Religion in history and in modern life, together with an essay on the church and the working classes

Front matter

AND IN

MODERN LIFE

TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY ON THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CLASSES

Preface

This little book is republished in response to much friendly pressure which has come from many sides. While it has been revised throughout, and in certain places expanded, yet expansion has not been found possible where it was most needed — in the concluding lecture. But this is the less regretted as the book is not an essay in what it is the fashion to call Christian Economics, but rather a discussion as to the nature and action of the Christian Religion as it has revealed and fulfilled itself in history. Abstract economics, even though deduced from the Sermon on the Mount, are more likely to be ingenious than either relevant to the original or practicable in the present, ideals that do not so much produce realities as become apologies for their absence. A man wiio is a good exegete but an inexperienced economist, is no more able to apply the Xew Testament to our social and industrial problems, than the man who is an expert economist but a stranger to the New Testament. To make knowledge of the one subject a reason for attempting to wTite on both, is simply to show how foolish a reasonable man may be, for it is nowhere so hard to tliink truly and speak vi Religion in History,

wisely as in the application of simple maxims to complex problems. This, of course, does not mean either that the ethics of Christ ought not, or that they cannot be applied to modern economics; on the contrary, the whole argument of the book is governed by the conviction that they ought to be so applied, and that the whole past life of the Christian Religion has been a series of efforts to embody itself in a higher social and economical order. From these efforts the religion cannot desist, and against the hindrances to them it must for evermore contend. But then in order to the success of this contention the churches must see clearly that they may strike boldly; to hit blindly is only to inflict damage all round.

Now, the author is not a student of economics — in this region he feels rather than sees, but he is a student of the history of religion, and he feels more able to define the duty and function of religion in the present when he comes to it through the experience of the past. And this is all he really professes to do, but even so, this is no little or insignificant thing to attempt. In studying the history and the action of Christian ideas, we move in the region of the actual, and learn through what the religion has done, what it is capable of doing, what it has failed to do, why it has failed to do it, and what it ought now to set itself to accomplish. The historical thus becomes a most practical discussion, and forms a necessary and sobering introduction to every attempt to deal either critically or constructively with the economic functions of the Christian religion. But the author

Preface. vii

has no wish to escape, under the disguise of an historical discussion, the grave responsibility which lies upon every Christian teacher to apply his religion to the present. His sense of this responsibility, within the limits defined by the origin and purpose of the lectures, is partially expressed in the essay on ^^The Church and the Wording Classes." Without this recognition of duty he could not have allowed this book to go forth in a new edition.

Perhaps it may be as wefl to recall the original purpose of the Lectures which form the body of the book. The author was then resident in the neighbourhood of Bradford, and he volunteered to address the working men of the town on ^ ^ Religion in History," expressly through the press inviting them to attend. His purpose was thus stated in the Preface to the First Edition: —

^ ^ The reasons which induced me to take so unusual a step had a twofold source; first, the strong conviction of what Religion is, and what it ought to do; and, secondly, the feeling that it is the duty of the special student to become, as far as possible, a teacher of the people, especially in matters where the people so much need instruction, and where instruction is so necessary to their highest good. Our hard-worked ministers and clergy have quite enough to do without attempting labour of this kind; yet it is labour that ought to be done. The ordinary pulpit leaves many questions undiscussed, and the ordinary congregation does not desire or require their discussion; yet they are questions viii Religion in History,

everywhere anxiously debated by earnest and most excellent men. It is easy, through the press, to reach the cultivated and leisured classes; it is not so easy, indeed to many it is quite impossible, to reach the industrial classes through it. Yet these latter are often the more susceptible, with natures more open to conviction, more fully convinced, if convinced at all. Some things that had recently happened within m.y own experience, made me very vividly aware of the peculiar forms our religious problems and difficulties assume among our working men, and this discovery led to the feeling of obligation that resulted in the delivery of these Lectures. I felt bound, as a student and teacher of the Christian religion, to speak to my fellow townsmen, especially those of the industrial classes, concerning questions they were discussing and honestly trying to understand.

''The Lectures were determined alike as to matter and form by their purpose. They are not apologetic in the customary sense, bitt I hope they are something better, because more relevant to the actual state of mind of the persons addressed. It will be but just if they are judged according to their real intention and scope, and in no respect as a polemical and controversial endeavour."

December 10, 1893.

*• The King said to his people : ' The good in you I will not dare to keep concealed ; and for the evil in me I will not dare to forgive myself, I will examine these things in harmony with the mind of God, When guilt is found anytvhere in you who occupy the myriad regions, let it rest on me, the One man. When guilt is found iJi me, the One man, it shall not attach to you who occupy the myriad regions.' " — '' The Shu King," Part iv., Book iii., Part 3.

^^ Heaven loves the people, and the sovereign should reverently carry out (this mind of) Heaven.''' — lb., Part v., Book i., § 2.

^^ The ancients have said, ^ He who soothes us is our sovereign; he who oppresses us is our enemy. " — lb.. Part v., Book i., § 3.

** A state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only : if life only icere the object, slaves and brute animals might form a state ; but they cannot, for they have no share in happiness or in a life of free choice. . . . Whence it may be further inferred that virtue must he the serious care of a state %ohich truly deserves the name : for (without this ethical end) the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and law is only a convention, ' a surety to one another of justice,' as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens good and just." — Aristotle, ''Politics," Book i., § 9.

'^It has been well said that ^ he who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.' The two are not the same, but the good citizen ought to be capable of both; he should know how to govern like a. freeman, and how to obey like a freeman — these are the virtues of a citizen." — lb., Book iii., § 4.

'' Two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal ; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom and equality mean the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong ; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution ; for it is their salvation." lb., Book v., § 9.

'^ Neither is a horse elated nor proud of his manger and trappings and coverings, nor a bird of his little shreds of cloth or of his nest : but both of them are proud of their swiftness ; one proud of the swiftness of the feet, and the other of the wings. Do you also, then, not be greatly proud of your food and dress, and, in short, of any external things, but be proud of your integrity and good deeds {evitoiia)." — EpictetuS; ^' Encheiridion," xxvi.

Contents

THE CHURCH AND THE WORKING CLASSES.

PAGE

1. Its Changed Attitude to the Working Classes —

Chapter I. The Church And The Working Classes

It is now almost ten years since these Lectures were delivered, and this period is remarkable for the growth in all religious societies of a new feeling for our workmen, and of responsibilitj^ in connexion with their special problems.

1. The causes and forms of this latest and most hopeful outgrowth of the Christian conscience are many and most varied. The generous and trustful humanity of the older Christian Socialists — Maurice. Kingsley, and Hughes — fired the enthusiasm of their disciples, and led them^ now as teachers and now as co-operators, through personal intercourse to such a knowledge of working men, their character, their capacity, their aims and claims, as awakened a new sense of affinity with their manhood, and sympathy with their efforts after amelioration. The extension of primary and the reform of secondary education made the more open-minded men of the older nniversities, see the intellectual promise and abilities of those who had hitherto been excluded from the higher culture. The finely blended speculative and practical genius of T. II. Green became a passion for the realization of the ideals of freedom and justice in all the grades of our social and in all the forms of our national life, and his personal influence imparted his passion to several generations of university men^ who later expressed it in their own ways^ now in economics^ now in politics, and now in the church. The study of the industrial revolution in the spirit and through the philosophy of Green made Arnold Toynbee feel that the man who tended the machine must no longer be sacrificed to the machine he tended, but be made, even by the craft he followed, better as a man and more efficient as a citizen. The teachings of Carlyle distilled through Ruskin, and woven by him into the theories of art and the criticisms of life that were his message to the age, inspired with a will for service many who would otherwise have wasted their sensitive enthusiasm in admiration of dubious art. The Anglican revival, like the older evangelical, became in many of its sons a love of souls, and certain both of its priests and laymen made the East End of London the scene of as unselfish labours and as consecrated lives as the most heroic ages of the Church have known.

The result of these and similar causes is the varied movements, outwardly so different, which have had as their common end help of the working classes, especially those whose lot is hardest and least hopeful. Hence have come Toynbee Hall wdth its sane and sagacious belief in the value of art for the squalid East End, and its brave endeavour to educate the universities by means of Whitechapel, and to save Whitechapel by the culture and service of the universities; Oxford House, with its intense conviction of the mission of the Church to the masses, though of a mission that the ordinary ecclesiastical agencies and methods are quite unable to fulfil: Mansfield House, w^th its strong, practical spirit, seeking to improve the houses, the amusements, the minds, the relationships, and the lives of the workers in the farther East End; the Wesleyan settlement at Eermondsey, with its noble religious zeal and broad philanthropy attempting at once to heal the bodies and save the souls of those it can reach; University Hall, w4th its intellectual energy and its belief in knowledge as a saving and civilizing power; and besides these a multitude of houses and missions independently and separately maintained by colleges and public schools.

But the first broad and most apparent result of these varied institutions is this, they have affected much more profoundly those who have conducted them than those for whose sakes they are being conducted. Men who, left to the ordinary tendencies of nurture and culture, would have seen things only through the eyes of the propertied and leisured classes, have come or are coming to study them through the eyes of those who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow, often finding but little bread for all their sweat and toil. And it has been found surely enough that the same things look wonderfully different when seen from those two opposite points of view. For largely out of these settlements, and the influences by which they have persuaded cultured minds to occupy, sympathetically, the standpoint of the labourer, there has come both an academic and a religious socialism, which is powerfully modifying political, economical, and ecclesiastical doctrine, and which promises to affect the teaching and practice of the churches as radically as it is affecting the spirit and the scope of our civil legislation. We are witnessing a process of conversion, but it is of the missionaries at the unconscious hands of those they were sent out to convert; and this is a process which may have the most momentous results for the future of society and religion in England.

2. But correspondent to the new feeling which these causes have been contributing to produce in the churches, is the birth of a new spirit in the lower labour. It is possessed of a hopefulness which may be described as the child of a new sense, — on the one side, of internal competence or capability, and on the other, of the sympathy which comes from being better understood. In other words, it does not feel so much in bondage to its own infirmities, or so much an outcast from the community of freedom and progress and hope. This has been illustrated by those recent events in our economic history, which showed, first, the ability of the classes that live by what is termed unskilled labour to conceive methods and to use means for their own amelioration, and even to combine in support of them; and secondly, the willingness of classes once hostile or indifferent to assume a kindlier and more intelligent attitude to the disputes of labour, and even the tendency to regard its questions as the concern not simply of economics, but of social ethics. This spirit of sympathy from without labour which has so cheered the upward impulse from within it, stands in notable contrast to the jealous and fretful criticism which hindered and harassed the earliest attempts of the skilled workmen at combination. Both of these are hopeful elements, for the men who can design a poli3y of social and industrial improvement and unite ii its support, have become something more and better than day labourers; wiiile the society that looks at an industrial question through living persons and in its effects upon them, and not simply through the abstract ideas of capital and labour, production and distribution, has translated the problem as to wealth into one as to well-being. The laws of political economy may be regarded in the one case, as in the other, as expressing actual processes or relations between co-ordinated phenomena, but they will be supplemented in tlie one case, as they Avould not be in the other, by the attem.pt to discover those countervailing forces, or to create those modifying conditions, that shall change their morally indifferent or sectionally injurious action into one socially and collectively beneficent. For economics may show the need of change, and the alternative lines along which it may move; but it is the function of the social conscience to say which line the common good makes the more imperative. Thus economics may tell that either rent, or interest, or wages, must rise or fall, but it belongs to ethics to say which of these has the prior right to consideration in the adjustment of the -jpward or downward scale.

We may, then, venture to affirm that the ethical is the strongest and most significant tendency in social and political thought. And so men are coming to see more clearly that, for moral rather than economical reasons, questions between classes are never merely class questions, and that what depresses the standard of living in any one class lowers the level and worth of life throughout the community as a whole. And this idea is so penetrating the community that we see it daily becoming more distinctly conscious that it is as responsible for safeguarding the skill which is the sole property of the artisan, and, as far as possible, securing his happiness also, as for protecting his employer in the use and enjoyment of his capital. And this is a point which the industrial struggle through which we are even now passing with so much pain and shame, is only the more defining and emphasizing. In no previous economic struggle has the sense of justice within the community been so widely and deeply touched, or so vigorously expressed. The feeling has grown that both masters and men have a responsibility to the community as well as to each other, and that the community has such a responsibility to both as will not allow it to stand as an idle or uninterested spectator of the disastrous strife. The awakening sense of justice means that legislation embodying it will most surely follow, and this legislation will seek to deal justly with both classes — with the demand of the men for a living wage, and of the masters for guarded property and fair profits, — and will attempt to secure that each class shall deal justly by the other, and both by the community as a whole. It seems, then, as if we were tending towai*ds a state where we shall have greater unity of feeling and solidarity of ethical interests; and where these are, there will be more of the pressure of the community upon the class than of the dominion of the class over the community, though, it must be confessed, this is a state where wisdom and justice are demanded as they were never demanded or needed before.

3. Now, the most efficient factors of this change have been many, labour itself being the most efficient factor of all. Our workmen are no longer dumb; we cannot now speak of them with Carlj le as the inarticulate multitude. They have a mind of their own and a most potent voice, while they have been represented by many convinced and persuasive spokesmen. The economics of the school and the study do not now reign in undisputed supremacy; they are confronted and challenged by the economics of the workshop and the trades-union. And while we may here leave thesis and antithesis to qualify each other, we must confess that not only has the workman's experience forced the student to modify his doctrines, but his arguments have also conquered many of the prejudices and modified the mind of our English public, Avhich. though often unreasonable and hard to convince^ is invariably^ when convinced, a mind both honest and just. Yet while the workmen themselves have been the most efficient factors of this changed attitude to their questions, we may say that those who have given the most remarkable and emphatic expression to the change have been churchmen, princes of the Roman, bishops of the Anglican, pastors of the Nonconformist communions. It is not said or meant that these were the men who formulated the principles or inaugurated the movements that effected the change, — this, we have just said, the workmen were and the churchmen certainly were not; but they expressed it, gave the sort of social sanction that made society aware of the process that was going forward, of the new feelings towards labour, its state and claims, that were rising within it. The really significant thing is that Roman priests, English bishops, and dissenting ministers have so tried to intervene, or have so succeeded in intervening, as arbiters between masters and workmen as to express the idea that conflicts between capital and labour concern as well the whole community, and especially the religious societies within it, as the immediate parties to the quarrel. They represent the pressure of the more reasonable social mind, or the more sensitive conscience, upon the belligerents. This is the most obvious moral to be drawn from the negotiations, whether successful or abortive, in connection with the strikes of the dockers in London, the shoemakers at Northampton, the miners in Durham, and with the lockedout at Hull. These events have not, indeed, the intrinsic significance of the fact we noticed above.

the action of the working men on the strong and sensitive minds that have chosen to work for or live among them. Those events are significant as expressing common tendencies and achieved results, but this action as denoting nascent yet potent causes. The meaning of the former can in a manner be already measured, the latter is only a little bit of leaven just begun to act within the iiimp.

CHAPTER IT.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE MEN TO THE CHURCHES.

1. But while the churches through their most honoured representatives, or through their strongest and most resolute sons, liave turned this friendly and helpful face towards labour, Avhat has been its correspondent or reciprocal attitude ? The help has been accepted with a sort of proud yet indulgent gratitude, as if for duty at last performed by one who had not been accustomed to perform it; but there has been little sign of any changed attitude to the faith and worship of the Church. The men who represent labour, and the labour they represent, may be quite willing to enlist the ecclesiastic as a recruit, but they show no inclination of joining the army he leads, or of submitting to his discipline. They may hail the attempt of the Church to fulfil economic functions, whether as mediator or as teacher, or even seriously propose to capture her as the chosen citadel of the capitalist, and turn her into the stronghold of labour and the minister of the democracy; but they do not mean to commit themselves to her, whether as regards her policy for this life or her dogmas as to the life to come. Nor need we wonder

The Attitude of the Men to the Church, 11

at their attitude; we are rather tempted to commend it as both reasonable and reverent. The Church is infinitely more than an economic institution; the man or society would be a secularist of the very worst type who would enter it simply because of its promise to be profitable for the life that now is. This is a reason worthy of the suitor for social recognition, but not of the blunt integrity of the English workman. Then all churches are historical institutions; the attitude to them of classes and bodies of men is also historical. Agreement on a current question does not afiect an attitude which depends on ancient and permanent causes. If, then^ we would discover how the Church and the industrial classes are to be reconciled, we must inquire into those causes which worked their estrangement and still keep them estranged. This estrangement is too general to be explained by any local or accidental or occasional cause, or indeed any cause that affects only one of the two sides. The causes are of so common and so essential a kind that they have affected and do affect equally the churches and the industrial classes, both in themselves and in their mutual relations.

2. It may be doubted whether the estrangement can properly be described as general; but it is general in this sense that (the Graeco-Russian Church does not come into our purview) it is a state which all churches know and have cause to lament. The experience of the Roman Church is not uniform, but it is decisive enough. There is no country where the anti-clerical and anti-Church feeling is so strong as in France, and it is intensest — becoming almost a sort of fanaticism — in the artisan class. The Belgian workman is less demonstrative and more tolerant than his French neighbour, but quite as little does he love the Church. There is no Church in the United States that suffers so much from leakage, or the loss of those immigrants and their descendants who were hers by race, as the Roman Catholic. It is, of course, different in Ireland, in the South American Republics, and in certain of the countries of Southern Europe; but it is only different in these cases because the industrial development has been arrested, or has not well begun. In the case of Ireland, indeed, there is this special characteristic: Catholicism and patriotism have only been different aspects of the same thing, church and people lay under the same disabilities, suffered from the same penal laws, and were therefore one in their conflict for justice and freedom. But as regards the general question the significant thing is, that where industry has been so far developed as to allow the causes which most tend to alienation to operate, the Roman religion has, so far from preventing, emphasized and exasperated the effect. The Anglican Church, too, has here failed signally, often in spite of her many beneficences, sometimes even because of the form her beneficences have assumed. There are districts in England where, if it had not been for certain dissenting bodies, paganism would have practically prevailed. Her debt to those bodies she can never pay, and, unhappily, she is not always willing even to recognize it, at least in a form that an honourable creditor can regard as recognition.

The Attitude of the 3Ien to the Church. 13

Methodism^ in its several branclies, has done more for the conversion and reconciliation of certain of the industrial classes to religion than any other English Church. It is but just to say that the enfranchisement of our mining and agricultural populations made this evident, that their regulative ideas were religious rather than utilitarian and secular. The politician finds when he addresses the peasantry that he has to appeal to more distinctly ethical and religious principles than when he addresses the upper or middle classes, and we may hope that even in a politician the principles he appeals to may ultimately affect his policy. Meanwhi-.e we simply note that it is the local preacher rather than the secularist lecturer who has, while converting the soul, really formed the mind of the miner and labourer, and who now so largely represents the ideas he seeks in his dim and inarticulate way to see applied to national policy and legislation. The Congregational and the Presbyterian Churches have been more successful with the middle than with either the lower or the upper classes; they may indeed be said to represent the older English Nonconformity, but while the latter is largely Scotch, the former inherits tlie mind and traditions of the burghers and the yeomen who formed the main body of the Independents of the Commonwealth. Theirs were the men who governed England from '32 to '68, and who have not been inactive since then. They are mainly the men who have created our industries and extended our commerce, and made the conscience for integrity and economy in the English race. These things are not said by way of polemic against any churchy or of apologetic on behalf of any; but simply by way of stating a fact that needs to be explained. Of all forms of ecclesiastical controversy, the most sordid and mean is the form of mutual reproach, or blame for failure where there has been common guilt. The body that has helped to keep any class or any proportion of any class religious, deserves the gratitude of all the rest; the body that has failed, though it has tried to succeed, deserves at least their sympathy and respect. But when our churches stand face to face with the alienated classes of our great cities and industries, the only mood that becomes any and is incumbent upon all, is one of humiliation and confession of sin with a view to amendment of life. But this only emphasizes our special point — where the effect is so general there must be common causes more or less uniform in their operation. Our problem is the discovery and the determination of these causes.

CHAPTER III. CAUSESj APPAREXT AXD REAL, OF ALIENATION

1. Xow among these causes I do not reckon as primary, either in time or in importance, Avhat is popularly known as infidelity or unbelief. Xo doubt there is among artisans under various forms and names a great deal of vigorous and thoroughgoing negation. Forty years ago it used to be termed Secularism, which was a sort of instinctive and unreasoned agnosticism. Its basis was a rough-andready doctrine of utility, which regarded this life as the only real object or field of knowledge, and judged everything by its value or efficiency in helping man to live it honestly and happily. Then, under the new scientific impulse, came a Avavc of more positive materialism^ and doctrines and dicta from men like Darwin and Huxley, down through Tyndall to Moleschott and Bilchner, were repeated and interpreted into a sort of philosophy of existence, though now and then an ideal or intellectual element was so introduced as to modify the conception into a species of Pantheism. The critcism which was its polemic against Christianity, especially so lar as directed against the Scriptures as sources or authorities in religion, was