We are living in a sterner age than that in which Hotspur is supposed to have put this poser to the Welshman. Great declamations and fine promises will not do for any length of time, at least. We are hard, and prosy, and practical. We must have facts, and figures, and something clear before we are asked to choose a policy, or a system, or take a stand on a platform. Love of country, homes and altars, and all the old watchwords, serve no longer; they come down to a vulgar question of taxes, of custom-house duties, of imports and exports, of pauperism, and the increase of crime. This hard, practical spirit has been carried with all the keenness of, if not an intellectual, at least a very intelligent age, into the sanctuary of religion, and men and women are no longer content to follow a sect or a creed because they happened to be born in it, or because their friends belong to it, or because as Giles has it, “Payrson says so, and Payrson's daughter be married to Squoire.” They will have the why and wherefore: why they must take this creed and reject that; why they must take a part and not the whole; why it is necessary to be bothered with any form of belief at all, when, as they say, and many of them truthfully, they can get on well enough without it, and live happily, and play their part, and die out of the world without having committed any special faults against society, leaving behind them children whose rule in life shall be the truth and honor which they have bequeathed them as a last legacy. They have saved themselves infinite trouble by not mingling in the clashing of the sects, where each one claims to be the one, the only one, the church of Christ. One would imagine that Christ came only to set the world on fire and all good people by the ears; that, in fact, it would be better had he not come at all if this is to be the result, [pg 384] this wrangling and jangling and eternal jargon about what one must do to be saved, as though good people, who do no earthly harm must join one or other of these conflicting parties, who can never agree among themselves, and use the name of the God of peace as a firebrand to stir up dissension and the worst of strife. Influenced by thoughts such as these, we find so many of the most intelligent people, what we might call Nothingarians, believing in nothing but the law of the land, that is, of expediency—a class that is growing wider every day in proportion as the sects are loosening and parting asunder; which embraces the ablest writers on the ablest secular journals; which sees only one religious body in the world endowed with a consistency, and a uniqueness, and years, and a glorious history, and a strange unity that will not be broken; a church which takes to-day, as it has always taken, the bold stand before the world—we are the one church founded by Jesus Christ, in this church and in this church alone is salvation, not because we say it, but because he has said it: a stand in their eyes outrageous, so utterly opposed, as it is, to the dictates of human reason, with its doctrines of infallibility and what not; yet, after all, logical and strangely consistent throughout; so bold, so logical, so strangely consistent and united, that if there were a church at all it would be this, for all else is uncertainty. And as the Nation said the other day in an article on the Old Catholics, written evidently by one of the class we have been describing: “The great strength of the Church of Rome lies now in the fact that he who quits her knows not whither he is going, and can find no man to tell him.” Schism and heresy and persecution have tried her in turn, and exhausted their efforts in vain; she stands today as she stood on the morning of the Christian era, full and fair in the light of God, not a dint in the rock, not a loosening in the edifice, though the ages have washed over her, and washed all other landmarks away; and the dove that leaves the ark finds no resting-place over the barren waters; and the olive branch of peace is not yet found to tell us that the waters have subsided, and the earth is again as God made it.
Religious unity has been the dream of earnest seekers ever since Jesus Christ gave the final mandate to the apostle to go forth and convert the world; and it would seem that the dream is as far from fulfilment to-day as it ever was; that it is likely to be so till the end of time. The Catholic Church is denounced as the great stumbling-block in the way of the much-desired unity. The sects say to her each in turn: You will not come to us; you will not join us. We are ready to make some sacrifices, but you will not budge an inch. You are false; you are absurd; you are mysterious; you are superstitious; you are everything that is bad—but only give up infallibility, says one, and we are with you; surrender the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, says another, and we will join you; only let your priests marry, says a third; give up the sacraments, says a fourth. To these, and all and many more, the church replies now as always: “Non possumus.” We cannot; God gave the laws to his church. They are his laws; they are irrevocable; more fixed than those of nature; it is not for us to change them. There again, say her adversaries: the old cry. You will not change; you will not concede; you are perverse and implacable. How can we ever have unity? They forget [pg 385] that they ask the church to dismember herself; to destroy her own identity; to break up, and come down to their level. Suppose she were to do so, what would the result be? She would be lost and absorbed in the sea of sectarianism. The one object to which all eyes look, whether faithfully or maliciously, as at least fixed and united to-day as to-morrow, as yesterday, would be blotted out of the sight of man. Even humanly speaking, much would be lost; nothing would be gained; and union would be farther off than ever.
The best example of the truth of this is given in the history of the last great departure from the Catholic Church—the Protestant Reformation. Though this movement never reached to the proportions of Arianism, yet it was a movement that captivated nations, and was eminently adapted to favor the revolutionary spirit then breaking out among men, to throw off all constraint of whatever nature, and stand upon the false notion of unbridled liberty of thought and action. The new doctrine of private interpretation spread rapidly, because it pandered to the age. Nations broke away from the church; a new faith, a new creed, grander, larger, fuller, purer than the old, was to be built up. And what was the result? What is the result? A multiplication of sect upon sect; a fresh departure; a new interpretation of the Gospel of God day after day; a breaking out into the wildest and most erratic courses of belief and conduct, oftentimes so utterly subversive to all government that it was obliged to be forcibly repressed by the law of the lands which at first favored it for its own purposes. This tower of faith that men would build from earth to heaven, like the old tower of pride, ended in nothing—crumbled away and caused a Babel—a confusion of beliefs. Such is the inevitable end of all religions that men make for themselves; vain efforts; uncertainty; good perverted or rendered useless; disagreement and religious anarchy.
No wonder that men cry out for something fixed. No wonder that so many turn infidel. Protestantism has proved an utter failure as a guidance and a religion to men. So much so that, if one asked for a definition of the Protestant religion today, it could not be given him; and the only right answer would be not a faith or a system, but the opposition of non-Catholic Christians to the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps the most striking proof of this is exemplified in the late meeting at Cologne. There were assembled delegates from several rival sects and churches, in the endeavor to bring order out of chaos, to plant a new church and a new faith which all men might accept. If the Protestant bishops who attended there were satisfied that their religion or form of religion was true and all-sufficient, why not stay at home? Why did they go at all? While Döllinger and the rest, satisfied of the failure of Protestantism, cling fast to the torn shred of the Roman Catholic faith, and proclaim loudly and absurdly that they are Catholic still, it is a deep and bitter lesson to Protestants of the hopelessness of their efforts to create a unity such as they see alone in the Catholic Church.
In the midst of this general and growing dissatisfaction, a pamphlet has been put into our hands which promises to settle the vexed question once for all. It is written by a Baptist minister, the Rev. James W. Wilmarth, pastor at Pemberton, N. J. Who he is, beyond the fact stated on the cover, we do not know. His pamphlet has no claim to our attention beyond the thousand-and-one [pg 386] such thrust upon our notice day after day. But as it is somewhat pretentious, and has received the sanction of no less distinguished a body than the West New Jersey Baptist Association, which body, by vote, requested its publication (the substance of it having been delivered in the “doctrinal sermon” preached September 13, 1871), it may be taken to represent the orthodox Baptist doctrine, and may, therefore, be glanced at just to see what that doctrine is, or is supposed to be, for we have no doubt many Baptists would disagree with it. The author takes a bold line, “The True Idea of the Church: Baptist vs. Catholic,” for he recognizes[181] no logical middle position between Baptist and Catholic ground, and, therefore, salvation lies in one of the two bodies, as it cannot lie in both. What Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the rest may think of this high-handed mode of dealing with their several pretensions to truth, we may imagine. But they can scarcely complain, as all in turn adopt precisely the same line of argument: the haven of salvation resting not between Presbyterian and Baptist or Methodist and Episcopalian, but between each of these sects and Rome. They slide by each other, and confront us. The only similar example we can call to mind at present of such union out of disunion, is that of the fallen spirits.
It is unnecessary to observe that, in a contest of this nature between an individual Baptist minister and the whole Catholic Church, the church, notwithstanding her rather formidable array of theologians and philosophers, gets decidedly the worst of the battle. And, though the author, as he tells us in his preface, “has endeavored to ‘speak the truth in love,’ ” perhaps it was only natural to find, particularly towards the end, his temper proving a little too much for his “love,” so that we must not be astonished, though “in no partisan spirit has he discussed his theme,” at meeting little phrases scattered here and there of a decidedly unlovable nature. Thus, the Holy Father is mentioned as “the bigoted Pope of Rome” who “sits cursing modern civilization and freedom, and sighing for the return of the dark ages and the inquisition”; the whole Catholic system “a diabolical imposture,” italicized; “Catholics appeal chiefly to sentiment,” “undervalue the importance of Scriptures,” “may be good Catholics, and yet profane, immoral, untruthful, and regardless of the will of God, and that millions notoriously are so.” If this be our author's mode of asking for his views “the candid consideration of every reader of whatever religious persuasion,” we should strongly recommend him for the future to alter his tone; if it be “speaking the truth in love,” we wonder what his notions of speaking the truth in wrath would be. Catholic writers are habitually accused of intolerance in tone and controversy: we humbly submit that, when we have to encounter—as we are compelled to do every day—adversaries of this stamp, we may be reasonably pardoned for not using studious phrases with men on whom politeness is thrown away.
A year has now flown by since this “discourse was prepared and delivered under a profound conviction of the importance and timeliness of the vital truths therein set forth, and it is now given to the public with the same conviction.” As to its timeliness, we have nothing to object, it was probably meant for Baptists rather than Catholics, and with an eye to the dissensions that [pg 387] seem racking and threatening to rend that body at present. In fact, from its whole tone and the round rating he gives members of his community who “would give up their vantage-ground by concealment or compromise of truth,” and his insisting on their “maintaining their Baptist attitude” (whatever that may be precisely he fails to explain), the pamphlet sounds very much like a warning-note—like the weak cry of “No surrender!” when surrender follows immediately, like Mr. Winkle's “all right” when Mr. Winkle felt satisfied that it was all wrong. With regard to its “importance,” notwithstanding the writer's “conviction” on the point, we may be permitted to entertain some slight doubt. Authors are sometimes apt to overrate the importance of their productions. At all events, after a year of trial, we have heard of no very wonderful result following the launching of this pamphlet on the troubled waters of controversy. Catholics are Catholics still. The church stands precisely at its first starting-point of some nineteen centuries ago, while the Baptists stand at theirs—a point involved still in a region of mist, and apparently rapidly dissolving into it. So that, with regard to this closing of the controversy generally, we are compelled to arrive at the painful conclusion that it has either been very greatly undervalued by the public at large, or is absolutely good for nothing.
The author proposed to himself to place the only two ideas of the church, Baptist and Catholic, which he acknowledges, in such juxtaposition, in so clear a light, that all who read must be compelled to adopt either the one or the other. In other words, be purposed ending forever all the controversies that have ever raged between church and church, in a pamphlet of forty-two pages. And his mode of setting about it is at least original.
“I do not propose to discuss this question of ‘true church’ after the common method. I shall not raise questions of apostolic or of historic succession, of ‘legality’ or ‘validity’ or ‘regularity.’ I propose to go deeper than that into the heart of the subject.”
Now, with all due respect to the reverend author, these little items, which he finds it so convenient to throw overboard in such an arbitrary fashion, constitute, for his readers at least, the heart of the subject. He tells us that “all the Christian ages with one consent acknowledge the church to be a divine society”—human-divine, Catholics would say—“governed by divine law, established by Jesus Christ.”