God and my Neighbour Part 31

In some men this desire is weak, in others it is strong. In some it takes the form of devotion to "G.o.d," in others it takes the form of devotion to men. In some it is coloured by imagination, or distorted by a love of the marvellous; in others it is lighted by reason, and directed by love of truth. But whether a man devotes himself to G.o.d and to prayer, or devotes himself to man and to politics or science, he is actuated by the same impulse--by the desire for what is good.

John says: "I feel that there is a G.o.d, and I worship Him." Thomas says: "I do not know whether or not there is a G.o.d, and if there is, He does not need my adoration. But I know there are men in darkness and women in trouble, and children in pain, and I know they _do_ need my love and my help. I therefore will not pray; but I will work."

To him says John: "You are a fellow of no delicacy. You lack spiritual discernment. You are disqualified for the expression of any opinion on spiritual truths." This is what John calls "humility," and "gentle treatment of the beliefs of others." But Thomas calls it unconscious humour.

Really, Archdeacon Wilson's claim that only those possessing spiritual discernment can discern spiritual truths means no more than that those who cannot believe in religion do not believe in religion, or that a man whose reason tells him religion is not true is incapable of believing religion is true. But what he means it to mean is that a man whose reason rejects religion is unfit to criticise religion, and that only those who accept religion as true are qualified to express an opinion as to its truth. He might as well claim that the only person qualified to criticise the Tory Party is the person who has the faculty for discerning Tory truth.

My claim is that ideas relating to spiritual things must be weighed by the same faculties as ideas relating to material things. That is to say, man can only judge in religious matters as he judges in all other matters, by his reason.

I do not say that all men have the same kind or quant.i.ty of reason.

What I say is, that a man with a good intellect is a better judge on religious matters than a man, with an inferior intellect; and that by reason, and by reason alone, can truth of any kind be discerned.

The archdeacon speaks of spiritual geniuses, "geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with G.o.d." The Saints, for example. Well, if the Saints were geniuses in matters religious, the Saints ought to have been better judges of spiritual truth than other men. But was it so? The Saints believed in angels, and devils, and witches, and h.e.l.l-fire and Jonah, and the Flood; in demoniacal possession, in the working of miracles by the bones of dead martyrs; the Saints accepted David and Abraham and Moses as men after G.o.d's own heart.

Many of the most spiritually gifted Christians do not believe in these things any longer. The Saints, then, were mistaken. They were mistaken about these spiritual matters in which they are alleged to have been specially gifted.

We do not believe in sorcerers, in witches, in miracle-working relics, in devils, and eternal fire and brimstone. Why? Because science has killed those errors. What is science? It is reason applied to knowledge.

The faculty of reason, then, has excelled this boasted faculty of spiritual discernment in its own religious sphere.

It would be easy to multiply examples.

Jeremy Taylor was one of the most brilliant and spiritual of our divines. But his spiritual perception, as evidenced in his works, was fearfully at fault. He believed in h.e.l.l-fire, and in h.e.l.l-fire for all outside the pale of the Christian Church. And he was afraid of G.o.d, and afraid of death.

Archdeacon Wilson denies to us this faculty of spiritual perception.

Very well. But I have enough mental acuteness to see that the religion of Jeremy Taylor was cowardly, and gloomy, and untrue.

Luther and Wesley were spiritual geniuses. They both believed in witchcraft. Luther believed in burning heretics. Wesley said if we gave up belief in witchcraft we must give up belief in the Bible.

Luther and Wesley were mistaken: their spiritual discernment had led them wrong. Their superst.i.tion and cruelty were condemned by humanity and common sense.

To me it appears that these men of "spiritual discernment" are really men of abnormally credulous and emotional natures: men too weak to face the facts.

We cannot allow the Christians to hold this position unchallenged. I regard the religious plane as a lower one than our own. I think the Christian idea of G.o.d is even now, after two thousand years of evolution, a very mean and weak one.

I cannot love nor revere a "Heavenly Father" whose children have to pray to Him for what they need, or for pardon for their sins. My children do not need to pray to me for food or forgiveness; and I am a mere earthly father. Yet Christ, who came direct from G.o.d--who _was_ G.o.d--to teach all men G.o.d's will, directed us to pray to G.o.d for our daily bread, for forgiveness of our trespa.s.ses against Him, and that He would not lead us into temptation! Imagine a father leading his children into temptation!

What is there so superior or so meritorious in the att.i.tude of a religious man towards G.o.d? This good man prays: for what? He prays that something be given to him or forgiven to him. He prays for gain or fear.

Is that so lofty and so n.o.ble?

But you will say: "It is not all for gain or for fear. He prays for love: because he loves G.o.d." But is not this like sending flowers and jewels to the king? The king is so rich already: but there are many poor outside his gates. G.o.d is not in need of our love: some of G.o.d's children are in need. Truly, these high ideals are very curious.

Mr. Augustine Birrell, in his _Miscellanies_, quotes a pa.s.sage from "Lux Mundi"; and although I cannot find it in that book, it is too good to lose:

If this be the relation of faith to reason, we see the explanation of what seems at first sight to the philosopher to be the most irritating and hypocritical characteristic of faith. It is always shifting its intellectual defences. It adopts this or that fashion of philosophical apology, and then, when this is shattered by some novel scientific generalisation of faith, probably after a pa.s.sionate struggle to retain the old position, suddenly and gaily abandons it, and takes up the new formula, just as if nothing had happened. It discovers that the new formula is admirably adapted for its purposes, and is, in fact, what it always meant, only it has unfortunately omitted to mention it. So it goes on again and again; and no wonder that the philosophers growl at those humbugs, the clergy.

That pa.s.sage has a rather sinister bearing upon the Christian's claim for spiritual genius.

But, indeed, the claim is not admissible. The Churches have taught many errors. Those errors have been confuted by scepticism and science. It is no thanks to spiritual discernment that we stand where we do. It is to reason we owe our advance; and what a great advance it is! We have got rid of h.e.l.l, we have got rid of the Devil, we have got rid of the Christian championship of slavery, of witch-murder, of martyrdom, persecution, and torture; we have destroyed the claims for the infallibility of the Scriptures, and have taken the fetters of the Church from the limbs of Science and Thought, and before long we shall have demolished the belief in miracles. The Christian religion has defended all these dogmas, and has done inhuman murder in defence of them; and has been wrong in every instance, and has been finally defeated in every instance. Steadily and continually the Church has been driven from its positions. It is still retreating, and we are not to be persuaded to abandon our attack by the cool a.s.surance that we are mentally unfit to judge in spiritual matters. Spiritual Discernment has been beaten by reason in the past, and will be beaten by reason in the future. It is facts and logic we want, not rhetoric.

SOME OTHER APOLOGIES

Christianity, we are told, vastly improved the relations of rich and poor.

How comes it, then, that the treatment of the poor by the rich is better amongst Jews than amongst Christians? How did it fare with the poor all over Europe in the centuries when Christianity was at the zenith of its power? How is it we have twelve millions of Christians on the verge of starvation in England to-day, with a Church rolling in wealth and an aristocracy decadent from luxury and self-indulgence? How is it that the gulf betwixt rich and poor in such Christian capitals as New York, London, and Paris is so wide and deep?

Christianity, we are told, first gave to mankind the gospel of peace.

Christianity did not bring peace, but a sword. The Crusades were holy wars. The wars in the Netherlands were holy wars. The Spanish Armada was a holy expedition. Some of these holy wars lasted for centuries and cost millions of human lives. Most of them were remarkable for the barbarities and cruelties of the Christian priests and soldiers.

From the beginning of its power Christianity has been warlike, violent, and ruthless. To-day Europe is an armed camp, and it is not long since the Christian Kaiser ordered his troops to give no quarter to the Chinese.

There has never been a Christian nation as peaceful as the Indians and Burmese under Buddhism. It was King Asoka, and not Jesus Christ or St.

Paul, who first taught and first established a reign of national and international peace.

To-day the peace of the world is menaced, not by the Buddhists, the Pa.r.s.ees, the Hindoos, or the Confucians, but by Christian hunger for territory, Christian l.u.s.t of conquest, Christian avarice for the opening up of "new markets," Christian thirst for military glory, and jealousy, and envy amongst the Christian powers one of another.

Christianity, we are told, originated the Christ-like type of character.

The answer stares us in the face. How can we account for King Asoka, how can we account for Buddha?

Christianity, we are told, originated hospitals.

Hospitals were founded two centuries before Christ by King Asoka in India.

Christianity, we are told, first broke down the barrier between Jew and Gentile.

How have Christians treated Jews for fifteen centuries? How are Christians treating Jews to-day in Holy Russia? How long is it since Jews were granted full rights of citizenship in Christian England?

All this, the Christian will say, applies to the false and not to the true Christianity.

Let us look, then, for an instant, at the truest and best form of Christianity, and ask what it is doing. It is preaching about Sin, Sin, Sin. It is praying to G.o.d to do for Man what Man ought to do for himself, what Man can do for himself, what Man must do for himself; for G.o.d has never done it, and will never do it for him.

And this fault in the Christian--the highest and truest Christian--att.i.tude towards life does not lie in the Christians: it lies in the truest and best form of their religion.

It is the belief in Free Will, in Sin, and in a Heavenly Father, and a future recompense that leads the Christian wrong, and causes him to mistake the shadow for the substance.

COUNSELS OF DESPAIR

"If you take from us our religion," say the Christians, "what have you to offer but counsels of despair?" This seems to me rather a commercial way of putting the case, and not a very moral one. Because a moral man would not say: "If I give up my religion, what will you pay me?" He would say: "I will never give, up my religion unless I am convinced it is not _true_." To a moral man the truth would matter, but the cost would not. To ask what one may _gain_ is to show an absence of all real religious feeling.

The feeling of a truly religious man is the feeling that, cost what it may, he must do _right_. A religiously-minded man _could_ not profess a religion which he did not believe to be true. To him the vital question would be, not "What will you give me to desert my colours?" but "What is the _truth_?"

But, besides being immoral, the demand is unreasonable. If I say that a religion is untrue, the believer has a perfect right to ask me for proofs of my a.s.sertion; but he has no right to ask me for a new promise.