"Naturally and profoundly religious ... Mr. Gladstone conceived that those who professed the warmest regard for the Church of England and posed as her most strenuous defenders, were inclined to base their championship on mistaken grounds and to direct their efforts towards even mischievous ends. To supply a more reasonable basis for action and to lead this energy into more profitable channels were the objects which he proposed to himself in his treatise of 1838. The distinctive principle of the book was that the State had a conscience. This being admitted, the issue was this: whether the State in its best condition, has such a conscience as can take cognizance of religious truth and error, and in particular whether the State of the United Kingdom at that time was, or was not, so far in that condition as to be under an obligation to give an active and an exclusive support to the established religion of the country.
"The work attempted to survey the actual state of the relations between the State and the Church; to show from history the ground which had been defined for the National Church at the Reformation; and to inquire and determine whether the existing state of things was worth preserving and defending against encroachment from whatever quarter. This question it decided emphatically in the affirmative. Faithful to logic and to its theory, the book did not shrink from applying them to the external case of the Irish Church. It did not disguise the difficulties of the case, for the author was alive to the paradox which it involved. But the one master idea of the system, that the State as it then stood was capable in this age, as it had been in ages long gone by, of a.s.suming beneficially a responsibility for the inculcation of a particular religion, carried him through all. His doctrine was that the Church, as established by law, was to be maintained for its truth; that this was the only principle in which it could be properly and permanently upheld; that this principle, if good in England, was good also for Ireland; that truth is of all possessions the most precious to the soul of man; and that to remove this priceless treasure from the view and the reach of the Irish people would be meanly to purchase their momentary favor at the expense of their permanent interests, and would be a high offense against our own sacred obligations."
We quote also from the opening chapter of the second volume of this work, which treats of the connection subsisting between the State of the United Kingdom and the Church of England and Ireland, and shows Mr.
Gladstone"s views at that period of his life upon the relations of the Church as affecting Ireland in particular. The pa.s.sage also indicates the changes that have taken place in his mind since the time when he defended these principles. It also shows the style in which this remarkable book was written and enables us to compare, not only his opinions now and then, but his style in writing then with his style now.
"The Protestant legislature of the British Empire maintains in the possession of the Church property of Ireland the ministers of a creed professed, according to the parliamentary enumeration, of 1835, by one-ninth of its population, regarded with partial favor by scarcely another ninth, and disowned by the remaining seven. And not only does this anomaly meet us full in view, but we have also to consider and digest the fact, that the maintenance of this Church for near three centuries in Ireland has been contemporaneous with a system of partial and abusive government, varying in degree of culpability, but rarely, until of later years, when we have been forced to look at the subject and to feel it, to be exempted in common fairness from the reproach of gross inattention (to say the very least) to the interests of a n.o.ble but neglected people.
"But, however formidable at first sight the admissions, which I have no desire to narrow or to qualify, may appear, they in no way shake the foregoing arguments. They do not change the nature of truth and her capability and destiny to benefit mankind. They do not relieve Government of its responsibility, if they show that that responsibility was once unfelt and unsatisfied. They place the legislature of the country in the condition, as it were, of one called to do penance for past offences; but duty remains unaltered and imperative, and abates nothing of her demand on our services. It is undoubtedly competent, in a const.i.tutional view, to the Government of this country to continue the present disposition of Church property in Ireland. It appears not too much to a.s.sume that our imperial legislature has been qualified to take, and has taken in point of fact, a sounder view of religious truth than the majority of the people of Ireland in their dest.i.tute and uninstructed state. We believe, accordingly, that that which we place before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial to them; and that if they know it not now, they will know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?
"It does, indeed, so happen that there are powerful motives on the other side concurring with that which has here been represented as paramount.
In the first instance we are not called upon to establish a creed, but only to maintain an existing legal settlement, when our const.i.tutional right is undoubted. In the second, political considerations tend strongly to recommend that maintenance. A common form of faith binds the Irish Protestants to ourselves, while they, upon the other hand, are fast linked to Ireland; and thus they supply the most natural bond of connection between the countries. But if England, by overthrowing their Church, should weaken their moral position, they would be no longer able, perhaps no longer willing, to counteract the desires of the majority tending, under the direction of their leaders (however, by a wise policy, revocable from that fatal course) to what is termed national independence. Pride and fear, on the one hand, are therefore bearing up against more immediate apprehension and difficulty on the other. And with some men these may be the fundamental considerations; but it may be doubted whether such men will not flinch in some stage of the contest, should its aspect at any moment become unfavorable."
Of course the opponents of Mr. Gladstone"s views, as set forth in his book, strongly combated his theories. They replied that "the taxation of the State is equal upon all persons, and has for its object their individual, social and political welfare and safety; but that the taxation of one man for the support of his neighbor"s religion does not come within the limits of such taxation, and is, in fact, unjust and inequitable."
It was no easy task for Mr. Gladstone, with all his parliamentary duties, to aspire to authorship, and carry his book through the press.
In preparing for publication he pa.s.sed through all the agonies of the author, but was n.o.bly helped by his friend, James R. Hope, who afterwards became Mr. Hope-Scott, Q.C., who read and criticised his ma.n.u.script and saw the sheets through the press. Some of the letters from the young Defender of the Faith to his friend contain much that is worth preserving. We give some extracts.
He writes: "If you let them lie just as they are, turning the leaves one by one, I think you will not find the ma.n.u.script very hard to make out, though it is strangely cut in pieces and patched.
"I hope its general tendency will meet with your approval; but a point about which I am in doubt, and to which I request your particular attention, is, whether the work or some of the chapters are not so deficient in clearness and arrangement as to require being absolutely rewritten before they can with propriety be published.... Between my eyes and my business I fear it would be hard for me to re-write, but if I could put it into the hands of any other person who could, and who would extract from my papers anything worth having, that might do.
"As regards myself, if I go on and publish, I shall be quite prepared to find some persons surprised, but this, if it should prove so, cannot be helped. I shall not knowingly exaggerate anything; and when a man expects to be washed overboard he must tie himself with a rope to the mast.
"I shall trust to your friendship for frankness in the discharge of your irksome task. Pray make verbal corrections without scruple where they are needed."
Again: "I thank you most cordially for your remarks, and I rejoice to find you act so entirely in the spirit I had antic.i.p.ated. I trust you will continue to speak with freedom, which is the best compliment as well as the best service you can render me.
"I think it very probable that you may find that V and VI require quite as rigorous treatment as II, and I am very desirous to set both my mind and eyes at liberty before I go to the Continent, which I can now hardly expect to do before the first week in September. This interval I trust would suffice unless you find that the other chapters stand in equal need.
"I entirely concur with your view regarding the necessity of care and of not grudging labor in a matter so important and so responsible as an endeavor to raise one of the most momentous controversies which has ever agitated human opinion,"
Again: "Thanks for your letter. I have been pretty hard at work, and have done a good deal, especially on V. Something yet remains. I must make inquiry about the law of excommunication.... I have made a very stupid cla.s.sification, and have now amended it; instead of faith, discipline and practice, what I meant was the rule of faith, discipline, and the bearing of particular doctrines upon practice.
"I send back also I and II that you may see what I have done."
The work was successfully issued in the autumn of 1838, and pa.s.sed rapidly through three editions. How it was received it would be interesting to inquire. While his friends applauded, even his opponents testified to the ability it displayed. On the authority of Lord Houghton, it is said that Sir Robert Peel, the young author"s political leader, on receiving a copy as a gift from his follower, read it with scornful curiosity, and, throwing it on the floor, exclaimed with truly official horror: "With such a career before him, why should he write books? That young man will ruin his fine political career if he persists in writing trash like this." However, others gave the book a heartier reception. Crabb Robinson writes in his diary: "I went to Wordsworth this forenoon. He was ill in bed. I read Gladstone"s book to him."
December 13, 1838, Baron Bunsen wrote: "Last night at eleven, when I came from the Duke, Gladstone"s book was lying on my table, having come out at seven o"clock. It is a book of the time, a great event--the first book since Burke that goes to the bottom of the vital question; far above his party and his time. I sat up till after midnight, and this morning I continued until I had read the whole. Gladstone is the first man in England as to intellectual power, and he has heard higher tones than any one else in the land." And again to Dr. Arnold he writes in high praise of the book, but lamenting its author"s entanglement in Tractarian traditions, adds: "His genius will soon free itself entirely and fly towards Heaven with its own wings."
Sir Henry Taylor wrote to the Poet Southey: "I am reading Gladstone"s book, which I shall send you if he has not.... His party begin to think of him as the man who will one day be at their head and at the head of the government, and certainly no man of his standing has yet appeared who seems likely to stand in his way. Two wants, however, may lie across his political career--want of robust health and want of flexibility."
Cardinal Newman wrote: "Gladstone"s book, as you see, is making a sensation." And again: "The _Times_ is again at poor Gladstone. Really I feel as if I could do anything for him. I have not read his book, but its consequences speak for it. Poor fellow! it is so n.o.ble a thing."
Lord Macaulay, in the _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1839, in his well-known searching criticism, while paying high tribute to the author"s talents and character, said: "We believe that we do him no more than justice when we say that his abilities and demeanor have obtained for him the respect and good will of all parties.... That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his Parliamentary avocations, have constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory, on a great problem in politics, is a circ.u.mstance which, abstracted from all considerations of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone"s doctrine may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become."
It was in this article, by Lord Macaulay, that the mow famous words occurred which former Conservative friends of Mr. Gladstone delight to recall in view of his change of political opinions: "The writer of this volume is a young man of unblemished character and of distinguished parliamentary talents; the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and cautiously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England."
Higginson writes: "The hope of the stern and unbending Tories has for years been the unquestioned leader of English Liberals, and though he may have been at times as unpopular as Macaulay could have predicted, the hostility has come mainly from the ranks of those who were thus early named as his friends. But whatever may have been Mr. Gladstone"s opinions or affiliations, whoever may have been his friends or foes, the credit of surpa.s.sing ability has always been his."
It was remarked by Lord Macaulay that the entire theory of Mr.
Gladstone"s book rested upon one great fundamental proposition, namely, that the propagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends of government _as_ government; and he proceeded to combat this doctrine. He granted that government was designed to protect our persons and our property, but declined to receive the doctrine of paternal government, until a government be shown that loved its subjects, as a father loves his child, and was as superior in intelligence to its subjects as a father was to his children. Lord Macaulay then demonstrated, by appropriate ill.u.s.trations, the fallacy of the theory that every society of individuals with any power whatever, is under obligation as such society to profess a religion; and that there could be unity of action in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would naturally follow, or be justifiable in an a.s.sociation where Mr.
Gladstone"s views were paramount. It would be impossible to conceive of the circ.u.mstances in which it would be right to establish by law, as the one exclusive religion of the State, the religion of the minority. The religious teaching which the sovereign ought officially to countenance and maintain is that from which he, in his conscience, believes that the people will receive the most benefit with the smallest mixture of evil.
It is not necessarily his own religious belief that he will select. He may prefer the doctrines of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland, but he would not force the former upon the inhabitants of Scotland. The critic raised no objections, though he goes on to state the conditions under which an established Church might be retained with advantage. There are many inst.i.tutions which, being set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down. On the 14th of June, 1839, the question of National Education was introduced in the House of Commons by the Ministry of the day. Lord Stanley opposed the proposal of the government in a powerful speech, and offered an amendment to this effect: "That an address be presented to her Majesty to rescind the order in council for const.i.tuting the proposed Board of Privy Council." The position of the government was defended by Lord Morpeth, who, while he held his own views respecting the doctrines of the Roman Catholics and also respecting Unitarian tenets, he maintained that as long as the State thought it proper to employ Roman Catholic sinews, and to finger Unitarian gold, it could not refuse to extend to those by whom it so profited the blessings of education. Speeches were also made by Lord Ashley, Mr. Buller, Mr. O"Connell and others, and in the course of debate reference was freely made to Mr. Gladstone"s book on Church and State. Finally Mr. Gladstone rose and remarked, that he would not flinch from a word he had uttered or written upon religious subjects, and claimed the right to contrast his principles, and to try results, in comparison with those professed by Lord John Russell, and to ascertain the effects of both upon the inst.i.tutions of the country, so far as they operated upon the Established Church in England, in Scotland and in Ireland. It was at this time that a very remarkable scene was witnessed in the House. Turning upon Mr. O"Connell, who had expressed his great fondness for statistics, Mr. Gladstone said the use he had made of them reminded him of an observation of Mr. Canning"s, "He had a great aversion to hear of a fact in debate, but what he most distrusted was a figure." He then proceeded to show the inadequacy of the figures presented by Mr. O"Connell. In reply to Lord Morpeth"s declaration concerning the duty of the State to provide education for Dissenters so long as it fingered their gold, Mr. Gladstone said that if the State was to be regarded as having no other functions than that of representing the mere will of the people as to religious tenets, he admitted the truth of his principle, but not that the State could have a conscience.
It was not his habit to revile religion in any form, but he asked what ground there was for restricting his lordship"s reasoning to Christianity. He referred to the position held by the Jews upon this educational question, and read to the House an extract from a recent pet.i.tion as follows: "Your pet.i.tioners feel the deepest grat.i.tude for the expression of her Majesty"s most gracious wish that the youth of the country should be religiously brought up, and the rights of conscience respected, while they earnestly hope that the education of the people, Jewish and Christian, will be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures."
Mr. Gladstone very pertinently asked how the education of the Jewish people, who considered the New Testament an imposture, was "to be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures," which consisted of the Old and New Testaments? To oblige the Jewish children to read the latter would be directly contrary to the views of the gentlemen on the other side of the House. He would have no child forced to do so, but he protested against paying money from the treasury of the State to men whose business it was to inculcate erroneous doctrines. The debate was concluded, and the government carried its motion by a very small majority. Two years later, when the Jews" Civil Disabilities Bill was before Parliament, Mr. Gladstone again took the unpopular side in the debate and opposed the Bill, which was carried in the House of Commons but defeated in the House of Lords.
Mr. Gladstone published, in 1840, another work, ent.i.tled "Church Principles Considered in their Results." It was supplementary to his former book in defense of Church and State, and was written "beneath the shades of Hagley," the house of Lord and Lady Lyttelton, and dedicated "in token of sincere affection" to the author"s life-long friend and relative, Lord Lyttelton. He dwelt upon the leading moral characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value and their adaptation to the circ.u.mstances of the times, and defined these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments.
In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding, misinformed as it is by depraved affections, as our adequate instructor in matters of religion, is most highly irrational." Nevertheless, "the understanding has a great function in religion and is a medium to the affections, and may even correct their particular impulses."
In reference to the question of the reconversion of England to Catholicism, earnestly desired by some, Mr. Gladstone forcibly remarked: "England, which with ill grace and ceaseless efforts at remonstrance, endured the yoke when Rome was in her zenith, and when her powers were but here and there evoked; will the same England, afraid of the truth which she has vindicated, or even with the license which has mingled like a weed with its growth, recur to that system in its decrepitude which she repudiated in its vigor?" If the Church of England ever lost her power, it would never be by submission to Rome, "but by that principle of religions insubordination and self-dependence which, if it refuse her tempered rule and succeed in its overthrow, will much more surely refuse and much more easily succeed in resisting the unequivocally arbitrary impositions of the Roman scheme." Here is the key-note of many of Mr. Gladstone"s utterances in after years against the pretentious and aspirations of Rome. The defense of the English Church and its principles and opposition to the Church of Rome have been unchanging features in Mr. Gladstone"s religious course. But, in the light of these early utterances, some have criticised severely that legislative act, carried through by him in later years, by which the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was effected. How could the author of "The State in its Relations with the Church" become the destroyer of the fabric of the Irish Church?
To meet these charges of inconsistency Mr. Gladstone issued, in 1868, "A Chapter of Autobiography." The author"s motives in putting forth this chapter of autobiography were two--first, there was "the great and glaring change" in his course of action with respect to the Established Church of Ireland, which was not due to the eccentricity or perversion of an individual mind, but to the silent changes going on at the very basis of modern society. Secondly, there was danger that a great cause then in progress might suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of the author.
He stated that "The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for England it was good for Ireland too. But he denied that he had ever propounded the maxim _simpliciter_ that we were to maintain the establishment. He admitted that his opinion of the Church of Ireland was the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his work were in conflict with an a.s.sault upon the existence of the Irish Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people of Ireland, and if it could not be maintained as the truth it could not be maintained at all."
Mr. Gladstone contended that the Irish Episcopal Church had fallen out of harmony with the spirit and use of the time, and must be judged by a practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding the author puts ant.i.thetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church of Ireland: "An establishment that does its work in much and has the hope and likelihood of doing it in more; that has a broad and living way open to it into the hearts of the people; that can command the services of the present by the recollections and traditions of the past; able to appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to the respect or scruples of living work and service, and whose adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that there will be a future for them and their opinions; such an establishment should surely be maintained.
"But an establishment that neither does nor has her hope of doing work, except for a few, and those few the portion of the community whose claims to public aid is the smallest of all; an establishment severed from the ma.s.s of the people by an impa.s.sable gulf and a wall of bra.s.s; an establishment whose good offices, could she offer them, would be intercepted by a long, unbroken chain of painful and shameful recollections; an establishment leaning for support upon the extraneous aid of a State, which becomes discredited with the people by the very act of leading it; such an establishment will do well for its own sake, and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as soon as may be, of gauds and trappings, and to commence a new career, in which renouncing at once the credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, and shall seek its strength from within and put a fearless trust in the message that it bears."
Such, then, were the reasons that led the defender of the Irish Church to become its a.s.sailant, "That a man should change his opinions is no reproach to him; it is only inferior minds that are never open to conviction."
Mr. Gladstone is a firm Anglican, as we have seen, but the following extract from his address made at the Liverpool College, in December, 1872, gives a fine insight as to the breadth of his Christian sentiments:
"Not less forcibly than justly, you hear much to the effect that the divisions among Christians render it impossible to say what Christianity is, and so destroy all certainty as to the true religion. But if the divisions among Christians are remarkable, not less so is their unity in the greatest doctrines that they hold. Well-nigh fifteen hundred years have pa.s.sed away since the great controversies concerning the Deity and the person of the Redeemer were, after a long agony, determined. As before that time, in a manner less defined but adequate for their day, so, even since that time, amid all chance and change, more--aye, many more--than ninety-nine in every hundred Christians have, with one voice, confessed the Deity and incarnation of our Lord as the cardinal and central truth of our religion. Surely there is some comfort here, some sense of brotherhood; some glory due to the past, some hope for the times that are to come."
Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister of England, during his several administrations, has had a large Church patronage to dispense, in other words, has been called upon, by virtue of his office, to till many vacancies in the Established Church, but it has been truly testified that there has probably never been so laboriously conscientious a distributor of ecclesiastical crown patronage as Mr. Gladstone. In his ecclesiastical appointments he never took politics into consideration. A conspicuous instance of this may be mentioned. When it was rumored that he intended to recommend Dr. Benson, the present Archbishop, for the vacant See of Canterbury, a political supporter called to remonstrate with him. Mr. Gladstone begged to know the ground of his objection. "The Bishop of Truro is a strong Tory," was the answer; "but that is not all.
He has joined Mr. Raikes"s election committee at Cambridge; and it was only last week that Raikes made a violent personal attack upon yourself." "Do you know," replied Mr. Gladstone, "that you have just supplied me with a strong argument in Dr. Benson"s favor? for, if he had been a worldly man or self-seeker he would not have done anything so imprudent."
Mr. Gladstone sympathized more or less with the Nonconformists struggling against the application of university tests and other disabilities from which the Dissenters suffered, but it was not until 1876 that he really discovered the true religions work of the English Nonconformists. The manner in which the Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and others rallied to the standard raised in the cause of Bulgarian nationality effected a great change in his att.i.tude towards his Dissenting fellow countrymen. He entertained many of the representative Nonconformist ministers at breakfast, and the fidelity and devotion of Nonconformists generally to the Bulgarian cause left on his mind an impression which has only deepened with the lapse of time.
The extent to which this influences him may be gathered from the reply which he made to Dr. Dollinger whilst that learned divine was discussing with him the question of Church and State. Dr. Dollinger was expressing his surprise that Mr. Gladstone could possibly coquette in any way with the party that demanded the severance of Church and State in either Wales or Scotland. It was to him quite incomprehensible that a statesman who held so profoundly the idea of the importance of religion could make his own a cause whose avowed object was to cut asunder the Church from the State. Mr. Gladstone listened attentively to Dr. Dollinger"s remarks, and then, in an absent kind of way, said, "But you forget how n.o.bly the Nonconformists supported me at the time of the Eastern Question." The blank look of amazement on Dr. Dollinger"s face showed the wide difference between the standpoint of the politician and the ecclesiastic. But Mr. Gladstone knew upon whom to rely in the hour of need, when great moral issues were at stake. The Bishops of the House of Lords had not always done their duty. Lord Shaftesbury, himself a very ardent Churchman, wrote, June 16, 1855, in reference to the Religious Worship Bill: "The Bishops have exhibited great ignorance, bigotry and opposition to evangelical life and action, and have seriously injured their character, influence and position."
Mr. Gladstone never displayed more marked respect for the "Nonconformist conscience" than when, in deference to their earnest appeal, he risked the great split in the Home Rule ranks that followed his repudiation of Mr. Parnell. Mr. Gladstone never hesitated or made the slightest pretense about the matter. If the Nonconformists had been as indifferent as the Churchmen, his famous letter about the Irish leadership would not have been written. "He merely acted, as he himself stated, as the registrar of the moral temperature which made Mr. Parnell impossible.
He knew the men who are the Ironsides of his party too well not to understand that if he had remained silent the English Home Rulers would have practically ceased to exist. He saw the need, rose to the occasion and cleared the obstacle which would otherwise have been a fatal impediment to the success of his course. Mr. Gladstone is a practical statesman, and with some instinct divined the inevitable."
Mr. Gladstone"s religious belief, as well as his opinion of the Bible and the plan of salvation revealed in the Gospel, are manifest as expressed in the following words from his pen:
"If asked what is the remedy for the deeper sorrows of the human heart--what a man should chiefly look to in his progress through life as the power that is to sustain him under trials and enable him manfully to confront his afflictions--I must point him to something which, in a well-known hymn is called "the old, old story," told of in an old, old book, and taught with an old, old teaching, which is the greatest and best gift ever given to mankind."
Another may read the lessons on the Lord"s day in Hawarden Church and write and speak in defense of the Established Church of England, but Mr.
Gladstone did more--he put his trust in his Lord and Saviour, and believed in his word. Mr. Gladstone was denominationally a member of the Episcopal Church, but religiously he held to views commonly held by all Evangelical Christians, from which the temptations of wealth at home, of college and of politics never turned him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Kilmainham Jail, where the Irish M.P."s were confined in 1883]