CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM. 



227 



There is certainly nothing in the spirit of Chris- 

 tianity, as a moral code, which need operate 

 against patriotism so understood and limited, for, 

 on the one hand, its injunctions to protect the 

 weak and oppressed are clearly applicable to 

 nations as well as to individuals, and cover as 

 fully the organization of an army to avert foreign 

 tyranny and domestic suffering as they do the 

 championship of a single widow or orphan wronged 

 by a private oppressor; while, on the other hand, 

 all the precepts which enjoin the doing justice 

 impartially between man and man apply, without 

 any strain or non-natural interpretation, to all 

 that part of legislation and government which 

 deals with the public and private rights of classes, 

 persons, and things. It would be easy to show, 

 were the digression necessary, that there are 

 other systems, and notably Islam, under which 

 this principle does not hold good, because all 

 non-Moslems must be placed, in virtue of the 

 teaching of the Koran, in a permanent state of 

 political and social inferiority wherever Islam is 

 the national code. 



If, then, it be true that in Christian countries 

 the operation of theological influences is to di- 

 minish the number of those citizens who are will- 

 ing to busy themselves actively in the conduct of 

 affairs, national or local, and to labor for the pro- 

 motion of salutary reforms, it will be necessary 

 to distinguish again, and to show that, just as 

 there is a great deal of false and unwholesome 

 patriotism, which Christianity ought to expose 

 and resist, so it is not Christianity at large or 

 abstractedly which withdraws men from the duties 

 of citizenship, but merely some particular kind 

 of adulterated and insalubrious quasi-Christian 

 teaching, which should bear the blame alone, and 

 not be taken as compromising and discrediting 

 the entire Christian system. 



Indeed, the whole indictment may be boldly 

 traversed by an appeal to political experience. 

 If it be true at all that Christianity, by directing 

 attention to a future state, and treating this life 

 as no more than preliminary, does necessarily 

 weaken the practical interest of its disciples in 

 the good government of this world, the principle 

 must exhibit itself in action on the largest scale 

 in national life. Exactly in proportion as an 

 active participation in Christian belief, as distin- 

 guished from languid hereditary assent, is found 

 prevalent among the laity, the area of political 

 activity, and the number of those who intelligent- 

 ly take part in public affairs, or even in semi- 

 public philanthropic labors, ought to be reduced. 

 But, as a fact, the countries where the great lav 



| body is most actively interested in religious ques- 

 ; tions. and is not content to leave them undis- 

 ! turbed in the custody of a professional class, are 

 j Great Britain and the United States ; precisely 

 those where the political philosopher recognizes, 

 after all deductions, the largest measure of con- 

 stitutional freedom, and the largest number of 

 persons, not being government officials, who take 

 a full and active share in the internal administra- 

 tion of local and general laws. 



The hurtful abstention of the most cultured 

 class of American citizens from the arena of poli- 

 tics is due altogether to social and political 

 causes, having nothing whatever to do with re- 

 ligious questions ; and so, conversely, the divorce 

 of the lay intellect on the Continent from the 

 ecclesiastical systems, whether Roman Catholic 

 or Protestant, does not appear to have stimulated 

 political capacity, or trained in habits of self- 

 government the nations most affected by it. The 

 one apparent exception, that of Italy, has been 

 so largely conditioned by constitutional and dy- 

 nastic changes in the civil sphere, that it is diffi- 

 cult to disentangle the strands of political and 

 religious motive, especially from the additional 

 complications introduced by the Roman ques- 

 tion ; but the remainder of Western Europe is 

 quite enough to supply adequate matter of induc- 

 tion. Nor is it true that the publicists of those 

 countries where Christianity is in full and active 

 lay operation are generally or principally recruit- 

 ed from the ranks of secularism. It would be 

 invidious to particularize, but no cabinet has held 

 office in this country during the last forty years 

 which has not contained several ministers whose 

 interest in religious questions was active and per- 

 sonal, sometimes even fervid ; and nothing like 

 the Depretis Government in Italy just now has 

 been ever possible for a moment among us. The 

 reason why one would antecedently expect Chris- 

 tianity to foster patriotism in the true sense is, 

 because it is a personal and historical creed, 

 which, if given fair play, strengthens that sense 

 of continuity with the past which is necessary to 

 the higher forms of national life. Conversely, it 

 is in countries where a mere philosophical system, 

 like Vedantism, or an impersonal Pantheistic be- 

 lief, whether Brahman or Buddhist in form, pre- 

 vails, that patriotism and political history are 

 weakest ; whence it seems more than probable 

 that there would be far less civil capacity dis- 

 played than now, if Christianity were to be super- 

 seded by Agnosticism or any non-historical be- 

 lief. And this view receives strong confirmation 

 from the definition of patriotism in time of peace, 



