institutes that is the ideal towards which they struggle, the Utopia of which they dream.

It would be idle to stop to demonstrate the baselessness of the hopes they cherish. They may succeed in destroying the Church's belief. They may, in the present languor of faith, paralyse the noblest instrument for the elevation of man which was ever granted to any nation; for there appears to be no limit to the power for evil which well-meaning theorists are allowed to exercise. But they will never be enabled to enslave it. They cannot carry it off from the service it now fulfils, in order to turn it to the uses of a godless philanthropy. The zeal which is born of religious belief cannot be confiscated by Act of Parliament. The most Ultra-Liberal politicians seem to be aware of the advantages which result to the community, even in the most secular point of view, from religious earnestness. They must make up their minds to the disagreeable truth that those advantages cannot be enjoyed without the inconveniences which follow from a definite belief in supernatural truths. It is related of a German prince, that when the automaton chess-player was exhibiting its wonders before Europe, he bethought him that it would add to his somewhat shrunken state and dignity to purchase such a marvel. Unfortunately he neglected at the same time to secure the services of the concealed player, to whose genius the remarkable performances of the automaton were due. The distressing result was that when the Prince came into possession of his bargain, the bargain would not move. The Church has ever proclaimed the hidden Power to whom all her marvellous achievements are due, and has never sought to take the glory to herself. But, if the comparison may be made without profanity, the parallel in other respects holds good. The Ultra-Liberals desire for the propagation of their shallow philosophy, that strange mastery over the minds of men which is possessed by the Church of God; and they dream that by seizing the machinery, they can appropriate the spirit. No suspicion seems to cross their minds that the dogma against which they rebel has any connection with the energy they admire. In the recent discussion upon the Oxford Tests Bill, upon the fourteenth of last month, the champions of the new doctrineless religion spoke their minds with unusual candour. Any one who wishes for a synopsis of their belief will do well to refer to that debate. Mr. Goschen throughout treated religious teaching as something wholly beside the interests of ordinary men. Oxford, he said, was a place mainly for the education of laymen, and not a seminary for ecclesiastics; and therefore it was absurd to make theology an essential portion of the teaching. Mr. Grant Duff was of opinion that 'the true

strength

strength of the Church of England lay not in dogmas, but in her action upon the people.' Mr. Chichester Fortescue, a distinguished member of the Government, after several skits at what he called 'controversial divinity,' which he appeared to think ceased to be of importance the moment it was controverted, went on to make the remarkable statement, that every year of his life he was less inclined to attach much importance to dogmatic teaching, compared with the great objects of a Christian life.' There lies, as neatly as words can express it, the great article of the Neo-Christian faith. Undoubtedly, it contains a truth. It is the result, not the essence, of Christianity, that is of importance to the politician. From a purely secular point of view, there would clearly be an advantage if we could have the purity of Christian morality, and the benefits of Christian zeal, without its stubborn and inflexible creed. In the same way, it would be a great saving of trouble if it were possible to cut down oaks without the tedious necessity of planting them first. These theorists need to be taught by hard experience, as theorists scarcely more presumptuous have been taught before, that Christian morality is a blessing which can only be enjoyed by the world as a consequence of Christian faith. What misleads them is that this rule is true of a community, but is not necessarily true of an individual. Some of the brightest examples of what a Christian life should be have been, and still are, men who have renounced all but the mere pretence of Christian faith. The fact in their case is that their morality was formed before their intellect went astray. Virtue had become easy to them before faith had become difficult. Thus it has come to pass that Christianity has been reproached with her own success, and the morality which her preaching has produced has been employed to discredit its truth. But what the world has not yet seen is a society in which the dogmas which these gentlemen despise have lost their hold upon all classes and both sexes, and which yet retains its morality or even its civilisation through two or three generations. The virtuous heretic or infidel, the child of believing parents, brought up in a believing community, is not difficult to understand. But in order to prove the disconnection between 'the objects of a Christian life' and 'dogmatic teaching,' which is the cardinal principle of this new school, it is necessary to produce a generation, born of unbelieving parents, nurtured amid an unbelieving community, and which yet has grown up even to that measure of Christian self-restraint which we are able to recognise in our own lukewarm age. These will be the only conditions under which it can be fairly ascertained by experiment whether Christian morality can be produced by mere sentimental

admiration,

admiration, or whether it needs for its sustenance the love of an 'historic Saviour,' and the fear of a genuine retribution. No impartial reader of history, ancient or modern, can doubt of the calamitous issue to which the experiment, if it should be ever tried, will come. The duty which lies upon Christians of the old sort, is to take care that ours shall not be the community upon which the experiment is performed.

To most Churchmen, it will be a matter of less interest to inquire how this school is to be refuted than how it is to be repelled. The impossibility and self-contradiction of a religion without dogma is a fact that to most minds does not need formal proof. It is more material to inquire how the danger of the attempt to set it up can be averted. Irrational as the idea may seem, it exerts at this moment a considerable, though probably a transitory power. It has of course a permanent value in the eyes of those politicians who recognise the social utility of religion without having arrived at any very profound conception of the causes to which that utility is due. But its chief strength lies in the fact that it falls in with the humour of the day. Religious enthusiasm is liable to the law of action and reaction which governs every movement in the moral world. Its history consists of an alternating series of fervour and apathy. At the present moment the tide appears to be at its lowest ebb. The keen interest in controversy which marked the first half of the century has almost died away. Novelties that thirty years ago would have scared the whole Church from its propriety scarcely leave a ripple upon the tranquil surface of the religious world. Controversies which but fifteen years ago moved the public mind with uncontrollable violence, and carried disunion and dissension into the heart of the most united families are now dismissed with a shrug of contemptuous indifference. Many remarkable results of various tendency may be traced to this curious change, for its operation is neither wholly for good nor wholly for evil. But one of its necessary results is to lead men to undervalue dogma, or even to despise it altogether. Dogmatic theology has naturally few friends. Every one can see at a glance the uses of morality. The shallowest understanding can appreciate the inconveniences which would result to most people, and especially to wealthy people, if the laws of morality fell into contempt. But it requires a process of reasoning and an appeal to history to demonstrate the utility of dogma. It is easy to evade the argument that outside of revealed truth there is no motive strong enough to extort morality from the passions of human nature, by rosecoloured theories of human progress: and there is no simpler mode of winning a reputation for liberality and largeness of

thought

thought than by advocating an 'undogmatic' or 'unsectarian' religion. In an age, therefore, when religious emotions are flagging, and religious convictions are feeble, the dogmatic portion of theology is the first to suffer. Everyone wishes to be thought charitable by his neighbours: and by a curious contortion of language a religion which discards dogma, and makes the promises of Christianity independent of articles of faith, is usually decorated with the epithet 'charitable.' The charity appears to consist in presenting to everybody a general license not to believe. It certainly has the merit of being the most inexpensive kind of charity, for it only involves the bestowal of that which is not the giver's to bestow. But in the ebb-tide of religious feeling, a system of teaching is naturally more comfortable, and seems more amiable, which involves nothing that can be disagreeable to anybody. The Church, therefore, in resisting attacks upon her endowments, and attacks upon the dogmatic restraints by which the disposal of them is restricted, is contending with two antagonists of very different power. The adversary who desires to despoil the Church is contending against the whole current of the feeling of the day; for the nation is too keenly engaged in getting rich not to set an intense value upon the rights of property, and cannot listen to the word 'spoliation' without feelings of undisguised dismay. But the stout defence of unbending creeds does not command any worldly sympathy, but is rather opposed to that vague kindliness of sentiment which civilized and well-educated people commonly entertain upon subjects in regard to which they are entirely indifferent. The fashion will change in due time, as controversial fashions have changed before. The severance which has to some extent taken place between Christian morality and Christian truth is too artificial to be lasting. As soon as the exceptional combination of circumstances which has produced it shall have passed away, it must either become better intellectually, or be followed by a worse morality than it has produced as yet. The dream of undogmatic religion is too baseless to impose long upon educated minds. Either the philosophic caprice of the day will melt silently away, and the mass of our countrymen will be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of that reverence for the great doctrines of their faith which they have always cherished, or we shall return to the same starting-point by a more circuitous and more disastrous route. We shall either cling to our articles of faith in spite of rationalist' and 'unsectarian' teaching, or we shall learn, by a cruel experience, that men will not be moral without a motive, and that a motive can only be furnished by religious belief.

Vol. 118.-No. 235.

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But

But before the problem can be thus worked out many years perhaps may pass; and it is for lovers of the Church to take precautions that during that interval the State shall not use its power to imperil the steadfastness or the purity of her faith. That must be the chief object of their political efforts; but it is not the only one. In many other points the legislation of Parliament can injuriously affect the Church; and there are never wanting adversaries to take advantage of any such opportunity. There is the victorious decision of the church-rate controversy to be upheld. There are the burial-grounds to be protected from the invasion of dissenting ministers. There are the efforts perpetually made by Dissenters to appropriate in a greater or less degree the educational institutions of the Church; and unless the greatest of all instruments for evangelization is to be tamely surrendered, these efforts must be resisted, whether they strike at the universities, or the endowed grammar-schools, or the humble national schools for the primary education of the poor. Against each the antagonists of a definite faith are diligently working, either in the House of Commons or in executive departments; and they occupy positions from which they may do incalculable mischief, unless they are baffled by the steadfastness and the vigilance of Churchmen. In the presence of dangers so grave and so numerous, and foes so inveterate, the employment of ecclesiastical influence for political purposes becomes a sheer necessity of selfprotection. The only question about which any doubt will remain in any Churchman's mind is as to the mode in which it can be the most effectively applied.

Our own opinions upon this question will be no novelty to our readers. The Quarterly Review' has never failed to maintain that the Church, as one of the most vital parts of our Constitution, has a claim to the services of the Conservative party which they can never disregard; and that all friends of the Church are bound as such to support the party on whose strength her political existence depends. Thirty years ago such a doctrine would have been admitted almost as a political axiom, too plain to need formal statement. In more recent times, however, the axiom has not been undisputed. A certain number of persons, more or less friendly to the Church, have in recent years exhorted the clergy, and those of the laity generally in whose hearts the interests of the Church occupied the foremost place, to withdraw from all connexion with their old Conservative allies. Nobody, indeed, has ever gone so far as to advise Churchmen to seek the alliance of the Dissenters. It would be difficult to take kindly to an ally who was perpetually showing his affection by hunting for flaws in your title-deeds, or dipping his fingers into your cash-box.

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