Correspondence.

The Unity of Christendom.

To the Editor.

Sir,—In offering a few strictures upon Dr. Barry's letter published in your last Number, I think it only fair to acknowledge the satisfaction I have in dealing with an opponent who does not condescend to be abusive; who has enough of the angelic or archangelic temper to abstain from bringing "a page 92 railing accusation "against a theological adversary. Dr. Barry, as I under-stand him, objects to the admission of Unitarians into the Unity of Christendom, because, whilst calling themselves Christians, they do not believe in the Godhead of Christ. Now, in the first place, I can find nothing in the word "Christian" necessarily implying such belief. A man calls himself, or is called by others, a Wesleyan, a Mohammedan, a Papist, a Buddhist: does any sane man pretend to say that Wesley or Mohammed, the Pope or Buddha is regarded by even the most enthusiastic of partisans as God. But further, I beg, with all deference to Dr. Barry, to challenge his right to set up any such test at all. It has always been a puzzle to me that orthodox Christians, holding as they do such extravagantly exalted views of the nature and character of Jesus, seem nevertheless to attach no more importance to the very words of their incarnate God, than to the sayings of Paul or Peter, or even to the mysterious vaticinations of the writer of the Apocalypse. Coming, then, to the very words of Jesus, we find him exclaiming : "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Such was the "basis of comprehension" announced by Jesus, and the "brand" by which his followers were to be recognised. Not a word is said about holding the Trinity in Unity, or the Incarnation, or any theological dogma whatever. In fact no such word as Trinity or Incarnation is to be found in the Bible. I think I have a right therefore to claim, as the criterion of membership for Christendom, love toward mankind, or, as the writer of Ecce Homo terms it, "the enthusiasm of humanity."

Dr. Barry does indeed favour us with a text for a proposed sermon which (even according to the version of Mr. Martineau) he clearly regards as a crusher. Granting, however, that this and other passages in the New Testament afford some ground for the ordinary doctrines of orthodox Christianity, I may without hesitation affirm that there can be found at least at many which tell on the other side. And surely in the case of doctrines so incomprehensible, involving so many palpable contradictions and absurdities, we might fairly expect an overwhelming weight of evidence before we feel ourselves bound to accept them. That Jesus should be both God and man in one person was a doctrine to challenge credence eighteen centuries ago; when therefore the evidence of the New Testament writers is not more in favour of that supposition than it is in favour of the more rational hypothesis of his humanity, common sense will surely urge us to give the verdict on the side of the rational as against the supernatural.

Dr. Barry is no doubt familiar with such texts as the following : "My Father is greater than I."—"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the son, but the Father."—"[ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God."—"Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man." I might go on quoting texts which are certainly hard to interpret on the hypothesis of Christ's Godhead, but I would rather remind Dr. Barry that bandying texts is a work as dangerous as it is unprofitable; dangerous, for if once the outside public become aware how easy it is to pile up quotations on either side for or against these speculative points of doctrine, they might be led to one or other or both of these conclusions—"that the Bible is full of blunders, incongruities and contradictions"—to quote the words of Mr. William Lorando Jones—or else that these mysterious questions are of no importance at all.

Dr. Barry is very indignant that his arguments should be ignored on account of his education as a clergyman, and alleges his status as a member of a learned University. He quite fails, however, to see that the treatment he complains of has no reference whatever to his rank as an educated gentleman, but to the fact that, as an ordained clergyman, he has pledged himself to maintain the whole budget of theological dogmas comprised in the Prayer Book and the Thirty-nine Articles. To these a clergyman of the English Church, frequently when quite a youth, gives his unfeigned assent and con- page 93 sent. Now, suppose such a man, newly inducted into a comfortable living, to engage in controversy with some well-educated and intelligent layman of a sceptical turn of mind, what is likely to happen? The parson may convert the layman, and the layman in a worldly point of view remains what he was before. But supposing the layman to shake the faith of the parson in ever so slight a degree, the latter, feeling the unsatisfactory nature of the arguments on which his doctrines are based, must perforce shun all further inquiry, or else make up his mind to risk one of two things: he may either go on as a conscious hypocrite, preaching what he does not believe and performing rites which are to him no better than a mockery, or he may feel himself bound in conscience to give up preferment and social position and to begin the world afresh. A group of intelligent laymen discussing the Mosaic account of the Creation, or of the Fall of Man, or of the Deluge, etc., will be sure to treat these stories, not as history, but as mythology. But no such license of interpretation is possible to the clergyman. He is bound, or is supposed by the least intelligent of his hearers to be bound, to believe the Bible in its entirety; and although Bishop Colenso, by reason of his rank as bishop, escaped with no worse fate than that of being sneered at and prayed for as "poor Bishop Colenso" by his episcopal brethren, he would be a bold ecclesiastic who should venture to calculate on a like immunity.

Dr. Barry cannot understand prayer for spiritual good any more than for physical good, unless on the supposition that such prayer is to be capable of altering the course of events. Now, let us suppose any man to have lately parted with friends or relatives embarked for a long voyage. What can be more natural than for such a man frequently to express his hopes that those he loves may have a successful and pleasant journey? How often will he say "I trust my friends have escaped the varied perils of the deep, and I long to hear that they have reached home safe?" Yet surely these expressions are not expected by the utterer to drive away the icebergs or to pacify the storms. He loves his friends, and longs to hear of their safety, and how shall such longing fail to vent itself in words. Now, to carry out this idea, I imagine a man of enlarged mind, full of deep sympathy with his fellowmen, one whose soul is thoroughly suffused with the "enthusiasm of humanity." He looks about him in the world, and finds inevitably much that is hollow and unsatisfactory, mean and degraded, vicious and brutal, and he yearns with a profound and passionate yearning for that good time, which we all, I suspect, are inwardly desiring, when there shall be no more wars and rumours of wars, when nation shall no more rise up against nation, and they shall no more hurt nor destroy, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. If, further, he has a strong imagination, and the religious sentiment ardent within him, is it wonderful that he should pour forth these his aspirations in his closet before that God whom he believes to be ever about him?" "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion." Did the children of the captivity suppose that their tears would restore them to their beloved city? Certainly not. The tender-hearted weep over the past, not with a view to results, but because they cannot help weeping. Even so, I think, men of strong religious feelings pray, not for effect, but because a passionate impulse prompts them, and pray they must. And yet this same habit of prayer may serve as an exercise of the religious sentiment in the soul as physical exercise may strengthen and develope the body.

Dr. Barry wishes for the Unity of Christendom, and yet is loth to surrender dogma. Let him look around him on the wide wide world, and see if there ever was a time when the attempt to form such an union on the basis of dogma was ever more hopelessly impracticable. Even the boasted union of Roman Catholics is in great danger of being shivered into pieces; and as for Protestants, their dogmatic differences seem to be more conspicuous and more ostentatiously asserted than ever. Moreover, the particular "platform," which Dr. Barry occupies, is the one which is the most likely to sink page 94 altogether out of sight. There will always be feeble souls, that require suppport, who desire nothing so much as to be relieved of the irksome necessity of thinking for themselves, and for such what can be more suitable than the organisation of the Roman Church and its gorgeous ceremonial. But for bold spirits, who will think for themselves, what chance is there that they will contrive to make their convictions run in the exact groove marked at for them by Articles of Religion framed 300 years ago? An infallible look will not mend matters, for what is an infallible book without an infallible interpreter? One man professes to find in the Bible ample warrant for the existence of bishops, priests and deacons, while another can trace in it the Westminster Confession and the Larger and the Shorter Catechisms. A third feels sure that the New Testament forbids all swearing and soldiering and titles of rank; while a fourth cannot read therein a word to justify infant baptism. Every one appeals to the Bible and every one is sure that be is right and that all his opponents are wrong. But casting aside dogma, let us take up two or three of the great social plagues which disfigure and cesolate this world of ours—war, slavery, drunkenness and prostitution,—and let us suppose that on and after a certain date all the pulpits in Christendom were to ring with able and earnest expositions of the horrors of war, and of the duty of governments to try the experiment of an international court of arbitration, composed of the best and wisest men of all nations, which should meet promptly at the very beginning of a dispute, to secure an amicable Settlement of the same. Surely such a combined effort could not fail to do some good. So of drunkenness, prostitution and other forms of human degradation: we all hate them, and allow them to be moral nuisances which squire to be abated; and if there is any influence at all in preachers and preaching, some good could not fail to be done by the united action of all pastors urging on all their flocks towards some definite end.

Dr. Barry probably would be in favour of some such course if once he got Christendom united on his own plan. But our objection is that on his plan we may wait a very long time, and meanwhile these moral plagues are slaying their thousands and tens of thousands, and making of this fair earth a howling wilderness. The Creeds have had their day, and they have neither stopped war, nor slavery, nor any other hideous thing that oppresses man-kind. Let us, then, drop them and try whether a little more practical Christianity, a little more of the spirit of Christ, who gave no Creeds, nor Catechisms, long or short, might not help to forward the time "when the kindly earth shall slumber lapt in universal lace."

Nicodemus.