MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTERS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 901, 22 August 1910, Page 8

MR. GLADSTONE'S LETTERS.

» 7— CHURCH AND RELICION. REVIEW BY THE RIGHT HON. G. W. E. RUSSELL. In a review of "The Correspondence on Church and Religion of William -En-art Gladstone," the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell writes: Mr. Lathbury is specially' to be congratulated on his method of arrangement. He has divided his material into ten main sections—"Church- and State," "Ecclesiastical Patronage and University Reform," "The Oxford Movement," "The Scottish Episcopal Church," "Oxford Elections," "The Controversy with Rome," "The Controversy with Unbelief," "Education," "Letters to Children,"-and a convenient Holdrall called "Personal." Under each of these ten headings, Mr. Lathbury proceeds in a chronological order, tracing in each case, by letters ranged in succession, and with brief comments of his own, the development of Galdstono's thought. The space covered is pretty nearly co-extensive with •the religious history of the Nineteenth Century, and the record of Gladstone s I mental movement in .religion is clear, continuous, and cjiuplete. ' I say, advised]/, "mental' movement; for in tlfc highest sphere of man's being and activities—in the region of conscience and the soul—there was no "movement" to record. From the first page to the last, in all the successive stages of life,. aiid through all changes, sometimes very great, of more .opinion, we see him in the highest part of his nature fixed and immovable, living' in intimate and- conscious relation with unseen realities. The earliest of his recorded letters, and his memorandum on the State of Religion, in Oxford in 1829, are as solemn, as devout, as full of the sense of responsibility to an invisible Judge for deeds done in tho body,' as tho EssayS | ui defence of Belief, or tho "Studios Subsidiary .to Bishop Butler," which he wrote on the verge of , ninety years. And here we see, as in days gone by we felt, the spell by. which he held his disciples. ' We knew thai, amid all the turmoils and distractions of ■ a most exciting and contentious occupation, his inner-life, was' lived unbrokenly with time or afiotnei, had tho privilege of knowing great Saints; but, ai> a rule, they have boon Ministers of Religion God. Most of; us have, at ono by profession or recluses, from tho world,by choice. • Here was a maJt who did his human work and fought his secular battles with the most masterful ''' resolution, and yet, all the while, was dwelling (to use his own phrase; "in the inner court of the sanctuaiy, 'whereof the walls are, not built with hands." . :' Prpgrcss arid Crowth. But, while it is true that' iir tho region of conscience and .the soul Gladstone had no history, it is not less true that in the, lower sphere, of mere opinion hio life lroin' nrsl to last was, a progress and a growth. That this was true in the domain of politics is. common and hackneyed knowledge: the volumes before us show that it was not less truo in the domain of religious thought, and in "tho mixed sphere ot religion and the fioeeulmn. .His essential religiousnesii of disposition dates from his very earliest years. He/grew up in the straightest sect of Evangelicalism, loaning rather in > Calvmistic than an 'Armmian direction. Ot, the Church he was taught nothing. It once happened to mo," ho m after years, '"on the top of a coach between London and Eton, to hear' ft conversation in which the interlocutors were a 'converted' private soldier, aud an unconverted comrade, of tho i'oot and Life Guards respectively. There came a turn in it at which the hrstnamed of the two put, the question, 'Come now, what is the-Church of EnMandS" To which tho other replied, 'It°is a d- —d large building with an organ in it.' I think'this expressed the ideas of my childhood." The author of this naive confession became, in early manliood, an' adherent of what we must perforce call (though lie-abhorred these labels) - the High Church school. It is to be noted, in contradiction, of what has generally been believed,- that "/his change of view hud j nothing to do with the. "Oxford Movcmen ." Ho had loft: Oxford for good before the' Movement began.. He owed no allegiance to any of." it* .leaden, aud from some of them he sharply differed. He learned Ins conception of the "Holy Church Universal' in a kind of mental vision under, the Dome of St Peter's, and his conception ot tho English Church in particular, from the Occasional Offices m the Prayerbook. Ho soon, acquired a strong and lasting hold on the Sacramental system of the Church, and this remained' unshaken to the end; but at first ho held it «■ with the doctrine, which he soon learned to disavow, that, "the propagation of religious truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government." ■ ; Disestablishment. It cannot, I think, be truly said that Gladstone ever ■ became a Disestablishmentarian in the fullest, sense;,. He was prepared to disestablish particular churcheswhen they'wore proved.to>bo out of harmony-with the timents of- those to whom they professed to minister, and the idea of Disestablishmnt in general had no terrors for him.' Buthe did not regard Establishment as a patent and obvious evil which it was desirable in all cases to abolish..' Still, the writer.of "The. State in its Relations with the Church, must have unlearnt • a good deal of legalism and. learnt a good deal of Liberalism before he wrote about a. particular amendment to the Public Worship Act: "As that amendment cuts at the root of-the Episcopal office, I havo requested the 'Bishop of Winchester to inform the two Archbishops that, if they carry it,\l hold myself altogether discharged from maintaining any longer the Establishment of 'the Church. .-. . -I told the Bishop that I inquired nothing of anyone, that I see my way perfectly, and shall only be applying'at short notice the conviction and intention ' of more than forty years." At no period'of his life was Gladstone an Erastian; he never desired to see the -spiritual "Bocioty fettered to the chariot-wheels of the State; but ho thought that the closest union between tho two, oven in "the crucial case of Ireland,"was a natioual blessing of the highest prico. His gradual abandonment of this belief, and his increasing faith in the virtues of spiritual 'autonomy, mark tho second transition of his mind-in reference to religion. The third and final transition was his emergence from tho very narrow limits within • which ho had confined . his religious speculations, into that Inrger air, which wo breathe ill his later' writing's on "Heresy and Schism" and on the doctrine of Natural ' Immortality. . But, after all merely mental permutations,' ho closed his long life of incessant reflection on the deepest mysteries of time. and eternity with the simple expression of an unchanged faith—"Commending myself to the infinite mercies of God in the Incariiato Son, as my only and sufficient hope." "Master of Ills Soul." Wo have thus traced in general outline the history of ' Gladstone's theological development; but theru arc one. or" two points of dotail which demand consideration. In the first place, ho was conspicuously "master of bis soul."

His religion was between himself and God, and no third person intervened. He had founil his way to his religious standpoint without the assistance of a guide. With Manning and Hope-Scott, indeed, he took frequent and intimate counsel on Religion, but it was the counsel of brothers and equals. Though he passionately admired Newman's genius (especially as displayed in' "The Dream of , Gerontius"), ho held that Dean Churoh was "by much the weightier, and the wiser man." Ami,-if Gladstone was not a Tractarian, still loss was ho a Ritualist. In spite of his cultivated lovo' of beauty and the Arts,- he had no sense for the ordered splendour of Catholic Worship. "My sympathy with the Ritualists," he wrote, "is founded, entirely on the one-sided, shabby, cruel treatment of them." No man held more tenaciously the doctrines of which Ritual is the symbol, but the ritualistic method of expressing them made no appeal to him. ' . ■ ''" From first to last, Gladstone's loyalty to the English Church was based oil her historic, claim, and, when driven to supply a form of words which should express his theological standing, hesuggested "Historic English Catholic" j| but really none of the current descriptions exactly fitted him. In 1874 he wrote to Queen Victoria: "Mr. Gladstone is from time to time denounced in 'some■ quarters as a'Ritualist, as a Papist, and also as a Rationalist. Hebears in silence the ascription to him of these or nf any other names, for lie has perfect confidence in the general good sense of bis countrymen; but ho never has at any time assumed for himself, fir admitted rightly to belong to him/any parly designation whatever, in religion, inasmuch as' the voluntary assumption of such designation would compromise (in his opinion) what he cherishes as the first of earthly blessings—his mental freedom." The first of earthly blessings—his mental freedom: These noble words supply a cluo to tlie complexities, of a character and a life,which have been often, and not unnaturally, misconceived