“The equality of man,” exclaims Disraeli in Tancred, “can only be accomplished by the sovereignty of God. The longing for fraternity can never be satisfied but under the sway of a common Father ... announce the sublime and solacing principle of theocratic equality.”

This is a Semitic idea; but, then, so is the Church. The State, on the other hand, is an Aryan conception. The real religion both of Athens and of Rome was the State. These radical ideas of Church and State, to which we have grown so accustomed, are, in fact, the products of special races and the salvage of the centuries. The Romans invented “Empire,” the Athenians “Democracy,” the Jews created “Theocracy.”

It may be interesting to inquire how this idea of a spiritual Church—a colony from the unseen and eternal—has been in constant conflict with that other dominant idea of the State; and how, among the nations, England alone has made any serious or successful attempt to reconcile them. For these are the ideas, expressed or implied, of Disraeli. I take the liberty of illustrating these ideas afresh in my own manner, and in continuous commentary, rather than by considering isolated passages scattered through his books and speeches, many of which I shall quote later on. And the standpoint marked by the title of this chapter is the point of view which seems to me to distinguish the many varieties of the theme which he presents, and which evidently fascinated him.

A national Theocracy has always been rejected in the West. The Roman Church, whose ideal is an international Theocracy under an imperial form, is in essence anti-national and cosmopolitan; and for this very reason it became repugnant to those Northern races whose genius makes for nationality and independence. Moreover, it is unable itself to flourish without the temporal appanage of a State; and it therefore tends to become an imperium in imperio. On Western soil religion is unable to thrive as a living force unless aided by the equipments of the State, which the instinct of the West evolved, and to which it is prone; while a non-organised, inorganic creed can no more make a Church, which is a society of believers, than a paper constitution can make a state, which is the community individualised.

A national Theocracy failed also in the East because the faculty for creating a State was deficient. When once Theocracy, pure and simple, vanished from Palestine—“the fatherland of the Spirit”—Israel and Judah were confronted by their inherent inability to found a State. It was this, indeed, which gave rise to the Messianic hope, a hope which yielded to daily motherhood the consecration of divine destiny. For to lend an effective earthly sanction to the theocratic ideal, to reconcile without violence the government of a community under the Eternal and Invisible with the progress of a community under a visible chieftain, a perfect monarch, the founder of a golden age, was required—a theocrat king. The Jewish polity was a Church. All European churches, on the contrary, are polities. This is well recognised by Professor Ewald,88 who proves that the State, as such, took no root and found no real place in Palestine. The tentatives towards a State conflicted with the native theocratic ideals of race aspiration, and failed to survive them. And when at length the Incarnation displayed the “Perfect King,” whose “kingdom was not of this world,” but “within you,” and whose Kingship was “without observation,” it was the very anti-nationalism of His teaching at a period when Rome had tinged Palestine with Western politics that perplexed or offended a perverse caste of fanatics athirst for national unity, although national independence had crumbled away. When, once more, the Apostle to the Gentiles laid the Pauline foundations of an international Christian Church, the Jewish nationalism, despite the sublime prophecies of Isaiah, grew doubly embittered, and closed its ears to that theocratic message, which was, in fact, the fulfilment of its highest aspirations.

For the ideal of the early Christian Church was undoubtedly an international Theocracy. On this very account it disgusted the Roman patriotism which despised it. But directly it became acclimatised in the West, and prevailed, it also underwent that modification of theocratic ideals which the West always entails. It threw itself into the mould of the State. It assumed the purple of the CÆsars; it “sent forth its dogmas like legions into the Provinces.”

This only happens in Europe; in the East religions are never politicised. The West seeks the tangible and turns to myth the wonders that are literal to the Eastern mind. In so far as the old Egyptian belief was in the priestly power, it may perhaps be termed oligarchical, but not in the Western sense. The Church of Buddha is a spiritual brotherhood, never a State. Islam, like that from which it sprang, is a Theocracy without any inherent organisation. Like it, it eventually chose a monarchical headship; and, like it too, its monarchy came to be cleft in twain. It is, I repeat, only in the West that creeds are politicised. As the earthly sanctions for Christianity coarsened through the centuries, it became at once CÆsarian and cosmopolitan. But the warfare between the so-called secular and spiritual powers, which, indeed, forms the history of the earliest Middle Ages, soon began to impair its birthright of cosmopolitanism. The invincible bias towards nationality of the Northern races asserted itself.

Dante, it is true, dreamed of a real Theocracy. But he was a strong champion of a monarchical State. He staked his hopes on that great Emperor—that “patriot king”—whose premature death dashed his vision to the ground. And after Dante, Savonarola craved a real Theocracy; but it again assumed that Republican shape which, two centuries later, was to play a greater, though as futile, a part in England. The Church one way or another throughout Europe perpetually tended towards becoming “a State within the State,” a “King of kings;” and in this regard it is not a little curious that the present Oratorians still obey the antique Florentine Constitution which St. Philip of Neri transcribed and embalmed as the rule of his order. In the same way the early American Episcopalians brought with them, in their three-yearly Conventions, that Triennial Parliament which William of Orange grudgingly granted to the Tories, and which Walpole was afterwards to repeal for the Whigs. Once more, the Pilgrim Fathers brought the ideal of Republican forms to America; but Republican forms soon passed into democratic facts. From Jemima Wilkinson to Mormonism and Christian science, sects and sectaries have abounded. No religious vagary has lacked its audience and its franchise. America exemplifies the disadvantage of lacking a national comprehensive Church in a country whose aspirations are national. Early in the seventeenth century the Presbyterians persecuted the Quaker immigrants with a ferocity of which Torquemada might have been proud; but in their turn the American Presbyterians eventually fell a prey to their own factions. While she was still a British colony, England unwisely forced on America bishops consecrated at home; but these very bishops were themselves rejected admittance by persecuting Presbyterians, who regarded Episcopalians as Jacobites, and taunted them as Papists. It was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel that persistently sought to remedy the gross anomaly of the Bishop of London being the Bishop of America.

The Reformation in England was in its essence a national protest against internationalism. Out of it flowed the notion of a national Church like a “national party” (a contradiction in terms but a most remarkable actuality), which it, in common with France, theoretically justified as prior to Roman usurpation. Our Church is one at once rooted in the soil as a civil institution, a source of parish life, a security for local government, a bar at once to oligarchy and bureaucracy, against the exclusion of the many from public life,89 the trustee of an estate which enables all to become proprietors of the soil, which is, as Disraeli termed it, “the fluctuating patrimony of the great body of the people;” and it is also by inheritance one paramount in the country as a spiritual authority, an educator, a social regenerator, and a mainspring of that tolerance and religious liberty which the great Whig party secured for our country. As Disraeli has pointed out repeatedly, the union of Church and State means the hallowing of the civil power, the investment of secular authority with religious sanction, the loss of which the State would be the first to feel and regret, should the bond be severed.

England, then, is the only nation that has reconciled through compromise the spiritual ideas of Theocracy with the dominant forms of the State.

But the English Church, headed by the English king, was soon faced by Puritanism; and of this phase Disraeli, through his father’s history, was a deep student.

Puritanism was cradled among small traders, conscious of their virtues, but socially ill at ease. It at once became terribly at ease in the courts of Zion. It began with a retail outlook, and it soon politicised its creed. It became eminently republican, nor was it ever democratic. Instinctively counter to all forms, whether “temporal” or “spiritual,” it aimed at the destruction both of Monarchy and the Church, and yet it set up an exclusiveness of its own. The Jewish Theocracy had, as I have pointed out, broken down even under that monarchical shape which suited it, just because its outward State apparatus was mechanical and out of touch with the development of national life. The finer spirits of Puritanism—and they were very fine—had these features to reckon with. Cromwell, like Savonarola, compassed an impracticable solecism. He desired a Republican Theocracy. His scheme only chimed with that of the Church which he sought to ruin in this, that he too wished religion to be nationally organised—to be political. But the result was an intolerant fanaticism of mutually persecuting sects, and a Parliamentary censorship of morals which cramped, nay, imprisoned self-developing virtue, confounded holiness with austerity, and furnished the best argument for a “national Church.”

Milton, who tempered the Puritanic fire with the Renaissance light, who, in his youth, was a worshipper of the subdued loveliness of the Church and “her dim, religious light,” came to regard our national Church as merely, in his own phrase, “an anti-papal schism.” Like Cromwell, he longed to destroy it.

“It is a rule and principle,” he urges,90 “worthy to be known by Christians, that no Scripture, no, nor so much as any ancient creed, binds our faith or our obedience to any Church whatsoever denominated by a particular name; far less if it be distinguished by a several government from that which is indeed Catholic.... It were an injury to condemn the papist of absurdity and contradiction for adhering to his Catholic Romish religion, if we, for the pleasure of a king and his public considerations, shall adhere to a Catholic English.” Milton only wanted republican instead of monarchical forms. Politics were still the setting of religion. He was even more inconsistent. He deprecated any discipline by the State, although his Church was a political Church, and although Cromwell’s purposes are contradicted by Milton’s very deprecation” ”If we think”—who can forget this fine passage from his “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing”?—“if we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to men. No music must be set or sung but what is grave and Doric.... I hate a pupil-teacher; I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist.” How did Milton relish the Independents as “pupil teachers,” or the “overseeing fist” of the Fifth-Monarchy men, or the wardship of the Reign of Saints? Milton wants neither the Church as a Polity, nor the State as a Church. Not staying to inquire what fits the genius of England and her national traditions and customs, he seeks a Theocracy which is untheocratic, and a national republic doomed to fall when the perfect ruler is removed. “When,” he indignantly exclaims91—“when God shakes a kingdom with strong and healthful commotions to a general reforming, it is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing, but yet more true is it that God then raises to His own work men of rare abilities and more than common industry, not only to look back and revise what hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further and to go on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.” So, then, a reformed commonwealth, and no visible Church are Milton’s ideals.

“The Parliament of England,” he protests, had turned “regal bondage into a free commonwealth.” “All Protestants,” he proceeds, “hold that Christ in His Church hath left no vicegerent of his power, but Himself without deputy is the only head thereof, governing it from heaven.” So far Milton announces pure Theocracy; but the leaven of his classical republicanism is disclosed in the next sentence: he cannot divorce religion from politics. “How, then, can any Christian man derive his kingship from Christ? I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me that a free commonwealth, without a single person or House of Lords, is by far the best Government, if it can be had.” And then he propounds grand councils of a perpetual senate, safe-guarded against “any dogeship of Venice,”92 as the means to save the State. “The whole freedom of man,” he says, “consists either in spiritual or civil liberty.” No rule for the first is admitted by him but the Scriptures; for the second he takes the Dutch model of the United Provinces. But he neglects to consider how liberty can be settled without order, or order without discipline, or discipline without authority, or authority without creed.

Even the loftiest Puritan ideal of Theocracy, therefore, was no less political than that of the Church.

A very few years witnessed the complete breakdown of a system which sought to blend the early Latin and the early Semitic ideals together in unnatural alliance, and disregarded the native bias of Great Britain. The ensuing reaction rendered the English Church more political than ever. She was split into contending partisanship for contending dynasties. She repudiated James the Second, but not the Stuarts. Under William of Orange latitudinarianism, even her latitudinarianism, was militant. But under the two first Georges she grew torpid and time-serving. The rash and rabid Sunderland, the astute Walpole, parodied the old Miltonic ideals in their zeal for indifferentism, and in self-defence the Church tended temporarily to seem the mere stipendiary of the State, like an excise officer. But Wesley in England, and Whitefield both here and in America, re-aroused the Church to the higher and holier ideals of a national Theocracy. Some century later the Tractarian movement spurred her energies afresh, and they have since been once more quickened in the battle with mechanical materialism.

But all along it has been a sheer necessity in England—a necessity for spiritual as well as civil freedom—that the State should lend its earthly sanction of order to the Church. A national Church so uncontrolled is impossible in England, where politics tinge every form of aspiration. For international Theocracy, for that “millenary year” which is the magnificent ideal of Romanism, the times are unripe. It must remain a remote goal so long as the competitive egoism of nations, transfiguring the baser egotism of individuals and of mere races, is paramount.

The Church State has been unrealisable. England alone has realised the State Church. The former has been impossible in the West, owing to the Aryan genius for State development, and especially to the national instinct of the Anglo-Saxon family. With the British spirit a cosmopolitan religion is incompatible. No nation ambitious of being a world-power can revert to Theocracy. It is not feasible under such conditions.

The latter, however, the Anglican Church, has reconciled these two concepts of opposite origins, the Oriental idea of a “Church,” and the Occidental idea of the State. For it is not only a religious, but a national and a social tradition.

This, I take it, was Disraeli’s attitude. By temperament he was theocratic. He believed in the original spirituality of his race; but he also believed in the great destiny of the nation to which he belonged, and in her Church he descried the naturalised power of Semitic ideas, the only form in which they could become nationally operative, the sole political means in a political country of sanctifying the secular. “The Church,” he once said, “is one of the few great things left.” The Church ever found him a wise and enthusiastic supporter. The fact is, as he put it in a speech of 1860, “the Church is a part of England.” Nor would he ever allow that mere differences of opinion negatived her comprehensiveness. She was still Anglican. What he recoiled from was the hard-and-fast narrowness of Puritanism, the fiercer fanaticisms of which, he always maintained, had undone Ireland. Sectarianism is not strength, for strength resides in national discipline. He regarded a “national Church” as the best pledge for religious liberty to even those outside her communion, as a national refuge from bigotry and a national rampart against priestcraft.

The Church’s “nationality” is proved even by the peculiar character of her property. It is territorial. It is (as he emphasised in a speech of 1862) “... so distributed throughout the country, that it makes that Church, from the very nature of its tenure, a national Church; and the power of the Church of England does not depend merely on the amount of property it possesses, but in a very great degree on the character and kind of that property. Then I say that the Church, deprived of its status, would become merely an episcopal sect in this country. And in time, it is not impossible it might become an insignificant one. But that is not the whole, nor, perhaps, even the greatest evil, that might arise from the dissolution of the connection between Church and State, because in the present age the art of government becomes every day more difficult, and no Government will allow a principle so powerful as the religious principle to be divorced from the influences by which it regulates the affairs of a country. What would happen?... The State of England would take care, after the Church was spoiled, to enlist in its service what are called the ministers of all religions. They would be salaried by the State, and the consequences of the dissolution of the alliance between Church and State would be one equally disastrous to the Churchman and to the Nonconformist. It would place the ministers of all spiritual influences under the control of the civil power, and it would in reality effect a revolution in the national character....”

De Tocqueville has proved that the French clergy were the staunchest upholders of civil liberty before the Revolution; but he has also acutely shown that the Roman priesthood, devoid of domestic ties, looks to the Church as its sole fatherland, unless it can itself become a proprietor of the soil. The French Revolution disempowered it for that purpose, and evicted it from its heritage. The English clergy, on the other hand, are linked to civil life both by the land and the home. Contrast for one moment the landscape of a French village with that of an English, and the difference becomes typified. In the one the church stands aloof and dominates the hamlet. In the other it nestles among the cottages, and helps the daily life around it.

What was present to Disraeli’s mind was not only that, in such a case, the ancient landmarks of parish life, the ancient trusts of education, the ancient equality of social intercourse between clergy and laity, the ancient duties and intimacies, the ancient openness to the poorest of career in the Church and of residence on the land, would be swept away; but that, as he expressed it when discussing the “Cowper-Temple Amendment” in 1870, “you will not entrust the priest or the presbyter with the privilege of expounding the Holy Scriptures ... but for that purpose you are inventing and establishing a new sacerdotal class.” “My idea of sacerdotal despotism,” he said in 1863, “is this, that a minister of the Church of England, who is appointed to expound doctrine, should deem that he has a right to invent doctrine. That ... is the sacerdotal despotism I fear....” The State would suffer; and it would suffer doubly. Not only would religion cease to be an official element of order, but the ministers of religion might be unduly strengthened in civil affairs—might be over-politicised. “Whether that is a result to be desired,” he remarked ten years afterwards, “is a grave question for all men. For my own part, I am bound to say that I doubt whether it would be favourable to the cause of civil and religious liberty.”

In his novels he emphasises his belief that society is inconceivable without religion, and that “without a Church there can be no true religion, because otherwise you have no security for the truth,” although he also distinguishes between differing “orthodoxies” and real religion. At the same time, the Church as a polity must have dogmas—“No Church, no creed”—“no dogmas, no deans, Mr. Dean.” The human craving, the passionate instinct for religion, he ever based—from the date of Contarini Fleming and Alroy to that of Coningsby and Tancred, and from that of Tancred to that of Lothair—on the fact that “man requires that there shall be direct relations between the created and the Creator, and that in those relations he should find a solution of the perplexities of existence.”—“The brain that teems with illimitable thought will never recognise as his Creator any power of nature, however irresistible, that is not gifted with consciousness.... The Church comes forward, and without equivocation offers to establish direct relations between God and man. Philosophy denies its title and disputes its power. Why? Because they are founded on the supernatural. What is the supernatural? Can there be anything more miraculous than the existence of man and the world? Anything more literally supernatural than the origin of things? The Church explains what no one else pretends to explain, and which every one agrees it is of first moment should be made clear.”

Of the two passions which moved Disraeli, the one for mastery, the other for the mysterious, the last was perhaps the strongest. The mysteries that fascinated him were real, and did not render him a mystic, still less a quietist. It is a mistake so to regard him. His strength alike and his weakness resided in the practical energy of his imagination. The whole of existence was for him a standing miracle. “Contarini” finds his fate by a vision in a church; “Venetia” receives a miraculous answer to her prayer of agony. He delights to depict, even in the short biography of his father, providential coincidences. What is deemed bizarre in his works, is really the sense of magic wonder in all we experience. His irony, too, contrasting show with substance and words with things, works by paradox.93 That man is a spirit on earth was his firm conviction. We find it accentuated from his earliest utterances to his latest. “... There are some things I know,” said the Syrian in Lothair, according with the Syrian in Tancred, “and some things I believe. I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is immortal....”94 The riddle of life is not to be solved by theories, however true or ingenious of the processes of development, still less by the fashionable “prattle of protoplasm,” or the glib triflers with their “We once had fins, we shall have wings.” He was quite sincere and consistent in his famous “Ape or Angel” dilemma. He believed, both passionately and dispassionately, that man was divine. Science confesses that its discoveries are merely of recurrent facts called laws; it does not profess to account for them.

“Science may prove the insignificance of this globe in the scale of creation,” said the stranger, “but it cannot prove the insignificance of man. What is the earth compared with the sun? A mole-hill by a mountain; yet the inhabitants of this earth can discover the elements of which the great orb exists, and will probably, ere long, ascertain all the conditions of its being. Nay, the human mind can penetrate far beyond the sun. There is no relation, therefore, between the faculties of man and the scale in creation of the planet which he inhabits.... But there are people now who tell you there never was any creation, and therefore there never could have been a creator.”—“And which is now advanced with the confidence of novelty,” said the Syrian, “though all of it has been urged, and vainly urged, thousands of years ago. There must be design, or all we see would be without sense, and I do not believe in the unmeaning. As for the natural forces to which all creation is now attributed, we know that they are unconscious, while consciousness is as inevitable a portion of our existence as the eye or the hand. The conscious cannot be derived from the unconscious. Man is divine.... Is it more unphilosophical to believe in a personal God omnipotent and omniscient, than in natural forces unconscious and irresistible? Is it unphilosophical to combine power with intelligence? Goethe, a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza, said he could bring his mind to the conception that in the centre of space we might meet with a monad of pure intelligence. Is that more philosophical than the truth first revealed to man amid these everlasting hills,” said the Syrian, “that God made man in His own image?” ... “It is the charter of the nobility of man ... one of the divine dogmas revealed in this land; not the invention of councils, not one of which was held on this sacred soil; confused assemblies first got together by the Greeks, and then by barbarous nations in barbarous times.”—“Yet the divine land no longer tells us divine things,” said “Lothair.” “It may, or may not, have fulfilled its destiny,” said the Syrian. “‘In my Father’s house are many mansions,’ and by the various families of nations the designs of the Creator are accomplished. God works by races,95 and one was appointed in due season, and after many developments, to reveal and expound in this land the spiritual nature of man....”

This quotation may suffice, though many others, even from the biography of Lord George Bentinck, might have been offered. These ideas are perhaps best summarised in the Preface to Lothair. Disraeli really believed in the sacredness of the Syrian soil and air, the peculiar genius of the Semite for communion with God, as of the Hellene for communion with nature and origination of art; in the special religious revelation vouchsafed to Semites alone and consummated in Christianity, which he ever held was the fulfilment of Judaism. The dogma of the Atonement he received literally. It was a divine mystery enacted by a prince of Israel. Disraeli’s sense of mystery was, let me repeat, literal, and never explained through emblems. There was nothing of Gothic symbolism in his nature. From these convictions flowed his sanguine confidence in himself and his mission; in destiny, which he has himself said may be but the exertion of our own will. From these flowed his sympathy with the heroic, his turn for the adventurous; his disrelish, too, of modern rationalism, modern materialism,96 and even of modern metaphysics.97 From these flowed his faith in the revelations of conscience—“I worship in a Church where I believe God dwells, and dwells for my guidance and my good; my conscience;”98 in a word, from these flowed his bias towards a natural Theocracy. But, as I have already said, he recognised that the English Church had alone, as the depository of these racial ideas, attuned them to the national refrain of England, embodied them in living Western flesh. Just as for him Government meant organised authority, and Party organised opinion, so the Church meant organised belief; nor did he ever cease to point out that if the national Church were disestablished, if that form of Protestant religion, resting on popular sympathies and popular privileges, which had grown with the growth of England and had leavened her life, her civil society, her public education, and even her pastimes, were divorced from the principle of authority, not only might the competition of sects cause a bigoted intolerance, but the State itself would certainly be the loser.

I will choose another most pertinent passage from his speech on the Irish Church Bill, delivered in March, 1869. He had discussed “disendowment,” and he opposed it with all his might, as the plunder of the Church in English history had always gone into the coffers of the land, although it was a trust for the poor.

“Now, sir,” he continued, with regard to disestablishment, “I myself am much opposed to it, because I am in favour of what is called the union between Church and State. What I understand by the union of Church and State is an arrangement which renders the State religious by investing authority with the highest sanctions that can influence the sentiments, the convictions, and consequently the conduct of the subject; while, on the other hand, that union renders the Church—using that epithet in its noblest and purest sense—political. That is to say, it blends civil authority with ecclesiastical influence; it defines and defends the rights of the laity, and prevents the Church from subsiding into a sacerdotal corporation. If you divest the State of this connection, it appears to me that you necessarily reduce both the quantity and the quality of its duties. The State will still be the protector of our persons and our property, and no doubt these are most important duties for the State to perform. But there are duties in a community which rather excite a spirit of criticism than a sentiment of enthusiasm and veneration. All, or most of the higher functions of Government—take education, for example, the formation of the character of the people, and consequently the guidance of their future conduct—depart from the State and become the appanage of religious societies, of the religious organisations of the country—you may call them the various Churches, if you please—when they are established on what are called independent principles.” After welcoming the fact of a religious revival, he next continues:—

“When we have to decide whether we can dissociate the principle of religion from the State, it is well to remember that we are asked to relinquish an influence that is universal. We hear in these days a great deal of philosophy. Now, it is my happiness in life to be acquainted with eminent philosophers. They all agree in one thing. They will all tell you that, however brilliant may be the discoveries of physical science, however marvellous those demonstrations which attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the human mind, wonderful as may be these discoveries, greatly as they have contributed to the comfort and convenience of man, or confirmed his consciousness of the nobility of his nature—yet all those great philosophers agree in one thing—that in their investigations there is an inevitable term where they meet the insoluble, where all the most transcendent powers of intellect dissipate and disappear.99 There commences the religious principle. It is universal, and it will assert its universal influence in the government of men. Now, I put this case before the House. We are asked to commence a great change.... When, therefore, we are called to the consideration of these circumstances, it is absolutely necessary that we should contemplate the possibility of our establishing a society in which there may be two powers, the political and the religious, and the religious may be the stronger.100 Now I will take this case. Under ordinary circumstances, a Government performing those duties of police, to which it will be limited when the system has perfectly developed, the first step to which we are called upon to take to-night—such a Government, under ordinary circumstances, will be treated with decent respect. But a great public question, such as has before occurred in this country, and as must periodically occur in free and active communities—a great public question arises, which touches the very fundamental principles of our domestic tranquillity, or even the existence of the Empire; but the Government of the country, and the religious organisations of the country, take different views, and entertain different opinions on that subject. In all probability the Government of the country will be right. The Government in its secret councils is calm and impartial, is in possession of ample and accurate information, views every issue before it in reference to the interests of all classes, and takes, therefore, what is popularly called a comprehensive view. The religious organisation of the country acts in quite a different manner. It is not calm; it is not impartial; it is sincere, it is fervid, it is enthusiastic. Its information is limited and prejudiced. It does not view the question of the day in reference to the interests of all classes. It looks upon the question as something of so much importance—as something of such transcendent interest, not only for the earthly, but even for the future welfare of all her Majesty’s subjects—that it will allow no consideration to divert its mind and energy from the accomplishment of its object. It, therefore, necessarily takes what is commonly called a contracted view. But who can doubt what will be the result, when on a question which enlists and excites all the religious passions of the nation, the zeal of enthusiasm advocates one policy, and the calmness of philosophers and the experience of statesmen recommend another. The Government might be right, but the Government would not be able to enforce its policy, and the question might be decided in a way that might disturb a country or even destroy an empire. I know, sir, it may be said that though there may be some truth in this view abstractedly considered, yet it does not apply to the country in which we live, because ... we enjoy religious freedom ... and because only a portion of her Majesty’s subjects are in communion with the National Church. I draw a very different conclusion to that which I have supposed as the objection.... It is because there is an Established Church that we have achieved religious liberty and enjoy religious toleration; and without the union of the Church with the State, I do not see what security there would be either for religious liberty or toleration. No error could be greater than to suppose that the advantage of the Established Church is limited to those who are in communion with it. Take the case of the Roman Catholic priest. He will refuse—and in doing so he is quite justified, and is indeed bound to do so—he will, I say, refuse to perform the offices of the Church to any one not in communion with it. The same with the Dissenters. It is quite possible—it has happened, and might happen very frequently—that a Roman Catholic may be excommunicated by his Church, or a sectarian may be denounced and expelled by his congregation; but if that happens in this country, the individual in question who has been thus excommunicated, denounced, or expelled, is not a forlorn being. There is the Church, of which the Sovereign is the head, which does not acknowledge the principle of Dissent, and which does not refuse to that individual those religious rites which are his privilege and consolation.... Now, I cannot believe that the disendowment of the Church of England could occur without very great disturbances.... England cannot afford revolution. England has had her revolutions. It is indeed because she had revolutions about two hundred years ago, before other nations had their revolutions, that she gained her great start in wealth and empire. Now, sir, what have we gained by these revolutions? A period of nearly two hundred years of great serenity and the secured stability of the State. I attribute these happy characteristics of our history to the circumstance, that in this interval we did solve two of the finest and profoundest political problems. We accomplished complete personal, and, in time, complete political liberty, and combined them with order. We achieved complete religious liberty, and we united it with a national faith. These two immense exploits have won for this country regulated freedom and temperate religion.... Speaking now not as a partisan, I believe the Tory party, however it may at times have erred, has always been the friend of local government, and that the instinct of the nation made it feel that on local government political freedom depended.”101

“It is said,” he remarked three years afterwards, after commenting on the historical union between Church and State—“two originally independent powers,” and the fact that their alliance has prevented the spiritual power from “usurping upon the civil and establishing a sacerdotal society,” as well as the civil power from invading “the rights of the spiritual,” and from degrading its ministers into “salaried instruments of the Government.”—“It is said,” he continued, “that the existence of Nonconformity proves that the Church is a failure. I draw from these premises an exactly contrary conclusion; and I maintain that to have secured a national profession of faith with the unlimited enjoyment of private judgment in matters spiritual is ... one of the triumphs of civilisation.” Nonconformity he considered a misfortune, though it was a symptom of national freedom. With Nonconformists, however, he sympathised. It was with indifference that he warred.

Let me illustrate these points. In an earlier speech he addresses himself to prove that the Church is none the less truly national because millions of the nation are not in communion with it; and he analyses Nonconformity.

“Now, the history of English Dissent will always be a memorable chapter in the history of the country. It displays many of those virtues for which the English character is distinguished—earnestness, courage, devotion, conscience. But one thing is quite clear, that in the present day the causes which originally created Dissent no longer exist; while—which is of still more importance—there are now causes in existence opposed to the spread of Dissent. I will not refer to the fact that many—I believe the great majority—of the families of the descendants of the original Puritans and Presbyterians have merged in the Church of England itself; but no man can any longer conceal from himself that the tendency of this age is not that all creeds and Churches and consistories should combine—I do not say that, mind—but I do say that it is that they should cease hereafter from any internecine hostility; ... and therefore, so far as the spread of ... mere sincere religious Dissent is concerned, I hold that it is of a very limited character, and there is nothing in the existence of it which should prevent the Church of England from asserting her nationality. For observe, the same difficulties that are experienced by the Church are also experienced by the Dissenters, without the advantage which the Church possesses in her discipline, learning, and traditions.”

Part of these “difficulties” he considered in the later speech, above cited, where he holds that the existence of parties in the Church is a sign of vigour; but the other part, the growth of indifferentism among millions of the populace, he considers here, and he considers it as affording a great field for the Church if it be true to its great traditions and answers to the temper of the times and to the call of the summons. “... If, indeed, the Church of England were in the same state as the pagan religion was in the time of Constantine; if her altars were paling before the Divine splendour of inspired shrines, it might be well indeed for the Church and its ministers to consider the course that they should pursue; but nothing of the kind is the case. With the indifferentists you are dealing with millions of a people the most enthusiastic, though not the most excitable, in the world. And what awakes their enthusiasm?

“... The notes on the gamut of their feeling are few, but they are deep. Industry, Liberty, Religion, form the solemn scale. Industry, Liberty, Religion—that is the history of England.” He predicts a feeling of exaltation for religion similar to those enthusiasms for freedom and toil which have inspired the nation in recent periods, and he harps on the opportunity for a Church with a tradition of “the beauty of holiness.” “What a field for a corporation which is not merely a Church, but ... the Church of England; blending with a divine instruction the sentiment of patriotism, and announcing herself as the Church of the country;” which may realise its nationality by increasing her hold on the education102 of the people, “though it is possible there may be fresh assaults and attacks upon the machinery by which the State has assisted the Church in that great effort;” by extending the Episcopate (which has happened); by developing the lay element in the administration of her temporal affairs; by fulfilling the right of visitation both by priest and parishioner, and maintaining those parochial privileges which are still inviolate both in town and country; by remedying the gross inequality of stipend (which remains to be done); by, so far as possible, relying on the Church itself, and not resorting to the Legislature.

With respect to indifferentism among the more enlightened classes, it is “agnosticism,” partly due to the scientific spirit on which I have touched; partly to that “higher criticism” which Germany originated, and which, it is clear, can only modify the views of an educated few. With the mild rationalism of “Essays and Reviews,” Disraeli dealt characteristically. He found them “at the best a second-hand medley of contradictory and discordant theories.” Thirty years earlier he had satirised those devout Christians who do not believe in Christianity. As in the march of Science he perceived nothing new, and held that it interpreted the imagery without sapping the foundations of belief, so with regard to the “Teutonic rebellion” against inspiration, he saw only repeated in another form, and with no more ability, the Celtic “insurrection” which distinguished the eighteenth century: both had their uses. “Man brings to the study of oracles more learning and more criticism than of yore; and it is well that it should be so.” Nay, the very development of the German theological school proves its ephemeral character.

“About a century ago” (he observed in 1861) “German theology, which was mystical, became by the law of reactions critical. There gradually arose a school of philosophical theologians which introduced a new system for the interpretation of Scripture. Accepting the sacred narrative without cavil, they explained all the supernatural incidents by natural causes. This system in time was called Rationalism.... But where now is German Rationalism, and what are its results? They are erased from the intellectual tablets of living opinion. A new school of German theology then arose, which, with profound learning and inexorable logic, proved that Rationalism was irrational, and successfully substituted for it a new scheme of scriptural interpretation called the mythical.103 But if the mythical theologians triumphantly demonstrated ... that Rationalism was irrational, so the mythical system itself has already become a myth; and its most distinguished votaries, in that spirit of progress which, as we are told, is the characteristic of the nineteenth century, and which generally brings us back to old ideas, have now found an invincible solution of the mysteries of human existence in a revival of Pagan pantheism.”

This he defined elsewhere as “Atheism in domino.” Since Disraeli’s death the German school has made further strides. There has been a brisk export of fresh theories “made in Germany.” We are now told that the Old Testament is Babylonian, and that the New springs out of Aryan ideas; and side by side with this tour-de-force of paradox, an orgy of anarchical hysteria threatens the sanctions of authority, the secular as well as the spiritual. Disraeli would probably meet it by what he retorted in the ’sixties, that when the periodical deluge subsides, the ark is seen resting at the summit of the mountain.

But if education was to be secularised, might not the ark be chopped up for firewood? Education was a problem that, in its private and public aspects, engrossed Disraeli from his youth. In the second of two election addresses at High Wycombe in the memorable year 1832 he had announced: “... By repealing the taxes upon knowledge, I would throw the education of the people into the hands of the philosophic student, instead of the ignorant adventurer.” He believed that its current principles were constantly wrong—that words were taught instead of ideas, and grammar studied instead of character; and he was also a great advocate of the wisdom of steeping the youth of a nation in national literature. It was a keen disappointment to him that he was deprived of the occasion of settling—partially, at any rate—the problem of national education, and he considered that the less it was fettered by direct State interference and the more it was helped by State support, the better. He was persuaded that any national system ought to be religious. For the Church’s original training of the people, for her alliance with the Universities, too, he had the keenest admiration.

“Nothing is more surprising to me,” he urged in 1872, “than ... that in the nineteenth century the charge against the Church of England should be that Churchmen, and especially the clergy, had educated the people.... I think the greatest distinction of the clergy is the admirable manner in which they have devoted their lives and fortunes to this greatest of national objects.”104

It may not be generally remembered that only two years after Disraeli entered the House of Commons he delivered himself of a remarkable speech in this connection. He was opposed, he said, at that time to a strictly State system, for he was opposed to “paternal government, which stamped out the sense of independence in man, and caused him to rely upon others.” Society should be strong, and the State weak; order should not be disturbed by national injustice, nor liberty by popular outcry. “It is always the State and never Society—always machinery and never sympathy.” But though he did not change the principles of his outlook, he came by experience very materially to change his view of the machinery by which they were to be applied. He detested the interferences of centralisation; but a doubled population and the overgrowth of cities rendered State measures imperative, and their absence a disgrace. In his Edinburgh speech, twenty-eight years later, he thus handled this national need: “... Ever since I have been in public life I have done everything I possibly could to promote the cause of the education of the people generally. I have done so because I always felt that with the limited population of this United Kingdom, compared with the great imperial position which it occupies with reference to other nations, it is not only our duty, but ... an absolute necessity, that we should study to make every man the most effective being that education can possibly constitute him. In the old wars there used to be a story that one Englishman could beat three members of some other nation. But I think if we want to maintain our power, we ought to make one Englishman equal really in the business of life to three other men that any other nation can furnish. I do not see otherwise how ... we can fulfil the great destiny that I believe awaits us, and the great position we occupy.”

It will be noticed that he forecasts the practical and technical requirements which, at a period of comparative commercial decline, we are only now beginning to take to heart.

“Therefore,” he resumed, “so far as I am concerned, whether it be a far greater advanced system of primary education—whether it be that system of competitive examination which I have ever supported, though I am not unconscious of some pedantry with which it is associated—or whatever may be the circumstances, I shall ever be its supporter.”

He kept his word. Leading the Opposition in 1870, he supported Mr. Forster’s great measure, though he strongly opposed the Cowper-Temple Amendment—one which has undoubtedly kept much religious acrimony alive. His speech on these clauses can still be studied with advantage. In 1854, Lord John Russell introduced his bill for the “good government of the University of Oxford.” Here, again, Disraeli objected to undue Government interference. He thought that this “great seat of learning” should deal with these problems itself independently, and in the spirit of the age. It was designed to create professors on the Prussian model. Disraeli showed that in Prussia there was then small “sphere for the genius, the intellect, the talent, and the energy of Germany, except in the professorial chair.” There were not then great opportunities for a public career in Germany. “In this country you may increase the salaries as you please; but to suppose that you can produce a class of men like the German professors is chimerical.... We are a nation of action, and you may depend upon it that, however you may increase the rewards of professors ... ambition in England will look to public life.... You will not be able, however you think you may, to lay your hand upon twenty-five or thirty professors suddenly, capable of effecting a great influence on the youth of England. You cannot get these men at once. It will be slowly, with great difficulty, by fostering and cultivating your resources, that you will be able to produce one of these great professors—a man able to influence the public opinion of the University. Whether, then, you look to the great change which you propose with respect to these private halls, which is in fact a revolution of the collegiate system; or whether you look to the great alteration you contemplate by the revival of the professorial instead of the tutorial system—on both points you will meet, I think, with disappointment.... If I were asked, ‘Would you have Oxford, with its self-government, freedom, independence, but yet with its anomalies and imperfections; or would you have the University free from those anomalies and imperfections and under control of the Government?’ I would say, ‘Give me Oxford free and independent, with its anomalies and imperfections.’”105 In the discipline of the Church itself also Disraeli eventually found it imperative for the State to interfere. With extreme Ritualism, with amateur popery in an alien camp, effetely and sometimes treacherously practised, till the insubordination of a few, who were not in any sense strong men or leaders, began to infect the many, Disraeli could not sympathise. The Mass of the Roman Church as a solemn act he could reverence, but not the “masquerade” of amateur ultramontanes. With the High Anglicans, with the Tractarians, he in many respects sympathised profoundly. Their movements were those of noble aspiration and high endeavour. But most of the ultra-Ritualists were of wholly different calibre. Their attitude he typified most humorously in Lothair, and in the person of the “Reverend Dionysius Smylie,” who was wont to observe, “Rome will come to me.” Moreover, the Church had passed rapidly through varying vicissitudes. In the late ’thirties and early ’forties there had been a signal revival; but the secession of Newman, “apologised for but never explained,” had proved a blow under which “the Church still reels.” She lost a great, a generous, a necessary leader, when a leader was her need. “If,” Disraeli wrote in 1870, “a quarter of a century ago, there had arisen a Churchman equal to the occasion, the position of ecclesiastical affairs in this country would have been very different from that which they now occupy. But these great matters fell into the hands of monks and Schoolmen....”

In the ’fifties there was some degeneration, and the revival of Convocation was not on the wider basis which might have quickened clerical energy and lay enthusiasm. In the ’sixties the Church began to be “in danger.” Radicalism and Ritualism united; and there is a manuscript letter of Disraeli, still extant, written at this period, and affording some very interesting and secret knowledge.

What Disraeli disliked and regretted was that the choice between faith and free thought should be more and more presented as one between the Roman purple and the “Red Republic.”

And this brings me to the consideration of Disraeli’s ideas regarding the Latin Church, the immortal Rome, “that great confederacy which has so much influenced the human race, and which has yet to play perhaps a mighty part in the fortunes of the world.”

This imperial form of Theocracy exercised for him, both imaginatively and historically, an enormous attraction. Its special appeal to the Latin and Celtic races; its unbroken phalanx of organisation; its immemorial persistence of policy; its creative combination of spirituality with art, of purity with beauty; its union of ideals beyond and above the world with the mechanism of empires; its blend of contrasts, of solemn softness with sombre control, of charm with coldness, of callousness with charity, of loneliness with society, of curse and comfort; its theoretic espousal of theological free will with the practical denial of it in action, and of outward pomp with inward simplicity; its watchful intimacies with every moment of life—the way in which, as he puts it in Contarini, it “... produces in” its “dazzling processions and sacred festivals an effect upon the business of the day;” its guardianship of the weak, the erring, and the poor; its nursing motherhood of doubt and despair; its insidious captivation of the will and intellect; its power to recall and continue the spirits of the centuries, to absorb schism and rebaptise it union; its claims to obliterate the past for the penitent; to keep all things old and make all things new; its great deeds and its great heroes; these elements and many more, that have cooped Jews in Ghettos while blazoning the proud inscription in front of St. Peter’s, Vicit Leo de tribu Juda,—all these opposites enchant even when they fail to enchain the mind and the feelings. They have linked the Vatican and the Palatine, the see to the throne, the tiara to the diadem. They have transfigured, while maintaining, pagan rites and customs, till “Madre Natura” reappears with a halo, the very shrines of the Madonna repeat the antique pattern of those dedicated to the Lares and Penates, and the procession of waxen images in Southern Italy but perpetuates another and an older ceremony. The Roman Church has been the most consistent educator, the greatest organiser, the most universal legislator of the last thousand years. It has attained uncompromising ends unswervingly pursued by compromises the most subtle and the most skilful. Nor is the esoteric doctrine which recalls the Eleusinian Mysteries, and enables the initiated to regard forms comprehensible by the multitude as merely popular symbols of higher truths, without a certain glamour of its own. Disraeli’s father had penned a treatise on the Jesuits, and their history had been deeply studied by the son. I can still recall the unconscious tone of ironical appreciation with which one of those “professors,” “capable of effecting a great influence on the youth of England,” informed me that when he met Disraeli, “he spoke to me of the Jesuits.” Both the two factors in himself which I have mentioned, the sense of mystery and the impulse to control, are precisely the atmosphere of the Papal Church. There was, therefore, to some extent the attraction of affinity. But the Papacy appealed to him imaginatively, not theologically, as it did to his great rival. I recollect being told by a member of the symposium that Gladstone once discussed deep into the night at Hawarden what form of Christianity would eventually survive and prevail. Three chosen friends agreed with him that it would be Romanism, the establisher and not the establishment, the supernational and not the national, theocratic and not (as Disraeli makes one of his characters describe the Church of England) “parliamentary Christianity.”

Not so Disraeli. Its political influences, its “clamour for toleration,” its “labour for supremacy,”106 its warping limitations, its prying priestcraft, its humble haughtiness, its casuistic candour, its centralising forces fatal to Northern liberty, the ban placed on free discussion and free intercourse, its proclamation of the uniformity rather than of the unity of human nature, and above all its admixture of paganism, were the drawbacks that repelled him. “The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful,” he observes, adverting to that “mistake and misfortune” of Newman’s desertion. “Resting on the Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the seceders sought refuge in mediÆval superstitions which are generally the embodiments of pagan ceremonies and creeds.”107

The spell of Romanism is an incident in Contarini Fleming. The spell, but also the perils of Romanism, its bewitchment of judgment and of conscience, its repugnance to free politics and independent wills, its arrogance of inspiration, its monopolies, its burdens of enjoined etiquette, form the theme of Lothair. He cannot bind himself to the danger, yet how adorable is its source! How firm the rock on which it is founded, when it is not of offence! How certain the conclusions, if only the premises can be conceded!

“Religion is civilisation,” said the Cardinal—“the highest: it is a reclamation of man from savageness by the Almighty. What the world calls civilisation, as distinguished from religion, is a retrograde movement, and will ultimately lead us back to the barbarism from which we have escaped. For instance, you talk of progress: what is the chief social movement of all the centuries that three centuries ago separated from the unity of the Church of Christ? The rejection of the Sacrament of Christian matrimony. The introduction of the law of divorce, which is, in fact, only a middle term to the abolition of marriage. What does that mean? The extinction of the home and household on which God has rested civilisation. If there be no home, the child belongs to the State, not to the parent. The State educates the child, and without religion, because the State in a country of progress acknowledges no religion.108 For every man is not only to think as he likes, but to write and speak as he likes.... And this system which would substitute for domestic sentiment and Divine belief the unlimited and licentious action of human intelligence and will, is called progress. What is it but a revolt against God?”

What religious intelligence would not endorse these truths! But let us now listen to the other side, that of “other-worldliness,” of “the conversion—or conquest of England,” though the allusions to “Corybantic Christianity” are not without justice.

“There is only one Church and one Religion,” said the Cardinal; “all other forms and phrases are mere phantasms, without root or substance or coherency. Look at that unhappy Germany, once so proud of its Reformation.... Look at this unfortunate land, divided, subdivided, parcelled out in infinite schism, with new oracles every day, and each more distinguished for the narrowness of his intellect or the loudness of his lungs; once the land of saints and scholars, and people in pious pilgrimages, and finding always solace and support in the Divine offices of an ever-present Church; which were a true, though a faint type of the beautiful future that awaited man. Why, only three centuries of this rebellion against the Most High have produced ... an anarchy of opinion, throwing out every monstrous and fantastic form, from a caricature of the Greek Philosophy to a revival of Feticism.... The Church of England is not the Church of the English. Its fate is sealed. It will soon become a sect, and all sects are fantastic. It will adopt new dogmas, or it will abjure old ones; anything to distinguish it from the Non-conforming herd in which nevertheless it will be its fate to merge....”

“I cannot admit,” replied the Cardinal, “that the Church is in antagonism with political freedom. On the contrary, in my opinion, there can be no political freedom which is not founded on Divine authority; otherwise it can be at the best but a specious phantom of licence inevitably terminating in anarchy. The rights and liberties of the people of Ireland have no advocate except the Church, because there political freedom is founded on Divine authority; but if you mean by political freedom the schemes of the illuminati and the Freemasons, which perpetually torture the Continent, all the dark conspiracies of the secret societies, then I admit the Church is in antagonism with such aspirations after liberty; those aspirations, in fact, are blasphemy and plunder. And if the Church were to be destroyed, Europe would be divided between the atheist and the communist.”

This last opinion is Disraeli’s own. None knew better, or realised more, the disintegrating terrors of the secret societies, the propaganda of desperation served by desperadoes and exploited by soldiers of fortune.

Disraeli appreciated and often testified that Roman Christianity had pre-eminently spiritualised the once undecayed Latin races. To its services and ideals he always paid the deepest homage; for some of them he displayed an evident affection. Nowhere has the higher aspiration of Romanism been portrayed more touchingly than in the person of “Clare Arundel.” The description in that book of the TenebrÆ vibrates with delicate emotion. In the same book he foresees the erection on the site of slums of the stately fane which now adorns Westminster. His public utterances on Ireland, on the Maynooth question, and many others, his ardent championship of the bill which secured the offices of his priest for the Catholic prisoner, showed not only respect, but a sympathy and conversance with Roman affairs passing that of ordinary statesmen. But, as a statesman, he also realised that the Roman Church was not only hostile to the Anglo-Saxon instincts, but has always claimed a despotic temporal dominion; and he also realised not only the earlier and far-reaching designs of Cardinal Wiseman, but the later diplomacies of a definite scheme for the capture, now that absolutism is on the wane, of democracy. Rome means to be the sole absolutism that shall survive. What Disraeli dreaded and countervailed was the new-fangled alliance, not only between Radicalism, but between Liberalism and Romanism. In Ireland, as I shall show, a peculiar phase of the design was apparent, and what Rome had manoeuvred she came to deplore and even to struggle to prevent. In Lothair, “Monsignor Berwick,” Antonelli’s ultramontane disciple, is made to say of “Churchill,” the leader of Irish Nationalism, “For the chance of subverting the Anglican establishment, he is favouring a policy which will subvert religion itself.”

In later times the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, Monsignor Ireland and the “Knights of Labour” in America, Cardinal Manning and the London Dock strikers, are an evidence that Disraeli’s insight was sound.

The people as a Civitas Dei—the Church-State—is a superb ideal, one with which Disraeli was in heartfelt accord. But under what national forms is this to be compassed in England? A desire that Anglican orders should be confirmed by the Bishop of Rome has been during the last few years publicly advanced by dignitaries of our own Church. Is the Roman system capable of satisfying the progressive demands of the masses in England? Though their sordid homes need purifying, will they ever tolerate the intrusion of their privacy by celibate priests? Is a doctrinal absolutism, which the people themselves have dethroned from political ascendency, likely to consummate the cosmopolitan dream? State socialism divorced from ecclesiastical dominion would never for one moment enlist the Pope. And if some form even of State socialism ever became national (and Disraeli could have withstood it to the death), how could Catholic socialism control the socialism of the State? Can the supreme voice of God brook the admonitions of the voice of the people?

Lothair treats more especially of the diplomacies of Rome, and perhaps the polite struggle at “Muriel Towers,” between the Cardinal and the Bishop for the hero’s soul, is one of Disraeli’s most finished pieces of humour. “The Anglicans have only a lease of our property, a lease rapidly expiring,” ejaculates “Monsignor Berwick.” This imminent expiry of the lease is undoubtedly a cherished hope of the Vatican and Sacred College.

“Lothair,” it will be remembered, himself an earnest if somewhat ineffectual youth, falls under the influence of “Lady St. Jerome,” whose houses are rallying-centres for the great Cardinal and his associates. “Lady St. Jerome” induces “Lothair” to attend the office of the TenebrÆ. He is told that nothing in this particular service can prevent a Protestant from attending it. This is followed by the master-gardener, “Father Coleman’s” comments on the adoration of the Cross in the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, and a picnic with “Miss Arundel” and the courtly “Monsignor Catesby.” “The Jesuits are wise men; they never lose their temper. They know when to avoid scenes as well as when to make them.” “Lothair,” under the banner of his heroine, “Theodora,” fights for Garibaldi and the “Madre Natura” against the Papal troops. He is wounded at Mentana, and, by a coincidence, tended by “Clare Arundel” and her Roman circle. On his recovery, a miracle is announced concerning his rescue. The Virgin has interposed to save a defender of the Faith. He is led to a great function in the sacristy of St. George of Cappadocia. He finds himself the centre of devout attraction. The Cardinal assures him that the miracle is true. “Lothair” indignantly protests and denies. The Cardinal maintains that there are two “narratives of his relations with the battle of Mentana.” “If I were you, I would not dwell too much on this fancy of yours about the battle.” ... “I am not convinced,” said “Lothair.” “Hush!” said the Cardinal; “the freaks of your own mind about personal incidents, however lamentable, may be viewed with indulgence, at least for a time. But you cannot be permitted to doubt of the rest. You must be convinced, and, on reflection, you will be convinced. Remember, sir, where you are. You are in the centre of Christendom, where truth, and where alone truth resides.”

Nobody for one moment would believe that the illustrious Archbishop of Westminster debased strategy to stratagem; or could under any circumstances have resorted to a deliberate lie. Lothair is a satirical fairy-tale, and “Cardinal Grandison” is only an outward semblance of the late Cardinal Manning. But this passage sheds a true light on Rome’s attitude towards doubt, and her methods of proselytising; it shadows her secular policy. Can any one deny that “the truth with a mental reserve” of Jesuitry composes much of the plot in the drama of the hierarchy? Moreover, the passage agrees with a very remarkable one in a distinguished French novel that appeared three years afterwards—“L’AbbÉ Tigrane,” by M. Fabre. Long after these events, when “Lothair” comes of age, his guardian, the same Cardinal, converses with him on the impending Œcumenical Council. The duologue contains a forcible summary of the Church’s infallibility, however fallible may seem her individual members:—

“The basis on which God has willed that His revelation should rest in the world is the testimony of the Catholic Church, which, if considered only as a human historical witness of its own origin, constitution, and authority, affords the highest and most enduring evidence for the facts and contents of the Christian religion. If this be denied, there is no such thing as history. But the Catholic Church is not only a human and historical witness of its own origin, constitution, and authority, it is also a supernatural and Divine witness, which can neither fail nor err. When it oecumenically speaks, it is not merely the voice of the Father of the World; it declares ‘what it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.’”

No wonder that “Lothair,” sitting down in the crisis of his life by the moonlit Coliseum, muses in a rhapsody of the magnetism for opposed causes of the genius of the spot, strangely anticipating Zola’s contrast between the new Italian “Orlando” and the old Italian “Boccanera.”

“Theodora lived for Rome and died for Rome. And the Cardinal, born and bred an English gentleman, with many hopes and honours, had renounced his religion and, it might be said, his country, for Rome; and his race for three hundred years had given, for the same cause, honour, and broad estates, and unhesitating lives. And these very people were influenced by different motives, and thought they were devoting themselves to opposite ends. But still it was Rome; Republican or CÆsarian, papal or pagan, it still was Rome.”

I have shown the sources, as I believe, of Disraeli’s convictions. He was the first to dwell on those problems of race which are now recognised. His derided “Asian mystery” has been amply justified. His view of the “Caucasian” is that of subsequent science. Writing nearly forty years after he had mooted his ideas, he observed: “familiar as we all are now with such themes ... the difficulty and hazard of touching for the first time on such topics cannot now be easily appreciated.” His beliefs were racial, and depended on the clue of race to history. Their applications, however, were national. For he knew that race is only an element among the shared associations and common language, customs and history, that make up that ideal assembly which is called a nation; and he also knew that mere communication is not communion; that the rapidity of increased methods of material intercourse will never extinguish the slow, but certain, fires of race discord, which can only “consume its own smoke” through the free fusion of nationality.

His own race he cleared from prejudice, and proudly displayed as a potent, if sometimes hidden, force throughout the world. His praise and illustration of its endowments, its strength by virtue of its purity of strain, its tenacity and power of organisation, its veiled ramifications among the mainsprings that move Governments and alter systems, no longer raise a smile; and if they did, they would certainly cease to do so when placed on the lips of Macaulay, who thus treated them—

“He knows,” said Macaulay, speaking in 1833 of the member for the University of Oxford—“he knows that in the infancy of civilisation, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their poets.... Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, or heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees.”