ili^ 
 
 W^ 0r 
 
 THE RELATIONS 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 
 7
 
 THE RELATIONS 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION, 
 
 THREE LECTURES 
 
 Rev. W. R. W. STEPHENS, M.A. 
 
 IREBENDARY OF CHICHESTER AND RECTOR OF WOOLBEDIXG. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " LIFE AND LETTERS OF DEAN HOOK ;" 
 
 'CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM;" "LIFE OF S.JOHN CHRYSOSTOM," &C. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS; 
 
 43 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET ; 48 PICCADILLY ; 
 
 AND 135 NORTH STREET, BRIGHTON.
 
 i 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 These Lectures were originally written in fulfilment 
 C'f the annual course which the Prebendary of Wit- 
 tering is bound to give in Chichester Cathedral or its 
 precincts. 
 
 I had thought of recasting and expanding them for 
 publication, but on further consideration it seemed 
 m.ore probable that they would be of service to the 
 general reader if they were allowed to remain nearly 
 in the form in which they were originally delivered.
 
 uiuc 
 
 ''«cri(<i' 
 
 /
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MEANING OF ' CULTURE.' HOW FAR THE AIMS 
 OF CULTURE AND RELIGION COINCIDE ... 9 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 DTVERGENCE IN THE AIM OF CULTURE AND 
 RELIGION 28 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 DEFECTS OF CULTURE AS A MEANS OF MORAL 
 TRAINING 45 
 
 I
 
 THE RELATIONS 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE MEANING OF 'CULTURE.' HOW FAR THE 
 AIMS OF CULTURE AND RELIGION COINCIDE. 
 
 What is Culture ? The word is not altogether 
 a new creation. In the sense of the act or process 
 of cultivating it may be found occasionally in the 
 works of old and good writers. For example, in 
 one of Addison's papers in the 'Spectator' we 
 read 'the mind that lies fallow but a single day 
 sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed 
 by a constant and assiduous cultured 
 
 But although the word itself is not a novel 
 manufacture, we must all be aware that it has of 
 late acquired a new significance. It has become 
 one of the fashionable terms of the day. In cur- 
 rent literature, and in the conversation of polite 
 society we are perpetually being confronted by it. 
 Sometimes it is printed with a capital C, as if to 
 indicate that it belongs to the catalogue of sciences
 
 lO THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 or arts like Astronomy or Music. And in har- 
 mony with this view of it we hear or read of 
 those who are 'believers in culture,' 'votaries of 
 culture,* ' apostles of culture,' and so on. We are 
 told by those who do believe in it that it is the 
 most purifying, ennobling, regenerating influence 
 at work in the world: that if we will only sur- 
 render ourselves to it, and apply it to our brethren, 
 we shall all become transformed into new creatures 
 of astonishing excellence in every respect. 
 
 On the other hand there are despisers of culture, 
 who disparage it and its votaries in language of 
 scornful contempt. ' People who talk about what 
 they call culture,' exclaims one of our most 
 eloquent orators, ' by which they mean a smatter- 
 ing of the two dead languages of Greek and 
 Latin.' ' Perhaps the very silliest cant of the day,' 
 says a clever writer in one of the popular reviews, 
 'is the cant about culture.' He is speaking of 
 the qualities necessary in his opinion for a good 
 politician, and he says ' Culture is a desirable 
 quality in a critic of new books, and sits well on 
 a professor of belles lettres: but as applied to 
 politics it means simply a turn for small fault- 
 finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in 
 action. For simple pedantry and want of good 
 sense no man is the equal of the man of culture.
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. II 
 
 No assumption is too unreal, no end too imprac- 
 tical for him.' And after more in the same 
 strain this vehement but able writer concludes by 
 declaring that ' men of culture are the only class 
 of responsible beings in the community who can- 
 not with safety be entrusted with power,' 
 
 Two different extremes then of opinion prevail 
 respecting this thing, whatever it is, called culture : 
 there are the enthusiastic admirers and the scorn- 
 ful despisers ; those who think that it is destined 
 to do the greatest good, and those who think 
 that it is calculated to do the greatest mischief. 
 This is what commonly happens when anything, 
 be it a fresh discovery in science or a new style 
 in art, is brought into great public prominence, or 
 when circumstances render some person the most 
 conspicuous public character of the day. It or he 
 is extolled to the skies with praise by some, is 
 beaten down to the dust of the earth and trampled 
 under foot by the contumely and scorn of others. 
 
 Truth commonly lies in the mean between 
 these two extremes. For a long time passion 
 and prejudice, and the smoke of controversy hide 
 the truth, but in time as the combatants cool it 
 begins to emerge. 
 
 My aim in the present lectures is to try and 
 get at the truth respecting what is called culture,
 
 lij THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 especially in its relations to religion. I would 
 endeavour by a calm and dispassionate enquiry to 
 ascertain first the simple natural meaning of the 
 word, then, having determined what culture is, 
 to consider the advantages of it, what it can do 
 for us, how far and in what respects it may work 
 hand in hand with religion: and then again, on 
 the other hand, to consider what it sometimes 
 pretends to do which it cannot, and how in this 
 way it may become not the friendly ally of re- 
 ligion, but rather its rival and foe. 
 
 First then as to the actual meaning of the 
 word. This need not detain us long ; although of 
 course a right definition is of primary importance, 
 since in this as in so many other subjects of con- 
 troversy the dispute is often largely a verbal one, 
 i.e. the acrimony of the disputants arises from 
 each side understanding the word in a different 
 sense from the other, and probably neither side 
 having precisely fixed the limits of its meaning. 
 
 Looking then to the plain, primary, literal sense 
 of the word culture, we find that it merely signi- 
 fies cultivation. The culture of the soil is a 
 comprehensive phrase including everything which 
 is concerned with the production of crops; the 
 ploughing, cleaning, dressing, and sowing of the 
 land, the tending and nurturing of the plant in
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. I3 
 
 the several stages of its growth. Transferred by 
 a figure of speech to the field of human nature, it 
 signifies the cultivation of all the faculties ; the 
 education or training of them all to their utmost 
 capacities of growth and activity. It seeks to 
 know, partly by study, partly by observation, the 
 very best that has been thought and said in the 
 world, and so to arrive at perfection or complete- 
 ness of character. In this sense it is perhaps the 
 nearest English equivalent which can be found to 
 the Greek 77ai5eta, the Latin Jmmanitas^ and the 
 German Bildiing. 
 
 The great advocates of culture moreover deny 
 that they are actuated by a merely personal desire 
 for knowledge. They maintain that they seek 
 not their own perfection only, but the perfection 
 of others also. To quote the words of one of the 
 most eminent of their school — ' There is a view 
 in which all the love of our neighbour, the im- 
 pulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the 
 desire for removing human error, clearing human 
 confusion, and diminishing human misery, the 
 noble aspiration to leave the world better and 
 happier than we found it — motives eminently 
 such as are called social — come in as part of the 
 grounds of culture, and the main and preeminent 
 part.' Culture is then properly described not as
 
 14 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 having its origin in curiosity ('by which the 
 writer means an earnest quest after knowledge '), 
 but as having its origin in the love of perfection : 
 it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force 
 not merely or primarily of the scientific passion 
 for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and 
 social passion for doing good. As in the first 
 view of it Montesquieu's words may be taken 
 for its worthy motto, 'To render an intelligent 
 being yet more intelligent,' so in the second view 
 of it there is no better motto which it can have 
 than these words of Bishop Wilson, 'To make 
 reason and the Kingdom of God prevail.' 
 
 Now clearly culture, as it is thus presented to 
 uSj is not a thing to be railed at. To aim at the 
 cultivation of all the faculties, so that each may 
 attain the full measure of its strength and do its 
 proper work, to do this by seeking to know what 
 is best, and to teach it so that reason and the 
 Kingdom of God may prevail ; no one can deny 
 that such an aim is a noble one, and that certain 
 advantages of it are obvious. 
 
 In the first place, examining all the energies of 
 human nature with a view to the proper culti- 
 vation of each^ it determines that the moral and 
 intellectual faculties are the highest, and that 
 human perfection and human happiness depend
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 15 
 
 upon giving to these powers the predominance to 
 which they are naturally entitled. Culture places 
 perfection and happiness in the inward condition 
 not the outward circumstances; in the growth 
 and predominance of the mental and spiritual as 
 distinguished from the animal powers of man. 
 
 Now every one must allow that here culture 
 may do good service. In an age of extraordinary 
 discoveries and inventions in the material world, 
 all tending to promote the comfort and con- 
 venience of life and the accumulation of wealth, 
 there is a very strong temptation to forget the 
 end of living in the means. We gaze with aston- 
 ishment and admiration at railroads and ma- 
 chinery, and vast manufactories, and what are 
 called great centres of industry, and great sea- 
 ports filled with vessels laden with all the mer- 
 chandise of the world ; princes, statesmen, and 
 orators are invited for the express purpose of 
 extolling on public occasions all these great and 
 wonderful things as the very pith and marrow of 
 our national grandeur and power; those again 
 who have amassed great riches by some of these 
 great mechanical inventions or commercial enter- 
 prises are regarded as the most fortunate beings 
 in the world : and the consequence of all this is 
 a tendency to forget wherein perfection and hap-
 
 l6 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 piness consist; and unconsciously to become idol 
 worshippers, to worship railroads, worship steam, 
 worship coal, worship riches, and the rich, as if 
 these constituted a nation's greatness, forgetting 
 that 
 
 'By the soul 
 Only, the nations shall be great and free.' 
 
 Now culture sets itself against this false estimate 
 of greatness and happiness, by recalling men from 
 the outward and material to the inward and 
 spiritual state of being. I cannot do better than 
 quote again in reference to this point the words 
 of an eloquent votary of culture. ' Every one,' he 
 says, 'must have observed the strange language 
 current during the late discussions as to the pos- 
 sible failure of our supplies of coal. Our coal, 
 thousands of people were saying, is the real basis 
 of our national greatness. If our coal runs short 
 there is an end of the greatness of England. But 
 what is greatness ? culture makes one ask. Great- 
 ness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, 
 interest, and admiration ; and the outward proof 
 of possessing greatness, is that we excite love, 
 interest, and admiration. If England were swal- 
 lowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of the two 
 a hundred years hence would most excite the love, 
 interest, and admiration of mankind, — would
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 1 7 
 
 most therefore show the evidences of having pos- 
 sessed greatness — the England of the last twenty 
 years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of 
 splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and 
 our industrial operations depending on coal, were 
 very little developed ? Well, then, what an un- 
 sound habit of mind it must be which makes us 
 talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the 
 greatness of England, and how salutary a friend 
 is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and 
 thus dissipating delusions of this kind, and fixing 
 standards of perfection that are real.' 
 
 ' Wealth again,' continues the same writer, ' that 
 end to which our prodigious works for material 
 advantage are directed, the commonest of common- 
 places tells us how men are always apt to regard 
 wealth as a precious end in itself: and certainly 
 they have never been so apt thus to regard it as 
 they are in England at the present time. Never 
 did people believe anything more firmly than nine 
 Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe, 
 that our greatness and welfare are proved by our 
 being very rich. Now the use of culture is, that 
 it helps us by means of its spiritual standard of 
 perfection, to regard wealth as mere machinery, 
 and not only to say this as a matter of words, but 
 really to perceive and feel that it is so.' And 
 C
 
 1 8 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 then, referring to those who believe that our 
 greatness and welfare are proved by our being 
 rich, and who give their lives and thoughts 
 to becoming rich, he continues : ' Culture says, 
 Consider these people, their way of life, their 
 habits, their manners, the very tones of their 
 voice ; observe the literature they read, the things 
 which give them pleasure, the words which come 
 out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the 
 furniture of their minds ; would any amount of 
 wealth be worth having with the condition that 
 one was to become just like such people by hav- 
 ing it ? ' And thus, he concludes, culture begets a 
 dissatisfaction which is of the highest possible 
 value in stemming the common tide of men's 
 thoughts in a wealthy and industrial community. 
 
 It is clear indeed that in all this the Culturists 
 (if I may coin a word) are on the same track with 
 the best moral philosophers, and with the teaching 
 of a yet greater One when He says ' A man's life 
 consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
 which he possesseth,' and ' What shall it profit a 
 man if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul ?' 
 
 It would be easy to show that culture takes the 
 same wholesome line of admonition in regard to 
 other tendencies. There is clearly, for instance, a 
 tendency at the present day, when so much atten-
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 1 9 
 
 tion is paid to animal health and bodily vigour, 
 to pursue these ends with too exclusive eagerness : 
 so that invigorating sports and pastimes, which 
 ought not to be neglected, but which ought to be 
 kept as means of recreation (i.e. renovating vigour), 
 are often made the business of life. Here again 
 culture steps in to restrain a vicious tendency, 
 and says the cultivation of bodily vigour and 
 activity, good in itself, is to be kept subordinate 
 to higher and spiritual ends. If the corpus is to 
 be kept sanum it is principally that the mens 
 within it may be sana. Here again culture is on 
 the same track with the teaching of the Christian 
 Apostle when he says 'bodily exercise profiteth 
 little: but godliness is profitable unto all things.' 
 Again, another merit of culture, which is a 
 natural consequence of its seeking perfection by 
 the cultivation not of one set of faculties but of 
 all, is that it is opposed to all one-sided and 
 narrow views of things. It endeavours to look 
 all round a question, and is persuaded that truth 
 cannot be discovered except by a searching and 
 complete enquiry. Hence it has no great faith in 
 the machinery of parties, schools, associations, 
 into which mankind is divided, and by which so 
 much of the work in the world is carried on. No 
 doubt culture may often underrate the value and
 
 30 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 practical utility, perhaps necessity, of these agen- 
 cies, but all will admit that the danger which 
 besets them is that of fostering narrow-minded- 
 ness. The existence of a school, or party, or 
 association, means that a certain number of 
 persons are so firmly convinced of some particular 
 truth, or side of a truth, that they band themselves 
 together in order to propagate it. The obvious 
 risk which besets them, is that the very clearness 
 with which they see certain sides of a truth, the 
 very fixedness with which they look at it, may 
 prevent their seeing the other parts which may be 
 equally important. And so they become exclusive 
 and self-conceited ; the members of each school 
 or party think that they have found out the 
 secret of perfection, they have discovered the 
 sovereign remedy which is to cure all ills, or the 
 master-key which is to unlock all problems. 
 They look down with a smile of pity or contempt 
 upon the members of rival schools and parties, 
 and so strife is engendered, and that even, com- 
 plete, impartial, cultivation of the whole field of 
 human energy, which is the special aim of the 
 eulturists, is painfully thwarted. 
 
 For a similar reason, the advocates of culture 
 regard the multitude of Nonconforming bodies 
 which swarm in this country and in America as
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 2T 
 
 a serious evil. Every sect is, as the word implies, 
 a fragment cut off from another body. It owes 
 its existence to some doctrine, or doctrines, or 
 practice having been brought into extraordinary 
 prominence. If true at all, they are but a part 
 or side of the truth, but the existence of the sect 
 having its origin in them, and being bound up 
 with them, they are inevitably magnified into an 
 exaggerated importance. It is the chief business 
 of the disciples of the sect to propagate their 
 tenets rather than any others, and to uphold them 
 against all assailants. The natural consequence 
 is that they get to imagine these tenets to be the 
 most vital saving truths in the world. That is to 
 say, they are one-sided and narrow-minded. And 
 where sects are multiplied, instead of one body, 
 and one harmonious growth of religious thought, 
 as part of the whole stream of national life, there 
 are a number of small bodies all more or less 
 narrow-minded^ each a centre for the propagation 
 of partial views, and all contending one with 
 another. This is directly adverse to the idea 
 conceived by culturists of human perfection as a 
 harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our 
 humanity ; and also as a general perfection de- 
 veloping all parts of our society. That perfection, 
 then, that completeness of character at which the
 
 23 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 disciples of culture aim, is more commonly found, 
 is more easily attained among the members of an 
 established religion than amongst members of 
 Nonconforming bodies. It has been truly re- 
 marked by one of the advocates of culture, that 
 the great works by which, not only in literature, 
 art, and science generally, but in religion itself, 
 the human spirit has manifested its approaches to 
 totality, and to a full, harmonious perfection, and 
 by which it stimulates and helps forward the 
 world's general perfection, come not from Non- 
 conformists, but from men who either belong to 
 Establishments, or have been trained in them. 
 An Establishment, he observes, which has pro- 
 duced Hooker, Barrow, and Butler, has done more 
 to moralise and ennoble, than communities which 
 have produced the Nonconforming divines. The 
 fruitful men of English Nonconformity and 
 Puritanism, such as Milton, Baxter, and Wesley, 
 are men who were trained within the pale of the 
 Establishment. A generation or two outside the 
 Establishment, and Puritanism produces men of 
 national mark no more. The only exceptions to 
 the operation of the law, which seems to forbid 
 the rearing of men of the highest spiritual 
 significance and influence outside of national 
 churches are the Roman Catholic and the
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 
 23 
 
 Jewish Churches. But these, both of them, he 
 observes, rest on Establishments which though 
 not national, are cosmopolitan. It must be borne 
 in mind, that we are here speaking of the advan- 
 tages of Establishments as such, apart from the 
 question of the intrinsic truth of the teaching in 
 our own Established Church or any other. And 
 the reason why that completeness or totality of 
 character, which the culturists aim at, is to be 
 found more within the pale of Establishments 
 than of Nonconforming bodies, is, that the Esta- 
 blishment (and preeminently in this country) has 
 grown up with the nation, and is therefore part of 
 the national life. And the member of an Esta- 
 blishment is brought into contact with the main 
 current of national life in a way which is not 
 possible for any one who stands outside its pale. 
 The very fact that he belongs to a Church which 
 is historical, whose order and ceremonies and 
 formularies are no modern creations devised by 
 a few great names, the very fact that he has not 
 to do battle for a few special tenets or practices, 
 which are the whole raison d'etre of a Noncon- 
 forming, self-made, religious community ; these 
 facts are in themselves helps to developing that 
 harmonious perfection of character at which the 
 men of culture aim. And therefore one school at
 
 24 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 least of culturists is adverse to disestablishment, 
 because they see the consequence of it would be, 
 not only the severance of the Church from the main 
 stream of national life, but probably its breaking 
 up into a number of smaller bodies, similar to the 
 Nonconforming bodies : in other v^^ords, the mul- 
 tiplication of associations or communities v^ith 
 those one-sided, narrow-minded views, which are 
 so obstructive to that complete and harmonious 
 development of human nature which the cultur- 
 ists seek to bring about. 
 
 One more good point in culture may be men- 
 tioned, and that is, its progressive character. Its 
 motto is ' forwards.' It is not content to stand 
 still. Whatever advances may have been made 
 in civilization, in learning, in the arts, in the moral 
 and intellectual standard, whether of nations 
 or individuals, it still aims at knowing more, 
 advancing further, climbing higher. It places no 
 definite limits to the improvement to be wrought 
 in human nature, by a continual, assiduous culti- 
 vation and expansion of all its powers. It aims at 
 perfection; but perfection is not an absolute term : 
 and what might have seemed perfection a hun- 
 dred years ago, is now only the starting point for 
 another march towards a still distant goal. ' For-
 
 b 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 25 
 
 getting the things which are behind,' the men of 
 culture press on to that which is before. 
 
 I have here been speaking of culture taken at 
 its best, and as it is presented to us by its most 
 enlightened advocates : that is to say, by those 
 who seek to work out the principle of the cultiva- 
 tion of human energy in the largest and most 
 comprehensive way. There are those who tell us 
 that a liberal education, in its highest sense, which 
 is only a longer name for culture, consists solely 
 in learning the laws of nature and training one- 
 self to obey them. Few however would allow this 
 to be an adequate definition of either term, liberal 
 education, or culture. I have been putting forward 
 the views of those who understand both in a much 
 wider sense. 
 
 And before examining in what respects they are 
 faulty or mischievous, my design has been to do 
 full justice to them, and to point out where they 
 are sound and useful. Now we shall all admit 
 that the cultivation of all the powers with which 
 we are endowed, is not only a laudable aim., but 
 a duty: we shall all admit that in an age of 
 material discovery, an age of luxury and wealth, 
 we need to be recalled from the outward to the 
 inward, and to be reminded that ' wealth ' in the 
 sense of riches, is not synonymous with wealth in
 
 26 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 the sense of ' well-being ' : we shall all admit that 
 the division of society into innumerable sects, 
 schools, parties, and associations, is accompanied 
 with great risk, to say the least, of narrow-minded- 
 ness and all the evils which accompany it. We 
 of the Established Church at any rate shall be 
 willing to allow that an Establishment is most 
 favourable to the production of that refined and 
 enlightened type of religious character which can 
 scarcely be attained apart from a liberal educa- 
 tion. On this head I think we clergy of the 
 Established Church may need a little warning in 
 the present day. If I may employ such a term in 
 reference to our holy calling, we are as a body much 
 more p7-o/essw;ialth3.n we used to be : that is to say, 
 we receive, to begin with, more of a special train- 
 ing for our work than formerly was the case, and 
 as a body, we are much more exclusively devoted 
 to that work than the clergy in past times. Let 
 us thank God for it : but on the other hand, let 
 us not forget that in a special training for a 
 particular work, and in an exclusive attention to 
 that work, there is a risk of becoming a little con- 
 tracted in sympathy and in mind. And this can 
 only be counteracted by enriching our mental 
 stores by means of study and enquiry, as we have 
 opportunity, so as to enlarge the powers of our
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 27 
 
 mind and expand the range of our sympathies. 
 It is very commonly said by men of culture, that 
 while the clergy are very indefatigable in their 
 pastoral labours, and in working all manner of 
 what is called parochial machinery, they do not 
 read ; that they are becoming less and less men of 
 general education and cultivation ; and that con- 
 sequently they lose much influence over the more 
 educated portion of their flock. 
 
 There is more truth in these observations than 
 we can afl"ord to neglect. 
 
 Thus far I have endeavoured to show to what 
 extent, and in what respects, the aims of culture 
 and religion are harmonious, if not exactly coin- 
 cident. 
 
 In the next lecture I shall try to point out 
 where and in what respects they part company.
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 DIVERGENCE IN THE AIM OF CULTURE AND 
 RELIGION. 
 
 We considered in the last Lecture what was to 
 be understood by the term Culture : and we de- 
 fined its meaning to be the cultivation of all the 
 energies in human nature, so that each might have 
 free scope and do its proper work. We dis- 
 covered also that the end at which the votaries 
 of culture aim, is nothing less than the elevation 
 of human nature to a more perfect state, if not to 
 perfection itself, through this gradual process of 
 tilling or training. We endeavoured to analyse 
 the merits of this system, as presented to us by 
 its most enlightened advocates, and we found 
 them to consist mainly in these points : — 
 
 (i) That it seeks to know and to teach the 
 best which has been thought and said in the 
 world. 
 
 (2) That it assigns the highest place to the 
 intellectual and spiritual faculties, and sets itself 
 against the tendency, never more prevalent than in
 
 I 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 29 
 
 the present day, to value outward material pros- 
 perity and power and animal enjoyment more 
 highly than inward perfection of soul. 
 
 (3) That, aiming as it does at an harmonious 
 development of all the powers, it is a wholesome 
 corrective to that narrowness of mind and sym- 
 pathy which is apt to exaggerate one side of truth 
 and overlook others, a narrowness which is too 
 much fostered and stereotyped by the mechanism 
 of parties, factions, and sects. 
 
 (4) That it recognises progress and growth as 
 the law of healthy life. 
 
 Now in these respects it would certainly seem 
 as if religion ought to welcome culture as her 
 ally. And no doubt she ought : there is no reason 
 in the nature of things why culture and religion 
 should not work hand in hand. But when we 
 speak of allies, what do we mean ? By allies are 
 properly understood powers working together for a 
 common end, and pursuing it by continued harmo- 
 nious methods of operation : neither power seek- 
 ing to occupy the ground and usurp the functions 
 of the other, neither power seeking to obtain the 
 end by itself, or for itself alone. Unless these 
 conditions are carefully observed, it is plain that 
 the two forces become not allies but rivals, and 
 rivals too quickly become foes.
 
 30 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 Now it is quite certain that by many culture is 
 brought forward as the rival of religion, and not 
 as its ally. We read and hear of and meet with 
 persons who call themselves believers in culture, 
 apostles of culture, disciples of culture, and the 
 like, and they spell culture with a capital C, as if 
 it were a science or an art. Now what does all 
 this mean ? It means that such persons believe 
 in culture, and teach culture as the science taking 
 precedence of all others for perfecting human 
 nature. They distinctly claim for it a larger and 
 more comprehensive domain than that to which 
 religion can pretend. Let me quote the words 
 of one of their advocates. ' Perfection,' he says, — 
 ' as culture from a thorough disinterested study of 
 human nature and human experience learns to 
 conceive it — is a harmonious expansion of all the 
 powers which make the beauty and worth of 
 human nature, and is not consistent with the over 
 development of any one power at the expense of 
 the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as 
 religion is generally conceived by us.' In other 
 words, according to this view, religion is only 
 one element or factor in the process of working 
 out, or working towards the perfection of man's 
 nature. Culture is the master science for the 
 accomplishment of this grand work, and amongst 
 
 I
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 31 
 
 other means, it may condescend to use religion as 
 a help. It allows that religion may be a useful 
 auxiliary, provided it does not aspire to govern or 
 to lead. 
 
 Religious thoughts, feelings, emotions, are 
 indeed to be cultivated, because the religious 
 element is one element, one ingredient in the 
 composition of our nature : but they are to be 
 kept in their proper place, and not allowed to 
 dominate too much, else the man will become 
 one-sided, and that beautiful, symmetrical com- 
 pleteness of character which it is the aim of 
 culture to produce, will be marred. Now when 
 culture puts forward pretensions of this kind, it is 
 brought into fatal collision with the claims of 
 religion. Religion absolutely refuses to be put 
 into this subordinate position. Religion will not 
 consent to be the servant of culture ; religion dis- 
 dains to be patronised by the culturist, to be told 
 that she is a useful handmaid to assist m accom- 
 plishing his grand designs, only she must mind 
 her place and not presume to go too far. No ! 
 Religion will not consent to be thus treated as 
 the humble dependant of culture. For religion 
 maintains this : that the greatest aim and end of 
 man's existence, is the knowledge and the love 
 and the service of Gcd : that once grant the
 
 32 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 being of a God at all, no other ends can from the 
 nature of the case compete with these : that these 
 are of primary paramount importance, and that 
 if these are pursued, then that harmonious expan- 
 sion of all the powers of our nature, which culture 
 aims at, will follow as a result : since it is part of 
 our duty to God to cultivate to the utmost all the 
 energies with which He has endowed us. In 
 short, culture may be a part of religion, but 
 religion cannot be a part of culture ; culture, like 
 everything else, may be followed in a religious 
 spirit, and from a religious motive, but to follow 
 religion merely, if one may so say, in the interests 
 of culture, and for the sake of culture, is an ab- 
 surdity. It contradicts the very first principle of 
 religion, that which it declares to be the first and 
 great commandment, ' Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.' This 
 principle_, which is the groundwork of religion, 
 cannot be made subservient to any ulterior pur- 
 pose. It is an end in itself; it is supreme, or it is 
 nothing. And therefore, as I said, to follow 
 religion for the sake of culture is an absurdity. 
 For, in the first place, the really religious will not 
 consent to attempt it, and in the next, if they did, 
 they would soon cease to be religious, and become 
 
 (
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. ^^ 
 
 mere sentimentalists. A remark made by a highly- 
 gifted theologian^ is very applicable to this sub- 
 ject. ' All virtue and goodness/ he observes, * tend 
 to make men powerful in this world ; but they 
 who aim at the power have not the virtue. Again, 
 virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the 
 truest and highest pleasures ; but they who culti- 
 vate it for the pleasure's sake are selfish, not 
 religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because 
 they never can have the virtue.' Precisely in the 
 same way we may say that religion tends to culture ; 
 but they who seek religion for the sake of culture, 
 are votaries of culture rather than of religion, and 
 because they miss religion, will miss also that 
 completeness and grace which religion alone can 
 throw around culture. They will miss, in fact, 
 also the very end which culture proposes to itself ; 
 the complete development of all the energies ; 
 for if the religious element is narrowed, and kept 
 down, and denied the predominance which natu- 
 rally belongs to it, the character is stunted and 
 mutilated, and that symmetry is lost in which 
 culture defines perfection to consist. 
 
 I am here speaking of culture at its best, as it 
 
 is represented by those who do take some account 
 
 of the religious element in human nature. But it 
 
 ^ Cardinal Newman. 
 
 D
 
 34 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 must be remembered that by many religion is 
 hardly recognised, if at all, even as a part of 
 culture. The designation of a cultivated man or 
 a man of culture is often freely given to any one 
 of liberal education and good breeding, to any 
 one who is tolerably v^ell read, or who is an ac- 
 complished linguist, or artist, or who has, or 
 affects, refined taste in art, without the least con- 
 sideration whether he is also a religious man, or 
 has even any tincture of religion. We hear also 
 of schools, or colleges, or associations, or what 
 not, for teaching {^' imparting^ is, I think, their 
 favourite word) the ' higher culture ' as they call 
 it, which seems to embrace every science and ac- 
 complishment under the sun except the highest 
 of all sciences, the knowledge of God and of His 
 laws, and the noblest of all accomplishments, the 
 moulding of the character into conformity with 
 those laws. 
 
 Now religion claims not only a place, but the 
 FIRST place for these things, and maintains that 
 unless their supreme value is kept in sight, the 
 highest type of character is simply unattainable. 
 In fact religion retorts upon those culturists who 
 leave the knowledge of God and of the soul out 
 of their scheme of education, the very charge of 
 narrowness and incompleteness which culture is
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. ^^ 
 
 apt to fasten upon religion. As it has been well 
 said, 'there is no narrowing so deadly as the nar- 
 rowing of man's horizon of spiritual things : no 
 worse evil can befall him in his course here, than 
 to lose sight of heaven^.' Consider the graces 
 which religion tends to produce — humility, gentle- 
 ness, forbearance, tender consideration for others, 
 self-forgetfulness — and then say whether any char- 
 acter which lacks them can be called, in the best 
 sense of the word, cultivated. I do not deny that 
 such qualities may exist^ or forget that they have 
 existed in individuals apart from religious faith, 
 but the question is, whether culture in itself, apart 
 from rehgion, tends to produce them. I think we 
 may boldly say that it does not : that instead of 
 humility, its tendency is to generate conceit; 
 instead of self-forgetfulness, to foster self-conscious- 
 ness; and instead of delicate consideration for 
 others and enlarged sympathies, to encourage a 
 somewhat selfish and disdainful fastidiousness. I 
 think we may certainly say that this is the tendency 
 of culture apart from religion ; not only because we 
 commonly do find these unpleasant qualities in 
 the disciples of what is called the higher culture, 
 but also because it really seems inevitable when 
 one considers what the main principle and motive 
 ^^ ' Gifts of Civilization,' p. 133, by Dean Church. 
 D %
 
 3^ THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 of culture is. Suppose the case of two men, both 
 eager in the acquisition of knowledge, both cul- 
 tivating their intellectual powers with diligence 
 and training them up to a high degree of excel- 
 lence. Outwardly, or on a slight acquaintance, 
 there may appear to be very little difference in 
 their aims, and yet there may be a vital difference. 
 The one may be impelled primarily, if not exclu- 
 sively, by the desire of mental cultivation ; he may 
 be actuated by the belief that by this method 
 perfection of character, the highest condition pos- 
 sible for a rational being, is to be reached. 
 
 The other is not actuated primarily by the 
 desire of self-improvement. Starting from a con- 
 viction of the supreme importance of knowing 
 God and obeying Him, he makes this knowledge 
 of God's will and obedience to it the first con- 
 sideration of life. He gets into the habit of 
 acting in all he does under a profound sense of 
 responsibility to a higher power than himself. 
 
 This being his central motive, he is assiduous 
 in cultivating all the energies of his nature, not 
 merely or chiefly with a view to self-improvement, 
 but from a conviction that by self-improvement 
 he is discharging his duty towards God ; that he 
 is bound to cultivate to the utmost the faculties 
 with which he is endowed by God, in order that
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 37 
 
 he may fulfil the purpose and execute the work 
 for which they were given ; in fact attain the very 
 end of his existence. 
 
 Now will any candid person have any difficulty 
 in deciding which is the higher and nobler of 
 these two types ; and, we may add, which is likely 
 to be the more complete and finished character 
 of the two ; which is the more likely to be invested 
 with those charms which win the hearts of others, 
 and to be inspired with that enthusiasm for the 
 welfare of others which can alone avail to pro- 
 mote it. 
 
 In this last respect indeed we detect one of 
 the most fatal flaws in the theory of the culturists 
 viewed as an instrument for the improvement of 
 mankind. The starting-point of culture is the 
 idea of perfecting self, and although some of its 
 most distinguished advocates struggle hard to rid 
 it of the taint of selfishness, they cannot succeed 
 in the attempt. They see indeed that since man, 
 as Montesquieu says, is ' born in society and must 
 there remain,' an isolated self-culture is impos- 
 sible ; that we cannot advance far towards per- 
 fection ourselves without what are called the 
 social virtues : and further they see that it would 
 conduce very much to the comfort, convenience, 
 and happiness of others, as well as their own, if
 
 38 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 all were as highly cultivated as themselves. And 
 hence they declare it to be a duty to promote 
 culture which, as understood by the more en- 
 lightened advocates of it, will include moral train- 
 ing, and perhaps some tincture of religion. To 
 cite again the words of one whom I quoted in 
 the last lecture, the aim of culture from one point 
 of view is 'to make reason and the Kingdom 
 of God prevail.' Only let it be carefully noted 
 that the desire to make reason and the Kingdom 
 of God prevail arises not from the positive love 
 of God and of God's creatures our fellow-men ; 
 this is not the inspiring motive. It is rather 
 that self- culture cannot be perfected without in- 
 cluding others in the process, and carrying them 
 along with us. That I may be quite sure I am 
 not misrepresenting the theory on this point, I 
 will quote another passage from the same writer 
 whose words about reason and the Kingdom of 
 God I cited just now. 
 
 'And because men,' he says, 'are all members 
 of one great whole, and the sympathy which is in 
 human nature will not allow one member to be 
 indifferent to the rest, or to have a perfect welfare 
 independent of the rest, the expansion of our 
 humanity to suit the idea of perfection which 
 culture forms must be a general expansion. Per-
 
 I 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 39 
 
 fection, as culture conceives it, is not possible 
 while the individual remains isolated. The in- 
 dividual is required, under pain of being stunted 
 and enfeebled in his ozun development if lie dis- 
 obeys, to carry others along with him in his march 
 towards perfection, to be continually doing all 
 he can to enlarge and increase the volume of the 
 human stream sweeping thitherward. And here 
 once more culture lays on us the same obligation 
 as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has 
 admirably put it, that to promote the Kingdom 
 of God is to increase and hasten one's own hap- 
 piness.' True! Bishop Wilson says this, but he 
 does not tell us that we are to promote the King- 
 dom of God in order to increase and hasten cur 
 own happiness. If he had said this we should 
 have felt that the saying was hardly reconcileable 
 with the precept of his Divine Master, ' Seek ye 
 first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.' 
 It is quite true that our highest and most real 
 and most lasting happiness are involved in seek- 
 ing the Kingdom of God and promoting it ; but 
 according to the ethical law alluded to just now, 
 that he who aims at the lower object instead of 
 the higher, which includes it, is likely to lose the 
 higher object, if not both, so he who in promoting 
 the Kingdom of God chiefly aims at increasing and
 
 40 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 hastening his own happiness, and thinks primarily 
 of that, is likely to miss the Kingdom of God 
 and his own happiness too. Moreover, the hap- 
 piness which springs out of the effort to promote 
 the Kingdom of God is of a more purely spiritual 
 and inward kind than would content many of 
 the devotees of culture. It consists indeed very 
 largely in gaining a mastery over the forces of 
 evil within and around us; but this mastery is 
 not obtained without sharp and severe contests ; 
 so that, while on the one hand Holy Scripture 
 speaks of 'joy and peace in believing,' 'a light 
 yoke, and easy burden,' and ultimate triumph, it 
 also speaks to us of a ' strait gate and narrow way,' 
 and ' much tribulation,' of ' the putting on of 
 armour,' and fighting and watching. The devo- 
 tion of the disciple to his Master, forgetting self 
 in the love for Him, and the ardent desire to 
 promote His Kingdom, enables him not only to 
 be content, but to be happy, and even to find his 
 happiness in these labours and tribulations; but if 
 his primary aim in promoting the Kingdom of 
 God were his own happiness, he would probably 
 be soon daunted by such unpleasant trials, and, 
 like Pliable in the Pilgrim's Progress, seek his hap- 
 piness by some smoother and more flowery path. 
 It has been truly remarked of culture, when put
 
 I 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 4I 
 
 in the supreme place, that it holds forth a hope 
 for humanity by enlightening self, and not a hope 
 for humanity by dying to self. This last is the 
 hope which Christianity holds out to us. It 
 teaches us that the road to virtue and happiness 
 and Heaven is through forgetfulness and renun- 
 ciation of self. ' He that loseth his life shall find 
 it.' ' He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.' 
 And the history of Christianity proves that those 
 who have reached the highest rank of purity and 
 nobleness of character in Christ's Kingdom, those 
 who have been most powerful to advance that 
 Kingdom, and have given a fresh impulse to 
 the moral growth of mankind, have been men 
 who have forgotten self, who have merged their 
 own personality in a higher ; who out of the love 
 of God, especially as manifested to us in the 
 person of Jesus Christ, have sought before all 
 other things the promotion of His Kingdom upon 
 earth, and in this love and labour of love have 
 found their happiness and their exceeding great 
 reward. Christianity supplies a method of veri- 
 fying that remarkable declaration of the Greek 
 sage, that the life of the true philosopher ought 
 to approach as nearly as possible a state of death : 
 it behoves him, says Plato — otl lyyvrara. oira tou 
 liiQvavai oiJrco C^r\v. (Phsedo, ch. xii.)
 
 42 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 Culture, on the contrary, as a theory of life, 
 cannot clear itself from the radical vice of self- 
 consciousness, if not of positive selfishness, a 
 defect absolutely fatal to the production of the 
 loftiest type of human character ; absolutely fatal 
 to that enthusiasm for the welfare of others which 
 alone can avail to give an impulse to moral pro- 
 gress. There can be no question that the ten- 
 dency of culture is to become a principle of 
 exclusion rather than of brotherhood. It is by 
 its very nature a fastidious and dainty habit of 
 mind. It is obviously impossible that even in 
 an advanced state of education and civilization, 
 what is called high culture can be the condition 
 of the multitude. And therefore the man who 
 identifies happiness with culture must be more 
 or less out of sympathy with those who are on 
 a much lower plane of cultivation than himself. 
 He may indeed wish for their improvement, and 
 even take some pains to effect it, but he will lack 
 the inspiring overmastering motive of love, which 
 will alone enable him to conquer the natural 
 repugnance of refinement to coarseness, of learning 
 and literary taste and zeal for knowledge, to 
 ignorance and stupidity, and indifference to all 
 intellectual pursuits and exercises which are so 
 largely to be found among the lower strata of 
 society. Nothing short of love for our fellow-men
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 43 
 
 because they are our brethren, children of one 
 common divine Father, can be a real, effectual, 
 enduring bond of brotherhood. Nothing less than 
 this can look below the surface, and beneath all 
 the strange ravages which sin and ignorance and 
 wretchedness and disease may have wrought upon 
 the outward form, discern some traces of the 
 divine image. 
 
 Lastly, the apostles of culture maintain that 
 they aim at perfection. So does the Christian, 
 although he shrinks from any presumptuous or 
 ostentatious assertion of an aim which he knows 
 to be unattainable in this life. His only hope of 
 approaching it consists in reliance upon a power 
 above his own, and he does not dream of reaching 
 it until he shall have entered a 'better country, 
 that is an heavenly,' 'the land which is very far 
 off.' The apostles of culture, on the other hand, 
 seem to confine their view to present time, and 
 to train their disciples to believe largely in their 
 own capacities without any direct reference to a 
 higher power. A culturist would scarcely sym- 
 pathise with the fervent address of St. Augustine 
 to God — ' Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor 
 nostrum donee requiescat in TeV or with the 
 prayer in the Psalms, ' O set me up upon the rock 
 
 ^ Conf. I. I : 'Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our 
 heart is restless until it reposes upon Thee.'
 
 44 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 
 that is higher than I,' or with Archbishop Leigh- 
 ton's description of perfection as ' an union with 
 a higher power by love.' 
 
 In the following lecture my aim will be to 
 prove that no ideal less than this will suffice: 
 that such an idea of perfection supplies the only 
 motive which can successfully impel us either to 
 reach the highest levels of virtue ourselves or to 
 conduct others to them.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 DEFECTS OF CULTURE AS A MEANS OF MORAL 
 TRAINING. 
 
 In the last lecture I endeavoured to point out 
 how culture comes into fatal collision with re- 
 ligion. It does this when it aspires to be the 
 science for conducting human nature to perfection, 
 and treats religion as only a humble auxiliary in 
 this process. Religion being concerned with the 
 highest elements in human nature declines to be 
 thrust into this subordinate position. Religion 
 claims to be an end in itself, not one of the 
 means to another end : it may be the starting- 
 point of culture, as of every other good thing, but 
 it refuses to be reckoned merely as a part of it. 
 
 Further, we pointed out that the culturists, by 
 assigning only a subordinate office to religion in 
 developing human character, sometimes leaving 
 it out of the question altogether, miss the very 
 end at which they profess to aim, the harmonious 
 expansion of all the capacities of our nature. 
 For if the religious element is not cultivated the
 
 46 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 character Joses all those graces which religion 
 naturally throws around it, and thus becomes 
 unsymmetrical, incomplete. Religion too, if put 
 in the second place, cannot produce these graces ; 
 for it ceases to be religion, and becomes merely 
 a sentiment, and sentiment cannot produce such 
 qualities as self-sacrifice and self-restraint, hu- 
 mility, forbearance. They are the offspring of 
 something stronger and tougher than sentiment 
 — faith in God, love of God, a sense of duty to 
 God. Further, it was pointed out that the ten- 
 dency of culture alone — altogether separate from 
 religion or even religious sentiment, is to produce 
 qualities of a contrary kind, self-conceit, self- 
 consciousness, fastidious tastes and narrow sym- 
 pathies. And this led us on to remark how 
 feeble an instrument culture alone must be for 
 promoting the moral welfare and happiness of 
 others, and for making, as Bishop Wilson says, 
 ' Reason and the Kingdom of God prevail :' since 
 it lacks the motive force, the enthusiasm, the 
 inspiration, the self-forgetfulness, which alone can 
 surmount the difficulties and survive the strain of 
 such arduous work. 
 
 Culture, then, whether considered as the process 
 whereby the individual seeks his own perfection, 
 or the perfection of others, is an inadequate means
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 47 
 
 when acting alone. Culturists of the higher order 
 will acknowledge that the training of the moral 
 faculties is of the highest importance in this 
 process. But they do not sufficiently take into 
 account (and sometimes not at all) the need of 
 a power outside man, above and beyond his own 
 natural moral instincts to quicken and control, to 
 stimulate to good and restrain from evil. 
 
 Now I think it does not require any lengthened 
 study of moral philosophy to discover that the 
 point in which nearly all systems are most defective 
 is the practical one; viz. supposing virtue to be 
 defined, the moral standard to be fixed, the true 
 ideal of character to be formed, what and where 
 is the motive which shall impel and constrain us 
 to persevere in aiming at this ideal: and so to 
 be always on the march tozuards perfection, 
 although it will never be actually reached ? 
 
 After allowing for great differences in the 
 method of enquiry adopted by Plato and Aris- 
 totle, it is true to say that both of these great 
 original masters in moral philosophy define virtue 
 as consisting in a balance or harmony of powers 
 in the soul. Where each power does its proper 
 work under the direction and control, according 
 to Plato of ' reason,' according to Aristotle of 
 (pp6n]aLs or practical wisdom, t/^crc is virtue.
 
 48 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 Bishop Butler's ethical system is but the Chris- 
 tian adaptation and expansion of these philo- 
 sophies, Man's nature, according to him, is a 
 constitution and economy in which the several 
 parts are all ranged in due gradation ; all have 
 their places and functions assigned under con- 
 science as the supreme authoritative power. 
 
 Virtue then being defined as a balance of 
 powers in the soul, where is the motive force to 
 be found which shall impel man towards this 
 condition? If the reason of Plato, the practical 
 wisdom of Aristotle, or the conscience of Bishop 
 Butler, command what is right, where is the 
 power which shall induce obedience to their dic- 
 tates? Some such power was sought by Plato in 
 his remarkable doctrine of the ' essential forms ' 
 or realities of things; of which all the sensible 
 objects in the world are but as shadows and 
 reflections. The highest and purest of these es- 
 sential forms, according to him, was 'the good.' 
 In one of his dialogues he very beautifully illus- 
 trates his psychology by the image of a charioteer 
 drawn by two horses. The charioteer is reason ; 
 the two horses, of which one is of an eager, high- 
 spirited temper, the other base and grovelling, 
 respectively represent the passions and appetites. 
 The charioteer is just able to raise his head for
 
 r 
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 49 
 
 an instant_, and catch a glimpse of the essential 
 verities, the formless, colourless substances on 
 which the gods continually gaze in the region 
 beyond the skies. And, even though it be but 
 a glimpse, it is so enchanting, so ravishing, that 
 it fills the soul with love. To contemplate these 
 beautiful forms, these eternal realities, above all 
 to contemplate the eternal essence of good itself, 
 becomes the aspiration of the philosopher. The 
 whole Platonic theory concerning these essential 
 celestial forms is very marvellous and sublime : 
 but it was a theory for philosophers, not a creed 
 or religion for the multitude. This vision of the 
 beautiful and the good, which inspired the soul 
 with such a longing after righteousness and truth, 
 was the privilege only of the select few. Plato 
 himself allows that it was unattainable by the 
 mass of mankind, although the whole object of 
 education should be to turn the eye of the soul 
 round from sensible forms to eternal truths, from 
 the shadow and reflection to the real substance. 
 And if in Plato the master motive, although 
 powerful where it exists, is rare and hard to reach, 
 in Aristotle it is altogether wanting. The vir- 
 tuous character is slowly elaborated by the forma- 
 tion of habits, and habits are formed by a repe- 
 tition of acts which tend to produce them. These 
 E
 
 50 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 acts should always be in the mean, i.e. the 
 middle between two extremes. As a guide to 
 what the mean is, man has his own individual 
 reason, or practical wisdom, and plus that he has 
 the general moral sentiment of mankind as a 
 kind of standard, a sort of conscience to appeal 
 to outside himself. But Aristotle does not tell 
 us where the motive power is to be found which 
 will propel men towards this ideal. He dissects 
 human nature with the most admirable analytical 
 skill, and tells us how it ought to work, but he 
 does not tell us how it shall be made to work. 
 It is rather as if one should minutely explain all 
 the several parts of a steam-engine, and how it 
 ought to work, but should omit to show how 
 steam could be brought into it and make it go. 
 
 In Bishop Butler's psychological analysis we 
 get a step further. In his ^conscience' there is 
 far more binding authoritative power than there 
 is in the practical wisdom ((ppovrjcns) of Aristotle. 
 But at the same time, if we were left to this part 
 of Bishop Butler's teaching alone, we might still 
 feel unsatisfied. If we ask why conscience should 
 be supreme? why should we obey it? he replies 
 because it is supreme by the nature of the case ; 
 it -carries its own authority along with it ; it is by 
 the very constitution of our being supreme, and 
 
 1
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 51 
 
 therefore it is our duty to obey it. There are some 
 however who would not be content with this 
 explanation : they would say it is too much like 
 arguing in a circle. 
 
 But in his sermons upon the Love of God the 
 great Bishop passes from the domain of philo- 
 sophy into the higher region of religion ; and 
 the master motive which shall impel to virtue 
 is revealed. He lived in an age when, partly 
 as a recoil from mystical religious notions, partly 
 with a view of meeting philosophical opponents 
 of religion on their own ground, and fighting 
 them with their own weapons, the reasonableness 
 of religion was continually being insisted on, 
 until he remarks ' we are got into the contrary ex- 
 treme, under the notion of a reasonable religion ; 
 so very reasonable^ he ironically adds, ' as to have 
 nothing to do with the heart and affections.' 
 And then he goes on to demonstrate with great 
 power and exhaustive completeness of argument, 
 how the love of God is reasonable. Religion, 
 he observes, does not create new affections, but 
 only supplies the noblest and purest objects to 
 affection, which already exist. 
 
 We have affections, emotions, aspirations, which 
 nothing less than the love of God will satisfy, 
 the love of a Being who is the perfect represen- 
 E 3
 
 5« THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 tation of all beauty, and order, power, wisdom, 
 greatness, goodness. By the love of such a Being 
 the sum of our happiness is increased here and 
 will be perfected hereafter. Butler in fact finds 
 in the love of God just that satisfaction of the 
 deepest longings of the soul which Plato at- 
 tempted to supply through his theory concerning 
 the essential forms. Only God is the living 
 representation of all these abstract ideas. He 
 sums them all up perfectly in Himself; and as it 
 is easier to love a living personality than an 
 abstract existence, as it is easier to love God 
 than ' the good,' so does that love become a far 
 more powerful motive and regulative moral force 
 than any contemplation of an abstract science 
 can. Admiration, reverence, trust, gratitude, are 
 all excited by the contemplation of divine power, 
 the divine wisdom^ the divine benevolence, 
 and these have the most powerful effect upon 
 the formation of character and the regulation 
 of conduct ; they tend to produce humble sub- 
 mission and cheerful obedience to the Divine 
 Will. 
 
 Such, briefly and inadequately stated, is the 
 substance of the Bishop's two sermons on the 
 love of God, which he concludes with this mag- 
 nificent chain of passages from the Book of
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 53 
 
 Psalms. 'I have seen an end of all perfection.' 
 'Whom have I in Heaven but thee? and there 
 is none upon earth that I desire in comparison 
 of Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but 
 God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
 for ever.' ' Like as the hart desireth the water- 
 brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee O God.' 
 * My soul is athirst for God yea even for the living 
 God, when shall I come to appear before the pre- 
 sence of God.' ' Plow excellent is thy loving-kind- 
 ness, O God ! and the children of men shall put 
 their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.' 
 ' They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness 
 of Thy house : and Thou shalt give them drink of 
 Thy pleasures, as out of the river.' ' For with 
 Thee is the well of life : and in Thy light shall 
 we see light.' ' Blessed is the man whom Thou 
 choosest, and receivest unto Thee : he shall dwell 
 in Thy court, and shall be satisfied with the 
 pleasures of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple.' 
 'Blessed is the people, O Lord, that can rejoice 
 in Thee : they shall walk in the light of Thy 
 countenance.-' 'Their delight shall be daily in 
 Thy name, and in Thy righteousness shall they 
 make their boast. For Thou art the glory of 
 their strength : and in Thy lovingkindness shall 
 they be exalted.' ' As for me, I will behold Thy
 
 54 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 presence in righteousness, and when I wake up 
 after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it/ 
 ' Thou shalt show me the path of life ; in Thy 
 presence is the fulness of joy, and at Thy right 
 hand there are pleasures for evermore.' 
 
 It would occupy far too much time to take 
 even a rapid survey of other ethical systems, and 
 to show how, in one way or another, they fail 
 either in supplying a sufficiently high standard, 
 or in furnishing an adequate moral motive. I 
 will only remind you here (i) that the philoso- 
 pher Kant places virtue in obedience to the pure 
 moral law, and he conceives that this law when 
 clearly presented to the mind in its perfection is 
 the most powerful motive which can be applied 
 to the will. To this we may reply that it cannot 
 be so powerful a motive as love and reverence 
 for one who is Himself the realisation of the 
 moral law. 
 
 (2) The utilitarian philosophers, as they are 
 called, of whom Bentham in the last century 
 and Mill in this, have been the most powerful 
 representatives, maintain that utility or the ten- 
 dency to promote pleasure or pain is the only 
 test of the goodness or badness of actions, and 
 that pleasure and pain are the only possible 
 motives which can determine the will. This
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 55 
 
 is the school to which a large number of the 
 culturists gravitate. 
 
 In spite of much ingenuity however, the utili- 
 tarians are unable to refute two charges : (i) that 
 their limitation of human motives to two only, 
 pleasure and pain, is unsound, since it is certain 
 that men often act either from generous self- 
 forgetful impulses, or from a sense of duty apart 
 from all considerations of their own happiness ; 
 (2) that their moral standard and aim, the pur- 
 suit of happiness, is too low; spite of all explan- 
 ation and disguises it is a Selfish aim ; and it 
 must surely be acknowledged that the aim of 
 all moral systems should be, not to intensify or 
 refine selfishness, but continually to raise men 
 above it. And as a matter of fact, looking to 
 the history of the world, we see that the men 
 who have risen to the greatest heights of virtue 
 themselves, and the men who have given the 
 most powerful impulse to it in others, who have, 
 so to say, pushed on the moral progress of man- 
 kind a stage further, are those who have been 
 most forgetful of themselves, who have been con- 
 sumed with the desire, not of attaining happiness, 
 but of doing what was right, and promoting what 
 was good. 
 
 And the noblest manifestations of this en-
 
 ^6 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 thusiasm for the right and the good have un- 
 questionably been found amongst those who have 
 loved God, more especially those who have 
 learned to love God in Jesus Christ. 
 
 Nothing could kindle such an ardent love of 
 God as His coming amongst us and dwelling 
 with us. Immanuel, God with us ; that word, or 
 rather the fact which it expresses, is the key to 
 such a source of moral inspiration as the world 
 had not known before. And of course when we 
 say this we do not mean merely the fact of Christ's 
 coming and dwelling among us, but everything 
 which that coming involved ; His atoning death, 
 His resurrection, His indwelling Spirit, as well 
 as His character and His words. What we call 
 the Christian character is certainly the product 
 of belief in all these facts. Cut away any one of 
 them and you mutilate the religion of Christ, as 
 a moral agency ; you weaken the strength of the 
 strongest lever which the world has ever known 
 to lift men out of the slough of low selfish aims 
 and base desires. 
 
 It has been well said, take any one precept, e.g. 
 ' Love your enemies ; do good to them that hate 
 you.' How am I really to fulfil this ? If the law 
 of my country gives me a command, I can give 
 it an outward mechanical obedience, and with
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 57 
 
 this human law is satisfied. But the divine 
 precept commands not an outward act, but an 
 inward spiritual condition of being. How am 
 I to attain to this? By my force of will? My 
 will can rule my outward acts, but cannot change 
 my inward dispositions. What shall avail to turn 
 the whole tide of feeling and change the natural 
 hatred of enemies into love for them ? Nothing 
 short of the forgiveness and the love of God in 
 Christ to me and to all men, felt to be a reality. 
 And in like manner it might be shown that 
 there is not one Christian precept which has 
 not its root, its motive spring, directly in some 
 transcendent truth of God's nature and of the 
 soul's relation to Him. Deny these and the 
 precepts fall. Vain therefore is the dream of 
 a Christian morality without a true Christian 
 theology supporting and inspiring it. 
 
 We maintain therefore against the culturists, 
 that no motive less than the love of God can 
 propel men towards that perfection of moral 
 character which they profess to seek. Look at 
 any of the men who stand in the higher ranks 
 of purity and nobleness of character, and who 
 have given in one way or another the greatest im- 
 pulse to virtue in the world— such men as St. 
 John Chrysostom, or St. Augustine, or A Kempis,
 
 58 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 or Pascal, or Fenelon, or Leighton, or Ken, 
 or Bishop Wilson, or Henry Martyn, or John 
 Wesley, or John Keble, and say if you can that 
 anything less than the love of God would have 
 enabled them to be what they were, or to 
 have achieved what they did? None had more 
 right to speak on this point than Leighton him- 
 self; and hear what he says: ' One glance of God, 
 a touch of His love, will free and enlarge the 
 heart so that it can deny all and part with all, 
 and make an entire renouncing of all, to follow 
 Him;' and again, 'It is in His power to do it 
 for thee. He can stretch and expand thy 
 straitened heart, can hoist and spread the sails 
 within thee and carry thee on swiftly, filling 
 them not with the vain air of men's applause, 
 but with the sweet breathings and soft gales of 
 His own Spirit which carry it straight to the 
 desired haven/ 
 
 And since religion cultivates the highest and 
 purest elements in man's nature it follows that it 
 does of itself go further than any other kind of 
 training to elevate and refine the character. Most 
 of us must have come across instances of persons 
 in a lowly rank of life, engaged in very humble 
 sort of work, and with very little tincture of what 
 is called learning, who yet have manifested under
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 59 
 
 the influence of religion a delicacy of thought and 
 feeling and conscience as well as a simplicity and 
 rectitude of life which are often lacking, grievously 
 lacking, in those who are learned in the wisdom 
 of this world, but who have not drunk from any 
 higher and purer source. It is often surprising 
 also how much men of very moderate intellectual 
 abilities are able to accomplish, if their hearts are 
 possessed by religious feeling, and their conduct 
 regulated by a religious standard. The reason is 
 that religion puts the whole nature into a healthy 
 condition and supplies it with a powerful spring, 
 so that the man is able to make the most of all 
 such powers as he has. Therefore we cannot be 
 too much on the alert to meet a tendency which 
 is unpleasantly prevalent at the present day to 
 thrust religion out of education, or into a very 
 subordinate place, or to attenuate and enervate 
 and dilute it to such a degree that most of the sap 
 is squeezed out of it and it becomes hardly worth 
 the teaching. 
 
 We cannot too strenuously insist that culture and 
 education are necessarily stunted and incomplete 
 unless they accord to religion not only a place 
 but the foremost place, for that without it they 
 tend to produce a very maimed and very unlovely 
 type of character, a character destitute of the
 
 6o THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 noblest gifts and the most attractive charms, 
 a character lacking the strongest of all motives 
 both to restrain from evil and to impel to good. 
 
 We cannot too earnestly maintain that religion 
 has no quarrel with culture, if culture will not 
 pretend to be all-sufficient, and claim a power 
 which it does not possess. Religion certainly 
 presents no obstacles to culture; on the contrary, 
 recognizing all our capacities and all our oppor- 
 tunities as gifts from God, it tells us that it is our 
 duty to cultivate them to the utmost of our power. 
 It says, ' covet earnestly the best gifts,' though it 
 also says, ' yet show I unto you a more excellent 
 way.' It says, ' desire worldly knowledge and use 
 it, only remember that no amount of worldly know- 
 ledge can compensate for ignorance of God and 
 the loss of all those gifts and graces and bless- 
 ings which the knowledge and the love of God 
 bring with them.' 
 
 It is a matter of simple history that the ten- 
 dency of Christianity, wherever it has been intro- 
 duced, has been to promote order, civilization, and 
 moral progress. And these are essential con- 
 ditions for the growth of learning, science, and 
 art. Hellenic civilization and Roman civiliza- 
 tion both died out : the fierce barbarians of the 
 north, our Teutonic ancestors, rushed in and took
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 6l 
 
 possession of the wreck of the old Roman Empire. 
 What was the power which saved such qualities as 
 were worth preserving in the elder races, and 
 added new ones to them ? What was the power 
 which tamed the ferocity of the young barbarian 
 races, took up what was good in them, and 
 moulded it into shape? 
 
 We may answer without hesitation that Chris- 
 tianity was this power. Notwithstanding many 
 and grievous shortcomings, blunders, and corrup- 
 tions, the Christian Church has been the salt of 
 society, which age after age has preserved it from 
 the decadence and decay which overtook the 
 older civilizations of the world. In ages of 
 ignorance and barbarism, in ages of profligacy, in 
 ages of a cold-hearted worldliness and scepticism, 
 although the Church has always necessarily been 
 herself tainted by the prevalent vice, yet she has 
 also always contained, even in the worst times, 
 the force which alone could counteract that vice. 
 She has never failed to bring up some children 
 who have been learned in the midst of ignorance, 
 gentle in the midst of ferocity, pure and saintly in 
 the midst of profligacy and worldliness, zealous and 
 fervid and faithful in the midst of apathy, coldness, 
 and unbelief. And such have been the saviours 
 and regenerators of their age : they have quickened
 
 62 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 
 the moral pulse of mankind, and given it a fresh 
 start. It is no answer to this to say that there 
 have been times when the Church has opposed 
 learning, and set itself against the cultivation of 
 art. As the depository and guardian of divine 
 truths she has ever been rather suspicious of novel- 
 ties, lest she should by an over hasty adoption of 
 them countenance error and be untrue to her 
 trust. To say that she has often carried this 
 prmciple of conservative caution to excess, has 
 rejected truth and clung to error, is only to admit 
 that, though of divine origin, she is administered 
 in this world by fallible men. It is not surprising, 
 for instance, that the Church did not give a cordial 
 welcome to all the 'new learning,' as it was called, 
 which after the fall of Constantinople and the 
 invention of printing in the latter part of the 
 fifteenth century, spread with such astonishing 
 energy through Western Europe. Yet it must be 
 remembered that amongst the men who embraced 
 the ' new learning ' with enthusiasm were distin- 
 guished Churchmen, such as Erasmus, and Sir 
 Thomas More, and Colet, dean of St. Paul's, 
 men who loved learning indeed with passionate 
 fondness, yet never forgot that the primary use 
 of learning should be to advance the Kingdom of 
 God. It must be remembered too on the other
 
 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 6^ 
 
 hand that the revival of taste for classic pagan 
 literature and art, was accompanied by a wide- 
 spread tendency to laxity in faith and morals ; 
 and Puritanism, though undoubtedly too rigid and 
 austere in its hostility to literature and art, was 
 but a natural, and it many respects a wholesome, 
 recoil from the spirit of the age which had made 
 too much of them. 
 
 The fact however that the Christian Church has, 
 under certain circumstances^ opposed science, or 
 literature^ or art, does not at all overthrow the 
 truth of the assertion as a general principle that 
 the natural relation between them is not one of 
 antagonism. On the contrary religion bids God- 
 speed to the cultivation of all the powers with 
 which we are endowed : it encourages, nay it 
 commands us to employ thankfully all the sources 
 of innocent knowledge and happiness which are 
 within our reach. ' Every creature of God is 
 good, and nothing is to be rejected if it be 
 received with thanksgiving' (i Tim. iv. i). It is 
 utterly false to say that religion, as such, weakens 
 or cramps the intellect, or stifles science. It does 
 nothing of the kind : it braces the energies, and 
 promotes the cultivation and healthy activity of 
 all the mental powers. Religion, in short, naturally 
 leads to culture, and encourages it. Only this it
 
 64 CULTURE AND RELIGION. 
 
 will not permit : it will not consent to follow at 
 the heels of culture and to be employed merely as 
 an auxiliary means to a further end. It will not 
 suffer the culturists to arrogate the power of pro- 
 ducing the highest type of human perfection, or to 
 maintain that culture is able by itself to conduct 
 mankind to virtue and happiness. 
 
 When culture assumes this attitude, it must 
 expect to be treated not as an ally, but as a rival 
 or a foe, with whom no truce can be made until 
 these arrogant pretensions are abandoned. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CLARENDON PRESS, OXFORD. 
 
 FOR THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.
 
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