172 



♦ KNOVSTLEDGE ♦ 



[June 1, 1887. 



way by the immense majority of their fellows. Besides the 

 men who think and thosa who believe, besides those who 

 think they believe and those who believe they think, the 

 world must for the present have many who think they 

 ought to believe, absurd though the idea of duty in connec- 

 tion with belief most assuredly is. 



Under these curiously mixed and unsatisfactory conditions, 

 the unthinking are content to believe that there is a set of 

 men specially trained and sjjecially fitted to examine the 

 doctrines which happen to be those they themselves un- 

 thinkingly accept. So that if a student of science, accus- 

 tomed to weigh and examine causes, and to speak with 

 confidence only when (which is seldom) he has been satisfied 

 with evidence, should express an opinion about matters 

 seemingly touching such doctrines, the unthinking many 

 console themselves by cheerfully concluding that he is out 

 of his depth, resting content in the belief that only the 

 members of that particular set of trained clerics can form 

 just opinions about such matters. 



In reality, however, the case is otherwise, with regard to 

 nearly all the doctrines about which our Spencers, Huxlej's, 

 Fiskes, and others have spoken, or which the researches of 

 science have appeared to touch. In the Roman Catholic 

 Chui'ch, indeed, as among Buddhists, Mohammedans, and 

 Jews, there are classes specially trained in theological study 

 or even for dogmatic disputation. But the matters about 

 which these trained men are alone competent to speak with 

 authority are questions of ritual or doctrine lying within 

 their own special church, and of little interest to outsiders. 

 A Huxley or a Spencer may find himself at a loss, for ex- 

 ample, in discussing with a Eoman Catholic theologian such 

 a question as the treatment of Galileo by Roman Catholic 

 ecclesiastics — not because of any misapprehension of the 

 subject really at issue, but from want of knowledge of the 

 details of ecclesiastical procedure in such matters. But 

 even within the strict limits of Catholicity, Buddhism, 

 Mohammedanism, and .ludaism, the really important problems 

 of religion remain untouched in the systems of training 

 adopted for ministers of various orders. Nay, those systems 

 tend to narrow and limit the powers of the trained ministers, 

 by directing their attention solely to points within a certain 

 circle deemed sacred, and leaving them no scope for survey 

 outside of it. 



In the vai-ious nonconforming bodies which lie outside 

 Catholicity, there is not any recognised system of training, 

 of any value, which should fit men specially for religious 

 discussion, and no training whatever which can enable them 

 to deal with the higher and nobler problems of religion. 



Take, for example, what is called the Established Church 

 of England. This church, though singularly broad, yet has 

 its definite limits of belief, within which a man may, if he 

 will, call himself " a member of the Church of England as 

 by law established," while outside those limits he must be 

 regarded as a dissenter. Now, theoretically, the Articles of 

 the Church define these limits, and every minister of the 

 English Church should be thoroughly versed, not only in all 

 that these Articles define, but in regard to the limits within 

 which each Article must b3 understood. If all clergymen of 

 the Established Church were so trained and taught, that 

 would not mean much, nor would it in the slightest degree 

 touch on the wider question we are considering. It would 

 only imply that there was a certain set of men who could 

 speak with authority as to the doctrines which a member of 

 the Church of England may or may not accept : as to the 

 wider questions relating to religion itself, regarded as '• the 

 most noble and most useful attribute of humanity," such 

 training, even if it were systematically adopted, would be 

 valueless. 



But no such system even as this has been adopted. 



Though all our clerics are not trained at our universities, we 

 have in these universities the chief and probably the best 

 types of training for the ministry. What does such training 

 amount to ? The crowds which fill our churches probably 

 imagine that the surpliced teachers to whom they listen have 

 been specially selected from among those having a special 

 calling to such work, and have then undergone special train- 

 ing — some such training as a lawyer, or a doctor, or a mer- 

 chant, or an artist, or even a man of science, requires for 

 successful work in the business of his life. But the actual 

 case is very diflerent. 



As to calling : — It is well known that ninety-nine out of 

 a hundred of the young men who go up to our universities 

 (or to separate colleges) to be trained — save the mark ! — for 

 the ministry, have no calling that way at all. They form a 

 section, taken as it were at haphazard, from our British 

 youth. If there is any selection at all, it is such as arises 

 from the thought in a father's mind that a son seems un- 

 likely to succeed in law or medicine or business : or it may 

 be that there is promise, through some family circumstances, 

 of a good opening in the clerical way ; or other such reasons 

 operate. But this is not the kind of selection thought of 

 when we speak of calling. 



Then as to training : — Noting first that the material if 

 equal is certainly not superior to the average, either in 

 ability, or in what should be rather important in this special 

 profession, in earnestness and strictness of character, the 

 system applied to that material is not such as to fit it 

 specially for the study of the higher and nobler problems of 

 religious philosophy. Even in what may be called Anglican 

 theolog3% most of the clerics sent out from our universities 

 are ill trained. We do not say it is at all necessary that most 

 of them should be well trained, seeing that their work in 

 country places — the " holy vegetable " life, as Sydney Smith 

 put it — requires no special training in the details of 

 Anglican theology. But, for the argument we are here con- 

 sidering, viz., that clerics and clerics only should speak 

 about religious matters, this particular shortcoming in 

 the training of the average English clergyman must cer- 

 tainly- be taken into account. Be it noticed that we are 

 finding no fixult with the system. Taking several hundred 

 young men, most of them of only average brain power, and 

 of perhaps less than average earnestness of purpose, but on 

 the whole very fairly representing the intellect and character 

 of their race, what can our ecclesiastical system do with 

 them t Too high a standard would keep the majority of 

 them out altogether, and then what would our country 

 towns and villages do for clergymen? This would be dis- 

 establishment of the most unsatisfactory sort. Better to 

 let them through with a little Latin and less Greek (not 

 one out of ten can read the Epistle to the Romans in the 

 Latin Vulgate, and not one out of a hundred can read that 

 epistle understandingly in the Greek), a very small quantum 

 of mathematics (the connection of which with religion is 

 too obvious to need insisting on), and, finally, that very 

 slight smattering of theological matter which the " volun- 

 tary "(so called because involuntary) requires to be "got 

 up " in a week's reading — apparently so that it may be 

 forgotten six weeks after ordination. 



We would not be understood as speaking slightingly 

 either of the average attainments or of the average character 

 of the clergy of the Church of England. If our univer.si- 

 ties were chiefly used for the education of lawyers, doctors, 

 or merchants, the results in all probability would be much 

 the same. Among a hundred lads in a school, there will be 

 one or two who are clever, nine or ten above the average, 

 forty or fifty below it, and the rest dufiers. There will be 

 a few of fine character, many neither good nor bad, and a 

 few of very poor character indeed — to put the matter 



