Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1624/Religious Strife on the Continent

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

RELIGIOUS STRIFE ON THE CONTINENT.

The recent letters of the Times correspondent from various Belgian cities are defaced by some of those dabs of tawdry local colour which the present taste of newspaper-readers demands from newspaper-writers, but they contain some very interesting information independently of their descriptions of old women and bagmen, and they throw light on portions of an important pamphlet which has just been translated at Mr. Gladstone's instance. M. de Laveleye, the author, repeats and enlarges upon the position first taken up by Macaulay and afterwards insisted upon by Buckle, that the great differences between the nations of the West are not so much due to distinctions of race, of institutions, or of historical antecedent, as to differences of religion. He is very far, indeed, from accepting Buckle's conclusion that, in order that a community may advance indefinitely in moral and material civilization, it is simply necessary to disbelieve religions. On the contrary, if we understand M. de Laveleye rightly, he draws a most melancholy inference from existing facts. He certainly thinks that if the principles now accepted by Catholics are carried to their consequences a certain amount of low and peaceful civilization is all that at best can be attained. But he considers that before it is reached the Western world will probably be distracted by a religious war; and he does not believe that the mere rejection of religious doctrine opposes any serious impediment to the spread of ultra-sacerdotal principles. The only effectual resistance to it, he thinks, was, offered by Protestantism. But, though out of this resistance the most splendid achievements of modern civilization have grown, Protestantism itself has been effectually checked in some countries, and gains ground in few or none.

The Belgian correspondent of the Times explains much in these opinions which otherwise would not be intelligible to an Englishman. At first sight, it is not easy to understand why a belief in the immaculate conception should have a more deadening influence on a shopkeeper, farmer, or artisan than a belief in predestination, final acceptance, or any other of the mysteries of Calvinistic Christianity. All seem equally remote from actual life and fact, and little likely to affect motives and springs of action. M. de Laveleye suggests that Protestantism, being a system of direct inference from the text of Scripture, carries with it the necessity of learning to read; but, though this necessity was really at one time the secret of the superiority of Scottish education, the Protestantism of England long managed to co-exist with very moderate knowledge of the alphabet. The true explanation why a Catholic of the middle or lower orders is a very different being from a Protestant of the same social position is given by the Times correspondent. He was present at a bitter quarrel between commercial travellers and local tradesmen over a table d'hôte, and he found that the actual subject of the dispute was the genuineness of a recent miracle by a local saint. One man of respectable appearance positively decclared that he knew of his own knowledge that a woman had been miraculously cured of blindness. Here, then, is the secret. It is not devotion to the Sacred Heart, or even to Our Lady of Salette, or the repudiation of all the doctrines condemned in the Syllabus, which makes the difference; it is (to take a saint singled out by a writer whom M. de aveleye quotes) the worship of St. Cupertin. The English gentleman or lady who goes on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund by special steamer and train is not the better for the indulgence of washy religious sentiment; but enough remains from early education or present association to keep the devotee from the degrading effects of pure fetichism. But the small cultivator who in our day has been taught to believe that the saint of one parish cures rheumatism, while the saint of the next has power over blindness, and he of the next over the disobedience of children, has really sunk to a point of superstition to which not even such Protestants as the Peculiar People have descended. For these at all events believe not in many gods, but in one; and, though even apart from them there are very queer ideas abroad among Protestants as to special interpositions of Providence, they are at all events thought to be rare, and exercise in fact little influence on the daily course of life. But people who sincerely believe in the existence of a host of divinities, each specially present in a shrine at no great distance, each superseding at pleasure all secondary agencies, each infinitely more powerful than the doctor or the schoolmaster, have really returned to the familiar superstitions of the savage. Indeed, in its effects on exertion of mind or body, such a creed as this is in some respects more enervating than savage fetichism. For this last form of belief is at all events modified in its results by the manifold risks and surprises of barbarous life. The man, however, who, in the highly organized and carefully protected society of Western Europe, has been made to believe in omnipresent and ever-active supernatural agency, is least likely of all human beings to conceive a new idea, try a new experiment, or strike out a new path of conduct.

The correspondent of the Times saw plenty of evidence that the adversaries of the principles which all this apparatus of supernaturalism is made to subserve are rapidly changing, or have already changed, from political liberals into fanatical enemies of all religion; M. de Laveleye states the fact and bitterly laments it. As he tells us, it is no doubt in part the result of historical causes, but it is also in great measure the work of St. Cupertin, who has divided Continental society into two irreconcilable factions. "The father of a family," says the writer before quoted, "who believes in God without believing in St, Cupertin is in great difficulties between his atheistic sons and his religious daughters. The Lord deliver us from atheism and from the worship of St. Cupertin!" Here, in fact, we have the great characteristic malady of modern society, of which the symptoms are inability to believe and clear appreciation of the mischief and miseries of disbelief. How is it to be cured? If it cannot be cured, how can its effects be prevented from crippling the whole body, social and politic? Mr. Gladstone, in the earnest preface with which he introduces the English translation of M. de Laveleye's pamphlet, uses language which seems to recommend as a specific our believing in any form of Christianity so long as it is not Ultramontanism. The advice is doubtless sincerely given, and there is a certain sense in which it may really be taken by Englishmen. M. de Laveleye helps us to know the extreme value of the Protestant Christianity which still survives in some vigour among us, and we may well draw the inference that it would be merely folly to connive at the efforts of fools or traitors to water it down into a bastard form of Catholicism. But no recommendation could be more futile than Mr. Gladstone's if addressed to the enlightened Continental opponents of Ultramontanism or to the Englishmen who sympathize with them; even if it were possible to adopt it it would be unwise. For the assumption that belief is a matter of choice is one of the most powerful weapons of the sacerdotalists. If a man once succeeds in "submitting his reason to his faith," it does not greatly matter how much he forces himself to believe. There is no perceptibly greater difficulty in believing against conviction in the water of Lourdes than in believing against conviction in revival by Messrs. Moody and Sankey. And when, on the Continent at all events, a man has once maimed his intellect by an exercise of his will, there are a thousand reasons why, if he belongs to the opulent classes, he should accept the whole body of Ultramontane doctrine. He at once takes his stand on the side of the angels, on the side of the leaders of fashionable society, and on the side of the police. Thus the conclusion of Mr. Gladstone is unsatisfactory, and that of M. de Laveleye is unsatisfactory also, and avowedly so. Still he seems to end in simple despair. What is wanting, both, in the pamphlet and in the preface, is some discussion of the great and formidable experiment now being tried in Germany. This, before all things, is a deliberate attempt to cope with the dangers which, according to M. de Laveleye, are covering the future of Europe with gloom. These dangers, if dangers they be, have evidently sprung from applications of the theory of a "free Church in a free State," or, if you choose so to put it, from the endeavour to reconcile political institutions borrowed from England with religious opinions centralized at Rome. But, though the State has hitherto got the worst of the union, it is clear that the power which bears this name can contend at an advantage with the pope, the Jesuits, and the Roman Curia if only those who direct it please. The State cannot indeed, under modern conditions, force its subjects to believe this or that, but it can derange the whole machinery by which a particular system of belief is spread abroad; it can profoundly modify the religious convictions of future generations; and, if it be wise as well as strong, it can furnish proper securities against anarchy and spoliation, and thus dispel the terrors which are the strength of sacerdotalism. The objections to the anti-clerical legislation of Germany and Prussia are of a kind which occur in crowds to Englishmen; but the question whether in Continental Europe the patrons of St. Cupertin can be effectually dealt with by the use of soft words deserves attentive consideration.