1851.]

Sermons should not be read.

183

You will not let a man read in the House of Commons or to a jury, because you know that what is read is not attended to. You profess to consider the matters which relate to the next world infinitely more important than those which belong to this, and yet you treat them, and them only, in written discourses often not even composed by the man who delivers them.'

'You should recollect,' I answered, 'that the practices of all professions are regulated by the convenience of the professors: the practices of the Bar are arranged for the convenience of barristers; the regulations of the Army for the convenience of officers; the studies of our Universities for the convenience of the college tutors: so our ecclesiastical habits are arranged to suit the clergy. It is difficult to preach extempore. Some men could not do it at all, others would do it badly. Benefices are property: they are bought like other estates, and the duties are made such as any educated man can perform. If every clergyman were required to preach extempore, a man who has paid 5,000l. for a living might be forced to give it up.'

'That might account,' he replied, 'for the use of written sermons; but then how are we to account for the effects which this torpid, formal religious teaching seems to produce? How are we to reconcile the coldness, the worldly-mindedness, and the general want of enthusiasm in your clergy with the religious zeal of your laity? With us, the influence of the priest depends on his abstraction from the world, on his indifference to the ordinary pleasures, and his contempt for the ordinary

pursuits of mankind. He tells us that this world is not a place of amusement but of trial; that happiness is not to be sought here, and if it could be obtained would not be worth a thought if it in the slightest degree interfered with our chances hereafter; that it is to our future fate which is to endure to all eternity, not to the few years that we have to pass here, that our attention and our efforts ought to be directed. But when the man who teaches all this is obviously thinking more of this world than of the next, when for one hour that he employs in providing for his eternal welfare he spends three or four in trying to obtain the comforts and enjoy the pleasures of this brief existence, it is difficult to believe him to be sincere.'

'Much,' I answered, 'perhaps depends on the absence from Protestantism of the ascetic element. According to the Roman Catholic doctrine the Deity is propitiated by human suffering. A man saves his soul by punishing his body. On that assumption, to enjoy pleasure is in the nature of sin, and to provide the means of enjoying it is sacrificing the next world to this.

'But we hold that a man may be happy both here and hereafter; at least, that his happiness here does not interfere with his prospects hereafter. And that a clergyman is not merely justified but bound to marry his daughters, and place out his sons, and leave his widow a comfortable annuity: this takes time and thought. A married clergyman cannot abstract himself from the world or despise the ordinary pursuits of mankind. If he were to do so he would ruin his family.

1851.]

Influence of Clergy.

185

'He is necessarily a man of the world as well as a man of religion.'

'Still,' said Tocqueville, 'I do not understand how a clergy so occupied can excite the enthusiasm of their hearers. How, for instance, is it possible that one of your written sermons, read like a task without action or life or energy, can rouse the passions of the congregation? And yet roused they must be. Religious motives affect more the conduct of your people, religious ideas occupy a larger portion of their thoughts, than they do among us, where a much greater proportion of priests, whose whole hearts are devoted to the propagation and enforcement of their doctrines, who really act as they preach, who really show that they believe themselves striving for an eternal reward, are constantly working on the minds of their flocks with the popular eloquence of a Catholic pulpit and the powerful engine of confession.'

'One explanation,' I answered, 'is that our religion is, in a great measure, a religion of opposition. Much of it is expended in hatred or contempt of other persuasions.

'There is little controversial feeling among the continental Catholics. No attempts are made to convert them, they have no sects to divide them. They may think the belief and the practices of the Protestants imperfect, but can scarcely think them mischievous. Their religious feelings therefore, wanting the stimulus of opposition, require to be kept up by the constant, active intervention of the clergy. We live in an atmosphere of

controversy. We have proselytizers all round us. No man in the higher classes is certain that his daughters may not turn Catholics, or his sons Puseyites; the lower and middle classes are assailed by the fifty different species of Dissenters; then the Roman Catholic religion, of which we are chiefly in dread, appears to us not only mistaken but destructive. You pity us, but we fear you. And it is comparatively easy to rouse and to keep up fear. Our priests too, belonging to the aristocracy, influence the humbler portion of their parishioners by their expenditure and by their charities, and the higher by their society. The celibacy of your clergy, by almost excluding gentlemen from the profession, prevents their having much familiar intercourse with the higher classes.'

'I have often doubted,' said Tocqueville, whether, if I were reforming the discipline of the Church, I would not allow priests to marry. One objection to their marriage with us, is the practice of confession. We should not like to have the secrets of so many families confided to married men. That, I suspect, is the reason why our lay authorities prevent a man who has been a priest, even if he choose to throw off his orders, from marrying. The Maire refuses to authenticate the marriage, and the Courts of Law refuse to compel him.'

'Have you ever,' I said, 'considered the loss which the world would have sustained if the Protestant clergy were unmarried? A third, perhaps a half, of our most distinguished men in England and Scotland have been the sons of clergymen. A clergyman has almost always

1851.] Protestant and Roman Catholic Clergy. 187

a family; he always gives them a liberal education; he has generally something beyond his life income, but not enough for his sons to live on. They uniformly refuse to be tradesmen, and therefore are forced into literature and the professions, and succeed in them better than any other class.'

'That is good for the sons,' said. Tocqueville, 'but must give an immense harvest of old maids.' '

1 The following letter, in answer to one from Archbishop Whately, is interesting, not only as a commentary on the preceding conversation, but as showing Mr. Senior's object in writing these journals :—

Letter from N. W. Senior to Archbishop Whately.

My dear Whately,-I have read over the Sorrento dialogue, which is open to much of your criticism; but you must recollect that in all these conversations my object is to record what my companions said, not what I said myself. My own words are introduced as sparingly as possible, merely to render intelligible what was said to me. My journals are therefore full of most extravagant opinions and statements, unopposed, indeed uncommented on by me—but certainly no more acquiesced in than what is reflected by a mirror is acquiesced in by the man who holds it.

On the other hand, I do not think that I represent Protestant ministers as worldly or interested, that is, beyond the average. I believe them to be, in general, neither better nor worse than other people.

What Roman Catholic priests may be I do not know from experience, for I never came across them. Tocqueville, in all his conversations, both in Sorrento and in Normandy, speaks well of them.

C. A————— and my Italian friends describe them as immoral and rapacious. I lean to the latter opinion, but on very imperfect data.

Again, I believe that in France, of which we were speaking, and among the higher classes of whom we were speaking, there is much less hostility to Protestants than there is with us towards Catholics. And for this reason, that among the higher classes the men are almost all indifferent to religion, or think the Protestants nearer to the truth than the Roman Catholics.

Those among my French male acquaintances who are Christians are very rarely Roman Catholics in real opinions. They approach much more nearly to Unitarians.

Our religious feelings are kept up by living in an atmosphere of