The Moral And Religious Condition Of England On The Eve Of The Great Revival

The Moral And Religious Condition Of England On The Eve Of The Great Revival

If we add the names of Bishop Berkeley and some others to the list of apologists contained in the preceding section, a majority of whom belonged to the Established Church, we shall see that the English Church in the first half of the eighteenth century, could claim no little merit on the score of intellectual strength and activity. Had it been equally eminent in respect of practical religion, it might well be proud of its record in that era. But unhappily, the reverse was the case. It was a time of unusual spiritual barrenness. The Church failed of the true aggressive impulse and power against ungodliness. Some of the bishops who shone as great lights in the controversial field did very little to promote the interests of practical religion within the sphere of their superintendence. According to Burnet, many of those who aspired to the ministry were ignorant of the first principles of evangelical truth. "The much greater part," he writes, "of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers; I mean the plainest parts of the Scriptures. They can give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents of the Gospels, or of the catechism itself." The style of preaching most in vogue was singularly inadequate to lay hold upon heart and conscience with transforming effect. Reaction against the fervors of the commonwealth era had, begotten a horror of anything approaching to enthusiasm. "Appeals both to authority and to the stronger passions gradually ceased. The more doctrinal aspects of religion were softened or suffered silently to recede, and, before the eighteenth century had much advanced, sermons had generally become mere moral essays, characterized chiefly by cold good sense, and appealing almost exclusively to prudential motives." 1 Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, i. 92. In 1724 Bishop Gibson thought it necessary to remind his clergy of their "being Christian preachers and not mere preachers of morality," and in 1735 Hearne complained that "the misfortune now-a-days is that the sermons are more like essays than sermons, as having little of Scripture and divinity in them." An excessive utilitarianism pervaded all kinds of religious writing. Happiness was glorified in sermons, essays, and theological treatises, as the goal of ambition and expectation, "our being's end and aim." With a part of the clergy there was an undisguised dislike and repudiation of some of the cardinal features of evangelical Protestantism. "Certain doctrines taught in common by the reformers and later divines in the English Church were caricatured and denounced, especially the doctrine of justification by faith, which was represented as a doctrine against good works. Miracles were appealed to as the seals of Christianity in the first century; but the work of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men in the eighteenth was pronounced an idle dream." 1 Stoughton, History of Religion in England, Georgian era, pp. 44, 45.

The age, in general, as if taking its impress from the prosaic empirical philosophy which was dominant, was peculiarly lacking in warmth of feeling and in appreciation for the mystical side of man and the universe. "Never," says James Hamilton, "has century risen on England so void of soul and faith as that which opened with Queen Anne, and which found its misty noon beneath the second George." These characteristics were revealed in the poet as well as in the preacher. Pope was the great luminary in the domain of the muses. Poetry was distinguished by considerable liveliness of fancy, by nicety of versification, and by polish of expression, but was greatly lacking in emotional depth and spiritual suggestiveness.

The peculiar bias of the age may not have been without a certain advantage. The aversion to enthusiasm tended, in some measure, to place a check upon superstition. A special manifestation of this tendency may perhaps be discerned in the relaxation, in 1736, of the law against witchcraft. Toleration also stood a better chance to get a foothold at such a time, other things being equal, than in an age of intense unrelaxed zeal. There was, it is true, a plenty of intolerant outbursts, yet the cause of toleration, especially after the reign of Anne, was gaining ground.

On the other hand, there were disadvantages of a very serious nature. The absence in the Church and in the spirit of the age of sanctified zeal and spiritual depth left a considerable fraction of the nation an easy prey to a flippant and scornful infidelity. "It has come," said Bishop Butler, "I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a subject for inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious." Archbishop Seeker wrote to the same effect: "In this we cannot be mistaken, that an open and professed disregard of religion is become, through a variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present age. "

In morals the lapse was even more conspicuous. The first half of the eighteenth century added another to the list of demonstrations that good moralizing is far from necessarily implying good morals. In the lack of an adequate motive power, immorality was feebly withstood, and it went on with a widening, deepening current till near the middle of the century. Even such a counter influence as the sanctified learning and wit of the great essayists, like Addison and Steele, seems to have effected little toward checking the adverse drift. The clergy as a body were not notoriously corrupt, bat instances of scandal were uncomfortably frequent, and non-residence and pluralities were abuses too common to be generally regarded as scandalous. In fashionable and political life there was no small degree of unblushing baseness. The court of the first two Georges was scarcely cleaner than that of Charles II. Richard Walpole, who had a chief control of the administration for a long period, was a statesman of the expediency stripe, whose great object was to keep things quiet by any and every means, who encouraged venality on all sides, and who was withal an adept in foul language, and a devotee of the bottle, the table, and the chase. Bolingbroke, the brilliant orator, filled up his earlier years with licentious excess, and his later with political intrigue,--a man who could loudly champion the cause of the High Church party, and stigmatize freethinkers as pests of society, while yet he was himself one of the moat radical and cold-blooded among the free-thinkers of his age. Chesterfield, the ornament of polite society, in his correspondence with his son, made elaborate endeavors to convince him that polish is of more importance than principle, and remorselessly filled out the curriculum of a genteel education by instructing him in the arts of seduction. Such was the example of some of the leaders. Many were the apt pupils. Though moderation was the watchword in religion, moderation in living was little regarded. Gambling and extravagance were rife. A large proportion of families were disposed to overstep the limits of their incomes. The prisons were crowded with insolvent debtors. With this fashionable extravagance was joined, at least in the early Georgian era, a peculiar vein of coarseness. Walter Scott, in the time of George III., wrote: "We should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings even of the most esteemed poets of that period contain passages which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of conversation more pure than of composition; for the taint of Charles II.'s reign continued to infect society until the present reign, when, if not more moral, we are at least more decent." Commerce, which has its diabolical phases in every age, included in this period some items of peculiar enormity. Up to the middle of the century a flourishing slave-trade went on, with scarcely an opposing voice to challenge the iniquity. "It has been computed that between 1680 and 1700 the English tore from Africa about 300,000 Negroes, or about 15,000 every year. In a discussion upon the methods of making the trade more effectual, which took place in the English Parliament in 1750, it was shown that 46,000 Negroes were at this time annually sold to the English colonies alone." 1 Lecky, ii. 13, 14.

As respects the mass of the people, they were left to a lamentable degree under the dominion of ignorance and brutality. "The increase of population which followed on the growth of towns and the development of commerce had been met by no effort for their religious or educational improvement. Not a new pariah had been created. Hardly a single new church had been built." Green, History of the English People, iv. 121. Drunkenness in particular was a source of misery and degradation. A demand for the stronger liquors increased in geometrical ratio. While statistics report British spirits distilled in 1684 at 527,000 gallons, they report for 1735 no less than 5,394,000 gallons. "Physicians declared that in excessive gin-drinking a new and terrible source of mortality had been opened for the poor. The grand jury of Middlesex declared that much the greater part of the poverty, the murders, the robberies of London, might be traced to this single cause. Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards announcing that their customers could be made drunk for a penny, and dead drunk for two pence, and should have straw for nothing." 2 Lecky, i. 519.

Evidently there was a profound demand for a new moral and spiritual factor in the Church and society of England. The fullness of time had come for the Great Revival. That revival, if it did not reform all that needed to be reformed, cast nevertheless a new leaven into Church and society, checked an on-going declension, and emancipated a great multitude from a degrading enslavement to vice.

Limitation Of Christian Territories By Mohammedanism

LIMITATION OF CHRISTIAN TERRITORY BY MOHAMMEDANISM.

IN the first part of the seventh century, a power arose in Arabia which despoiled Christianity of much of its territory and cast a menacing shadow over the rest for centuries.

The founder of so great, and, relatively speaking, so permanent a power, could not have been an ordinary man. As we consider the breadth and self-propagating force of Mohammed's influence we are compelled to rank him among the most noteworthy actors upon the field of Oriental history.

The prophetic vocation came to Mohammed in part as a demand of his age and country, and in part as a result of his peculiar mental and physical constitution. Tokens of a religious ferment had appeared among his countrymen. The presence of a considerable Jewish and Christian population had probably acted upon some minds as a leaven of unrest. The reliability of the old faith began to be questioned, and there were instances in which its former devotees passed over into scepticism. In this unrest and dissatisfaction, none shared more deeply than Mohammed. But his ardent nature could not abide in mere doubt or denial of the old idolatrous faith. He pondered intensely upon the problems of religion. Seeking a place congenial to his burdened soul, he retired often to a lonely cave. Gradually his mind became established firmly in the conviction of the nothingness of idolatry, and in the acknowledgment of one supreme God, the Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the world. In a nature so intense and poetic as was his, the new belief could not lie dormant. It fired his imagination, and commanded his thoughts. At the same time, his physical constitution gave him a peculiar aptitude for vision and trance. So the epilepsy of childhood became the prophetic swoon of the mature man; Mohammed believed himself to be the recipient of revelations, a prophet sent from God to turn the Arabs from their idols. After spreading his views in private for an interval among his near friends, he called upon the people at large to give heed to his message. But the inhabitants of Mecca proved to be a gainsaying people. They responded with indifference, and finally with wrath and persecution. Meanwhile pilgrims from Medina had become favorably impressed with his claims, and prepared for him a refuge in that city. The result was the Hejira so celebrated in Mohammedan annals,- the flight of the prophet, in 622, from Mecca to Medina. In the latter city he easily gained complete ascendency. Other means besides spiritual weapons were now at his command, and he made no delay in using them. The sword was welcomed as the most effective instrument of persuasion. By its aid Mohammed's power had so far advanced by 630, that he was able to take Mecca; and in the next year came the unsparing edict for the complete extirpation of idolatry in Arabia. "When the sacred months," so reads the edict, "are passed away, kill the idolaters wherever ye may find them, and take them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every place of observation; but if they repent, and are steadfast in prayer, and give alms, then let them go their way." 1 Koran, Sura ix. At the death of Mohammed, in 632, little more remained to be done to complete the dominion of his faith in Arabia.

As Mohammed professed in all varieties of matters to be guided by revelations, his decisions as a ruler, as well as his earlier prophetic messages, were at the same time oracles of religion. So the Koran was prepared. It is simply a collection of the prophet's utterances, without respect to chronology in its arrangement,-a feature not a little embarrassing to the interpreter; for, it being a settled rule among the Mohammedans that in case of disagreement a later revelation must be regarded as cancelling an earlier, an unsettled chronology is equivalent to an unsettled authority. In fact, the outlines of the faith in the Koran have not appeared so distinct to its votaries as to prevent much diversity of opinion, and much division into sects. The advice of the prophet, "Take tight hold of God's rope altogether, and do not part into sects, 2 Sura iii. has been very poorly followed.

Great originality cannot be claimed for the prophet of the Koran. He drew both from Judaism and from Christianity. His borrowings, however, evidently were not made on the basis of an accurate acquaintance with the oracles of either. The sources of which he availed himself were extra-biblical, the popular traditions found among the Arabian Jews and Christians in his time. These he interwove at considerable length with his revelations. At first he acknowledged both Jews and Christians as representatives of the true religion, and even instructed his followers to turn their faces towards Jerusalem in prayer. Later he regarded them in a much less friendly light, though still giving a place to Moses and Jesus as the great prophets of the past, and reckoning himself as the end of the succession to which they belonged.

The Koran is not without reference to the Divine compassion, the freedom of man, and spiritual rewards in the hereafter. But, after all, the charge is well founded, that it sets forth the God of might and judgment rather than the God of love, lays the foundation for a fatalistic conception of man's relation to the Divine sovereignty, and encourages the anticipation of a sensual paradise. On the latter point, the mild comments of some recent writers are hardly adequate to the case. In the light of such passages as are found in Suras xliv., lv., and lxxviii., it cannot well be denied that a full counterpart of the Oriental harem is transferred to the hereafter.

With some passages noble in content as well as in style, and not unworthy of a prophet, the Koran combines others which bespeak a man weakly given over to delusion, or consciously devoted to fraud and trickery. The revelations by which he justified his marriage with Zeinab, the divorced wife of his freedman and adopted son, as also that by which he endeavored to silence the complaints of his wives over an unequal share in his attentions, give us a picture of inspiration descending into a poor and transparent burlesque. Even critics who judge Mohammed in general with great charity are obliged to confess that in his later years he was not unstained by the arts of the imposter. "It is hard to think," says Stanley Lane-Poole, "that he could really believe in the inspired source of some of his revelations. He may have thought the commands they convey necessary, but he could hardly have deemed them Divine. In some cases he could scarcely fail to be aware that the object of the 'revelation' was his own comfort or pleasure or reputation, and not the major Dei gloria, nor the good of the people." 1 Studies in a Mosque.

The Koran embodied not only a religion, but a social system. In respect to the latter, it no doubt introduced much improvement upon the previous customs of the Arabians. At the same time it built enormous barriers against future progress. By giving the sanction of religion to the cardinal vices of Eastern civilization,- polygamy, unlimited license in concubinage, and slavery, -- it mortgaged unnumbered generations to degradation.

Mohammed's commendation of the sword by word and deed found a ready response in the hearts of his followers. Under the double impulse of a fresh religious zeal and military ambition, they sallied forth to the work of conquest. And where these two motives failed, a third came in to urge on the halting, -- the love of plunder, so strongly rooted in the Arabs of that as of other ages. To use the graphic description of Sir William Muir: "The marauding spirit of the Bedouin was in unison with the militant spirit of Islam. The cry of plunder and of conquest reverberated throughout the land, and was answered eagerly. The movement began naturally with the tribes in the North, which had been first reclaimed from their apostasy, and whose restless spirit led them over the frontier. Later on, in the second year of the Caliphate, the exodus spread to the people of the South. At first the Caliph forbade that help should be taken from such as had backslidden. But step by step, as new spheres opened out, and the cry ran through the land for fresh levies to fill up the martyr gaps, the ban was put aside, and all were welcome. Warrior after warrior, column after column, whole tribes in endless succession, with their women and children, issued forth to battle, and ever, at the marvelous tales of cities conquered, of booty rich beyond compute, of fair captives distributed on the field, --'to every man a damsel or two,' -- and, above all, at the sight of the royal fifth of spoil and slaves sent to Medina, fresh tribes arose and went. Onward and still onward, like swarms from the hive, one after another they poured forth, pressed first to the north, and spread thence in great masses to the east and west." 1 Annals of the Early Caliphate.

So far as Christian territory was concerned, in large sections an easy victory for the Islamite warriors had been prepared by the great schisms which had grown out of the Christological controversies. Large populations in Egypt and Syria mere not at all loath to change from the hated government at Constantinople to the yoke of Mohammedan rule. Both of these countries had been conquered by 640. Persia was added by 651. Northern Africa was invaded in 647, but not fully subdued till the first years of the next century. The conquest of Spain was begun in 710. The capital of Eastern Christendom was twice assailed (669, 717), and owed its safety only to the strength of its fortifications and the use of the Greek fire. The Western capital was also threatened. Indeed, in the space of a century Mohammedanism had stretched its borders along the whole extent of Christian territory, and seemed destined to make still further acquisitions. But the reserved power was wanting to follow up the early victories. So the rugged peoples which had settled in the Western Empire were able both to check, and in a measure to turn back, the advancing wave.

In most countries, Mohammedan possession meant the limitation rather than the complete destruction of the Christian Church. In Arabia the policy was broached by the second Caliph, Omar, of tolerating no religion but that of the Koran. But elsewhere the attempt was not made-- at least, it was no part of a settled scheme -- to proscribe Christianity and Judaism. The alternatives presented were Islam, tribute, and the sword. By the payment of tribute the Christians could purchase for themselves the privilege of practising their religion, only subject to social degradation and often assailed with ridicule. To those at all open to temptation, there were plenty of motives for apostasy. The simple acceptance of the Koran raised the conquered to the rank of the conquerors. Prisoners who had forfeited their lives, as having been taken in battle, could redeem themselves by a change of faith. Polygamy, and the unrestrained right of the master to use every bondwoman according to his pleasure, brought multitudes of women under a heavy domestic constraint, against which it was no easy matter to preserve their religion. Before excessive indulgence had enervated the conquerors, these features of their social system were no doubt effectual means for swelling their own ranks at the expense of the tributary Christians. In some quarters Christianity was reduced almost to the vanishing point. "Out of four hundred sees that once shed a salutary light on Africa, four only were surviving in the eleventh century. The rest had been absorbed in the vortex of Islamism." 1 Hardwick, Christian Church in the Middle Age.

In return for its work of destruction in general, and for its enormous crime and folly in particular in the burning of the Alexandrian library, Mohammedanism began to give back the fruits of learned industry after the conqueror came the scholar. By the eighth century the Arabic mind began to yield to the stimulus of Greek culture. Metaphysics attracted some attention; but it was in the line of mathematical and physical studies that the most noteworthy achievements were made. In Spain the tenth century was the golden era of this Arabic learning.