The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-01 00:00:00

THE MEETING OF CONVOCATION.

It must be admitted that during the present
Session Convocation has displayed more than usual
vitality. After liberalising the time-honoured insti-
tution of Godfathers aid Godmothers, and making
a demonstration in favour of a revival of the Offer-
tory, it has proceeded to attack the great religious
scandal of the day—the redoubtable volume of
" Essays and Reviews." We are not disposed to cavil
at this exercise of its functions. Convocation is a
pretty fair exponent of the views of the great
body of the clergy, and its . judgment on ques-
tions of this nature is, at all events, less invidious
than that of any isolated Bishop who may be rash
enough to break a lance with an imputed heretic
in the Arches Court. The wisest course, in our
opinion, would have been to leave the matter to
be settled between the public and the booksellers,
who, but for the timely interference of the Bishops,
would have found their speculation a losing affair.
The controversy, however, once stirred, must be
allowed to burn itself out, and the poking which
Convocation has just administered may help to
expedite the process. We have no intention of
burning our fingers by taking part in any theolo-
gical discussion which may arise upon the volume
in question. But there is a practical view of the
subject which must be obvious to every one who
gives it a moment's thought, and upon which, as
laymen, we may be permitted to make a few re-
marks.
The orthodox gentlemen who believe in Bishop-
rics believe also, as a matter of course, in every-
thing else which is true and proper. Theirs
is a wonderfully malleable creed,—just starch
enough, just lax enough, just tight enough,
just loose enough, with just argument enough and
just sentiment enough in it, spiced and flavoured to
the standard taste with great judgment and accu-
racy, adding here and dropping there, taking in
the little floating particles of current thought as
they go by, so as just to keep up with the day,
and not to pass it, and be at once properly old
and properly new. It is this tendency of the day
which converts any honest and bold expression of
religious opinion out of the established mould and
type of the day into a striking phenomenon, and
we may even say one which in a certain sense com-
mands respect. It is, at any rate, plain that those
who make such a demonstration, if they are clergy-
men and men of ability, sacrifice their prospects to
their own views of truth. But, while we give the
authors of the " Essays and Reviews" full credit for
their sincerity and self-sacrifice, and while we
honestly think that their avowed scepticism cannot
do a tenth part of the injury to practical faith that
the constant spectacle of the huge mass of worldly
unreal belief does, we cannot shut our eyes to the
awkward fact of a certain number of able and edu.•
cated men among the clergy having avowed a reli-
gious belief different not only from that of our
clergy, but from that of our congregations. This is
a very serious thing. The condemnation or quasi
condemnation just passed on the book by Convoca-
tion will not go for much, but a collision with the
religious creed of the laity is a difficulty. Some of
these gentlemen are parochial clergymen ; they have
to preach every Sunday, they have to catechise the
children, they have to attend the sick. The ques-
tion is whether, holding the opinions they do, and
interpreting Scripture as they do, they can consist-
ently minister to the religious wants of an English
parish. Does not the relation of the clergyman to
his parishioners require an indentity of belief in the
main ? And, supposing the population of an ordi-
nary English parish were fairly put in possession
of the ideological interpretation of Scripture ex-
pounded in these " Essays," of their theory of mira-
cles, their theory of prophecy, and their explana-
i onmo %Atilt doctrines, can we think it
would admit that.there was this identity of belief
in case its own clergyman held these views P What
would it think of him P Undoubtedly two persons
with a very different belief may hold a common
language, and converse in this language, and the
one may teach and the other be taught, the one
be the spiritual adviser and the other the advised,
by the medium of this language; but if, as soon
as the parish clergyman has shut the door of
the school or cottage behind him, the unlucky
discovery is made that his language has had one
meaning to his parishioners and another to himself,
their religious faith would feel a considerable shock.
It must be admitted that this is not a desirable state
of things, or even a state of things which would be
tolerated supposing it were really known. We
should need no Convocation and no Ecclesiastical
Courts; a vicar or curate of a parish who got into
the pulpit and proclaimed himself an ideological
interpreter of Scripture, who held that the pro-
phecies were made after the events, and that mira-
cles were impossible, would to a certainty find his
parish too hot to hold him. This is the test of his
suitableness for a post. Would he venture to preach
his views to his own flock in his own church ? If
he did, this would be the result; but we do not be-
lieve that one of the writers of the Essays would,
and that not from any cowardice or intentional
disguise, but because he would really, when it came
to the point, find that he respected the popular
faith too much to attack it on its hearth, and in its
own sanctuary of the parish church. It is all very
well to write a book ; you are then only disputing
in scholis ; you are addressing men as intellectual
inquirers, not as believers; but it is a different thing
to confront the countenance of natural and simple-
minded faith. But if this is avoided the awkward-
ness of the fact itself still remains, that the clergy-
man has a different belief from that of his
parishioners.
We know one " Essayist" will say that he gives
his people the real kernel and essence of Chris-
tianity, all that their minds really take in, even
when they listen to the ordinary teaching of the
Church ; he will tell us that people are mistaken
when they think it is this or that fact or particular
tenet expressed in a particular way which is the true
aliment of their souls, and that it is something
deeper than this upon which they are really feeding
all the time, which deeper thing the new teacher
gives them, only in a purer form, and without
the incrustations. But, if full credit is given
him for really thinking this, is this the aspect in
which English congregations regard matters of be-
lief? Or, rather, is not their belief essentially and
vitally bound up with certain definite doctrines and
attested facts, so that if the facts or the doctrines
were cleared away there could be no manner of
doubt what would become of the belief ? The faith
of a mass of people, indeed the faith of a commu-
nion, the faith of a nation, is by no means a perfect
thing ; its practical basis is habit and custom more
than reason ; it is apt to be more loud and clamorous
than it has any right from its own intrinsic life and
genuineness to be; it assumes its own earnestness
to be much greater than it is; it likes controversy,
quarrelling, and disputing, because this excitement
breeds a sort of artificial earnestness in the absence
of that true seriousness which prefers a calmer
atmosphere, and can stand the trying test of dull
ordinary life ; it is wanting in fairness, it will not
listen, it must Speak, and not always decorously ;
it is abusive, it imputes motives, it calls names. But
when you have summed up all the offensive charac-
teristics which attach to the temper of popular
faith, what have you said more than that men are
men ? If there is to be such a thing as a wide

spread faith in the world, the faith of a church or
the faith of a nation, it must and will be a faith to
which such imperfections as these attach. It may
be criticised then, and, indeed, it is abundantly ex-

posed to criticism, but still this popular faith is,
with all its faults of temper, a holy thing--it is

the most sacred and valuable treasure we have, the

sanctifier of society, and the bond of a human

communion and fellowship which dares to look
beyond the grave for its proper sphere, and links
men together as spit itual and immortal beings.
It is, then, an awkward prospect which we have
before us, if we are to look forward now to a

struggle of a class of philosophical clergy with the
creed of their congregations. There are many

minute distinctions of doctrine about which these

congregations do not care, but there is one autho-
rity upon which they do stand, and that is the
authority of Scripture. The Bible, with all its facts
and its doctrines naturally interpreted, is undeniably
the religion of Protestant England. Our clergy,
then, have a considerable latitude allowed them,
but any theory which brings them into collision
with the Bible, and which forces them to adopt a
peculiar mode of interpreting the Bible, depriving
it of its character as a record of certain actual facts
connected with the foundation of our faith, idealiz-
ing these facts, and, in short, making the Bible
a totally different thing from what the common be-
lief Aupposes it to be—such a theory does appear to