God The Invisible King Part 3

Now the G.o.d whom those of the new faith are finding is only mediately concerned with the relations of men and women. He is no more s.e.xual essentially than he is essentially dietetic or hygienic. The G.o.d of Leviticus was all these things. He is represented as prescribing the most petty and intimate of observances--many of which are now habitually disregarded by the Christians who profess him... . It is part of the evolution of the idea of G.o.d that we have now so largely disentangled our conception of him from the dietary and regimen and meticulous s.e.xual rules that were once inseparably bound up with his majesty. Christ himself was one of the chief forces in this disentanglement, there is the clearest evidence in several instances of his disregard of the rule and his insistence that his disciples should seek for the spirit underlying and often masked by the rule. His Church, being made of baser matter, has followed him as reluctantly as possible and no further than it was obliged. But it has followed him far enough to admit his principle that in all these matters there is no need for superst.i.tious fear, that the interpretation of the divine purpose is left to the unembarra.s.sed intelligence of men. The church has followed him far enough to make the harsh threatenings of priests and ecclesiastics against what they are pleased to consider impurity or s.e.xual impiety, a profound inconsistency. One seems to hear their distant protests when one reads of Christ and the Magdalen, or of Christ eating with publicans and sinners. The clergy of our own days play the part of the New Testament Pharisees with the utmost exactness and complete unconsciousness. One cannot imagine a modern ecclesiastic conversing with a Magdalen in terms of ordinary civility, unless she was in a very high social position indeed, or blending with disreputable characters without a dramatic sense of condescension and much explanatory by-play.

Those who profess modern religion do but follow in these matters a course entirely compatible with what has survived of the authentic teachings of Christ, when they declare that G.o.d is not s.e.xual, and that religious pa.s.sion and insult and persecution upon the score of s.e.xual things are a barbaric inheritance.

But lest anyone should fling off here with some hasty a.s.sumption that those who profess the religion of the true G.o.d are s.e.xually anarchistic, let stress be laid at once upon the opening sentence of the preceding paragraph, and let me a little antic.i.p.ate a section which follows.

We would free men and women from exact and superst.i.tious rules and observances, not to make them less the instruments of G.o.d but more wholly his. The claim of modern religion is that one should give oneself unreservedly to G.o.d, that there is no other salvation. The believer owes all his being and every moment of his life to G.o.d, to keep mind and body as clean, fine, wholesome, active and completely at G.o.d's service as he can. There is no scope for indulgence or dissipation in such a consecrated life. It is a matter between the individual and his conscience or his doctor or his social understanding what exactly he may do or not do, what he may eat or drink or so forth, upon any occasion.

Nothing can exonerate him from doing his utmost to determine and perform the right act. Nothing can excuse his failure to do so. But what is here being insisted upon is that none of these things has immediately to do with G.o.d or religious emotion, except only the general will to do right in G.o.d's service. The detailed interpretation of that "right" is for the dispa.s.sionate consideration of the human intelligence.

All this is set down here as distinctly as possible. Because of the emotional reservoirs of s.e.x, s.e.xual dogmas are among the most obstinately recurrent of all heresies, and s.e.xual excitement is always tending to leak back into religious feeling. Amongst the s.e.x-tormented priesthood of the Roman communion in particular, ignorant of the extreme practices of the Essenes and of the Orphic cult and suchlike predecessors of Christianity, there seems to be an extraordinary belief that chast.i.ty was not invented until Christianity came, and that the religious life is largely the propitiation of G.o.d by feats of s.e.xual abstinence. But a superst.i.tious abstinence that scars and embitters the mind, distorts the imagination, makes the body gross and keeps it unclean, is just as offensive to G.o.d as any positive depravity.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE LIKENESS OF G.o.d

1. G.o.d IS COURAGE

Now having set down what those who profess the new religion regard as the chief misconceptions of G.o.d, having put these systems of ideas aside from our explanations, the path is cleared for the statement of what G.o.d is. Since language springs entirely from material, spatial things, there is always an element of metaphor in theological statement. So that I have not called this chapter the Nature of G.o.d, but the Likeness of G.o.d.

And firstly, G.o.d IS COURAGE.

2. G.o.d IS A PERSON

And next G.o.d IS A PERSON.

Upon this point those who are beginning to profess modern religion are very insistent. It is, they declare, the central article, the axis, of their religion. G.o.d is a person who can be known as one knows a friend, who can be served and who receives service, who partakes of our nature; who is, like us, a being in conflict with the unknown and the limitless and the forces of death; who values much that we value and is against much that we are pitted against. He is our king to whom we must be loyal; he is our captain, and to know him is to have a direction in our lives. He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by us. He hopes and attempts... . G.o.d is no abstraction nor trick of words, no Infinite. He is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace.

Now this is where those who have left the old creeds and come asking about the new realisations find their chief difficulty. They say, Show us this person; let us hear him. (If they listen to the silences within, presently they will hear him.) But when one argues, one finds oneself suddenly in the net of those ancient controversies between species and individual, between the one and the many, which arise out of the necessarily imperfect methods of the human mind. Upon these matters there has been much pregnant writing during the last half century. Such ideas as this writer has to offer are to be found in a previous little book of his, "First and Last Things," in which, writing as one without authority or specialisation in logic and philosophy, as an ordinary man vividly interested, for others in a like case, he was at some pains to elucidate the imperfections of this instrument of ours, this mind, by which we must seek and explain and reach up to G.o.d. Suffice it here to say that theological discussion may very easily become like the vision of a man with cataract, a mere projection of inherent imperfections. If we do not use our phraseology with a certain courage, and take that of those who are trying to convey their ideas to us with a certain politeness and charity, there is no end possible to any discussion in so subtle and intimate a matter as theology but a.s.sertions, denials, and wranglings. And about this word "person" it is necessary to be as clear and explicit as possible, though perfect clearness, a definition of mathematical sharpness, is by the very nature of the case impossible.

Now when we speak of a person or an individual we think typically of a man, and we forget that he was once an embryo and will presently decay; we forget that he came of two people and may beget many, that he has forgotten much and will forget more, that he can be confused, divided against himself, delirious, drunken, drugged, or asleep. On the contrary we are, in our hasty way of thinking of him, apt to suppose him continuous, definite, acting consistently and never forgetting. But only abstract and theoretical persons are like that. We couple with him the idea of a body. Indeed, in the common use of the word "person" there is more thought of body than of mind. We speak of a lover possessing the person of his mistress. We speak of offences against the person as opposed to insults, libels, or offences against property. And the G.o.ds of primitive men and the earlier civilisations were quite of that quality of person. They were thought of as living in very splendid bodies and as acting consistently. If they were invisible in the ordinary world it was because they were aloof or because their "persons"

were too splendid for weak human eyes. Moses was permitted a mitigated view of the person of the Hebrew G.o.d on Mount h.o.r.eb; and Semele, who insisted upon seeing Zeus in the glories that were sacred to Juno, was utterly consumed. The early Islamic conception of G.o.d, like the conception of most honest, simple Christians to-day, was clearly, in spite of the theologians, of a very exalted anthropomorphic personality away somewhere in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian G.o.d is described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be explained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by most straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality.

Now if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and individual, then certainly G.o.d as he is now conceived is not a person and not an individual. The true G.o.d will never promenade an Eden or a Heaven, nor sit upon a throne.

But current Christianity, modern developments of Islam, much Indian theological thought--that, for instance, which has found such delicate and attractive expression in the devotional poetry of Rabindranath Tagore--has long since abandoned this anthropomorphic insistence upon a body. From the earliest ages man's mind has found little or no difficulty in the idea of something essential to the personality, a soul or a spirit or both, existing apart from the body and continuing after the destruction of the body, and being still a person and an individual.

From this it is a small step to the thought of a person existing independently of any existing or pre-existing body. That is the idea of theological Christianity, as distinguished from the Christianity of simple faith. The Triune Persons--omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent--exist for all time, superior to and independent of matter.

They are supremely disembodied. One became incarnate--as a wind eddy might take up a whirl of dust... . Those who profess modern religion conceive that this is an excessive abstraction of the idea of spirituality, a disembodiment of the idea of personality beyond the limits of the conceivable; nevertheless they accept the conception that a person, a spiritual individual, may be without an ordinary mortal body... . They declare that G.o.d is without any specific body, that he is immaterial, that he can affect the material universe--and that means that he can only reach our sight, our hearing, our touch--through the bodies of those who believe in him and serve him.

His nature is of the nature of thought and will. Not only has he, in his essence, nothing to do with matter, but nothing to do with s.p.a.ce. He is not of matter nor of s.p.a.ce. He comes into them. Since the period when all the great theologies that prevail to-day were developed, there have been great changes in the ideas of men towards the dimensions of time and s.p.a.ce. We owe to Kant the release from the rule of these ideas as essential ideas. Our modern psychology is alive to the possibility of Being that has no extension in s.p.a.ce at all, even as our speculative geometry can entertain the possibility of dimensions--fourth, fifth, Nth dimensions--outside the three-dimensional universe of our experience.

And G.o.d being non-spatial is not thereby banished to an infinite remoteness, but brought nearer to us; he is everywhere immediately at hand, even as a fourth dimension would be everywhere immediately at hand. He is a Being of the minds and in the minds of men. He is in immediate contact with all who apprehend him... .

But modern religion declares that though he does not exist in matter or s.p.a.ce, he exists in time just as a current of thought may do; that he changes and becomes more even as a man's purpose gathers itself together; that somewhere in the dawning of mankind he had a beginning, an awakening, and that as mankind grows he grows. With our eyes he looks out upon the universe he invades; with our hands, he lays hands upon it. All our truth, all our intentions and achievements, he gathers to himself. He is the undying human memory, the increasing human will.

But this, you may object, is no more than saying that G.o.d is the collective mind and purpose of the human race. You may declare that this is no G.o.d, but merely the sum of mankind. But those who believe in the new ideas very steadfastly deny that. G.o.d is, they say, not an aggregate but a synthesis. He is not merely the best of all of us, but a Being in himself, composed of that but more than that, as a temple is more than a gathering of stones, or a regiment is more than an acc.u.mulation of men.

They point out that a man is made up of a great mult.i.tude of cells, each equivalent to a unicellular organism. Not one of those cells is he, nor is he simply just the addition of all of them. He is more than all of them. You can take away these and these and these, and he still remains.

And he can detach part of himself and treat it as if it were not himself, just as a man may beat his breast or, as Cranmer the martyr did, thrust his hand into the flames. A man is none the less himself because his hair is cut or his appendix removed or his leg amputated.

And take another image... . Who bears affection for this or that spadeful of mud in my garden? Who cares a throb of the heart for all the tons of chalk in Kent or all the lumps of limestone in Yorkshire? But men love England, which is made up of such things.

And so we think of G.o.d as a synthetic reality, though he has neither body nor material parts. And so too we may obey him and listen to him, though we think but lightly of the men whose hands or voices he sometimes uses. And we may think of him as having moods and aspects--as a man has--and a consistency we call his character.

These are theorisings about G.o.d. These are statements to convey this modern idea of G.o.d. This, we say, is the nature of the person whose will and thoughts we serve. No one, however, who understands the religious life seeks conversion by argument. First one must feel the need of G.o.d, then one must form or receive an acceptable idea of G.o.d. That much is no more than turning one's face to the east to see the coming of the sun.

One may still doubt if that direction is the east or whether the sun will rise. The real coming of G.o.d is not that. It is a change, an irradiation of the mind. Everything is there as it was before, only now it is aflame. Suddenly the light fills one's eyes, and one knows that G.o.d has risen and that doubt has fled for ever.

3. G.o.d IS YOUTH

The third thing to be told of the true G.o.d is that G.o.d IS YOUTH.

G.o.d, we hold, began and is always beginning. He looks forever into the future.

Most of the old religions derive from a patriarchal phase. G.o.d is in those systems the Ancient of Days. I know of no Christian attempt to represent or symbolise G.o.d the Father which is not a bearded, aged man.

White hair, beard, bearing, wrinkles, a hundred such symptoms of senile decay are there. These marks of senility do not astonish our modern minds in the picture of G.o.d, only because tradition and usage have blinded our eyes to the absurdity of a time-worn immortal. Jove too and Wotan are figures far past the prime of their vigour. These are G.o.ds after the ancient habit of the human mind, that turned perpetually backward for causes and reasons and saw all things to come as no more than the working out of Fate,--

"Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe."

But the G.o.d of this new age, we repeat, looks not to our past but our future, and if a figure may represent him it must be the figure of a beautiful youth, already brave and wise, but hardly come to his strength. He should stand lightly on his feet in the morning time, eager to go forward, as though he had but newly arisen to a day that was still but a promise; he should bear a sword, that clean, discriminating weapon, his eyes should be as bright as swords; his lips should fall apart with eagerness for the great adventure before him, and he should be in very fresh and golden harness, reflecting the rising sun. Death should still hang like mists and cloud banks and shadows in the valleys of the wide landscape about him. There should be dew upon the threads of gossamer and little leaves and blades of the turf at his feet... .

4. WHEN WE SAY G.o.d IS LOVE

One of the sayings about G.o.d that have grown at the same time most trite and most sacred, is that G.o.d is Love. This is a saying that deserves careful examination. Love is a word very loosely used; there are people who will say they love new potatoes; there are a mult.i.tude of loves of different colours and values. There is the love of a mother for her child, there is the love of brothers, there is the love of youth and maiden, and the love of husband and wife, there is illicit love and the love one bears one's home or one's country, there are dog-lovers and the loves of the Olympians, and love which is a pa.s.sion of jealousy. Love is frequently a mere blend of appet.i.te and preference; it may be almost pure greed; it may have scarcely any devotion nor be a whit self-forgetful nor generous. It is possible so to phrase things that the furtive craving of a man for another man's wife may be made out to be a light from G.o.d. Yet about all the better sorts of love, the sorts of love that people will call "true love," there is something of that same exaltation out of the narrow self that is the essential quality of the knowledge of G.o.d.

Only while the exaltation of the love pa.s.sion comes and goes, the exaltation of religious pa.s.sion comes to remain. Lovers are the windows by which we may look out of the prison of self, but G.o.d is the open door by which we freely go. And G.o.d never dies, nor disappoints, nor betrays.

The love of a woman and a man has usually, and particularly in its earlier phases of excitement, far too much desire, far too much possessiveness and exclusiveness, far too much distrust or forced trust, and far too great a kindred with jealousy to be like the love of G.o.d.

The former is a dramatic relationship that drifts to a climax, and then again seeks presently a climax, and that may be satiated or fatigued.

But the latter is far more like the love of comrades, or like the love of a man and a woman who have loved and been through much trouble together, who have hurt one another and forgiven, and come to a complete and generous fellowship. There is a strange and beautiful love that men tell of that will spring up on battlefields between sorely wounded men, and often they are men who have fought together, so that they will do almost incredibly brave and tender things for one another, though but recently they have been trying to kill each other. There is often a pure exaltation of feeling between those who stand side by side manfully in any great stress. These are the forms of love that perhaps come nearest to what we mean when we speak of the love of G.o.d.

That is man's love of G.o.d, but there is also something else; there is the love G.o.d bears for man in the individual believer. Now this is not an indulgent, instinctive, and sacrificing love like the love of a woman for her baby. It is the love of the captain for his men; G.o.d must love his followers as a great captain loves his men, who are so foolish, so helpless in themselves, so confiding, and yet whose faith alone makes him possible. It is an austere love. The spirit of G.o.d will not hesitate to send us to torment and bodily death... .

And G.o.d waits for us, for all of us who have the quality to reach him. He has need of us as we of him. He desires us and desires to make himself known to us. When at last the individual breaks through the limiting darknesses to him, the irradiation of that moment, the smile and soul clasp, is in G.o.d as well as in man. He has won us from his enemy. We come staggering through into the golden light of his kingdom, to fight for his kingdom henceforth, until at last we are altogether taken up into his being.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS

1. THE SCIENTIFIC ATHEIST