A DANGER TO' PROTESTANTISM.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 198, 21 August 1900, Page 4

A DANGER TO' PROTESTANTISM.

(By Graduate.)

Says the witty rector of Seaming: "How we all hanker after a theory! What! liver all your life without a theory? It's as dreary a prospect-as living all your life without a baby, and yet some few great men have managed to pass through life placidly without the one or the other, and have not died forgotten or lived forlorn." Now, even though Mr Brown is a professor, he is by ho means forlorn, and has a theory. He thinks that our university Would be more interesting and.attract more public notice if the study of theology were permitted. This is a good and charming theory not likely to be put into practice. But how many good and charming babies never arrive at maturity! Yet, as there is much that is hypothetical in theology, there can be no harm in an endeavour to show how important and instructive a faculty of Divinity would be in our educational establishment at the back of the Supreme Court. Theology might be studied as a pure science •in which broad — viewily broad —professors and examiners might teach, and set papers to, students of every, or no, form of belief; for the subject would doubtless be popular with undergraduates as the absence of any fixed standard would prevent the marking of the papers from being too stiff. If, however, this plan did not find favour, others might be suggested. For, though ' the appointment of an Anglican professor of theology might vex the soul of his Wesleyan brother, and a Presbyterian of the Establishment, speaking excathedra, might be an offence to his Free Kirk cousin, and a member of the U.P. body, "founded by the Jesuits for the greater confusion of Scotch theology," might reasonably feel that his peculiar corner of the vineyard was left untilled, this laudable rivalry could be kept within moderate bounds by such division of English-speaking Protestantism being represented by professors lecturing in rotation during successive academic terms or years. And by this means, too, the faculty of theology would become, in numbers at least, the most powerful in the college. The conditions are so different that the example of England helps us but little. In new countries everything is criticised, but in old countries timehonoured anomalies are often stronger and dearer to the national mind than the most logical systems. The Queen shows her good taste and her sound judgment in this, as'in many other things, that she is very fond of going to Scotland, but as often as she crosses the border she changes the form of her belief. In South Britain she is the earthly ruler of an Episcopal Church, in North Britain she is the human head and leader of a Calvinistic establishment that has preached and written and fought to prove Episcopacy wrong. : The universities', certainly, have powerful schools of theology,' including many learned and world-wide names, but the" position til" these, schools is just as anomalous as that of sovereigns changing' doctrines by crossing rivers, or that of Bishops and Archbishops selected by possibly agnostic Prime Ministers. In fact, there is in Great Britain no science of national theology; for the faculties are merely bodies bound to support th-e church by law established. The professors of theology in Oxford and Edinburgh may be : firm ■ friends and good patriots, but, though they may agree in all other points, in the subjects they teach and are supposed to know best they are in theory at "least most solemnly at variance,' as each' is appointed to maintain that his friend is no safe guide in matters that concern the everlasting welfare of the nation. ■ And the confusion' and contradiction does- not end here. Almost every sect that thinks it knows the working of the Divine mind better than the established churches of England and Scotland has built colleges and seminaries to teach the truth of the Kingdom as it is understood by the infinitely elect. And these curious contradictions seem, in a sense, suited to old and settled communities. In them there is a life-giving power in-dead things. In them a ruined castle with a heroic past is in reality, jf its story be rightly read, a better defence than a brand new up-to-date fort that calls up; only feelings of mechanical strength, but can never make a loyal heart beat faster or seta patriot's eyes aflame. In them attractive , incongruities and customs and institutions that seem to have lived their, time are neither useless nor obstructive. They are rather the monuments of an eager past that sought most earnestly lor light and liberty, rather an encouragement to succeeding generations aided by greater knowledge and wider charity to emulate the strenuous efforts of. their ancestors. '..■•■••...•.■.; But in the colonies we have no worn and hoary landmarks, material or figurative, and in our newness we must be our own.guides. ■ Yet in this there is a danger, there is a fear that an unfavourable aspect of Protestantism may be brought into undue prominence. In Catholic countries people go to church to worship, in Protestant countries there is perhaps a growing tendency to go to church to hear what the Reverend — has got to say. In other words, Protestants are possibly beginning to attach more and more- importance to showy. selj-*asser-tion', and less and less to the. neverending r subtle influence ctf adoration and prayer, to. the attitude-like, thnt of .obedient loving children, believing1 as their, fathers believed, worshipping as their fathers worshipped, led .by the power''of uninterrupted" doctrine and practice in the paths of that peace which the carnal mind cannot comprehend, but the spiritual man fan know more surely than any other thing; ... ■ Yes, the Protestant outlook in the colony is disqtiieting". The various divisions can receive no training- in Divinity in the University, and as they have not the means to properly equip seminaries of their own to g>ive instruction to candidates for the ministry, the result is inevitable. Ordination will become, if indeed it has not already become, extremely' easy, and instruction in divine things will necessarily fall into the hands of those who never having had the opportunity of thorough training, will be apt from no fault of their own to overlook the higher duties of their office and give ■their chief attention to the social and economic, questions of the hour. - This- statement; unfortunately, is but too easily confirmed; it is but too frequently proved in the daily press. The English ma.v not be an ostenta-

tiously religious people, but tVey take a living interest in matters concerning religion. Things of eternal importance are frequently discussed in public. Earnestr questions are often asked, but an authoritative corporate answer is hardly ever given. The Church is silent. And yet this silence cannot be due to self-restraint or inopportuneness, for individual preachers unchecked are but too ready to have their irresponsible weightless opinions appear in the correspondence column of the daily papers. Can it be that the Protestant Church is silent through apathy, through fear, through want of union, or because she is not an organsied body at all, but a mere collection of disjointed members? An aggressive clergy displaying but too clearly their own unpreparedness cannot fail to somewhat alienate thoughtful laymen; and there is a growing possibility that public services will grow less acceptable, and the outward expression of religion become from choice what in the early days of Christianityit was from necessity—a family observance. And this lamentable condition need astonish no one. It is an unforeseen, and sad but natural, outcome of the Eeformation . The early reformers fought, though they did not know it, for freedom of speech. They thought, they were fighting for the freedom of what is always free—the Kingdom of God; and having gained "the day and won a victory, they did not understand they made their supposed freedom a prison-house for others. Without ••■ solidarity, without tradition,, without having proved their weapons they tried to force their new dogmas on others, and succeeded in multiplying sects and accentuating religious differences. And as the influence of these unfortunate accompaniments Qf religious freedom affect "us still, there is a fear that in the colony the descendants of the reformers may lose not only the true idea of a church, but even the semblance of impressive and stimulating public worship. Aid let no one say ithat this is the outcome of too much liberty, for the facts of to-day show that it is not so. Certainly, the Anglo-Saxon race loves freedom, but loves it linked with selfrestraint. Colonials have submitted themselves to severe discipline and gene round the world to •share the responsibilities, the trials, the defeats, and the triumphs of the Motherland, and are willing to join her in one great federation. In secular things the Englishman is ready to forget the individual in the State, and to limit his actions by law in proportion as ne feels that*he is free; but in spiritual things it is otherwise. In them ancient antipathies and modern differences tend to crush the effort to form a visible Kingdom of God symbolical of the City above. The ministers themselves seem to forget, or have .never been really taught, that they should be guides in holiness, removed from the cares and turmoils of the world, set apart"-to -show other men how' to walk, as if they had even in this life a share in. tlie citizenship of Jerusalem," which is free. They seem but too easily tempted to forget their1 high calling, and step down into the dusty arena of secular strife. * It must not for a. moment be supposed that the saintly influence is forgotten of thbse of the clergy who, with few gifts of this world, are yet by their earnest teaching, by their daily walk and conversation, living proofs of the beauty and. all-suffering- power of tJie Gospel; but just as an army must have skilled leaders as well as devoted soldiers, so, too, the Church militant requiries in her armies gifts of the mind as well as of the spirit, and the countrymen of Hooker and Chillingworth, Leighton and Berkeley, should be the last to forget that the humblest piety amd the highest intellect are. often found together. Those who wish well to their church must not Overlook the plain teaching of history, that when the clergy are not intellectually superior, or equal, to the laity, the standard of religious feeling is lowered, the services degenerate into bizarre displays of narrow-minded zeal, or into the distractionis of a sensuous ritual, and the laity gradually divide, into the apathetic and the superstitious. All who know anything of the ways and'thoughts of the new genteration aTe aware that there is ground for uneasiness ■ and anxiety. Perhaps the laity are not entirely the cause of a. change thatyis possibly not an improvement.