French & English

The distinction between formalism and hypocrisy in religion is, that the formalist follows a custom without setting up any claim to depth or sincerity of conviction, whilst the hypocrite falsely pretends to be full of godliness and zeal.

There is probably not a religion in the world that presents so large a proportion of formalists and so few complete hypocrites as the Anglican. Decorous obedience to all outward religious observances is very frequently combined in England with an entire absence of pretension to sanctity. The gentlemanly Englishman is a regular attendant at church, he does not forget to say grace at dinner, but he dislikes cant of all kinds, and it is a part of his habitual reserve to say nothing about his religious experiences. His observance of form is so perfect that you may be acquainted with him for many years without knowing what he really thinks. About politics he is open enough, but he makes you feel that it would be indiscreet to ask for any confidences on religion, it would be like asking for his opinion of his wife. He, on his part, is too well bred to betray any anxiety for the state of your own soul; he is not a member of the Salvation Army, and your eternal welfare is not any concern of his.

Who shall fix precisely the exact place at which formalism ends and real hypocrisy begins? The formalist has a sort of conscience which forbids him to go much beyond strictly ceremonial limits. He will seem to use his prayer-book in church, yet will sometimes shrink from reading prayers aloud in his own home. He would listen respectfully if a chaplain read them, but declines to do it with his own voice. I remember one excellent father of a family who had no objection to take his children to church, but nothing could induce him to conduct family worship, and in that household the wife and mother was the chaplain. Still, this is not any certain test. An English gentleman once told me that he had been a convinced atheist from boyhood, yet he went to church with unfailing regularity, and read family prayers like a clergyman. Are we to call this formalism or hypocrisy? I will leave the gentleman to make his own defence. He said that he was absolutely compelled to conform to the national religion externally, and might as well make his conformity thorough, the more so that it was natural for a family to have a religion, and he knew of none better than the Church of England.

The true English formalist looks upon the Scotch and the Dissenters as more frequently exposed to the vice of hypocrisy than he is himself. He is so careful to keep anything resembling piety out of his ordinary language that it seems to him ill bred in a Scotchman to make pious reference to the Scriptures or the Sabbath Day. On the other hand, he unfeignedly disapproves of the continental Sunday, because forms are not so steadily observed on the Continent, and it seems to him as if the French and Germans did not know how to behave.

Now with regard to formalism in France I should say that in the upper classes, where it exists in the greatest force, it is even more a matter of ceremonial usage than in England. Has the reader ever observed French gentlemen in church? How many of them have any appearance, even, of taking part in the service! They are present for the most part as spectators of a “function” only—they support it by their presence, by their respectful deportment, and that is all.

French formalism has taken its last and most determined stand on marriages and funerals. Here it is strongly sustained by the general sentiment that a ceremony is needed on such important occasions, and the Church of Rome understands ceremony so well that she gives complete satisfaction to this instinctive need. Quite independently of special theological tenets, it is felt that marriage requires some kind of blessing or consecration, and that a solemn pomp should accompany the dead man to his grave.

I remember being in a room with a number of Frenchmen when the conversation turned upon funerals. “You will all of you,” I said, “be buried with the ceremonial of the Church of Rome, and there is not one of you who is really a Catholic or even a Christian, except in the sense that you believe Jesus to have been a good man. Why this clinging to ceremonies that have lost their meaning for you? Why not be buried with rites in accordance with your convictions?” An old lawyer made himself the spokesman of the party in reply. He said, “The disposal of our remains is almost invariably decided by the ladies of the family, who abominate civil interments. Besides this, many Frenchmen are neither convinced Catholics nor convinced unbelievers either, so they cling to established forms.” I then referred the question to a lady in connection with a recent Catholic interment of a sincere unbeliever, and she answered that the ceremony, being a matter of usage, really implied no affirmation whatever concerning the faith of the dead man, but was the only way of doing him a little honour, as none of those present would have dared to attend a civil burial.[40]

One of the most interesting of comparisons between England and France in the present day is suggested by philosophical Anglicanism, but before seeking for the French equivalent we need some definition of the English original.

It appears to be a condition of absolute mental freedom, a freedom fully equal to that enjoyed by M. Renan, for example, combined with adhesion to all Anglican forms and a clinging to the Anglican name. The philosophical Anglican criticises the sacred texts, has no respect for dogmas, and expresses his own opinions in language of refreshing candour and frankness, yet at the same time he will not be called a dissenter, and is certainly not a nonconformist. He has his seat in church with the motto “J’y suis et j’y reste.”

The opinions of a philosophical Anglican are individual, and so much his own that we cannot justly attribute any one set of opinions to two men, each of whom would repudiate responsibility for the other. Some opinions appear to be what we should once have called Unitarian, others belong to pure Deism, and the more advanced to scientific Agnosticism, in which the existence of a conscious and thinking Deity seems doubtful and the continuity of life beyond the grave a dream. As for the old dogmas, they are treated as the subjects of past controversies. The Trinity and the Incarnation have gone the way of the Real Presence,[41] though we may still retain for them a kind of imaginative credence like that which, in reading Tennyson, we have for the Holy Grail.

Philosophical Anglicanism differs from ordinary formalism in this, that whereas the ordinary formalist is condemned to life-long silence because he dares not say what he thinks, the philosophical Anglican, whilst accepting all the forms like the other, has assumed complete liberty of utterance. In short, he is a formalist who is tired of being gagged. How he reconciles his liberty of thought and speech with the old submission to forms and names it is not my business to explain. The remarkable peculiarity of the case, and its special interest, is that in the leaders of the movement there is no hypocrisy. Even Mr. Tollemache, who admits a certain ésotérisme inévitable, takes away that ground for the accusation of hypocrisy by putting the secret into print. All is clear and above-board with the leaders, but it may be suspected that with many of their followers the ésotérisme inévitable is carried so far in prudence that their position is not morally different from that of the everyday English formalist, already so familiar to us. Therefore, in spite of the really admirable honesty of Mr. Arnold and Mr. Tollemache, I am not sure that the movement is favourable to honesty in the rank and file, who will not feel under the same obligation to take mankind into their confidence. And with respect to the clergy the examples of Dean Stanley and Mark Pattison are even less encouraging, since in their case the ésotérisme inévitable must assume still larger proportions. What they thought I do not profess to know, as we have not any clear and brief statement of their views, but they were certainly freethinkers in the sense of not being deterred by dogma. Subject to correction from their admirers, I should say that their opinions did not differ essentially from those of Renan. They may have accepted the moral side of the Christian religion, but even in that they would probably reject what obviously belonged to an early stage of civilisation. The danger of their example consists in encouraging a class of freethinking clergymen, who must necessarily defend an essentially false position by the most disingenuous arts.

Most of my English readers will have their own opinion on these phases of English thought, and will care more to hear whether there is anything corresponding to them in France. The answer that first suggests itself is that Liberal Protestantism as represented by M. Réville[42] is the French form of the same thing, but a little reflection shows that Liberal Protestantism differs from philosophical Anglicanism in having no social importance. It is something like an advanced development of Unitarianism in England, which would not disturb English society in the least. If Mr. Arnold had been professedly a Unitarian, his announcement of advanced views would have interested a small sect; but as he professed Anglicanism and was an influential leader of opinion, his thoughts interest all who belong, really or nominally, to the National Church. A French Arnold would have to arise within the pale of the Church of Rome, where his career as a reformer would shortly come to an end.

The nearest French equivalent for philosophical Anglicanism is the theory that the religion a man professes is a matter of heredity in his family, and that as an individual he takes what he likes of it and no more. This theory differs, however, from philosophical Anglicanism in one important point—it is never published to the world. When expressed at all, which happens very seldom, it is expressed in the privacy of conversation, but the tacit acceptance of it is very wide. The genuine Catholics insist, on the contrary, that “all or nothing” is the one immutable principle of their religion, and that he who disbelieves the minutest detail of the Catholic dogmas is no more a Catholic than if he professed Protestantism openly.[43] However this may be, the fact remains, that any Frenchman who conforms externally to the Church of Rome is counted as a Catholic from the social point of view. I need not expatiate upon the convenience of the theory that the doctrines of the Church are like a banquet offered, of which the guest may take only what his appetite demands. We most of us accept something that might be called a Catholic doctrine, if only that it is wrong to steal.

Besides this lax idea amongst laymen, there is the influence of Jesuitism amongst the clergy. The Jesuits are said to confess the ésotérisme inévitable of a great popular religion so frankly that the modern intellectual man may find complete liberty in the Church of Rome. It appears that by an ingenious manner of presenting them all Roman Catholic doctrines may be made capable of a liberal interpretation in order that the modern thinker may remain within the fold.[44] Even the very spirit of Catholicism is ready to adapt itself to his taste. If he dislikes an intolerant spirit, the Church becomes most tolerant. He is told that all sincere men who endeavour to do right are sure of salvation, whatever may be their religious belief. If it is painful to him to think that the damned are suffering eternal torture, he is soothed by the assurance that the flames of hell are a figure of speech, and that the real punishment of the damned is only regret for their misdeeds, and privation of the sight of God, two evils that all Christians suffer from in this present world without finding it unendurable.

The success of what is called “Ritualism” in England has some connection with the increase of formalism, though we ought to remember that the formal spirit attaches itself quite as readily to a plain and simple ceremonial as it does to a splendid and elaborate one. The etiquette about plain black cloth for the masculine evening costume is quite as severe as it would be for coloured velvets and embroidery, whilst the modern white tie is more rigidly formal than the lace cravat of our ancestors; in fact, the simpler the costume the stricter the rule. The dress of French peasants is much more formal, in the sense of being governed by rigid custom, than the far more varied dress of the upper classes. We find formal strictness going with simplicity in the Anglican vestments before the days of ritualism, and extreme liberty of artistic design permitted by the Church of Rome in the ornamentation of mitre, chasuble, and cope. When Leo XIII. received many thousand chasubles as jubilee gifts, it is probable that there were not two of them alike. Again, in matters of usage it is quite as much a form to put incumbent, curate, and clerk in tiers one above another as to assign to them any other places that might be fixed by the ritual. Therefore, between one form and another, one costume and another, there is little difference as to the reality of formalism. The difference is in the degree of attention given to the matter. Just at first, when a more splendid ritual is adopted, as it has been by some Anglican clergymen, the change may be evidence of a formal spirit, but the same splendours would signify little or nothing if they were traditional and familiar.

This marks the difference between England and France with regard to ritual. In England it has recently been a subject of controversy and of conscious attention, whereas in France the instinct that desires it has always been abundantly satisfied by the Church of Rome, so that there has been no thought about it, and there is no such thing as a consciously ritualistic party. The gorgeous Roman ritual is enjoyed by those who have the instinctive need of it, whilst most people, even unbelievers, consider it natural in a great religion. The ultra-simplicity of French Protestantism is certainly not natural. It is an intentional contrast due to the effect of schism; it is dogmatic dissent expressing itself by external dissimilarity.

All varieties of formalism have one quality in common, that the strength they give to religion is not vital, it is only social and external. They have a weakening effect upon faith, even in the faithful. Formalism lowers the temperature, not on one side only, but all round it, like an iceberg floating in the sea. Its disapproval of dissent is accompanied by a chilling want of sympathy with religious earnestness and zeal. Formalism is to faith what etiquette is to affection; it is merely taste, and it is quite as much a violation of taste to have the motives of a really genuine, pious Christian, and avow them (in religious language, “to confess Christ before men”), as it is to abstain from customary ceremonies. In short, formalism is the world with its usages, substituting itself for Jesus and his teaching; it is “good form” set up in the place of enthusiastic loyalty and uncalculating self-devotion.