The Rev. C. A. Berry, the eminent English Congregational minister, who, as we stated on Thursday, is at present in Sydney, was interviewed by a representative of Great Thoughts just before his departure from England.
After giving a short account of his life, in which Mr. Berry stated that he declined the pastorate of Brooklyn Church because it is America's Westminster Abbey, and he who goes there must be an American, not an Englishman, his attention was drawn to a statement recently made by the well-known secularist leader and writer G. W. Foote, to the effect that the secularists had good cause to be thankful and encouraged, that the Churches were rapidly becoming secularised, and that their cause was flourishing.
As I very much (writes the interviewer) doubted the accuracy of the cheery and light-hearted Mr. Foote, I thought I would place the statement before such a man as Mr. Charles Berry, cool, wide-awake, much-travelled, earnest and well-informed, and ask him what he thought of it all.
His reply was lengthy and characteristic, and ran as follows : —
"It all depends on what Mr. Foote means by the Churches becoming secularised. If he means that the Churches are losing their grip of the unseen world and spiritual faith, he is utterly, and entirely, and hopelessly at sea; and this, I fancy, is what he hopes, if he does not actually mean and believe it.
But if he means that the Churches are rubbing out the popular and unwarrantable distinction between matters sacred and secular, and are finding an expression in secular service for their spiritual faith, he is quite right. Secularity of service, which springs from spirituality of life, and faith, and vision, is a totally different thing from that secularism which finds its motive in a narrow and materialistic outlook."
"I am glad you use the word 'narrow' in connection with the so-called freethinkers," I remarked; "my experience of them is that, with a few charming exceptions amongst the cultivated, well-bred, refined and educated agnostics, they are the most hopelessly bigoted, narrow-minded and intolerant people on the face of this earth."
Mr. Berry thoroughly agreed. "Free-thought!" he cried. "Pah! 'Freethinker,' the term is utterly absurd — it is tautological, at least! A thinker is a thinker, and thought, to be thought, must be free. But the so-called and professional and blatant freethinker holds an unintelligible position. His freedom includes denial of the accumulated wisdom of the past. No man can be a thinker without taking in all the past; and he must give due authority to the best thought of the best minds. If they do away with our glorious inheritance of thought, then they are more free than thinkers. In the same way I do not hope for much from their professed freedom in the world of life. Freedom is due, can only be due, to a hearty recognition of our common brotherhood. Now, an atheist cannot believe that, because he does not believe in the common Fatherhood of God, without which brotherhood cannot exist.
The security for our liberty lies in this recognition of our common and exalted relation to God, and, as a matter of fact, and in spite of all persecuting epochs in the Church, progress has found its inspiration in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, while atheism has tended to the worst forms of Toryism. Perhaps it is stretching my meaning to say that some illustration of this is found in the fact that while agnostics like Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Leslie Stephen, and atheists like Bradlaugh are pronounced aggressive Individualists, the new socialism finds its ablest exponents in the Christian Church. The secularity of the Christian Church, you may be quite certain, will minister to the whole man, and will extend her solicitude over every department of human life. I think that you and Mr. Stead came to that conclusion in your famous conversation concerning the Church of the future. But I would differ from you and him. It is not the Church of the future, but the Church of the warm, living, pulsating present."
"Well, but," I remarked," there are those who say, and they are notably of the Nonconforming element, that this very secularity tends to the destruction of spirituality. Is this so?"
"Ah, that is a difficult question to answer generally. In some particular cases secular activity may not spring from a clearly recognised spiritual motive, but to suppose that in descending into secular activity the spiritual forces of the Church are doomed to secularism, is to deny the supremacy of the spiritual and its power of conquest. Of course, in proportion as a Church enters upon these secular paths of work she will need to multiply and intensify her prayers, her conscious fellowship with Christ and her clear spiritual vision. Look at St. Veronica, with her issue of blood. She touched Christ, but her uncleanness did not run up into Him, His cleanness ran down into her. A Pharisee would have had to cleanse himself before he could have entered into the Temple. Not so our Lord. If the Church is Pharisaic she will be secularised by her present mode of activity. If she dwells near to Christ she will spiritualise all she touches.
"No, no, my friend, the old personal love of Christ is stronger than ever in the Churches. The larger activities of the Church are due to the fact that in the place of a dead theological Christ they have recognised and come into fellowship with a living Christ who fills every sphere of life's activity as He did on earth. That, Mr. Stead tried to show in his conversation with you. By-the-bye, I do protest against a phraseology of which we have had quite enough. I mean, for example, "The New Era," the New Church, the New Faith. The idea created on my mind is that of a manufactured commodity which in time will grow as stereotyped and tyrannical as the old dogmatisms which have passed away. My Faith, My Church, My Era must be new every morning, and in the sense in which the morning is new; passing away and coming again, and marking ceaseless progress while adding fresh hoariness to time. What Mr. Stead means, as far as I can judge, commands my cordial agreement, i.e., I want the Church to become growingly expansive in thought, sympathy and activity. But from what I have already said you will perceive in my judgment such expansion can only come out of the spiritual regeneration of each unit in its membership.
"Between Mr. Stead's idea of a Church and mine there is this vital difference. His Church is simply an aggregation of secular workers that, by its very constitution, can never look much beyond the political, social and intellectual regeneration of society. Mine is that of a spiritual company, which, whilst working along these same lines, work from a more powerful motive that carries them forward to larger results. Mine is more than his coat, his brain or his hand. Put all these into order and satisfy all their just claims, the biggest work still remains to be done. I readily admit Mr. Stead may himself and probably does agree with all this, yet I fail to see how at least the atheistic members of his proposed Church could take so wide and thorough a view of the work needing to be done. I understand his earnest drift, and welcome as a powerful minister of Christ a man who, to such a powerful pen, brings the added inspiration and weight of a devoted and unselfish life. The Churches are spiritually secular. That we grant. But Mr. Foote must not begin to rejoice yet."