THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 14963, 24 August 1912, Page 3

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

THE BIRTHDAY OF NONCONFORMITY. A NOTABLE ANNIVERSARY. [By THE PILGJUM.] To-day is the birthday of English Nonconformity. Two hundred and fifty years ago there came a climax m the religious life of our Old Land. An attempt was made to bond lo tho will of on« religious party, restored to accustomed dominance in the State, another party of recent appearance and growing power. The attempt ended in failure. The experiment was carried to the breaking point, and the new party, refusing to be bent, broke away with a snap. Though with to-day five jubilees have passed since then, the break has not been repaired. The severed party has remained aloof, working out its own remarkable destiny. After such an interwal, and at this distance, we may reflect with profit and without pain upon the crisis of August 24, 1662. The bare facts are simple, and soon told. The Stuart monarchy had been restored in the person of Charles 11. The English people as a whole had not been captured by the ideals of Cromwell and his Independents. They were tired of the discipline and disputes of Puritanism. The Episcopal party, so Jong on the defensive, found in the Restoration an opportunity for the reassertion of its policy in Church arid State. But at first there was promise of reconciliation rather than revolution in matters religious. Toleration was declared to be the guiding principle of the new King. " We declare," Charles wrot3, "a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and we 6hall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to us for the. full granting that indulgence." It was on the strength of the declaration in which these words occur that he was welcomed to the Throne. But hopes of toleration were short-lived. Conferences between opposing parties« broke down. Presbyterian suggestions of a modified Episcopacy were mot with refusals to grant any concessions on points of ceremonial ami government. Parliament refi'sed to give the force of law to a Royal proposal of mediation, and the parting of the ways was reached with rapid strides. By Act of Parliament all the clergy ejected during the Civil War were reinstated in their livings—even those who had been dismissed for scandalous living or almost . as scandalous incompetency. Then the Corporations Act excluded from all municipal offices those who failed to renounce the Covenant and conform to strictest Episcopal usage. A special Act was directed against the Quakers. The old ecclesiastical courts were restored. Then, in May of 1662 (less than two years after the landing of Charles at Dover), the last step was taken. Henceforth there was no returning. There was passed (to give the full title) "An Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administration of Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies, and for establishing the form of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in the Church of England." The Act recited the attempts to secure uniformity in Elizabeth's time, and proceeded : And yet this notwithstanding, a great i number of people in divers parts of this realm, following their own sensuality, and living without knowledge and due fear of God, do wilfully and schismatically abstain and refuse to come to their parish churches and other public places where common prayer, administration of the sacraments, and preaching of the Word of God, is used upon the Sundays and other days ordained and appointed to be kept and observed as holy days. That quaint, legal definition of Nonconformity still stands upon the Statute Book of old England. On or before the Feast of St. Bartholomew (August 24) " every parson, vicar, or other minister whatsoever" was "to make This*declaration in presence of his congregation : " I do here declare an unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the book entitled the Book of Common Prayer." The Act brought within its sweep every holder of an ecclesiastical position and all professors and tutors in the universities. Failure to comply with its provisions meant in every case deprivation of position. The day chosen was ono of evil omen. Ninety years before, across the Channel, that Feast of St. Bartholomew was the occasion of a stain upon tho record of France and the fame of religion. Then, thanks to a scheming woman, a weak king, and a political feud that linked itself to an intolerant religious hate, one of the most shameful tragedies of tho race was enacted. Before daybreak that fearful Sunday the grand old Protestant admiral, Gaspard Do Coligny, was brutally murdered, his body being flung out "of the window for identification by the Due De Guise. Having savagely mado proof of the mangled body, and delivered it with kicks and curses to the mob, the Due cried : "Courage. We have begun well ; now for the others." The "others" were thousands of men, women, and children—helpless, Paris, and tens of thousands in the provinces. But, hor rible a,s was that gruesome Huguenot massacre, it had no more tragic results than tho happenings of St Bartholomew's Day, when England's Act of Uniformity took effect. On that day about a. fifth of the English clergy were driven from their parishes as Nonconformists. As our careful and eloquent churchman, John Richard Green, says in his 'History,' no such sweeping change in tho religious aspect of the Church had ever been seen before. "The change wrought by St. Bartholomew's Day was a distinctly religious change, and it was a change which, in its suddenness and completeness, stood utterly alone, Tho rectors and vicars who were driven out were the most learned and the most active of their order. Tho bulk of the great livings throughout the country were in their hands. They stood at the head of the London clergy, as the London clergy stood in general repute at tho head of their class throughout England. They occupied the higher posts at the two universities." And, as Green points out. thee© two thousand who were ejected were not only inclusive of the most learned of the English clergy ; they were Men whose zeal and labor had diffused throughout the country a greater appearance of piety and religion than it had ever displayed before. But the expulsion of these men was far more to the Church of England than the loss' of their ' individual services. It was the definite expulsion of a great party, which, from the time of the Reformation, had played the most active and popular part in the lifa of the Church. J It meant, also, the cutting off of that 1 Church from the general body of Protestant churches. And while thus cut off from all healthy religious communion with tho world without, it sank into immobility within. With the expulsion of the Puritan clergy, all change, all efforts after reform, all national development suddenly stopped From that time to this the Episcopal Church has been unable to meet the varying spiritual needs of its adherents by any modification of its government or its worship. It stands alone among all the religious bodies of Western Christendom in its failure through two hundred years to devise a 6ingle mew service of prayer or of praise. But though spiritual impoverishment of a great Church was the price exacted for the temporary triumph of the effort to shackle religion, there was ultimate gain for religion itself. The Act of Uniformity was a measure of religious persecution, and its enforcement, and that of consequent Acts, entailed terrible suffering. Many of the ejected clergy went out into the world to starve. Robert Hall estimates that at least 10,000 people perished in gaol an account of these Acta Richard Baxter, who was himself imprisoned, explains: "Many of the ministers being afraid to lay down "their ministry after they had been ordained to it, preached to such as would hear them in fields and private houses, till.

they were apprehended and cast into gaol, where many of them perished." It was at this time that John Bunya-n spent twelve years in prison at Bedford. That persecution hrought a gain to England's religious life as a. whole. To quote Green yet again : '" If the issues of St. Bartholomew's Day have been harmful to the spiritual life of the English Church, they have been in the highest degree advantageous to the cause of religious liberty." So the eventual outcome of the Act has been progress for that which is the churches' raieon d'etre. They exist for religion ;it does not exist for them. It is greater than them all, and their service to it has been rendered at times through sacrifice, even unwilling loss. The Act and its inevitable persecution unitr.l the Nonconformists, created a great body of men caring more for religion than for any accustomed forms of expression of it, put new life into the evangelical spirit, and gave birth to a fervent zeal that was invaluable in the difficult times that followed the Restoration. Looking back calmly across the intervening years, it seems idle to deny that such a religious upheaval as that of 1662 was a stimulus to religion. It put iron into the blood of the Church universal. And that broad vision reveals justification for critical cleavages that must at first have seemed calamitous. Multiplication by division has been the law. Life has increased through fission. The encvsting tendency of institutions has needed to be violently overcome in order that truth might thrive and spread. "God fulfils Himself in many ways." Trtrth has many facets. Nonconformity, Protestantism, Christianity itself, have been thrustincs forth of an abundant life. Many of the sections of the Christian Church can show just cause for their arising. " Old Catho-1 He," "United Free." "Methodist," "Salvation Army," these names mean much in religion's record. That is a _ historic | church which can show a historic necessity for its beginning. This is not to say that a division once created need always continue. It all deppnds on the conditions that forced the division. If these continue the division may remain ; if these change, the separation may be ended. Where protest has been heeded or witness to neglected truth has proved convincing, there "we may look for the ranks of the Church militant to be closed up. _ In some cases this should happen now; it is happening. In others the time is not yet. Meanwhile, in a land where all churches are equal before the law, we may "keep the vhity of the spirit in the bond of peace," even though we may not find some ways of worship or expressions of religious truth quite suited to gut own 'temperament or thought.