Recollections and Impressions, 1822-1890

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

There is certainly a great difference between the Broad Church in America and the Broad Church in England; there are no Thirty-Nine Articles in this country; there is no National Church. The Broad Churchman here is still a Churchman, but the system is much more elastic and much more intellectual. The Church is to him also a divine institution, but not a final establishment; and it becomes divine by virtue of its helpfulness in imparting the divine life and its power of human service. The sacraments have become symbols, venerable from their antiquity, but more venerable from their use. The Broad Churchman is an orthodox believer, but he accepts only the simplest creeds, and he interprets them in accordance with the rational principles of thought, and with his fundamental conception of Christianity, holding not to the written letter, but to the real meaning of the Confession. This meaning is, he maintains, easily reconcilable with the idea that all revelation is made to a living mind,—whether that of a race or an individual,—and that the Bible is merely the record of it. No book, in his estimation, can be inspired. This, coupled with a belief in the unlimited progress of the natural conscience, brings the system within the category of modern arrangements.

The idea that man is developed into the divine life, not converted to it, seems to be the heart of the system. The writings of F. D. Maurice are full of it. He said that he did not know what the Broad Church was, and disclaimed any position in it; yet he is its reputed father, and certainly held its cardinal doctrine. This was the soul of his teaching; this dictated his likes and his dislikes; this animated his dissent from the Evangelicals on the one hand and the Rationalists on the other; this made him cling to the "Articles"; this made him love the Church. I cannot better convey my notion of the Broad Churchman's credence than by quoting some passages from Maurice:

I think that the ground-work of this thought and this humanity is laid bare in the Thirty-nine Articles; that for that ground-work [namely, the living God, the living Word] all our different schools are trying to produce feeble and crumbling substitutes; that we must recur to it if we would pass the narrow dimensions of Calvinism, Anglicanism, Romanism; if we would learn what a message we have for Jews, Mahometans, Brahmins, Buddhists, for all the nations of the earth, as well as our poor people at home.

I cannot doubt that this belief [the confession of a God, who was, and is, and is to come] is latent in every man now; that we are all living, moving, having our being in this God, and that He does reveal Himself to His creatures gradually, before He is revealed in His fulness of glory.

I do perceive that if I have any work in the world, it is to bear witness of this name [the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost], not as expressing certain relations, however profound, in the divine nature, but as the underground of all fellowship among men and angels, as that which will at last bind all into one, satisfying all the craving of the reason as well as of the heart, meeting the desires and intuitions that are scattered through all the religions of the world.

The Church must either fulfil its witness of the redemption for mankind or be cut off. And I cannot help thinking that a time is at hand when we shall awaken to this conviction, and when we shall perceive that what we call our individual salvation means nothing, and that our faith in it becomes untenable when we separate it from the salvation which Christ wrought out for the world by His incarnation and sacrifice, resurrection and ascension.

He has been pleased to reveal to me in His Son the brightness of His glory, His absolute love. On that point I have a right to be certain; he who says I have not, rejects the Bible and disbelieves the incarnation of the Lord. I will not give up an inch of this ground; it is a matter of life and death.

By baptism we claim the position which Christ has claimed for all mankind.... More and more I am led to ask myself what a Gospel to mankind must be, whether it must not have some other ground than the fall of Adam and the sinful nature of man.... No doctrine can be so at variance as this, with the notion that it is a Gospel which men have need of, and in their inmost hearts are craving for.

Why is not this system sufficient? Simply because the claim that Christ is God, does not seem made out to severely critical minds. Such as these must hold even the Broad Church to be a mythology, beautiful and innocent, but still a mythology. The word "mythology" implies no disparagement. A mythology is simply the poetical form of an idea, and takes its character from the nature of the ideas it represents. The pagan mythology is on this account very different from the Christian, and a mythology that has universal love as its basis may well be called innocent and beautiful. To the doctrine of trinity, philosophically considered, even Unitarian scholars make no objection. What they cannot accept is the deity of Jesus as an historical person. The Christ is not, in their opinion, an historical person, but a doctrine, not identical with the man of the New Testament. The Divine Being has never, in their estimation, appeared on earth. They only who can put aside criticism, can suppress it, can regard it but as one of many manifestations of mind, can fix their eyes on a church for society at large and not for individuals, will be likely to accept it, and they will on the ground that it is altogether human, a church for mankind.

The last phase in the development of the moral sentiment is represented by the "Ethical Societies." It is natural that the origin of these should be Jewish, for the Jews are unencumbered by the mysteries of the Christian theology; their genius is for social organization, and the moral element is very large in their religion. It is natural, too, that the system should be purer here than in England. Some of the members of the "Cambridge Ethical Society" are members of the Church of England, and have to be warned not to set themselves needlessly in opposition to the work of the Christian churches. The "Edinburgh Ethical Club" is mainly a debating society. In America it is usual to have a lecturer, and stated services on Sunday. But these services are very simple, nay, even bare; there is no prayer, and no scripture, no architecture or art or poetry; but there is an intense earnestness, nay, enthusiasm, for social reform. There are kindergartens for the poor children of the streets, there are classes for the untaught, libraries for the workingmen, plans for better lodging and employment for the families of artisans. There is no fixed doctrine in regard to the origin of the moral sentiments, lest any should be alienated; the object being to combine all who have at heart the moral interests of mankind. The peculiarity of these societies is not so much that they lay emphasis on the moral as distinct from the spiritual interests, or aim to break down the dividing line between Religion and Ethics, as it is that they rest upon conscience as the supreme authority, that they assume its practical function, build upon it as the one and only thing absolutely known. There is no pretence of following, even at a distance, the charities of the old churches with their vast funds, their immense organizations, their heaps of tracts, their legions of missionaries, all employed in calling unbelievers into the fold. The object is to elevate all mankind by appealing to their moral instincts, on the ground of their inherent ability to rise in the scale of being.