English Secularism Part 2

"Better wild ideas than no ideas at all."

--Professor Nichol at Horsham.

THE emanc.i.p.ation of the understanding from intimidation and penal restraint soon incited thinkers of enterprise to put their new powers to use. Theology being especially a forbidden subject and the greatest repressive force, inquiry into its pretensions first attracted critical attention.

In every century forlorn hopes of truth had set out to storm one or other of the ramparts of theology. Forces had been marshalled by great leaders and battle often given in the open field; and unforeseen victories are recorded, in the annals of the wars of infantine rationalism, against the full-grown powers of superst.i.tion and darkness.

In every age valiant thinkers, scholars, philosophers, and critics, even priests in defiance of power, ecclesiastical and civil, have, at their own peril, explored the regions of forbidden truth.

In Great Britain it was the courage of insurgent thinkers among the working cla.s.s--whom no imprisonment could intimidate--who caused the right of free speech and free publicity to be finally conceded. Thus rulers came round to the conclusion of Caballero, that "tolerance is as necessary in ideas as in social relations."

As soon as opinion was known to be emanc.i.p.ated, men began to think who never thought before. The thinker no longer had to obtain a "Ticket of Leave" from the Churches before he could inquire; he was free to investigate where he would and what he would. Power is, as a rule, never imparted nor acquired in vain, and honest men felt they owed it to those who had won freedom for them, that they should extend it. Thus it came to pa.s.s that independence was an inspiration to action in men of intrepid minds. Professor Tyndall in the last words he wrote for publication said, "I choose the n.o.bler part of Emerson when, after various disenchantments, he exclaims, 'I covet truth!'" On printing these words the _Westminster Gazette_ added: "The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to say this."

The energies of intellectual intrepidity had doubtless been devoted to science and social progress; but as philosophers have found, down to Huxley's day, all exploration was impossible in that direction.

Murchison, Brewster, Buckland, and other pioneers of science were intimidated. Lyell held back his book, on the Antiquity of Man, twenty years. Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer were waiting to be heard. As Huxley has justly said: "there was no Thoroughfare into the Kingdom of Nature--By Order--Moses." Hence, to examine theology, to discover whether its authority was absolute, became a necessity. It was soon seen that there was ground for scepticism. The priests resented criticism by representing the sceptic of their pretensions, as being sceptical of everything, whereas they were only sceptics of clerical infallibility.

They indeed did aver that branches of human knowledge, received as well established, were really open to question, in order to show that if men could not be confident of things of which they had experience, how could the Churches be confident of things of which no man had experience--and which contradicted experience? So far from disbelieving everything, scepticism went everywhere in search of truth and certainty. Since the Church could not be absolutely certain of the truth of its tenets, its duty was to be tolerant. But being intolerant it became as Julian Hibbert put it--"well-understood self-defence" to a.s.sail it. The Church fought for power, the thinker fought for truth. Free thought among the people may be likened to a good ship manned by adventurous mariners, who, cruising about in the ocean of theology came upon sirens, as other mariners had done before--dangerous to be followed by navigators bound to ports of progress. Many were thereby decoyed to their own destruction. The sirens of the Churches sang alluring songs whose refrains were:

1. The Bible the guide of G.o.d.

2. The origin of the universe disclosed.

3. The care of Providence a.s.sured.

4. Deliverance from peril by prayer dependable.

5. Original sin effaceable by grace.

6. Perdition avoidable by faith in crucifixion.

7. Future life revealed.

These propositions were subjects of resonant hymns, sermons, and tracts, and were not, and are not, disowned, but still defended in discussion by orthodox and clerical advocates. Save salvation by the blood of Christ (a painful idea to entertain), the other ideas might well fascinate the uninquiring. They had enchanted many believers, but the explorers of whom we speak had acquired the questioning spirit, and had learned prudently to look at both sides of familiar subjects and soon discovered that the fair-seeming propositions which had formerly imposed on their imagination were unsound, unsightly, and unsafe. The Syracusans of old kept a school in which slaves were taught the ways of bondage.

Christianity has kept such a school in which subjection of the understanding was inculcated, and the pupils, now free to investigate, resolved to see whether such things were true.

Then began the reign of refutation of theological error, by some from indignation at having been imposed upon, by others from zeal that misconception should end; by more from enthusiasm for facts; by the bolder sort from resentment at the intimidation and cruelty with which inquiry had been suppressed so long; and by not a few from the love of disputation which has for some the delight men have for chess or cricket, or other pursuit which has conflict and conquest in it.

Self-determined thought is a condition of the progress of nations. Where would science be but for open thought, the nursing mother of enterprise, of discovery, of invention, of new conditions of human betterment?

A modern Hindu writer* tells us that: "The Hindu is sorely handicapped by customs which are prescribed by his religious books. Hedged in by minute rules and restrictions the various cla.s.ses forming the Hindu community have had but little room for expansion and progress. The result has been stagnation. Caste has prevented the Hindus from sinking, but it has also preventing them from rising."

* Pramatha Nath Bose.

The old miracle-bubbles which the Jews blew into the air of wonder two thousand years ago, delight churches still in their childhood. The sea of theology would have been stagnant centuries ago, had not insurgent thinkers, at the peril of their lives, created commotion in it. Morals would have been poisoned on the sh.o.r.es of theology had not free thought purified the waters by putting the salt of reason into that sea, freshening it year by year.

CHAPTER V. CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION

"The secret of Genius is to suffer no fiction to live."

--Goethe.

THEOLOGIANS had so choked the human mind with a dense undergrowth of dogmas that it was like cutting through an African forest, such as Stanley encountered, to find the paths of truth.

On that path, when found, many things unforeseen before, became plain.

The siren songs of orthodoxy were discovered to have strange discords of sense in them.

1. The Guide of G.o.d seemed to be very human--not authentic, not consistent--containing things not readable nor explainable in the family; pagan fictions, such as the Incarnation reluctantly believable as the device of a moral deity. Men of genius and of n.o.ble ethical sympathy do however deem it defensible. In any human book the paternal exaction of such suffering as fell to Christ, would be regarded with alarm and repugnance. Wonder was felt that Scripture, purporting to contain the will of deity, should not be expressed so unmistakably that ignorance could not misunderstand it, nor perversity misconstrue it. The G.o.ds know how to write.

2. The origin of all things has excited and disappointed the curiosity of the greatest exploring minds of every age. That the secret of the universe is undisclosed, is manifest from the different and differing conjectures concerning it. The origin of the universe remains unknowable. What awe fills or rather takes possession of the mind which comprehends this! Why existence exists is the cardinal wonder.

3. Pleasant and free from anxiety, life would be were it true, that Providence is a present help in the day of need. Alas, to the poor it is evident that Providence does not interfere, either to befriend the good in their distress, or arrest the bad in the act of crime.

4. The power of prayer has been the hope of the helpless and the oppressed in every age. Every man wishes it was true that help could be had that way. Then every just man could protect himself at will against his adversaries. But experience shows that all entreaty is futile to induce Providence to change its universal habit of non-intervention.

Prayer beguiles the poor but provides no dinner. Mr. Spurgeon said at the Tabernacle that prayer filled his meal barrel when empty. I asked that he should publish the recipe in the interests of the hungry. But he made no reply.

5. There is reason to think that original sin is not anything more than original ignorance. The belief in natural depravity discourages all efforts of progress. The primal imperfection of human nature is only effaceable by knowledge and persistent endeavor. Even in things lawful to do, excess is sin, judged by human standards. There may be error without depravity.

6. Eternal perdition for conscientious belief, whether erroneous or not, is humanly incredible. The devisors of this doctrine must have been unaware that belief is an affair of ignorance, prejudice, custom, education, or evidence. The liability of the human race to eternal punishment is the foundation on which all Christianity (except Unitarianism) rests. This awful belief, if acted upon with the sincerity that Christianity declares it should be, would terminate all enjoyment, and all enterprise would cease in the world. None would ever marry. No persons, with any humanity in their hearts would take upon themselves the awful responsibility of increasing the number of the d.a.m.ned. The registrar of births would be the most fiendish clerk conceivable. He would be practically the secretary of h.e.l.l.

The theory that all the world was lost through a curious and enterprising lady, eating an apricot or an apple, and that three thousand or more years after, mankind had to be redeemed by the murder of an innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme.

Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument against the existence of G.o.d whereas it is merely against the attributes of deity, as ascribed to him by Christianity. If G.o.d be not moral, in the human sense of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is only he whose principles of justice, men can understand, that men can trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and dispa.s.sionateness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said: "The suggestion arises, if G.o.d is the cause of all things he is responsible for evil as well as for good, and it appears utterly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has in fact done himself." The poet concurs with the philosopher when he exclaims:

"The loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless G.o.d Amid his worlds."*

* Browning.

Christianity indeed speaks of the _love_ of G.o.d in sending his son to die for the security of others. But not less is the heart of the intelligent and humane believer torn with fear, as he thinks what must be the character of that G.o.d who could only be thus appeased.

The example of self-sacrifice is n.o.ble--but is it n.o.ble in any one who deliberately creates the necessity for it? The better side of Christianity seems overshadowed by the worse.

7. Future life is uncertain, being unprovable and seemingly improbable, judging from the dependence of life on material conditions. Christians themselves do not seem confident of another existence. If they were _sure_ of it, who of them would linger here when those they love and honor have gone before? Ere we reach the middle of our days, the joy of every heart lies in some tomb. If the Christian actually believed that the future was real, would he hang black plumes over the hea.r.s.e, and speak of death as darkness? No! the cemeteries would be hung with joyful lights, the grave would be the gate of Paradise. Every one would find justifiable excuse for leaving this for the happier world. All tenets which are contradicted by reason had better not be.

Many preachers now disown, in controversy, these doctrines, but until they carry the professions of the platform into the statute book, the rubric, and the pulpit, such doctrines remain operative, and the Churches remain answerable for them. Nonconformists do not protest against a State Church on account of its doctrines herein enumerated.

When the doctrines which conflict with reason and humanity are disowned by authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denominations, the duty of controverting them as impediments to progress will cease.

It may be said in reply to what is here set forth as tenets of Christian Scripture, that the writer follows the letter and not the spirit of the word. Yes, that is what he does. He is well aware of the new practice of seeking refuge in the "spirit," of "expanding" the letter and taking a "new range of view." He however holds that to drop the "letter" is to drop the doctrine. To "expand" the "letter" is to change it. New "range of view" is the term under which desertion of the text is disguised.

But "new range" means new thought, which in this insidious way is put forward to supersede the old. The frank way is to say so, and admit that the "letter" is obsolete--is gone, is disproved, and that new views which are truer const.i.tute the new letter of progress. The best thing to do with the "dead hand" is to bury it. To try to expand dissolution is but galvanising the corpse and tying the dead to the living.

CHAPTER VI. STATIONARINESS OF CRITICISM

"Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the dark."

--John Newton.

CRITICISM in theology, as in literature, is with many an intoxication.

Zest in showing what is wrong is apt to blunt the taste for what is right, which it is the true end of criticism to discover. Lord Byron said critics disliked Pope because he afforded them so few chances of objection. They found fault with him because he had no faults. The criticism of theology begets complacency in many. There is a natural satisfaction in being free from the superst.i.tion of the vulgar, in the Church as well as out of it. No wonder many find abiding pleasure in the intellectual refutation of the errors of supernaturalism and in putting its priests to confusion. Absorbed in the antagonism of theology, many lose sight of ultimate utility, and regard error, not as a misfortune to be alleviated, so much as a fault to be exposed. Like the theologian whose color they take, they do not much consider whether their method causes men to dislike the truth through its manner of being offered to them. Their ambition is to make those in error look foolish. Free thinkers of zeal are apt to become intense, and like Jules Ferry (a late French premier), care less for power, than for conflict, and the lover of conflict is not easily induced to regard the disproof of theology as a means to an end* higher than itself. It is difficult to impart to uncalculating zealots a sense of proportion. They dash along the warpath by their own momentum. Railway engineers find that it takes twice as much power to stop an express train as it does to start it.