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THE CHURCH OF THE PRESENT, AND
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.
AN ADDRESS,
DELIVERED IN THE
CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL, MOSELEY ROAD,
-
.>.•
BIRMINGHAM,
8th MAY, 1870.
BY
MATTHEW MACFIE,
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RESIGNING THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTRY,
AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS' SERVICE.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
“Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”—In Memoriam.
BIRMINGHAM : E. C. OSBORNE, 84, NEW STREET.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co.
1870.
PRICE SIXPENCE,
�Those who heard the following Address will observe several passages
introduced in its printed form which were omitted, for want of time, in its
delivery. A few sentences here and there, too, are cast in a different
mould.
�AN ADDRESS, &c.
Matthew 6-10.—“Thy kingdom come."
A distinguished foreigner, himself a true Christian, a few
years since said, in a select circle : “ I begin to doubt whether
Christianity has a future in the world.” EWhyso?” asked
one present, in surprise at so dark a saying from such a
quarter. “ Because,’! he replied, neither in India, nor in
America, nor anywhere in all Europe, does any of the govern
ments called ‘ Christian’—I do not say do what is right—but
even affect and pretend to take the Right as the law of
action. Whatever it was once, Christianity is now, in all the
great concerns of nations, a mere ecclesiasticism, powerful for
mischief, but helpless and useless for good. Therefore I begin
to doubt whether it has a future; for if it cannot become
anything better than it is, it has no right to a future in God’s
world.”*
These grave words of one so wise and devout should, perhaps,
be taken “with a grain of salt.” But many a thoughtful and
earnest Englishman will feel bound to admit that, to a certain
extent, they are too true, and hit a blot in our practical religious
life as a professedly Christian community. As far as consis
tency is concerned in the application of our sacred writings to
the affairs of national life, do we not present a striking contrast
even to some semi-barbarous nations ? The religious traditions
of India teach that the Brahmins were born from the head of
their god, and the Sudras from his feet; and caste, with all its
cruel exclusiveness, is the logical outcome of this doctrine. The
Buddhists revolted from this article of Hindoo faith, and we
are not surprised, therefore, to find prevailing in China a sort
of Social Democracy. The Mussulman believes the Koran to be
* From an article by F. W, Newman on “the weakness of Protestantism,”
�4
his moral and spiritual guide for this life and the next, and the
laws and usages of Turkey are consistently enough framed on
the prophet’s model. It is otherwise with the Christian nations
of the West. They boast a higher civilization than that of the
despised Orientals. They possess a faith (I speak of the mass
of Europeans) which they hold to be the only true Revelation
of religious truth and duty to the world; and yet the moral
teaching of the New Testament—zealously contended for in
our orthodox churches—is strangely ignored in our political
and social life. Think, for instance, of the incongruous pro
ceedings of the British legislature. With one hand it upholds,
from professed zeal for the spiritual and moral good of the
nation, a costly Established Church, and with the other hand
it mutilates every just and noble measure brought before
it; so that if ever a good bill passes into law at all, it usually
comes to the people an emasculated thing—the mangled off
spring of compromise and expediency. Is not our English
common law .borrowed from Pagan Rome ? And up to this
nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is notorious that
the international disputes of Christian states, glorying, theore
tically, in the forgiving and peaceful principles of Jesus, can
not, as a rule, be settled, without the slaughter of millions to
propitiate mutual hatred and jealousy. We should accuse our
preachers of heresy, if they did not tell us that all men are to
be loved and cherished as brethren; and yet in the very
House of Prayer, as well as in our every day life, we file off
into classes, and raise up the unhallowed distinctions of rank
and wealth, extremely attentive to those in least need of our
sympathy and help, and standing quietly by while untold
numbers of our fellow-countrymen perish in misfortune, igno
rance, and shame.
Well, then, in this strange state of national contradictions
the Christian church stands forth, reiterating her claims as the
one divinely-appointed agent for applying the balm of truth
and love to the social wounds of Humanity, ever ready to take
credit for all the spiritual and moral good effected among men
under this Dispensation. Many, quite competent to judge, and
with no wish to disparage the efforts of the church, take leave
to doubt whether that credit is always due. But at any rate
�5
it is to be feared that the sects of Christendom, have not always
been careful to reflect fairly the spirit and essence of Christ’s
religion. Divisions about trifles of dogma have drained off the
strength that ought to have been given to the improvement of
the masses, physically, intellectually and morally, and have
driven the higher intellect of the country beyond the pale of
modern churches. The most enlightened of the population
have ceased to take the least interest in Sunday services, and
every year witnesses secessions from the sects, and brings more
powerful opposition from the enemy. Different schools of
church theology wax more and more bitter in their jealousy
toward each other. Dr. Pusey accuses Bishop Bickersteth of
holding unworthy views of the "sawfamentsjthese two
“brethren in Christ” unite in charging Bishop Temple with
deadly error, and in denouncingyDissenters from the established
church as unauthorised religious <g^ides. Nor is forbearing
charity between members of evangelica^n.©.mcon|prmist churches
always so conspicuous as to call forth th^exclamftion, “ Behold,
how these Christians love one anotlie$ ! ”
This, then, is the strange spectacle the avowed disciples of
Christ present to the world, each sect believing their church
the true one, all vying in their reverence for one book as the
perfect source of religious truth, equally earnest in asking
Divine guidance in the study of it, and yet all intensely differ
ing from each other about its meaning; and this difference not
confined to what they deem secondary points, but touching
the very essentials of salvation. , One naturally asks: Can
this incoherent mass of sects, with their endless and conflicting
metaphysical dogmas and varieties of ritual and ill-disguised
jealousies of one another, be the church of Him who did
not strive or cry—“the meek and lowly Jesus ” ? I rejoice to
believe that multitudes of His true followers—like the seven
thousand in the time of Elijah who had not bent the knee to
the idol—are included in the institutions of organized Christi
anity now. But the institutions themselves, as a whole, in the
judgment of many, are relics of superstitious times, and are
fast losing their hold on the talent and culture of mankind—
powerless to leaven the mind and life of civilized nations.
The “ secular ” press, as a teacher, has a vastly larger and more
�6
enlightened audience than the pulpit. The strongest spirits,
if they frequent Sabbath assemblies at all, do so mostly for
the sake of setting an example to the weak and the ignorant,
who are always more impressed by priestly authority and
church ordinances than by abstract principles, religious or
moral. What then is the goal to which events are tending ?
Must we share the fears of the distinguished foreigner I have
referred to, that Christianity is dying out and has no future;
and that religion and morality are doomed to the same grave
with itself? Or will there be a resurrection out of this threatened
decay of the Christian faith, of all that is real and vital in it ?
I believe that when a system or an organization has done its
work, it is the will of God that it should give place to another
more suited to the genius and wants of the times, and this, in
the opinion of many great thinkers, is to be the fate of existing
churches. Most certainly history strongly favours that opinion.
But I have no fear about the future of Christianity as taught
by Jesus, and as distinguished from the myths that have crept
into the record of His life, and from the metaphysical theology
over which his name is profanely called. I believe it is
destined, in its essence, sooner or later, to be the religion of the
whole world, because it is written, in characters more indelible
than those in any book, however “ sacredit is written in the
very nature of man. There is much in the present state of the
church to cause pain, but nothing to discourage our hopes in
reference to the future of “ pure and undefiled religion.” The
laws of the universe are laws of progress, and so far from the
sun of religious development having reached its meridian, we
are only as yet in the grey dawn of a brighter day. Humanity
is still in its intellectual and moral childhood. Organic life has
from the beginning been shaping itself into higher types
under laws of progress. The advance of civilization is marked
by the strides made by men from the age of flint to the age of
gold, and still its course is onward. From the period of the
Magna Charta our political institutions have developed into
their present freeness, and will continue to expand till even
the most liberal Reformers of to-day will be looked back upon
as the fossils of a slower and a duller time. Why, then, should
we despair of the future of religious thought and life ? It
�7
were ungrateful to reproach the church of the past or of the
present. All great systems of thought and activity are the
creatures of their age, and cannot reasonably be expected to
rise above the level of those outward conditions for which they
are adapted and prepared. They have no mission to the future.
But the history of Religion clearly proves that it always has
been controlled by thefllaw of progress, and so it will ever
continue to be#-. From the worship of
men haw risen to
the worship of One Pw^on, and the religion of Monotheism
has developed from the grim conception of God as a ruler
which prevailed uncte® Mosaism, into that more tender and
*
worthy conception of Him as a great and loving JWAer under
Christianity. Early contact with Hearf^aMm- m8I State-craft
marred the original beauty and^eajMaed the natiwqpower of
the Christian God, and fb^cemuri^^ we kmvaJjltopffitianity
lay like a corpse,—the only beautiful thing about i^ibeing the
embroidered winding sheet
But the. Reform
ation of the sixteenth century fewied. therfmMllectual and
spiritual life of Europe a step»MmMmii^Mit- was before; and
again the fulness of time has come, I venture to think, for a
second Reformation. Let us look and labour
Let us
hail the jubilant note® l^sdKDn every side which “ ring in the
Christ that is to be.” Old churches are fast breaking up in
decay, with their effete theologies and formal observances.
Many minds already descry the di® morning twilight that
will usher in the Church 0/ tAe Fufru/re.
In what remains of this discourse
to say a few words
on the Church of the Present, as compared with the
Church of the Futu^MI
I. The sources of religious thought will be wider in the
Church of the Future $han they are Mj the Church of the
Present.
Before the days of Luther the Bible was hardly known to
the laity, or even to the- clergy of Europ® as ajbody. So that
whatever theories have b<Wffi held by Christians as to its
Inspiration and Infallibility are mainly jgonfined to the past
three centuries. Me®» previously believed in the Infallibility
of a church, and driven from that shelter, but still clinging to
�8
the fancy that they must have some human symbol of Divine
authority to cling to, the second generation from the Reformers
betook themselves to faith in the infallibility of a book. And
with the pronounced followers of Calvin, Knox, and the Puri
tans the battle cry still is, “ The Bible and the Bible alone the
Religion of Protestants.” They hold this book to be the sole
authoritative, certain and final Revelation of the moral char
acter and will of God bearing on the eternal interests of His
creatures. They believe that God chose one nation from the
beginning and “made known his ways” to them, mysteriously
leaving all other nations in hopeless darkness and death. They
believe that to the Jews this revelation was made in symbol
and prophecy, and that it was reserved to our era to receive
that more perfect substance of spiritual truth of which
Judaism was but the appointed type and shadow. They
believe that in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of
Jesus, and in the alleged writings of certain of his apostles,
we have a miraculous unveiling of all that was needed to
“ make us wise unto salvation.” It is not wonderful, there
fore, that this collection of writings, affirmed to have so vital
a significance to us, should be diligently and prayerfully
studied by theologians and private Christians; and that, how
ever ignorant English children may be of the history of
Greece and Rome, China and America, most of them should
know something of the history of that ancient people to whom
God is believed to have been related by a special supernatural
Revelation. The kernel of critical inquiry however, in regard
to the credibility and authority of the Bible as a Revelation lies
in the history of the Canon. On this I would fain speak at
large, but may not in the limited space of time allotted to a
sermon. But be our views on this topic what they may,
that man would betray not only ignorance but impiety who
could think or speak without reverence of the “ sacred books ’
of any nation, especially of the Bible. Whatever mistakes
may be in it affecting matters of science, history, and of the
Divine government, it contains an interesting record of the
religious thought and life of a people who attained a loftier
idea of God than the surrounding nations of their time. The
noble aspirations of Hebrew patriarchs, seers and poets, as
�9
breathed in their lives and their utterances, will stir the
spiritual instincts of true souls for ever. And what shall we
say of Him who is the central figure in the Book,—the grandest
man, whose teaching swept all the keys of moral thought and
spiritual feeling, like the fingers of a God, and struck chords
of love and peace in sincere hearts, and notes of terror and
self-condemnation in those that were hollow and base ? What
shall we say of His life, so rich beyond that of ordinary lives
in meek wisdom, in unconscious self-denial, in holy patience,
and in humility, unsullied even by the shadow of that most
subtle and impalpable vice of the mind, spiritual pride ? What
shall we say of His death, that purest and most triumphant
sacrifice to Truth and the world’s highest good ? Who can read
the sketches the New Testament affords of the first planting of
Christianity, without feeling that it marks the passage of man
kind into a new stage of religious developmenwaccount for the
origin of the movement as you may ? gfflfen we have the
Epistles to the early churches, abounding in allusions seen to
be very apt if read in the light of the circumstances of those
*
to whom they were addressed, but utterly bewildering and
mischievous if interpreted literally throughout, and applied, as
they still too often are, without discrimination, to men of all
ages and climes. But stripping these letters, semi-Jewish in
great part, of their local and figurative dress, we shall find in
them thoughts and counsels that will be earnestly pondered
and cherished even in the days of the world’s maturest man
hood. It is not surprising, then, that the Bible should have
so conspicuous a place assigned it in our homes and churches,
and that it should be introduced to sanctify all the great
events of our lives.
But, while the Church of the Future will not fail to show
becoming respect to the Bible, as setting forth certain sublime
conceptions of the government of the world, as the cause of
the greatest religious movement the world has yet witnessed,
the Church of the Future will feel that it honours God more
by lovingly, but strictly, bringing to the tribunal of reason
every word in that book, than by blindly accepting any
part of it as necessarily infallible. The Church of the Future
will take a wider view of the range of Revelation than the
�10
Church of the Present usually does. It will appreciate more
intelligently physical laws as lying at the root of the effectual
elevation of the race, and as, in a most solemn sense, revealing
the will of God. What progressive mind can think without
a blush of the suspicion and bitterness with which the
Church of the Past, to say nothing of the Church of the
Present, was accustomed to look upon scientific discoveries,
almost as if they revealed the ubiquitous demon of Christian
mythology, instead of the good and glorious God ? It has been
common for a large class of Christians to view the world in a
sort of Gnostic light, as if it were a waste, howling wilderness,
and to think of the chemical elements composing it as saturated
by sin and cursed by Divine anger, in consequence of that
tragic scene in the history of our traditional mother—the
eating of an apple ! Many a discourse has been preached to
show that any strong interest in the affairs of the present life,
scientific or commercial, is the sure mark of a godless heart,
and that the truest proof of godliness is to be ever dwelling
in the atmosphere of hymns and prayers, and devout medita
tions, and I white robes,” and “ crowns,” or groaning over the
hundreds of millions of our fellow beings whom a morbid faith
is always thinking of as falling into a burning lake. I need
hardly say that those who come after us will have worthier
ideas of the possibilities of the world, and of the individual
and collective happiness to be derived from discovering and
obeying physical laws. Then religion will consist less in that
imagined super natural contact of God with the’human spirit
—the visions and nervous raptures, for which good orthodox
people so often pray now. It will consist more of being loyal
to material laws, improving the health and strengthening the
frame, increasing brain-power, laying to heart every form of
responsibility, giving to the race a noble organization, and a
more rational idea of how to control body and mind as
mutually dependent on each other, in the forming of a great
and noble character.
Without slighting the importance of God’s dealings with
the Jews, and with the members of the first Christian Churches,
the Church of the Future will recognise the wing of God’s
equal love and care spread over all nations, and His Providence
�11
as truly visible in the guidance and discipline of one as of
another of them. Every nation will be seen contributing its
share to the world’s culture, and revealing forms of thought
and life all needful to the complete culture of humanity.
The Church of the Future will see, in the mechanism of the
individual mind, and in the economy of family and social life,
a true Revelation of God, unclouded by the “original sin” of a
gloomy theology. The reason and the affections will be
revered as a medium of that Revelation. The conscience will
be more solemnly listened to as the accredited voice of God,
enforcing His moral and spiritual claims.
The domestic
constitution will be more honoured than at present, not merely
as of His wise appointment, but because it was intended to
mirror the all-embracing love of His own Fatherhood to the
whole human family; and so far from politics being deemed
unholy, it will be held to be a grave defect in the character of
a religious man not to take part in all political schemes for
the raising of the suffering and the oppressed.
All great and good men who increase the stock of human
knowledge, purity, and happiness, will be venerated as Godsent revealers of Himself, born to unveil to us the endlessly
varied phenomena of material and spiritual law.
God’s
Revelation will then be no longer viewed as exhausted in one
book, or as confined to any favoured people. Never was there
anything good, or true, or wise, written or spoken, without the
inspiration of God, and in reading words clothed with these
attributes, you read a Revelation of Him. One servant will
not be exalted to the disparagement of other servants. God’s
will, in what is vaguely called the spiritual sphere, will not
absorb attention to the neglect of his Revelation in morals and
aesthetics. All things are spiritual to the good. The reign of
law will be owned uniform and universal, and its claims in
one department will not be allowed to over-ride its appeals to
our nature in another; and every man gifted with a seer’s
insight in the manifold realms of law, will be hailed as a
messenger of the Most High. The Newtons to the Church
of the Future will be revealers of God in the science of the
stars, the Murchisons in the system of the rocks, the Turners
in the beauties of the canvas, the Miltons in the ideal charms
�of poetry, the Shakspeares in the philosophy of character, the
Watts and the Faradays in the latent forces and functions of
nature, and the true prophets of all countries and times, with
Jesus at their head, in the glories of moral and spiritual truth.
Blessed period! When the lingering shadows of superstition,
fanaticism, bigotry, and sectarian heart-burning shall be chased
away by the light of universal knowledge and rational religion,
when the tendrils of religious feeling shall not be found, as
now, chiefly entwining around Gothic and Grecian piles—
symbols of intense and beautiful religious sentiment though
these may be; when semi-Jewish restraint shall no longer
make British Christian life so sombre on that day consecrated
to rest which our Continental neighbours twit us with turn
ing into a “ Himalaya of wearinesswhen holiness shall not
consist so much in an extended countenance, in exclusive
devotion to books of an unctuously pious type, and in the
mere round of little | denominational ” activities, often to the
neglect of personal culture and the claims of home; but when
the sincere and truth-loving heart shall be held the most sacred
thing on earth when the craft we ply for our daily bread,
and the friendly circle in which we regale the social affections,
and the sunny hillside on which we bask in holiday time;
when all that ministers to the expansion of true thought and
unselfish sympathy, to purity of conscience, and to the music of
innocent joy, shall be regarded as most holy and suggestive of
God. No words could more fully express my sentiment than
those of Tom Hood :—
“ Thrice blessed is the man with whom
The gracious prodigality of nature—
The balm, the bliss, the beauty and the bloom,
The bounteous providence in every feature,
Recall the good Creator to his creature,
Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome.
Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar,
An organ breathes in every grove,
And the full heart’s a psalter
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love.”
Then the Revelation of God will be treated not as a distant
thing of the past, when He is believed by many to have startled
the world with a cannonade of miracles, and afterwards retreated
�13
from direct contact with His creatures. To the Church of the
Future God will he an ever-present Being, as near the soul that
loves and does His will in the work, joy, and rest of life, as He
could possibly be in any imagined supernatural age. His
Revelation will then appear in its true light—perennial, and
needing no theological creed and priestly commonplace to help
us to understand it.
II. The scope of teaching in the Church of the Future will
be freer than it is in the Church of the Present.
The sects of our time, whether Established by law or Non
conformist, are fettered by creeds. I say fettered by creeds.
And yet creeds of some sort, implicit or expressed, would seem
to be necessary as a basis of religious union and action. That
is freely admitted. It is stereotyped, minute, dogmatic creeds,
that I object to, as these are found in Evangelical Christen
dom. I hold that a religious sect has no more right to bind
all coming generations to believe the metaphysical dogmas
which it now believes, and in the same form, than any body of
scientific men in one age have a right to make exact agreement
with them a condition of their successors enjoying the honours
and privileges of the Royal Institution. We complain of the
disabilities placed upon us as Dissenters by the unjust ecclesi
astical and doctrinal tests that, till lately, have shut us out
from the National Universities. But what authority have we
to insert clauses in the Trust Deeds of our so-called “ Free
Churches,” permitting only those to preach in our pulpits who
can subscribe certain non-essential articles of belief which we in
our wisdom think essential ? A ncient creeds have always
savoured of an intolerant spirit, and modern creeds, to say the
least, bear a strong family lilceness to their ancestral relations.
I have always found that the more narrow, minute and elabo
rate a man’s creed, if he follow it logically, the more bitter and
uncharitable is his temper towards those who differ from him.
No matter how superior they may be to him in earnestness,
talent, and attainment, he is accustomed to treat their honest
difference from him almost as a personal offence, if not a sin.
We should never forget that while some men are worse, others
are better than their creed; but all the difference I can see
�14<
between the exclusiveness of the Evangelical Protestant and
that of the Catholic is in the mode of persecuting heretics. The
Romanist, informer times, treating freedom of thought in
religion as a fearful crime, burned offenders ; and even now he
consistently enough stands aloof from other professing Christ
ians as schismatics, because he believes his church to be infal
lible, his priesthood to be alone endowed with the grace of
apostolical succession, and his way of salvation to be the only
true one. But the Evangelical Protestant rejoices in the “ right
of private judgment ” and of free inquiry, and yet will only
tolerate as his teacher one who falls in with a certain stereotyped
theological system. No matter how single-hearted and truthloving, if he should happen to diverge from what are called “ the
cardinal doctrines,” he is cast as a leper outside the camp.
Fixed creeds are opposed to the spirit of progress. Any
Church that exists in order to perpetuate a tabulated set of
opinions, which they have sworn never to change, must sooner
or later be swamped by the advancing tide of free thought,
and deserted by the intellectual strength and liberal culture
of the age. No Church is worthy of support which does not
exist to teach truth as its prime object, and which is not
eager to hear what every competent earnest teacher has to say,
whose soul burns with his message. His accord with the creed
is a trifling consideration.
*
The captain of a ship may use
his quadrant and record his bearings at midday to-day, but
surely, as his vessel is still sailing towards a foreign port, he
will not think that he can dispense with reckoning his longitude
and latitude to-morrow, and so on to the end of the voyage.
But the meaning of a traditional creed is this : “ The doctrines
our fathers have handed down to us include the alpha and the
omega of truth, absolute and unchangeable, and we insist on
posterity accepting it as we have done, and will inflict penal
disabilities on those who refuse to think as we do. We have
squared the theological circle, and anybody who presumes to
differ from us is either profane, foolish, or mad.” Now just
apply the same criterion to science and see how it would
* Carlyle in his life of Sterling relates that once his friend objected to some
opinions he had offered, by saying, “That’s flat Pantheism.” “What matters it,”
Carlyle replied, “if it were flat Poftheism, if it’s truth?”
/
�15
stand. Suppose Mr. Huxley were to endow a professor’s chair
at Oxford, and enact that no candidate was eligible for the
position unless he gravely affirmed that the founder had
learned and taught all that could be known about comparative
anatomy; why, men of science, with one voice, would laugh to
scorn the conceit of the proposal. And what is this but the
ridiculous attitude of a theological creed ? It outrages reason
by undertaking to solve religious problems for all time, and so
impiously affects to have already all the light which ever can
be thrown on such themes. Precisely in this spirit most of
the fathers of the (Ecumenical Council condemn the whole
circle of modern science,—including discoveries that have
immortalized the names of Laplace, Herschel and others, as
only a renewal and reproduction of errors that have been a
thousand times refuted by the Church
*
But there has been a change in the religious beliefs of the
past, and why should we arrogantly fancy that the Church of
the Future must subscribe the creed which prevails among
Evangelical Christians now ? Mr. Leckyf powerfully shows
that formulated doctrines, like all animated things, accom
plish the end of their existence, expend their force and die
out, and are followed by others which, in their turn, expire at
length in like fashion. As a matter of fact, take that doctrine
which, above all others, is popularly regarded, in this country,
as essential to salvation—I mean the atonement of Christ for
sin. It has passed through so many transformations, that it is
simply impossible for any one intelligently acquainted with its
history to show what theologians would have us believe about
it, that we may be saved. Not a single trace of proof can be
*Well may we ponder the words of Richard Hooker on this subject. “Au
thority is the greatest and most irreconcilable enemy to truth and rational argu
ment that this world ever furnished out since it was in being ; against it there is
no defence ; it is authority alone that keeps up the grossest and most abominable
errors in the countries around us ; it was authority that would have prevented all
reformation where it is, and which has put a barrier against it where it is not.
Tor man to be tied and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of
judgment, and though there be reason to the contrary, not to listen to it, but to
follow, like beasts, the first in the herd, they know not, nor care whither_ this
were brutish.”
f History of Rationalism. Vol. I.
�16
adduced in the apostolic or post-apostolic fathers in support of
the theory held by many now, that Jesus suffered as a judicial
substitute and offered himself a sacrifice for the punishment due
to our sins. Allusions do occur in some of the early Christian
writings to the world being under bondage to the Evil Spirit,
and bought off by the holy life and martyrdom of Christ; but
they are only figurative, and point to self-denying efforts of
the Saviour to deliver men, by his revelation of God’s truth
and love, from the influence of error, ignorance, formality,
lust, pride, and all sin. The ideas of the first Christians
imprinted themselves on their simple works of art, even more
distinctly than in their writings, and though in the Catacombs
touching references to the rest of the departed in Christ
often occur, the emblem of Christ on the Cross never does.
The idea of the mental and physical sufferings of Jesus, as
a literal satisfaction or propitiation to Divine justice, was not
developed till the outbreak of Mahometanism in the sixth
century, when a superstitious priesthood spread the opinion
among the credulous masses that God could no longer have
patience with so wicked a world; and religion, as taught by
the Church, began to assume throughout a dismal aspect, from
which it has not yet quite recovered. It was then for the first
time that paintings and sculptures of Christ on the Cross
appeared. It was then that the theory first took wing, that
the multitude must be scorched eternally in consequence of
their sins, and that only the few who viewed Jesus as having
paid the bloody price which Divine justice demanded could
be saved. It was then that all the dreary machinery of
penance and the Inquisition actively began.
But with all a convert’s wish to trust the vicarious efficacy
of the atoning sacrifice, the difficulty of exactly knowing that
special point in the doctrine on which his soul was to rest,
became more embarrassing to him from the disputes of polemi
cal divines. Under Pope Homisdas and some of his successors,
there was a fierce strife as to whether we ought to say “ one,
of the Trinity suffered in the flesh,” or “ one Person of the
Trinity suffered in the flesh; ” and the two parties in this
controversy went on damning each other most zealously, till
the displacement of this crotchet, by another equally important,
�17 .
revived the same process, which has been so general in the
Christian Church in all ages. In our own time, the thought
ful enquirer after salvation, through the atonement, is almost as
much at a loss. For some learnedly argue that the virtue of
the “ saving work ” lies in the death of Christ; others, that it
is in the shedding of His blood; others, in His obedience from
the cradle to the grave; some have written to prove that He
died only for the elect; others, that He died for the world, but
His sufferings only avail for the elect. Some of us, too, can
remember the countless distinctions of faith so finely drawn
by preachers, that a sensitive mind felt bound to hesitate
which was the right one. Then there were the varied and
perplexing definitions of predestination, “sublapsarian,” “supralapsarian,” and “ subter-superlapsarian.” 0, Christianity, what
follies have been perpetrated in thy name! Even as late as
the days of John Wesley, to deny the existence of witchcraft
was branded an impiety, equal to rejecting the Bible. Here
are the venerable man’s own words: “ It is true that the English
in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe,
have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere
old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it. . . . The giving up
of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible. . . . 1
cannot give up to all the Deists of Great Britain the
existence of witchcraft, till I give up the credit of all history,
sacred and profane ” Well, these, with many more theological
speculations and superstitions equally interesting, that once
stirred up much bitterness among the followers of Jesus, have
been consigned to the limbo of dead credulities. And with
such exploded errors once believed by well-meaning men, not
very distant from our own times, it is only bigotry that can
prevent us from seeing that the Church of the Future will
recall many of the opinions, eloquently defended now by
Evangelical teachers, as the debris of a theological period,
which only the curious student of antiquity will take the
trouble to look into. As from the beginning, the “extreme
views ” of to-day will be the moderate views of the coming
age; and men who think only at the level of their times, are
taking a sure path to speedy oblivion.
But not only do creeds proscribe inquiry; they give oppor*
B
i
�18
tunities for hypocrisy. There are thousands of clergymen in
the English church who, in common with no small number of
excellent laymen, cannot think on any subject very deeply,
and are content to take their creed ready made; and the same
class of minds make up the vast proportion of adherents to
every system. But there are clergymen of a higher order.
They signed the “ articles ” before they had time thoroughly
to examine the mysteries they contain. These men become
committed to their position and dependent on preaching for
their support. As always must 'be the case with independent
thinkers brought up in strict orthodoxy, and who are thrown
in the way of argument on the opposite side, the convictions
of these men deviate eventually from the “ old paths.” What
is the result ? They sigh for freedom of thought and speech,
but while there are institutions to take in the criminal and the
vicious who want to break away from their evil ways, there are
none that seem to offer refuge for the honest clergyman who
desires to be true to his conscience, but fears lest destitution
should overtake his family. The barometer of his moral cour
age, perhaps, is not naturally high, and the miserable man stays
where he is, doing daily violence to the most holy part of his
nature, quenching; because perverting, the only light within
him appointed for his moral and spiritual guidance, proclaiming
to others what his conscience is ever telling him is untrue.
Is it surprising that the same tendency should exist, though
perhaps to a smaller extent, among Nonconformists ? A young
man entering a Dissenting college is obliged to profess his faith
in a list of dogmatic statements which his youth and inexpe
rience preclude the possibility of his having gravely examined.
At the close of his preparatory course he is expected to have
read and thought much, but those who guide his studies take
care that his reading and thought shall be in the direction of
confirming him in the doctrines of his denomination.
*
When
he is ordained to the ministry, the repetition of an unchanged
statement of his belief is again demanded from him. The
doctrinal provisions in the Trust Deed of the chapel in which
* In my college days, by desire of one of the tutors, the Westminster Review
was excluded from the House,
�he preaches are an additional chain to bind his intellect. I
challenge any man of average mind to let the thought-currents
of this age have free access to his soul, and conscientiously
endorse many dogmatic articles of belief framed in the six
teenth century and still prevalent in many quarters. To throw
in the way of any minister, therefore, the temptation, to which
I fear not a few are exposed, of being untrue to their convic
tions, is an iniquity that must, sooner or later, bring Divine
retribution upon us, in the form of a heartless ministry and a
hollow church. If such deceitful “ things be done in the green
tree ”—in that institution which claims to be the very ark of
the New Covenant—what must be the effect “in the dry”—
in the paths of politics and commerce ?
Christ lays down no creed, or any form of church govern
ment; whatsoever. He came to declare what Moses and the
prophets had done before Him,—judgment, mercy, faith,—only
with the motive-power of a higher and more tender conception
of God. He came to emancipate men from the slavery of forms
and ceremonies, and to enforce earnestness in knowing, and
sincerity in doing, the will of God. Nothing could be more
catholic and beautiful than religion as He taught it before
brangling theological doctors had done for Christianity what
the Masoretic Rabbis did for the original and essential princi
ples of the Hebrew faith. “ God is a spirit,” He said, “ and
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit, and in
truth.” The apostle, Peter, on escaping from the despotism of
Jewish forms, announced a similar doctrine. “Of a truth I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every
nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is
accepted with him.” “Let us therefore stand fast in the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” If your heart be
under pure, lowly, and sincere impulse^ your mind may be
safely trusted to roam in the joys of intellectual freedom.
If the church is to keep pace with the world in energy for
good, honouring the devoted efforts of men of every name to
receive and spread the truth; if Christians are to prevent
enlightened and benevolent enterprise from passing wholly from
themselves to men of the world, many of whom are nothing in
�20
the eyes of the sects because they cannot embrace their dogmas
(nevertheless as truly saved before God as those who sit in
judgment on them), then they must combine firmness of
present conviction with perfect freedom of enquiry into the
opinions of all seekers after truth, and be ready to follow
wherever the light of evidence leads. This will be a prominent
characteristic of the Church of the Future. That church
will elect its teachers, not because of their agreement with
any one set of dogmatic views, but because of their pos
sessing that mysterious gift of insight, which, in a certain high
and genuine order of minds, lets in the rays of beauty and
truth. It will despise those teachers who waste their strength,
and the time of their hearers, in expositions of useless
metaphysics. It will supplicate those who minister, thus:
“ Preach not simply what we believe, if it be not in perfect
accord with your own conscience. We encourage you to
think closely, deeply, and clearly, and tell us, without
the least reserve, all that is in your heart about the great
interests of religion, and we will respect your loyalty to
conscience.” Methinks the members of the future church
will look back from the heights of their calm intelligence with
mingled grief and pity on the things we now generally call
religion and theology, and on the unreal and unprofitable
utterances called sermons, that pour even from eloquent lips
throughout Evangelical England to fill up two half-hours
every Sunday. The Church of the Future will consist of
voluntary associations of unselfish seekers after truth, without
a distinct professionally-trained ministry of any kind. All
the members of the church will have sufficient education to
develop their powers, if' they have any powers to develop,
each will hold the culture and use of his special talents sacred,
and devote a fair share of his time to the study needful to
increase intellectual and moral strength. Business and wealth
will be made subservient- to the pursuit of truth and goodness,
and of the bliss which these precious qualities bring, and all the
“pomps and vanities” of the fashionable world will be pitied as
signs of ignorance and barbarism. Thus the future church will
be able to “edify” itself in the best sense. It will not depend
for instruction and impulse on what is now called “the
�21
regular ministry,” or any one man, or class of men, toiling
their weary round, week by week, in the narrow circle of
orthodoxy. Each of the ministers will possess something that
a century of devoted application to academic study could
never give. They will be inspired, gifted with a sort of clair
voyant perception of the true and the right, which can never
be acquired—intuition, insight; and so their minds will be to
the church like so many windows opening out upon the mani
fold glories of the universe. They will not see eye to eye, but,
coming before the people in rotation, they will be able, alto
gether, to cover the wants of the congregation. Each of them
will be “a law unto himself,” and his teaching will be
approved, not because it happens to agree with what somebody
believes, but because it is a true effluence from an earnest and
gifted man.
III. Terms of membership in the Church of the Future will
be simpler, than they mostly are in the Church of the Present.
There is an anomalous section of the Protestant Church in
this country which has expended immense ingenuity in its
creeds, parties and bearing, and with great success, in making
the Christian religion look ridiculous. I refer to the body that
makes residence in the parish the one title to church com
munion, and yet every Sunday hurls anathemas at those
respectable parishioners, its legal members, who do not believe
the incomprehensible doctrine of Three Persons in One Person.
I except therefore the Church of England from this comparison.
But Evangelical Nonconformists, while they would shrink from
applying the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed,
would, I suppose, reject any applicant for membership who did
not receive the teaching of that Creed. What authority have
you from reason or from your Master for shutting out any God
fearing man, who as conscientiously believes that he is honour
ing God by denying your views of the Godhead, as you believe
that you are doing the same thing by holding those views ?
Never did Jesus require any test of discipleship but thinking
and doing what one believed to be right. “ He that doeth the
will of my Father who is in Heaven, the same is my mother,
my sister, and my brother.” Nor did Paul place any meta-
�22
physical barrier in the way of anybody entering the church at
Rome. In his Epistle to that church he says: “ God shall
render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by
patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honour, and
immortality, eternal life; but to them that are contentious and
do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation
and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man
that doeth evil; but glory, honour, and peace to every man
that worketh good. . . . For there is no respect of persons
with God.” As a matter of fact we know that there were
members in the church at Corinth who did not even accept the
doctrine of the resurrection, and yet there is no record of their
expulsion.
In the Reformed Church of the yet distant future, when a
higher secular training will have braced the powers of men to
grapple with such questions, I believe the doctrinal terms of
membership will be reduced to two : the Fatherhood of God,
and the Brotherhood of man. These are the grand central be
liefs to which men of soul and light in all countries are rapidly
tending, as they gradually uncoil from their souls the chains
of churchism and creedism, and we need no other principles
to live and die by. Most of the discords and divisions of
Christendom about “ points of faith ” will be viewed by the
Church of the Future as very much of the same importance as
Milton, in his History of England, gives to the battles of the
Kings of the Heptarchy. He passes them over, as if they
had only been “fights of crows in the air.”
Upon the two doctrines I have named, the Church of the
Future will peacefully rest. And are they not strikingly
simple and intelligible ? They need no miracle to reveal
them, and no learning to expound them. They are written
upon our nature, and directly revealed to the whole race.
They cannot create religious strife, but wherever honestly
realised, they must bind all men together in one happy and
holy family, and bring all into blissful relation to God. A
man must belie his being not io feel their truth the very moment
they are presented to him. They are moral intuitions. Four
and twenty years have I been a student of theology and a
preacher, and now when life is more than half gone, it pours
�23
a terrible mockery on one’s past intellectual toil, to be obliged
to unlearn the vague, shifting and clashing theological theories
with which my intellectual and moral' growth has been
cramped. But with humility, joy, and faith, I return, like a
little child, to the guidance of those two natural sentiments,
which the true prophets and teachers of all times have but
repeated and confirmed, but which dogmatic theology has
tended so much to mystify. They are the core of Christ’s
teaching, and the pillars of the future church.
A twofold rule of duty and discipline to be imposed on
applicants to the new church, will form inevitable counterparts
of these two fundamental principles. The one test of fitness
for fellowship will consist in a true effort to keep those com
mandments, on which hang the law and the prophets : “ Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength,
and mind, and thy neighbour as thyself;” commandments
which embrace immutable morality, and are the most exhaus
tive expressions of practical and eternal religion ever uttered.
In these two precepts are to be found the substance of all
the guiding laws and dispensations of God. Blessed is he who
fulfils them. The man who candidly does his best to conform
to them, will be welcome to the coming Church of God. In
our love to God we have the motive-power to aim without
ceasing at perfection. In our love to man—the sequel of our
love to God—there is a pledge that all bitterness and hatred
between man and man shall perish. If we understand our
true relations to God and to each other, brotherly love, a
virtue not conspicuously developed by Evangelicism, will be
evoked ; all the benevolent feelings of our nature, patriotism,
philanthropy, charity, compassion, forgiveness, and the do
mestic affections. Movements will be encouraged, fitted to
promote the material, intellectual, social, and moral improve
ment of mankind. All nlalevolent propensities, all attempts
to harm the temporal and spiritual interests of society will be
checked. In the bonds of real human brotherhood, as distin
guished from the artificial ties of creed and sect, all oppression,
tyranny, pride, envy, ingratitude, and deceit, must disappear.
Such an ideal of brotherhood will become a fact in the Church
of the Future. Then the wise and the unlearned, the rich and
�24
the poor, the strong and the weak, shall dwell together in the
holy tabernacle of God, rendering mutual services under the
inviolable covenant of love, and sharing far more warmly than
at present, the blessing conferred by the common Father; and
the hope of humanity shall approach realization: “ Peace on
earth, and goodwill toward men.” Those who accept these two
principles of faith, and strive to keep these two great command
ments, whether they come from the East or from the West, the
North or the South, will sit at the banquet of this glorious
Catholic Church fellowship. No “ deputation from the breth
ren ” will need to be appointed to examine the faith of the
candidate for membership, for the satisfaction of the church.
There will be no occasion for imposing dogmatic tests. If
the life be right that will be accepted as a sufficient proof of
the reality of the faith. The new church will not be a self
constituted heaven only for those who fancy themselves saints,
but rather a hospital for the moral cure of all who honestly
wish to be healed,. None will then, as now, be found stand
ing aloof from the church, because the terms of commun
ion are thought to be too strict. The society of the church
will be so pure, truthful, and noble, that the bigot, the back
biter, the vain, the mean, will feel rebuked and repelled under
the consciousness of their own unworthiness. Family distinc
tion, wealthy ignorance, and bustling conceit, will have no
favour shewn them in that serene and enlightened community
Those Divine graces, now so much at a discount, if not decked
out in golden attire in the Church of the Present, will be the
all in all of qualification for admission to the Church of the
Future.
IV. The objects and aims of the Church of the Future will
be more practical than those of the Church of the Present.
The object and aim in which the prayers, preachipg, teach
ing, and all other kind of Evangelical effort, at home and
abroad, avowedly centre, is a work which is described as “ the
salvation of souls.” It is the keeping of this work ever in
view that is, with orthodox Christians, the chief signs in the
individual and in the church, of spiritual life. It is this
that kindles the passionate zeal of the young disciple in
�25
dedicating himself to the toils of the ministry. It is the
shaping of a sermon to this, that is supposed to give it its
true value.
Take away the animating doctrine of “ the
salvation of sinners” from Evangelical theology and organiza
tion, and the speeches delivered in Exeter Hall, at the present
season, would be extremely tame, the peculiar “unction”
which is so indispensable an element of ministerial power with
the faithful, would be sadly wanting, and the decline of “ the
prayer meeting,” of the “Tract Society,” and of application for
“ fellowship with the church,” would be even more lamented
than it is. What then is the nature of this solemn business,
that so inflames the zeal and the liberality of popular
churches ? There are very different ways of looking at the
matter, according to the stratum of Evangelical society to
which people belong.
The Primitive Methodist preacher
presents the orthodox view of “ salvation through the blood of
the cross,” in its most naked and consistent form. There can
be no mistaking his meaning when he cries aloud about the
eternal destruction of the sinner. Without ceremony he pitches
his camp in the street, and states the case between sinners and
God, plainly and honestly, according to the Evangelical theory
of the universe. It is strangely otherwise, in most instances,
with Evangelical ministers of the middle class. They profess
just the same doctrine on this subject as the untutored “local
preacher.” But out of an unwarrantable and expedient regard
to their somewhat more intelligent congregations, they illogically—I might be pardoned if I were to use even a more severe
term—allude to the disagreeable articles of their creed, in a
subdued and reserved tone, as if they thought it vulgar to be
only, after all, doing exactly the same kind of work as their
more ranting brethren. Why should the quieter clergyman or
congregationalist smile at the excited methodist, for manifesting
an earnestness, which, believing as he does, would surely
not be too intense in himself? This is a discrepancy of
orthodox Protestantism, which might afford scope for an
interesting paper, at the next meeting of the “ Evangelical
Alliance.” The common notion among orthodox sects is, that
in consequence of sin,—either committed by the first man and
imputed to his race, or committed by both him and them
�26
together—a dread abyss has been prepared to engulf human
beings ; that, in order to avert this fate, the second person of
the Godhead was slain by a Divine decree, so that, in some
variously .defined, and consequently unintelligible way, the
attribute of God’s t( official justice ” might seem not to be
compromised in the salvation of men. It is gravely affirmed
that Jesus must be lacerated, exposed, and crucified, like the
worst Roman malefactor, and that only by trusting in the
efficacy of this awful transaction, as meeting the imperious
demands of a dishonoured law, and as substituted for our own
individual and everlasting punishment, can any one escape
certain material and moral torments in the next life. Is it
wonderful that, with these conceptions of God’s character and
dealings, many a parent has been driven to distraction about the
deliverance of his children from this “ blackness of darkness,”
and that not a few strong minds have lost their balance in
following out the doctrine to its logical issues ? It is some
consolation, however, to the poor sotds that, Sunday after
Sunday, are consigned, either to the woe of eternal conscious
suffering, or of annihilation, to know that ma^iy of those
ministers who are most impassioned in their pulpit speculations
about the horrors of the lost, do not allow these things to
spoil their relish for the comforts, and, where they can afford
them, for the luxuries of life. In private friendship they are
usually most vivacious and humorous. By a mysterious but
happy contradiction, the crushing agony we might naturally
expect them to feel for the millions they tell us are ever
falling into “ eternal destruction,” does not impair their interest
in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, or Tennyson’s last
poem.
What is the inference from this fortunate incongruity be
tween professional phrase and the common sense of every-day
life ? Certainly not that Evangelical preachers practise deceit.
I believe that, as a body, they are free from the remotest
shadow of wilful insincerity. But how, with the facts before
us, can we avoid the suspicion that they deceive themselves ;
that what they fancy to be a belief is merely a sentiment, a
“ tradition of the elders,” with which reason may not inter
meddle, and which, consequently, has never really entered into
�27
them as a practical conviction ? If it be so, the reaction of this
self-delusion upon the conscience cannot be favourable. How
could any religious man believe that nineteen-twentieths of the
world’s population have for countless ages been going to perdi
tion, in spite of their possible deliverance through the preaching
of the gospel, and yet retain his sanity ? Indeed, if he took
the subject to heart, he would be just as likely to go mad over
the apathy of the church as over the doom of the world.
Suppose we were told that out of a thousand British subjects
in Greece five hundred had been captured by brigands, and
subjected to a slow and an incessant process of torture which
they had resolved to continue through an indefinite number of
years, and that the remaining five hundred were in imminent
risk of being taken also; to say nothing of Christianity,
would not common humanity impel all civilized governments
to combine and rush to the rescue of our countrymen ? Then
I hold it to be contrary to all the laws of mind for any rational
being to believe in the eternal destruction of “ unbelievers,” in
any form, and go about the duties of a citizen like other men.
But most orthodox people, clerical as well as lay, seem quite
at home in secular affairs, and thus demonstrate the revolt of
their better nature from this figment of semi-Pagan theology.
But, again, the Evangelical way of salvation offers a motive
to the impenitent which cannot but render their faith and
obedience specially unacceptable to God. He seeks our love,
and whoever turns to Him from the mere dread of punishment,
or from the selfish desire to get behind the walls of a city im
pregnable to flames, and without the breathing of the heart
supremely after the pure, the truthful, the just and the good,
must be an object of the Divine pity, if not contempt. What
noble-minded man does not shrink from the servility of a
creature who affects esteem only because he is afraid of punish
ment ? And shall the holy God be placed beneath the level
of imperfect men ? What I have known of the tendency of
the Evangelical system—all elaborate repudiations of the fact
notwithstanding—leads me to , believe that it never can and
never does produce a high type of character where it is con
sistently followed. But to the credit of thousands be it said,
that it is not always consistently followed. It exalts escape
I
�28
from future punishment and the attainment of future happi
ness into the chief end of religion. That is its gospel, and a
most selfish gospel it is. I tremble at the thought of the
grievous and degrading perversions of the relations between
God and man for which it is responsible. No wonder there is
such unavailing complaint on the part of preachers that, as a
rule, religious progress usually ceases with converts at the point
of their admission to the circle of communicants. They were
taught to “ flee from the wrath to comethey were made un
happy by the burden of real or, as is quite as often the case, of
imaginary sins. Their grand inquiry is “ How are we to get
forgiveness and peace, and release of the fear of endless woe ?”
The judicial notion of Christ’s mission is set before them, and
whatever idea they may have of the desirableness of becoming
God-like, the necessity of being insured against the dreaded
forensic penalty of sin is presented to them in a light so ab
sorbing, that any distinct conception of Christianity as aiming
chiefly at the moral elevation of our nature, and at the recovery
of our powers to harmony with each other and with God’s
will, is kept in the background. Evangelical congregations
may hear God referred to as a Father, but the corner-stone of
their theology is that He is an inflexible Ruler, whose official
anger is to be appeased. The spectral representation of a
magistrate who may be approached only through a propitia
tory sacrifice is the backbone of orthodoxy. How then is it
possible to love, in any rational sense, this governmental ab
straction ? How can a Ruler be other than a cold embodiment
of law ? You may fear and reverence such a Being, but to let
your heart go out in passionate love for His character, to be
inspired with a longing desire to be like Him, to delight in the
thought of His presence, would necessitate a revolution in the
laws of being. That gospel, then, which interprets the salva
tion of souls according to legal analogies, and gives such
towering prominence to escape from punishment as a motive
power, and turns the life and death of Christ into a substi
tutionary sacrifice, cannot fail to produce in the subject of
Evangelical faith, either spiritual stagnation, oi' fanatical illu
sion which will be mistaken for sound religious progress.
I might, did time permit, prove that the whole Evangelical
�29
fabric rests in a confusion of Pagan and Jewish traditions with
literal facts. I might trace back with you the prevailing idea of.
future torment to its true source in Babylon, where the Jews
found it during their captivity, and afterwards brought it
with them to their own land, and incorporated it with their
t national theology, I might easily prove that, as a poetical
figure has been confounded with an absolute truth respecting
penalty, so allusions to ancient Jewish ceremonial laws have
been confounded with literal facts respecting redemption
through Christ. But I must leave this train of thought
to be pursued by you at leisure. What I am most anxious
to say is, that the supreme object of the Church of the Future
will be to teach and spread a salvation not material, but moral,
intellectual, and spiritual; present, too, as well as future.
“ The Kingdom of Heaven is not meat and drink, but right
eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” So the kingdom
of wrath is not fire and brimstone, but envy, pride, idolatry,
lust, uncharitableness, ignorance, superstition, and bigotry.
And it will be the aim of the Church of the Future to heal
minds by applying the salve of truth, in all its adapted forms
and bearings, in order to cure these ruinous diseases. That
was the work Christ, the Great Spiritual Physician, set
Himself to accomplish. He found one faculty out of joint,
another bruised, another bleeding, and another cumbered
with a loathsome excrescence, and lie brought to bear
His spiritual surgery to heal all. While recognising the
necessity of a turning-point in a character that was previously
under some dominant wrong influence, the Church of the
Future will reject most of the sensational experiences which
are now described as gathering around Evangelical “ con
version.” In that golden age of religion to which our hopes
reach' forth; the beginning of Divine life in the soul will consist
in free moral decision to escape from the thraldom of error and
, wrong-doing, and to be governed by those pure and changeless
principles laid down by a loving Father for the control and the
guidance of His children. Worthier impulses than the terrors
of woe, or the safety of Heaven, will be urged to bring men
into sympathy with truth and righteousness. The justice of
God will not then be degraded into a bugaboo to frighten
�30
sinners. It will be delighted in as a manifestation of holy love.
No miserable Jewish modes of seeking reconciliation with God
will then be acknowledged. The intrinsic charms of harmony
with His appointments in our being, and in the universe at large,
will eclipse all inferior considerations. Love to God, the essential
transforming power, will not then spring from some one sup
posed judicial contrivance to “deliver from going down to the
pit,” or from some morbid emotionalism supposed to be of super
natural origin, but really a sympathetic and nervous affection.
Love to God will then spring from an adoring view of all His
endless contrivances to promote the happiness of men, and the
full development of all their powers. The labours of the Future
Church will be directed to improve everything within its
reach, capable of improvement. Its teaching and work will be
eminently practical. Instead of strumming ad nauseam, as is
now done, upon a few doctrines or duties supposed to contain
the essence of saving truth, but which often leave those who hear
them as dead in their besetting sins of temper, ignorance, and
covetousness as they found them, the Church of the Future
will deem all truth equally sacred, and in its place necessary
to be unfolded for the illumination and the advancement of
mankind, for the hastening of the period of which the seer of
olden time spake, when “ the wilderness and the solitary place
shall become glad, and the desert rejoice-and blossom as the
rose.”
Moreover, the efforts of the Church of the Future will ever
be encouraged by the assured faith that the antidote of truth,
love, joy and peace will yet perfectly neutralize the bane of
error, hatred, misery, and care. It will have risen out of the
heartless, useless, tiresome debates of minds struggling with
creed-bonds, as to whether conscious agony or final extinction
of being awaits the sinner. The Church of the Future will
be able to work without the feverishness and gloom that
generally mark the movements of the Church of the Present.
It will be able to work calmly and joyfully in the confidence that
the chasm which still exists between God’s ideal of the world
and the realization of that ideal will be bridged over, arid that
not a soul created will ever fail of being lifted up into holy and
blessed fellowship with Himself. What earthly parent would
�31
ever dream of making the punishment of his child an end ?
The object of all intelligent parental correction is to subdue
wrong habits and bring the chastised one into the orbit of
obedience ? Is it not one of the plainest signs of advancing
civilization too, that criminal discipline is made subservient to
the reformation of the offender?. It is not so easy now as it
once was to induce juries to find a verdict that will necessitate
punishment by death; nor are judges so ready, as they once
were, to sentence men to the gibbet. All ranks of society are
becoming increasingly permeated with the idea of the improve
ability of the race under conformity to physical and moral law.
And the principle which is only dawning upon our age as a
discovery has been acted upon by God from all eternity, and
He will never swerve from it. So when the church becomes
a more instructed medium of God’s revelation, she will labour
in every sphere of the useful, the beautiful, and the good, in
the unfaltering hope that all rebels and all revolted provinces
in the universe will be finally restored.
Now, in my capacity as your minister, I say Farewell. I
thank you for your kindness toward me, during the four and
a half years of my ministry among you. I have not inten
tionally offended anyone. I have tried under somewhat difficult conditions, in a congregation, made up of all beliefs, and
of marked differences in intelligence, to impel and guide, by
God’s help, your religious life. My own convictions have
expanded of late, and I should have been glad to lead you,
as I believe I have been led, into upward paths, which the
Church of the Future will not fear to tread, but I may not.
In my retirement from the Congregational ministry, I mean
no attitude of antagonism to Evangelical bodies. They are,
I doubt not, suited to the felt spiritual wants of the masses
of worshippers in this country at present, or they would not
be so numerous and influential as they are. The character
of their teaching has changed in a measure, in the past,
and it will gradually become - vastly more modified still, ere
another half century go by. But the ideal church we have
been contemplating to-night is not, I think, to result from
the transformation of any existing church. Each of the
present sects has a history and a mission, and when the
�32
forces of its doctrines and discipline are expended, it will no
longer dovetail into the necessities of the age; it will die.
But out of the ruins of the Church of the Present, the New
Church of our aspirations will rise.
It will embrace, as I
have already remarked, many bright souls that are now as
“ proselytes of the gate,” conscientiously standing outside all
orthodox communions, because these have ceased to be true to
their consciences. The Church of the Future will also take
up into itself what of light and life may remain in the churches
it is destined to displace. I am among those who seek the
intellectual and religious freedom that, at present, lies beyond
the walls of sectarianism. I will honour the well-intentioned
efforts of all orthodox bodies, and am willing to preach in their
pulpits, and join in their worship, and help in their good
works, and rejoice in all that is true in them. But the call of
God to me is to cease from the salaried pastorate of an
Evangelical Church, and I dare not disobey. My future in
another sphere is full of care and uncertainty.
But for
conscience’ sake I must not hesitate to take the uninviting
road. God will provide, and should He see fit to provide
adequately for ‘my temporal wants, I shall not abandon the
hope of some years hence, being able to preach what I believe,
without fear of creed or of man, in true apostolic fashion, in
the happiest sense, an “ Independent ” minister, because an
independent man. I shall delight in your peace and prosperity
throughout all the organizations of the Church, and shall never
cease to think kindly of you all, and long for your growth in
the spirit and truth of Jesus Christ.
E. . C. OSBORNE, PRINTER, NEW STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The church of the present, and the church of the future: an address, delivered in the Congregational Chapel, Moseley Road, Birmingham, 5th May 1870
Creator
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Macfie, Matthew
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Birmingham; London
Collation: 32 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "Published by request". Sermon preached on the occasion of Macfie resigning the Congregational ministry after fifteen years' service. Text of sermon from Matthew 6-10 'Thy kingdom come'.
Publisher
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E.C. Osborne; Simpkin Marshall & Co.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
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G5370
Subject
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Sermons
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The church of the present, and the church of the future: an address, delivered in the Congregational Chapel, Moseley Road, Birmingham, 5th May 1870), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Sermons