Causes of Weakness in Modern Protestant Churches.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2930, 6 July 1878, Page 4

Causes of Weakness in Modern Protestant Churches.

Always when men are in earnest about religion, it will appear as a visibly conttroling influence in their daily habits. Men who hare a real, genuine belief in God, men, to whom God is not a name, but an awful ever-present reality, think . naturally before all other things how they can best please Him; how they can make his law the law of their own existence. This is the meaning of a saving faith. A faith that >is alive, a faith that is a faith indeed and in fact, issues naturally in a life 6f holiness; The Reformation of the sixteenth century was the wakingl up, after along slumber", of a living conviction of this kind ; and the Reformers were not more distinguished from the Catholics by the simplicity of thfeir doctrines than by the austerity and purity of their lives. The veil of imposture which had so long shut out the light of the sky had suddenly been rent away. The ritualistic paraphernalia which had usurped the functions of piety appeared as the tawdry furniture of a theatre when surprised by daylight. Massses, penances, absolutions, pilgrimages to the shrines of saints— mechanical substitutes, all of them, for a life of righteousness—were recognised in their infinite contemptibility as but the idle mummery of a spiritual puppet-play. The true nature of human existence, the - tremendous responsibilities of it; the majesty and purity of God, and the assurance of his judgment, came home as they had never come before to the hearts of those whose eyes were opened. Thus, while in their consciousness of sin and infirmity, the Reformers repudiated with passionate earnestness every notion of human merit; while they denied that by the fullest obedience men could either deserve God's favour, or escape his wrath, they endeavoured, nevertheless, with all their souls, to learn and to do his will. They loved what they knew to be good ; they hated what they knew to be evil. They lived soberly, purely, modestly, honestly, and industriously. They modelled themselves after the highest conceptions of duty which they were able to form. Wealth would have been ( showered on tuthur had he cared to receive it; his scale of expenditure was that of a modern artisan. Calvin might have commanded any income that he liked to name from revenues at Geneva; he was contented -with the average wages of a clerk. The example of the apostles of the Reformation was the rule to their followers, and when the congregations were in a position to give - io their convictions the effect of law, tjiey 1 framed their institutions on the principles of the strictest morality. In Geneva, in J Scotland, in England—as long as the Calvinistic party retained power—the civil magistrate was the guardian of the morals of the people. A sin against the Almighty was treated as a crime against the State; and adultery, and drunkenness, and impurity, foul language, disobedience to parents, and all the various forms of dishonesty, which the law now lets alone, were brought within the cognizance of the secular authority. A discipline so severe could only have extended into the public administration when it had been introduced spontaneously by the mass of the citizens into their private . families; and a religion which could display its powers in characters so legible had no need of the support of arguments. When we «cc a tree in vigorous health, we do not aik it prove to us that it is alive. The fact carries its own evidence with it, and we demand no more. A religion which holds possession of our lives^ which directs us at each 3tep which we take, becomes part of our own souls. Unless, in some shape or other, it prescribes a rule of conduct, it inevitably loses its hold. The Catholic system scarce leaves an hour without its stated duties ; such and such forms to be gone through ; such and such prayers to be repeated. Night and day, morning and evening, at meals and in the intervals between meals, the Catholic is reminded of his creed by a set form. Calvinism superseded these formal observances by yet more noble practical observances. It was ever present with its behests in fixing the scale of permitted expenditure, in regulating the dress, the food, the enjoyments, the hours of sleep and labour; sternly cutting short all idle pleasure and luxury ; sternly insisting on the right performance of all practical work, the trade, the handicraft, or whatever it might be, as something for every thread and fibre of which a man would one day be called to account. There was no mystery in the influence which Calvinism was thus able to exercise as long as the spirit of it lasted : neither is there any mystery in the decline of that influence when the fruits of faith became less and less conspicuous. Ideas are more powerful when they are fresh. Enthusiasm cools, emotions die away, when the cause which evoked them grows familiar. Our hearts are like metal, malleable at high temperature, but hardening as the heat evaporates, and selfishness begins to reassert itself. After the middle of the seventeenth century, Protestantism ceased to be aggressive. It no longer produced men conspicuously nobler and better than Romanism, and, therefore, it no longer made converts. As it became established, it adapted itself io the world, laid aside its harshness, confined itself more and more to the enforcement of particular doctrines, and abandoned, at first tacitly and afterwards deliberately, the pretence to interfere with private life or practical business. The Protestant countries are no longer able to boast of any special or remarkable 'moral standard; and the effect of the creed on the imagination is analogously, impaired. Protestant nations show more energy than Catholic nations, because the mind is left more free, and the intellect is undi started by the authoritative instilment of false principles. But Protestant nations have been guilty, as nations, of enormous crimes. Protestant individuals, who profess the soundest of creeds, seem, in their conduct, to have no creed at all, beyond a conviction that pleasure is pleasant, and that money will purchase it. Political corruption grows up; sharp practice in trade grows up—dishonest j - speculations, short weights and mea- ' sures, and adulteration of food. The j commercial and political Protestant world, on both sides of the Atlantic, has accepted a code of action from which morality has been banished; and the clergy have for the most part sat silent, and occupied themselves in carving and polishing in completeness their schemes of doctrinal salvation. They shrink from offending the wealthy members of their jcougregations. They withdraw into the affairs of the other world, and Jeav,#

the present world to men of business and the devil. For Ihe working purposes of this life, they luivo allowed the gospel to be superseded by the new formulas of political economy. This so called science is the most bare-faced attempt that has ever yet been openly made on this earth to regulate human society without God or recognition of the moral law. The clergy have allowed, it to grow up, to take possession of the air, to penetrate schools and colleges, to control the action of legislatures, without even so much as opening their lips in remonstrance. Imagine.Knox, or Calvin, or Latimer coming back to us again. To what would they address themselves ? To the settling doctrinal differences between Ritualists and Evangelists—Broad Churchmen and Sociniam — Episcopalians and Independents ? Or to the cynical complacency with which the very existence of a God is discussed as a problem of speculation ; with which the principle of Cain is enunciated as the elementary axiom of |life, that man is his own keeper and not his brother's; that his first duty is to himself; that the supreme object of his existence is to make his fortune, and enjoy himself in this life. I once ventured to say to a leading evangelical preacher in London that I thought the clergy were much to blame in these matters. If the diseases of society were unapproachable by human law, the clergy might at least keep their congregations from forgetting that there was a law of another kind, which in some shape or another would enforce itself. He told me very plainly that he did not look on it as part of his duty. He could not save the world, nor would he try. The world lay in wickedness, and would lie in wickedness to the end. His business was to save out of it individual souls by working on their spiritual emotions, and bringing them to what he called the truth. As to what men should do or not do, how they should occupy themselves, how and how far tney might enjoy themselves, on what principles they should carry on thfeir daily work —on these and similar subjects he had nothing to say. I needed no more to explain to me •why Evangelical preachers were losing their hold on the more robust intellect: or why Catholics, who at least offered something which at intervals might remind men that they had souls, should hare power to win away into their fold many a tender conscience which needed detailed support and guidance.—Fbotoe on the " Eevival of Komanism."