seat of the religion of peace and love—can be the scene of strife and murder, of revenge and hellish cruelty,—of national vanity and imperial ambition, and hard unscrupulousness,—which we see it in our day. If the passions of the Greek and Roman churches are as bad as any strife of Moslems and Christians, and if the Protestant nations can be, as Prussia is, as retrograde as Rome itself; and if they can fly at one another’s throats as the Americans are doing,—if this is the temper and behaviour of Christians in this age of a religion which has had eighteen centuries to operate in, and in the present stage of philosophy and the arts, what are we to think and to expect?
Before casting about for the answer to this, let me say that I am not overlooking the more favourable features of the time. If the case were one of comparison between the whole good and evil of the old and the present days, I should have to dwell on such pleasant topics as the uprising of United Italy; the abolition of slavery, as far as it has gone; the freedom of trade, and other freedoms; the extension of popular rights in some countries, and the advance of education in more; and (the most striking thing just now) the character and conduct of the negro race in America, as brought out by the war, through which a million of slaves have become free in the course of six months, without giving a single occasion for complaint of any sort of outrage, while yet so spirited and brave as to compose the best part of the army to which they belong,—thirty thousand of them being now trained soldiers, working out the emancipation of their race by their own services and qualities. These are pleasant sights, and full of promise: but they do not touch upon the problem—what to say, do, and expect, while Christendom is so unlike the spirit of its faith, and so unworthy of the philosophy of its age.
In a Protestant country like ours there is no need to enlarge on the point that such mischief must always happen where religion is treated as a kingdom of this world, and where it is made an object of action, instead of the temper of the life. Through such a misapprehension of the entire intent and spirit of the Gospel we see Papal government the infamous abuse that it is: we see the shocking annual wrangle at Jerusalem, when a Turkish magistrate has to separate the Christians of the Greek and Latin churches who are clutching each other by the throat: we see the Czar worshipped as a god by a peasantry who have been sunk below humanity in the name and by the influence of the religion of the country: we see the Queen of Spain and her ministers ruining by imprisonment and banishment the quiet and loyal citizens who have done nothing worse than reading the Bible; and we see the whole east of Europe agitated by a religious quarrel which may burst into a flame of war at any moment. Truly, when we see the monkish old Pope playing the sovereign over quick-witted and clear-sighted Italians, and forcing on a schism in his church; and the Russians practising an idolatry scarcely less monstrous than Hindooism; and the misery of Poland prolonged by the theological strife; and the graves in the Crimea, which are the fruit of the question of the Holy Places; we could almost suppose that the Bible is a lost book, leaving no faithful traditions. How can a religion of unworldliness, humility, spirituality, gentleness, harmlessness, and generosity, be represented by the political rule of the Pope, the high-priestship of the Czar, the religious wars of Eastern Europe, invasions of Asiatic and American countries, and, in Protestant empires, by multiplying schisms in the churches, and by strifes such as render Ireland the opprobrium of our own empire?
It is clearly by religion being applied to a purpose for which it was never intended. It might have prevented the decline and fall of the Roman empire if it could have pursued its proper work on individual character, and, through that channel, on the fortunes of society, instead of becoming implicated with the state and its rulers; and in our time it has failed to land the nations in a region of peace and progress, because its character and function are still misunderstood and abused; so that the most absolute unlikeness to Christ and his religion is found in the persons and transactions which make the most ostentatious profession of his name and authority. Christendom is as little like a kingdom of Christ as can well be imagined; and it can never grow more like till theology is altogether separated from worldly government and political relations.
We were all glad to hear, the other day, that no report of any daughter of our Queen marrying the King of Greece can be true, now or at any time, because no English prince or princess will ever become a member of the Greek church, or any grandchildren of our Queen be consigned to that church as a condition of royalty in Greece. The abuse of religion for state objects will not be kept up by England beyond the operation of her own state religion, which produces, by its political character, particular troubles within its own realm.
The most special and distinctive troubles of our time, however, may be ascribed to a more special cause. In all ages of the world, men have suffered from the religious abuse: but in our own age there is a kind of trouble never known before in the same style or degree, from the break-down in the relations of the three elements which make up the organised society of Christendom.
The three elements are the Sovereign, the Aristocracy, and the People: and they may make, and have made, a variety of junctions: and according to the success or failure of these alliances is the welfare or the unprosperousness of the respective nations. Where the king and the people unite, as against the aristocracy, there cannot be any permanent establishment of popular freedom; and after the aristocracy has perished out of sight and action—as it is sure to do—either the sovereign or the people gets the upper hand, and liberty is lost under the reign of either despotism or democracy. This is how France has failed in her political career; and this is why Russia cannot get her political career begun. The old aristocracy of France is politically extinct; and the fortunes of the nation vibrate between the ascendency of despotism and revolution. In Russia, the aristocracy has only lately been exempted from the knout, as a punishment at the pleasure of the Czar; and it is only as a bureaucracy that the