The Express.
London, England, 1847-07-20 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Consei!idiom ofthe the Future; n Practi-
cal Explanation of the Correspondence with the Right
llonourobk William Gladstone, on the German Church,
Episcopacy, and Jerusalem, with a !'reface, Notes, and
the compkle Correspondence. By CHRISTIAN CH ARIAS
JOSIAS llvmsrv, D. Ph., D.C.L. Translated front the
German, under the superintendence of, and with additions
by, the Author. London. 1847.
The original work, of which we propose to notice
the English version, was published at Hamburg in
1845, and excited a good deal of attention in Germany.
It originally, however, arose from an attempt to meet
some English difficulties, arisin from the institution
of the Jerusalem bishopric. When the King of
Prussia and the English bishops agreed on the insti-
tion of a bishopric fur both nations, a good deal of
confusion naturally arose in the minds of ecclesiastical
theorists and connoisseurs. Was the Anglican succes-
sion to becommunicated to Lutherans and Calvinists—
and if so, were they to sacrifice their schismatical,
or we our orthodox,sonsiateney ? To English ob-
jectors it was, of course, answered, that those who
might be ordained at Jerusalem would belong to the
church from which they derived the true succession ;
while, for the satisfaction of dissatisfied German Pro-
testants, Abeken published an authorised account of
the arrangements connected with the foundation of
the bishopric, from which it appeared that the minis-
ters to be ordained in the new diocese would be in
communion with the united church of Prussia.

Mr. Gladstone, es an earnest suppoi ter of Anglican
principles, naturally communicated to the Chevalier
Bunsen his impression that Abeken's view was " not
only quite at variance with the real character of the
project itself, but also utterly fatal to whatever life or
realities, whatever of hope for any other, or for oar-
select., there may be in our episcopal constitution."
M. Bunsen's elaborate reply meets the objection by
the not very satisfactory explanation that Abeken's
book was addressed, not to the English, but to the
Germans; that if the Prussian church recognised the
validity of Anglican orders, the English church could
not be aggrieved by any relation into which ministers
so ordained might enter with ecclesiastical bodies of
their own country. He does not notice the exclusive
character which we believe belongs to every chris-
tian church—certainly to that of England. Even the
laity, and, much more, the clergy, who acknowledge
their communion with a non-episcopal church, cease
to be in communion with one professedly founded on
the succession traced through bishops.
The Chevalier Bunsen, however, due not content
himself with answerinu or uotanswering the difficulty
originally proposed to him. He farther declares that
while he considers episcopacy of a certain kind as
useful, and even necessary, to a christiau church, and
while he wishes to introduce it as an additional ele-
ment into the presbyterian system of church govern.
ment, he neveithelees utterly repudiates and abhors
the high church and catholic claims which are set up
in its behalf. " If," he says in a theological tone,
which is unpleasantly frequent in his work, " if an
angel from heaven should manifest to me that by in-
troducing or asserting, or favouring only, the intro-
duction of such an episcopacy into any part of Ger-
many I should not only make the German nation
glorious and powerful over all the nations of the
world, nay, combat successfully the unbelief, pan-
theism, and atheism of the day, I should not do it, so
help me God. Amen."
From this correspondence the work before us arose.
M. Bunsen naturally found himself led on to develop
his views of a model church ; and his scheme derives
much importance from the position which he is be-
lieved to hold of chief counsellor and confidant of the
King of Pruitt in ecclesiastical matters. He pru-
dently, and no doubt truly, declares that he has no
official sanction for his plans ; but it is difficult to
suppose that his work was not more or less intended
to feel the way for future legislation. The King of
Prussia is well known as a dilettante religioniet. His
intimacy with Mrs. Fry, and his frequent exhibitions
of pietistic tendencies, have won for him some secta-
rian applause, and much ridicule from the not very
reverent section of society which determines the
public opinion of Berlin. Indeed, the weak
point both of his position and that of his minister
in England as religious reformers, is the very
limited amount of popularity which religious
views enjoy in Northern Germany. In England
we are all more or less religious, theoretically or prac-
tically. In Berlin, from various causes, an entirely
different state of feeling prevails. The king however
forms, as we have said, an exception, and we have
no doubt that he contemplates ecclesiastical changes
as a complement to those which he has set on foot in
the working of the constitution.
It is remarkable that the form of church govern-
ment which the Chevalier Bunsen proposes, is essen-
tial, popular, and free from state control. The only
check which the government is to possess on the
church, is that which it will derive from the power
of withholding the supplies ; but Mr. Bunsen does
not seem to consider that any control will be wets-
nary. We cannot but think that he is wrong. A
free state may, though with difficulty, keep a free
church in order ; but a free presbyterian church
under a quasi-absolute government would attract to
itself all the opposition and discontent which is not
I allowed a political vent. It would supply a workshop
for pamphlets which the censorship could not reach—
a club which would elude the police. Nothing is
easier than to clothe politics in the Isognage of reli-
gion. Heine and Bruno Bauer would soon become
orthodox communicants if the synods and assemblies
of the church allowed of free discussion and of popular
elections.

The church of the future is founded on the existing
Presbyterian Church of Rhenish NVestphalia, with
many additions calculated to give it soundness and
uniformity, including the introduction of bishops.
Mr. lisiusen is, Lowever, as we have seen, wholly
opposed to the high church theory of episcopacy. He
asserts, with eloquent prolixity, the universal priest-
hood of einistians, the great doctrine which, as he
sap, the catholic church has obscured, and which the
Reformation re introduced without carrying it out in
practice. his bishops, therefore, are to depend on
the church, not the church on the bishops.
In the Prussian monarchy there are about 6,000
parishes, from which Mr. Bunsen would form 60
dioceses of about 100 parishes each. The provincial
synAls are to elect the bishops, the crown reserving a
veto. The bishop is to ordain the clergy and deacons,
and, in conjunction with two lay assessors, to admi-
nister the ecclesiastical affairs of the diocese. Ten
parishes are to form a deanery, the bishop being dean
of his own neighbonrhood. Churchwardens, over-
seers, and, above all, schoolmasters, are to be ordained
deacons. Mr. Bunsen speaks with enthusiasm of the
body of parochial schoolmasters some of whom, he
says, have a salary of less than 101. a year, while
aimost all of them have enjoyed a much higher educa-
tion than any even now proposed for the correspond-
ing functionaries iu England. But in Germany all
clanks are better educated than in England, and
educated men are more easily satisfied. Money is
far less than with us the object of life and the
standard of happiness.
The whole monarchy, according to the same plan,
is to be divided for ecclesiastical purposes into six
great provinces, each including, on an average, ten
bishoprics,or 1,000 parishes. Dioceses and provinces
are each to be represented by a synod. In the dio-
cese 100 clergy, consisting of the bishop, the nine
deana, and the ninety parochial clergy are, in con-
junction with 122 laymen, of whom 10 are returned
by the schoolmaster, to do the deliberation or talking
of the church, without meddling with administrative
business. In the provincial synod, the ten bishops,
ten deputed deans, two deputies from the theological
faculty of the university, and ten from the parochial
clergy, are to be united with twenty-two lay coun-
cillors, two school deputif s, and twenty deputies from
the diocesan synods. We have not space to enter
into the minister details, but the great prin-
ciple is that the string of red tape which
at present pulls the springs of church as well as
of state in Prussia is to be withdrawn. If the ma-
chine is to move, it must be worked by the religious
feeling of the members of the church ; and we can
only remark that if that feeling exists in such suffi-
cient force, we are not aware why the bureaucratic
element has hitherto been found indispensable. We
do not pay any extravagant compliment to the
Prussian minister and the friend of Niebuhr, when
we attribute to him the merit of having drawn out a
scheme of an ecclesiastical polity which hangs tole-
rably well together on paper : a scheme sufficiently
ingenious to interest readers of a turn for church
constitution building, sufficiently plausible to meet
obvious objections. Many can do this; many have
done it. We all know how many sages the last half
century has produced capable of drawing a constitu-
tion, including alike things sacred and things profane,
for any given European or transatlantic community
out of some one or other pigeon-hole of a crowded
escritoire. This is but sketching the parts of a ma-
chir,e ; to set it a going is another matter ; to keep it
going another matter still. We all know where the
difficulty has been found in the case of the moat
purely secular constitutions. The august constituent
assembly made the constitution, and thought that it
had done the hardest part of the week which France
hod to do. Their successors, coming as to an
easy task, found that the difficulty was left for them ;
and, moreover, that the difficulty was an impossibility.
Let U 3 avail ourselves of the opportunity to borrow
from Carlyle a few words of humorous wisdom.
" Like doomed familiar spirits : ordered by magic
under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of
sand—to ' make the constitution march.' If the con-
stitution would but march ! Alas ! the constitution
will not stir. It falls on its face : they tremblingly
lift it ou end again. March, thou gold constitution !
The constitution will not march. ' He shall march,
by —,' said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore.
The Corporal answered mournfully, ' He will never
march in this world.' "
The experience of the 19th century has made this a
truism to us, which was a paradox to our fathers.
It seems now obvious enough that life is a
different thing from the framework of life, and that
to make institutions live, you must, by one means or
another, put life into them. If this is difficult in the
case of a secular constitution, it is not easier in the
attempt to form an ecclesiastical polity. Under one
form of government or another men must live ; and
the daily life, manners, habits, and dealings of the
men of a nation—all those things which the constitu-
tion builder notices and respects if he is a wise man,
forgets or affronts if he is an unwise man, and so
leaves his constitution either deficient or self-destruc-
tive—these things make in fact of themselves three
parts in four of the life of every state ; directly
embodying themselves in many institutions, they are
or shou'd be the moving principle of all ; and where
the saperadded, and, so to speak, arbitrary, portion of
the constitution works in accordance with these in-
ternal forces, the state is so far well-orgauised.
Speaking of national as we would of individual
existence, we may say that the men, the living spirits,
of a nation are its circulating blood, its life : the con-
stitution or state is the body or framework of that
life—essential to keep it together and give it unity of
action but receiving life from it, and incapable of
living with any other life than that so derived.
Given, then, a nation—a community of men—
and the maker of a state has most of his
work done to his hands. Yet the remainder is
a hard task for the wisest. The builder of the Church
of the Future may find his work, perhaps, easier, as
far as the mere edifice is concerned. He may find,
or he justified in assuming that he shall find, a less
inexhaustible variety of circumstances to reduce
under sone common form, a set of materials less in-
tractable than those which come under the hand of
his secular brother in the art of law-making. It may
seem to him that while the one has to deal
with all possible combinations of facts, and
more kinds of men, from " soldier to thief,"
than children count on their fingers ; the other
has but to organise one great department, and to
distinguish two great classes—the instructors and the
instructed—the clergy and the laity. It may seem to
him, therefore, that he has done much, when availing
himself first of the six great divisions of the Prussian
kingdom, and next of the accidental, but permanent,
prevalence among Europeans of the habit of
counting by tens, he has reduced the parochial in-
cumbent to a convenient decimal of the dean, who is
in his turn a decimal of the bishop, who is himself but
a decimal of the great provincial abstraction.
The inn et penseldent swiss," we the et ewe peas-
esthess le th Mm ef seelthried di week Ghee 110 dtheesse, eed
n
providedeld hes did~ dew method k the Erin le hue
eosins et Sea no
?he term eves demelse, the WM MO
=Thee the indelens ef the aura esseemend loth the
sole, nod the meet ethemient
oasts Ns
ma. As the dimes is et liks • east and the
Wass Me a greet Moser, it Mon, in the Oat
whiner bolds psi of the Ithier distoloe, Tegreenned
the same will be hoe in the dhow of .6, la the desrl et Ind
in the push of AK To ads replerity In the proposed esindllnden
we by co mesas egret. Irrennier es nature is, semethisnee is the
keet rsconmendstlien of all seraeeesr estaftwers. Ilismees nth
is rash end Mdse. it does net Mow dot • Shedd est
sasW inneeth. We cab Imply be
we tt be
made even or method, the Omost will set yew."
Here, explained In a metaphor somewhat different
from, but smelly expressive with, those which
we have beim employed—here lies the diffi-
culty. Have the materials employed., life, or not?
Will they grow ? A temple can be built on a better
or a worse model : on the model adopted by those
who have built before us, if we cannot muster raven
tion enough for a form more suited to our own time.
If the Church of the Future be merely parallel with
the church implied in the term church extension—a
church which can be built with forms and figures, as
that with brick or stone—we need feel little anxiety,
as we shall certainly feel little interest, for the fate of
the Church of the Future. The generation which has
undertaken to complete the Cathedral of Cologne,has
undertaken a task, perhaps, of equal difficulty, and at
least equal profit, with that of constructing for Prussia
a well-shaped, substantial-looking, respectable scheme
of church polity. For such an achievement we need no
noble army of martyrs, but a noble army of that class
of intellectual architects and hodmen, who are as plen-
tiful as spectacles in "sapient Germany." Bat a
temple is useless without worshippers ; and worship-
pers, other than in name, will not kneel before a shrine
which they do not believe to be in one way or other
sanctified by the presence of something divine.
The " establishment" of the future is one thing.
The Church of the Future is another thing :I
its life must be—the only possible, life for a I

church—the faith of those who belong to it. If'
Mr. Bunsen can discover what his countrymen have
really faith in—if ho can satisfy himself that that
faith is accordant with his own--and if he can then
embody that faith in a form which shall be accepted
by him and them as a fit setting forth of a positive
belief, not as a mere evasion of hostility, then, and
then only, his Church of the Future will live with the
life of the churches of the past, not acquiesced in, but
clung to ; not tolerated, but loved. We have already
paralleled, and it is certainly no uncomplimentary
parallel, Mr. Bunsen's undertaking with that.