To young men who have not yet been ordained and who incline to “rational” views of Christianity, I have been disposed hitherto to give different advice: “Wait a while. The fashion of men’s opinion is rapidly changing; the excessive fear of science on the part of the Clergy—many of whom come from Public Schools where they have received no training in the rudiments of science or mathematics—is, strange to say, predisposing all but extreme High Churchmen to welcome the adhesion of any who are firm believers in Christ, even though they may doubt or reject the miracles. It would be a miserable thing to be ordained, and to undertake the task of preaching a doctrine implying the highest conceivable morality, and presently to find yourself condemned by those to whom you should be an example as well as an instructor, for what appears to them patent insincerity—condemned by others, and perhaps not wholly acquitted by yourself. In a few years you may perhaps find it possible to be ordained not upon tolerance but with a hearty reception, and then there need be no concealment of your opinions.”
Such is the language that I have hitherto used on the very few occasions when I have been consulted, generally advising delay. But now I am inclined to think that the time has come when young men with these opinions ought not to wait, but ought at least to set their case before the Bishops, leaving it to them to accept or refuse them as candidates for ordination. Schisms and prosecutions are very objectionable things, but there are worse evils even than these. There is the danger of hypocrisy, spreading, like an infection, from oneself to others. The hour has perhaps come for authorizing or condemning the extreme freedom of opinion which some of the Broad Churchmen have assumed. Proverbs and texts might be quoted in equal abundance to justify action or inaction in the abstract; but two important practical considerations appear to me to dictate some kind of action without delay.
On the one hand, we hear the complaint that the ablest and most conscientious men are deterred by scruples from entering the ministry in the Church of England, even when they feel a strong bent for clerical work. If this scarcity of able candidates for ordination continues for many more years, we shall have bad times in store for us. Already I think I have noted, among some ministers who are conscious of but little intellectual and not much more spiritual power, a disposition unduly to magnify their office, the ritual, the mechanical use of the sacraments, parochial machinery, processions, sensational hymns, church salvation-armies, and church-routine generally, because they feel they have no evangelic message of their own, no individual inspiration. In some degree, such a subordination of self is good and may argue modesty; but in many cases it is not good, when it leads young men to materialize and sensualize religion, to suppose that the preaching of Christ’s Gospel and the elevation of the souls of men can be effected by ecclesiastical battalion drill; to dispense with study, thought, and observation; to acquiesce in the letter of the collected dogmas of the past, and to hope for no new spiritual truth from the progress of the ages controlled by the ever fresh revelations of the Spirit of God.