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 THE CHURCH AND 
 DEMOCRACY. 
 
 A PAPER READ AT THE MEETING OF THE 
 CHURCH CONGRESS AT DERBY, OCTOBER 4TH, 1882. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAM WATKINS, D.D., 
 
 Archdeacon of Auckland and Canon of Durham, Exaviinhig Chaplain to 
 
 the Lord Bishop of Durham, and Professor of Hebrew i)i the 
 
 University of Durham. 
 
 LONDON: 
 BEMROSE & SONS, 23, OLD BAILEY; AND DERBY.
 
 THE CHURCH AND DEMOCRACY. 
 
 1. A FEW days ago I was looking through a somewhat crowded list ot 
 engagements, and congratulating myself that with the end of September 
 came the end of their pressure, and that before the opening of the 
 University term I should at least have a few days of what I flattered 
 myself would be a well-earned rest. I was especially happy in the fact 
 that I had been released from a promise to speak on one of yesterday's 
 subjects at this Congress, and was correspondingly grateful to your 
 Committee. My gratitude was of short duration, for the next post 
 brought me an urgent request to supply one of two places unexpectedly 
 made vacant at the eleventh hour, and to address the Congress on 
 " Church and Democracy." That request I tried to decline, but I 
 could not find it in my heart to do so — partly because my experience on 
 the committee of last year's Congress gave me something of a fellow- 
 feeling for my brethren on this ; chiefly because I thought that there was 
 no subject on your list of greater practical importance, and that it must 
 not, at any cost, be left unmanned. I should not have dared to choose 
 it ; I could not at any time add much to the solution of the problem, 
 still less can I hope to do so now ; but I can at least, as a working 
 clergyman, whose lot is cast among the masses of the people, bear wit- 
 ness to the fact that it must not be left unsolved, and express the hope 
 that the wisdom of this Congress may help to solve it aright. 
 
 2. Now when we speak of " democracy," we are, of course, admitting 
 its existence, and have a more or less clear idea of its significance. Clerel 
 de Tocqueville claimed to be an impartial judge of it, because it had 
 not come into being when he was himself born ; but he lived to be its 
 historian. With prophetic insight and prophetic dread he foresaw the 
 rapid strides which it would make, and lived to see his predictions ful- 
 filled. The popular nature of English institutions and the stability of 
 English character, have hitherto prevented our feeling the full force of 
 the wave ; but men who are not alarmists think that our present position 
 is full of gravity. They read of Russia, of Germany, of France, of Ire- 
 land ; Nihilism, Sociahsm, Communism, Fenianism, are ugly words and 
 denote ugly things. Electricity and steam have brought both word and 
 thing to our very doors. Will those doors still protect us? The British 
 nation, more than any nation in the world, presents the striking contrast 
 of property in the hands of the few, and political power in the hands of 
 the many. You may be accustomed to weigh votes ; the nation is 
 pledged to count them. It requires but one more "leap in the dark " 
 and our destinies will be absolutely in the hands of the people. The 
 text on which to address them is not wanting, nor are the preachers. 
 Hear for a moment words which are said to have been spoken to an 
 audience of working men by the most eloquent orator in England : — 
 " Just now {T/ie Right Hon. John Bright is reported to have said) as I 
 was on my way to this place to speak to you, I watched in the street a
 
 magnificent carriage pass me ; and in that carriage were two splendidly 
 dressed ladies. Who made that carriage ? You did. Who made 
 those dresses ? You did. Have your wives any such ^ carriages 
 to drive in? Do your wives ever wear clothes of that kind? I 
 watched that carriage farther, and I saw where it stopped. It 
 stopped before a stately house with an imposing portico. Who 
 built that house? You did. Do you and your wives live in any such 
 houses as that ?" * 
 
 These remarks were, of course, received with loud cheers. You will 
 mark their import; I make no comment upon them ; my work is rather 
 to point out the position of our Church in the conflict, and the duty 
 of her sons in the struggle, which is said to be at hand. 
 
 3. That position I take to be absolutely unique. It is the high 
 privilege and the grave responsibility of the Church of England to be 
 able to speak with authority to the disputants on either side. She alone 
 can claim rich and poor alike to be her children ; and, standing betwixt 
 the approaching armies, forbid the war and declare a lasting peace : — 
 " Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong one another ? " 
 
 (i) The assertion that the Church of England is the Church of the 
 rich man is not likely to be questioned. In theory every Englishman 
 is born within her fold ; and every broad acre of every estate, every site 
 of every factory, every street of every town, every mile of every railway, 
 is claimed by some one of her parishes. As a matter of fact the land- 
 owners, the manufacturers, the capitalists, the men and women who 
 represent the property of the country are for the most part, at least in 
 profession, members of the Church of England. Here is her right to 
 speak to them fully and frankly granted. They admit her authority ; 
 they are bound to hear her voice. Let her then speak boldly and 
 decidedly. Ler her clergy speak ; let her daughters speak ; let her lay 
 sons speak ; let her, if she claims to be a pure and Apostolic branch of 
 the Catholic Church of Christ, speak in the nineteenth century as she 
 knows Christ and His Apostles did speak in the first century. Let her 
 say, and by leavening public opinion let her make the truth felt as well 
 as said, that a Christian's tenure of property is that of a trust committed 
 to him by God for the good of man; that the doctrine of the dependence 
 of rights upon duties is true of the rich man's acres as it is true of the 
 poor man's claims. If the holders of property assert that it is sacred, let 
 her teach them to regard it as sacred. Is the warning unnecessary ? An 
 hereditary peer gambling away the estates of his fathers ; a manufacturer 
 sweating by farthings from the weary toil of women and children the 
 thousands which he squanders on wasteful, and therefore, sinful luxury ; 
 a capitalist gloating over his profitable returns, though they may have 
 come direct from the gin palace and the haunts of vice, and every gold 
 piece be stained by the blood of souls ; a Christian woman, who 
 believes in the inspiration of St. Peter, wasting more on useless 
 ornament than would rebuild or drain a squalid court and give to 
 a hundred of her sisters the possibility of a Christian life — are 
 such lessons rare, some of them very rare ? Let the charity which 
 hopeth all things hope that they are ; but let those who teach them 
 remember that the masses are apt learners ; that one deed says more 
 
 * *' Social Equality," by W. H. Mallock, London, 1882, p. 43. J»^\
 
 than a thousand words ; that every owner of property who violates its 
 sacred character and ignores its solemn responsibilities is placing the 
 axe in hands that will surely seize it. And let the women and the men 
 of our Church of England, in the name of our Master, Christ, protest 
 against such deeds. Let mothers and fathers declare that women and 
 men who do them shall not darken their doors, or with stained hands 
 touch their daughters or their sons ; let Christians in the every-day life 
 of home, of the mart, of the club, cease to smile at such things — the 
 demagogue alone can afford to smile at them — and let them rather 
 weep. Let men be honoured for what they are, and not for what they 
 have ; let wealth be regarded as an accident of human life and not its 
 essence ; let disciples of Christ at least believe, and let them speak and 
 act as though they believed, that a man's life is not a matter of magnificent 
 carriages, and splendid dresses, and porticoed houses, that it " consisteth 
 not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." 
 
 (2.) The assertion that the Church of England is the Church of the 
 poor man, is also one that is not likely to be seriously questioned ; and 
 public opinion in our own day will deal sharply and decisively — the 
 more sharply and the more decisively the better — with every obstacle 
 that prevents its being so. She is the Church of the poor man, 
 because she is the Church of England. He can claim his share 
 in her endowments ; he can claim the services of her ministers ; 
 he can claim his place — a Church which believes in the inspiration of 
 St. James will not give him the worst place — in her buildings. She has 
 then the right to speak authoritatively to him, and she has grounds of 
 appeal which must necessarily command his confidence : — 
 
 Does he feel the burden of a life of constant work and pressing penury ? 
 The Church of Christ is founded on the perfect life of One who was the 
 Son of a carpenter and a carpenter Himself, who lived the poor man's 
 life, and ate the peasant's black barley-bread, and had not even a hovel 
 which He could call His own. Every man who believes that the life 
 of Christ is the noblest ever lived on earth has a faith that ennobles 
 labour and sanctifies even want. 
 
 Do European workmen claim a higher place in the world's esteem 
 and a greater share in the product of their work ? It is the Church of 
 Christ which has given them all the honour and all the rights they 
 have. Even a Plato declared that an artisan's life served no other 
 end than the practice of his trade, and a Cicero held that a workshop 
 was incompatible with anything noble. Christianity first called the 
 workman "brother," and lifted him to the true dignity of man. The 
 Church dared baptize emperor and slave in the same font, and bade 
 them kneel before the same altar, and taught them that there is one 
 Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is 
 above all and through all and in all. 
 
 Have the working classes claimed a fuller freedom, a wider liberty, 
 rights of union and organisation for common good ? The very idea of 
 the Church of Christ is of an all-inclusive brotherhood. Her name 
 iKKXr)(Tia means not a body called out of the wider humanity, but the 
 body of mankind as such called out of the selfism of the individual into 
 the corporate life of the whole. The lesser brotherhoods and societies 
 which are co-extensive with Christianity, are all of them her offspring 
 and are practically unknown beyond her pale.
 
 Do men claim liberty? The Church found one half of mankind 
 in bondage to the other, sold as chattels or butchered to glut a monster's 
 savagery ; and wherever she has uttered her voice she has bidden the 
 slave go free. 
 
 Are rights claimed for women and for children ? The Church found 
 women the mere creatures of man's passion, and infanticide a recog- 
 nised practice. It is the voice of Christ and His Church that has 
 declared human life sacred, and has blessed the poor man's cottage 
 with the hallowed love of wife and child. 
 
 I am warned that I may not dwell longer on the Church as the 
 friend of humanity in the past. But the fact that she has ever been 
 so, gives her the right to address humanity in the present. Are men 
 still poor and oppressed ? then, if the Spirit of the Lord be upon her, she 
 has a Gospel for the poor, and release for the captives, and sight for 
 the blind, and liberty for the bruised ; and if she declares this as Christ 
 declared it, the common people will hear her gladly. If she declares it 
 as Christ declared it, she will not flatter them, and they will despise her 
 if she does. She will not set class against class ; she will not speak of 
 their rights ; but will here, too, lay stress on duties, and by first teaching 
 their duties will effectually create their liberties. If she is tempted to 
 forget this necessary order, the poet of freedom will himself remind her 
 of it :— 
 
 " Licence they mean when they cry, Liberty, 
 For who loves that must first be wise and good. " 
 
 (3.) In making these remarks on the Church's mission to the working 
 classes, I have had in my mind the obvious and frequent objection that, 
 whatever our theory may be, the practical outcome is that thinking 
 working men are brought to a very slight extent into any relation what- 
 ever with either the Church or the clergyman. This objection is in part 
 false, and it ought to be wholly false. 
 
 (a.) It is in part false, let these facts among others testify and teach — 
 {a) When the Co-operative Congress met at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, they 
 chose as their president the Bishop of the diocese, {b) The Bishop of 
 Manchester, on three important occasions, has acted as arbitrator be- 
 tween masters and men. Chosen by both, his decision commanded the 
 confidence, and gained the thanks of both. Christians will not forget, 
 families saved from the fearful struggles of a strike did not forget, that 
 *' Blessed are the peacemakers." {c) The trades' unionists are to be 
 addressed at Middlesborough, on the first Sunday in the next month, 
 by the Archbishop of the province, {d) A committee of clergy on 
 " Trades Unions and the Church," has existed for the last two years. 
 To say that it includes the Bishops of Durham and Bedford, and the 
 Deans of St. Paul's and Carlisle ; and that amongst those who have 
 conferred with it are Mr. Holyoake and Mr. George Howell, is to say 
 that it exists in more than name. 
 
 (b.) The objection ought to be, and it is in our hands to make it, 
 wholly false. No race of men in the world are more honest than 
 the working men of England. They have a prejudice against black 
 coats, but this may not be altogether undeserved, and at all events it 
 may very soon be removed. Perhaps we have some natural prejudice 
 against black faces, A crowd of ardsans pouring out of a workshop, or 
 a crowd of pitmen coming from a night shift, do not always look like
 
 men and brethren : but you need not be afraid of the coal dust. It 
 will wash off; the diamond is in another form, both on the man 
 and in him ; and when you get face to face with these men, when you 
 look at things from their standpoint, when you are willing to learn in 
 order that you may teach, when you have seen that there is a real man 
 beneath the black face, and they have seen that there is a real man 
 beneath the black coat, and that neither is a scarecrow, you will find the 
 great heart of humanity here, as everywhere, beating true. The work- 
 ing men of England will listen whenever they find that more than a 
 voice is speaking to them. Did they not listen to Frederick Maurice and 
 Charles Kingsley ? Did they not in this diocese listen to their Bishop 
 Selwyn ? Did they not in the East of London listen to the layman 
 Edward Denison, to the priest Charles Lowder? They are men, do 
 not reason about them as though they were machines ; they are men, 
 do not be afraid of them, as though they were brutes ; they are men, do 
 not expect them to be faultless, as though they were angels ; they are 
 men, do not feed them with spoons, as though they were children ; 
 they are men, with sharp, God-given intellects and great God-endowed 
 souls ; and they will hear the Church of Christ, they will hear the 
 Church of England, for she has God's truth to tell them and God's love 
 to give them. 
 
 But if the assertions which I have ventured to make are based 
 upon facts, the Church of England has in this her power to reach 
 the rich, and in this her power to reach the poor, a responsibility which 
 should rest heavily on every Churchman. If she is the Church of 
 England she ought to be the salt of England, but " if the salt have 
 lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? " Is the beloved mother 
 of us all " to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men ? " 
 Let her children answer. Not unless they make her " good for 
 nothing." Her rights also must depend upon duties. Let her in the day 
 of trial be found faithful ; let her, as I verily beUeve she alone can, save 
 the nation, and she will save herself ; yea she will remain established 
 in the loving hearts of a thankful people, and a nation yet unborn — this 
 nation born again — shall arise to call her blessed. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE CHURCH CONGRESS, BY 
 BEMROSE AND SONS, 23, OLD BAILEY, LONDON ; AND DERBY.
 
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