can we so fitly name the somewhat degenerated and inadequate form of Hellenism as Millism? This is the Hellenic or Hellenistic counterpart of Mialism; and like Mialism it has its further degenerations, in which it is still less commendable than in its first form. For instance, what in Mr. Mill is but a yielding to a spirit of irritable injustice, goes on and worsens in some of his disciples, till it becomes a sort of mere blatancy and truculent hardness in certain Millites, in whom there appears scarcely anything that is truly sound or Hellenic at all.
Mankind, however, must needs draw, however slowly, towards its perfection; and our only real perfection is our totality. Mialism and Millism we may see playing into one another's hands, and apparently acting together; but, so long as these lower forms of Hellenism and Hebraism prevail, the real union between Hellenism and Hebraism can never be accomplished, and our totality is still as far off as ever. Unhappy and unquiet alternations of ascendency between Hebraism and Hellenism are all that we shall see;—at one time, the indestructible religious experience of mankind asserting itself blindly; at another, a revulsion of the intellect of mankind from this experience, because of the audacious assumptions and gross inaccuracies with which men's account of it is intermingled.
At present it is such a revulsion which seems chiefly imminent. Give the churches of Nonconformity free scope, cries an ardent Congregationalist, and we will renew the wonders of the first times; we will confront this modern bugbear of physical science, show how hollow she is, and how she contradicts herself! In his mind's eye, this Nonconforming enthusiast already sees Professor Huxley in a white sheet, brought up at the Surrey Tabernacle between two deacons,—whom that great physicist, in his own clear and nervous language, would no doubt describe like his disinterred Roman the other day at Westminster Abbey, as 'of weak mental organisation and strong muscular frame,'—and penitently confessing that Science contradicts herself. Alas, the real future is likely to be very different! Rather are we likely to witness an edifying solemnity, where Mr. Mill, assisted by his youthful henchmen and apparitors, will burn all the Prayer Books. Rather will the time come, as it has been foretold, when we shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and shall not see it; when the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Jesus Christ, as a power to work the annulment of our ordinary self, will be clean disregarded and out of mind. Then, perhaps, will come another re-action, and another, and another; and all sterile.
Therefore it is, that we labour to make Hebraism raise itself above Mialism, find its true self, show itself in its beauty and power, and help, not hinder, man's totality. The endeavour will very likely be in vain; for growth is slow and the ages are long, and it may well be that for harmonising Hebraism with Hellenism more preparation is needed than man has yet had. But failures do something, as well as successes, towards the final achievement. The cup of cold water could be hardly more than an ineffective effort at succour; yet it counted. To disengage the religion of England from unscriptural Protestantism, political Dissent, and a spirit of watchful jealousy, may be an aim not in our day reachable; and still it is well to level at it.
CONTENTS.
| [St. Paul and Protestantism] |
| [Puritanism and the Church of England] |