THERE is a beautiful Greek legend about the Battle of Marathon, where the heroic bands of Greece drove back from her shores the hordes of Asia — and Greece at that time stood for freedom, for thought, for progress, for civilisation. It is said the fight was won not so much by the living as by the dead — that conspicuous in the van there rode—
“A leader crowned
And armed for Greece that day,
But the falchions made no sound
On his gleaming war array.
In the battle’s front he stood,
With his tall and shadowy crest;
But the arrows drew no blood,
Tho’ their path was thro’ his breast.
Far sweeping thro’ the foe,
With a fiery charge he bore,
And the Mede left many a bow
On the sounding ocean shore;
And the field was heaped with dead,
And the sails were crowded fast,
As the sons of Asia fled,
When the shade of Theseus passed.”
So the dead fought and conquered for freedom and for Greece. Now, in our great battle we have not only one dead hero fighting for us, but a hundred — nay, a thousand. We have heroic memories of the past, glorious thoughts for the present, splendid hopes for the future. Then why does not victory crown our standards? Why are not our fields “piled with dead” — dead errors, delusions, superstitions? What stops the way? Where are the hindrances? For hindrances there must be — and perhaps if we recognized them we might help to remove them.
The first hindrance we shall name is our ignorance. Not our general ignorance — far from it! Protestants, as compared with others, are not ignorant. No; we have ever been the friends of knowledge, of literature, and of science. I think we shall find that Protestants in the past have been foremost in opening up the treasures of these to mankind, and that in the present we have in Protestant countries more education, more enlightenment, more activity of thought than elsewhere.
At the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when such Protestants as were not heroes and martyrs in heart were forced into the Church of Rome, some of these “new converts” went to the priests and said, “Teach us about your religion. You have made us Catholics, now we want you to explain to us the Catholic faith. What are your doctrines? What do you mean by this, that, and the other which you tell us to do? “The poor cures wrote to their bishops in much perplexity, “Here are these Protestants asking us to teach them. What are we to do? We have not been in the habit of thinking that our people needed instruction of that kind.” Protestantism awakens the mind, teaches men to think, stirs in them the desire for instruction. Romanism as a rule does not.
With ourselves, in these modern days, the difficulty is not that we know so little, but that our sphere of knowledge is so vast. The fields that open before our mental vision are so wide, so far-reaching, so boundless, that it has become impossible for us to explore them all — we are obliged to specialize, to take up, some one thing and some another. Perhaps the utmost to which anyone can aspire is to know a little about everything, and to know a great deal about one thing. And it has happened somehow that amidst all our knowledge, all our learning extending over a hundred fields, one particular field has been overlooked. Not the field of history as a whole, but an important part of it. Pity it is that in our great public schools the young, who will by and by be the leaders of our thought and the pioneers of our progress, are taught much about the siege of Ilium, but little about the sieges of Leyden and Londonderry; much about the noble three hundred that died at Thermopylae in obedience to the sacred laws of Sparta, but little of the yet nobler three hundred who died in England during five short years, in obedience to the higher law of Christ their King. Far too much neglected has been the study of our Church history, and especially of our Protestant Church history. If only a few young minds — a few young hearts already devoted to Christ their King — would give themselves to that noble and most instructive branch of historical study, I think they would do great service to God and man, and I know they would be amply repaid.
On account of our ignorance, there are very few of us who have a proper grasp of this subject, or a true and wide outlook. One of the results is seen in the vague and misty way in which many people talk upon the subject of religious persecution. We have touched upon this point in a former talk, when we recalled the well-known name of Michael Servetus, who was undeniably burned by Protestants, and burned for his religious opinions. We have shown how this question of persecution appears when resolved into one of proportion. May I be allowed to illustrate, even by a rather ludicrous comparison, the difference, in this matter of proportion, between our record and that of Rome? A lady once said to Beau Brummell, “Mr. Brummell, do you never eat vegetables?” “Yes, madam,” was the answer, “I once ate a pea.” We confess to having eaten that pea! Forgive even the semblance of a jest upon a matter so tragically serious.
Intolerance is the principle of Rome and the logical outcome of her creed. Her own adherents, when they are candid, avow this themselves, and we respect them for their honesty. They say to us, “You are bound to tolerate us because it is your principle; but we are not bound to tolerate you, because it is against our principle! “And the Tablet, the great Roman Catholic newspaper, once put the matter, from its own point of view, with admirable force and directness. “Rome is intolerance itself, because she is the Truth itself.” Really, there is something sublime about that sentence! When Rome falls, it will certainly not be because she is illogical, nor yet because she is inconsistent. Her deductions in this instance are quite logical, and she has acted upon them with marvelous consistency. It is only her premises that are in fault. She has erected an imposing structure, put together with admirable skill and elaborately adorned; all it lacks is — a foundation.
It is an article of her creed, universally taught, insisted upon, and “required to be believed” of all men, and women too, who join her communion, that out of her own pale there is no salvation. Once that is granted, every violence, every cruelty, is justified which can keep men and women and children from falling into the terrible gulf of hopeless perdition that yawns outside.
The Inquisitor’s maxim, “In this case cruelty is mercy, and mercy is cruelty” was, from his point of view, indisputable. He and the Church whose agent he was, violated no rule of logic; but they violated something else: they violated the first law that makes civilized life a possibility — that which goes by the name of the “social contract.” If, in a war, one of the belligerents absolutely refuses to give quarter, what is the other to do?
“No quarter” has ever been the principle of Rome in her conflict with Protestants. It was a war of extermination. Wherever Rome prevailed death or conversion was the law — often indeed the practice was death without the chance of conversion. Every Protestant was like a man who feels a murderer’s grip on his throat. Is he intolerant if he strikes the murderer back again as hard a blow as he can? We acknowledge that religious toleration as a theory was not understood at the time of the Reformation, nor long after, save by a few enlightened spirits, such as William the Silent and Henry IV. of France. But in spite of the frequent mistakes and the occasional crimes which are inseparable from fallible humanity, there was between the two parties a great moral contrast, which we will try to illustrate.
During the wars of religion in France a soldier of fortune, named Des Adrets, joined the Huguenots, and held a command under Admiral Coligny. He was a brutal, hard-hearted-man, with no real religion, having joined the Protestant party out of personal enmity to the Guises. He committed various excesses — amusing himself, for instance, by forcing his prisoners to throw themselves from the top of a high tower. But these cruelties aroused the indignation of the other Protestant leaders, and, on their being reported to Coligny, he deprived him of his command. Des Adrets returned eventually to the Catholic faith and the Catholic party.
About the same time one of the Catholic generals, named Montluc, committed a series of frightful barbarities, of which sickening accounts remain to us, some of them from his own pen. And to one of these stories a Catholic historian adds: “The cruelty was excessive, even to killing infants in the arms of their mothers, and the mothers after them.”
Was this monster disowned, or punished, or even reprimanded for his atrocities? They were well known in high quarters, even in the highest. And they brought him a letter from no less a person than the Pope — the so-called Vicar of Christ. “Very noble and beloved son, health and Apostolic benediction,” so it began, going on to the most fulsome and extravagant praises of his deeds, “works of a most true Christian and Catholic, and without doubt, excellent gifts conferred by Heaven.” His Holiness adds that after former good service under earthly kings and princes, he is now called on to “maintain with still greater glory, honor, and reputation the war of the King of kings, Jesus Christ, and fight the fight of the Lord of lords. For this thou mayest assure thyself that His eternal favor will never fail thee,” and so on, and so on. Did ever blasphemy of infidel profane the Name that is above every name as hideously, as cruelly, as this letter of him who dared to call himself His Vice-gerent?
Take another story which points out clearly the “parting of the ways” in principle and practice between the two religions. In the days of Coligny a party of Huguenots, followers of his, crossed the ocean to Florida, and founded a little colony, where they might worship God in peace. They lived quietly and happily, tilling the soil and keeping on the best of terms with the neighboring Indians. France and Spain were at peace at the time. Nevertheless, a Spanish fleet bore down upon the little settlement. A party of Spaniards landed, seized the unprepared and peaceful settlers, flayed them alive, and hung their bodies upon trees, placing over them the inscription, “Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.” Of this breach of the law of nations the Court of France took no notice. Heretics were outlaws; in the eye of the law they had no existence. Those who had killed “also took possession” of the place, and built two forts for protection from the Indians, whom they had good cause to dread. But a Huguenot adventurer, named Dominique de Gourges, who heard of these things, secretly equipped a vessel in Rochelle, stole across the Atlantic, surprised the miscreants, and with the help of the Indians, slew, and afterward hanged, every one of them. He did not torture them, but he hanged their bodies on the trees where they had hanged the Huguenots, reversing the inscription, which bore now, “Not as Spaniards, but as murderers.” “Not as Catholics, but as murderers” would have been more appropriate. And it throws what may be truly called a search-light upon the historical question between us and Rome.
It is very important that our ignorance on this subject should be dispelled, for it has done and is doing our cause much harm. When two people discuss a matter together, if one has no knowledge of the facts, and the other no regard for the truth, we know what results. There is a great conspiracy — we can call it no less — on the part of the Romanists and the Romanisers, to mislead us about the facts and the teachings of history. If we are not well informed and well upon our guard, we shall fall into the traps that have been laid for us. The Jesuits have been particularly busy and skillful in this work. They have turned the Massacre of St. Bartholomew into “a mere squabble between the two parties, of which the Protestants happened to get the worst.” Friends and foes knew better at the time. England knew better — and England’s Queen, when after hearing the terrible story she received the Ambassador of France in deep mourning, with all her courtiers, dressed in mourning also, lining each side of the way he had to pass in solemn silence — no man giving him a word or a look of greeting. Lord Burghley knew better when he called the massacre “the most horrible crime that had been committed since the crucifixion of Christ,” and Sir Thomas Smith, when he asked, “Will God sleep?” The Emperor of Germany, the father-in-law of Charles IX., knew better when he wrote: “It is with great sorrow of heart I am informed that my son-in-law has suffered himself to consent to so foul a massacre.” Gregory XIII. knew better also, when in his joy he had the famous medal struck in commemoration of the event, and sent the golden rose, the special mark of his favor, to King Charles. We seem still to hear the thunder of the cannon of St. Angelo, the joyous peal from the bells of every steeple in Rome. And one sound yet more ominous lingers on the ear — the sound of a single solitary laugh. On hearing the tidings, Philip of Spain laughed aloud in his joy — the only time, it is said, when he was ever heard to laugh.
Not the St. Bartholomew Massacre alone, but the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes with its consequences takes on a different coloring in Jesuit and in all other history. In a recent History of France, compiled by Jesuits, all the horrors and cruelties that accompanied and followed that great crime are dismissed in a few airy words, and with the statement that “about fifty thousand persons withdrew from France, and were not ashamed to carry their knowledge, their strength, and their courage into the service of the stranger.” Not a word of the horrible dragonnades, of the breakings on the wheel, of the dungeons, of the galleys — “those floating hells “ — of the miseries of the children torn from their parents and the parents from their children! There are silences that lie more impudently than the loudest of uttered falsehoods. And thinking of this silence, I can only repeat what Pascal said two hundred and fifty years ago to one of these same Jesuits, “Mentiris Impudentissime” — “Thou dolt lie most impudently.”
The mention of Pascal reminds us of another result of our ignorance — a too great readiness to admire and copy certain Romish saints. Pascal lived and died in the Church of Rome, although he was enlightened enough to say, when his work against the Jesuits, “The Provincial Letters,” was condemned in Rome, “If my letters are condemned in Rome, what I condemn there is condemned in heaven.” But, whatever his creed, we love him! Vinet, the Protestant theologian, asks, “Who is there that does not love Pascal?” Certainly not you or I! Thank God, we can look to meet him, and thousands who, like him, never left the Romish Church, in “the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven.” We have this great advantage over our opponents, that we are not obliged to think of them as they are of us, as inevitably lost and cast away. Practically, we are sure very many of them do not really think this — but it is what their Church declares. Thank God, we hold a larger, as well as a purer, faith. Joyfully, lovingly, we can recognize “ the likeness of the Lord on every chastened face,” whether it be the face of one whom Rome has burned or of one whom Rome has canonised.
Some of these last have been little worthy of our reverence — more worthy indeed of our execration, like St. Dominic, the founder of the Inquisition. But many, on the other hand, were true Christian men and women, who shone as lights — though lights oftentimes dim and clouded — in the world of their own generation. And yet I cannot help deprecating the tendency shown by some of our friends to admire and to extol them, to study their lives and find therein inspirations and examples for their own, to the neglect of the great cloud of witnesses, the magnificent roll of saints, heroes, and martyrs that belong to us as Protestants. No doubt St. Francis of Assissi, St. Bernard, St. Teresa, St. Catherine of Siena, and others we could name, truly loved their Lord and ours — there is that great bond between us — and for that we can love them truly. But we are in no want of heroes and heroines, that we should go so far to seek them. If we will but study our Protestant history, we shall find abundant use for all the hero-worship we have got to spare. I would rather canonise St. Hugh Latimer, St. John Frith, St. William Tyndale, St. John Hus, and others I could mention — not to speak of a great company of more modern witnesses — than any of those whom Rome has sainted. Granted that to some of these God had manifestly given “ the spirit of power and of love,” yet can we not add much more certainly with regard to our saints and heroes, “and of a sound mind?” It is a true remark however that Rome has canonised some whom under slightly altered circumstances she might have burned, and burned some who, had they been less clear-headed, courageous, and outspoken, she might have canonised. God grant us to enjoy, with all who have truly loved Him, the “sweet peace” of the heavenly home, when doubtless we shall get to know them, as they also will get to know us, in the presence of our common Lord.
We pass on to another hindrance, and a very grievous one, “the dangers caused by our unhappy divisions.” These are a reproach continually brought against us by our foes — ay, and often by our friends; often too by ourselves, both in secret and in public, when — as indeed we ought to do — we pray to be delivered from them. And yet they are not all our fault, nor even all perhaps entirely our misfortune.
Many of them were not, in the beginning, so much theological as historical and local. It was not because, when we came out from Rome, we were separated in faith that we were obliged at the time to form separate organizations. Groups of men came out at different times, in different places, and in different ways. They came out because they believed that the doctrines and the ceremonies of Rome were anti-scriptural; or, as it sometimes happened, Rome knew them before they knew themselves, and cast them out, when she could not kill them. Then they had to do, in each place, what St. Paul and the other Apostles did in primitive times — set things in order, have pastors ordained, provide for the administration of the Sacraments which Christ commanded, and so forth. At the time of the Reformation, it was only in some countries that they were able to do this. In others, as in Spain and Italy, they were exterminated, or driven into exile. But wherever they were able to hold their ground, they were obliged to organize. They could not help it; it was a necessity of their position. But you will ask, Why did they not unite and form one great, strong, Reformed Church all over Europe? That, even if they had wished it, would have been at the time simply impossible. You must not think that things in the sixteenth century were just as they are now; or that the reformer in Italy, who wished to take counsel with the reformer in England, had nothing to do but take a through ticket to London, put his foot in the train, and get there. He would have run a good chance of arriving instead in the kingdom of heaven, by the conveyance of a chariot of fire. It is true that, at intervals, some Protestants from some countries did manage to meet and confer together, hut not frequently, and not generally.
So it was that every reformed community had to organize its own visible Church after its own ideas, and therefore came to be regarded as something apart and isolated. Suppose you see a field all covered with snow; by and by, when the sun rises and the snow melts in patches, every patch makes a little island of green amidst the white, and the field looks like a field of white, broken with isolated patches of green. But it is really the green which is one, underneath the snow, and this will appear presently, when the snow has all melted. At the time of the Reformation there was a real oneness underlying all the divisions of the reformed, and that in itself is a wonderful proof of the reality and the Divine origin of the great movement. When you think of it, does it not seem very remarkable that in the sixteenth century a number of men, quite apart from each other, in different countries and speaking different languages, just took the Bible in their hands, and, guided by God’s Holy Spirit, drew from it the same conclusions? They rejected the same doctrines as inventions of men; they retained the same doctrines as truly revealed in Scripture; so that when they came to compare their several creeds and confessions they found them in wonderful harmony. What differences existed were almost entirely upon two subjects — the nature of the Sacraments, and the forms of Church government. These slight differences only serve to emphasize their universal agreement in all the main points of their belief.
That all these men, working independently, found substantially the same things in the Bible is surely a striking proof that the things they found are those the Bible does really teach, and that the things they did not find are those the Bible does not teach.
Still, the divisions with which Protestants are so often reproached are not wholly historical and local. In all communities where people think, and where thought is free, some divisions are sure to arise. You cannot have perfect freedom and absolute unanimity together; the two things are incompatible. Differences are the outcome of the necessary limitations of our nature, and therefore are inevitable and invincible. No one of us sees things exactly as they are, and no one of us sees the whole of them. Each sees his own part, and sees it in his own way. Men are influenced in their opinions by temperament, by prejudice, by habit, by environment, by a hundred things; and when they are all free, there is nothing to hinder their proclaiming their differences openly. Indeed, they often talk more of a few small things about which they differ than of many great things in which they agree.
It would not be fair to look for the same freedom in the Church of Rome; it is an absolute monarchy, ruled by a head who is believed to be infallible. Yet Romanists cannot help having differences amongst themselves — the mind of modern Europe, even when fettered, is far too active for that — and their differences are often quite as keenly contested, and cause quite as much if not more, than ours; only they are hidden from the eyes of the world by the screen of a so-called infallible authority, to which all profess to submit, though all do not do it very thoroughly.
Freedom develops party spirit. When the Czar Alezander I. was in England he studied our institutions with much interest. One day he said to Lord Castlereagh: “ There is one of your English institutions which I greatly admire, and think very useful. I should like to introduce it into my country, but I do not know how.”
“What is it, your Imperial Majesty?”
“Your Opposition,” was the answer. He had watched the doings of our Parliament, and he thought the Opposition an admirable institution!
“Let your Majesty give your people a free Parliament, and they will give you an Opposition soon enough,” was the answer.
In free communities there will be divisions, and there will be parties. These usually hinge, really or nominally, upon two principles or forces, each useful and necessary in its place. We find them in the stars of heaven as well as in the nations of the earth. By their action and reaction they control and balance each other, and the world goes on.
There are in every community some people whose main desire is to stand firm, and keep all the good they have — these may be said to represent the forces of Conservatism and Permanence. There are others who are always wanting to go on, and get all the good they can — these supply what may be called the forces of Advance and of Progress. Between these two, which modify or balance each other, the affairs of the world are managed — not very perfectly, as we can all of us bear witness, but still tolerably, and progress is made on the whole.
These two tendencies have always existed in Protestant as in other communities. On the Continent both are represented, though roughly and inexactly — the preservative tendency by the Lutheran Churches, the progressive by the Reformed. Indeed, in various ways and forms they show themselves everywhere. Nor, hover troublesome, are such differences always or altogether to be deplored; because, as we have seen, the real and vital unity which subsists within and beneath them is a most striking proof of the truth of those principles which we hold in common. Let us cultivate this unity more and more. There are two places in which we can find and keep it — in the lofty place of personal communion with God, and in Him with each other; and in the lowly yet most honorable place of loving service to Him and to each other. In that loving service the only strife should be as to which of us shall do the most for our Master and our brethren.
Still, divisions are provoking — often very provoking indeed. We all know that. But, if we must needs be provoking and provoked, let us remember that there are two kinds of provocation. There is provoking “unto anger,” and there is provoking “unto love and to good works.” Let us choose the latter. And oh! what a glorious vision it opens out before us — the vision of a strong, pure, free, united Protestantism, standing with one front to the foe and with one heart for Christ, and against all that dishonors or denies Him! When that vision breaks on the sight, it seems almost too good to believe in — but it is not too good to hope for, to pray for, to strive for.
Another hindrance to our witness must not be ignored. It is a very great, but, as human nature is constituted, a quite unavoidable one. When the children of Israel left the land of Egypt, we are told that “a mixed multitude went up also with them.” Probably never, before or since, has any nation or community gone up out of the house of bondage that a mixed multitude has not gone up with it. It was so at the time of the Reformation. When the great movement became, as in most countries it was forced to do, a political as well as a religious one, it was necessarily joined by this “mixed multitude,” whose hearts were set on anything and everything but the restoration of a pure and spiritual religion.
Some wanted civil liberty, others unrestrained license; many wanted relief from cruel oppression which they had long endured at the hands of both their spiritual and their temporal lords and masters; many more, maddened by their sufferings, burned for revenge upon their tyrants. Moreover, there were political schemers, who cared nothing at all about creeds or dogmas, but being, as we should call them now, opportunists, played upon the passions of the multitude in order to compass their own selfish ends. Just as the calamities that overtook the children of Israel in the wilderness were due in great measure to the mixed multitude, who murmured, disobeyed, and rebelled, so the sins and mistakes which have brought discredit upon our witness and disgrace upon our name are mainly due to our mixed multitude, who are or who have been with us, but not of us. “It must be that offenses come;” they are the fruit of human frailty and sin. But let us try to lessen their number by every effort in our power.
We come now to the last, and the worst, of all our hindrances. Shall we call it our Indifference? But what is indifference?
Ruskin, that great teacher of Art — and of some other things too — tells us that vulgarity is “one of the many forms of death.” The same thing may be said of indifference, and with even more truth, since it not only, like vulgarity, comes from “deadness of sensation,” but it actually is deadness of sensation — in itself a beginning of death. And death is the one great thing we have to fight against — the enemy. Its sign and symptom is the absence of all feeling — all care. Do we feel? Do we care? Is it a matter of indifference to us what Faith we hold and accept, or what Faith the men and women of our country hold and accept, or in what Faith the children of our country are being brought up, and whether they are taught from their earliest years to read and love the Book which should be the guide of their youth, the inspiration of their manhood, and the stay and prop of their age? God keep the Bible for the men and the women and the children of our country! But God works by human hands. It is we who must do this work for Him, and it is as Protestants we must do it. First, some of us will say, we should do it for our own souls’ sake, secondly for theirs. Yet after all there is a higher plea, a stronger motive, than even these— “for Christ’s sake.” Let us think of Christ; let love to Him and loyalty to Him be the strength which arms us for this great fight. But this presupposes life in Christ.
As a living Protestantism is the strongest thing in the world, so a dead Protestantism is the weakest. It is far weaker than a dead Romanism. For dead Romanism can make a great show before the world, can keep multitudes true to her claims, can even attract more multitudes to her standard, without any spiritual life at all. She knows how to dress out the corpse with beautiful raiment, and to lavish costly gems and flowers upon it. She knows how to give to the dead the spices of sweet and tender sentiment, the purple and fine linen of Art, the charms of music, and the glories of architecture. Some there are, indeed, who tell us that these gifts are not the best of their kind — that even in those things upon which she prides herself, Rome has failed. They tell us that her gold is tinsel, her ornaments tawdry and meretricious, and even her music but second-rate after all. But were it — as we know it has often been — like the music of the spheres, and her beauty “perfect” like that of Tyre, when she was “in Eden the garden of the Lord, and every precious stone was her covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond” — we do not want a corpse, however beautiful and however splendidly adorned. There is no help in a dead thing; and least of all — again we must say it — is there help in a dead Protestantism.
For death there is but one remedy, and that is Life. When once death has come and life has gone, Nature knows nothing of its return: Life never comes back again to the House it has deserted. But above Nature there is a Power that can give life. There is ONE who has said that, “in the time that now is, the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live.” That word is true, as thousands amongst ourselves have proved and are proving every day. The life that Christ gives is a real life — no mere symbol or figure of speech, but a fact. It was this life which made the men and women of whom we have been telling, and who were often weak enough in themselves, strong to do and suffer all things, and able to rejoice with exceeding joy in the midst of anguish and in the face of death. It is this life of Christ — which is also the love of Christ — that we must have in our hearts; and this, and this alone, will make us victorious in our fight for Protestantism, which is, as we believe, the fight for truth, for freedom, and for righteousness.