ART. VII.-CHURCH AND STATE. The Ideal of a Christian Church considered in comparison with existing Practice. By Rev. W. G. WARD, M. A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Second The Kingdom of Christ delineated; in two Essays, on our Lord's own account of his Person and of the nature of his Kingdom, and on the Constitution, Powers, and Ministry of a Christian Church, as appointed by Himself. By RICHARD WHATELY, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. 1841. On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of each. By SAMUEL TAYLOR COLeridge. 1839. Fragment on the Church. By THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., late Head Master of Rugby School. 1844. THE questions which engage the attention of speculative men often appear to have little connection with the actual affairs of their time: and are regarded, both by those who discuss them and by those who despise them, as mere ideal things, touching at no point the realities amid which they appear. Yet this estimate, invariably made by contemporaries, is as invariably reversed by posterity. In the historical retrospect of any period, the relation between its Thought and Action becomes clear: and its philosophy appears, no less than its Poetry, its Art, or even its Polity, distinctly expressive of its real internal life. Nay, the very literature which most affects universality, is often most deeply stamped with the characteristics of age and race. The genius of a peculiar civilization, slowly and obscurely rising, appears to reach its culminating intensity in its philosophy. Standing at that point of its culture, we occupy the precise meridian from which it looked forth on the universe. What it missed and what it saw, what it loved and what it hated, all its conceptions of truth and all its aspirations after good, are collected there, and so constructed into a systematic whole, as to be apprehensible at a single view. There is nothing more absolutely Hellenic than the Dialogues of Plato; or more distinctively CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 28. X medieval than the writings of Thomas Aquinas: the England of the Reformation perfected itself in Locke, and the France of the Revolution is reflected in Diderot. He who would thoroughly appreciate the actuating spirit of any period, must study, not only the debates of its Senates, but the discussions of its Schools. In the theories of Society produced by the great masters of thought in ancient and in modern times, we find this remarkable difference: that with the former the grand problem is, to adjust the relations of the State to the Individual; with the latter, of the State to the Church. Yet the change, when rightly interpreted, will appear a change rather of names than of things, and presents us only with two cases of a problem essentially one and the same. No one can suppose that the agency of the Individual, so much guarded against in the ideal communities of the Greek philosophers, has vanished from modern society, and carried off the difficulties which its presence was once felt to introduce. Nor is it correct to imagine that the influences which we denote by the word Church constitute a new element special to Christian nations, and had not to be taken into account in schemes of ancient polity. They were in truth comprised in the Hellenic idea of the State; which was not equivalent, as with us, to the mere aggregate of individual interests in respect to physical good, but represented all those moral ends which transcend personal happiness, and constitute the TελÓTαTOV TEλos of human life. An institution for the protection of "body and goods" would have been considered by Plato as a club of private persons requiring to be strictly watched; or at most as a police organization subsidiary only to the true aims of government: while, on the other hand, the direct training of individual character, the influence over prevailing habits, the maintenance of the highest sentiments, which we consider the proper business of the Church, he claimed as characteristic functions of the public Polity. So that when we look to the principles of human nature operative in each, we find in the modern State only the corporate existence of the ancient idiúrns; and in the ancient TóAs the territorial sovereignty of the modern kкλnoía. The real subject of controversy is at bottom still the same; as to the proper sphere and limits, in the affairs of men, of Self-will on the one hand and Reverence on the other. That the mere form of the question has undergone a change, is a natural consequence of the new cast which has been given to the elementary forces of social life. The Greek mythology and worship were, for the most part, unmoral, and had little tendency to control the individual will by a sentiment of duty; and to inspire and maintain in a people the sense of a law higher than themselves, philosophers, left at fault by the Temple, looked to the Senate-house. The Christian faith, on the other hand, is in its very essence moral, and wherever taken to heart, has established over private life the august rule of conscience. Religion, in its proper sense, having thus gone over from the State to the Individual, has left the functions of the Sovereign power, in a reduced condition, and made them rather protective of the personal desires, than an encroachment upon them: and hence the modern notion of the purely negative office of government; and the limitation of its action to what are called secular affairs. It is easy to understand, when these changes are taken into account, why men whose minds were purely antique, -as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle,-regarded the State as wholly including all the influences now contained under our word "Church," while men in sympathy with modern ideas, as Warburton and Locke,-regard it as wholly excluding them; why writers imbued with the wisdom of both periods,-as Hooker and Arnold,-refuse to admit either agency as prohibitive of the other, and therefore pronounce the two spheres of operation absolutely coincident; and why those who engage themselves chiefly with the transition from the Heathen to the Christian civilization, should admire, with Mr. Ward, the sacerdotal system of the middle ages, which practically leavened the mass of European population with Christian ideas; and should desire to subordinate the human sovereignty of government to the divine supremacy of the Church. At the present moment we can turn our eyes to no considerable province of Christendom, which is not agitated by the contest, between the State and the Church, for the private life of individuals. There seems to be a general conviction, that the Reformation has developed itself into an excessive self-will; that its maxims have weakened religious unity, and relaxed temporal authority; that the great multitude of men require more systematic guidance, more protection from temptation, more steady help towards a Christian life, than are secured by its methods, ever alternating between the repose of latitudinarian ease, and paroxysms of importunate zeal. That the let-alone system is incompetent to the moral management of the new economical conditions under which society exists, is the inference generally drawn from the frightful mass of practical Heathenism existing in the heart of Christian countries. But whether the new and needed power shall be assumed by the sceptre or the cross; whether either can make good its exclusive prerogative, from natural reason, from human prescription, from divine ordination; whether both must concur, and lay aside all mutual jealousy in a work demanding alike the strength of the one and the persuasion of the other,―are questions by which the whole mind of Europe is vehemently moved. Scotland, impatient of the restraints imposed by the law on its ecclesiastical activity, sets up its Free Church. Ireland, ruled by priests, is tempting the State,-too long hated and defied, - to seek alliance with the only power through which the functions of government can be recovered. England, ashamed of its neglected population, is agitated by the rival efforts of a repentant legislature and a repentant clergy, aiming to regulate the labour, to abate the ignorance, to elevate the desires of the people, the one by legalised discipline, the other by a sacerdotal police. France, with a Catholic King, whose policy has been indulgent to a clergy long despised, sees its Church unsatisfied, and resolved to dispute with the University the right of control over public instruction. Switzerland becomes the centre of anxious attention to all Europe, while deciding the fate of the Jesuits, to whom Lucerne had entrusted the education of her citizens. And if at Treves another Luther has arisen in the person of Ronge, it is from too bold an attempt to reassert the power of ultramontane superstition over the Catholics of modern Germany. Everywhere, an aggressive action has commenced upon the private elements of society: and usually, the civil and ecclesiastical powers appear as competitors for the new influence which is confessedly required. Hence the revived interest in those discussions of polity, which have at all times so much attraction for thoughtful men, and have given occasion to the works of our greatest moralists. Of the treatises mentioned at the head of this article, only those of Coleridge and Arnold attempt directly to define the relation between the Church and State. The other two are wholly occupied with the internal constitution and proper office of the Christian Church considered by itself. Incidentally, however, a State theory is involved in this narrower discussion: for in proportion as the range of ecclesiastical functions is made to take in more or less of the moral work of Society, will less or more remain for the civil power to undertake. Accordingly, there is no difficulty in perceiving that Mr. Ward and Archbishop Whately occupy the opposite extremities of political philosophy as well as of theological system. Their whole conception of human life is so different, that, in dealing with it, temporally or spiritually, each would precisely invert the rules of the other. Whatever the one delights to disparage, presents the favourite views of the other; the ideas which the one has lived to expel, it is the highest ambition of the other to restore; and the lessons from Scripture, from history, from science, from reflection, which constitute the characteristic wisdom of the one, are present to the other as a never-failing stock-on-hand of fallacies and follies. Mr. Ward maintains the world to have been prepared for a divine revelation by the inextinguishable activity of conscience; which has power, even where connected with a feeble will, to maintain a secret sense of danger, or, possibly, an ineffectual sadness of aspiration. He lays the greatest stress on the truths of Natural Religion and the obligations of Natural Law: and regards Christianity as throughout assuming these, and furnishing their supernatural complement. The Church is an institution set up for the divine guidance of men; to alarm, to counsel, to encourage them, to a moral obedience, of which, without such heavenly aid, they will only have a distant and passing dream. Her title to afford this guidance must be sought, not in any mere external credentials, but in her self |