They come, our soul's deep yearnings,
Welling and surging in,

They come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod:
Some hold it idle dreaming,

We know that it is God."

- PROFESSOR CARRUTH.

CHAPTER II

RELIGION

"WHEN I speak of religion," says Parson Thwackum, “I mean the Christian religion; and when I say Christian religion I mean the Protestant religion; and when I say Protestant religion I mean the Church of England." Most men, until they have reflected, mean by religion their own tenets and practices, and are liable to refuse the name to other tenets and practices, which may yet be equally religious.

The easiest and simplest method of determining the right religion is to adopt, and to swear by, that which is established in the country to which you belong. It is a good way to preferment. Indeed, it is good for everything in you, with the possible exception of character.

When in 1788 a deputation waited on Lord Chancellor Thurlow to obtain his support for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act he listened civilly, and then said, "Gentlemen, I'm against you. I am for the Established Church. Not that I have any more regard for the Established Church than for any other Church, but because it is established. And if you can get your religion established I'll

be for that too." A principle of such simplicity and advantage must commend itself to a large proportion of any community. But, notwithstanding the simplicity and advantage, it represents but a low degree of religion. It favours prejudice, intolerance, and that type of character which was admirably hit off in Addison's essay on the Tory foxhunter. This typical gentleman uttered a panegyric to Mr. Spectator on his spaniel: "But I found the most remarkable adventure of his life was that he had once like to have worried a dissenting teacher. The master could hardly sit on his horse for laughing all the while he was giving me the particulars of this story, which I found had mightily endeared his dog to him, and, as he himself told me, had made him a great favourite among all the honest gentlemen of the country." As they rode on the way, "Where do you intend to inn to-night?" asks the squire. "I can help you to a very good landlord if you will go along with me. He is a lusty, jolly fellow, that lives well, at least three yards in the girth, and the best Church of England man upon the road." Then the narrative proceeds: "The landlord had swelled his body to a prodigious size, and worked up his complexion to a standing crimson by his zeal for the prosperity of the Church, which he expressed every hour of the day, as his customers dropped in, by repeated bumpers. He had not time to go to church himself, but, as my friend told me in my ear, had headed a mob at the pulling down of two or three

meeting-houses. While supper was preparing he enlarged upon the happiness of the neighbouring shire. 'For,' says he, 'there is scarce a Presbyterian in the whole country except the bishop.' In short, I found by his discourse that he had learned a great deal of politics, but not one word of religion, from the parson of his parish; and, indeed, that he had scarce any other notion of religion but that it consisted in hating Presbyterians. I had a remarkable instance of his notions in this particular. Upon seeing a poor, decrepit old woman pass under the window where he sat he desired me to take notice of her, and afterwards informed me that she was generally reputed a witch by the country people, but that, for his part, he was apt to believe she was a Presbyterian."

But if a State establishment of religion tends to produce this ignorant kind of prejudice, and a religious temper which is of all things the most irreligious, the same infirmity is found in every system, or Church, or sect, in which the idea is encouraged that it is the exclusive possessor of the truth. The Moslem scorns the Christian infidel as the Jew once scorned the Gentile. The Orthodox Russian, though a saint, like Ivan of Cronstadt, regards with loathing the Dissenters from the Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic will not even pray with those who are outside his fold. The size of the Roman Communion tends to hide the corrosive influence of this exclusive spirit. But the Catholic regards the rest

of the Christian world as the Tory fox-hunter regarded the Presbyterians. His religious spirit intrinsically is the same as that of the narrowest sectarian, who, after banning all the other sects of Christendom, quarrels with the members of his own sect, and finally finds that there is scarce a man within the country that he can "break bread with." 1

The sectarian spirit, in Islam or Romanism, in an Established Church or in a minute and powerless sect, is the disease of religion, the antithesis of it, in many cases the destruction of it. As was once said about the narrowest form of what is called Brethrenism, "it skims off the cream of the Churches, and turns it sour."

Religion is a universal phenomenon. It is the differentia of man: for man might be defined in creation as "the religious animal." If men are without religion, they are so far forth not human. It is this universality which should be first impressed

1 A friend of mine had a brother who came to visit him for a Sunday at Eastbourne. "Well, George," he said, on Sunday, "will you come to church with me?" "No," he replied, "there is a brother a few miles out with whom I shall break bread." In the evening George returned. "Well, how did you get on?" was the genial inquiry. "Pretty well," was the doubtful reply, “but the Brother, as he sat down, said to me: 'Now I wish you to understand, that though you break bread with me, I do not break bread with you.""

This is the same spirit as was shown by Cardinal Manning and some other Roman clergy, whom we met in Christian conference in the Jerusalem Chamber. We all had to withdraw into the unlighted chancel of the Abbey for the opening prayer, because the Roman Catholics would not pray with us.