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RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES:
A SERMON PREACHED AT
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baptist’s,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET,
AND AFTERWARDS READ AS A PAPER ^BEFORE
THE
LONDON DIALECTICAL SOCIETY,
BY THE
EEV. MAURICE DAVIES, D.D.,
Author of “Orthodox,” “Unorthodox,” and “Heterodox London,” &c.,&c.
MEDIO TUTI88IMUS IBIS.
KENSINGTON:
JAMES WAKEHAM, BEDFORD TERRACE, CHURCH STREET.
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��RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES.
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St. Luke xii. 51.
“ Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I
tell you nay, but rather division.”
For those who are disposed to take a sentimental
view of religion, it must be infinitely distressing to find
that the revelation of Jesus Christ has not proved that
complete panacea for all evils social and theological
which their own a priori principles laid down that it
ought to be. Peace on earth was the anticipatory
announcement of the Coming Man. Not Peace, but a
Sword, his own account of his mission, more than
borne out by the event. Before he came there was
that stagnation which men artificially make and mis
name Peace. Since that time they have ever been
ready to fight and slay one another for their religion.
Every new era of Reformation has been a fresh
development of odium theologicum, until the old
encomium is quite reversed, and people cry out “ See
how these Christians hate one another;” and on the
Augustinian principle, but with a new meaning, the
seed of every evolution in Church development has
been the blood of martyrs. Every Reformer from
�Christ himself to the Wesleys has realised this. The
method and measure only of their misery has differed :
the principle that inflicted it was identical. The
Scribes and Pharisees crucified Christ. The Bishop of
Lincoln erases from the tombstome of a dead child the
title which courtesy awarded to its Wesleyan father.
In proportion to the purity of their faith have men
been prone to
Prove their doctrines orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks ;
and to
Call fire, and sword, and desolation,
A godly, thorough Reformation.
Along with general progress, religious stagnation
has had the tendency to pass into its violent antithesis,
and in both cases, general and special, has humanity
been the gainer. Only in proportion as it has caught
the contagion has religion in any degree seemed not
to deserve the stigma cast upon it by Mr. Buckle of
being the static as opposed to the dynamic force in
SocietyIt may be edifying, and certainly will not be unin
teresting to trace in one or two typical cases this con
dition of human stagnation met by what we are bold
to call the genuine revulsion of Christian Faith and
Energy, and collaterally to notice some of those Com-
�5
promises by which the ingenuity of man tries to over
ride the great principle “ Not Peace but Division ” —
the quieta non movere method which is characteristic of
so great a portion of modern orthodoxy.
In the Jewish Synagogue ■ t the date of the
Christian era, degenerated though it was held to be
from the perfect centralisation of the Temple pure and
simple, we have an admirable picture of full-blown
Sacerdotalism, which the recent lectures of Dr.
Benisch, at St. George’s Hall, only amplified in more
minute details without questioning the vraisemblance o^
the New Testament account. The result was, to a great
extent, the stagnation we spoke of. True, the Pharisees
were disposed to carry things with a high hand; they
were the Ritualists of' the hour; while Broad Church
men in the shape of Sadducees spread into the very
highest quarters doctrines which seemed to spiritualise
away a good deal of the antique Faith and olden dis
cipline. But on the whole the Jewish Church repre
sented to a very satisfactory extent that artificial Peace
which the Sacerdotalism of every age creates and pro
nounces “Very good; ” and, in complete opposition to
this came the system of Christ. Aiming in the Judaean
Ministry at being nothing more than a reformation
and expansion of Judaism to meet the growing needs
of humanity, it was driven by the fulminations of the
Sanhedrim into fierce revolution out among the
�G
Galilaean hills, and finally culminated in the fatal
mistake of Calvary.
Here we have the two poles in extreme opposition.
On one side the established faith, with its prestige of
centuries, its delicate nuances of theological opinion
just to relieve the monotony of Infallibility—on tlie
other the levelling* doctrines of Nazareth branded with
the stigma of Golgotha.
Between these two came the accommodations and
compromises which some pretend to find even in St.
Paul himself—in the anathemas hurled at the Corin
thian Church, and at those who questioned his personal
apostleship; and which certainly were discernible in the
constant efforts of well-meaning heretics to drag the
Christian schism back into the respectable position of a
Jewish sect.
And so History repeats itself. Sown in the blood
of martyrs, established by the policy of Constantine,
developed in the east and west by the finesse of
Patriarchs and Popes, the Christian Church stood
after fifteen centuries curiously in the same position
as the Jewish Synagogue had done—and just as that
had developed, in a precisely similar period, out of the
simple institutions of Sinai. The so-called Catholic
Church stood supreme in Western Europe, until Luther,
like a second Baptist, sounded his note of defiance
“ Repent,” “ Reformand again the reformation was
refused, the reformers were persecuted, and, in Eng-
�7
land, like another Galilee, the battle of Faith and Free
Thought seemed likely to be fought to the very knife.
When, lo! another compromise.
The Anglican
Church, under Royal Supremacy, threw herself into
the breach. It is no sort of disrespect to speak of
her thus as the result of a compromise. The fact
stands recorded in the very structure of her formularies
and articles, just as the successive changes in the
structure of the globe are written in the solemn letters
of the igneous and the stratified rocks. A fresh totality
was formed by the superposition of the new doctrines
on the antique faith. We can concede thus much with
out joining Mr. Froude to attribute all the cardinal
virtues to Henry VIII., as Head of the Church, or
wailing with the Church Times about “ the lamentable
schism of the sixteenth century.”
The Anglican
Church first, and the Protestant sects afterwards,
were efforts more or less respectable, more or less
graceful, more or less successful, to graft the new
opinions on the old trunk.
Our position as ministers and members of the Church
of England shows that we hold the Anglican Commun
ion to have a logical locus standi. What else counteracts
the centrifugal force which would otherwise drive us
off into the abysses of theological space, until we
reached the position of the Dialectical Society itself,
and accepted nothing save as the conclusion of a
syllogism ?
�8
But is not the same apparently inevitable mistake
being made over again,—the mistake of High Priest
and Sanhedrim as opposed to Christ, of Pope and
Cardinal as opposed to the Reformers ? Do not the
words of the Founder still stand good, “Nay, but
rather division
“ Not peace but a sword ?’’ We are
always trying to do away with Divisions—to wreathe,
prematurely and precociously, the Sword with the
Olive Branch.
On one side stereotyped Faith, on the other crude
Reason. On both sides Intolerance; on neither Con
ciliation—is not that a fair statement of what we see
around us ?
What shall we do then ? Try to eliminate either of
these opposed elements—the static or the dynamic?
As well seek for the Philosopher’s Stone or the Elixir
Vitae. As wisely think to ensure peace by suspending
either the centripetal or the centrifugal in the balanced
forces of the universe. From the collision of these
forces results the well-being of humanity, as the
symmetry of our planetary orbits.
Shall we, on the contrary, drift into an Epicurean
optimism, and say, Whatever is is best ? The alterna
tive would seem scarcely necessary. It is surely pos
sible to agree to differ. The endeavour to develope
Pure Faith is the Idol of the Churchman : to excise
Faith the Idol of the Philosopher (if we may borrow a
�9
Baconian term.) The supreme mistake is to carry into
science the dogmatisms of theology. The opposite
error, though not so fatal, palpably is erroneous, to
import into theology, which claims to be in some
degree a matter of d priori revelation, the purely
inductive method of science.
Is there no via media—no spicy equatorial zone
between these poles of Pure Faith and utter Free
Thought ? That is the problem we set ourselves so
wearily to solve in our Churches, Communities, and
Parties. The pervading error is that we all claim
finality. Each assumes to have ultimated truth : and,
worse than all, wants to call down fire from Heaven on
those who differ.
Surely here come in the words of the Master, “ Ye
know not what Spirit ye are of.”
Can any Christian read the posthumous work of
John Stuart Mill, or the recent utterances of Professor
Tyndall at Belfast, and say there is nothing in common
between true Theism and self-styled Materialism ?
On the other hand will those who make of the works
of the Philosophers what they accuse the Christians of
making of the Bible—will they deny the existence of a
missing link in science—a failure of Philosophy to
cover all the knowable ? Is it necessary to assume a
sort of mental emasculation in every one who accepts
anything on trust ? Is that not what Lord Lytton
�10
called “the most stubborn of all bigotries—the fanati
cism of unbelief? ” Such was scarcely the doctrine of
him who wrote on the Scientific use of the Imao-inao
tion thus :—“ The clergy of England—at all events the
clergy of London—have nerve enough to listen to the
strongest views which any one amongst us would care
to utter; and they invite, if they do not challenge,
men of the most decided opinions to state and stand
by those opinions in open court. No theory upsets
them. Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated
only in the language current among gentlemen, and
they look it in the face * * smiting the theory, if
they do not like it, with honest secular strength. In
fact the greatest cowards of the present dag are not to he
found among the clergy but within the pale of science
itself.”
The question of questions at the present hour is
whether it be not possible to elaborate something like
a Christian Positivism—the terms are not contradic
tory—which, accepting the broad basis of the Christian
Revelation, and leaving its extent undefined, should
range—not below, not above, but co-ordinately there
with the great demonstrations of science; making of
the revelations of faith and the facts of science, not
two discrepant books, but simply two volumes in the
Great Book of Nature—each, in the truest sense, a
Revelation, neither of the two (in the words of the
�11
Athanasian Creed) before or after the other, greater
or less than, the other. Is it chimerical to look for
such an issue of our divisions ?
Is it not, at all events more hopeful to seek thus to
utilise those inevitable divisions than to try to drill
men into an artificial and unreal unity either on the
side of implicit Faith or licensed Scepticism ?
Such utilitarianism is not—need it be said?—the
present tendency on either side. On the one hand
there stand the Dogma of Infallibility and the Vatican
Decrees which no special pleading in the world will
ever convince men to be anything like an extension of
Magna Charta; on the other there is what has been
clearly defined by its promulgator as not the atheistic
position which reluctantly doubts the existence of God,
but the antitheistic which dogmatically, and in the very
spirit of the Vatican Decrees, denies such existence—■
and still between these poles any number of com
promises good, bad, and indifferent, temperate,
tropical, and frigid.
It is for some such compromise we plead; and
therefore would not indiscriminately condemn all or
any, though neither would we lose sight of the fact
that they are compromises and accommodations. The
grand mistake is not the putting the new wine into
the old bottles (though that is proverbially a delicate
and dangerous experiment), but the insisting that the
�12
wineskins are intact when the wine is palpably spilt
before our eyes.
In all things charity: agreement to differ: the
simple logical processes of abstraction and generalisa
tion—are not these the methods by which we may get
at the essence of the Christian Faith and Morals ?
What, on the contrary, do we do ? Pass a Bill,
nominally to “ put down Ritualism,” but which will
certainly “ put down ” defects as well as excess of
rubrical orthodoxy, even if the “ putting down ” any
thing or anybody were not as much an anachronism in
the Reformed Church, as the excommunication of an
offender by Paul was alien from the spirit of him who
raised the sinful woman from the ground, and bade her
go and sin no more when none of her accusers were
found capable of casting a stone at her.
The infallibility which we look for in a Vatican
Decree, comes incongruously enough from Fulham or
Lambeth : and whereas the Catholic only holds infal
lible the decisions of Pius IX. given ex cathedra, we—
some of us—are disposed to accept as final all the
utterances of our Episcopate—the Fulham Code of
Morals—the Canterbury Standard of Faith (each no
doubt of the very purest kind),—the diatribes of Dr.
Wordsworth against race-horses, Wesleyan Ministers,
and Cremation ’
The cardinal clerical virtue at the present moment is
�13
holding one’s tongue—Tacere tutum est—the being
content to keep quiet: not to have “ views ” either in
the direction of Dr. Pusey or Bishop Colenso. What
a commentary on the elasticity of our Establishment is
the simultaneous presence of each of these dignitaries
within its comprehensive fold! Whoever gravitates
towards either of those poles is labelled in the Index
Expurgatorius of episcopal regards a “ dangerous man.”
But it is too late; there are others equally high in
dignity to those just mentioned, who have set the
fashion of speaking out, and the Muscular Christians
among our clergy are taking up the old battle cry from
Marmion :—
“ On, Stanley, on !”
And as with the priests, so with the people. They
are beginning to see that the assumption of authority
in a body whose very raison d'etre is the emancipation
of its adherents from Jewish and Roman bondage is
an incongruity and an anachronism. If they like
genuflexions and a full band in church, they feel they
have a right to them ; if moral essays and a shortened
service, who shall say them nay ? The question of
establishment or disestablishment is one more likely to
come from without than within; but already the myster
ious words of Mr. Miall, with reference to possibly
uncongenial allies of the Liberationist, point towards a
very novel reproduction of the junction between the
Pharisees and Herodians.
�14
Recognising, then, as we are taught on highest
authority to do, the supreme authority of the individual
conscience, we may still discern a work for the com
bined consciences of the many fused into sympathetic
union in churches, just as the individual duties and
rights of men run up into their social rights and duties
as citizens of a State; but we see no reason for churches
any more than nations claiming to represent mankind
exhaustively; and a judicious balance of power stands
far above any supremacy of one faith over another.
Our lots as Englishmen, whether in Church or State,
will, we venture to think, well bear comparison with
any; but it would be the poorest insularity to deem
that we exhaust excellence in either capacity. To
assume authority in a system which, whether we like it
or not, is the outcome of that schism of the sixteenth
century as well as the previous schism of the first, is as
incongruous as that aping of national supremacy which
too often renders our countrymen ridiculous when they
come into contact with other and more cosmopolitan
people.
It is thus I feel that without sacrificing one iota of
our individual convictions we may still comport our
selves courteously towards those forms of faith or
systems of discipline that differ even most widely from
our own, whether in the direction of sacerdotalism or
scepticism.
�15
The very fact—so travellers tell us—that at the
equator the sun is all the year overhead, and that
at the poles there is the wearisome monotony of the
one long day and dreary night, makes more enjoyable
the changes of our temperate climate—the long summer
days, the short grey winter evenings, the alternate
sunshine and rain—which things ” surely “ are an
allegory.”
Jaines Wakebam, Printer,4, Bedford Terrace, Church Street, Kensington.
�‘Wj
�
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Victorian Blogging
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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>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Religious differences: A sermon preached at St. John the Baptist's, Great Marlborough Street, and afterwards read as a paper before the London Dialectical Society
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Davies, Maurice [Rev.]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Extensive annotations in pencil written upside down on title page and last printed page and blank page at the end. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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James Wakeham
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[n.d.]
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CT5
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Sermons
Religion
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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 (Religious differences: A sermon preached at St. John the Baptist's, Great Marlborough Street, and afterwards read as a paper before the London Dialectical Society), 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>
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English
Conway Tracts
Religion