God and my Neighbour Part 27

And the fact must be insisted upon, that _all_ religion, in its very nature, makes for persecution and oppression. It is the a.s.sumption that it is wicked to doubt the accepted faith and the presumption that one religion ought to revenge or justify its G.o.d upon another religion, that leads to all the pious crimes the world groans and bleeds for.

This is seen in the Russian outrages on the Jews, and in the Moslem outrages upon the Macedonians to-day. It is religious fanaticism that lights and fans and feeds the fire. Were all the people in the world of one, or of no, religion to-day, there would be no Jews murdered by Christians and no Christians murdered by Moslems in the East. The cause of the atrocities would be gone. The cause is religion.

Why is religious intolerance so much more fierce and bitter than political intolerance? Just because it _is_ religious. It is the supernatural element that breeds the fury. It is the feeling that their religion is divine and all other religions wicked: it is the belief that it is a holy thing to be "jealous for the Lord," that drives men into blind rage and ruthless savagery.

We have to regard two things at once, then: the good influences of Christ's ethics, and the evil deeds of those who profess to be His followers.

As to what some Christians call "the Christianity of Christ," I suggest that the teachings of Christ were imperfect and inadequate. That they contain some moral lessons I admit. But some of the finest and most generally admired of those lessons do not appear to have been spoken by Christ, and for the rest there is nothing in His ethics that had not been taught by men before, and little that has not been extended or improved by men since His era.

The New Testament, considered as a moral and spiritual guide for mankind, is unsatisfactory. For it is based upon an erroneous estimate of human nature and of G.o.d.

I am sure that it would be easy to compile a book more suitable to the needs of Man. I think it is a gross blunder to a.s.sume that all the genius, all the experience, all the discovery and research; all the poetry, morality, and science of the entire human race during the past eighteen hundred years have failed to add to or improve the knowledge and morality of the first century.

Mixed with much that is questionable or erroneous, the New Testament contains some truth and beauty. Amid the perpetration of much bloodshed and tyranny, Christianity has certainly achieved some good. I should not like to say of any religion that all its works were evil. But Christ's message, as we have it in the Gospels, is neither clear nor sufficing, and has been obscured, and, at times almost obliterated, by the pomps and casuistries of the schools and churches. And just as it is difficult to discover the actual Jesus among the conflicting Gospel stories of His works and words, so it is almost impossible to discover the genuine authentic Christian religion amid the swarm of more or less antagonistic sects who confound the general ear with their discordant testimonies.

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILISATION

It is a common mistake of apologists to set down all general improvements and signs of improvements to the credit of the particular religion or political theory they defend. Every good Liberal knows that bad harvests are due to Tory government. Every good Tory knows that his Party alone is to thank for the glorious certainties that Britannia rules the waves, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that journeymen tailors earn fourpence an hour more than they were paid in the thirteenth century.

Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and the condition of the ma.s.ses, to Free Trade. Things are better than they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago.

_Ergo_--there you are.

There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships, about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones; about education and better facilities of travel; about the Factory Acts and Truck Acts; about cheap books and newspapers; and who so base to whisper of Trade Unions, and Agitators, and County Councils?

So it is with the Christian religion. We are more moral, more civilised, more humane, the Christians tell us, than any human beings ever were before us. And we owe this to the Christian religion, and to no other thing under Heaven.

But for Christianity we never should have had the House of Peers, the _Times_ newspaper, the Underground Railway, the _Adventures of Captain Kettle_, the Fabian Society, or Sir Thomas Lipton.

The ancient Greek Philosophers, the Buddhist missionaries, the Northern invaders, the Roman laws and Roman roads, the inventions of printing, of steam, and of railways, the learning of the Arabs, the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Hunter, Laplace, Bacon, Descartes, Spencer, Columbus, Karl Marx, Adam Smith; the reforms and heroisms and artistic genius of Wilberforce, Howard, King Asoka, Washington, Stephen Langton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, and Shakespeare; the wars and travels and commerce of eighteen hundred years, the Dutch Republic, the French Revolution, and the Jameson Raid have had nothing to do with the growth of civilisation in Europe and America.

And so to-day: science, invention, education, politics, economic conditions, literature and art, the ancient Greeks and Oriental Wisdom, and the world's Press count for nothing in the moulding of the nations.

Everything worth having comes from the pulpit, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the _War Cry_.

It is not to our scientists, our statesmen, our economists, our authors, inventors, and scholars that we must look for counsel and reform: such secular aid is useless, and we shall be wise to rely entirely upon His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the England of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was paramount, there was a cruel penal code, there was slavery, there were barbarous forest laws, there were ruthless oppression and insolent robbery of the poor, there were black ignorance and a terror of superst.i.tion, there were murderous laws against witchcraft, there was savage persecution of the Jews, there were "trial by wager of battle," and "question" of prisoners by torture.

Many of these horrors endured until quite recent times. Why did Christianity with its spiritual and temporal power, permit such things to be?

Did Christianity abolish them? No. Christianity nearly always opposed reform. The Church was the enemy of popular freedom, the enemy of popular education; the friend of superst.i.tion and tyranny, and the robber baron.

Those horrors are no more. But Christianity did not abolish them. They were abolished by the gradual spread of humane feelings and the light of knowledge; just as similar iniquities were abolished by the spread of humane doctrines in India, centuries before the birth of Christ.

Organised and authoritative religion the world over makes for ignorance, for poverty and superst.i.tion. In Russia, in Italy, in Spain, in Turkey, where the Churches are powerful and the authority is tense, the condition of the people is lamentable. In America, England, and Germany, where the authority of the Church is less rigid and the religion is nearer Rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent, and less superst.i.tious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seems less beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist.

The worst found and worst taught cla.s.s in England is that of the agricultural labourers, who have been for centuries left entirely in the hands of the Established Church.

It may be urged that the French, although Catholics, are as intelligent and as prosperous as any nation in the world. But the French are a clever people, and since their Revolution have not taken their religion so seriously. Probably there are more Sceptics and Rationalists in France than in any other country.

My point is that the prosperity and happiness of a nation do not depend upon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy and intelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they have attained.

It is because organised and authoritative religion opposes education and liberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. And this is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians, that their religion is the root from which the civilisation and the refinement of the world have sprung.

CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS

Christianity, we are told, inaugurated the religion of humanity and human brotherhood. But the Buddhists taught a religion of humanity and universal brotherhood before the Christian era; and not only taught the religion, but put it into practice, which the Christians never succeeded in doing, and cannot do to-day.

And, moreover, the Buddhists did not spread their religion of humanity and brotherhood by means of the sword, and the rack, and the thumb-screw, and the f.a.ggot; and the Buddhists liberated the slave, and extended their loving-kindness to the brute creation.

The Buddhists do not depend for the records of their morality on books.

Their testimony is written upon the rocks. No argument can explain away the rock edicts of King Asoka.

King Asoka was one of the greatest Oriental kings. He ruled over a vast and wealthy nation. He was converted to Buddhism, and made it the State religion, as Constantine made Christianity the State religion of Rome.

In the year 251 B.C., King Asoka inscribed his earliest rock edict.

The other edicts from which I shall quote were all cut more than two centuries before our era. The inscription of the Rupuath Rock has the words: "Two hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the departure of the teacher." Now, Buddha died in the fifth century before Christ.

The Dhauli Edict of King Asoka contains the following:

Much longing after the things [of this life] is a disobedience, I again declare; not less so is the laborious ambition of dominion by a prince who would be a propitiator of Heaven.

Confess and believe in G.o.d, who is the worthy object of obedience.

From the Tenth Rock Edict:

Earthly glory brings little profit, but, on the contrary, produces a loss of virtue. To toil for heaven is difficult to peasant and to prince, unless by a supreme effort he gives up all.

This is from the Fourteenth Edict:

Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, values alone the harvest of the next world. For this alone has this inscription been chiselled, that our sons and our grandsons should make no new conquests. Let them not think that conquests by the sword merit the name of conquests. Let them see their ruin, confusion, and violence. True conquests alone are the conquests of _Dharma_.

Rock Edict No. 1 has:

Formerly in the great refectory and temple of King Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, many hundred thousand animals were daily sacrificed for the sake of food meat... but now the joyful chorus resounds again and again that henceforward not a single animal shall be put to death.

The Second Edict has:

In committing the least possible harm, in doing abundance of good, in the practice of pity, love, truth, and likewise purity of life, religion consists.

The Ninth Edict has:

Not superst.i.tious rites, but kindness to slaves and servants, reverence towards venerable persons, self-control with respect to living creatures... these and similar virtuous actions are the rites which ought indeed to be performed.