CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM. 



229 



been forced on the latter. Russia, Sweden, Bel- 

 gium, Great Britain itself, all witness that the 

 rule of a foreign dynasty, to the exclusion of a 

 native one, may be cheerfully acquiesced in, and 

 acquire the fullest prescription ; so that it is not 

 the mere fact of being governed by strangers, 

 mortifying as it often is to national pride, which 

 makes one portion, and one portion only, of the 

 Polish nation eager to assert itself, and to refuse, 

 so far as it can, absorption into a vaster country 

 of kindred stock. It is simply that a religious 

 grievance has quickened their patriotism ; where- 

 as, on the hypothesis we are considering, the 

 grievance never would have arisen, because nei- 

 ther the clergy nor their adherents would have 

 interested themselves in politics so as to arouse 

 the jealousy and the persecution of the conquer- 

 ing power, to which, and not to the Russian cler- 

 gy, is the forcible interference with Polish reli- 

 gion, for political reasons, to be ascribed. 



It will hardly be alleged, even by the most 

 daring broacher of paradox, that religion had no 

 part in rousing the Dutch patriots against Philip 

 II. ; that the interest which the Parliamentary 

 party in our civil war took in politics was at all 

 damped by their equally keen interest in theol- 

 ogy ; or that Cromwell's powers as a statesman 

 and sovereign were at all chilled or hampered by 

 his religious belief; while the same remark holds 

 good of the most gallant leaders of the South in 

 the American conflict — Robert E. Lee, J. E. B. 

 Stuart, Leonidas Polk, and Stonewall Jackson. 

 And, to return for a moment to a period between 

 these two, it was the ecclesiastical rather than 

 the civil acts of James II. which led to the Rev- 

 olution of 16S8. There is nothing in all the sur- 

 vey which favors the case for the prosecution ; 

 nor, if attention be directed to countries where 

 the clerical spirit is aggressive, such as Ireland, 

 France, and Belgium, can it be alleged, with any 

 truth, that abstention from political action is a 

 mark of Ultramontanism. And yet the conten- 

 tion seems to be not that the kind of policy fol- 

 lowed by persons with strong religious opinions 

 is inimical to the best interests of the state, for 

 that would not differentiate it from mere party 

 politics on behalf of sectional interests of any 

 kind ; but that all sense of duty toward the 

 state, all willingness to discharge the public func- 

 tions of citizenship, is fatally enfeebled by Chris- 

 tianity, because it diverts attention almost exclu- 

 sively to a future life. Now, so far as this is true 

 at all, it is true only of a limited number of per- 

 sons under a specific kind of theological influ- 

 ence. The only epoch in history at which it 



tended to become widely true, was in the great 

 development of monachism in Egypt and Syria 

 (perhaps, too, in Gaul) during the fourth and fifth 

 centuries, a period too remote and isolated to be 

 reasonably cited in evidence now. Even the sec- 

 ond great impetus toward monachism during the 

 twelfth century in the West was something very 

 different in temper and working from the passive 

 contemplativeness of Eastern asceticism ; and the 

 leading spirit of the movement, St. Bernard, ri- 

 valed in variety and activity of exertion the 

 most diligent secular chiefs of his time. And, 

 when it is remembered that monachism then ne- 

 cessarily attracted and embraced the great ma- 

 jority of men with no bent toward the occupa- 

 tions of war, handicrafts, and agriculture, such as 

 now would be authors, schoolmasters, professors, 

 lawyers, physicians, scientists, and the like, it is 

 at least doubtful whether it did not rather pro- 

 vide a career for those who otherwise would have 

 had none, than withdraw them from useful ser- 

 vice to the state and society at large. In the 

 present day, when we have most of us got our 

 shoulders to the wheel, but when very few of us 

 know whither we are shoving the cart, the ad- 

 vantage of having a few peaceable resting-places 

 where fuss is unknown, ought to be quite as 

 great as it was in the stormy middle ages, not to 

 speak of the gain to the celerity and quality of 

 work, when there are not so many workers as to 

 be in one another's way. As a rule, the stamp 

 of man whom his religion seems to make unprac- 

 tical, takes little save the mere color of his indo- 

 lence from his creed. The indolence itself is 

 constitutional, and his abstinence from the con- 

 duct of affairs is a gain to those who want them 

 transacted promptly and effectively. Neverthe- 

 less, it is quite true that when all these qualifi- 

 cations and corrections of the original proposi- 

 tion have been made, there remain examples of 

 unpatriotism and anti-patriotism for which some 

 kind of religious sentiment appears to be account- 

 able. 



It may be fairly said, on the one hand, that 

 the utter failure of the Reformation in France, 

 after more encouraging beginnings than almost 

 everywhere else, is due to the entirely anti-patri- 

 otic attitude adopted from the first by the Hugue- 

 nots. Unlike those English Roman Catholics 

 who rallied round Elizabeth Tudor when the 

 tidings of the Armada came, and who were so ill- 

 requited for their loyalty, the Huguenot leaders 

 from the first made common cause with the ene- 

 mies of France, and from the revolt of Guienne 

 under Henry II. in 1548, till the Peace of Alais 



