{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_55354/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_55354","id":"gutenberg_55354","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55354","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Church and state","History","Political science"],"text":"WHAT DOES HISTORY\nTEACH?\n\nTWO EDINBURGH LECTURES\n\nBY\nJOHN STUART BLACKIE\n\nLondon\nMACMILLAN AND CO.\n1886\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER'S NOTES.\n\nThis book was originally digitized by Google and is intended for\npersonal, non-commercial use only.\n\nFootnotes have been relocated to the end of the book.\n\nPassages originally rendered in small-caps have been changed to all-caps\nin the text version of this work.\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n  PREFATORY NOTE.\n  I. THE STATE.\n  II. THE CHURCH.\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE.\n\nTHE following Lectures were prepared for the Philosophical Institution\nof Edinburgh, and were delivered, with the exception of a few passages,\nbefore audiences consisting of Members of that Institution on the\nevenings of 8th and 11th December in the present year.\n\nEDINBURGH, _December_ 1885.\n\n\n\nI.\nTHE STATE.\n\n\u1f6d\u03c3\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1 \u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03c9\u03b8\u1f72\u03bd \u03b2\u03ad\u03bb\u03c4\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03b6\u1ff4\u03c9\u03bd \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f55\u03c4\u03c9 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03c7\u03c9\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03b8\u1f72\u03bd \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5\n\u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03b4\u03af\u03ba\u03b7\u03c2 \u03c7\u03b5\u03af\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd \u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd.--ARISTOTLE.\n\nHISTORY, whether founded on reliable record, or on monuments, or on\nthe scientific analysis of the great fossil tradition called language,\nknows nothing of the earliest beginnings. The seed of human society,\nlike the seed of the vegetable growth, lies under ground in darkness,\nand its earliest processes are invisible to the outward eye.\nSpeculations about the descent of the primeval man from a monkey, of the\nprimeval monkey from an ascidian, and of the primeval ascidian from a\nprotoplastic bubble, though they may act as a potent stimulus to the\nbiological research of the hour, certainly never can form the\nstarting-point of a profitable philosophy of history.\n\nAs revealed in history, man is an animal, not only generically different\nfrom, but characteristically antagonistic to the brute. That which makes\nhim a man is precisely that which no brute possesses, or can by any\nprocess of training be made to possess. The man can no more be developed\nout of the brute than the purple heather out of the granite rock which\nit clothes. The relation of the one to the other is a relation of mere\noutward attachment or dependency--like the relation which exists\nbetween the painter's easel and the picture which is painted on\nit. The easel is essential to the picture, but it did not make the\npicture, nor give even the smallest hint towards the making of it. So\nthe monkey, as a basis, may be essential to the man without being in any\nway participant of the divine indwelling \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 which makes a man a\nman. The two are related only as all things are related, inasmuch as\nthey are all shot forth from the great fountain-head of all vital\nforces, whom we justly call GOD.\n\nThe distinctive character of man as revealed in history is threefold.\nMan is an inventive animal, and he does not invent from a compulsion of\nnature, as bees make cells or as swallows build nests. These are all\nprescribed operations which the animal must perform; but the inventive\nfaculty in man is free, in such a manner that the course of its action\ncannot be foreseen or calculated. It revels in variety, and, above all\nthings, shuns that uniformity which is the servile province of brute\nactivity. A man may live in a hole like a fox, but his proper humanity\nis shown by building a house and inventing a style of architecture. A\nman can sing like a bird, but--what the bird cannot do--he can\nmake a harp or an organ. He can scrape with his nails like a terrier,\nbut, as a man manifesting his proper manhood, he prefers to make a\nshovel of wood and a hatchet of stone or iron. The other animals,\nhowever cunning, and often wonderfully adaptable in their instincts, are\nmere machines. Man makes machines. In this respect he is justly entitled\nto look upon himself as the God to the lower animals, just as the\nsheriff in the counties by delegated right represents the supreme\nauthority of the Crown. But, above all things, man is a progressive\nanimal,--not merely progressive as the grass grows from root to\nblade and from blade to blossom to perfect its individual type of\nvegetable life, but advancing from stage to stage and mounting from\nplatform to platform for the perfectionation of the race; nor even\nprogressive as plants and fruits are improved by culture and favourable\nsurroundings, and what is called forcing, or as the breed of sheep and\ncattle is improved by selection. No doubt progress of this kind is made\nby man as well as by plants and brutes; but his most distinctive human\nprogress is made, not by imposition from without, but by projection from\nwithin. These projections from within are what in philosophical language\nis called the idea; they proceed from the essential nature of mind,\nwhose imperial function it is to dictate forms, as it is the servile\nfunction of the senses to receive impressions. These intelligent forms,\ncoming directly from the divine source of all excellence, and projected\nfrom within with sovereign authority to shape for themselves an outward\nembodiment, constitute what in art, in literature, in religion, and in\nsocial organisms, is called the ideal; and man may accordingly be\ndefined as an animal that lives by the conception of ideals, and whose\ndestiny it is to spend his strength, and, if need be, to lay down his\nlife, for the realisation of such ideals. The steps of this realisation,\noften slow and painful, and always difficult, are what we mean by human\nprogress; and it is the dominant characteristic of man, of which amongst\nthe lower animals there is not a vestige, neither indeed could be; for\nso long as they have no ideas, neither reason nor the outward expression\nof reason in language--two things so closely bound together that\nthe wise Greeks expressed them both by one word, \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2--so\nlong must it be ridiculous to think of them shaping their career\naccording to an inborn type of progressive excellence. To do so is\nexclusively human. Hence our poems, our high art, our churches, our\nlegislations, our apostleships, our philosophies, our social\narrangements and devices, our speculations and schemes of all kinds,\nwhich, though they are sometimes foolish, and always more or less\ninadequate, deliver the strongest possible proof that man is an animal\nwho will rather die and embrace martyrdom than be content to live as the\nbrutes do, neither spurred with the hope of progress nor borne aloft on\nthe wings of the ideal.\n\nOf the very earliest state of human society, as we have already said,\nhistory teaches nothing; but, as man is a progressive animal, and the\nplan of Providence with regard to him seems plain to let him shift for\nitself and learn to do right by blundering, as children learn to walk by\ntumbling, we may safely say that the easier, more obvious, and more rude\nforms of living together must have preceded the more difficult, the more\ncomplex, and the more polished. And in perfect consistency with this\npresumption, we find three social platforms rising one above the other\nin human value, duly accredited either by monuments, by popular\ntradition, or by the evidence of comparative philology. These three\nare--(1) The prehistoric or stone period, from which such a rich\nstore of monuments has been set up in the Copenhagen Museum, and the\nexistence of which is indicated in Gen. iv. 22 as antecedent to Tubal\nCain, the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. (2) The\nshepherd or pastoral stage, represented by Abel (Gen. iv. 2), in which\nmen subsisted from the easy dominance which they asserted over wild\nanimals, and from fruits of the earth requiring no culture. (3) The\nagricultural stage, when cereal crops were systematically and\nscientifically cultivated, which, of course, implied the limitation of\nparticular districts of ground to particular proprietors, and those\nagrarian laws which caused the Greek Demeter to be honoured with the\ntitle of \u03b8\u03b5\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03c6\u03cc\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, or lawgiver--a step of marked and decided advance,\ninsomuch that we may justly attribute to it the redemption of society\nfrom the _vagus concubitus_ of the earliest times, and the firm\nestablishment of the family, with all its sanctities and all its binding\npower, as the prime social monad. To the priestess of this goddess\naccordingly, amongst the Greeks, was assigned the function of ushering\nin the newly-married pair to the peculiar duties of their new social\nrelation.[1]\n\nThe fact that the family is the great social monad, as it is undoubtedly\none of the oldest and most accredited facts in human tradition, so it\npresents to us perhaps the most important of all the lessons that\nhistory teaches--a lesson as necessary to be inculcated at the\npresent hour as at the earliest stages of social advance; and Aristotle\ncertainly was never more in the right than when he emphasised this truth\nstrongly in traversing Plato's fancy of making the state the\nuniversal family, to the utter absorption of all subordinated family\nmonads. Here, as in one or two other matters, the great idealist would\nbe wiser than God; and so his philosophy, so far as that point was\nconcerned, became only a more sublime attitude of folly. The importance\nof the family, as the divinely instituted social monad, depends\nmanifestly on the happy combination and harmonious blending of authority\nand love which grow out of its constitution--two elements with the\nfull development and true balance of which the well-being and happiness\nof all societies is intimately bound up. The fine moral training which\nthe family relation alone can inspire we find not only at our own door,\nin the fidelity and self-sacrificing devotion of our noble Highlanders,\nwho derived their inspiration from the clan system, of which the family\nlove and respect is the binding element,[2] as contrasted with the\nslavish system of vassalage, the badge of feudalism; but in the habits\nand institutions of the three great ancient peoples to whom modern\nEurope owes its higher civilisation, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans,\nspecially the last,[3] the great masters of the difficult art of\ngovernment, who, to use Mommsen's phrase, carried out the unity of\nthe family through the virtue of paternal authority \"with an\ninexorable consistency,\" the beneficial effect of which could not\nfail to display itself in social life far beyond the sphere from which\nit originally emanated; for obedience to authority is the fundamental\npostulate of all possibie societies. With the family, if not absolutely,\ncertainly with the best and normal state of it, most closely connected\nis monogamy; for, though instances of bigamy and polygamy, from Lamech\ndownwards (Gen. iv. 19) to King David and Solomon in the Old Testament\nhistory, crop up here and there in the oldest times, and even in the\npost-Babylonian period, without any formal mark of disapprobation, yet\nit is quite certain that the Greeks and Romans were guided by a sound\nsocial instinct when they held the practice of bigamy to be inconsistent\nwith the proper constitution of a family. What troubles are apt to arise\nfrom a multiplication of contending wives and ambitious mothers the\nlatter story of King David tells in more unhappy episodes than one; and\ngenerally it may be laid down as one of the great lessons of history\nthat polygamy, in every shape, is one of those acts of Oriental\nself-indulgence which may be sweet in the mouth but has a very strong\ntendency to be bitter in the belly, and therefore ought by all means to\nbe avoided.\n\nBy the instinct of aggregation, which belongs to an essentially social\nanimal, families will club together into townships or villages, and\ntownships will be centralised into states. Humanity without townships\nwould degenerate into tigerhood, or whatever type of animal existence\nmight express an essentially self-contained, solitary, and selfish\ncreature; townships without that sort of headship which the word State\nimplies, would make society cry halt at a stage of loosely-connected\naggregates which would render common action for any high human purpose\nextremely difficult, and, in the general case, as human beings are,\nimpossible. Hence the centralisation of the Attic townships at Athens in\nthe legendary traditions of the Athenians attributed to Theseus;[4]\nhence also the lax confederation of the earliest Latin states under the\nheadship of Albalonga; and, after the humiliation of that old\nstronghold, the more closely cemented union of those states under the\nhegemony of Rome.[5] Whatever may be the evils connected with the growth\nof large towns, especially when, as in modern times, they have been\nallowed to swell to enormous magnitude without regulation or control, it\nis one of the undoubted lessons of universal history that the social\nstimulus necessary for the creation of vigorous thought, no less than\nthe centralised force indispensable to great achievement, is found only\nin the large towns. The Christians were called Christian first at\nAntioch; and, had there been no Rome to unify a little Latium, there\nwould have been no great Roman Empire to amalgamate the rude barbarians\nof the North with the smooth civilisation of the South by the force of a\ncommon law and common language.[6]\n\nThe form of government natural to such infant states as the expansion of\nthe original social monad, the FAMILY, is a loose but not unkindly\nmixture of monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy--the aristocracy\nbeing always the preponderating element. In the single family, of\ncourse, we have only the monarchical element in the father, and the\ndemocratic element in the children; but, as families expand into\ntownships, it could not be but that the heads of the families composing\nit, partly from their age and experience, partly from the force of\nindividual character, should form a sort of natural aristocracy, while\nthe less notable and less prominent members would form the \u03b4\u1fc6\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2,\nor great body of the constantly increasing multitude of the associated\nfamilies. Below these three dominant elements of the body social, there\nwould always be found a loose company of dependents and\nonhangers--the class called \u0398\u1fc6\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 in Homer (Od., iv. 644),\nand in the Solonian constitution--who had no civic rights any more\nthan the serfs and vassals of our medieval feudalism. The weakness of\nthe monarchical and the strength of the aristocratic elements in the\nearly societies arose from the original equality of the heads of\nfamilies, and from the jealousy with which they would naturally look on\nany functions of superiority exercised by any of their order naturally\nno better than themselves. The king, accordingly, like Agamemnon in\nHomer, would claim the homage which the title implies only for purposes\nof common action; and even in such cases would always be kept in check\nby a \u03b2\u03bf\u03c5\u03bb\u03ae, or council of the aristocracy, of whose will properly\nhe was only the executive hand; while the great mass of the people,\noccupied with the labours that belong to an agricultural and pastoral\npopulation, and unaccustomed to the large views which statesmanship and\ngeneralship require, would come together only on rare occasions of\npeculiar urgency.\n\nThe element in that loose triad of social forces that was first\nformulated into a more distinct type, and endowed with more imperative\nefficiency, was the kingship. The power of the king was increased, which\nof course implies that the power of the people, and specially of the\naristocracy, was diminished. And here let it be observed generally that\nthe progress of civilisation in its natural and healthy career is the\nprogress of limitation and the curtailment in various ways of that\nfreedom which originally belonged to every member of the community. The\ntanned savage of the backwoods is the freest man in existence; next to\nhim, the nomad or the wandering gipsy, such as may still be seen in\ntheir glory at St. James' fair in Kelso, whose house is at once\nhis dwelling-place, his manufactory or place of business, and his\ntravelling car; least free is the civilised citizen hemmed in on all\nsides by police-officers, soldiers, sentinels, door-keepers, and\ngame-keepers, and the whole fraternity of dignified but unpopular\nofficials of various kinds whose business it is to the general public to\nsay No! This accretion of strength to the king proceeded first from his\nmere personal influence and the general deference paid to him during the\ncontinuance of a prolonged and easily-exercised sovereignty; all\nclasses, even the aristocracy, whose ambition is thus kept in check and\ntheir perilous enmities softened, feel the benefit of a wise head and a\nfirm hand; but the party specially benefited by the kingship is the\ndemos; for this body, from its position peculiarly liable to be trampled\non by an insolent aristocracy, naturally looks up to the king as the\nfather of the whole family, who, on his part, feels his position\nstrengthened and his respect increased by performing with tact and\nfirmness the delicate functions of a mediator. But the great social\nforce which operates in giving prominence and predominance to the\nmonarchy is WAR; and, though war is unquestionably an evil, it is an\nevil only as death is, and a form of dying accompanied not seldom with\nan exhibition of more manhood than the experience of many a peaceful\ndeathbed can show. In fact, as stout old Balmerino said on the scaffold\nin 1746, \"The man who is not ready to die is not fit to\nlive;\" that is, we hold our life under the condition that we may\nat any time be called on to sacrifice it, whether for the preservation\nof our own self-respect, or for the integrity of the community of which\nwe are a member. All great nations, in fact, have been cradled in war,\nthe Hebrews no less than the Greeks and Romans; and it is only an\namiable sentimentalism, pardonable in women, but inexcusable in men,\nthat, in contemplation of the hard blows, red wounds, and gashed bodies\nwith which war is accompanied, will allow itself to forget the\nhardihood, endurance, courage, self-sacrifice, and devotion to public\nduty, of which, under Providence, it has always been the great training\nschool.[7] There is no profession that I know more favourable to the\ngrowth of noble sentiment and manly action than that of the soldier; and\nto its beneficial action in the formation of States every page of\nhistory bears flaming testimony. War, in fact, is the principal agent in\nproducing that unification so absolutely necessary to social existence,\nbut which is lost so soon as the headship of the common father of the\nexpanded clan ceases to be recognised. Thus it was under the compulsion\nof war from their Lombardian neighbours on the west and Sclavonians on\nthe east that the petty democratic communities, which after the\ndisruption of the Roman Empire occupied the Venetian isles, found\nthemselves, in the year 697, obliged to elect a king for life, wisely\nmasking his absolute authority under the name of Doge or Duke. And in a\nsimilar fashion the situation of the Piedmontese, constantly forced to\ndefend themselves against Gallican and Teutonic ambition, begot in them\na stoutness of self-assertion and a general manhood of character which\nup to the present hour has placed them in favourable contrast to the\ninhabitants of the southern half of the peninsula; and the manhood\ndisplayed by the Counts of Savoy in asserting their independence against\ngreat odds was no doubt the cause why, in the Peace of Utrecht in 1713,\ntheir lords were allowed to assume and maintain the title of\nkings--a circumstance which gave rise to the saying of Frederick\nthe Great of Prussia, that the lords of Savoy were kings by virtue of\ntheir locality.[8] This is certainly true, not only of Sardinia, but of\nall States that ever rose above the loose aggregation of the original\ntownships. It was the necessity of adjusting matters with troublesome\nneighbours that caused a perpetual succession of petty wars; and these\ncould not be conducted without a prolongation of the power of the\nsuccessful general, which acted practically as a kingship. The\nsuccessful general in such times did not require to usurp a title which\nthe people were forward to force upon him; and only a few, we may\nimagine, like Gideon (Judges viii. 22), had virtue enough to remain\ncontented with the distinction belonging to a private station when the\ngrace of the crown and the authority of the sceptre were formally\npressed upon them by a grateful people. So in Greece we find an early\nkingship signalised by the names of \u00c6geus, Theseus, and Codrus; so in\nRome a succession of seven kings, more or less distinctly outlined, the\nlast of whom, Tarquin the Proud, stands forward as the head of the great\nLatin league, and entering in this capacity into a formal treaty with\nCarthage, the great commercial State of the Mediterranean. Closely\nconnected with war, or, more properly, as the natural development of it\nin its more advanced stages, we must mention CONQUEST; that is, the\nviolent imposition of the results of a foreign civilisation on the\nnative social foundations of any country. Here, no doubt, there may\noften be on the conquering side something very different from a manly\nself-assertion--viz. self-aggrandisement at the expense of an\ninnocent neighbour, greed of territory, lust of power, and the vanity of\nmere military glory, which our brilliant neighbours the French were so\nfond to have in their mouth. The virtue of war as a training school of\ncivic manhood does by no means exclude the operation of many forces far\nfrom admirable in their motive; and it is the presence of these unholy\ninfluences, no doubt piously brooded over, that has generated in the\nbreasts of our mild friends the Quakers that anti-bellicose gospel which\nthey preach with such lovable persistency. But whatever the motives of\nfamous conquerors have been, the results of their achievements in the\ngreat history of society have been most important. The imposition of a\nforeign type on the peoples of Western Asia by the brilliant conquests\nof Alexander the Great, gave to the whole of that valuable part of the\nworld, along with the rich coast of Northern Africa, a common medium of\nculture of the utmost importance to the future civilisation of the race.\nThe imposition of the Norman yoke 900 years ago on this island gave to\nthe contentious Saxon kingdoms, by a single vigorous stroke from\nwithout, that social consistency which the bloody strife of five\ncenturies of petty kings and kinglets among themselves had failed to\nproduce; while in India the imposition of the most highly advanced\nmercantile and Christian civilisation of the West on crude masses of an\naltogether diverse type of Asiatic society, presents to the thoughtful\nstudent of history a problem of assimilation of an altogether unique\ncharacter, the final solution of which, under the action of many complex\nforces, no most sagacious human intellect at the present moment can\ndivine. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the blessings which\nconquest brings with it, when vigorously managed and wisely used, are\nlightly turned into a bane whenever the power which has the force to\nconquer has not the wisdom to administer; of which unblissful lack of\nadministrative capacity and assimilating genius the conquests of the\nTurks in Europe, and of the English in Ireland, present a most\ninstructive example.\n\nThe monarchies created in the above fashion, by the combination of old\npatriarchal habits with military necessities, however firmly rooted they\nmay appear at the start, carry with them a certain germ of\ndissatisfaction, which, under the influence of popular irritability,\nseriously endangers their permanence, and may at any time break up their\nconsistency. The causes of such dissatisfaction are chiefly the\nfollowing:--(1) The original motive for creating a king, the\npressure of foreign war, as war cannot last for ever, in time of peace\nwill cease to operate, and the instinct of individual liberty, which\nbelongs to all men, unless when violently stamped out, will revive, and\ncause the subjection of all men to the will of one to be looked on with\ndisfavour. (2) This feeling will be specially strong with the\n\u1f04\u03c1\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9, or natural aristocracy, whose individual importance\nmust diminish as the power of the king increases. (3) A great danger\nwill arise from the fixation of the order of succession to the throne.\nThe natural tendency will be to follow the example of succession in\nprivate families, and recognise the right of the son to walk into the\npublic heritage of his father; but the additional influence thus given\nto the king will have a tendency to sharpen the jealousy of the nobles.\nAnd, again, the son may be a weakling or a fool, and utterly unfit to\nplay the part of a supreme ruler with that mixture of intelligence,\nfirmness, and tact which the royal function for its fair and full action\nrequires. (4) And if, in order to avoid these evils, the elective\nprinciple is maintained, either absolutely or within certain limits, the\ntendency to faction inherent in all aristocracies, stimulated by the\npotent spur of a competition for power, will be increased; and this\nfactious yeast will work so potently in the blood of the nobles that\nthey will either reduce the power of the king to a mere name, and change\nthe government into an exclusive oligarchy, as in Venice, or they will\neven go the length of calling in foreign arbiters to heal their\ndissensions, which, as in the case of Poland, will naturally end in\nsubjection to some foreign power; or, lastly, they will dispense with\nthe kingship altogether, and return to their original mixture of\naristocracy and democracy with more firmly-defined functions and more\nreliable guarantees. (5) This result may be precipitated by some\noutbreak of that insolence which is so naturally fostered by the\npossession of absolute power; the sacredness of personal property and\nthe reverence of ancestral possession will not be respected by some Ahab\nof the day; some young Tarquin or Hipparchus may cast his lustful eye on\nthe fair daughter of an humble citizen; and then will be unsheathed the\nsword of a Brutus, and then uprise the song of a Harmodius and\nAristogeiton, which will sound a long knell to monarchy, during the\nmanhood of a free, an independent, a self-reliant, and a self-governing\npeople.\n\nThe system of self-government thus introduced, as the natural fruit of\nthe elements out of which it arose, would be a mixture of aristocracy\nand democracy, with a decided predominance of the former element at\nstarting, but with a gradually increasing momentum on the side of the\ninferior factor in proportion as the mass of the people excluded from\naristocratic privileges by a necessary law of social growth advanced in\nnumbers and in social importance. Greece and Rome, or rather Athens and\nRome, present to us here two types from which important lessons may be\nlearned. In both the discarding of the kings was the work of the\naristocracy; but, while the germ of the democratic element was equally\nstrong in both, in Athens, partly from the genius of the people, partly\nfrom peculiar circumstances, this germ blossomed into an earlier, a more\nmarked, and a more characteristic manhood; whereas in Rome, in the most\nbrilliant period of its political action, the form of government might\nrather be defined as a strong aristocracy limited by a strong democracy\nthan a pure democracy, to which category Athens undoubtedly belongs. In\nboth States the aristocratic element did not submit to the necessary\ncurtailment of its power without a struggle; but in Athens the names of\nSolon (600 B.C.), Clisthenes, Aristides, and Pericles distinctly marked\nthe early formation of a democracy almost totally purged from any\nremnant of aristocratic influence, at an epoch in its development\ncorresponding to which we find Rome pursuing her system of worldwide\nconquest under a system of compromise between the patrician and the\nplebeian element, similar in some sort to what we see before our eyes at\nthe present moment in our own country. To Athens, therefore, we look, in\nthe first place, for an answer to the question, What does history teach\nin regard to the virtue of a purely democratic government? And here we\nmay safely say that, under favourable circumstances, there is no form of\ngovernment which, while it lasts, has such a virtue to give scope to a\nvigorous growth and luxuriant fruitage of various manhood as a pure\ndemocracy. Instead of choking and strangling, or at least depressing,\nthe free self-assertion of the individual, by which alone he feels the\nfull dignity of manhood, such a democracy gives a free career to talent\nand civic efficiency in the greatest number of capable individuals; but\nit does not follow that, though in this regard it has not been surpassed\nby any other form of government, it is therefore absolutely the best of\nall forms of government. All that we are warranted to say is, as\nCornewall Lewis does,[9] that without a strong admixture of the\ndemocratic spirit humanity in its social form cannot achieve its highest\nresults; of which truth, indeed, we have the most striking proof before\nour eyes in our own happy island, where, even before the time which Mr.\nGreen happily designates as Puritan England, powerful kings had received\na lesson that as they had been elected so they might be dismissed from\noffice by the voice of London burghers. Neither, on the other hand, does\nit follow from the shortness of the bright reign of Athenian\ndemocracy--not more than 200 years from Clisthenes to the\nMacedonians--that all democracies are short-lived, and must pay,\nlike dissipated young gentlemen, with premature decay for the feverish\nabuse of their vital force. Possible no doubt it is that, if the power\nof what we may call a sort of Athenian Second Chamber, the Areiopagus,\ninstead of being weakened as it was by Aristides and Pericles, had been\nbuilt up according to the idea of \u00c6schylus and the intelligent\naristocrats of his day, such a body, armed, like our House of Lords,\nwith an effective negative on all outbursts of popular rashness, might\nhave prevented the ambition of the Athenians from launching on that\nfamous Syracusan expedition which exhausted their force and maimed their\naction for the future. But the lesson taught by the short-lived glory of\nAthens, and its subjugation under the rough foot of the astute\nMacedonian, is not that democracies, under the influence of faction,\nand, it may be, not free from venality, will sell their liberties to a\nstrong neighbour--for aristocratic Poland did this in a much more\nblushless way than democratic Greece--but that any loose aggregate\nof independent States, given more to quarrel amongst themselves than to\nunite against a common enemy, whether democratic, or aristocratic, or\nmonarchical in their form of government, cannot in the long run maintain\ntheir ground against the firm policy and the well-massed force of a\nstrong monarchy. Athens was blotted out from the map of free peoples at\nCh\u00e6ronea, not because the Athenian people had too much freedom, but\nbecause the Greek States had too little unity. They were used by Philip\nexactly in the same way that Napoleon used the German States at the\ncommencement of the present century. DIVIDE ET INFERA is the\npolitician's most familiar maxim, which, when wisely and\npersistently applied, whether by an ancient Macedonia or a modern\nRussia, will always give a strong monarchy a decided advantage over\nevery other form of government. Surround me with a belt of petty\nprincipalities, says the despot, however highly civilised and however\nwell governed, and I shall know to make them play my game and work\nthemselves into confusion, till the hour comes when I may appear as a\ngod to allay by my intervention the troubles which I have fostered by my\nintrigues.\n\nSo much for Athens. Let us now see what lessons are to be learned from\nROME. And here, on the threshold, it is quite plain that the abolition\nof kingship goes in the first place to strengthen the aristocracy, on\nwhom as a body the supreme functions exercised by the monarch naturally\ndevolve. The highly aristocratic type of the early Roman republic,\nunlimited from above by any superior power, and with only a slight\noccasional check from a plebeian citizenship in the tender bud, is\nuniversally admitted. Plainly enough also it stands written on the face\nof the early history of the Commonwealth that the administration of the\naristocracy was marked in no ordinary degree by all that exclusiveness,\ninsolence, selfishness, and rapacity, which are the besetting sins of an\norder of men cradled in hereditary conceit, and eating the bread not of\nlabour, but of privilege, \"_das unverbesserliche Junkerthum_,\"\nas Mommsen calls them. To such an extent did they abuse the natural\nvantage ground of their social position that, while the great body of\nthe substantial yeomanry, who shed their blood in a constant succession\nof petty wars for the safety of the State, were stinted of their natural\nreward and degraded from their rightful position, the insolent\nmonopolisers of all dignities and privileges did not blush to take from\nthe people their natural heritage in the public land, and, for the\nenlargement of their own order, to deprive the State of its stoutest\ncitizens, and the army of its most effective soldiers. The irritation\nproduced by this insolent and anti-social procedure of the old Roman\nlandlords, by the law of reaction common to all forces, produced as its\nnatural consequence a revolt; for, as it has been truly said that the\nblood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, no less true is it in\nall history that the insolence of the aristocracy is the cradle of the\ndemocracy. That happened accordingly in ancient Rome which Sismondi\nprophesied might happen in modern Scotland: \"If the mighty thanes who\nrule in those trans-Grampian regions begin to think that they can do\nwithout the people, the people may begin to think they can do without\nthem.\"[10] So at least the Roman plebs thought when, in the year of the\ncity 259, they marched in a body out to the Sacred Mount on the banks of\nthe Anio, and refused to return to the city till their just claims had\nbeen conceded and their wrongs redressed. Their wrongs were redressed:\nconferences, concessions, and compromises, in a hurried and blundering\nsort of way, were made; tribunes of the plebs were appointed, with the\nabsolute power of stopping the whole machinery of the State with a\nsingle negation; and thus was sown the seed of a democracy destined to\ngrow into monstrous proportions, and ripen into the bloody blossom of a\nmilitary despotism by the hands of the very class of persons who were\nchiefly interested in preventing it.\n\nThe different stages of the battle between plebeians and patricians, or,\nas we term it, Whig and Tory, as they evolved themselves by a social\nnecessity from time to time, belong to the special history of Rome, not\nto the general philosophy of history with which we are here concerned.\nThe seed of democracy sown at the Sacred Mount went on from one stage of\nexpansion to another, breaking down every barrier of hereditary\nprivilege between the mass of the people and the old aristocracy, till\nit ended in the _Lex Hortensia_, passed B.C. 288, which gave to all\nordinances passed by the _Comitia Tributa_--that is, the\npeople assembled in local tribes and voting independently of all\naristocratic check or co-operation--the full validity of law. And\nin this progress of equalisation between class and class in a community,\nthe Muse of history sees only a special illustration of a general law\nthat every aristocracy contending for the maintenance of exclusive\nprivilege against natural right fights a losing battle. But the\nnecessity of the adjustment of the opposing claims of a conservative and\na progressive body in the State is a very different thing from the\nfashion in which the adjustment may be made, and from the consequences\nthat may grow out of the adjustment. Here there is room for any amount\nof wisdom, and unfortunately also for a large amount of blundering. No\nman can say that the Roman constitution as it stood, after the plebeians\nhad broken through all aristocratic barriers, was a cunningly compacted\nmachine, or that it afforded any strong guarantee against that\ndegeneracy into licence towards which all unreined democracies naturally\ntend. But one thing certainly was achieved. Out of the plebeian and\npatrician elements of the body social, no longer arrayed in hostile\nattitude, but fronting one another with equal rights before the law, and\nadjusting their forces in a fairly-balanced equilibrium, there was\nformed a great political corporation, deliberative and administrative,\nwhich for independence, dignity, patriotism, and sagacity, used its\nauthority in such a masterly style and to such world-wide issues that it\nhas earned from Mommsen the complimentary acknowledgment of having been\n\"the first political corporation of all times.\"[11] This\ncorporation was the Roman Senate, which ruled the policy of Rome for a\nperiod of 200 years, from the passing of the Hortensian Law through a\nlong period of African and Asiatic wars down to the civil war of Sulla\nand Marius, 88 B.C.--a body of which we may perhaps best easily\nunderstand the composition and the virtue if we imagine the best\nelements of our House of Commons and the best elements of the House of\nLords merged in one Supreme Assembly of practical wisdom, to the\nexclusion at once of the feverish factiousness and multitudinous babble\nof the one assembly, and the brainless obstructiveness and incurable\nblindness of hereditary class interests in the other. But there was\nsomething else in the mixed constitution of Rome besides the tried\nwisdom and the great practical weight of the Senate. What was that?\nThere was, in the first place, the evil of an elective kingship--for\nthe Consul was really an annual king under a different name, as the\nPresident of the United States is a quadriennial king, with greatly more\npower while his kingship lasts than the Queen of Great Britain; and this\nimplied an annual fit of social fever, and the annual sowing of a germ\nof faction ready to shoot into luxuriance under the strong stimulant of\nthe love of power. Then, as in the natural growth of society, a new\naristocracy grew up, formed by the addition of the wealthy plebeian\nfamilies to the old family aristocracy, and along with it a new and\nnumerous plebeian body, practically though not legally excluded from the\nprivilege of the _optimates_, the old antagonism of patrician and\nplebeian would revive, and the question arose, What machinery had the\nlegislation of the previous centuries provided to prevent a collision\nand a rupture between the antagonistic tendencies of the democratic and\noligarchic elements in the State? The answer is, None. The authority of\nthe Senate, great as it was both morally and numerically, was\nantagonised by the co-equal legislative authority of the _Comitia\nTributa_--an assembly as open to any agitator for factious or\nrevolutionary purposes as a meeting of a London mob in Hyde Park, and\ncomposed of elements of the most motley and loose description, ready at\nany moment to give the solemn sanction of a national ordinance to any\nact of hasty violence or calculated party move which might flatter the\nvanity or feed the craving of the masses. But this was not all. The\ntribunate, originally appointed simply for the protection of the\ncommonalty against the rude exercise of patrician power, had now grown\nto such formidable dimensions that the popular tribune of the day might\nbecome the most powerful man in the State, and only require re-election\nto constitute him into a king whose decrees the consuls and the senators\nmust humiliate themselves to register. Here was a machinery cunningly,\none might think, constructed for the purpose of working out its own\ndisruption, even supposing both the popular and aristocratic elements\nhad been composed of average good materials. But they were not so. In\nthe age of the Gracchi, 133 B.C., the high sense of honour, the proud\ninheritance of an uncorrupted patrician body, and the shrewd sense and\nsobriety of a sound-hearted yeomanry, had equally disappeared. The\naristocracy were corrupted by the wealth which flowed in from the spoils\nof conquest; they had become lovers of power rather than lovers of Rome;\nlords of the soil, not fathers of the people; banded together for the\nnarrow interests of their own order rather than for the general\nwell-being of the community. The sturdy yeomanry again, of which the\nmass of the original popular assemblies had been composed, had partly\ndwindled away under maladministration of the public lands, and partly\nwere mixed up with motley groups of citizens of no fixed residence, and\nof a town rabble who could be induced to vote for anything by any man\nwho knew to win their favour by a large distribution of Sicilian corn or\nthe exciting luxury of gladiatorial shows; in a word, the _populus_ had\nbecome a _plebsy_ or, in our language, the people a populace.\nFurthermore, let it be noted that this people or populace, tied down to\nmeet only in Rome, as the high seat of Government, was called upon to\ndeal with the administration of countries as far apart and as diverse in\ncharacter as Madrid and Cairo, or Bagdad and Moscow are from London.\nThink of a mob of London artisans, on the motion of a Henry George, or\neven a rational Radical like Mr. Chamberlain, drummed together to pass\nlaws on landed property and taxation through all that vast domain! But\nso it was; and most unfortunately also the original fathers of the\nagitation which, at the time of the Gracchi, ranged the great rulers of\nthe world into two hostile factions, stabbing one another in the back\nand cutting one another's throats, and plotting and counter-plotting in\nevery conceivable style of baseness, after the fashion which is now\nbeing exemplified before us in Ireland,--the authors of this agitation\nwere not the demagogues, but the aristocracy; as indeed in all cases of\ngeneral discontent, social fret, and illegal violence, the parties who\nare accused of stirring class against class are not the agitators who\nappear on the scene, but the maladministrators who made their appearance\nnecessary. Man is an animal naturally inclined to obey and to take\nthings quietly; insurrection is too expensive an affair to be indulged\nin by way of recreation; and there is no truth in the philosophy of\nhistory more certain than that whenever the multitude of the ruled rebel\nagainst their rulers, the original fault--I do not say the whole blame,\nfor as things go on from bad to worse there may be blame and blunders on\nboth sides--but the original fault and germinative cause of discontent\nand revolt unquestionably lies with the rulers. Whatever may be said\nabout Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, there can be no doubt that in\nthe case of Rome the original cause of the democratising of the old\nconstitution and the over-riding of senatorial authority by tribunician\nordinances was the senators themselves, who, in direct contravention of\nthe public law of the State, with that greed for more land which is the\nbesetting sin of every aristocracy, had quartered themselves, after the\nfashion of colonial squatters, on the public lands, and refused to\nsurrender them to the State till compelled by the cry of popular right\nagainst might, raised by such patriotic and self-sacrificing agitators\nas the Gracchi--patriotic men who attained their object at last by the\nonly means in their power, but means so drastic that, like doctor's\ndrugs, they drave out one devil by bringing in a score, and paid for the\npartial healing of an incurable disease by destroying for ever the\nbalance of the constitution, and inaugurating with their own martyr\nblood one of the most woeful epochs in human history--an epoch varied by\nperiodical assassinations and consummated by wholesale butcheries.\n\nI said the Gracchi attained their object, and that by appointing a\nCommission for a distribution of the public lands, such as the friends\nof the crofters in the Highlands now propose for the repeopling of the\nold depopulated homes of the clan. But I said also that the disease\nunder which Rome laboured was incurable. How was this? Simply because,\nwhatever might have been the merits of the special Agrarian Law carried\nby the Gracchi, the violent steam by which the State machine was moved\nremained the same, the clumsy machine itself remained, and the materials\nwith which it had to deal in a long and critical course of foreign\nconquest became every year larger and more unmanageable. It was not to\nbe expected either, on the one hand, that a strong and influential\naristocracy should die with a single kick, or, on the other, that a\ndemocracy, which had once learned the power of a popular flood to break\ndown aristocratic dams, would cease to exercise that power when a\nconvenient occasion offered. And so the strife of oligarchic and\nplebeian factions continued. The political struggle, as always happens\nin such cases, became a struggle for personal supremacy; the sanguinary\nstreet battle between the younger Gracchus and the Consul Opimius,\nthough followed by a lull for a season, was renewed after a few years in\nmore startling form and much bloodier issues, first between Marius and\nSulla, and finally between C\u00e6sar and Pompey. Such a succession of\nembittered civil wars could end only in exhaustion and submission; and\nthis is the last emphatic lesson which the history of Rome has taught to\nthe governors of the people. Every constitution of mixed aristocratic\nand democratic elements which fails by kindly control on the one side,\nand reasonable demand on the other, to achieve that balance of those\nantagonising forces which means good government, must end in a military\ndespotism. That which will not bridle itself must be bridled; and when\nconstant irritation, fretful jars, and cruel collisions are the bloody\nfruit of unchastened liberty, slavery and stagnation seem not too high a\nprice to pay for peace.\n\nI have enlarged on the development and decay of the Roman republic, not\nonly because in point of political achievement Rome is by far the most\nnotable of the great States of the world, but because in the struggle\nbetween aristocracy and democracy which was the salient feature of its\nhistory from the expulsion of the kings to the battle of Actium, it\npresents a very close and instructive parallel to what has been going on\namongst ourselves from the revolution settlement of 1688 to the present\nhour. If for annual kings with large power we put hereditary kings with\nsmall power, the parallel is complete.[12] Let us now cast a glance, for\ntime and space allow us no more, over some modern developments. The\nmodern States of Europe have good reason, upon the whole, to think\nthemselves fortunate in their having retained the kingship, which the\nGreeks and Romans rejected, either as their original type, or elevated\nand glorified from the dukedoms, margravates, and electorates with which\nthey started. There cannot be much doubt, I imagine, that, if the Romans\nhad retained their king in a hereditary or nearly hereditary form, he\nmight have exercised a mediatorial function between the contending\nparties that would have prevented those bloody strifes and those ugly\ncivic wounds with which the record of their political career stands now\nso sorrowfully defaced. In the experience of their own earliest story,\nServius Tullius had already shown them how a king in the strife of\nclasses might step in by a peaceful new model to open the ranks of a\nclose aristocracy with dignity and safety to a rising democracy; and in\nmodern times the case of Leopold II. of Tuscany does not stand alone as\nan example of what good service a wise king may do in the adjustment of\ncontending claims and smoothing the march of necessary social\ntransitions. In fact, the most democratic people amongst the ancients,\nin order to effect such an adjustment in a peaceful way, had been\nobliged to make Solon a king for the nonce; and the Romans, urged by a\nlike social pressure, named their dictator, or re-elected their consuls\nand their tribunes, in order to secure for the need of the moment that\nunity of counsel, energy of conduct, and moral authority which is the\ngrand recommendation of the kingship. No doubt kings in modern as in\nancient times have erred; they have not been able always to keep\nthemselves sober under the intoxicating influence of absolute power, and\nthey have paid dearly for their errors; but we were wise in this\ncountry, while beheading one despot and banishing another, to punish the\noffender without abolishing the office. True, a thorough-going and\nsternly-consistent republican may ask, with an indignant sneer, What is\nthe use of a king, when we have shorn him of all honours save the grace\nof a crown and the bauble of a sceptre--reduced him, in fact, to a\nmere machine to register the decrees of a democratic assembly? But such\npersons require to be reminded that there is nothing more dangerous, not\nonly in political, but in all practical matters, than logical\nconsistency; that the most narrow-minded people are always the most\nconsistent, and this for the very obvious reason that they have only\nroom for one idea in their small brain chambers, whereas God's\nworld contains many ideas, stiff ideas too, and given to battle, which\nmust be brought into some friendly balance or compromise, or set about\nthroat-cutting on a large scale--a process to which consistent\nrepublicans have never shown a less bloody inclination than consistent\nmonarchists. They must be reminded also that the person of the monarch\nis an incarnated, visible, and tangible symbol of the unity of the\nnation, of which parties and factions are so apt to be forgetful; and if\nour logically-consistent republican may look on this as a matter of\nassociation and sentiment which he will not acknowledge, he must simply\nbe told that the man who does not acknowledge the important place played\nby associations and sentiments in all matters of Church and State knows\nnothing of human nature, and is altogether unfit for meddling with the\ndifficult and dangerous art of politics. He may write books, and lecture\nto coteries, and harangue electoral meetings, and delight himself\nlargely in the reverberation of his own wisdom, but by all means let him\nnot be a prime minister. To what ends logical consistency can lead a\npolitician in high places Charles I. and Archbishop Laud learned when it\nwas too late; and the fate of these two high-perched worthies stands as\na speaking lesson to all politicians, whether of the democratic or the\nmonarchical type, how easy a thing it is for a man to be a good\nChristian and a consistent thinker, and yet on all political matters a\nperfect fool.\n\nAmong the notable modern States three stand before us with\nan exceptional preference for the democratic form of\ngovernment--Switzerland, France, and the great trans-Atlantic\nRepublic. These must be regarded with curious interest and kindly human\nsympathy as great social experiments, by no means to be prejudged and\ndenounced by any sweeping conclusions made from the unfortunate\nbreakdown of the two celebrated ancient republics. The experiment in\nthese cases, as made in altogether different circumstances and under\ndifferent conditions, cannot warrant any such denunciations. The\nrepresentative system which now universally prevails, and which enables\na most widely-scattered and diverse-minded population to vote with a\ncoolness and a precision and a large survey of which the urban system of\nGreece and Rome never dreamed; the general growth of intelligence among\nall classes through the action of cheap education and the large\ncirculation of cheap books; the rapid and ever more rapid travelling of\ncontagious thought from the centre to the extreme limbs and flourishes\nof social unities; and, above all, let us hope the improved tone of\nsocial feeling in all the relations of man to man, which we owe to the\ngreat Christian principle of living as brother with brother, and sister\nwith sister, under a common heavenly fatherhood,--these are all\nforces largely operating in the present day which justify us in hoping\nthat many a social experiment which signally failed with the ancients\nmay be crowned in the centuries which are now being inaugurated with\nencouraging success. Of the three which we have named, Switzerland is\nthe country in which, from topographical peculiarities, the interests of\njealous, neighbours, and the traditional habits of a peasant population\nwell trained to provincial self-government, the permanence of a\ndemocratic federation may be prophesied with the greatest safety, but at\nthe same time with the least interest to the general march of humanity.\nAncient Rome, had it continued as compact and as little disturbed by\nexternal forces and internal fermentations as modern Switzerland, might\nhave remained during the whole course of its career as sober-minded and\nas stable as in the days of Cincinnatus, and the yeomanry which were\ndisplaced by huge absentee landlords, and Syrian or Sicilian slaves. The\ncase of France is altogether different. A republic in an over-civilised,\nhighly-centralised, bureaucratically-governed country, with a\nreligiously hollow, hasty, violent, excitable, and explosive people,\nseems of all social experiments the least hopeful: and that is all that\ncan wisely be said of it at present. But the social conditions in\nAmerica are altogether different; and the experiment of a great\ndemocratic republic for the first time in the history of the\nworld--for Rome in its best times, as we have seen, was an\naristocracy--will be looked on by all lovers of their species with\nthe most kindly curiosity and the most hopeful sympathy. Here we have\nthe stout, self-reliant, sober-minded Anglo-Saxon stock, well trained in\nthe process of the ages to the difficult art of self-government; here we\nhave a constitution framed with the most cautious consideration, and\nwith the most effective checks against the dangers of an over-riding\ndemocracy; here also a people as free from any imminent external danger\nas they have unlimited scope for internal progress. Under no\ncircumstances could the experiment of self-government, on a great scale,\nhave been made with a more promising start. No doubt they have a\ndifficult and slippery problem to perform. The frequent recurrence of\nelections to the supreme magistracy has always been, and ever must be,\nthe breeder of faction, the nurse of venality, and the spur of ambition.\nOnce already has this Titanic confederacy, though only a hundred years\nold, by going through a process of a long, bitter, and bloody civil war,\nshown that the unifying machinery so cunningly put together by the\nconservative genius of a Washington, an Adams, and a Madison, was\ninsufficient to hold in check the rebellious forces at war within its\nwomb. No doubt also it were in vain to speak America free from those\nacts of gigantic jobbing, blushless venality, and over-riding of the\nmasses in various ways, which were working the ruin of Rome in the days\nof Jugurtha. The aristocracy of gold and the tyranny of capitalists in\nChristian New York has shown itself no less able to usurp the public\nland and defraud the people of their share in the soil than the lordly\naristocracy and the slave-dealing magnates of heathen Rome. Nevertheless\nwe need not despair. The sins of American democracy may serve as a\nuseful hint to us not rashly to tinker our own mixed constitution\nwithout waiting for a verdict on issues, which, as Socrates wisely says,\nlie with the gods; nor, on the other hand, is there any wisdom in\nascribing to the American form of government evils which, as belonging\nto human nature, crop up with more or less abundance under all forms of\ngovernment, and which may be specially rife among ourselves. We also\nhave our Glasgow banks, our bubble companies of all kinds, our heady\nspeculations, our hot competitions, our over-productions, our haste to\nbe rich, our idol worship of mere material magnificence,--these are\nevils, and the root of all evil, with the production of which no form of\ngovernment has anything to do, and against which every form of\ngovernment will be in vain invoked to contend.\n\nIn conclusion, we must bear in mind that democracy or social\nself-government is the most difficult of all human problems, and must be\napproached, not with inflated hopes and rosy imaginations, but with\nsobriety and caution and a sound mind, and at critical moments not\nwithout prayer and fasting. Before entering on any scheme for rebuilding\nour social edifice on a democratic model, we should consider seriously\nwhat a democracy really implies, and what we may reasonably promise\nourselves from its possible success. Of the two rallying cries which\nhave made it a favourite with persons given to change, equality and\nliberty, the one is no more true than that all the mountains in the\nHighlands are as high as Ben Nevis, and can only mean at the best that\nall men have an equal right to be called men and to be treated as men,\nwhile the other is only true so far as concerns the removal of all\nartificial barriers to the free exercise of each man's function,\naccording to his capacity and opportunities. But this is a mere\nstarting-point in the social life of a great people. When the bird is\nout of the cage, which it must be in order to be a perfect bird, the\nmore serious question emerges, what use it shall make of its\nnewly-acquired liberty. Here certainly to men, as to birds, there are\ngreat dangers to be faced; and with nations the progress of society, as\nalready remarked, is measured to a much larger extent by the increase of\nlimitations than by the extension of liberties. Then, again, the\nfundamental postulate of extreme democracy that the majority have\neverywhere a right to govern is manifestly false. No man as a member of\nsociety has a natural right to govern: he has a right to be governed,\nand well governed; and that can only be when the government is conducted\nby the wisest and best men who compose the society. If the numerical\nmajority is composed of sober-minded, sensible, and intelligent persons\nwho will either govern wisely themselves or choose persons who will do\nso, then democracy is justified by its deeds; but if it is otherwise,\nand if, when an appeal is made to the multitude, they will choose the\nmost daring, the most ambitious, and the most unscrupulous, rather than\nthe most sensible, the most moderate, and the most conscientious, then\ndemocracy is a bad thing, at least nothing better than the other\n_ocracies_ which it supplants. It is manifest, therefore, that of\nall forms of government democracy is that which imperatively requires\nthe greatest amount of intelligence and moderation among the great mass\nof the people, especially amongst the lower classes, who have always\nbeen the most numerous; and, as history can point to no quarter of the\nworld where such a happy condition of the numerical intelligence has\nbeen realised, it cannot look with any favour on schemes of universal\nsuffrage, even when qualified with a stout array of effective checks.\nThe system, indeed, of representing every man individually, and giving\nevery member of a society a capitation vote, as they have a capitation\ntax in Turkey, however popular with the advocates of extreme democracy,\nseems quite unreasonable. What requires to be represented in a\nreasonable representative system is not so much individuals as\nqualities, capacities, interests, and types. Every class should be\nrepresented, rather than every man in a class. Besides, the equality of\nvotes which democracy demands, on the principle that I am as good as you\nand perhaps a little better, is utterly false, and tends to nourish\nconceit and impertinence, to banish all reverence, and to ignore all\ndistinctions in society. Anyhow, there can be no doubt that great masses\nof men acting together on exciting occasions are peculiarly liable to\nhasty resolutions and violent opinions; all democracies, therefore, are\nunsafe which are unprovided with checks in the form of an upper chamber\ncomposed of more cool materials, and planted firmly in a position that\nmakes them independent of the fever and faction of the hour. A strong\ndemocracy stands as much in need of an aristocratic rein as a strong\naristocracy does of a democratic spur. And let it never be\nforgotten--what democracies are far too apt to forget--that\nminorities have rights as well as majorities; nay, that one of the great\nends to be achieved by a good government is to protect the few against\nthe natural insolence of a majority glorying in its numbers, and hurried\non by the spring-tide of a popular contagion. A state of society is not\nat all inconceivable in which the many shall make all the laws and\nmonopolise all the offices of a fussy bureaucracy, while the few are\nburdened with all the taxes. Never too frequently can we repeat, in\nreference to all public acts, no less than to the conduct of individuals\nin private life, the great Aristotelian maxim that ALL EXTREMES ARE\nWRONG; that every force when in full action tends to an excess which\nfor its own salvation must be met by a counterpoising force; that all\ngood government, as all healthy existence, is the balance of opposites\nand the marriage of contraries; and that the more mettlesome the charger\nthe more need of a firm rein and a cautious rider. He who overlooks this\nprime postulate of all sane action in this complex world may pile his\ndemocratic house tier above tier and enjoy his green conceit for a\nseason; but the day of sore trial and civic storm is not far, when the\nrain shall descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat\nupon that house, and it will fall, because it was founded upon a dream.\n\n\n\nII.\nTHE CHURCH.\n\n\u039f\u1f50 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03bb\u03ad\u03b3\u03c9\u03bd \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u039a\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03b5, \u039a\u03cd\u03c1\u03b9\u03b5, \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03c3\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2\n\u03c4\u1f74\u03bd \u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u03af\u03b1\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03bf\u1f50\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd\u00b7 \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u1fbd \u1f41 \u03c0\u03bf\u03b9\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c4\u1f78 \u03b8\u03ad\u03bb\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6\n\u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 \u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u1f10\u03bd \u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03bf\u1fe6\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2.--\u1f49 \u03a3\u03a9\u03a4\u0397\u03a1.\n\nMAN is characteristically a religious animal; in fact, as Socrates\nteaches, the only religious animal;[13] for, though a dog has no doubt\nreverential emotions, it cannot be said with any propriety that he has\nreligious ideas or ecclesiastical institutions, for a very good reason,\nbecause he has no ideas at all: observation he has very keen, and memory\nalso wonderfully retentive; instincts also, like all primal vital\nforces, divine and miraculous; but ideas certainly none, for ideas mean\nknowledge; and brutes that have no language properly so called that is a\nsystem of significant vocal signs expressive of ideas, but only cries,\ngesticulations, and visible or audible signs expressive of sensations\nand feelings, can by no law of natural analogy be credited with the\npossession of a faculty of which they give no manifestation. Language is\nthe outward body and form of which thought and reason and knowledge and\nideas are the inward soul and force; and hence the wise Greeks, unlike\nour modern scientists, who delight in confounding man with the monkey,\nexpressed language and reason with one word \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2, while what we\ndignify with the name of language in birds and other animals was simply\n\u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03ae, or significant voice. If, therefore, there is any thing most\nhuman that history has to teach, it must be about religion. All the\ngreat nations whose names mark the march of human fates have been\nreligious nations. A people without religion does not exist, or, if it\ndoes exist, it exists only as an abnormal and deficient specimen of the\ngenus to which it belongs, which is of no more account in the just\nestimate of the type than a fox without a tail, or a lawyer without a\ntongue; and as for individual atheists, who have been talked about in\nancient times, and specially in these latter days, they are either\nphilosophers like Spinoza, the most pious of men, falsely baptized with\nan odious title from the stupidity, prejudice, or malice of the\ncommunity, or, if they really are atheists, they are monsters which a\nman may stare at as at an ass with three heads or with no head at all in\na show.\n\nThe form in which religion generally presents itself in early history is\nwhat we commonly call Polytheism, though it is quite possible--a\nmatter about which I am not careful curiously to dogmatise--that\nthere may have been in some places an original Dualism, like the ancient\nPersian, or even a Monotheism, out of which the Polytheism was\ndeveloped. For there cannot be the slightest doubt that, whatever may\nhave been the starting-point, there lay in the popular theology a\ntendency to multiply and to reproduce itself in kindred but not always\neasily recognisable forms, like the children of a family or the\ncousinship of a clan. But, taking Polytheism as the type under which\nhistory presents the objects of religious faith in the earliest times,\nwe have to remark that under this common name, as in the case of\nChristianity, the greatest contrasts, both in speculative idea and in\nsocial efficiency, stare us everywhere in the face. In the eye of the\nChristian or the monotheistic devotee the worships of Aphrodite and of\nPallas Athene are equally idolatrous; but, allowing that these\nanthropomorphic forms of divine forces and functions of the universe are\nequally destitute of a foundation in fact or reason, the reverence paid\nto them by a devout people might be as different as passion is from\nthought, and sense from spirit. As the ideal of wisdom in counsel and in\naction, the Athenian Pallas no doubt exercised as beneficent a sway over\nher Hellenic worshippers as the ideal of Christian womanhood, in the\nperson of the Virgin Mary, does at the present day over millions of\nChristian worshippers. It is only when the cosmic function impersonated\nin the polytheistic god, being of an inferior order, leaps from its\nproper position of subordination and usurps the controlling and\nregulating action belonging to the superior function, that polytheistic\nidolatry becomes immoral; though, of course, the very facility of this\nusurpation, and the stamp of a pseudo divinity that may thereby be given\nto beastly vice, is a sufficient reason for the denunciations of the\nheathen idolatries so frequent in the Old Testament, which ultimately\nripened into the spiritual apostleship and monotheistic aggression of\nSt. Paul. One other striking feature of all polytheistic religions may\nnot be omitted. They are naturally complete--more catholic, more\nsympathetic with universal nature and universal life than monotheistic\nreligions; if they make a philosophical mistake in worshipping many\ngods, they do not make a moral mistake in excluding any of his\nattributes. With the polytheistic worshipper everything is sacred: the\nsun and the sea and the sky, dark earth and awful night, excite in him\nan emotion of reverence. If the Greek polytheist was devout at all, he\nwas devout everywhere; whereas, under monotheistic influences, there is\na danger that devout feelings may respond exclusively to the stern\ndecrees of an absolute lawgiver and the awful threatenings of a violated\nlaw. Polytheistic piety, whatever its defects, was always ready to add a\ngrace to every innocent enjoyment; monotheistic religiousness, as we see\nits severe features in some modern churches, contents itself with adding\na solemn sanction to the moral law--a severity which here and there\nhas not been able to keep itself free from the unlovely phase of\nregarding the innocent enjoyments and the graceful pleasantries of life\nas a sin.\n\nSo much for the soul of the business; the body is what we call the\nChurch. And here the very word is significant. In one sense, as a\nseparate ethical corporation, the ancients had no Church. Why? Because\nChurch and State were one; or, if they were two, they were too like the\nfamous Siamese twins that used to be carried about the country as a\nshow, two so closely connected that they could no more be torn from one\nanother and live than the limpet can be separated from the rock to which\nit clings. With the peoples of the ancient world the State was the\nChurch and the Church was the State; the priest was a magistrate and the\nmagistrate was a priest. This identity of two things, or loose\nintercommunion and fusion of two things in modern association so\ninstinctively kept apart, arose from the common germ out of which both\nChurch and State grew--viz., as we saw in the previous lecture, the\nFAMILY. Every father of a family, in the normal and healthy state of\nsociety, is his own priest as well as his own king. In religion and\nmorals, as well as in all domestic ordinances, he is absolute and\nsupreme; and the functions which necessarily belonged to him as supreme\nadministrator in his own family would, under the influence of family\nfeelings, naturally be conceded to him when the family grew to a clan,\nand the clan to a kingdom. And this is the state of things which we meet\nwith in the Book of Genesis, long before the promulgation of the Mosaic\nlaw, where we read (xiv. 18) that Melchizedek, _king_ of Salem,\nwent out to bless Abraham, and he was _priest_ of the Most High\nGod; the distinction between priest and layman, to which our ears are so\nfamiliar, being in this, as in a thousand other well-known instances,\naltogether ignored. Not only in Homer, where we find Agamemnon, the king\nof men, performing sacrificial functions without even the presence of a\npriest,[14] but in the sober historical age we find the King of Sparta\nperforming all the public sacrifices--being, in fact, in virtue of\nhis office, high priest of Jove.[15] So closely indeed was the State\nreligion identified with the person of the supreme magistrate that, when\nthe kingship was abolished in Greece, and three principal archons and\nseven secondary ones shared his functions, one still retained the title\nof \u03b2\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bb\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2, _king_, and had the supervision, or, as we\nwould say, supreme episcopacy and overseership of all matters pertaining\nto religion.[16] The same thing took place in Rome, where the name of\nking was even more odious than in Greece; but nevertheless a _rex\nsacrificulus_, or _king-sacrificer_, with his _regina_ or\n_queen_, took rank in all the public pontifical dinners above the\n_pontifex maximus_ himself. The college of pontiffs in Rome, which\nhad the supreme direction of all religious matters, was not a board of\npriests, but of laymen--or at least of laymen who, without any\nqualification but some inaugurating ceremony, might be assumed into the\npontifical college; whence the title of _pontifex maximus_, which\nthe emperors assumed, was no more of the nature of a usurpation than the\ntitle of _imperator_, which belonged to them as supreme commanders\nof the army. Who, then, were the priests, and what need of them, at all\nif the laity might legally perform all their functions? The answer is\nsimple. Both in Greece and Rome there were priests and priestly\nfamilies, as the _Eumolpid\u00e6_ in Eleusis, specially dedicated to\nthe service of certain local gods; but there was no order, class, or\nbody of persons having the exclusive right to officiate in sacred\nmatters over the whole community. No doubt the social position of\npriests in democratic Greece and monarchical Egypt was extremely\ndifferent, but in one respect they were identical: in Athens Church and\nState were one as much as in Memphis. In Egypt there was a remarkably\nstrong body or clan of priests enjoying the highest dignities and\nimmunities; but there is no proof that they were a caste, in the strict\nsense of the word; and their virtues were so far from being\nincommunicable that, when the Pharaoh did not happen to be a born\npriest, but of the military class, he was obliged to be made a priest\nbefore he could be a king; and when once king he became _ipso\nfacto_ the high priest of the nation, and took precedence of all\npriests in all great public acts of religious ceremonial. It must not be\nsupposed, however, that, though he was supreme in all sacred matters and\nthe actual head of the Church, to use our language, he could set\nhimself, like our Henry VIII., to carve creeds for the people, and\nimprison or burn devout persons for refusing to acknowledge his\narbitrary decrees. The exercise of sacred functions in the hands of the\nmasterful Tudor and his Machiavelian minister was a usurpation tolerated\nby a loyal people as their readiest and most effective way of getting\nrid of the masterdom of the Roman Pope, which in those days pressed like\nan incubus on the European conscience; it was invoking one devil to turn\nout another, and was successful, as such operations are wont to be, in a\nblundering sort of way. But the worshipful \"Sons of the\nSun\"--for so they were betitled--on the banks of the\nsweet-watered Nile, had no monstrous pretension of this kind, and could\nnot even have dreamt of it. They did not sit on the throne to reform\nreligion, but to maintain it. Neither in Egypt nor in Greece in those\ndays was any such thing known as the rights of the individual\nconscience; but both kings and people received religious laws and\nconsuetudes as we do _Magna Charta_; reasonable people, in the long\ncourse of the centuries before Christ, would no more dream of disturbing\nthe ancestral belief about the gods than they would think of influencing\nthe settled courses of the stars. It was their very deep-rooted\npermanency, in the midst of the startling mutabilities to which human\naffairs are liable, that made the fundamental truths of religion so\nvaluable to their souls; and as to the particular forms under which\nthese fundamental truths might have been symbolised by venerable\ntradition, the people were not given to form themselves into hostile\ncamps on the ground of any local difference, as we do in Scotland about\necclesiastical conceits and crotchets; and every devout Egyptian allowed\nhis neighbour without offence to pay sacred honours to a crocodile or a\ncat, convinced that these honours were equally legitimate and equally\nbeneficial whenever the sacred symbolism peculiar to the worship was\nwisely understood. Collisions, therefore, between Church and State, or\nbetween priesthood and kingship, such as signalised the medieval\nstruggles of the Popes and Emperors, and the convulsions of our infant\nProtestant freedom in England, could not take place amongst the ancient\npolytheists. A wise Socrates was equally willing with the most\nsuperstitious devotee, when pious gratitude called, to sacrifice a cock\nto \u00c6sculapius; and the \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u1ff3 \u03c0\u03cc\u03bb\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2, by the custom of the\nState, was the direction which he gave to all who inquired of him by\nwhat rites they ought to worship the gods.[17] Only amongst the Hebrews,\nas a people in whose religious habitude polytheistic and monotheistic\ntendencies had never come to any decisive settlement of their inherent\nantagonism, do I find a record of a very serious collision between\nChurch and State, after the fashion of our German Henries and\nTransalpine Hildebrands in the days of Papal aggression. Scotsmen\nfamiliar with their Bibles will easily see that I allude to the case of\nUzziah, as recorded in 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-20:--\"But when he\nwas strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction: for he\ntransgressed against the Lord his God, and went into the temple of the\nLord to burn incense upon the altar of incense. And Azariah the priest\nwent in after him, and with him fourscore priests of the Lord, that were\nvaliant men: And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It\nappertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but\nto the priests the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense:\ngo out of the sanctuary; for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be\nfor thine honour from the Lord God. Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a\ncenser in his hand to burn incense: and while he was wroth with the\npriests, the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priests in\nthe house of the Lord, from beside the incense altar. And Azariah the\nchief priest, and all the priests, looked upon him, and, behold, he was\nleprous in his forehead, and they thrust him out from thence; yea,\nhimself hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten him.\"\n\nSo much for Polytheism. That it should have served the spiritual needs\nof the human heart so long--five thousand years at least, from the\nfirst Pharaoh that looked down from his Memphian pyramid on the mystic\nform of the Sphinx, to the last Roman Emperor that sacrificed white\nbulls from Clitumnus at the altar of the Capitoline Jove--is proof\nsufficient that, with all its faults, it was made of very serviceable\nstuff; but creeds and kingdoms, like individuals, must die. At the\ncommencement of the eighth century of the Roman Republic heathenism was\ndoomed in all Romanised Europe, in all Northern Africa, and in Western\nAsia, and that for four reasons. The polytheistic religions of the Old\nWorld, created as they were in the infancy of society, no doubt under\nthe guidance of a healthy instinct of dependence on the ruling power of\nthe universe, but in the main inspired by the emotions and formulated by\nthe imagination, without the regulating control of reason, could not\nhope to hold their ground permanently in the face of that rich growth of\nindividual speculation which, from the sixth century before Christ,\nspread with such ample ramification from Asiatic and European Greece\nover the greater part of the civilised world. If it was a necessity of\nhuman beings at all times to have a religion, it was a no less urgent\nproblem, as the range of vision enlarged with the process of the ages,\nto harmonise their theology with their thinking. And if, on the\nintellectual side, the polytheistic religions of that cultivated age\nwere threatened with a collapse, the sensuous element, always strongly\nrepresented in emotional faiths, was in constant danger of being dragged\ndown into a disturbing and degrading sensuality. Then, again, when the\nRoman Republic, in the age of Augustus C\u00e6sar, had completed the range\nof its world-wide conquests, two social forces, unknown in the best ages\nof Greece and Rome, viz., wealth and luxury, added their perilous\nmomentum to the corrupting elements which were already at work in the\nbosom of the polytheistic system. And in what a hot-bed of fermenting\nputridity these evil leavens had resulted at this period, the pages of\nSuetonius and many chapters in St. Paul are witnesses equally credible\nand equally tragic. Add to all this the fact that the motley\nintermixture of ideas and the inorganic confusion and forced\nassimilation of creeds which, accompanied the universal march of Roman\npolity, brought about a vague desire for some sort of religious unity\nwhich might run parallel with the political unity under which men lived;\nand this desire could be gratified only by placing in the foreground the\ngreat truth of the unity of the Supreme Being, which to vindicate in\npre-Christian ages had been the special mission of the Hebrew race, and\nwhich the Greeks themselves had not indistinctly indicated by placing\nthe moral government of the world and the issues of peace and war in the\nhands of an omnipotent, all-wise, all-beneficent, and absolute Jove.\nThese and the like considerations will lead the thoughtful student of\nhistory easily to understand how the appearance of such an extraordinary\nmoral force as Christianity was imperatively called for at the period\nwhen our Saviour, with His divine mission to a fallen race, began His\npreaching on the shores of a lonely Galilean lake; and the most\nsuperficial glance at the contents of His preaching, as contrasted with\nthe heathenism which it replaced, will show how wonderful was the new\nstart which it gave to the moral life of the world, and how effective\nthe spur which it applied to the march of the ages--a spur so\npotent that we may, without the slightest exaggeration, say that to\nChristianity we owe almost exclusively whatever mild agencies tempered\nthe harshness and sweetened the sourness of crude government in the\nMiddle Ages; and no less, whatever hopeful elements are at the present\nmoment working among ourselves to save the British people, at a critical\nstage of their social development, from the decadence and the\ndegradation that overtook the Romans after their great military mission\nhad been fulfilled. Let us look articulately at the main constituents of\nthat new leaven wherewith Christianity was equipped to regenerate the\nworld. These I find to be--\n\n(1.) By asserting in the strongest way the unity of God, it at once cut\nthe root of the tendency in human nature to create arbitrary objects of\nworship according to the lust or fancy of the worshipper, and accustomed\nthe popular intelligence to a harmonised view of the various forces at\nwork in the constitution of a world so various and so complex as to a\nsuperficial view readily to appear contradictory and irreconcilable.\n\n(2.) By preaching the unity of God, not as an abstract metaphysical\nidea, but as what it really is, a divine fatherhood, Christianity at one\nstroke bound all men together as brethren and members of a common\nfamily; and in this way, while in the relation of nation to nation it\nsubstituted apostleships of love for wars of subjugation, in the\nrelation of class to class it established a sort of spiritual democracy,\nin which the implied equality of all men as men gradually led to the\nabolition of the abnormal institution of slavery, on which all ancient\nsociety rested.\n\n(3.) Christianity, by starting religion as an independent moral\nassociation altogether separate from the State, at once purified the\nsphere of the Church from corrupting elements, and confined the State\nwithin those bounds which the nature of a civic administration\nfurnishes. Religion in this way was purified and elevated, because in\nits nicely segregated sphere no secular considerations of any kind could\ninterfere to tone down its ideal, direct its current, or lame its\nefficiency; while the State, on the other hand, was saved from the folly\nof intermeddling with matters which it did not understand, and\nprofessing principles which it did not believe.\n\n(4.) Christianity, by planting itself emphatically at the very first\nstart, as one may see in the Sermon on the Mount, in direct antagonism\nto ritualism, ceremonialism, and every variety of externalism, and\nplacing the essence of all true religion in regeneration, or, as St.\nPaul has it, a new creature--_i.e._ the legitimate practical\ndominance of the spiritual and ethical above the sensual and carnal part\nof our nature--broke down the middle wall of partition which had so\noften divided piety from morality; so that now a man of culture might\nconsistently give his right hand to religion and his left hand to\nphilosophy, an attitude which, so long as Homer was all that the Greeks\nhad for a bible, no devout Hellenist could assume.\n\n(5.) By placing a firm belief in a future life as a guiding prospect in\nthe foreground, the religion of Christ gave the highest possible value\nto human life, and the strongest possible spur to perseverance in a\nvirtuous career.\n\n(6.) By appealing directly to the individual conscience, and making\nreligion a matter of personal concern and of moral conviction, it raised\nthe value of each individual as a responsible moral agent, and placed\nthe dignity of every man as a social monad on the firmest possible\npedestal.\n\n(7.) By making love its chief motive power, it supplied both the steam\nand the oil of the social machine with a continuity of moral force never\ndreamt of in any of the ancient societies--a force which no mere\nsocialistic schemes for organising labour, no boards of health, no\npolitical economy, no mathematical abstractions, no curiosities of\nphysical science, no democratic suffrages, and no school inspectorships,\nthough multiplied a thousand times, apart from this divine agency, can\never hope to achieve.\n\nThus equipped with a moral armature such as the world had never yet\nseen, it might have been expected that the triumph of Christianity over\nthe ruins of heathenism would have been as complete and as pure from all\nadmixture of evil as it appears in the great evangelical manifesto\ncommonly called the Sermon on the Mount. But it was not to be so; nor,\nindeed, created as human nature is, could possibly be. The miraculous\nvirtue of the seed could not change the nature of the soil, and the\nsweet new wine put into old bottles could not fail to catch a taint from\nthe acid incrustations of the original liquor. _Corruptia optimi\npessima_ is the great lesson which history everywhere teaches, and\nnowhere with a more tragic impressiveness than in the history of the\nChristian Church. What a rank crop of old wives' fables, endless\ngenealogies, ceremonial observances, worship of the letter, voluntary\nhumilities, and disputations of science, falsely so called, started into\nfretful array before the spiritual swordsmanship of St. Paul, no reader\nof the grandest correspondence in the world need be told; but it was not\nso much from Jewish drivel, Attic subtlety, or Corinthian sensualism,\nthat the corrupting forces were to proceed which in the post-Apostolic\nage insinuated themselves like a poison into the pure blood of the\nChurch. It is from within that, in moral matters, our great danger\nflows: if the kingdom of heaven is there, the kingdom of hell is there\nno less distinctly. The doctrine of Aristotle, and the teaching of\nhistory that ALL EXTREMES ARE WRONG, is ever and ever repeated to\npassion-spurred mortals, and ever and ever forgotten. In the green\nardour of our worship we make an idol of our virtue; the strong lines of\nthe particular excellence which we admire are stretched into a\ncaricature; our sublime, severed from all root of soundness, reels over\ninto the ridiculous; we revel and riot and get into an intoxicated\nexcitement with the fruit of our own fancy; and work ourselves from one\nstage of inflammation to another, till, as our great dramatist says,\n\n  \"Goodness, grown to a pleurisy,\n  Dies of its own too much.\"\n\nThe excess into which Christianity at its first start most naturally\nfell was ultra-spiritualism, asceticism, or by whatever name we may\nchoose to characterise that high-flying system in morals which, not\ncontent with the regulation and subordination, aims at the violent\nsubjugation and, as much as may be, the total suppression of the\nphysical element in man. How near this abuse lay is evident, not only\nfrom the general tendency of every man to make an idol of his\ndistinctive virtue, and of every sect to delight in the exaggeration of\nits most characteristic feature, but there are not a few passages of the\nNew Testament which plainly show that the masculine Christianity of St.\nPaul had not more occasion to protest against those Greek libertines who\nturned the grace of God into licentiousness, than against those\noffshoots of the Jewish Essenes who professed a self-imposed arbitrary\nreligiosity (Col. ii. 18, 23), even forbidding to marry and commanding\nto abstain from meats (I Tim. iv. 3).[18] There is, indeed, something\nvery seductive in these attempts to acquire a superhuman virtue, whether\nthey be made by a poet casting off the vulgar bonds that bind him to his\nfellows, like Percy Bysshe Shelley, that he may feed upon sun-dews and\nget drunk on transcendental imaginations, or by a religious person, that\nhe may devote himself to spiritual exercises, free from the disturbing\ninfluence of earthly passions. Such a renunciation of the flesh\ngratifies his pride, and has, in fact, the aspect of a heroic virtue in\na special line; while, at the same time, it is with some persons more\nconvenient, inasmuch as when the resolution is once formed and a decided\nstart made, it is always easier to abstain than to be moderate.\nNevertheless, all such ambitious schemes to ignore the body and to cut\nshort the natural rights of our physical nature must fail. It never can\nbe the virtue of a man to wish to be more than man; and every religion\nwhich sets a stamp of special approval on superhuman, and therefore\nunhuman, virtue, erects a wall of separation between the gospel which it\npreaches and the world which it should convert. In fact, it rather gives\nup the world in despair, and institutes an artificial school for the\npractice of certain select virtues, which only a few will practise, and\nwhich, when practised, can only make those few unfit for the social\nposition which Providence meant them to occupy.\n\nThe second excess into which Christianity, under the action of frail\nhuman nature, easily ran was intolerance. This intolerance, as in the\nprevious case, is only a virtue run to seed; for, as all asceticism is\nmerely a misapplication or an exaggeration of the virtue of self-denial\nand self-control, so all intolerance, or defect of kindly regard to the\ncontrary in opinion or conduct, is merely a crude or an impolitic\nextension of the imperative ought which lies at the root of all moral\ntruth, and specially of all monotheistic religions. There is, indeed, a\ncertain intolerance in truth which will not allow it to hold parley with\nerror; and every new religion with a lofty inspiration, conscious of a\ndivine mission, is necessarily aggressive: it delights to pluck the\nbeard of ancestral authority, and marches right into the presence of\nhoary absurdity and consecrated stupidity. No doubt there is a boundary\nhere which the divine wisdom of the Son of God pointed at emphatically\nenough when he was asked to bring down fire from heaven on those who\ntaught or did otherwise; but the evil spirit of self-importance which\nprompted this request was too deeply engrained in human nature to be\neradicated by a single warning of the great teacher. This spirit of\narrogant individualism asserted itself at an early period in the\ndisorderly Corinthian Church very much in the same way as it does\namongst ourselves, specially in Scotland, at the present moment--viz.\nby the multiplication of sects, the exaggeration of petty distinctions,\nand the fomenting of petty rivalries,--\"Now this I say, that every one\nof you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I\nof Christ\" (I Cor. i. 12),--a spirit which the apostle most strongly\ndenounces as proceeding manifestly from the overrated importance of\nsome secondary specialty, or some accessory condition, of the body of\nbelievers, who thus clubbed themselves into a denomination, and\nresulting in an unkindly divergence from the common highway of\nevangelic life, and an intolerant desire to override one Christian\nbrother with the private shibboleth of another, and to stamp him with\nthe seal of their own conceit. The field in which this intolerant Spirit\ndisplayed itself was of course different, according to the influences at\nwork at the time; but there is one field which, if church history is to\nteach us anything, we are bound to emphasise strongly, that is the field\nof dogma; for, if there be any influence that has worked more powerfully\nto discredit Christianity than even the immoral lives and selfish maxims\nof professing Christians, it is the fixation and glorification and\nidol-worship of the dogma. No doubt Christianity is far from being that\nsystem, or rather no system, of vague and cloudy sentiment to which some\npersons would reduce it: it has bones, and a firm framework; it stands\nupon facts, and is not without doctrines, but it does not make a parade\nof doctrines; and the faith which it enjoins, as is manifest from the\ndefinition and historical examples in Hebrews xi., is not an\nintellectual faith in the doctrines of a metaphysical theology, but a\nliving faith in the moral government of the world and a heroic conduct\nin life, as the necessary expression of such faith. The mere\nintellectual orthodoxy on which the Christian Church has, by the\ntradition of centuries, placed such a high value, is, in the apostolical\nestimate, plainly worth nothing; for the devils also believe and\ntremble, as St. James has it, or as our Lord himself said in the\nstriking summation to the Sermon on the Mount, \"Not they who call me\n_Lord, Lord_, shall enter into the kingdom, but they who do the will of\nmy Father who is in heaven. By their works, not by their creed, ye shall\nknow them.\"[19] Nevertheless, the exaltation of the dogma has always\nbeen a favourite tendency of the Church, and the besetting sin of the\nclergy. With the mass of the people, to swear to a curious creed is\nalways more easy than to lead a noble life; while to the clerical\nintellect it must always give a secret satisfaction to think that the\nscience of theology, which is the furthest removed from the handling of\nthe great mass of men, has in their hands assumed a well-defined shape,\nof which the articulations are as subtle and as necessary as the steps\nof solution in a difficult algebraic problem. The late Baron Bunsen, for\nmany years Prussian ambassador in London, one of the most large-minded\nand large-hearted of Christian men, in the preface to his great _Bibel\nwerk_, devotes a special chapter to Dogmatism as a vice of the clerical\nmind leading to false views of Scripture; over and above what he calls\nthe modern revival of scholastic theology in Germany, he enumerates four\ndominant epochs of ecclesiastical life in which this anti-evangelical\ntendency has prominently asserted itself. These are--(1) the dogmatism\nof the great Church councils in the reigns of Constantine, Theodosius,\nand Justinian; (2) the medieval scholasticism of the Western Church; (3)\nthe Protestant scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;\n(4) the dogmatism of the Jesuits, Perron, Bossuet, and others. Had this\ndogmatic tendency of the Church contented itself with tabulating a\ncurious scheme of divine mysteries, though it might justly have been\ndeemed impertinent, and here and there a little presumptuous, yet it\nmight have been condoned lightly as a sort of clerical recreation in\nhours which might have been worse employed; but it could not be content\nwith this: it passed at once into action, and in this guise prevailed to\ndeface the fair front of the Church with gashes of more bloody and\nbarbarous inhumanity than ever marked the altars of the Baals and\nMolochs of the most savage heathen superstitions.\n\nAnother monstrous abuse born out of the bosom of the Church, though not\nso directly, is Sacerdotalism. I say not so directly, because the genius\nof Christianity is so distinctly negative of all priesthood that, had\nthere been even an express prohibition of it, its contradiction to the\nwhole tone of the New Testament could not have been more apparent. Not\nmore certainly are the sacrifices of the Jewish law abolished in the\nsacrifice of Christ, according to the Pauline theology, than the\nLevitical priesthood stands abolished in the priesthood of Christ and in\nthe priesthood of the individual members of his spiritual body (2 Peter\nv. 9).[20] Whence, then, came our Christian priesthood? Partly, I\nsuspect, as the Jewish Sabbath was interpolated into the Christian\nLord's Day, from the nearness and external similitude of the two\nthings--the presbyter being to the outward eye pretty much the same\nas the priest was to the Jewish worshippers; partly from the\nself-importance which is the besetting sin of all bodies of men\nprominently planted in the social platform, and which induces them to\nmagnify their vocation, and in doing so stilt their professional pride\nup into the attitude of a very stately and a very reputable virtue. The\nproper functions of the office-bearers of the early Christian Church,\ncall them overseers, bishops, or what you will, were so honourable and\nso beneficent that, especially with an unlearned and unthinking people,\nthe reverential respect due to the actors might easily pass into a\nsuperstitious belief in the mystical virtue of the operations of which\nthey were the conductors; and this ready submission on the part of the\npeople, holding out a willing hand to the natural self-importance and\npotentiated self-estimate of the clerical body, resulted in a\nfour-square system of sacerdotal control, sacerdotal virtue, and\nsacerdotal influence, to which we shall search for a parallel in vain\nthrough all the annals of Asiatic and African heathenism. Nay, I can\nreadily believe that those who can find a priesthood in the genius of\nthe gospel and the apostolic institution of the Christian Church, will\nnaturally be inclined to maintain that the superior power of the\nGregories, Bonifaces, and Innocents of the medieval Church, as\ncontrasted with anything that we read or know of the Egyptian, Hebrew,\nand Roman pontiffs, is the natural and necessary outcome of the superior\nexcellence of the Christian religion; and this, no doubt, is the only\ncomfortable belief on which all forms of Christian sacerdotalism can\nrepose.\n\nSo much for the corruptions of the Christian religion proceeding from\nwhat, in theological language, might be called the indwelling sin of the\nChurch, unstimulated by any strong external seduction. But this\nseduction came. After three centuries of hardship, manfully endured in\nthe school of adversity, the more severe trial of prosperity had to be\ngone through. The Church, which had been declared to be not of this\nworld, and had stood face to face with the greatest political power the\nworld ever knew in a position of sublime moral isolation, was now\nadopted by the State, and formed a bond of the most intimate connection\nwith its hereditary persecutors. The starting-point of the oldest\nheathen social attitude, the identity of Church and State, seemed to be\nrecalled; and a Justinian on the shores of the Bosphorus seemed as\nreally a head of the Church as a Menes or an Amenophis on the banks of\nthe Nile. But under the outward likeness a radical difference lay\nconcealed. As an essentially ethical society, with its own special\ncredentials, its separate history, and its independent triumph, the\nChristian Church might form an alliance with a purely secular\ninstitution like the State, but it could not be absorbed or identified\nwith it. That alliance might be made beneficially in various ways and on\nvarious terms; the civil magistrate might be proud to be called the\nfriend and the brother of the Christian bishop, or he might humble\nhimself to be its servant, but he never could be its master. The\nalliance therefore was, as it ought to be, all in favour of the\nspiritual body; the Church gained the civil power to execute its decrees\nand to patronise its missions; but a Christian State could never gain\nthe right to dictate the creed or perform the functions of the Church.\nThe idea that there is anything absolutely sinful, or necessarily\npernicious, in the conception of an alliance between the Church and the\nState, is one of those hyperconscientious crotchets of modern British\nsectarianism at which the Muse of history can only smile. There can be\nno greater sin in an Established Church than in an Established\nUniversity or an Established Royal Academy. Religion and Science and Art\nhave their separate and well-marked provinces, in the administration of\nwhich they may wisely seek for the co-operation, though they will always\njealously avoid the dictation, of the State. But, though there could be\nno sin in the Church receiving the right hand of fellowship from the\nState, there might be danger, and that of a very serious description.\nNothing strikes a man so much in the reading of the New Testament as the\nlittle respect which it pays to riches and the pomp and pride of life,\nand worldly honours and dignities of all kinds. \"_How can ye\nbelieve who receive honour one from another?_\" is a sentence\nthat cuts very deep into the connection between the Church and State,\nwhich might readily mean the alliance of a secular institution,\ndelighting in pomp and parade and glittering show, with a religion of\nwhich, like the philosophy of the porch, the most prominent feature was\nunworldliness, humility, and spirituality. Here unquestionably was\ndanger: an alliance in which, as in an ill-consorted marriage, the lower\nelement was as likely to drag down the higher as the higher to lift up\nthe lower. And so it actually happened. The Church was secularised.\nAlongside of the hundred and one monkeries of stolid asceticism and the\nhundred and one mummeries of sacerdotal ceremonialism, there grew up in\nthe process of the ages a consolidated hierarchy of such concentrated,\nsecular, and sacred potency that the loftiest crowned heads of Europe\nducked beneath its shadow and quailed beneath its ban. To understand\nthis, we must take note of the change by which the scattered presbyters\nof the primitive Church were gradually massed into a strong aristocracy,\nwhich in due season, after the fashion of the State, found its key-stone\nin an ecclesiastical monarch. It was the wisdom of the founders of the\nChristian Church not to lay down any fixed norm of official\nadministration, but to leave all the external machinery of a purely\nspiritual institution free to adapt itself to the existing forms of\nsociety as time and circumstance and national genius might demand. The\nform of government natural to the Church in its earliest stages was\ndemocratic, with a certain loose, ill-defined element of presidential\naristocracy. But in an age which had bidden a long farewell both to the\nspirit and the form of democracy in civil administration, such a form of\ngovernment in the Church could not hope to maintain itself. Under the\ninfluence of the magnificent autocracy of Rome in its decadence, the\nsimple overseer or superintendent (\u1f10\u03c0\u03af\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2) of a remote\nprovincial congregation of believers gradually grew into a metropolitan\ndignitary, and culminated in the wielder of a secular sovereignty\nsitting in council with the most influential monarchs of Europe. The\nepiphany of an absolute monarch with a triple tiara on his head when\ncontrasted with the simplicity and unworldliness of the primitive\nbishops wears such a strange look that it has been judged, especially in\nProtestant countries, with a more sweeping severity than it deserved. As\na mere form of government, no man can give any good reason why the\nChurch should not be governed by a monarch as well as the State; the\nbishop of Rome, as supreme head of the body of bishops all over\nChristendom, and guided by them as his habitual advisers, was at least\nas natural and as reasonable a guide for the direction of the conscience\nof Christendom in the Middle Ages as the Council of Protestants who at\nDort, in the year 1618, condemned the greatest theologian and jurist of\nthe day to pine in a Dutch prison, or the Assembly of Divines in\nWestminster who empowered the supreme magistrate to suppress the right\nof free thought in the breasts of all persons who were not prepared to\nset their seal to the damnatory dogmas of extreme Calvinism. Nay, so far\nfrom there being anything anti-Christian or anti-social in the Popedom\nas a form of Church government, we may safely say that in ages of\ngeneral turmoil, confusion, and violence, the admitted supremacy of the\nvisible head of a church founded on principles of peace and conciliation\ncould not act otherwise than beneficially. But when the person in whom\nthis moral supremacy was vested became the acknowledged head of a\nsecular princedom, the case was altered. It was an unhappy day for the\nChristian Church, the most unhappy day perhaps in its whole eventful\nhistory, when Pepin, the ambitious minister of the last of the\nMerovingian kings, in the year 751, contrived to get out of Pope Zachary\na spiritual sanction for his usurption of his master's throne.\nFrom that moment the Church was doomed to a blazing and brilliant, but a\nsure career of downfall. The spiritual abetter of a secular crime had to\nbe rewarded for his pious subserviency: he received the exarchate of\nRavenna, and became a temporal prince. From that time forward the head\nof the Christian Church, who ought to have stood before the world as a\nmodel of all purity, truthfulness, peacefulness, and ethical nobility,\nwas condemned to serve two masters, God and Mammon, unworldly morality\nand worldly power, which was impossible. From this time forward there\nwas not a single court intrigue in Europe, nor a single plot of any knot\nof conspirators, into whose counsels the supreme bishop of the gospel of\npeace might not be dragged, or, what is worse, into whose lawless and\nungodly machinations he might not be officially thrusting himself, in\norder to preserve some accessory interest or gain some paltry advantage\naltogether unconnected with his spiritual function. If there is any one\nelement, always of course excepting the element of gross sensuality and\nabsolute villainy, which more than another is adverse to the spirit of\nEvangelical Christianity, it is the element of court intrigue, political\ncontention, and party feuds. In this region love, which is the life of\nthe regenerate soul, cannot breathe; truth is put under ban; lies\nflourish; conscience is smothered; and low expediency everywhere takes\nthe place of lofty principle. So it fared not seldom with the Popes; and\nmuch worse in the last degree; for wickedness, like everything that\nlives, must live by growing, and the seed of secular ambition which was\nsown in lies, will grow to robbery, blossom in lust, and ripen into\nmurder. This anywhere, but specially in Italy, where from the time of\nthe patrician Scipio, who suppressed the elder Gracchus, the hot\ncontenders for absolute power, in the eager pursuit of their object,\nhave never shrank from the free use of the assassin's dagger and\nthe poisoner's bowl. In fact, if the love of mere animal pleasure\nmakes a man a beast, it is the love of power that translates him into a\nfiend; and of this sort of human fiends Italian history presents as\nappalling a register as can be found anywhere in the annals of our race;\nand at the top of this register stand some of the Popes, whose names are\nas prominent in the story of ecclesiastical Rome as those of Nero,\nDomitianus, and Heliogabalus are in the story of the imperial decadence.\nWhen we cast a rapid glance--for it deserves nothing more--on\nthe revolting record of the Roman Popes in the age immediately preceding\nthe Reformation, we hear the solemn voice of history repeating again the\nmaxim above quoted--_corruptio optimi pessima_: when priests\nare bad, they are very bad; when the salt of the gospel, which was meant\nto preserve the moral life of society from putrescence, has lost its\nsavour, if not cast out, it is worse than useless--it becomes a\npoison.\n\nBefore proceeding to the modern history of the Church, we ought to\nemphasise in a special paragraph the fact that one unfortunate result of\nthe incorporation of the Church with the State was that the Church was\nnow in a position to request the State to lend its potent aid in\nestablishing the true doctrine of the gospel and suppressing all\nheresies. That the State had a right to do so no man doubted; even in\ndemocratic Greece free-thinking philosophers, such as Anaxagoras,\nDiogenes, and Socrates, were banished or suffered death on charges of\nimpiety; and though, no doubt, political elements, as in the case of the\nArminians in Holland, worked along with the strictly religious feeling\nto set the brand of atheism on those men, there cannot be any doubt that\nwhere the State and the Church were so essentially one, persecutions for\nunauthorised religious observances were perfectly legitimate, as indeed\nthe memorable case of the forcible suppression of the Dionysiac\nmysteries, more than two hundred years before the earliest of the\nChristian martyrdoms in Rome, abundantly testifies. But there was a\ndouble horror in the religious persecution, after the establishment of\nChristianity, now inaugurated for the first time--the horror of a\nconduct so diametrically opposed to the spirit and the express\ninjunction of the Founder of the Gospel, in whose defence it was\npractised, and the horror also that what was now violently suppressed\nwas not, as in the case of the Dionysiac mysteries, rather immoral\npractices than erroneous beliefs, but simply and nakedly metaphysical\nobjections against metaphysical propositions in theology, which, whether\ntrue or false, could not be made the subject of State action, or, in my\nopinion at least, of ecclesiastical censure, without a flagrant\nviolation of that law of charity which a large philosophy and a catholic\nChristianity equally enjoin. The banishment of Arius to Illyria, as the\ncivil consequence of the formal signature of the Trinitarian creed by\nthe decision of the Council of Nice in the year 325, though it made no\nsmall noise in the world in those days, was a very innocent overture to\nthe barbarous dramas of fire and blood that were in after ages to be\nenacted on this evil precedent. There are many grand places rich with\nhistorical lessons in London, and not a few sad ones; but the saddest of\nall is Smithfield. I can never pace the stones of this memorable site,\nwhere our noblest Scot, Sir William Wallace, was disembowelled and\nquartered to gratify the vengeance of an imperious Norman, without\nthinking of the sad fate of the young and beautiful Anne Askew. This\nlady, the daughter of a knight of good family in Lincolnshire, under\nsome of those stimulants of thought which were stirring up the stagnant\ntraditions of medieval piety, had been led to conceive serious doubts\nwith regard to the Scripture authority for some of the most universally\nreceived doctrines of the Roman Church. This pious scepticism coming to\nthe ears of certain leading persons in Church and State, who, after the\nexample of the Nicean doctors, considered it a sacred duty in matters\npertaining to religion to tolerate no contradiction, first brought this\nlady before the Lord Chancellor, who tore her limb from limb on the\nrack, because she would not say that she believed what she could not\nbelieve without denying her senses, and then dragged her to the\nblood-stained pavement of Smithfield, where she was girt with gunpowder\nbags and fenced with faggots, to be burnt to death, as if the God of\nChristians were a second and enlarged edition of the old Moloch of\nPalestine. And what was her offence--beautiful, young, pure, and\ntruthful woman, not more than twenty-five years of age--that she\nshould be treated in this worse than cannibalic style in the name of the\ngospel of Jesus Christ? Simply that Henry VIII., in that style of\ninsolent masterdom which he showed so royally, and conceiting himself,\nlike a Scotch fool who came after him, to be a considerable theologian,\nassumed the right to put the stamp of absolute kingship on the doctrine\nof the Church that a piece of bread, over which a priestly benediction\nhad been pronounced by a priest, was by the mystical virtue of this\nbenediction changed into flesh, while the fair young lady persisted in\nseeing nothing but bread. Let it be granted that the lady was in the\nwrong and the churchly tradition right, it never could be right to tear\nher flesh to shreds and to burn her bones to ashes because she held an\nopinion which, to say the least of it, looked as like the truth as its\nopposite. How sad, how sorrowfully sad, and what a commentary on what we\nare ever and anon tempted to call poor, pitiful, prideful, and\npresumptuous human nature, that Christianity had at that time been more\nthan fifteen hundred years in the world, sitting in high places, and\nwalking with triumphal banners over the earth, and yet neither the\nprinces of the earth nor the rulers of the Church should have retained\neven a slight echo of that reproof from a mild Master to a zealous\ndisciple, to the effect that no man who knew the spirit of the divine\nreligion which He taught, would ever propose to bring fire down from\nheaven or up from hell to consume the unbeliever.\n\nSuch enormities in the doctrine and practice of the Church, as we have\nindicated rather than described, could lead to only one of two\nissues--Reform or Revolution. The change brought about, though\ncontenting itself with the milder name, was in fact the more drastic\nprocedure. The European reformation of Martin Luther in 1517 was a\nrevolution in the Church, much more radical and much more worthy of so\nstrong a designation than the political revolution of 1688 in Great\nBritain. It is needless to recapitulate the causes of offence; they were\nonly too patent--insolence, secularity, sensuality, venality,\nidleness, vice, and worthlessness of every kind in the Church; but there\nwere two causes which, in addition to corruption from within, tended to\nopen the ears of Christendom largely to the cry for Church reform. These\nwere the stir in the intellectual movement from the days of the author\nof the Divine Comedy downwards, enforced by the invention of printing in\nthe middle of the fifteenth century, which was amply sufficient to\nbecome a danger to even a much less vulnerable creed than that which had\nsatisfied the crude demands of medieval intelligence; and, in the second\nplace, the hostility which the insolence and ambition of Churchmen had\nroused in the secular magistracy--that is, not only the monarch and\nhis official ministers, but the great body of the higher nobility who\nfound themselves ousted from their place in the familiar counsels of the\nmonarch by the advocates and ambassadors of a foreign potentate. Thus\nthe two best friends of every Established Church in its normal state\nwere converted into enemies; and the natural indignation of the common\npeople at the licentious lives and gross venality of the clergy was\nstimulated into an explosion by the desire of the secular dignities to\ncurb the pride of the clergy, and, it might lightly happen also, to rob\nthem of part of their overgrown wealth, nominally for the public good,\nreally for the aggrandisement of the Crown and the nobility. The\nshameless nepotism of Pope Sixtus IV., the flagitious lives and\nabhorrent practices of the Borgias, more fit for a sensational melodrama\nin the lowest Parisian theatre than for the home of a Christian bishop;\nthe military rage of a Julius, who turned the Church of Christ into a\ntravelling camp and the bishop's crozier into a soldier's\nsword; the literary dilettantism of the Court of Leo X., more eager to\ndistinguish itself by the elegant trimming of Latin versicles than by\napostolic zeal and Christian purity,--all this, so long as it\ndisported itself on Italian ground, the aristocracy of England and\nScotland might have continued to look on with indifference; but that the\nson of anybody or nobody, in a county of unvalued clodhoppers, should\njostle them in the antechamber of the monarch, and claim precedence in\nthe hall of audience, simply because he was the supple instrument of an\ninsolent Italian priest, this was not to be borne; and so the\nReformation came, with the mob of the lowest classes, the mass of the\nrespectable middle classes, the most influential of the nobility, and\nthe power of the Crown, all in full cry against the ecclesiastical fox.\nThe revolution thus volcanically effected, and known in history under\nthe name of Protestantism, meant simply the right of every individual\nmember of the Christian Church to take the principles and the practice\nof his Church directly from the original records of the Church, without\nthe intervention of any body of authorised interpreters; and the\nnecessary product of this right when exercised was first to declare\ncertain practices and doctrines that had grown up in the Church through\nlong centuries to be unauthorised departures from the original\nsimplicity and purity of the gospel; and, further, to deny that there\nexisted in the Christian Church, as originally constituted, any class or\ncaste of men enjoying the exclusive privilege to perform sacred\nfunctions, and endowed with a divine virtue to perform sacramental\nmiracles by their consecrating touch,--in a word, that there was no\npriesthood, properly so called, in the Reformed Christian Church. Nor is\nthis doctrine, as some may think, the teaching only of the Helvetic\nconfession, what certain persons have been fond to call extreme\nProtestantism; for, though the word priest has been retained in the\nEnglish prayerbook as a minister in sacred things of a particular grade\nand exercising a particular function, the attempt made by Archbishop\nLaud and the Romanising party in the Reformed Church of England to\nretain in the bosom of the Anglican Church the ideas which the ancient\nJews and the Romish Christians attached to the word _priest_,\nproved a signal failure; and for the sacerdotal despotism which it\nimplied, as well as for the secular despotism which the priest advised\nand encouraged the unfortunate king to assert, the adviser and the\nadvised justly lost their heads. Of all the teachings of Church history,\nfrom the Waldenses in the twelfth century down to the present hour,\nthere is nothing more certain than this, that between Popery and\nProtestantism there is no middle term possible. They may agree, in fact\nthey do agree, in many essential things, and in a few accidental; but in\nthe fundamental principle of Church administration they are\ndiametrically opposed. The principle of the one is sacerdotal authority,\nabsolute and unqualified; the principle of the other is individual and\ncongregational liberty. The one form of polity is a close oligarchy, the\nother either a free democracy or an aristocracy more or less penetrated\nby a democratic spirit.\n\nThe practical outcome of this great Protestant movement, in the midst of\nwhich we live, cannot fail to a reasonable eye to appear in the highest\ndegree satisfactory. Never was the life of the Christian Church at once\nmore intensely earnest and more expansively distributive than at the\npresent moment. On the one hand, the Roman Church, wisely taught by the\nexperience of the past, though obstinately cleaving to that stout\nconservatism of doctrine and ritual inherent in the very bones of all\nsacerdotal religions, has been, in the main, studious to avoid those\ncauses of offence from which the great rupture proceeded. On the other\nhand, the Protestant Churches, shaken free from the distracting\ninfluence of sacerdotal assumption and secular ambition, have found\nthemselves in a condition to permeate all classes of society with a\nmoral virtue, of whose regenerative action Plato and Socrates, in their\nbest hours, could not have dreamed. Some people, while gladly admitting\nthe immense amount of social good that is done by the various sections\nof the Protestant Church, never cease to sigh for a lost ecclesiastical\nunity, and to lament the unseemly strifes that arise among those that\nshould be possessed by one spirit and strive together for a common end.\nBut the persons who speak thus are either sentimental weaklings, being\nProtestants, or are Romanists and sacerdotalists in their heart. Variety\nis the law of nature in the moral no less than in the physical world;\nand the absorption of all sects into one results in a stagnation which\nwill never be found amongst moral beings, unless when produced by\nweakness of vital force from within, or unnatural suppression from\nabove. The two dominant types of church polity recognised in this\ncountry since the Reformation--the Episcopal and the Presbyterian--of\nwhich the one boasts a more aristocratic intellectual culture, and the\nother a more fervid and forcible popular action, may well be allowed to\nexist together on a mutual understanding of giving and taking whatever\nis best in each, and thus, in apostolic language, provoking one another\nto love and to good works. Competition is for the public benefit as much\nin churches as in trades. Dissent from any dominant body, even though it\nmay proceed from the exaggerated importance given to a secondary matter,\nwill always produce the good result that the dominant body will thereby\nbe stirred to greater activity and greater watchfulness; so that, in\nthis view, we may lay it down as one of the great lessons of history\nthat the best form of church government is a strong establishment\nqualified by a strong dissent. As to the proposals which have in recent\ntimes been made for the formal separation of Church and State, they bear\non their face more of a political than of a religious significance.\nImpartial history offers no countenance to the notion that Established\nChurches, when well flanked by dissent, and in an age when the spiritual\nruler has ceased to make the arm of the State the tool of intolerance,\nare contrary either to piety or to policy; and in the desire so loudly\nexpressed at election contests to lay violent hands on the valuable\norganism of church agency existing in this country, the venerated\ninheritance of many ages of patriotic struggle, the student of history,\nwith a charitable allowance for the best motives in not a few, feels\nhimself constrained to suspect in all such movements no small admixture\nof sectarian jealousy, fussy religiosity, and domineering democracy.\nChristianity, of course, stands in no need of an Established Church;\nreligion existed for three hundred years in the church without any State\nconnection, and may exist again; but Christianity does, above all\nthings, abhor the stirring up of strife betwixt Church and Church from\nmotives of jealousy, envy, or greed; and, along with the highest\nphilosophy and the most far-sighted political wisdom, must protest in\nthe strongest terms against the abolishing of a useful ethical\ninstitution to gratify the insane lust of levelling in a mere numerical\nmajority.\n\nThe Church of the future, whether established or disestablished, or, as\nI think best, both together, provoking one another to love and to good\nworks, has a great mission before it, if it keep sharply in view the two\nlessons which the teaching of eighteen centuries so eloquently enforces.\nOur evangelists must remove from the van of their evangelic force all\nthat sharp fence of metaphysical subtlety and scholastic dogma, which,\nbeing ostentatiously paraded in creeds and catechisms, has given more\njust offence to those without than edification to those within the\nChurch; the gospel must be presented to the world with all that catholic\nbreadth, kindly humanity, and popular directness which were its boast\nbefore it was laced and screwed into artificial shapes by the decrees of\nintolerent councils, and the subtleties of ingenious schoolmen. And,\nagain, they must not allow the gospel to be handled, what is too often\nthe case, as a mere message of hope and comfort in view of a future\nworld; but they must make it walk directly into the complex relations of\nmodern society, and think that it has done nothing till the ideal of\nsentiment and conduct which it preached on Sunday has been more or less\npractised on Monday. In fact, there ought to be less vague preaching on\nSunday, and more specific and direct application through the week of\ngospel principle in various spheres of the intellectual and moral life\nof the community. If, in addition to this, our prophets of the pulpit\ntake care to keep abreast of the intellectual movement of the age, so as\nnot only to stir the world in sermons, but to guide them in the wisdom\nof daily life, they have nothing to fear from all the windy artillery\nthat the speculations of a soulless physical science, the imaginations\nof a dreamy socialism, or the dogmatism of a cold philosophical\nformalism, can bring to bear upon them. Let them grapple bravely with\nall social problems, and prove whether Christianity, which has done so\nmuch to purify the motives of individuals, may not be able also to put a\nmore effective steam into the machinery of society. If they shall fail\nhere, they will fail gloriously, having done their best. It is not given\nto any people, however great, to solve all problems. When Great Britain\nshall have played out her part, there will be scope enough in the\nprocess of the ages for another stout social worker to place the cornice\non the edifice of which she was privileged to raise the pillars.\n\nThe End\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES.\n\n[Footnote 1]\n\nPlutarch conjugalia pr\u00e6cepta init.\n\n\n[Footnote 2]\n\nThe word _clan_ is the familiar, well-known Celtic word for _children_.\n\n\n[Footnote 3]\n\n\"Nulli alii sunt homines qui talem in liberos habeant potestatem qualem\nnos habemus.\" _Institut_. i. 9, 2.\n\n\n[Footnote 4]\n\nThucyd. ii. 15. The Athenians went further, and attributed to the son\nof \u00c6geus the creation of their democracy (Pausan., _Att_. iii.); but\nthis, of course, was only the popular instinct, everywhere active, which\nloves to heap all graces upon the head of a favourite hero.\n\n\n[Footnote 5]\n\nSee the words of the Latin league, Dionys. Hal. vi. 95, contrasting\nstrongly with the original collection of autonomous villages described\nby Strabo, v. 229, \u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u1f01 \u03ba\u03ce\u03bc\u03b1\u03c2 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd\u03bf\u03bc\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9.\n\n\n[Footnote 6]\n\nThe influence of the great city in centralising the villages and making\na state possible was in Greece philologically stereotyped by the fact\nthat for _city_ and _state_ the language had only one word, \u03c0\u03cc\u03bb\u03b9\u03c2. The\n_city_ was the _state_ in the same sense that the head is the body, for\nwithout the head no living body could be.\n\n\n[Footnote 7]\n\n\u1f41 \u03c3\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03c9\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b2\u03af\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u1f70 \u1f12\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9 \u03bc\u03ad\u03c1\u03b7 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03c1\u03b5\u03c4\u1fc6\u03c2.--Aristot. Pol. ii. 9.\nSt. Paul also frequently in the Epistles, and Clemens Romanus (Oxon.\n1633, p. 48) refers to the military profession as a great school of\nmanly virtue.\n\n\n[Footnote 8]\n\nSpalding's _Italy_, ii. p. 284.\n\n\n[Footnote 9]\n\n_On Method in Political Science_.\n\n\n[Footnote 10]\n\nSismondi, _Etudes sur l'economie politique_, Essai iv.\n\n\n[Footnote 11]\n\nWith which sentence Mr. Freeman agrees. _Comparative Politics_,\nLecture iii. p. 78.\n\n\n[Footnote 12]\n\nThis parallel has been noticed by the thoughtful Germans; see\nparticularly Zacharia Sulla, i. 40.\n\n\n[Footnote 13]\n\n\u03c4\u03af\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u1f02\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf\u03c5 \u03b6\u1ff4\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1f74 \u03c0\u03c1\u1ff6\u03c4\u03b1 \u03bc\u1f72\u03bd \u03b8\u03b5\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u03c4\u1f70 \u03bc\u03ad\u03b3\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1 \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76\n\u03ba\u03ac\u03bb\u03bb\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03be\u03ac\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u1f94\u03c3\u03b8\u03b7\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f43\u03c4\u03b9 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c3\u03b9: \u03c4\u03af \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c6\u1fe6\u03bb\u03bf\u03bd \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf \u1f22\n\u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u1f7a\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5\u03cd\u03bf\u03c5\u03c3\u03b9.--Xen. _Mem_. i. 4.\n\n\n[Footnote 14]\n\n_Iliad_, iii. 271; and compare Virgil, _\u00c6neid_, iii. 80.\n\n\n[Footnote 15]\n\nXen., _Rep. Lac._, i. 15; Herod, vi. 56.\n\n\n[Footnote 16]\n\nPollux, viii. 90.\n\n\n[Footnote 17]\n\nXen., _Mem_. i. 3.\n\n\n[Footnote 18]\n\nFrom the \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c7\u03ae \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd, or _Early Teaching of the Apostles_,\nlately discovered, ch. viii., we learn that it was the custom of\nthe early Christians to observe two days of fasting in the\nweek--Wednesday and Friday.--Edit. Oxford Parker, 1885.\n\n\n[Footnote 19]\n\nIn the \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c7\u03ae \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd there is absolutely no dogma. It is all\npractice, and this is quite in harmony with the use of \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c7\u03ae by Paul\n(I Tim. i. 10), and indeed with the whole tone of these two admirable\nepistles.\n\n\n[Footnote 20]\n\nIn the \u03b4\u03b9\u03b4\u03b1\u03c7\u03ae \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c3\u03c4\u03cc\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd, c. xiii., the \"_prophets_\" are said to be\nto Christians what the \"_high priests_\" were to the Jews,--a\nphraseology which could not possibly have been used had any priesthood,\nin the Hebrew sense, existed in the early Church.","title":"What Does History Teach?: Two Edinburgh Lectures","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":21311}