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HOW TO COMPLETE
THE REFORMATION.
A LECTURE
EDWARD MAITLAND.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price, Sixpence.
�I
BS9SB
�HOW TO COMPLETE THE REFORMATION.
I.
T is nearly two hundred and thirty years since John
Milton uttered these words :—
I
“Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by
the general instinct of devout and holy men, as they daily
and solemnly express their thoughts, G-od is beginning to
decree some new and great period in his church, even to
the reforming of reformation itself. What does He then,
but reveal himself to his servants, and as his manner is,
first to his Englishmen ? ’’
Nearly two hundred and thirty years, and not only
has the Reformation never been reformed, it has
never even been completed. Two hundred and thirty
years since the signs of the times led one of the most
highly inspired of Englishmen to believe that God
was then decreeing to begin the reforming of the
Reformation, and there is scarcely a portion of our
vast social system into which the animating principle
of that Reformation has yet found its way : still are
our laws in many respects based upon principles
essentially antagonistic to it; still are our Churches,
whether established or independent, for the most
part but servile repetitions of that old Romish system
from the influence of which it was the express
function of the Reformation to detach them. Still
does our education, whether in family or school, con
sist mainly in the inculcation of habits of thought and
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How to Complete the Reformation.
tenets wholly inconsistent with the broad purpose of
the Reformation.
Not that the Reformation, either in its principles
or practice, has been formally repudiated or virtually
discontinued; except perhaps by an insignificant
section. So far from this being the case, the movement
of which it was the initiation, continues under a more
significant name and in a more comprehensive form
than ever was contemplated by its originators: being
known to us by the modern designation of Liberalism.
But this Liberalism, while demonstrated both by
family resemblance, pedigree, and character, to be
the one and true heir of the Reformation, and though •
a sturdy and capable stripling, and well fitted to
sustain and extend the honours of its ancestral line,
sadly needs schooling. Through want of a logical
comprehension of its real character and functions, it
not unfrequently turns its back completely upon
itself and its parent, setting their interests and
principles entirely at nought. Through lack of
thoroughness it halts and falls far short of its proper
goal; and a halting Liberalism signifies an incomplete
Reformation.
Regarding this young Liberalism as the hope of the
world to come, at once the Atlas on whose broad
shoulders the future of Humanity rests, and the
Hercules by whose labours it is to be purified from
the defilements of past ages of ignorance, superstition,
and barbarism; regarding, in short, Liberalism as
synonymous with the development of the human intel
ligence and moral sense,—I trust I may be allowed
to speak freely of the characteristics which appear to
me as marring its perfections, and to point out the
proper path to the fulfilment of its high destiny.
II.
It has long been generally agreed that the fun-
�How to Complete the Reformation.
7
damental principle of the Reformation was the right
of private judgment, and of action in accordance
therewith. The assertion of that principle was a
protest on the part of individual liberty against
an organisation that sought to engulph the world
beneath an overwhelming regime of uniformity.
It involved, moreover, the right of every indi
vidual to all possible means of developing and
informing his judgment.
The fundamental principle of Liberalism may be
broadly stated as consisting in the tenet that opinion
should govern the world, in all respects in which the
world needs governing, such opinion to be the result
of the free, genuine, deliberate thought of living men.
To accept these definitions,—and I <fb not see how
it is possible to decline them,—is to admit the
essential identity of Liberalism and the Reformation.
It is to recognise it as the function of Liberalism to
carry out the intention of the Reformation ; and it is
to admit that only by accomplishing the programme
of Liberalism is it possible to complete the Refor
mation.
In dealing, then, with the completion of the
Reformation, we deal really with the development of
the programme of Liberalism.
In this relation I propose to show, First, the main
respect in which both the Reformation and Liberalism
have as yet failed to carry out their own principles ;
and, Secondly, the precise and most necessary step to
be taken in reversal of such failure.
The subject of my Lecture is capable of expression
by a still more condensed term. The ability of the
individual to develop and use his own judgment
involves directly the question of the education of his
understanding. Do not recoil at the word education,
trite and hackneyed though it be. I have not
brought you here to take you over beaten paths. The
side from which I propose to attack this Matterhorn
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How to Complete the Reformation.
of our social system, has scarcely, if ever, yet been
assailed. And if the method employed seem at first
somewhat indirect or obscure, I must ask you to
consider that it is because the process I propose to
adopt is rather that, of piercing into the centre and
tunnelling upwards through the interior, than of
scrambling up by the outside ; and that when we do
attain the summit it will be without risk of a fall,
and at the gain of a suddenly revealed panoramic
view.
The view which I am desirous of presenting to
you is that of the possibility of realising all our
wishes, and more than our hopes, in the matter of
our National Education by means of the utilisation of
the Church-establishment: and this, not by destruction
or disestablishment, not by deprivation or spoliation,
but by conversion or re-construction. Even to its
own accepted definition of the original intention of
that vast organisation, but one word needs to be
added to make it all that we want. Originally
designed to minister to our moral and spiritual
necessities, it has only to be adapted to our moral,
spiritual, and intellectual needs, to insure at once the
fulfilment of the programme of Liberalism, and the
completion of the Reformation.
If it be the fact that the addition of this single term
intellectual to the category of the functions of the Church,
has the effect of reversing or modifying the whole of its
previous conditions of existence, and setting it to work
in a track that is in any degree strange and repugnant
to it,—we need no further proof that the Reformation
has never yet reached the Church, be it of England
or of Scotland, “ as by law established.”
And so also we may say of the independent
nonconformist churches, that if their spirit be anta
gonistic to that free intellectual development which is
absolutely inconsistent with dogmatic teaching in any
department of knowledge whatsoever, we need no
�How to Complete the Reformation.
9
farther proof that the Reformation has not yet reached
even the Protestant dissenting bodies. And these
form a class, be it remembered, that specially affects
Liberalism in its politics.
To appreciate the position I am here taking up, it
must be borne in mind that, though fighting Rome
with its own weapons, and using dogma to combat
dogma, the Reformation was essentially a repudiation
of all dogma. Using Biblical Infallibility as an
engine of destruction against Papal Infallibility, the
Reformation, by its very assertion of the right of
private judgment in the choice of Infallibilities,
struck at the principle of all Infallibility whatever.
III.
The Reformation, therefore, not only had, properly,
no dogma of its own, but it was a protest against all
dogma whatsoever. Of which of the Churches, or
sects, to which the Reformation gave birth, can it
now be said that it has no dogma 1 If there be one,
that one, and that only, is entitled to be called a
reformed church.
For, only where there is freedom to follow truth by
means of evidence, and without deference to ancient
authority or foregone conclusion, has the Reformation
been completed: only there are the principles of
Liberalism practised : only there is the judgment of
the individual subjected to a regime favourable to
the production of that genuine Opinion which, accord
ing to the doctrine of Liberalism, alone ought to
govern the world.
For ourselves as a nation we claim to be governed,
at least in matters of common concern, by the opinions
of the majority of our citizens. It is well known
that large numbers of those citizens are altogether
uneducated and illiterate; and that of those who
claim to be neither uneducated nor illiterate, a large
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How to Complete the Reformation.
proportion have no genuine opinions whatever ; but
derive that which they regard as their opinion,
from mere prejudice, habit, or authority, traditional
or other, and altogether independently of any known
facts. In short, judging by what we know of the
nature of the instruction given to our youth both at
home and in school, in college and university, in
church and in chapel, it is impossible to avoid the
conclusion that so far from really governing ourselves,
so far from carrying out the principle of the Reforma
tion and of Liberalism that Opinion ought to govern
the world, such opinion to be the result of the free,
genuine, deliberate thought of living men,-—we are
in reality governed by the dead, by means of tenets
adopted from them mechanically and retained by
habit.
It was Hegel who first, I think, taught us to see in
the papal system a continuation of the domineering
spirit of ancient Rome; spiritual terror being
substituted for material force as the basis and main
stay of its authority: and in the Reformation, an
assertion of the rights of individual nationalities
against Rome’s all-absorbing regime of uniformity.
If Liberalism be a step further in advance, it is so in
respect of its claiming a similar right on behalf of
every individual to judge for himself both indepen
dently of his nationality, and in all matters, secular,
as well as religious.
Now, let us consider the regime to which every one
of us has been subjected, and to which in turn
nearly every one of us subjects or has subjected his
children ; and ask whether there is a topic of import
ance concerning which we have ourselves grown up,
or we have allowed them to grow up, with unbiased
judgment to form an independent opinion. Is it not
notoriously the case that both in things political and
things social, in things religious and even in things
scientific, there is scarcely a child in the country that
�How to Complete the Reformation.
11
is suffered to grow up without having its mind so
fettered and moulded by foregone conclusions, based,
at least in great part, on dogmatic authority and not
on any impartial review of the balance of evidence,
as to be absolutely incapacitated for forming any
genuine independent opinion whatever? Defining
Dogma as doctrine claiming to be accepted in virtue
of the authority by which it is laid down, and by no
means in virtue of its being possible, provable, useful,
or true, it cannot be too persistently set forth that
every sect, every teacher, every parent, that rests the
education of a child upon a dogmatic basis, instead of
cultivating its power of independent judgment, is an
enemy to the principles of Liberalism and of the
Reformation, is still the servitor and agent of Rome.
Does it not now begin to appear that, so far from
the Reformation having ever been completed, it has
scarcely advanced a step beyond its initial movement?
By profession we hold it immoral to inculcate opinion
by compulsion of authority, yet in practice we do it
universally and constantly.
The fact is, that to the guiding spirits of the
Reformation, or at least to their immediate successors,
the emancipation of Thought was a Frankenstein from
which they shrank back in terror so soon as they
began to discern the giant’s real dimensions. They
could not re-inclose it in the narrow limits from
which it had so lately been released; but what they
could do to arrest its movements and restrain its
force, they did. Its chains, re-cast, re-gilt, and a
little stretched, were insidiously replaced. A new
tyranny was created, a new Trinity, as it were,
having three persons,—Articles, Creeds, and Tests;
and one God—Biblical Infallibility. To the com
pulsory service of this complex divinity was the
soul of every individual in the State by law devoted
the moment he drew the breath of life. Its require
ments, among which were included “all the Articles
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How to Complete the Reformation.
of the Christian Faith,” every helpless infant was
compelled by its sureties to promise and vow, that
when it should come of age, it would most surely
keep and perform. Passing from infancy into child
hood, the individual was bred up on, and so saturated
with, the dogmas of the Catechism, that, like an
insect taking its colour from the leaves on which
it feeds, he had no choice, on reaching youth, but to
take upon himself in Confirmation, under the delusion
that he was doing so voluntarily, everything his
sureties had pledged him to. Every essential func
tion of his nature was placed under ecclesiastical
control. Certificates of compliance with the require
ments of Orthodoxy were exacted before he was
permitted to earn an honourable living. Still deeper
implication in church dogma was necessary to enable
him to contract an honourable marriage. When in
health, he incurred penalties if he absented himself
from a place of the established worship. When sick,
a profession of Orthodoxy was necessary to entitle
him to spiritual consolation. When dead, to burial
among his fellows. When risen, to admission into
heaven.
It was Rome again, with its headquarters at home
instead of abroad. The Reformation was in ashes.
Out of its ashes rose Liberalism. Its commencement
was not propitious. Liberalism, it is true, released
the individual from compulsory compliance with the
State-Church regime; but it called forth a number
of competing regimes, each more or less inimical to
that liberty which consists in the development of
individuality. For each separate system required
conformity to special tenets. Membership was in
consistent with the love of truth for its own sake and
apart from the Cause. In thus requiring adherence
to any set of opinions, the non-conforming bodies
were constituted upon the precise model of the estab
lished church, as the Church was upon that of Rome.
�How to Complete the Reformation.
13
It pleases some of our most liberal clergy to call dis
senters by the name of Non-conforming Churchmen.
Far nearer the mark would it be to describe both
dissenters and members of the established churches
of England and Scotland as “ Non-conforming
Papists.” Protestantism equally with Romanism,
asserted as more than possible, the incompatibility of
Faith with Knowledge. Where the acquisition of
knowledge might lead to a modification or renuncia
tion of Faith, it became a necessary condition of
church membership, or Orthodoxy, that knowledge
be not pursued to a point at which it might become
incompatible with the faith of the sect. In thus
admitting this incompatibility the Reformation re
verted to Rome, in spite even of its new guise of
Liberalism.
The circumstance that adherence to any of these
associations was voluntary, so far as the law was
concerned, was something gained. Practically, how
ever, the gain was to a great extent neutralised by
the still backward state of the public mind. To
belong to the Establishment was alone considered
socially “ respectable; ” while for anyone to refrain
from identifying himself with some religious denomin
ation, was to incur universal reprobation : and to quit
one of them, having once been a member, was to insure
persecution and odium. And even if adults, if
parents were free, how was it with children ? What,
under the tuition of the Sects, was their chance of
growing up unfettered, and able to form their own
judgment ? Would it be greater than under the
tuition of the Church, or of Rome ? And if not,
where was the Reformation ? It may be true that
Legislation, even of the most advanced Liberal type,
cannot interfere to prevent parents from shackling
the minds of their children. But parents who do thus
shackle them, have no claim to be regarded as
Liberals, or followers of the Reformation. They are
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How to Complete the Reformation.
of Rome, Romish, no matter how bitter and bigoted
their so-called “ Protestantism.”
IV.
Let us take an illustration from Science, undeterred
by the recent dictum of a Cabinet Minister to the
effect that “Religion differs from Science in that
fresh discoveries can be made in Science but not in
Religion.” Though Secretary of State in a “ Liberal ”
Government, he forgot one very important discovery
that might be made in religion, namely, the discovery
that all existing religions are false religions. It is a
discovery that has been made more than once in the
history of the world, and more than once it has led to
the introduction of a new religion. What is to
prevent the same thing from happening again 1 But
it is an illusion to suppose that there is any such
essential distinction between Science and Religion.
The recognition of a truth, whether religious or
scientific, consists in an impression upon the mind.
The source and nature of the impression requires in
each case to be brought to the test of evidence,
that is, to be judged by the human understanding.
For the testing of evidence we have but one set of
faculties; and we have no faculty whereby we can
transcend those faculties. Certitude, or the conviction
that one is in the right, proves nothing beyond one’s
own individual sentiment; and nothing is more
common than for different people to be equally and
absolutely certain of the most opposite beliefs.
When I speak of dogma, I do not include beliefs
which we are forced, by their very nature, or by our
very nature, to hold without proof, simply because
we cannot conceive the opposite of them. For us
Space must be infinite, Time must be eternal, God
must exist, (if only as the nature of things,) because
these are among the necessary bases of our conscious-
�How to Complete the Reformation.
15
ness, and we cannot think otherwise. Dogmatism
would consist in imposing beliefs respecting them,
without regard to evidence or probability; not in
asserting their existence, for we cannot think of
them as non-existent.
As nothing is true for us unless capable of verifica
tion by evidence, so nothing is good unless capable of
justification by experience. It is as absurd and
immoral to dogmatise concerning metaphysical or
transcendental subjects, as concerning scientific ones.
And how absurd and immoral this would be, may be
seen by this illustration from astronomy. The effect
of requiring astronomers to pledge themselves always
to uphold a particular theory of the Solar System—as that the earth goes round the sun, or the sun round
the earth,—(it would make no difference in principle
which, for the instant even an ascertained truth is
converted into a dogma, it acquires all the pernicious
ness of a falsehood, inasmuch as it is received upon
grounds other than that of its truth)—the effect of
such a pledge would at once be to make Astronomy,
as a Science, altogether unreliable, and to expose its
professors to deserved suspicion that their teaching
was the result of self-interest, and not of the facts
they had ascertained. The extension of such a
system generally to other departments of knowledge
could have no other result than to convert the people
who were subjected to it, into a nation of liars.
Against its application to the more palpable truths of
Physical Science, both our sense and our moral sense,
so far developed under the Reformation, have with
considerable effect protested. Our legislature dare
not, if it would, countenance such dishonesty in the
department of Science. We have not yet attained
that degree of clear perception at which we should
equally prohibit its countenancing the like dishonesty
in the department of religion.
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How to Complete the Reformation.
V.
By this point I wish to bring you on the way to
the end I have in view. I wish you to discern dis
tinctly, as a landmark once seen never to be forgotten,
this axiom: That the, contract whereby the State recognises
and protects the endowment of dogma, is an immoral
contract. It is not only to institutions connected with
the State that this axiom has reference. It is equally
valid for all associations, public or private, which
invoke the public law to the enforcement of those
articles of their constitution which involve the
inculcation of dogma, whether in pulpit or schoolroom,
in science, religion, or morals.
The grounds on which the Church-establishment is
ordinarily attacked are many and various. Objection
is made that it is unfair to other dogmatic bodies that
any should be selected for the favour of the State :
that the State has no proper concern with religion :
that the church ought to be permitted to govern itself
without control by the secular power : that State
interference diminishes religious zeal: that its dogmas
are not true; and that the State, though quite right
to select a church for its exclusive patronage, has in
our case selected the wrong one. No objection has,
so far as I am aware, hitherto been taken on the
ground that all dogmatic teaching whatever is immoral,
independently of the nature of the thing taught, and
that the State has no right to countenance immorality.
What prevents this axiom from itself being a dogma,
is the simple but essential fact, that in support of it
the appeal is, not to authority, but to evidence, or exper
ience, and reason. There are among us intelligent and
active spirits who are striving to obtain the release of
the Established Church, not from the State, but from
its dogmatic trammels: some, on the ground that its
dogmas are false; and others on the ground that,
whether true or false, a national institution ought to
�How to Complete the Reformation.
17
be exempt from such limitation. With the end that
these have in view, I heartily coincide; but seeing
that they betray no conviction that those trammels
are immoral simply because they are dogmatic, I base
my adherence to their programme on other grounds.
VI.
I propose now to show, from the practical working
of the dogmatic spirit, how suicidal it is for a free
State to do aught to encourage its promotion.
It has often been said in ridicule of the principle
of democracy that truth and justice have nothing
to do with majorities. It certainly is characteristic
of minorities that the more insignificant they are in
point of numbers, the more confident they are apt to
be of their own infallibility. Fanaticism needs not
for its own satisfaction any confirmation by success in
winning adherents by conviction. The fanatic is
content to force his tenets down the throats of others,
careless of the slow process of the reason. Certain of
his own infallibility, the secular doctrinaire is but a
variation of the religious dogmatist. In so far as
political or social doctrinairism involves the submission
of the individual to a regime of uniformity, it savours
of mediaaval papalism. It becomes altogether of Rome
when it would impose that regime by force, whether
of physical violence, or the resistless compulsion of
early training. The spirit of fanaticism is everywhere
the same, and its root one, Infallibility, that
aged fiend which recognises its. divinely appointed
vanquisher and destroyer in modern Liberalism, and
shrieks and rages against it. No matter whether the
direction of a fanaticism be for or against the ancient
orthodoxy, it becomes one with it in spirit when it
adopts the tactics of that orthodoxy. Even the
fanatic for liberty turns renegade to the principles of
liberty when he seeks to compel others to be free.
B
�18
How to Complete the Reformation.
Liberty does not consist in releasing even slaves from
their fetters against their will. The liberal throws
his principles overboard, and turns bigot when he
seeks to propagate his creed by force. Infallibility,
having its basis in the emotions, and by no means in
reason, naturally sees no reason why it should not
force others to admit its claims. Liberalism, having
its basis in reason, is bound by the very constitution
of its being to repudiate compulsion as a legitimate
or even possible method of attaining success. Every
step won by such means is in reality several steps
backward. It is suicidal for reason to appeal to force.
Having to deal with reason and not with prejudice or
passion, it is eminently characteristic of true Liberal
ism to be patient. When in a minority, it has no
right to dominate by force. When in a majority, it
has no need to do so.
I have spoken of Liberalism as a capable and sturdy
stripling, but one that sadly needs schooling. Let
me indicate one of the blemishes by which the conduct
of its professors among ourselves has been marred of
late. The practice of holding great public meetings
in the neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament, in
order, by a demonstration of physical force, to accelerate
the passage of a popular measure, is, for Liberals,
nothing less than a faithless abnegation of the funda
mental principles of Liberalism: for it involves an
appeal from the deliberate reason of the Legislature
to its fears:—fears of excesses that may be committed
by an excited multitude: such multitude itself pro
bably being for the most part utterly ignorant and
incapable of forming a sound judgment respecting any
great public question whatever. Be it once under
stood that the promotion of tenets or measures by
physical compulsion is the peculiar and especial
characteristic of Orthodoxy or Toryism, and it
becomes clear that however fair it may be to fight an
opponent with his own weapons, the cause of Liber-
�How to Complete the Reformation.
19
alism is only discredited and retarded by its adoption
of tactics which are inconsistent with its principles.
Besides, the adherence of an ignorant crowd proves
nothing beyond the fact that such a side has gained
its favour for the moment, a favour which is apt to
be far less dependent upon rational views, than upon
some shallow or deceptive consideration; a favour,
too, which may at any moment and upon slight pro
vocation be turned the opposite way. The worst
enemy of democracy is the Demagogue. By exciting
antagonism between class and class, he retards that
progress of conviction which is the only practical
test of the relative strength of opinions. Minds
forced into such an attitude, become necessarily nonreceptive as to new impressions. People are put
upon their mettle to resist conversion; recoiling from
violence, they recoil also from the doctrine of the
violent. And not only of the opposing parties, but
of the nation generally, is the capacity for deliberation
seriously diminished, when, instead of remaining calm,
clear and judicial in tone, it is stirred into turbidity
by noisy agitation. The fact that those who have
already been converted are impatient at the slowness
of others to be convinced also, constitutes no just
pretext for violence. The scholar does not the sooner
gain a knowledge of arithmetic through having his
slate broken over his head by an impatient master.
Indeed the violence of the latter is rather a confession
of his inability to teach. In a community in which
the governing power is vested in “the common-sense of
most,” the very use of force to effect a change is a
virtual confession that the advocates of that change
are still in a minority, and therefore, on the principles
of Liberalism, incompetent to demand that the change
be made at present. We shall indeed have reason to
congratulate Liberalism on its progress among us,
when we see the Legislature so imbued with its
principles as to vindicate them against all dema'
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How to Complete the Reformation.
goguery whatever, by boldly declaring, whenever it
may find itself menaced by demonstrations of physical
force, that it will postpone all consideration of the
questions at issue until such demonstrations shall
have wholly ceased. By such dignified assertion of
the rights of conviction as against compulsion in
matters eminently requiring the exercise of reason,
the cause of Liberalism would gain infinitely more
than it would lose by delay. It is in quietness and
confidence that its strength should lie.
It is in reality the Sectarian spirit that prompts the
demagogue to restrict the term people to a single class.
Forgetting that the people of any country consist of
the whole of its citizens, rich and poor, great and
small, learned and ignorant, those who have suc
ceeded, as well as those who have failed in life, the
demagogue delights in restricting it to the failures,
and strives ever to exasperate them against the rest,
and to obtain by dint of their uninstructed force that
which they have failed to demonstrate by reason to
be necessary and right. Impatience of the slow
process of reason, eagerness to seize results without
undergoing that preliminary discipline which is apt
to be even more beneficent than the results them
selves, is always characteristic of the shallow and
slenderly educated. One of the chief evils of dema
goguery, that is, of appealing to the passions rather
than to the reason of the community, consists in its
practice of stimulating this impatience among the
masses. Liberalism, aiming at reform, naturally com
mends itself in the first instance to those classes
whose condition is the most susceptible of improve
ment. Thinking more of the superficial and imme
diate than of the thorough and the permanent, and
knowing little of the patience whereby greatness,
whether individual or national, is alone to be
achieved, these classes are naturally liable to grasp
at any plausible measure that promises a temporary
�How to Complete the Reformation.
z1
alleviation of an evil, without considering what, in
the long run, may be the effect of the principle in
volved. When needed reforms fail to come from
above, that is, from the action of that educated class
which alone has leisure and culture sufficient to allow
of the necessary examination,—when, I say, reforms
fail to descend in beneficent dews and showers, they
are apt to be forced up from below with volcanic
destructiveness. The recent clamours for organic
changes on slight pretexts are an illustration of this.
The function of Liberalism is to enlarge, not con
tract our liberties. When the constitution of society
is such that it does not afford sufficient room for the
co-existence of two undoubted rights, Liberalism,
rather than sacrifice either of these rights, is bound
to enlarge the terms of the social contract, until it
can include and reconcile both. The masses, in their
keen appreciation of the evils of interference with
the liberty of election, have shown themselves ready
to sacrifice one of the most essential of a freeman’s
rights in order to secure another. There is strong
reason to fear that, by having recourse to compulsory
secrecy as a protection against interference, they are
seeking a remedy which will prove worse than the
disease. It is a far higher stage of liberty which
allows us to act as we please, openly and without fear
or favour, than that which allows us to act as we
please only on condition that we let nobody know
how we act. In demanding secrecy we abandon our
claim to this higher liberty, and with it the freeman’s
noblest privilege. I know well that it is through no
love of darkness for its own sake that our toiling
classes have clamoured for the Ballot. Far rather
would they, with our great Patriot-poet, cry, “ Hail!
holy light,” than with the arch-fiend call to the sun
to tell it that they “ hate its beams,” and prefer the
concealment of darkness. I know too that, thus far,
at least, it is the wealthy and so-called educated
�22
How to Complete the Reformation.
classes who, by their abuse of their privileges and
powers, have driven their poorer fellow citizens to
crave the shelter of secrecy. That this should be so,
is only a further proof of the worse than worthlessness
of much of the education hitherto given. It has
never comprised a knowledge of those first principles
of human association, which constitute the basis of
social morality, and the recognition of which con
stitutes the very alphabet of Liberalism. But to sub
stitute a compulsory secrecy for the publicity which
is the high privilege and distinguishing badge of the
Freeman, at least before the Legislature has exhausted
all possible means at its disposal, is to purchase one
right by the sacrifice of another, instead of endea
vouring to secure both. True thoroughgoing Liberal
ism, despising mere expedients, and repudiating
mechanical remedies for moral defects, ever aims at
the highest, and would rather endure a prolonged
condition of discomfort, than lower its aim to an
inferior standard.
VII.
The only wonder, however, is that the cause of
Liberalism has not been marked by far more and
greater errors. The “ Church ” of a country ought,
as its chief educational and civilising agent, to be
the leader and example to all parties. Such advan
tage our Liberalism has failed to enjoy. Where the
Church is dogmatic, it cannot influence Liberalism
for good. The two have no points of coincidence.
Where the Church’s own weapon is compulsion, it
cannot be expected to teach men the use of reason.
Our own day has witnessed a most startling instance
of the tremendous folly and wickedness of the appeal to
violence. France, as befits the elder son of a dog
matic Church, ever does appeal to force. As regards
her foreign relations, her hand is always on the hilt.
�How to Complete the Reformation.
23
And at home her minorities do not wait to convince,
but always strive to coerce the majority. Of all
those who in France are at issue with the Commune,
the Church is the least entitled to utter a word of
reproach. The Church has no right even to condemn
it as Atheistic. An infallible theory of Labour and
Capital may as fairly be regarded as a fitting object
of veneration by some, as an infallible priest or book
by others. The Communist of modern Europe may
have a vision of the possibilities of Humanity • bright
and glowing with blessedness in its exemption from
poverty and woe, and of the efficacy of his doctrines
to make that vision a reality. And the realisation of
his vision is as high and legitimate a subject of ambi
tion for him, as the establishment of the supremacy
of his church is for a cardinal archbishop. Each has
his ideal, at once the initial and the final cause of the
universe ; and his ideal ps to him as God. Call that
ideal what he will, Jehovah, Jesus, Church, or
Humanity, neither can substantiate the charge of
Atheism against the other. The sole radical differ
ence of faith lies between those who trust to reason,
and those who believe only in force. Violence is the
legacy of Cain, a legacy shared alike by Catholic and
Communist. In the long run it ever reacts upon its
employer. It is in more senses than one that the
blood of the martyr has proved the seed of the Church.
There is good reason for ascribing much of the suc
cess of the doctrine so shocking to the developed
moral sense of men, the doctrine of bloody sacrifices,
of a deity that requires to be propitiated towards
mankind by blood, even human blood, the blood of
his nearest and dearest, to the legend that represents
Abel as dying a martyr to his faith in it. A far hap
pier moral may be found in the tale which represents
the first man who wantonly sacrificed life, as the first
to lose his own. But however just and noble the in
dignation of the impetuous Cain, his appeal to force
�24
How to Complete the Reformation.
recoiled upon his own gentler faith, and thenceforth,
under the rule of a ferocious orthodoxy, blood took
the place of fruits and flowers, and terror the place
of affection, in the worship of the Supreme Being.
By its appeal to a force which is not that of Reason,
orthodoxy establishes its continuity with barbaric
antiquity. The invasion of Canaan, whether by
Israelites or Crusaders, was due to the aggressiveness
of an orthodox creed, and no mere struggle for exist
ence. The ground may be shifted from the next
world to this, and the motives be limited to the
secular, but Communism and Trades-Unionism have
shown themselves animated by the identical spirit of
fanaticism, which would subordinate the.individual to
a regime of uniformity, and use force to achieve its
purpose of subjugation. Even when engaged in
murdering priests and burning churches, it is still
Satan casting out Satan. The creed of both is dog
matic, and both use the same weapons. The Church
is the fountain even of the doctrinairism that would
commence with destroying the church. Indeed, they
are not without method in their madness who hold
that it was the Church’s chief apostle himself who
first set the example of massacring non-communists,
and that without regard to sex; and that the sudden
death miraculously inflicted upon two of them by
Peter, was the initiation of the atrocities which long
afterwards accompanied similar notions with the
Lollards and Anabaptists. The violence of Peter
proved as ineffectual to establish Communism within
the Church, as the gunpowder and petroleum of Paris
to establish it without the Church. The shrewd sense
of Paul gave another direction to the Christian move
ment, and saved it from the antagonism of Property.
But the direction in which that movement was turned
by the influence of Paul’s strong native bent towards
theological metaphysics, led to the creation of a
�How to Complete the Reformation.
25
systematised dogmatism, not less fatal to human
intellect and advancement, than ever the Communism
of Peter could have been. Both were alike destruc
tive of individual freedom and development. The
modern spectacle of Sacerdotalism—the Sacerdotalism
that has thriven upon St Bartholomew and a myriad
other massacres—affecting to be based upon primitive
Christianity, and at the same time denouncing and
slaughtering the Communists of Paris, is veritably
the spectacle of Saturn devouring his own children.
The whole principle of Dogma and of its enforce
ment by violence, is derivable from the Semitic
character of the church, which in respect of dogma
had its breeding-ground and nursery in Alexandria.
From Egypt came the Israelites of old with their
cruel Jehovistic alternative of conversion or destruc
tion, and the spirit which animates alike the ultramontanist of Rome, and the fanatic of the Revolution.
The wand that divided the Red Sea was the real
destroyer of Paris. And so long as we retain
in our midst an institution, bound by virtue of
its constitution, to maintain dogma and implant
the seeds of fanaticism, Egyptian darkness may be
truly said to dominate ourselves. The principle that
endows a dogma, enforces a creed, imposes a cate
chism, or pledges an infant in baptism, is identical
with the principle that massacres a tribe in Canaan,
explodes a bomb in the workshop of a non-union
artisan, or desolates a land by a religious war. In
each case alike the fanaticism is the offspring of
a claim to infallibility, and the result is the deter
mination to promote opinion by means other than
those of rational conviction. So that when wouldbe liberals appeal from reason to demonstrations of
physical force, they turn their backs upon liberalism,
and follow the fanatic and the bigot.
It is the Liberalism of the modern age that has
repudiated the ancient doctrine of the absolute pro-
�26
How to Complete the Reformation.
perty of parents in their children. The Church,
following the patriarchs, has ever asserted a similar
right on behalf, not of the parent, but of itself. As
it never occurred to Abraham that he had no right
to kill his son, so it seems never to have occurred
to the Church that no one has a right to dispose of
a child's mind and soul by pledging it to the
profession of any particular set of religious opinions.
VIII.
True Liberalism troubles itself little about forms.
In the State, it is neither monarchical nor re
publican.
In Society, it is neither aristocratic
nor democratic. In the Church, it is neither
established nor dissenting.
Its aim, following
the Reformation, is to bring about a liberty which
consists in the recognition of the right of
every person to develop his own individuality of
character and ability, to form and formulate his
own philosophy and faith, to work as best he likes
without the loss of caste, and earn as much as he
can, to enjoy the free disposal of his property, with
power to leave it to whom he will, to enjoy after
him :—for this is one of the highest incitements
to, and rewards of successful industry :—in short,
to regulate his life and faith in accordance with
his own tastes and his own deductions from the
phenomena of the world, the sole limit being the
equal liberty of others. Whatever forms of govern
ment or society best promote such liberty, these
are the forms approved by Liberalism. As the
genius of peoples and races varies, so also will these
forms vary. The detail must be a matter of experi
ence for each, not of dogma for any. All regimes
which fall short of such aims are, whether secular
or spiritual, political, industrial, or social, essentially
ultramontane in character, and antagonistic to Lib
eralism and the Reformation.
�How to Complete the Reformation.
ip
I have specified these details because there exists
among us a spirit which not unfrequently exhibits
itself in the form of class antagonism, seeking to
excite the animosity of the poor against the rich,
of the ignorant against the cultivated. I have
already designated the demagogue the worst enemy
of democracy. Liberalism is not the exclusive
appanage of those who call themselves by its name.
Sometimes it is not theirs at all. Liberals have no
monopoly of it in practice, whatever they may
pretend in principle. Those who endeavour to set
class against class, on the ground of the inequality
of their respective successes in the battle of life, are
the worst enemies of Liberalism and Liberty. To
have succeeded in that for which all are striving,
namely in winning exemption from a life of constant
hardship, and its degrading accompaniments, ignor
ance and coarseness, they pretend to account a
positive demerit and disqualification. Failing to
see that the chief glory of labour consists in its
capacity to enable men to live without excessive
labour, and to provide leisure for cultivation and
enjoyment, they would inflict penalties for all suc
cess beyond a certain mean standard. “ A man
ought not to be allowed to be so rich.” “ The law
should make him pay in taxes all that he has over
and above a certain income.” Such are the phrases
in which our Apostles of Communism in disguise
express themselves ; as if the success of one involved
the failure of another: not seeing that to lop off all
above a certain height would be, not to raise the lower
stratum,—for the poor are not poor through the
rich being rich,—but to make feebleness, stupidity,
ill-luck, or general incapacity, the universal mono
tonous rule, and to convert the nation into a com
munity of peasants and artisans, without space
for legitimate ambition or any ideal of life. It is
thus that the old dogmatic spirit is ever re-asserting
�28
How to Complete the Reformation.
itself under new forms. So soon as we make an
advance in the direction of greater liberty of indi
vidual development, a corresponding movement is
started to check it. The fanaticism bred by the
Church, takes the shape of doctrinairism in indus
trial, and intolerance of individuality in social, life.
The old orthodoxy, regarding all assertion of indi
viduality as heresy, measured all men by a standard
of religious doctrine ; this new one measures them
by a standard of wealth, or rather of poverty.
Thus the Church and the Commune are at one, for
their spirit is the same ; and “ Peter ” and “ Pet
roleum ” betray a mutual affinity in operation as
well as in name.
IX.
Similarly all existing fanaticism may be shown to
be an ecclesiastical product. Even those of our non
conforming sects which account themselves truest
heirs of the Eeformation, are lineally descended
from Pome, and partake the family features. It has
been shrewdly suggested that if, in their present tem
per, the Nonconformists obtain influence in the Univer
sities, any formal religious tests will be superfluous;
for liberal though they affect to be in their politics,
they make amends by being doubly narrow in their
religion. It is not for those who have acquiesced
in the exclusion of Nonconformists from the advan
tages of those institutions to taunt them on such score.
The fact, however, remains. And so long as we
suffer any of our national institutions to be conducted
on principles so much at variance with the principles
of Liberalism and the Reformation, as our Universities
have been and still are, we cannot boast of our
respect either for real education, for truth, or for
liberty. In Germany, the Universities, freed from
the trammels of dogma, are the homes and producers
�How to Complete the Reformation.
29
of the learning and science of the nation. A glance
at the roll of our great names reveals an almost total
divorce between the Universities and the genius
of the living generation. For a man of real science
and learning, even to retain his, connection with
them, it is needful that he, in part, either suppress
his convictions, or modify his utterances in deference
to their traditions. The vast bulk of the endow
ments, the honours, the emoluments, the prizes,
in our colleges are but means to enable dead bigots
to afflict the generations that come after them with
the perpetual reiteration of their own antiquated
tenets and obsolete arguments, and by no means
to enable men to follow the true, and utter their
own convictions. It was stated in evidence before
the Lords’ Committee on University Tests, that
it is considered necessary by the University Author
ities that parents should feel assured that their sons
will find nothing in the University System to inter
fere with the religious beliefs they bring from home.
It is in utter contradiction to all the principles both
of Liberalism and the Reformation thus to suffer the
understanding of our youth to be emasculated, their
morality to be depraved, and the whole future
of the nation to be held in leading-strings by the
stagnant or the dead.
X.
From the Universities let us glance to the next scene
in the career of those of their students who proceed to
take Orders in the Established Church. Constituted
as the Establishment now is, there can scarcely be, for
one thoroughly imbued with the true spirit of Liber
alism and the Reformation, a sadder spectacle than
that of an Ordination Service. It is not that the par
ticular doctrines, which the high-spirited and highly
cultivated youth have there assembled to pledge
�30
How to Complete the Reformation.
themselves to teach, are false and pernicious in them
selves. Even if they be so, this is not the worst
characteristic of the scene. It is because these youths
are pledging themselves to maintain those doctrines
whether they be true or not. It is because they are
bartering, as for a mess of pottage, their soul’s birth
right ; quenching the spirit of truthfulness within
them; binding themselves not to enquire further, lest
they come to see differently; binding themselves to
teach one thing, even when that thing shall have ceased
to be true for them; even to representing the character
and dealings of the Almighty as they no longer
believe them to have been ; binding themselves to
treat freedom of thought as licentiousness, freedom of
expression as blasphemy. To be true to their pro
fession and pledge there recorded, they must thence
forth treat the Universe as a sealed book ; for, were
they to explore it, they might, perchance, encounter
facts which refuse to square with their doctrines, the
doctrines to which they have vowed a life-long ad
herence, no matter how much in conflict with the
positive testimony of the rocks beneath, of the skies
above, or of the mind and soul within them. Call
such self-immolation what they will, it is essentially
irreligious in character. Religion has reference to
God, and it is not in God that they have undertaken
to place their trust, not in his “ invisible things made
visible ” in his works, and palpable to the developed
consciousness and conscience of man, as an index to
the divine nature; but in certain utterances, which
may or may not have been misreported or misinter
preted, of men who may or may not have been
mistaken or misinformed, utterances handed down
through conflicts of angry, unscrupulous partisans,
through changes of language and associations, through
a hundred troubled, distorting media; and these
utterances are to be, for time and for eternity, their
sole criterion of truth, and sole guide of life !
�How to Complete the Reformation.
31
Far different would be the moral aspect of the
spectacle, were each of these youths come thither to
devote himself, in the spirit of highest chivalry, to go
forth, no slave of a hierarchy, or bondsman of a
creed, but a knight-errant of light and liberty, in
pursuit of the Holy Grail of Truth, heedless whither
it might draw him; acknowledging no other allegi
ance, uttering no other watchword, but in perfect
confidence in his instinctive perception of the har
mony of the physical, moral, and spiritual universe,
the divinest of all bases of consciousness, fearing not
to face even the howling wilderness of absolute
negation: and, thus equipped with truest faith,
seek to lead his fellows on to those higher ranges of
the intellect and the moral sense, which are attain
able only by earnest and true spirits : seek too to
rekindle the flames of real patriotism, which consists
in that sincere and hearty comradeship which our
present fatal sectarianism, like an all-devouring acid,
seems to have eaten out of our national life.
XI.
It is a favourite way of defending certain of our
institutions, to say that, although it may be true that
were we suddenly placed on a desert island, and
forced to construct our system anew from the be
ginning, we should have many things different from
what they are, yet that, as our present institutions
have grown up with us as a part of ourselves, and in
accordance with our circumstances, it is better to
keep them, and patch and mend them as may be
found necessary, than to undergo the wrench and
discomfort of a total change, more particularly when
we know the limits of the disadvantages of the old,
and are not certain of the advantages of the new.
No doubt there are some of our institutions which
it may be better thus to put up with, rather than
�32
How to Complete the Reformation.
start on a quest of doubtful issue, to realise an ideal
of which we have no experience. But it does not
follow that all are of that character, or that we have
nothing that is not defensible for better reasons, or
capable of being, by practical reforms, adapted per
fectly to all our needs.
Let us suppose ourselves newly arrived, in con
siderable numbers, a free community, in some new
territory, in possession of a fair amount of intelli
gence, but compelled to construct our social and
political system without reference to traditions.
After making certain provisions in the interests of
security and order, there can be no doubt that one of
our first cares would be to provide for the education
of the young, and the general diffusion of useful
knowledge and sound principles of conduct among
all classes. To the first of these ends we should
create elementary common schools upon the broadest
possible basis throughout the whole settlement, with
trustworthy supervisors to ensure their efficiency.
Proceeding upon Liberal principles, and having
therefore no ulterior purpose, no traditional interests,
no particular form of society or government, or any
end whatever, to serve apart from its present or pro
spective utility, the main object of the education
given would be to develop the faculties and judg
ments of the scholars. The teachers would of course
be chosen for their special capacity, and as their
influence over the rising generation would necessarily
be great, the parents and the legislature would watch
most jealously over their exercise of it. The bulk of
the people would, of course, be engaged in industrial
pursuits, and have but little time to devote to their
own mental improvement. The second and remaining
division of our educational system, therefore, would
deal more especially with the adult population. In
order to develop and gratify the higher instincts of
our nature, of which the instinct of preservation,
�How to Complete the Reformation.
33
whether of self or of the species, forms only the basis,
we should encourage qualified persons to study for
our benefit, and to set before us, from time to time,
the results of their studies, in history, science, philo
sophy, literature, art, and religion; and, probably,
we should appoint certain periodical occasions, when
the whole population might rest from their physical
labours, and enjoy the mental recreation to be de
rived from listening to intelligent and cultivated
expositors in these various departments of knowledge.
Indeed, I should not be surprised to find certain
whole days, at convenient intervals, set apart for
such admirable purpose; and on the discussion
arising as to what those intervals should be, to find
that portion of the teaching class which more
particularly had devoted itself to the study of
meteorology and astronomy, suggesting that the
period of the moon’s quarters would make the
most convenient division of time, and recommending
that every seventh day be made the day of general
rest and recreation: in short, that something very
like the Sabbath should be instituted. We can
even understand the people becoming greatly at
tached to such an institution, and guarding it from
infringement by severe penalties, simply, of course,
because of .its human value. And we can imagine
with what zest the labourers in the various intellec
tual departments would work during the week to be
able to give of their best when the holiday came
round ; feeling that, on their earnestness and genuine
ness the higher life and happiness of their fellowcountrymen in great measure depended. We can
imagine, too, that the very buildings in which the
people and their instructors met for such purpose,
would become the objects of affection, and be con
structed and decorated in the most beautiful style
that could be devised.
C
�34
How to Complete the Reformation.
We can scarcely imagine, however, that these
various educational and recreational departments
would become jealous of each other; still less can we
imagine any one of them claiming such superiority
over the others as to seek to oust them altogether
from their share in the appointed ministrations, and
obtain a monopoly of the day to themselves. Neither
can we imagine that they would be suffered by the
community to prevail in such a demand were they so
unreasonable and arrogant as to make it. It would
be among the duties of the National Education over
seers,—who might fairly, in token of their function, be
distinguished by the title of Bishops, and would
doubtless comprise in their number the Mills, Hux
leys, and Tyndals of the community,—to see that
provision was made for the due satisfaction of every
side of man’s mental nature, and that neither secular
nor spiritual interests should usurp the place of the
other. It would also be among the duties of those
Bishops, as education controllers, to take care that
none but those who had first approved themselves
qualified by natural gifts and by culture, should fill
the office of teacher, under the recognition and remu
neration of the State : that their teaching did not
degenerate into trite common-place or dogmatic
assertion ; but that the same Liberal principle that
prohibits all pretension to be wise beyond that which
is written in the book of Nature, and can be plainly
read there, should pervade alike both higher and
lower departments of education. Not that opinion
and hypothesis should not be freely stated and can
vassed, but that while all have a hearing, none be
suffered to assume an authority beyond the fair
warrant of evidence and reason : so that there would
be no pretext for forming rival systems without the
general one in order to propound divergent doctrines.
�How to Complete the Reformation.
o>5
XII.
I can imagine, as the picture of such an ideal con
stitution grows and spreads before our minds, long
ings being excited for the realisation of such a happy
condition of things among ourselves to replace our
own distracted state. I can imagine, as we study the
details of such a system in order to compare it with
our own, and take account of the day we have set
apart, each seventh day, for physical, mental, and
spiritual renovation; of our army of preachers so
numerous and admirably organised as to have its
ramifications alike in populous city and remote
hamlet; of its hierarchy of overseers, ennobled as in
recognition of the loftiness of their functions; of the
vast revenues set apart for the higher education of the
whole people; and the vast multitude of edifices noble
and commodious devoted to their uses; I can imagine,
as we detect the many points of coincidence between
the ideal system I have attempted to describe, and
the real one which we already possess, the conviction
growing strong within us that we already have
in our possession not only such an ideal system, but
one far transcending in the perfection of its organisa
tion, the immensity of its appliances, the number and
quality of its agents, all that the most fertile imagin
ation could have devised without centuries of
experience : that we have already in possession and
operation a system of abundant capacity to lift the
dead weight of our most debased classes out of the
depths into which they have sunk, and sustain the
most elevated at their utmost height. And the con
viction would be a true one. For we, in very deed,
have in our possession an instrument, which like an
organ, magnificent in quality and unlimited in
capacity, but impaired with misuse, requires only to
be tuned up to the concert-pitch of our high needs
and aspirations, to produce in abundance the full rich
harmony of a perfect civilisation.
�2,6
How to Complete the Reformation.
It is by means of the Nationalisation of our Church
Establishment that I propose to complete the Reform
ation, and secure the final triumph of Liberalism.
To do this but one thing is needful. We have but
to purge it of its dogmatism to make it all that we have
been so long seeking for; all that the most developed
consciousness of our multiform deficiencies can require,
to minister to our educational needs high or low.
We have but to drive those thieves of the Intellect
and the Moral Sense, Creeds, and Articles and Tests,
out of the Temple of our Humanity, and replace them
by the simple Spirit of Truthfulness. In driving out
these, we shall drive out also from our midst the
malignant spirit of fanaticism which is ever the same
whatever the cause in which it is evoked; whatever
the means by which it works; whether it be to wage
a religious war, or to crush a soul’s freedom over
its whole career from the cradle to the grave.
Disestablish the Church, and we have what ? A
sect, a discord, the more. Perhaps three or four
sects the more. In any case a huge and wealthy
sect; for it could not be turned adrift bare, or with
out much wealth, corporately, of its own : it would
have, too, greater claim on the wealth of its mem
bers, and so be the richer in their zeal. It would
have power and prestige to arrogate superiority
over all other sects; and to develop, unmitigated
by the tempering influences of the State, into full
activity of fanaticism, all the fierce bigotries that
even now are glowing within its volcanic breast.
Let us never forget the utterance wherewith the
late Charles Buller pleaded against the separation
of the Church from the State : “ For heaven’s sake,
don’t meddle with the Church! It is the only
thing that stands between us and religion !” Even
now, while still connected with the State, such is
the power of dogmatism to generate and foster
bigotry that the Church fails to “ stand between us
�How to Complete the Reformation.
37
and religion,” or fanaticism. Numbers of its clergy
have taken the bit between their teeth, and are
boring ahead in all directions at once. Those who
once thought that they found in the State-religion
a harmless non-explosive compound, find it no such
compound now. Disestablished, and left to propa
gate unrestrained the spirit of dogmatism and
fanaticism, it will be impossible to over-estimate
the injury it will do to the State. The State
dares not risk such a danger to itself. It dares not
set up a vast imperium in imperio, endowed with
both will and power to withstand all progress in
the direction of Liberalism and Civilisation. It
dares not renew its immoral contract to recognise
and protect the endowment of dogma, when once
its eyes are open to the nature of that contract.
XIII.
There is but one condition upon which the State
can set the Church free, and allow it to retain a
particle of the property of the National Establish
ment : the condition that it abandons its dogmatic
character, and in place of constituting itself a huge
conspiracy against the intelligence and moral sense of
the nation, becomes co-extensive with the nation.
The retention by the Church of the national property
on any other terms, would be a perpetuation of the
robbery of the State by the Church.
But thus purged of these its defects and limitations,
all pretext for its disestablishment would cease
to exist, for it would then constitute, ready-made
in our hands, and in full operation, precisely the
organisation we require to crown and complete our
new national system of elementary education. Al
ready, by our creation of this system, we have
recognized and acted on two principles : First, that
no member of the State has a right to menace the
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How to Complete the Reformation.
safety and comfort of the community, or to sacri
fice his children, by allowing those children to
grow up as barbarians : and Second, that the com
pulsory inculcation of dogma is immoral and per
nicious. It needs but to extend the same principles
to the Establishment. It is true the State cannot
prevent people from being themselves dogmatic,
and fanatical, and otherwise immoral. But this
is no reason why the State should directly pro
mote, by immoral legislation, a temper so injurious
to the community. It has but to make its educa
tional system of a piece throughout, by banishing
dogma from the higher, as it has banished it
from the lower branch, its latest and purest creation.
Whether we keep the Church, or disestablish it, so
long as we suffer it to rest on a dogmatic basis, all
our efforts to educate our young on the principles of
a rational, manly Liberalism, will be vain. I do not
overlook all that its clergy have done for education.
I grant them, individually, fullest credit for their
earnest and self-denying labours in this behalf; but
it is not the less true that the system on which they
have worked is, both in its method and in its pur
pose, a system for producing, not men, but slaves
and cretins; for it is a system that sets the under
standing at nought, by blinding it to the meaning of
Natural law, to the significance of facts, the value
of evidence, and the very meaning even, and use of
the faculty of truthfulness. It is a system of
spiritual trades-unionism, regime at once of Sheffield
and of Rome, making the capacity of the feeblest and
stupidest the rule of all; for the regime is the same
that restricts the strength and genius of the workman
to the standard of the least capable, limiting the
number of bricks the builder shall carry in his hod
at a time, or lay in a day, the number of types the
printer shall set up, the number of hours each man
shall work, the amount of wage he shall earn; and
�How to Complete the Reformation.
39
that restricts his aspirations and advance towards the
universe of divine facts, by keeping him as a caged
squirrel, revolving within a little circle of artificial
beliefs and observances. The spirit is the same, and
the regime is the same. The end also is one. For
the spirit is that of cowardice and selfishness : the
regime, that of tyrannical repression of the human
faculties; the end, the advancement of a caste irre
spective of the cost to mankind.
XIV.
Stifled as the faculty of reason ever has been by
authority based upon dogma, it is no matter for wonder
that the revolts against that authority should ofttimes
fail to be governed by reason. Even the agitation
lately commenced for the disestablishment of the
Church indicates little appreciation of the principles
of Liberalism and of Liberty. The agitators are
divisible into two classes, of which one seeks but to
reduce the Establishment to the level of other sects,
and the other seeks to enable it to indulge its
sacerdotal predilections to the heart’s content of its
most bigoted adherents; while neither seems to care
for the moral character of our legislation, for the
waste of the nation’s resources, or how they are
directed against their proper function of promoting
■civilisation.
And what hinders us from completing the Refor
mation by such Nationalisation of the church estab
lishment as that which I am advocating ? Is it that
which people are pleased to call their Christianity—
their “ common Christianity” ? Admirable audacity,
to prate of a “ common Christianity; ” or even to
adduce what they possess under such name, as a
thing to be cherished and preserved at the cost of
all that is noblest in Humanity! For my part,
though I have been over a goodly proportion of the
�40
How to Complete the Reformation.
earth’s surface, I know not where in the world to look
to find a Christianity fulfilling its proper function, (if
such be its proper function,) of raising and sustaining
the moral, spiritual, and intellectual life of a people
by its hearty acceptance and wise application of the
only means that can tend to such ends. And if such
have as yet no existence anywhere, why may not
Milton’s prognostication turn out true, and “ God, as
His manner is, reveal Himself first to His English
men ?”
What hinders ? Is it the invincible attachment of
the clergy or the laity to their dogmas ? For the
laity, it is but necessary to point to the vast numbers
of men who abstain from the services, and reject the
teaching of the Church altogether, and that other
large proportion of men who attend them merely to
gratify the women of their families. For the clergy,
I need but specify the large and increasing number
who, longing to be delivered from their bondage, are
ever striving to infuse into the ancient forms, signifi
cations which are not altogether repulsive to their
intelligence or their moral sense, and who yet feel
that, jangle their fetters as they will, the music they
make is still but the clanking of fetters.
What hinders ? Is it a fear of being charged with
“confiscation” and “sacrilege?” If names import
anything, we have great names wherewith to confront
these loud sounding terms. We have Milton, the
soundness of whose orthodoxy no one is entitled to
question, for has he not, in his Paradise, Lost, Paradise
Regained, and Hymn of the Nativity, provided us with
a framework of mythology for our theology more
complex and perfect, even than that of the Bible
itself? Well, Milton advocated the application of
revenues “ left,” to use his own words, “ perhaps
anciently to superstitious, but meant undoubtedly to
good and best uses, and therefore applicable by the
present magistrate to such uses as the church, or
�How to Complete the Reformation.
41
solid reason from whomsoever, shall convince him to
think best •>” and enumerates among those legitimate
uses for church property, the 11 erection in greater
numbers all over the land of schools and libraries, so
that all the land would be soon the better civilised.” *
Milton, it is true, was a Nonconformist, but we find
the most eminent of our Bishops, Bishop Butler,
declaring that “every donation to the Christian
Church is a human donation and no more, and there
fore cannot give a divine right, but such right only as
must be subject, in common with all other property,
to the regulation of human laws. . . . The persons
who gave lands to the Church had no right of
perpetuity in them, and consequently could convey no
such rights to the Church.” t
But authorities are not needed to prove to us that
the religious revenues of a people not only may
follow, the religion of that people, but are applicable
to their “ good and best uses,” whatever the changed
sentiment of the people may come to consider those
uses bo be. To regard them otherwise would be to
let the dead, not bury the dead, but govern the living
for evermore, a principle at once fatal to Christianity,
to the Reformation, to Liberalism, to all advance and
improvement whatever in the world.
Neither do we require names or authorities to
convince us that the “ confiscation,” and the
“ sacrilege,” if any, would not be on our part, but is
on theirs already who have diverted the property of the
Establishment from its “ good and best uses,” to the
use of an association for the preservation of sectarian
dogmas and the observance of sectarian rituals. It is
not the “Church” that would suffer injustice : It
is the State that is robbed, under the present system,
and that would be robbed in perpetuity by the
* “The likeliest way to remove Hirelings out of the
Church.”
t “ Letter to a Lady. ”
�42
How to Complete the Reformation.
appropriation of its revenues to the purposes of a
sect.
XV.
It is not for man to live for ever in the nursery.
As in the history of an individual, so in that of a
people, there is a period when larger views must pre
vail and greater freedom of action be accorded ; when
life will have many sides, and hold relations with
a vast range of facts and interests, of which none
can be left out of the account without detriment to
all concerned. Formerly, it may be, men were able,
or content, to recognise their relations with the
infinite on but a single side of their nature. When a
strongly marked line divided the object of their
religious emotions from all other objects, when that
alone was deemed divine, and all else constituted the
profane or secular, there may have been excuse for
their accordance of supremacy to the one class of
emotions, and of inferior respect, or even contempt,
to the other. But we have passed out of that stage,
we know no such distinction in kind between the
various classes of our emotions. They all are human,
and therefore all divine. They all serve to connect
us with the universe of which we are a portion, the
whole of which universe must be equally divine for
us, though we may rank some of its uses above others
in reference to our own nature. Thus, if there is
nothing that is specially sacred for us, it is because
there is nothing that is really profane; but all is sacred,
from the least to the greatest. And this is the lesson
that the Churches have yet to learn. Let us com
plete the Reformation by freeing our own Church from
its ancient limitations, which are of the nursery. Let
us release our teachers from the corner in which they
have so long been cramped, and they will soon learn
to take greater delight in exploring the many
mansions which compose the whole glorious house of
�How to Complete the Reformation.
43
the universe, and unfolding in turn to their hearers
whatever they can best tell, whether of science,
philosophy, religion, art, or morality, not necessarily
neglecting those spiritual metaphysics to which they
have in great measure hitherto been restricted, and
the consequence of which restriction has been but to
distort them and all else from their due proportion.
In the Church thus reformed, all subjects that tend
to edification will be fitting ones for the preacher. But
whatever the subject, the method will have to be but
one, always the scientific, never the dogmatic method.
The appeal will be to the intellects, the hearts, and
the consciences of the living, never to mere authority,
living or dead. There will be no heresy, because no
orthodoxy; or rather, the question of heresy as
against orthodoxy will be a question of method, not
of conclusions. From the pulpits of such a church no
genuine student or thinker will be excluded, but will
find welcome everywhere from congregations composed,
not of the women only and the weaker brethren, but
of men, men with brains and culture ! Who knows
what edifices of knowledge may be reared, what
reaches of spiritual perception may be attained, upon a
basis from which all the rubbish of ages has been cleared
away, and where all that is useful and true in the
past is built into the foundations of the future ! Who
can tell how nearly we may attain to the perfections
of the blessed when, no longer straitened in heart and
mind and spirit by a narrow sectarianism, but with the
scientific and the 'verifiable everywhere substituted for
the dogmatic and the incomprehensible, the veil which
has so long shrouded the universe as with a thick
mist shall be altogether withdrawn, when the All is
revealed without stint to our gaze in such degree as
each is able to bear, and Theology no longer serves
but to paint and darken the windows through which
man gazes out into the infinite !
Thus reformed, amended, and enlarged, the estab-
�44
How to Complete the Reformation.
lished Churches of Great Britain will be no exclusive
corporations, watched with jealous eyes of less
favoured sects. Nonconformity will disappear, for
there will be nothing to nonconform to: Fanaticism,
for there will be no Dogma; Intolerance and Bigotry, for
there will be no Infallibility. Comprehensive, as all
that claims to be national and human ought to be,
no conditions of membership will be imposed to
entitle any to a share of its benefits : but every
variety of opinion will find expression and a home
precisely in the degree to which it may commend
itself to the general intelligence.
The bitterness of sectarian animosity thus extin
guished, and no place found for dogmatic assertion
or theological hatred, it will seem as if the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and a new heaven
and new earth had come, in which there was no more
sea of troubles, or aught to set men against each other
and keep them from uniting in aid of their common
welfare. Lit by the clear light of the cultivated
intellect, and watered by the pure river of the
developed moral sense, the State will be free to
grow into a veritable City of God, where there shall
be no more curse of poverty or crime, no night of
intolerant stupidity, but all shall know that which is
good for all, from the least to the greatest.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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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 Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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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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How to complete the reformation
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 44 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh.
Creator
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Maitland, Edward
Date
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1871
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
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Secularism
Church of England
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (How to complete the reformation), identified by Humanist Library and Archives, is free of known copyright restrictions.
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RA1610
G5510
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Church of England-Disestablishment
Conway Tracts