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Wells + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +Project Gutenberg's God The Invisible King, by Herbert George Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: God The Invisible King + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1046] +Last Updated: September 17, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD THE INVISIBLE KING *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h1> + GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + by H. G. Wells + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Contents + </h2> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <big><b>GOD THE INVISIBLE KING</b></big> </a> + </p> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER THE FIRST </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER THE SECOND </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER THE THIRD </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER THE FOURTH </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER THE FIFTH </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER THE SIXTH </a><br /><br /> <a + href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER THE SEVENTH </a> + </td> + <td> + THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION<br /> <br /> HERESIES; OR THE THINGS + THAT GOD IS NOT<br /> <br /> THE LIKENESS OF GOD<br /> <br /> THE RELIGION + OF ATHEISTS<br /> <br /> THE INVISIBLE KING<br /> <br /> MODERN IDEAS OF + SIN AND DAMNATION<br /> <br /> THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + PREFACE + </h2> + <p> + This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious + belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, + indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in + a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its statements that need + shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the expression of a faith + different from and perhaps in several particulars opposed to his own. The + writer will be found to be sympathetic with all sincere religious feeling. + Nevertheless it is well to prepare the prospective reader for statements + that may jar harshly against deeply rooted mental habits. It is well to + warn him at the outset that the departure from accepted beliefs is here no + vague scepticism, but a quite sharply defined objection to dogmas very + widely revered. Let the writer state the most probable occasion of trouble + forthwith. An issue upon which this book will be found particularly + uncompromising is the dogma of the Trinity. The writer is of opinion that + the Council of Nicaea, which forcibly crystallised the controversies of + two centuries and formulated the creed upon which all the existing + Christian churches are based, was one of the most disastrous and one of + the least venerable of all religious gatherings, and he holds that the + Alexandrine speculations which were then conclusively imposed upon + Christianity merit only disrespectful attention at the present time. There + you have a chief possibility of offence. He is quite unable to pretend any + awe for what he considers the spiritual monstrosities established by that + undignified gathering. He makes no attempt to be obscure or propitiatory + in this connection. He criticises the creeds explicitly and frankly, + because he believes it is particularly necessary to clear them out of the + way of those who are seeking religious consolation at this present time of + exceptional religious need. He does little to conceal his indignation at + the role played by these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing + the religious life of mankind. After this warning such readers from among + the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible to storms of + theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is an ineffable mystery + and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, read on at their own risk. + This is a religious book written by a believer, but so far as their + beliefs and religion go it may seem to them more sceptical and more + antagonistic than blank atheism. That the writer cannot tell. He is not + simply denying their God. He is declaring that there is a living God, + different altogether from that Triune God and nearer to the heart of man. + The spirit of this book is like that of a missionary who would only too + gladly overthrow and smash some Polynesian divinity of shark’s teeth and + painted wood and mother-of-pearl. To the writer such elaborations as + “begotten of the Father before all worlds” are no better than intellectual + shark’s teeth and oyster shells. His purpose, like the purpose of that + missionary, is not primarily to shock and insult; but he is zealous to + liberate, and he is impatient with a reverence that stands between man and + God. He gives this fair warning and proceeds with his matter. + </p> + <p> + His matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is only incidentally and + because it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinal Christianity. + </p> + <p> + In a previous book, “First and Last Things” (Constable and Co.), he has + stated his convictions upon certain general ideas of life and thought as + clearly as he could. All of philosophy, all of metaphysics that is, seems + to him to be a discussion of the relations of class and individual. The + antagonism of the Nominalist and the Realist, the opposition of the One + and the Many, the contrast of the Ideal and the Actual, all these + oppositions express a certain structural and essential duality in the + activity of the human mind. From an imperfect recognition of that duality + ensue great masses of misconception. That was the substance of “First and + Last Things.” In this present book there is no further attack on + philosophical or metaphysical questions. Here we work at a less + fundamental level and deal with religious feeling and religious ideas. But + just as the writer was inclined to attribute a whole world of disputation + and inexactitudes to confused thinking about the exact value of classes + and terms, so here he is disposed to think that interminable controversies + and conflicts arise out of a confusion of intention due to a double + meaning of the word “God”; that the word “God” conveys not one idea or set + of ideas, but several essentially different ideas, incompatible one with + another, and falling mainly into one or other of two divergent groups; and + that people slip carelessly from one to the other of these groups of ideas + and so get into ultimately inextricable confusions. + </p> + <p> + The writer believes that the centuries of fluid religious thought that + preceded the violent ultimate crystallisation of Nicaea, was essentially a + struggle—obscured, of course, by many complexities—to + reconcile and get into a relationship these two separate main series of + God-ideas. + </p> + <p> + Putting the leading idea of this book very roughly, these two antagonistic + typical conceptions of God may be best contrasted by speaking of one of + them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of the other as God-as-Christ or + the Redeemer. One is the great Outward God; the other is the Inmost God. + The first idea was perhaps developed most highly and completely in the God + of Spinoza. It is a conception of God tending to pantheism, to an idea of + a comprehensive God as ruling with justice rather than affection, to a + conception of aloofness and awestriking worshipfulness. The second idea, + which is opposed to this idea of an absolute God, is the God of the human + heart. The writer would suggest that the great outline of the theological + struggles of that phase of civilisation and world unity which produced + Christianity, was a persistent but unsuccessful attempt to get these two + different ideas of God into one focus. It was an attempt to make the God + of Nature accessible and the God of the Heart invincible, to bring the + former into a conception of love and to vest the latter with the beauty of + stars and flowers and the dignity of inexorable justice. There could be no + finer metaphor for such a correlation than Fatherhood and Sonship. But the + trouble is that it seems impossible to most people to continue to regard + the relations of the Father to the Son as being simply a mystical + metaphor. Presently some materialistic bias swings them in a moment of + intellectual carelessness back to the idea of sexual filiation. + </p> + <p> + And it may further be suggested that the extreme aloofness and inhumanity, + which is logically necessary in the idea of a Creator God, of an Infinite + God, was the reason, so to speak, for the invention of a Holy Spirit, as + something proceeding from him, as something bridging the great gulf, a + Comforter, a mediator descending into the sphere of the human + understanding. That, and the suggestive influence of the Egyptian Trinity + that was then being worshipped at the Serapeum, and which had saturated + the thought of Alexandria with the conception of a trinity in unity, are + probably the realities that account for the Third Person of the Christian + Trinity. At any rate the present writer believes that the discussions that + shaped the Christian theology we know were dominated by such natural and + fundamental thoughts. These discussions were, of course, complicated from + the outset; and particularly were they complicated by the identification + of the man Jesus with the theological Christ, by materialistic + expectations of his second coming, by materialistic inventions about his + “miraculous” begetting, and by the morbid speculations about virginity and + the like that arose out of such grossness. They were still further + complicated by the idea of the textual inspiration of the scriptures, + which presently swamped thought in textual interpretation. That swamping + came very early in the development of Christianity. The writer of St. + John’s gospel appears still to be thinking with a considerable freedom, + but Origen is already hopelessly in the net of the texts. The writer of + St. John’s gospel was a free man, but Origen was a superstitious man. He + was emasculated mentally as well as bodily through his bibliolatry. He + quotes; his predecessor thinks. + </p> + <p> + But the writer throws out these guesses at the probable intentions of + early Christian thought in passing. His business here is the definition of + a position. The writer’s position here in this book is, firstly, complete + Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator, and secondly, entire faith + in the matter of God the Redeemer. That, so to speak, is the key of his + book. He cannot bring the two ideas under the same term God. He uses the + word God therefore for the God in our hearts only, and he uses the term + the Veiled Being for the ultimate mysteries of the universe, and he + declares that we do not know and perhaps cannot know in any comprehensible + terms the relation of the Veiled Being to that living reality in our lives + who is, in his terminology, the true God. Speaking from the point of view + of practical religion, he is restricting and defining the word God, as + meaning only the personal God of mankind, he is restricting it so as to + exclude all cosmogony and ideas of providence from our religious thought + and leave nothing but the essentials of the religious life. + </p> + <p> + Many people, whom one would class as rather liberal Christians of an Arian + or Arminian complexion, may find the larger part of this book acceptable + to them if they will read “the Christ God” where the writer has written + “God.” They will then differ from him upon little more than the question + whether there is an essential identity in aim and quality between the + Christ God and the Veiled Being, who answer to their Creator God. This the + orthodox post Nicaean Christians assert, and many pre-Nicaeans and many + heretics (as the Cathars) contradicted with its exact contrary. The + Cathars, Paulicians, Albigenses and so on held, with the Manichaeans, that + the God of Nature, God the Father, was evil. The Christ God was his + antagonist. This was the idea of the poet Shelley. And passing beyond + Christian theology altogether a clue can still be found to many problems + in comparative theology in this distinction between the Being of Nature + (cf. Kant’s “starry vault above”) and the God of the heart (Kant’s “moral + law within”). The idea of an antagonism seems to have been cardinal in the + thought of the Essenes and the Orphic cult and in the Persian dualism. So, + too, Buddhism seems to be “antagonistic.” On the other hand, the Moslem + teaching and modern Judaism seem absolutely to combine and identify the + two; God the creator is altogether and without distinction also God the + King of Mankind. Christianity stands somewhere between such complete + identification and complete antagonism. It admits a difference in attitude + between Father and Son in its distinction between the Old Dispensation (of + the Old Testament) and the New. Every possible change is rung in the great + religions of the world between identification, complete separation, + equality, and disproportion of these Beings; but it will be found that + these two ideas are, so to speak, the basal elements of all theology in + the world. The writer is chary of assertion or denial in these matters. He + believes that they are speculations not at all necessary to salvation. He + believes that men may differ profoundly in their opinions upon these + points and still be in perfect agreement upon the essentials of religion. + The reality of religion he believes deals wholly and exclusively with the + God of the Heart. He declares as his own opinion, and as the opinion which + seems most expressive of modern thought, that there is no reason to + suppose the Veiled Being either benevolent or malignant towards men. But + if the reader believes that God is Almighty and in every way Infinite the + practical outcome is not very different. For the purposes of human + relationship it is impossible to deny that God PRESENTS HIMSELF AS FINITE, + as struggling and taking a part against evil. + </p> + <p> + The writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merely + extraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim in this + book is to give a statement of religion which is no longer entangled in + such speculations and disputes. + </p> + <p> + Let him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, and that + is to remark that except for one incidental passage (in Chapter IV., 1), + nowhere does he discuss the question of personal immortality. [It is + discussed in “First and Last Things,” Book IV, 4.] He omits this question + because he does not consider that it has any more bearing upon the + essentials of religion, than have the theories we may hold about the + relation of God and the moral law to the starry universe. The latter is a + question for the theologian, the former for the psychologist. Whether we + are mortal or immortal, whether the God in our hearts is the Son of or a + rebel against the Universe, the reality of religion, the fact of + salvation, is still our self-identification with God, irrespective of + consequences, and the achievement of his kingdom, in our hearts and in the + world. Whether we live forever or die tomorrow does not affect + righteousness. Many people seem to find the prospect of a final personal + death unendurable. This impresses me as egotism. I have no such appetite + for a separate immortality. God is my immortality; what, of me, is + identified with God, is God; what is not is of no more permanent value + than the snows of yester-year. + </p> + <p> + H. G. W. + </p> + <p> + Dunmow, May, 1917. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE FIRST + </h2> + <h3> + THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION + </h3> + <p> + 1. MODERN RELIGION HAS NO FOUNDER + </p> + <p> + Perhaps all religions, unless the flaming onset of Mohammedanism be an + exception, have dawned imperceptibly upon the world. A little while ago + and the thing was not; and then suddenly it has been found in existence, + and already in a state of diffusion. People have begun to hear of the new + belief first here and then there. It is interesting, for example, to trace + how Christianity drifted into the consciousness of the Roman world. But + when a religion has been interrogated it has always had hitherto a tale of + beginnings, the name and story of a founder. The renascent religion that + is now taking shape, it seems, had no founder; it points to no origins. It + is the Truth, its believers declare; it has always been here; it has + always been visible to those who had eyes to see. It is perhaps plainer + than it was and to more people—that is all. + </p> + <p> + It is as if it still did not realise its own difference. Many of those who + hold it still think of it as if it were a kind of Christianity. Some, + catching at a phrase of Huxley’s, speak of it as Christianity without + Theology. They do not know the creed they are carrying. It has, as a + matter of fact, a very fine and subtle theology, flatly opposed to any + belief that could, except by great stretching of charity and the + imagination, be called Christianity. One might find, perhaps, a + parallelism with the system ascribed to some Gnostics, but that is far + more probably an accidental rather than a sympathetic coincidence. Of that + the reader shall presently have an opportunity of judging. + </p> + <p> + This indefiniteness of statement and relationship is probably only the + opening phase of the new faith. Christianity also began with an extreme + neglect of definition. It was not at first anything more than a sect of + Judaism. It was only after three centuries, amidst the uproar and emotions + of the council of Nicaea, when the more enthusiastic Trinitarians stuffed + their fingers in their ears in affected horror at the arguments of old + Arius, that the cardinal mystery of the Trinity was established as the + essential fact of Christianity. Throughout those three centuries, the + centuries of its greatest achievements and noblest martyrdoms, + Christianity had not defined its God. And even to-day it has to be noted + that a large majority of those who possess and repeat the Christian creeds + have come into the practice so insensibly from unthinking childhood, that + only in the slightest way do they realise the nature of the statements to + which they subscribe. They will speak and think of both Christ and God in + ways flatly incompatible with the doctrine of the Triune deity upon which, + theoretically, the entire fabric of all the churches rests. They will show + themselves as frankly Arians as though that damnable heresy had not been + washed out of the world forever after centuries of persecution in torrents + of blood. But whatever the present state of Christendom in these matters + may be, there can be no doubt of the enormous pains taken in the past to + give Christian beliefs the exactest, least ambiguous statement possible. + Christianity knew itself clearly for what it was in its maturity, whatever + the indecisions of its childhood or the confusions of its decay. The + renascent religion that one finds now, a thing active and sufficient in + many minds, has still scarcely come to self-consciousness. But it is so + coming, and this present book is very largely an attempt to state the + shape it is assuming and to compare it with the beliefs and imperatives + and usages of the various Christian, pseudo-Christian, philosophical, and + agnostic cults amidst which it has appeared. + </p> + <p> + The writer’s sympathies and convictions are entirely with this that he + speaks of as renascent or modern religion; he is neither atheist nor + Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian. He will make no pretence, + therefore, to impartiality and detachment. He will do his best to be as + fair as possible and as candid as possible, but the reader must reckon + with this bias. He has found this faith growing up in himself; he has + found it, or something very difficult to distinguish from it, growing + independently in the minds of men and women he has met. They have been + people of very various origins; English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians, + French, people brought up in a “Catholic atmosphere,” Positivists, + Baptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans. Their diversity of source is as remarkable + as their convergence of tendency. A miscellany of minds thinking upon + parallel lines has come out to the same light. The new teaching is also + traceable in many professedly Christian religious books and it is to be + heard from Christian pulpits. The phase of definition is manifestly at + hand. + </p> + <p> + 2. MODERN RELIGION HAS A FINITE GOD + </p> + <p> + Perhaps the most fundamental difference between this new faith and any + recognised form of Christianity is that, knowingly or unknowingly, it + worships A FINITE GOD. Directly the believer is fairly confronted with the + plain questions of the case, the vague identifications that are still + carelessly made with one or all of the persons of the Trinity dissolve + away. He will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor all-powerful, + nor omnipresent; that he is neither the maker of heaven nor earth, and + that he has little to identify him with that hereditary God of the Jews + who became the “Father” in the Christian system. On the other hand he will + assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is a spirit, a person, + a strongly marked and knowable personality, loving, inspiring, and + lovable, who exists or strives to exist in every human soul. He will be + much less certain in his denials that his God has a close resemblance to + the Pauline (as distinguished from the Trinitarian) “Christ.” . . . + </p> + <p> + The modern religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of + universalism; he will assert that whensoever men have called upon any God + and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense of God + within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the religious + experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the True God is a + generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of that bickering + monopolist who “will have none other gods but Me”; and when a human heart + cries out—to what name it matters not—for a larger spirit and + a stronger help than the visible things of life can give, straightway the + nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man answers to the call. The + True God has no scorn nor hate for those who have accepted the many-handed + symbols of the Hindu or the lacquered idols of China. Where there is + faith, where there is need, there is the True God ready to clasp the hands + that stretch out seeking for him into the darkness behind the ivory and + gold. + </p> + <p> + The fact that God is FINITE is one upon which those who think clearly + among the new believers are very insistent. He is, above everything else, + a personality, and to be a personality is to have characteristics, to be + limited by characteristics; he is a Being, not us but dealing with us and + through us, he has an aim and that means he has a past and future; he is + within time and not outside it. And they point out that this is really + what everyone who prays sincerely to God or gets help from God, feels and + believes. Our practice with God is better than our theory. None of us + really pray to that fantastic, unqualified danse a trois, the Trinity, + which the wranglings and disputes of the worthies of Alexandria and Syria + declared to be God. We pray to one single understanding person. But so far + the tactics of those Trinitarians at Nicaea, who stuck their fingers in + their ears, have prevailed in this world; this was no matter for + discussion, they declared, it was a Holy Mystery full of magical terror, + and few religious people have thought it worth while to revive these + terrors by a definite contradiction. The truly religious have been content + to lapse quietly into the comparative sanity of an unformulated Arianism, + they have left it to the scoffing Atheist to mock at the patent + absurdities of the official creed. But one magnificent protest against + this theological fantasy must have been the work of a sincerely religious + man, the cold superb humour of that burlesque creed, ascribed, at first no + doubt facetiously and then quite seriously, to Saint Athanasius the Great, + which, by an irony far beyond its original intention, has become at last + the accepted creed of the church. + </p> + <p> + The long truce in the criticism of Trinitarian theology is drawing to its + end. It is when men most urgently need God that they become least patient + with foolish presentations and dogmas. The new believers are very + definitely set upon a thorough analysis of the nature and growth of the + Christian creeds and ideas. There has grown up a practice of assuming + that, when God is spoken of, the Hebrew-Christian God of Nicaea is meant. + But that God trails with him a thousand misconceptions and bad + associations; his alleged infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange + preferences, his vindictive Old Testament past. These things do not even + make a caricature of the True God; they compose an altogether different + and antagonistic figure. + </p> + <p> + It is a very childish and unphilosophical set of impulses that has led the + theologians of nearly every faith to claim infinite qualities for their + deity. One has to remember the poorness of the mental and moral quality of + the churchmen of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries who saddled + Christendom with its characteristic dogmas, and the extreme poverty and + confusion of the circle of ideas within which they thought. Many of these + makers of Christianity, like Saint Ambrose of Milan (who had even to be + baptised after his election to his bishopric), had been pitchforked into + the church from civil life; they lived in a time of pitiless factions and + personal feuds; they had to conduct their disputations amidst the + struggles of would-be emperors; court eunuchs and favourites swayed their + counsels, and popular rioting clinched their decisions. There was less + freedom of discussion then in the Christian world than there is at present + (1916) in Belgium, and the whole audience of educated opinion by which a + theory could be judged did not equal, either in numbers or accuracy of + information, the present population of Constantinople. To these conditions + we owe the claim that the Christian God is a magic god, very great + medicine in battle, “in hoc signo vinces,” and the argument so natural to + the minds of those days and so absurd to ours, that since he had ALL + power, all knowledge, and existed for ever and ever, it was no use + whatever to set up any other god against him. . . . + </p> + <p> + By the fifth century Christianity had adopted as its fundamental belief, + without which everyone was to be “damned everlastingly,” a conception of + God and of Christ’s relation to God, of which even by the Christian + account of his teaching, Jesus was either totally unaware or so negligent + and careless of the future comfort of his disciples as scarcely to make + mention. The doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the relationship of the + Third Person goes, hangs almost entirely upon one ambiguous and disputed + utterance in St. John’s gospel (XV. 26). Most of the teachings of + Christian orthodoxy resolve themselves to the attentive student into + assertions of the nature of contradiction and repartee. Someone floats an + opinion in some matter that has been hitherto vague, in regard, for + example, to the sonship of Christ or to the method of his birth. The new + opinion arouses the hostility and alarm of minds unaccustomed to so + definite a statement, and in the zeal of their recoil they fly to a + contrary proposition. The Christians would neither admit that they + worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor deny the divinity + of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be polytheistic; equally + did they dread the least apparent detraction from the power and importance + of their Saviour. They were forced into the theory of the Trinity by the + necessity of those contrary assertions, and they had to make it a mystery + protected by curses to save it from a reductio ad absurdam. The entire + history of the growth of the Christian doctrine in those disordered early + centuries is a history of theology by committee; a history of furious + wrangling, of hasty compromises, and still more hasty attempts to clinch + matters by anathema. When the muddle was at its very worst, the church was + confronted by enormous political opportunities. In order that it should + seize these one chief thing appeared imperative: doctrinal uniformity. The + emperor himself, albeit unbaptised and very ignorant of Greek, came and + seated himself in the midst of Christian thought upon a golden throne. At + the end of it all Eusebius, that supreme Trimmer, was prepared to damn + everlastingly all those who doubted that consubstantiality he himself had + doubted at the beginning of the conference. It is quite clear that + Constantine did not care who was damned or for what period, so long as the + Christians ceased to wrangle among themselves. The practical unanimity of + Nicaea was secured by threats, and then, turning upon the victors, he + sought by threats to restore Arius to communion. The imperial aim was a + common faith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the Arians and of + the Paulicians and suchlike heretics, and more particularly the systematic + destruction by the orthodox of all heretical writings, had about it none + of that quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a real + knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left to work + themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist of + Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the + sword of the executioner and the fires of the book-burner were added to + the weapon of the human voice. Priscillian was the first human sacrifice + formally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory + of the reinforced Trinity. Thereafter the blood of the heretics was the + cement of Christian unity. + </p> + <p> + It is with these things in mind that those who profess the new faith are + becoming so markedly anxious to distinguish God from the Trinitarian’s + deity. At present if anyone who has left the Christian communion declares + himself a believer in God, priest and parson swell with self-complacency. + There is no reason why they should do so. That many of us have gone from + them and found God is no concern of theirs. It is not that we who went out + into the wilderness which we thought to be a desert, away from their + creeds and dogmas, have turned back and are returning. It is that we have + gone on still further, and are beyond that desolation. Never more shall we + return to those who gather under the cross. By faith we disbelieved and + denied. By faith we said of that stuffed scarecrow of divinity, that + incoherent accumulation of antique theological notions, the Nicene deity, + “This is certainly no God.” And by faith we have found God. . . . + </p> + <p> + 3. THE INFINITE BEING IS NOT GOD + </p> + <p> + There has always been a demand upon the theological teacher that he should + supply a cosmogony. It has always been an effective propagandist thing to + say: “OUR God made the whole universe. Don’t you think that it would be + wise to abandon YOUR deity, who did not, as you admit, do anything of the + sort?” + </p> + <p> + The attentive reader of the lives of the Saints will find that this style + of argument did in the past bring many tribes and nations into the + Christian fold. It was second only to the claim of magic advantages, + demonstrated by a free use of miracles. Only one great religious system, + the Buddhist, seems to have resisted the temptation to secure for its + divinity the honour and title of Creator. Modern religion is like Buddhism + in that respect. It offers no theory whatever about the origin of the + universe. It does not reach behind the appearances of space and time. It + sees only a featureless presumption in that playing with superlatives + which has entertained so many minds from Plotinus to the Hegelians with + the delusion that such negative terms as the Absolute or the + Unconditioned, can assert anything at all. At the back of all known things + there is an impenetrable curtain; the ultimate of existence is a Veiled + Being, which seems to know nothing of life or death or good or ill. Of + that Being, whether it is simple or complex or divine, we know nothing; to + us it is no more than the limit of understanding, the unknown beyond. It + may be of practically limitless intricacy and possibility. The new + religion does not pretend that the God of its life is that Being, or that + he has any relation of control or association with that Being. It does not + even assert that God knows all or much more than we do about that ultimate + Being. + </p> + <p> + For us life is a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human + analysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being + reveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms of + consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the ether. Some day + in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an understanding of + relationship, a power and courage that will pierce into those black + wrappings. To that it may be our God, the Captain of Mankind will take us. + </p> + <p> + That now is a mere speculation. The veil of the unknown is set with the + stars; its outer texture is ether and atom and crystal. The Veiled Being, + enigmatical and incomprehensible, broods over the mirror upon which the + busy shapes of life are moving. It is as if it waited in a great + stillness. Our lives do not deal with it, and cannot deal with it. It may + be that they may never be able to deal with it. + </p> + <p> + 4. THE LIFE FORCE IS NOT GOD + </p> + <p> + So it is that comprehensive setting of the universe presents itself to the + modern mind. It is altogether outside good and evil and love and hate. It + is outside God, who is love and goodness. And coming out of this veiled + being, proceeding out of it in a manner altogether inconceivable, is + another lesser being, an impulse thrusting through matter and clothing + itself in continually changing material forms, the maker of our world, + Life, the Will to Be. It comes out of that inscrutable being as a wave + comes rolling to us from beyond the horizon. It is as it were a great wave + rushing through matter and possessed by a spirit. It is a breeding, + fighting thing; it pants through the jungle track as the tiger and lifts + itself towards heaven as the tree; it is the rabbit bolting for its life + and the dove calling to her mate; it crawls, it flies, it dives, it lusts + and devours, it pursues and eats itself in order to live still more + eagerly and hastily; it is every living thing, of it are our passions and + desires and fears. And it is aware of itself not as a whole, but + dispersedly as individual self-consciousness, starting out dispersedly + from every one of the sentient creatures it has called into being. They + look out for their little moments, red-eyed and fierce, full of greed, + full of the passions of acquisition and assimilation and reproduction, + submitting only to brief fellowships of defence or aggression. They are + beings of strain and conflict and competition. They are living substance + still mingled painfully with the dust. The forms in which this being + clothes itself bear thorns and fangs and claws, are soaked with poison and + bright with threats or allurements, prey slyly or openly on one another, + hold their own for a little while, breed savagely and resentfully, and + pass. . . . + </p> + <p> + This second Being men have called the Life Force, the Will to Live, the + Struggle for Existence. They have figured it too as Mother Nature. We may + speculate whether it is not what the wiser among the Gnostics meant by the + Demiurge, but since the Christians destroyed all the Gnostic books that + must remain a mere curious guess. We may speculate whether this heat and + haste and wrath of life about us is the Dark God of the Manichees, the + evil spirit of the sun worshippers. But in contemporary thought there is + no conviction apparent that this Demiurge is either good or evil; it is + conceived of as both good and evil. If it gives all the pain and conflict + of life, it gives also the joy of the sunshine, the delight and hope of + youth, the pleasures. If it has elaborated a hundred thousand sorts of + parasite, it has also moulded the beautiful limbs of man and woman; it has + shaped the slug and the flower. And in it, as part of it, taking its + rewards, responding to its goads, struggling against the final abandonment + to death, do we all live, as the beasts live, glad, angry, sorry, + revengeful, hopeful, weary, disgusted, forgetful, lustful, happy, excited, + bored, in pain, mood after mood but always fearing death, with no + certainty and no coherence within us, until we find God. And God comes to + us neither out of the stars nor out of the pride of life, but as a still + small voice within. + </p> + <p> + 5. GOD IS WITHIN + </p> + <p> + God comes we know not whence, into the conflict of life. He works in men + and through men. He is a spirit, a single spirit and a single person; he + has begun and he will never end. He is the immortal part and leader of + mankind. He has motives, he has characteristics, he has an aim. He is by + our poor scales of measurement boundless love, boundless courage, + boundless generosity. He is thought and a steadfast will. He is our friend + and brother and the light of the world. That briefly is the belief of the + modern mind with regard to God. There is no very novel idea about this + God, unless it be the idea that he had a beginning. This is the God that + men have sought and found in all ages, as God or as the Messiah or the + Saviour. The finding of him is salvation from the purposelessness of life. + The new religion has but disentangled the idea of him from the absolutes + and infinities and mysteries of the Christian theologians; from + mythological virgin births and the cosmogonies and intellectual + pretentiousness of a vanished age. + </p> + <p> + Modern religion appeals to no revelation, no authoritative teaching, no + mystery. The statement it makes is, it declares, a mere statement of what + we may all perceive and experience. We all live in the storm of life, we + all find our understandings limited by the Veiled Being; if we seek + salvation and search within for God, presently we find him. All this is in + the nature of things. If every one who perceives and states it were to be + instantly killed and blotted out, presently other people would find their + way to the same conclusions; and so on again and again. To this all true + religion, casting aside its hulls of misconception, must ultimately come. + To it indeed much religion is already coming. Christian thought struggles + towards it, with the millstones of Syrian theology and an outrageous + mythology of incarnation and resurrection about its neck. When at last our + present bench of bishops join the early fathers of the church in heaven + there will be, I fear, a note of reproach in their greeting of the + ingenious person who saddled them with OMNIPOTENS. Still more disastrous + for them has been the virgin birth, with the terrible fascination of its + detail for unpoetic minds. How rich is the literature of authoritative + Christianity with decisions upon the continuing virginity of Mary and the + virginity of Joseph—ideas that first arose in Arabia as a Moslem + gloss upon Christianity—and how little have these peepings and + pryings to do with the needs of the heart and the finding of God! + </p> + <p> + Within the last few years there have been a score or so of such volumes as + that recently compiled by Dr. Foakes Jackson, entitled “The Faith and the + War,” a volume in which the curious reader may contemplate deans and + canons, divines and church dignitaries, men intelligent and enquiring and + religiously disposed, all lying like overladen camels, panting under this + load of obsolete theological responsibility, groaning great articles, + outside the needle’s eye that leads to God. + </p> + <p> + 6. THE COMING OF GOD + </p> + <p> + Modern religion bases its knowledge of God and its account of God entirely + upon experience. It has encountered God. It does not argue about God; it + relates. It relates without any of those wrappings of awe and reverence + that fold so necessarily about imposture, it relates as one tells of a + friend and his assistance, of a happy adventure, of a beautiful thing + found and picked up by the wayside. + </p> + <p> + So far as its psychological phases go the new account of personal + salvation tallies very closely with the account of “conversion” as it is + given by other religions. It has little to tell that is not already + familiar to the reader of William James’s “Varieties of Religious + Experience.” It describes an initial state of distress with the + aimlessness and cruelties of life, and particularly with the futility of + the individual life, a state of helpless self-disgust, of inability to + form any satisfactory plan of living. This is the common prelude known to + many sorts of Christian as “conviction of sin”; it is, at any rate, a + conviction of hopeless confusion. . . . Then in some way the idea of God + comes into the distressed mind, at first simply as an idea, without + substance or belief. It is read about or it is remembered; it is expounded + by some teacher or some happy convert. In the case of all those of the new + faith with whose personal experience I have any intimacy, the idea of God + has remained for some time simply as an idea floating about in a mind + still dissatisfied. God is not believed in, but it is realised that if + there were such a being he would supply the needed consolation and + direction, his continuing purpose would knit together the scattered effort + of life, his immortality would take the sting from death. Under this + realisation the idea is pursued and elaborated. For a time there is a + curious resistance to the suggestion that God is truly a person; he is + spoken of preferably by such phrases as the Purpose in Things, as the + Racial Consciousness, as the Collective Mind. + </p> + <p> + I believe that this resistance in so many contemporary minds to the idea + of God as a person is due very largely to the enormous prejudice against + divine personality created by the absurdities of the Christian teaching + and the habitual monopoly of the Christian idea. The picture of Christ as + the Good Shepherd thrusts itself before minds unaccustomed to the idea + that they are lambs. The cross in the twilight bars the way. It is a + novelty and an enormous relief to such people to realise that one may + think of God without being committed to think of either the Father, the + Son, or the Holy Ghost, or of all of them at once. That freedom had not + seemed possible to them. They had been hypnotised and obsessed by the idea + that the Christian God is the only thinkable God. They had heard so much + about that God and so little of any other. With that release their minds + become, as it were, nascent and ready for the coming of God. + </p> + <p> + Then suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. This + cardinal experience is an undoubting, immediate sense of God. It is the + attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself. It + is as if one was touched at every point by a being akin to oneself, + sympathetic, beyond measure wiser, steadfast and pure in aim. It is + completer and more intimate, but it is like standing side by side with and + touching someone that we love very dearly and trust completely. It is as + if this being bridged a thousand misunderstandings and brought us into + fellowship with a great multitude of other people. . . . + </p> + <p> + “Closer he is than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” + </p> + <p> + The moment may come while we are alone in the darkness, under the stars, + or while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and muse. It + may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There is no + saying when it may not come to us. . . . But after it has come our lives + are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of God. Thereafter + one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has found a lover, + like one who was perplexed and has found a solution. One is assured that + there is a Power that fights with us against the confusion and evil within + us and without. There comes into the heart an essential and enduring + happiness and courage. + </p> + <p> + There is but one God, there is but one true religious experience, but + under a multitude of names, under veils and darknesses, God has in this + manner come into countless lives. There is scarcely a faith, however mean + and preposterous, that has not been a way to holiness. God who is himself + finite, who himself struggles in his great effort from strength to + strength, has no spite against error. Far beyond halfway he hastens to + meet the purblind. But God is against the darkness in their eyes. The + faith which is returning to men girds at veils and shadows, and would see + God plainly. It has little respect for mysteries. It rends the veil of the + temple in rags and tatters. It has no superstitious fear of this huge + friendliness, of this great brother and leader of our little beings. To + find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all our days we + have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with him. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE SECOND + </h2> + <h3> + HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT + </h3> + <p> + 1. HERESIES ARE MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOD + </p> + <p> + Religion is not a plant that has grown from one seed; it is like a lake + that has been fed by countless springs. It is a great pool of living + water, mingled from many sources and tainted with much impurity. It is + synthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from original complexities; + the sediment subsides. + </p> + <p> + A life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without mentality; + no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance of the + instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss, or nirvana. + It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is discord evoking the + will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At every need consciousness + breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments, needs, are the rents and tatters + in the smooth dark veil of being through which the light of consciousness + shines—the light of consciousness and will of which God is the sun. + </p> + <p> + So that every need of human life, every disappointment and dissatisfaction + and call for help and effort, is a means whereby men may and do come to + the realisation of God. + </p> + <p> + There is no cardinal need, there is no sort of experience in human life + from which there does not come or has not come a contribution to men’s + religious ideas. At every challenge men have to put forth effort, feel + doubt of adequacy, be thwarted, perceive the chill shadow of their + mortality. At every challenge comes the possibility of help from without, + the idea of eluding frustration, the aspiration towards immortality. It is + possible to classify the appeals men make for God under the headings of + their chief system of effort, their efforts to understand, their fear and + their struggles for safety and happiness, the craving of their + restlessness for peace, their angers against disorder and their desire for + the avenger; their sexual passions and perplexities. . . . + </p> + <p> + Each of these great systems of needs and efforts brings its own sort of + sediment into religion. Each, that is to say, has its own kind of heresy, + its distinctive misapprehension of God. It is only in the synthesis and + mutual correction of many divergent ideas that the idea of God grows + clear. The effort to understand completely, for example, leads to the + endless Heresies of Theory. Men trip over the inherent infirmities of the + human mind. But in these days one does not argue greatly about dogma. + Almost every conceivable error about unity, about personality, about time + and quantity and genus and species, about begetting and beginning and + limitation and similarity and every kink in the difficult mind of man, has + been thrust forward in some form of dogma. Beside the errors of thought + are the errors of emotion. Fear and feebleness go straight to the Heresies + that God is Magic or that God is Providence; restless egotism at leisure + and unchallenged by urgent elementary realities breeds the Heresies of + Mysticism, anger and hate call for God’s Judgments, and the stormy + emotions of sex gave mankind the Phallic God. Those who find themselves + possessed by the new spirit in religion, realise very speedily the + necessity of clearing the mind of all these exaggerations, transferences, + and overflows of feeling. The search for divine truth is like gold + washing; nothing is of any value until most has been swept away. + </p> + <p> + 2. HERESIES OF SPECULATION + </p> + <p> + One sort of heresies stands apart from the rest. It is infinitely the most + various sort. It includes all those heresies which result from + wrong-headed mental elaboration, as distinguished from those which are the + result of hasty and imperfect apprehension, the heresies of the clever + rather than the heresies of the obtuse. The former are of endless variety + and complexity; the latter are in comparison natural, simple confusions. + The former are the errors of the study, the latter the superstitions that + spring by the wayside, or are brought down to us in our social structure + out of a barbaric past. + </p> + <p> + To the heresies of thought and speculation belong the elaborate doctrine + of the Trinity, dogmas about God’s absolute qualities, such odd deductions + as the accepted Christian teachings about the virginity of Mary and + Joseph, and the like. All these things are parts of orthodox Christianity. + Yet none of them did Christ, even by the Christian account, expound or + recommend. He treated them as negligible. It was left for the + Alexandrians, for Alexander, for little, red-haired, busy, wire-pulling + Athanasius to find out exactly what their Master was driving at, three + centuries after their Master was dead. . . . + </p> + <p> + Men still sit at little desks remote from God or life, and rack their + inadequate brains to meet fancied difficulties and state unnecessary + perfections. They seek God by logic, ignoring the marginal error that + creeps into every syllogism. Their conceit blinds them to the limitations + upon their thinking. They weave spider-like webs of muddle and disputation + across the path by which men come to God. It would not matter very much if + it were not that simpler souls are caught in these webs. Every great + religious system in the world is choked by such webs; each system has its + own. Of all the blood-stained tangled heresies which make up doctrinal + Christianity and imprison the mind of the western world to-day, not one + seems to have been known to the nominal founder of Christianity. Jesus + Christ never certainly claimed to be the Messiah; never spoke clearly of + the Trinity; was vague upon the scheme of salvation and the significance + of his martyrdom. We are asked to suppose that he left his apostles + without instructions, that were necessary to their eternal happiness, that + he could give them the Lord’s Prayer but leave them to guess at the + all-important Creed,* and that the Church staggered along blindly, putting + its foot in and out of damnation, until the “experts” of Nicaea, that + “garland of priests,” marshalled by Constantine’s officials, came to its + rescue. . . . From the conversion of Paul onward, the heresies of the + intellect multiplied about Christ’s memory and hid him from the sight of + men. We are no longer clear about the doctrine he taught nor about the + things he said and did. . . . + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Even the “Apostles’ Creed” is not traceable earlier than + the fourth century. It is manifestly an old, patched + formulary. Rutinius explains that it was not written down + for a long time, but transmitted orally, kept secret, and + used as a sort of password among the elect. +</pre> + <p> + We are all so weary of this theology of the Christians, we are all at + heart so sceptical about their Triune God, that it is needless here to + spend any time or space upon the twenty thousand different formulae in + which the orthodox have attempted to believe in something of the sort. + There are several useful encyclopaedias of sects and heresies, compact, + but still bulky, to which the curious may go. There are ten thousand + different expositions of orthodoxy. No one who really seeks God thinks of + the Trinity, either the Trinity of the Trinitarian or the Trinity of the + Sabellian or the Trinity of the Arian, any more than one thinks of those + theories made stone, those gods with three heads and seven hands, who sit + on lotus leaves and flourish lingams and what not, in the temples of + India. Let us leave, therefore, these morbid elaborations of the human + intelligence to drift to limbo, and come rather to the natural heresies + that spring from fundamental weaknesses of the human character, and which + are common to all religions. Against these it is necessary to keep + constant watch. They return very insidiously. + </p> + <p> + 3. GOD IS NOT MAGIC + </p> + <p> + One of the most universal of these natural misconceptions of God is to + consider him as something magic serving the ends of men. + </p> + <p> + It is not easy for us to grasp at first the full meaning of giving our + souls to God. The missionary and teacher of any creed is all too apt to + hawk God for what he will fetch; he is greedy for the poor triumph of + acquiescence; and so it comes about that many people who have been led to + believe themselves religious, are in reality still keeping back their own + souls and trying to use God for their own purposes. God is nothing more + for them as yet than a magnificent Fetish. They did not really want him, + but they have heard that he is potent stuff; their unripe souls think to + make use of him. They call upon his name, they do certain things that are + supposed to be peculiarly influential with him, such as saying prayers and + repeating gross praises of him, or reading in a blind, industrious way + that strange miscellany of Jewish and early Christian literature, the + Bible, and suchlike mental mortification, or making the Sabbath dull and + uncomfortable. In return for these fetishistic propitiations God is + supposed to interfere with the normal course of causation in their favour. + He becomes a celestial log-roller. He remedies unfavourable accidents, + cures petty ailments, contrives unexpected gifts of medicine, money, or + the like, he averts bankruptcies, arranges profitable transactions, and + does a thousand such services for his little clique of faithful people. + The pious are represented as being constantly delighted by these little + surprises, these bouquets and chocolate boxes from the divinity. Or + contrawise he contrives spiteful turns for those who fail in their + religious attentions. He murders Sabbath-breaking children, or + disorganises the careful business schemes of the ungodly. He is + represented as going Sabbath-breakering on Sunday morning as a + Staffordshire worker goes ratting. Ordinary everyday Christianity is + saturated with this fetishistic conception of God. It may be disowned in + THE HIBBERT JOURNAL, but it is unblushingly advocated in the parish + magazine. It is an idea taken over by Christianity with the rest of the + qualities of the Hebrew God. It is natural enough in minds so self-centred + that their recognition of weakness and need brings with it no real + self-surrender, but it is entirely inconsistent with the modern conception + of the true God. + </p> + <p> + There has dropped upon the table as I write a modest periodical called THE + NORTHERN BRITISH ISRAEL REVIEW, illustrated with portraits of various + clergymen of the Church of England, and of ladies and gentlemen who belong + to the little school of thought which this magazine represents; it is, I + should judge, a sub-sect entirely within the Established Church of + England, that is to say within the Anglican communion of the Trinitarian + Christians. It contains among other papers a very entertaining summary by + a gentleman entitled—I cite the unusual title-page of the periodical—“Landseer + Mackenzie, Esq.,” of the views of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Obadiah upon the + Kaiser William. They are distinctly hostile views. Mr. Landseer Mackenzie + discourses not only upon these anticipatory condemnations but also upon + the relations of the weather to this war. He is convinced quite simply and + honestly that God has been persistently rigging the weather against the + Germans. He points out that the absence of mist on the North Sea was of + great help to the British in the autumn of 1914, and declares that it was + the wet state of the country that really held up the Germans in Flanders + in the winter of 1914-15. He ignores the part played by the weather in + delaying the relief of Kut-el-Amara, and he has not thought of the + difficult question why the Deity, having once decided upon intervention, + did not, instead of this comparatively trivial meteorological assistance, + adopt the more effective course of, for example, exploding or spoiling the + German stores of ammunition by some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting + their gunfire by a sudden local modification of the laws of refraction or + gravitation. + </p> + <p> + Since these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only conclude + that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible in the + established church, and that I am charging orthodox Christianity here with + nothing that has ever been officially repudiated. I find indeed the + essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer Mackenzie repeated in endless + official Christian utterances on the part of German and British and + Russian divines. The Bishop of Chelmsford, for example, has recently + ascribed our difficulties in the war to our impatience with long sermons—among + other similar causes. Such Christians are manifestly convinced that God + can be invoked by ritual—for example by special days of national + prayer or an increased observance of Sunday—or made malignant by + neglect or levity. It is almost fundamental in their idea of him. The + ordinary Mohammedan seems as confident of this magic pettiness of God, and + the belief of China in the magic propitiations and resentments of “Heaven” + is at least equally strong. + </p> + <p> + But the true God as those of the new religion know him is no such God of + luck and intervention. He is not to serve men’s ends or the ends of + nations or associations of men; he is careless of our ceremonies and + invocations. He does not lose his temper with our follies and weaknesses. + It is for us to serve Him. He captains us, he does not coddle us. He has + his own ends for which he needs us. . . . + </p> + <p> + 4. GOD IS NOT PROVIDENCE + </p> + <p> + Closely related to this heresy that God is magic, is the heresy that calls + him Providence, that declares the apparent adequacy of cause and effect to + be a sham, and that all the time, incalculably, he is pulling about the + order of events for our personal advantages. + </p> + <p> + The idea of Providence was very gaily travested by Daudet in “Tartarin in + the Alps.” You will remember how Tartarin’s friend assured him that all + Switzerland was one great Trust, intent upon attracting tourists and far + too wise and kind to permit them to venture into real danger, that all the + precipices were netted invisibly, and all the loose rocks guarded against + falling, that avalanches were prearranged spectacles and the crevasses at + their worst slippery ways down into kindly catchment bags. If the + mountaineer tried to get into real danger he was turned back by specious + excuses. Inspired by this persuasion Tartarin behaved with incredible + daring. . . . That is exactly the Providence theory of the whole world. + There can be no doubt that it does enable many a timid soul to get through + life with a certain recklessness. And provided there is no slip into a + crevasse, the Providence theory works well. It would work altogether well + if there were no crevasses. + </p> + <p> + Tartarin was reckless because of his faith in Providence, and escaped. But + what would have happened to him if he had fallen into a crevasse? + </p> + <p> + There exists a very touching and remarkable book by Sir Francis + Younghusband called “Within.” [Williams and Norgate, 1912.] It is the + confession of a man who lived with a complete confidence in Providence + until he was already well advanced in years. He went through battles and + campaigns, he filled positions of great honour and responsibility, he saw + much of the life of men, without altogether losing his faith. The loss of + a child, an Indian famine, could shake it but not overthrow it. Then + coming back one day from some races in France, he was knocked down by an + automobile and hurt very cruelly. He suffered terribly in body and mind. + His sufferings caused much suffering to others. He did his utmost to see + the hand of a loving Providence in his and their disaster and the torment + it inflicted, and being a man of sterling honesty and a fine essential + simplicity of mind, he confessed at last that he could not do so. His + confidence in the benevolent intervention of God was altogether destroyed. + His book tells of this shattering, and how labouriously he reconstructed + his religion upon less confident lines. It is a book typical of an age and + of a very English sort of mind, a book well worth reading. + </p> + <p> + That he came to a full sense of the true God cannot be asserted, but how + near he came to God, let one quotation witness. + </p> + <p> + “The existence of an outside Providence,” he writes, “who created us, who + watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful Father, we have + found impossible longer to believe in. But of the existence of a Holy + Spirit radiating upward through all animate beings, and finding its + fullest expression, in man in love, and in the flowers in beauty, we can + be as certain as of anything in the world. This fiery spiritual impulsion + at the centre and the source of things, ever burning in us, is the + supremely important factor in our existence. It does not always attain to + light. In many directions it fails; the conditions are too hard and it is + utterly blocked. In others it only partially succeeds. But in a few it + bursts forth into radiant light. There are few who in some heavenly moment + of their lives have not been conscious of its presence. We may not be able + to give it outward expression, but we know that it is there.” . . . + </p> + <p> + God does not guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess restraining and + correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would fly into the air, there + is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly for you or keep an ill-tended + engine going; if you would cross a glacier, no God nor angel guides your + steps amidst the slippery places. He will not even mind your innocent + children for you if you leave them before an unguarded fire. Cherish no + delusions; for yourself and others you challenge danger and chance on your + own strength; no talisman, no God, can help you or those you care for. + Nothing of such things will God do; it is an idle dream. But God will be + with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane or the dark ice-cave God + will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed, it is not an end. + He will be with you as you face death; he will die with you as he has died + already countless myriads of brave deaths. He will come so close to you + that at the last you will not know whether it is you or he who dies, and + the present death will be swallowed up in his victory. + </p> + <p> + 5. THE HERESY OF QUIETISM + </p> + <p> + God comes to us within and takes us for his own. He releases us from + ourselves; he incorporates us with his own undying experience and + adventure; he receives us and gives himself. He is a stimulant; he makes + us live immortally and more abundantly. I have compared him to the + sensation of a dear, strong friend who comes and stands quietly beside + one, shoulder to shoulder. + </p> + <p> + The finding of God is the beginning of service. It is not an escape from + life and action; it is the release of life and action from the prison of + the mortal self. Not to realise that, is the heresy of Quietism, of many + mystics. Commonly such people are people of some wealth, able to command + services for all their everyday needs. They make religion a method of + indolence. They turn their backs on the toil and stresses of existence and + give themselves up to a delicious reverie in which they flirt with the + divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how + ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed the + true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a + spiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose. The + true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling + for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must accept his + discipline and fight his battle. The peace of God comes not by thinking + about it but by forgetting oneself in him. + </p> + <p> + 6. GOD DOES NOT PUNISH + </p> + <p> + Man is a social animal, and there is in him a great faculty for moral + indignation. Many of the early Gods were mainly Gods of Fear. They were + more often “wrath” than not. Such was the temperament of the Semitic deity + who, as the Hebrew Jehovah, proliferated, perhaps under the influence of + the Alexandrian Serapeum, into the Christian Trinity and who became also + the Moslem God.* The natural hatred of unregenerate men against everything + that is unlike themselves, against strange people and cheerful people, + against unfamiliar usages and things they do not understand, embodied + itself in this conception of a malignant and partisan Deity, perpetually + “upset” by the little things people did, and contriving murder and + vengeance. Now this God would be drowning everybody in the world, now he + would be burning Sodom and Gomorrah, now he would be inciting his + congenial Israelites to the most terrific pogroms. This divine + “frightfulness” is of course the natural human dislike and distrust for + queer practices or for too sunny a carelessness, a dislike reinforced by + the latent fierceness of the ape in us, liberating the latent fierceness + of the ape in us, giving it an excuse and pressing permission upon it, + handing the thing hated and feared over to its secular arm. . . . + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * It is not so generally understood as it should be among + English and American readers that a very large proportion of + early Christians before the creeds established and + regularised the doctrine of the Trinity, denied absolutely + that Jehovah was God; they regarded Christ as a rebel + against Jehovah and a rescuer of humanity from him, just as + Prometheus was a rebel against Jove. These beliefs survived + for a thousand years throughout Christendom: they were held + by a great multitude of persecuted sects, from the + Albigenses and Cathars to the eastern Paulicians. The + catholic church found it necessary to prohibit the + circulation of the Old Testament among laymen very largely + on account of the polemics of the Cathars against the Hebrew + God. But in this book, be it noted, the word Christian, + when it is not otherwise defined, is used to indicate only + the Trinitarians who accept the official creeds. +</pre> + <p> + It is a human paradox that the desire for seemliness, the instinct for + restraints and fair disciplines, and the impulse to cherish sweet familiar + things, that these things of the True God should so readily liberate + cruelty and tyranny. It is like a woman going with a light to tend and + protect her sleeping child, and setting the house on fire. None the less, + right down to to-day, the heresy of God the Revengeful, God the Persecutor + and Avenger, haunts religion. It is only in quite recent years that the + growing gentleness of everyday life has begun to make men a little ashamed + of a Deity less tolerant and gentle than themselves. The recent literature + of the Anglicans abounds in the evidence of this trouble. + </p> + <p> + Bishop Colenso of Natal was prosecuted and condemned in 1863 for denying + the irascibility of his God and teaching “the Kaffirs of Natal” the + dangerous heresy that God is all mercy. “We cannot allow it to be said,” + the Dean of Cape Town insisted, “that God was not angry and was not + appeased by punishment.” He was angry “on account of Sin, which is a great + evil and a great insult to His Majesty.” The case of the Rev. Charles + Voysey, which occurred in 1870, was a second assertion of the Church’s + insistence upon the fierceness of her God. This case is not to be found in + the ordinary church histories nor is it even mentioned in the latest + edition of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; nevertheless it appears to have + been a very illuminating case. It is doubtful if the church would + prosecute or condemn either Bishop Colenso or Mr. Voysey to-day. + </p> + <p> + 7. GOD AND THE NURSERY-MAID + </p> + <p> + Closely related to the Heresy of God the Avenger, is that kind of + miniature God the Avenger, to whom the nursery-maid and the overtaxed + parent are so apt to appeal. You stab your children with such a God and he + poisons all their lives. For many of us the word “God” first came into our + lives to denote a wanton, irrational restraint, as Bogey, as the + All-Seeing and quite ungenerous Eye. God Bogey is a great convenience to + the nursery-maid who wants to leave Fear to mind her charges and enforce + her disciplines, while she goes off upon her own aims. But indeed, the + teaching of God Bogey is an outrage upon the soul of a child scarcely less + dreadful than an indecent assault. The reason rebels and is crushed under + this horrible and pursuing suggestion. Many minds never rise again from + their injury. They remain for the rest of life spiritually crippled and + debased, haunted by a fear, stained with a persuasion of relentless + cruelty in the ultimate cause of all things. + </p> + <p> + I, who write, was so set against God, thus rendered. He and his Hell were + the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I still believed in him, + and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic monster, + perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting to condemn + and to “strike me dead”; his flames as ready as a grill-room fire. He was + over me and about my feebleness and silliness and forgetfulness as the sky + and sea would be about a child drowning in mid-Atlantic. When I was still + only a child of thirteen, by the grace of the true God in me, I flung this + Lie out of my mind, and for many years, until I came to see that God + himself had done this thing for me, the name of God meant nothing to me + but the hideous scar in my heart where a fearful demon had been. + </p> + <p> + I see about me to-day many dreadful moral and mental cripples with this + bogey God of the nursery-maid, with his black, insane revenges, still + living like a horrible parasite in their hearts in the place where God + should be. They are afraid, afraid, afraid; they dare not be kindly to + formal sinners, they dare not abandon a hundred foolish observances; they + dare not look at the causes of things. They are afraid of sunshine, of + nakedness, of health, of adventure, of science, lest that old watching + spider take offence. The voice of the true God whispers in their hearts, + echoes in speech and writing, but they avert themselves, fear-driven. For + the true God has no lash of fear. And how the foul-minded bigot, with his + ill-shaven face, his greasy skin, his thick, gesticulating hands, his + bellowings and threatenings, loves to reap this harvest of fear the + ignorant cunning of the nursery girl has sown for him! How he loves the + importance of denunciation, and, himself a malignant cripple, to rally the + company of these crippled souls to persecute and destroy the happy + children of God! . . . + </p> + <p> + Christian priestcraft turns a dreadful face to children. There is a real + wickedness of the priest that is different from other wickedness, and that + affects a reasonable mind just as cruelty and strange perversions of + instinct affect it. Let a former Archbishop of Canterbury speak for me. + This that follows is the account given by Archbishop Tait in a debate in + the Upper House of Convocation (July 3rd, 1877) of one of the publications + of a certain SOCIETY OF THE HOLY CROSS: + </p> + <p> + “I take this book, as its contents show, to be meant for the instruction + of very young children. I find, in one of the pages of it, the statement + that between the ages of six and six and a half years would be the proper + time for the inculcation of the teaching which is to be found in the book. + Now, six to six and a half is certainly a very tender age, and to these + children I find these statements addressed in the book: + </p> + <p> + “‘It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must + acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.’ + </p> + <p> + “I hope and trust the person, the three clergymen, or however many there + were, did not exactly realise what they were writing; that they did not + mean to say that a child was not to confess its sins to God direct; that + it was not to confess its sins, at the age of six, to its mother, or to + its father, but was only to have recourse to the priest. But the words, to + say the least of them, are rash. Then comes the very obvious question: + </p> + <p> + “‘Do you know why? It is because God, when he was on earth, gave to his + priests, and to them alone, the Divine Power of forgiving men their sins. + It was to priests alone that Jesus said: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” . . + . Those who will not confess will not be cured. Sin is a terrible + sickness, and casts souls into hell.’ + </p> + <p> + “That is addressed to a child six years of age. + </p> + <p> + “‘I have known,’ the book continues, ‘poor children who concealed their + sins in confession for years; they were very unhappy, were tormented with + remorse, and if they had died in that state they would certainly have gone + to the everlasting fires of hell.’” . . . + </p> + <p> + Now here is something against nature, something that I have seen time + after time in the faces and bearing of priests and heard in their + preaching. It is a distinct lust. Much nobility and devotion there are + among priests, saintly lives and kindly lives, lives of real worship, + lives no man may better; this that I write is not of all, perhaps not of + many priests. But there has been in all ages that have known sacerdotalism + this terrible type of the priest; priestcraft and priestly power release + an aggressive and narrow disposition to a recklessness of suffering and a + hatred of liberty that surely exceeds the badness of any other sort of + men. + </p> + <p> + 8. THE CHILDREN’S GOD + </p> + <p> + Children do not naturally love God. They have no great capacity for an + idea so subtle and mature as the idea of God. While they are still + children in a home and cared for, life is too kind and easy for them to + feel any great need of God. All things are still something God-like. . . . + </p> + <p> + The true God, our modern minds insist upon believing, can have no appetite + for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for the attention + of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who dream of glory + in the nursery, who love to hear it said, “The children adore him.” If + children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and mutual forbearance, + they will be ready for the true God as their needs bring them within his + scope. They should be left to their innocence, and to their trust in the + innocence of the world, as long as they can be. They should be told only + of God as a Great Friend whom some day they will need more and understand + and know better. That is as much as most children need. The phrases of + religion put too early into their mouths may become a cant, something + worse than blasphemy. + </p> + <p> + Yet children are sometimes very near to God. Creative passion stirs in + their play. At times they display a divine simplicity. But it does not + follow that therefore they should be afflicted with theological formulae + or inducted into ceremonies and rites that they may dislike or + misinterpret. If by any accident, by the death of a friend or a + distressing story, the thought of death afflicts a child, then he may + begin to hear of God, who takes those that serve him out of their slain + bodies into his shining immortality. Or if by some menial treachery, + through some prowling priest, the whisper of Old Bogey reaches our + children, then we may set their minds at ease by the assurance of his + limitless charity. . . . + </p> + <p> + With adolescence comes the desire for God and to know more of God, and + that is the most suitable time for religious talk and teaching. + </p> + <p> + 9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL + </p> + <p> + In the last two or three hundred years there has been a very considerable + disentanglement of the idea of God from the complex of sexual thought and + feeling. But in the early days of religion the two things were inseparably + bound together; the fury of the Hebrew prophets, for example, is + continually proclaiming the extraordinary “wrath” of their God at this or + that little dirtiness or irregularity or breach of the sexual tabus. The + ceremony of circumcision is clearly indicative of the original nature of + the Semitic deity who developed into the Trinitarian God. So far as + Christianity dropped this rite, so far Christianity disavowed the old + associations. But to this day the representative Christian churches still + make marriage into a mystical sacrament, and, with some exceptions, the + Roman communion exacts the sacrifice of celibacy from its priesthood, + regardless of the mischievousness and maliciousness that so often ensue. + Nearly every Christian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as + it can contrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat + illegitimate children as unfortunate children, but as children with a + mystical and an incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may + resent this statement because it does not tally with their own attitudes, + but let them consult their orthodox authorities. + </p> + <p> + One must distinguish clearly here between what is held to be sacred or + sinful in itself and what is held to be one’s duty or a nation’s duty + because it is in itself the wisest, cleanest, clearest, best thing to do. + By the latter tests and reasonable arguments most or all of our + institutions regulating the relations of the sexes may be justifiable. But + my case is not whether they can be justified by these tests but that it is + not by these tests that they are judged even to-day, by the professors of + the chief religions of the world. It is the temper and not the conclusions + of the religious bodies that I would criticise. These sexual questions are + guarded by a holy irascibility, and the most violent efforts are made—with + a sense of complete righteousness—to prohibit their discussion. That + fury about sexual things is only to be explained on the hypothesis that + the Christian God remains a sex God in the minds of great numbers of his + exponents. His disentanglement from that plexus is incomplete. Sexual + things are still to the orthodox Christian, sacred things. + </p> + <p> + Now the God whom those of the new faith are finding is only mediately + concerned with the relations of men and women. He is no more sexual + essentially than he is essentially dietetic or hygienic. The God 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 God that we have now so largely disentangled our + conception of him from the dietary and regimen and meticulous sexual 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 superstitious fear, that the + interpretation of the divine purpose is left to the unembarrassed + 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 sexual 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 God is not sexual, + and that religious passion and insult and persecution upon the score of + sexual things are a barbaric inheritance. + </p> + <p> + But lest anyone should fling off here with some hasty assumption that + those who profess the religion of the true God are sexually anarchistic, + let stress be laid at once upon the opening sentence of the preceding + paragraph, and let me a little anticipate a section which follows. We + would free men and women from exact and superstitious rules and + observances, not to make them less the instruments of God but more wholly + his. The claim of modern religion is that one should give oneself + unreservedly to God, that there is no other salvation. The believer owes + all his being and every moment of his life to God, to keep mind and body + as clean, fine, wholesome, active and completely at God’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 God or religious + emotion, except only the general will to do right in God’s service. The + detailed interpretation of that “right” is for the dispassionate + consideration of the human intelligence. + </p> + <p> + All this is set down here as distinctly as possible. Because of the + emotional reservoirs of sex, sexual dogmas are among the most obstinately + recurrent of all heresies, and sexual excitement is always tending to leak + back into religious feeling. Amongst the sex-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 chastity was not invented + until Christianity came, and that the religious life is largely the + propitiation of God by feats of sexual abstinence. But a superstitious + abstinence that scars and embitters the mind, distorts the imagination, + makes the body gross and keeps it unclean, is just as offensive to God as + any positive depravity. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE THIRD + </h2> + <h3> + THE LIKENESS OF GOD + </h3> + <p> + 1. GOD IS COURAGE + </p> + <p> + Now having set down what those who profess the new religion regard as the + chief misconceptions of God, having put these systems of ideas aside from + our explanations, the path is cleared for the statement of what God 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 God, but the Likeness of God. + </p> + <p> + And firstly, GOD IS COURAGE. + </p> + <p> + 2. GOD IS A PERSON + </p> + <p> + And next GOD IS A PERSON. + </p> + <p> + 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. God 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. + . . . God is no abstraction nor trick of words, no Infinite. He is as real + as a bayonet thrust or an embrace. + </p> + <p> + 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 God. 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 assertions, + 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. + </p> + <p> + 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 gods 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 God on Mount Horeb; and Semele, who insisted upon seeing Zeus in + the glories that were sacred to Juno, was utterly consumed. The early + Islamic conception of God, 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 God 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 God as he is now + conceived is not a person and not an individual. The true God will never + promenade an Eden or a Heaven, nor sit upon a throne. + </p> + <p> + 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 God 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. + </p> + <p> + 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 space. He is + not of matter nor of space. 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 + space. 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 space 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 God 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. . . . + </p> + <p> + But modern religion declares that though he does not exist in matter or + space, 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. + </p> + <p> + But this, you may object, is no more than saying that God is the + collective mind and purpose of the human race. You may declare that this + is no God, but merely the sum of mankind. But those who believe in the new + ideas very steadfastly deny that. God 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 accumulation of men. They point + out that a man is made up of a great multitude 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. + </p> + <p> + 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. + </p> + <p> + And so we think of God 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. + </p> + <p> + These are theorisings about God. These are statements to convey this + modern idea of God. 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 God, then + one must form or receive an acceptable idea of God. 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 God 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 God has risen and + that doubt has fled for ever. + </p> + <p> + 3. GOD IS YOUTH + </p> + <p> + The third thing to be told of the true God is that GOD IS YOUTH. + </p> + <p> + God, we hold, began and is always beginning. He looks forever into the + future. + </p> + <p> + Most of the old religions derive from a patriarchal phase. God is in those + systems the Ancient of Days. I know of no Christian attempt to represent + or symbolise God 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 God, 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 gods 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,— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste + Brought death into the world and all our woe.” + </pre> + <p> + But the God 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. . . . + </p> + <p> + 4. WHEN WE SAY GOD IS LOVE + </p> + <p> + One of the sayings about God that have grown at the same time most trite + and most sacred, is that God 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 multitude 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 passion of jealousy. Love is frequently a + mere blend of appetite 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 God. 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 God. + </p> + <p> + Only while the exaltation of the love passion comes and goes, the + exaltation of religious passion comes to remain. Lovers are the windows by + which we may look out of the prison of self, but God is the open door by + which we freely go. And God never dies, nor disappoints, nor betrays. + </p> + <p> + 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 God. 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 God. + </p> + <p> + That is man’s love of God, but there is also something else; there is the + love God 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; God 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 God will not hesitate to + send us to torment and bodily death. . . . + </p> + <p> + And God 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 God 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. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE FOURTH + </h2> + <h3> + THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS + </h3> + <p> + 1. THE SCIENTIFIC ATHEIST + </p> + <p> + It is a curious thing that while most organised religions seem to drape + about and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the honest + Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is + constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be + interesting here to call a witness or so to the extreme instability of + absolute negation. + </p> + <p> + Here, for example, is a deliverance from Professor Metchnikoff, who was a + very typical antagonist of all religion. He died only the other day. He + was a very great physiologist indeed; he was a man almost of the rank and + quality of Pasteur or Charles Darwin. A decade or more ago he wrote a book + called “The Nature of Man,” in which he set out very plainly a number of + illuminating facts about life. They are facts so illuminating that + presently, in our discussion of sin, they will be referred to again. But + it is not Professor Metchnikoff’s intention to provide material for a + religious discussion. He sets out his facts in order to overthrow theology + as he conceives it. The remarkable thing about his book, the thing upon + which I would now lay stress, is that he betrays no inkling of the fact + that he has no longer the right to conceive theology as he conceives it. + The development of his science has destroyed that right. + </p> + <p> + He does not realise how profoundly modern biology has affected our ideas + of individuality and species, and how the import of theology is modified + through these changes. When he comes from his own world of modern biology + to religion and philosophy he goes back in time. He attacks religion as he + understood it when first he fell out with it fifty years or more ago. + </p> + <p> + Let us state as compactly as possible the nature of these changes that + biological science has wrought almost imperceptibly in the general scheme + and method of our thinking. + </p> + <p> + The influence of biology upon thought in general consists essentially in + diminishing the importance of the individual and developing the + realisation of the species, as if it were a kind of super-individual, a + modifying and immortal super-individual, maintaining itself against the + outer universe by the birth and death of its constituent individuals. + Natural History, which began by putting individuals into species as if the + latter were mere classificatory divisions, has come to see that the + species has its adventures, its history and drama, far exceeding in + interest and importance the individual adventure. “The Origin of Species” + was for countless minds the discovery of a new romance in life. + </p> + <p> + The contrast of the individual life and this specific life may be stated + plainly and compactly as follows. A little while ago we current + individuals, we who are alive now, were each of us distributed between two + parents, then between four grandparents, and so on backward, we are + temporarily assembled, as it were, out of an ancestral diffusion; we stand + our trial, and presently our individuality is dispersed and mixed again + with other individualities in an uncertain multitude of descendants. But + the species is not like this; it goes on steadily from newness to newness, + remaining still a unity. The drama of the individual life is a mere + episode, beneficial or abandoned, in this continuing adventure of the + species. And Metchnikoff finds most of the trouble of life and the + distresses of life in the fact that the species is still very painfully + adjusting itself to the fluctuating conditions under which it lives. The + conflict of life is a continual pursuit of adjustment, and the “ills of + life,” of the individual life that is, are due to its “disharmonies.” Man, + acutely aware of himself as an individual adventure and unawakened to + himself as a species, finds life jangling and distressful, finds death + frustration. He fails and falls as a person in what may be the success and + triumph of his kind. He does not apprehend the struggle or the nature of + victory, but only his own gravitation to death and personal extinction. + </p> + <p> + Now Professor Metchnikoff is anti-religious, and he is anti-religious + because to him as to so many Europeans religion is confused with + priest-craft and dogmas, is associated with disagreeable early impressions + of irrational repression and misguidance. How completely he misconceives + the quality of religion, how completely he sees it as an individual’s + affair, his own words may witness: + </p> + <p> + “Religion is still occupied with the problem of death. The solutions which + as yet it has offered cannot be regarded as satisfactory. A future life + has no single argument to support it, and the non-existence of life after + death is in consonance with the whole range of human knowledge. On the + other hand, resignation as preached by Buddha will fail to satisfy + humanity, which has a longing for life, and is overcome by the thought of + the inevitability of death.” + </p> + <p> + Now here it is clear that by death he means the individual death, and by a + future life the prolongation of individuality. But Buddhism does not in + truth appear ever to have been concerned with that, and modern religious + developments are certainly not under that preoccupation with the narrower + self. Buddhism indeed so far from “preaching resignation” to death, seeks + as its greater good a death so complete as to be absolute release from the + individual’s burthen of KARMA. Buddhism seeks an ESCAPE FROM INDIVIDUAL + IMMORTALITY. The deeper one pursues religious thought the more nearly it + approximates to a search for escape from the self-centred life and + over-individuation, and the more it diverges from Professor Metchnikoff’s + assertion of its aims. Salvation is indeed to lose one’s self. But + Professor Metchnikoff having roundly denied that this is so, is then left + free to take the very essentials of the religious life as they are here + conceived and present them as if they were the antithesis of the religious + life. His book, when it is analysed, resolves itself into just that + research for an escape from the painful accidents and chagrins of + individuation, which is the ultimate of religion. + </p> + <p> + At times, indeed, he seems almost wilfully blind to the true solution + round and about which his writing goes. He suggests as his most hopeful + satisfaction for the cravings of the human heart, such a scientific + prolongation of life that the instinct for self-preservation will be at + last extinct. If that is not the very “resignation” he imputes to the + Buddhist I do not know what it is. He believes that an individual which + has lived fully and completely may at last welcome death with the same + instinctive readiness as, in the days of its strength, it shows for the + embraces of its mate. We are to be glutted by living to six score and ten. + We are to rise from the table at last as gladly as we sat down. We shall + go to death as unresistingly as tired children go to bed. Men are to have + a life far beyond the range of what is now considered their prime, and + their last period (won by scientific self-control) will be a period of + ripe wisdom (from seventy to eighty to a hundred and twenty or + thereabouts) and public service! + </p> + <p> + (But why, one asks, public service? Why not book-collecting or the simple + pleasure of reminiscence so dear to aged egotists? Metchnikoff never faces + that question. And again, what of the man who is challenged to die for + right at the age of thirty? What does the prolongation of life do for him? + And where are the consolations for accidental misfortune, for the + tormenting disease or the lost limb?) + </p> + <p> + But in his peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure religiosity. + The prolongation of life gives place to sheer self-sacrifice as the + fundamental “remedy.” And indeed what other remedy has ever been conceived + for the general evil of life? + </p> + <p> + “On the other hand,” he writes, “the knowledge that the goal of human life + can be attained only by the development of a high degree of solidarity + amongst men will restrain actual egotism. The mere fact that the enjoyment + of life according to the precepts of Solomon (Ecelesiastes ix. 7-10)* is + opposed to the goal of human life, will lessen luxury and the evil that + comes from luxury. Conviction that science alone is able to redress the + disharmonies of the human constitution will lead directly to the + improvement of education and to the solidarity of mankind. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine + with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let + thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no + ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all + the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee + under the sun, all the days of thy vanity for that is thy + portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest + under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it + with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor + knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. +</pre> + <p> + “In progress towards the goal, nature will have to be consulted + continuously. Already, in the case of the ephemerids, nature has produced + a complete cycle of normal life ending in natural death. In the problem of + his own fate, man must not be content with the gifts of nature; he must + direct them by his own efforts. Just as he has been able to modify the + nature of animals and plants, man must attempt to modify his own + constitution, so as to readjust its disharmonies. . . . + </p> + <p> + “To modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame + the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of + science. + </p> + <p> + “If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion + of the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And if + it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith + alone, the faith must be in the power of science.” + </p> + <p> + Now this, after all the flat repudiations that have preceded it of + “religion” and “philosophy” as remedies for human ills, is nothing less + than the fundamental proposition of the religious life translated into + terms of materialistic science, the proposition that damnation is really + over-individuation and that salvation is escape from self into the larger + being of life. . . . + </p> + <p> + What can this “religion of the future” be but that devotion to the racial + adventure under the captaincy of God which we have already found, like + gold in the bottom of the vessel, when we have washed away the confusions + and impurities of dogmatic religion? By an inquiry setting out from a + purely religious starting-point we have already reached conclusions + identical with this ultimate refuge of an extreme materialist. + </p> + <p> + This altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our God—an + altar rather indistinctly inscribed. + </p> + <p> + 2. SACRIFICE IMPLIES GOD + </p> + <p> + Almost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness and + generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were the + statement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a religious writer + would say—except that God is not named. Religious metaphors abound. + It is as if they accepted the living body of religion but denied the bones + that held it together—as they might deny the bones of a friend. It + is true, they would admit, the body moves in a way that implies bones in + its every movement, but—WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE BONES. + </p> + <p> + The disputes in theory—I do not say the difference in reality—between + the modern believer and the atheist or agnostic—becomes at times + almost as impalpable as that subtle discussion dear to students of + physics, whether the scientific “ether” is real or a formula. Every + material phenomenon is consonant with and helps to define this ether, + which permeates and sustains and is all things, which nevertheless is + perceptible to no sense, which is reached only by an intellectual process. + Most minds are disposed to treat this ether as a reality. But the acutely + critical mind insists that what is only so attainable by inference is not + real; it is no more than “a formula that satisfies all phenomena.” + </p> + <p> + But if it comes to that, am I anything more than the formula that + satisfies all my forms of consciousness? + </p> + <p> + Intellectually there is hardly anything more than a certain will to + believe, to divide the religious man who knows God to be utterly real, + from the man who says that God is merely a formula to satisfy moral and + spiritual phenomena. The former has encountered him, the other has as yet + felt only unassigned impulses. One says God’s will is so; the other that + Right is so. One says God moves me to do this or that; the other the Good + Will in me which I share with you and all well-disposed men, moves me to + do this or that. But the former makes an exterior reference and escapes a + risk of self-righteousness. + </p> + <p> + I have recently been reading a book by Mr. Joseph McCabe called “The + Tyranny of Shams,” in which he displays very typically this curious + tendency to a sort of religion with God “blacked out.” His is an extremely + interesting case. He is a writer who was formerly a Roman Catholic priest, + and in his reaction from Catholicism he displays a resolution even sterner + than Professor Metchnikoff’s, to deny that anything religious or divine + can exist, that there can be any aim in life except happiness, or any + guide but “science.” But—and here immediately he turns east again—he + is careful not to say “individual happiness.” And he says “Pleasure is, as + Epicureans insisted, only a part of a large ideal of happiness.” So he + lets the happiness of devotion and sacrifice creep in. So he opens + indefinite possibilities of getting away from any merely materialistic + rule of life. And he writes: + </p> + <p> + “In every civilised nation the mass of the people are inert and + indifferent. Some even make a pretence of justifying their inertness. Why, + they ask, should we stir at all? Is there such a thing as a duty to + improve the earth? What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or has it a + purpose? + </p> + <p> + “One generally finds that this kind of reasoning is merely a piece of + controversial athletics or a thin excuse for idleness. People tell you + that the conflict of science and religion—it would be better to say, + the conflict of modern culture and ancient traditions—has robbed + life of its plain significance. The men who, like Tolstoi, seriously urge + this point fail to appreciate the modern outlook on life. Certainly modern + culture—science, history, philosophy, and art—finds no purpose + in life: that is to say, no purpose eternally fixed and to be discovered + by man. A great chemist said a few years ago that he could imagine ‘a + series of lucky accidents’—the chance blowing by the wind of certain + chemicals into pools on the primitive earth—accounting for the first + appearance of life; and one might not unjustly sum up the influences which + have lifted those early germs to the level of conscious beings as a + similar series of lucky accidents. + </p> + <p> + “But it is sheer affectation to say that this demoralises us. If there is + no purpose impressed on the universe, or prefixed to the development of + humanity, it follows only that humanity may choose its own purpose and set + up its own goal; and the most elementary sense of order will teach us that + this choice must be social, not merely individual. In whatever measure + ill-controlled individuals may yield to personal impulses or attractions, + the aim of the race must be a collective aim. I do not mean an austere + demand of self-sacrifice from the individual, but an adjustment—as + genial and generous as possible—of individual variations for common + good. Otherwise life becomes discordant and futile, and the pain and waste + react on each individual. So we raise again, in the twentieth century, the + old question of ‘the greatest good,’ which men discussed in the Stoa + Poikile and the suburban groves of Athens, in the cool atria of patrician + mansions on the Palatine and the Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and + the schools which Omar Khayyam frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of + the Middle Ages and the opulent chambers of Cosimo dei Medici.” + </p> + <p> + And again: + </p> + <p> + “The old dream of a co-operative effort to improve life, to bring + happiness to as many minds of mortals as we can reach, shines above all + the mists of the day. Through the ruins of creeds and philosophies, which + have for ages disdained it, we are retracing our steps toward that height—just + as the Athenians did two thousand years ago. It rests on no metaphysic, no + sacred legend, no disputable tradition—nothing that scepticism can + corrode or advancing knowledge undermine. Its foundations are the + fundamental and unchanging impulses of our nature.” + </p> + <p> + And again: + </p> + <p> + “The revolt which burns in so much of the abler literature of our time is + an unselfish revolt, or non-selfish revolt: it is an outcome of that + larger spirit which conceives the self to be a part of the general social + organism, and it is therefore neither egoistic nor altruistic. It finds a + sanction in the new intelligence, and an inspiration in the finer + sentiments of our generation, but the glow which chiefly illumines it is + the glow of the great vision of a happier earth. It speaks of the claims + of truth and justice, and assails untruth and injustice, for these are + elemental principles of social life; but it appeals more confidently to + the warmer sympathy which is linking the scattered children of the race, + and it urges all to co-operate in the restriction of suffering and the + creation of happiness. The advance guard of the race, the men and women in + whom mental alertness is associated with fine feeling, cry that they have + reached Pisgah’s slope and in increasing numbers men and women are + pressing on to see if it be really the Promised Land.” + </p> + <p> + “Pisgah—the Promised Land!” Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as if + he were half-way to “Oh! Beulah Land!” and the tambourine. + </p> + <p> + That “larger spirit,” we maintain, is God; those “impulses” are the power + of God, and Mr. McCabe serves a Master he denies. He has but to realise + fully that God is not necessarily the Triune God of the Catholic Church, + and banish his intense suspicion that he may yet be lured back to that + altar he abandoned, he has but to look up from that preoccupation, and + immediately he will begin to realise the presence of Divinity. + </p> + <p> + 3. GOD IS AN EXTERNAL REALITY + </p> + <p> + It may be argued that if atheists and agnostics when they set themselves + to express the good will that is in them, do shape out God, that if their + conception of right living falls in so completely with the conception of + God’s service as to be broadly identical, then indeed God, like the ether + of scientific speculation, is no more than a theory, no more than an + imaginative externalisation of man’s inherent good will. Why trouble about + God then? Is not the declaration of a good disposition a sufficient + evidence of salvation? What is the difference between such benevolent + unbelievers as Professor Metchnikoff or Mr. McCabe and those who have + found God? + </p> + <p> + The difference is this, that the benevolent atheist stands alone upon his + own good will, without a reference, without a standard, trusting to his + own impulse to goodness, relying upon his own moral strength. A certain + immodesty, a certain self-righteousness, hangs like a precipice above him; + incalculable temptations open like gulfs beneath his feet. He has not + really given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to whom he + can give himself. He is still a masterless man. His exaltation is + self-centred, is priggishness, his fall is unrestrained by any exterior + obligation. His devotion is only the good will in himself, a disposition; + it is a mood that may change. At any moment it may change. He may have + pledged himself to his own pride and honour, but who will hold him to his + bargain? He has no source of strength beyond his own amiable sentiments, + his conscience speaks with an unsupported voice, and no one watches while + he sleeps. He cannot pray; he can but ejaculate. He has no real and living + link with other men of good will. + </p> + <p> + And those whose acquiescence in the idea of God is merely intellectual are + in no better case than those who deny God altogether. They may have all + the forms of truth and not divinity. The religion of the atheist with a + God-shaped blank at its heart and the persuasion of the unconverted + theologian, are both like lamps unlit. The lit lamp has no difference in + form from the lamp unlit. But the lit lamp is alive and the lamp unlit is + asleep or dead. + </p> + <p> + The difference between the unconverted and the unbeliever and the servant + of the true God is this; it is that the latter has experienced a complete + turning away from self. This only difference is all the difference in the + world. It is the realisation that this goodness that I thought was within + me and of myself and upon which I rather prided myself, is without me and + above myself, and infinitely greater and stronger than I. It is the + immortal and I am mortal. It is invincible and steadfast in its purpose, + and I am weak and insecure. It is no longer that I, out of my inherent and + remarkable goodness, out of the excellence of my quality and the + benevolence of my heart, give a considerable amount of time and attention + to the happiness and welfare of others—because I choose to do so. On + the contrary I have come under a divine imperative, I am obeying an + irresistible call, I am a humble and willing servant of the righteousness + of God. That altruism which Professor Metchnikoff and Mr. McCabe would + have us regard as the goal and refuge of a broad and free intelligence, is + really the first simple commandment in the religious life. + </p> + <p> + 4. ANOTHER RELIGIOUS MATERIALIST + </p> + <p> + Now here is a passage from a book, “Evolution and the War,” by Professor + Metchnikoff’s translator, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, which comes even closer + to our conception of God as an immortal being arising out of man, and + external to the individual man. He has been discussing that well-known + passage of Kant’s: “Two things fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder and + awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them—the starry vault above + me, and the moral law within me.” + </p> + <p> + From that discussion, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell presently comes to this most + definite and interesting statement: + </p> + <p> + “Writing as a hard-shell Darwinian evolutionist, a lover of the scalpel + and microscope, and of patient, empirical observation, as one who dislikes + all forms of supernaturalism, and who does not shrink from the + implications even of the phrase that thought is a secretion of the brain + as bile is a secretion of the liver, I assert as a biological fact that + the moral law is as real and as external to man as the starry vault. It + has no secure seat in any single man or in any single nation. It is the + work of the blood and tears of long generations of men. It is not in man, + inborn or innate, but is enshrined in his traditions, in his customs, in + his literature and his religion. Its creation and sustenance are the + crowning glory of man, and his consciousness of it puts him in a high + place above the animal world. Men live and die; nations rise and fall, but + the struggle of individual lives and of individual nations must be + measured not by their immediate needs, but as they tend to the debasement + or perfection of man’s great achievement.” + </p> + <p> + This is the same reality. This is the same Link and Captain that this book + asserts. It seems to me a secondary matter whether we call Him “Man’s + Great Achievement” or “The Son of Man” or the “God of Mankind” or “God.” + So far as the practical and moral ends of life are concerned, it does not + matter how we explain or refuse to explain His presence in our lives. + </p> + <p> + There is but one possible gap left between the position of Dr. Chalmers + Mitchell and the position of this book. In this book it is asserted that + GOD RESPONDS, that he GIVES courage and the power of self-suppression to + our weakness. + </p> + <p> + 5. A NOTE ON A LECTURE BY PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY + </p> + <p> + Let me now quote and discuss a very beautiful passage from a lecture upon + Stoicism by Professor Gilbert Murray, which also displays the same + characteristic of an involuntary shaping out of God in the forms of + denial. It is a passage remarkable for its conscientious and resolute + Agnosticism. And it is remarkable too for its blindness to the possibility + of separating quite completely the idea of the Infinite Being from the + idea of God. It is another striking instance of that obsession of modern + minds by merely Christian theology of which I have already complained. + Professor Murray has quoted Mr. Bevan’s phrase for God, “the Friend behind + phenomena,” and he does not seem to realise that that phrase carries with + it no obligation whatever to believe that this Friend is in control of the + phenomena. He assumes that he is supposed to be in control as if it were a + matter of course: + </p> + <p> + “We do seem to find,” Professor Murray writes, “not only in all religions, + but in practically all philosophies, some belief that man is not quite + alone in the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards the good by + some external help or sympathy. We find it everywhere in the + unsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded self-revelations of the + most severe and conscientious Atheists. Now, the Stoics, like many other + schools of thought, drew an argument from this consensus of all mankind. + It was not an absolute proof of the existence of the Gods or Providence, + but it was a strong indication. The existence of a common instinctive + belief in the mind of man gives at least a presumption that there must be + a good cause for that belief. + </p> + <p> + “This is a reasonable position. There must be some such cause. But it does + not follow that the only valid cause is the truth of the content of the + belief. I cannot help suspecting that this is precisely one of those + points on which Stoicism, in company with almost all philosophy up to the + present time, has gone astray through not sufficiently realising its + dependence on the human mind as a natural biological product. For it is + very important in this matter to realise that the so-called belief is not + really an intellectual judgment so much as a craving of the whole nature. + </p> + <p> + “It is only of very late years that psychologists have begun to realise + the enormous dominion of those forces in man of which he is normally + unconscious. We cannot escape as easily as these brave men dreamed from + the grip of the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see + philosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the + Friend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a + moment and by an effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it seems + to me that perhaps here too we are under the spell of a very old + ineradicable instinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have been + such for countless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as + gregarious animals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship. + Students of animals under domestication have shown us how the habits of a + gregarious creature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in a thousand + details by reference to the lost pack which is no longer there—the + pack which a dog tries to smell his way back to all the time he is out + walking, the pack he calls to for help when danger threatens. It is a + strange and touching thing, this eternal hunger of the gregarious animal + for the herd of friends who are not there. And it may be, it may very + possibly be, that, in the matter of this Friend behind phenomena our own + yearning and our own almost ineradicable instinctive conviction, since + they are certainly not founded on either reason or observation, are in + origin the groping of a lonely-souled gregarious animal to find its herd + or its herd-leader in the great spaces between the stars. + </p> + <p> + “At any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of.” + </p> + <p> + There the passage and the lecture end. + </p> + <p> + I would urge that here again is an inadvertent witness to the reality of + God. + </p> + <p> + Professor Murray writes of gregarious animals as though there existed + solitary animals that are not gregarious, pure individualists, “atheists” + so to speak, and as though this appeal to a life beyond one’s own was not + the universal disposition of living things. His classical training + disposes him to a realistic exaggeration of individual difference. But + nearly every animal, and certainly every mentally considerable animal, + begins under parental care, in a nest or a litter, mates to breed, and is + associated for much of its life. Even the great carnivores do not go alone + except when they are old and have done with the most of life. Every pack, + every herd, begins at some point in a couple, it is the equivalent of the + tiger’s litter if that were to remain undispersed. And it is within the + memory of men still living that in many districts the African lion has + with a change of game and conditions lapsed from a “solitary” to a + gregarious, that is to say a prolonged family habit of life. + </p> + <p> + Man too, if in his ape-like phase he resembled the other higher apes, is + an animal becoming more gregarious and not less. He has passed within the + historical period from a tribal gregariousness to a nearly cosmopolitan + tolerance. And he has his tribe about him. He is not, as Professor Murray + seems to suggest, a solitary LOST gregarious beast. Why should his desire + for God be regarded as the overflow of an unsatisfied gregarious instinct, + when he has home, town, society, companionship, trade union, state, + INCREASINGLY at hand to glut it? Why should gregariousness drive a man to + God rather than to the third-class carriage and the public-house? Why + should gregariousness drive men out of crowded Egyptian cities into the + cells of the Thebaid? Schopenhauer in a memorable passage (about the + hedgehogs who assembled for warmth) is flatly opposed to Professor Murray, + and seems far more plausible when he declares that the nature of man is + insufficiently gregarious. The parallel with the dog is not a valid one. + </p> + <p> + Does not the truth lie rather in the supposition that it is not the Friend + that is the instinctive delusion but the isolation? Is not the real + deception, our belief that we are completely individualised, and is it not + possible that this that Professor Murray calls “instinct” is really not a + vestige but a new thing arising out of our increasing understanding, an + intellectual penetration to that greater being of the species, that vine, + of which we are the branches? Why should not the soul of the species, many + faceted indeed, be nevertheless a soul like our own? + </p> + <p> + Here, as in the case of Professor Metchnikoff, and in many other cases of + atheism, it seems to me that nothing but an inadequate understanding of + individuation bars the way to at least the intellectual recognition of the + true God. + </p> + <p> + 6. RELIGION AS ETHICS + </p> + <p> + And while I am dealing with rationalists, let me note certain recent + interesting utterances of Sir Harry Johnston’s. You will note that while + in this book we use the word “God” to indicate the God of the Heart, Sir + Harry uses “God” for that idea of God-of-the-Universe, which we have + spoken of as the Infinite Being. This use of the word “God” is of late + theological origin; the original identity of the words “good” and “god” + and all the stories of the gods are against him. But Sir Harry takes up + God only to define him away into incomprehensible necessity. Thus: + </p> + <p> + “We know absolutely nothing concerning the Force we call God; and, + assuming such an intelligent ruling force to be in existence, permeating + this universe of millions of stars and (no doubt) tens of millions of + planets, we do not know under what conditions and limitations It works. We + are quite entitled to assume that the end of such an influence is intended + to be order out of chaos, happiness and perfection out of incompleteness + and misery; and we are entitled to identify the reactionary forces of + brute Nature with the anthropomorphic Devil of primitive religions, the + power of darkness resisting the power of light. But in these conjectures + we must surely come to the conclusion that the theoretical potency we call + ‘God’ makes endless experiments, and scrap-heaps the failures. Think of + the Dinosaurs and the expenditure of creative energy that went to their + differentiation and their well-nigh incredible physical development. . . . + </p> + <p> + “To such a Divine Force as we postulate, the whole development and + perfecting of life on this planet, the whole production of man, may seem + little more than to any one of us would be the chipping out, the cutting, + the carving, and the polishing of a gem; and we should feel as little + remorse or pity for the scattered dust and fragments as must the Creative + Force of the immeasurably vast universe feel for the DISJECTA MEMBRA of + perfected life on this planet. . . .” + </p> + <p> + But thence he goes on to a curiously imperfect treatment of the God of man + as if he consisted in nothing more than some vague sort of + humanitarianism. Sir Harry’s ideas are much less thoroughly thought out + than those of any other of these sceptical writers I have quoted. On that + account they are perhaps more typical. He speaks as though Christ were + simply an eminent but ill-reported and abominably served teacher of ethics—and + yet of the only right ideal and ethics. He speaks as though religions were + nothing more than ethical movements, and as though Christianity were + merely someone remarking with a bright impulsiveness that everything was + simply horrid, and so, “Let us instal loving kindness as a cardinal + axiom.” He ignores altogether the fundamental essential of religion, which + is THE DEVELOPMENT AND SYNTHESIS OF THE DIVERGENT AND CONFLICTING MOTIVES + OF THE UNCONVERTED LIFE, AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE + WITH THE IMMORTAL PURPOSE OF GOD. He presents a conception of religion + relieved of its “nonsense” as the cheerful self-determination of a number + of bright little individuals (much stirred but by no means overcome by + Cosmic Pity) to the Service of Man. As he seems to present it, it is as + outward a thing, it goes as little into the intimacy of their lives, as + though they had after proper consideration agreed to send a subscription + to a Red Cross Ambulance or take part in a public demonstration against + the Armenian Massacres, or do any other rather nice-spirited exterior + thing. This is what he says: + </p> + <p> + “I hope that the religion of the future will devote itself wholly to the + Service of Man. It can do so without departing from the Christian ideal + and Christian ethics. It need only drop all that is silly and disputable, + and ‘mattering not neither here nor there,’ of Christian theology—a + theology virtually absent from the direct teaching of Christ—and all + of Judaistic literature or prescriptions not made immortal in their + application by unassailable truth and by the confirmation of science. An + excellent remedy for the nonsense which still clings about religion may be + found in two books: Cotter Monson’s ‘Service of Man,’ which was published + as long ago as 1887, and has since been re-issued by the Rationalist Press + Association in its well-known sixpenny series, and J. Allanson Picton’s + ‘Man and the Bible.’ Similarly, those who wish to acquire a sane view of + the relations between man and God would do well to read Winwood Reade’s + ‘Martyrdom of Man.’” + </p> + <p> + Sir Harry in fact clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a + well-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength in + his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the “Service of Man” is no + better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the + undisciplined prison of the mortal life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE FIFTH + </h2> + <h3> + THE INVISIBLE KING + </h3> + <p> + 1. MODERN RELIGION A POLITICAL RELIGION + </p> + <p> + The conception of a young and energetic God, an Invisible Prince growing + in strength and wisdom, who calls men and women to his service and who + gives salvation from self and mortality only through self-abandonment to + his service, necessarily involves a demand for a complete revision and + fresh orientation of the life of the convert. + </p> + <p> + God faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions + and cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle to a + great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. It is plain that + he can admit no divided control of the world he claims. He concedes + nothing to Caesar. In our philosophy there are no human things that are + God’s and others that are Caesar’s. Those of the new thought cannot render + unto God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that are + Caesar’s. Whatever claim Caesar may make to rule men’s lives and direct + their destinies outside the will of God, is a usurpation. No king nor + Caesar has any right to tax or to service or to tolerance, except he claim + as one who holds for and under God. And he must make good his claim. The + steps of the altar of the God of Youth are no safe place for the + sacrilegious figure of a king. Who claims “divine right” plays with the + lightning. + </p> + <p> + The new conceptions do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or + democracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain + the way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and + service of the will of God, which dwells in the hearts of men, and the + performance of that will, not only in the private life of the believer but + in the acts and order of the state and nation of which he is a part. I + give myself to God not only because I am so and so but because I am + mankind. I become in a measure responsible for every evil in the world of + men. I become a knight in God’s service. I become my brother’s keeper. I + become a responsible minister of my King. I take sides against injustice, + disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors, princes, + landlords, and owners, who set themselves up against God’s rule and + worship. Kings, owners, and all who claim rule and decisions in the + world’s affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants + of the believer or become the objects of his steadfast antagonism. + </p> + <p> + 2. THE WILL OF GOD + </p> + <p> + It is here that those who explain this modern religiosity will seem most + arbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of God, as men will relate of a + close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims of his + kingship. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the existence of + God but their realisation of him, so with regard to these qualities and + dispositions they have little argument but profound conviction. What they + say is this; that if you do not feel God then there is no persuading you + of him; we cannot win over the incredulous. And what they say of his + qualities is this; that if you feel God then you will know, you will + realise more and more clearly, that thus and thus and no other is his + method and intention. + </p> + <p> + It comes as no great shock to those who have grasped the full implications + of the statement that God is Finite, to hear it asserted that the first + purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a + means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power. For that he + must use human eyes and hands and brains. + </p> + <p> + And as God gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning to + apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But it + is possible to define the broad outlines of the attainment he seeks. It is + the conquest of death. + </p> + <p> + It is the conquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the + individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying + purpose, and then the defeat of that death that seems to threaten our + species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun. God fights against + death in every form, against the great death of the race, against the + petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness, misconception, and + perversion. He it is and no other who can deliver us “from the body of + this death.” This is the battle that grows plainer; this is the purpose to + which he calls us out of the animal’s round of eating, drinking, lusting, + quarrelling and laughing and weeping, fearing and failing, and presently + of wearying and dying, which is the whole life that living without God can + give us. And from these great propositions there follow many very definite + maxims and rules of life for those who serve God. These we will + immediately consider. + </p> + <p> + 3. THE CRUCIFIX + </p> + <p> + But first let me write a few words here about those who hold a kind of + intermediate faith between the worship of the God of Youth and the vaguer + sort of Christianity. There are a number of people closely in touch with + those who have found the new religion who, biased probably by a dread of + too complete a break with Christianity, have adopted a theogony which is + very reminiscent of Gnosticism and of the Paulician, Catharist, and + kindred sects to which allusion has already been made. He, who is called + in this book God, they would call God-the-Son or Christ, or the Logos; and + what is here called the Darkness or the Veiled Being, they would call + God-the-Father. And what we speak of here as Life, they would call, with a + certain disregard of the poor brutes that perish, Man. And they would + assert, what we of the new belief, pleading our profound ignorance, would + neither assert nor deny, that that Darkness, out of which came Life and + God, since it produced them must be ultimately sympathetic and of like + nature with them. And that ultimately Man, being redeemed and led by + Christ and saved from death by him, would be reconciled with God the + Father.* And this great adventurer out of the hearts of man that we here + call God, they would present as the same with that teacher from Galilee + who was crucified at Jerusalem. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * This probably was the conception of Spinoza. Christ for + him is the wisdom of God manifested in all things, and + chiefly in the mind of man. Through him we reach the + blessedness of an intuitive knowledge of God. Salvation is + an escape from the “inadequate" ideas of the mortal human + personality to the “adequate” and timeless ideas of God. +</pre> + <p> + Now we of the modern way would offer the following criticisms upon this + apparent compromise between our faith and the current religion. Firstly, + we do not presume to theorise about the nature of the veiled being nor + about that being’s relations to God and to Life. We do not recognise any + consistent sympathetic possibilities between these outer beings and our + God. Our God is, we feel, like Prometheus, a rebel. He is unfilial. And + the accepted figure of Jesus, instinct with meek submission, is not in the + tone of our worship. It is not by suffering that God conquers death, but + by fighting. Incidentally our God dies a million deaths, but the thing + that matters is not the deaths but the immortality. It may be he cannot + escape in this person or that person being nailed to a cross or chained to + be torn by vultures on a rock. These may be necessary sufferings, like + hunger and thirst in a campaign; they do not in themselves bring victory. + They may be necessary, but they are not glorious. The symbol of the + crucifixion, the drooping, pain-drenched figure of Christ, the sorrowful + cry to his Father, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” these + things jar with our spirit. We little men may well fail and repent, but it + is our faith that our God does not fail us nor himself. We cannot accept + the Christian’s crucifix, or pray to a pitiful God. We cannot accept the + Resurrection as though it were an after-thought to a bitterly felt death. + Our crucifix, if you must have a crucifix, would show God with a hand or a + foot already torn away from its nail, and with eyes not downcast but + resolute against the sky; a face without pain, pain lost and forgotten in + the surpassing glory of the struggle and the inflexible will to live and + prevail. . . . + </p> + <p> + But we do not care how long the thorns are drawn, nor how terrible the + wounds, so long as he does not droop. God is courage. God is courage + beyond any conceivable suffering. + </p> + <p> + But when all this has been said, it is well to add that it concerns the + figure of Christ only in so far as that professes to be the figure of God, + and the crucifix only so far as that stands for divine action. The figure + of Christ crucified, so soon as we think of it as being no more than the + tragic memorial of Jesus, of the man who proclaimed the loving-kindness of + God and the supremacy of God’s kingdom over the individual life, and who, + in the extreme agony of his pain and exhaustion, cried out that he was + deserted, becomes something altogether distinct from a theological symbol. + Immediately that we cease to worship, we can begin to love and pity. Here + was a being of extreme gentleness and delicacy and of great courage, of + the utmost tolerance and the subtlest sympathy, a saint of non-resistance. + . . . + </p> + <p> + We of the new faith repudiate the teaching of non-resistance. We are the + militant followers of and participators in a militant God. We can + appreciate and admire the greatness of Christ, this gentle being upon + whose nobility the theologians trade. But submission is the remotest + quality of all from our God, and a moribund figure is the completest + inversion of his likeness as we know him. A Christianity which shows, for + its daily symbol, Christ risen and trampling victoriously upon a broken + cross, would be far more in the spirit of our worship.* + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + * It is curious, after writing the above, to find in a + letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that + pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby, + almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed. + “If I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do,” he says, + “I would gladly look on it, but the fallen Head and the + closed Eye exclude from my thought the idea of glorified + humanity. The Christ to whom we are led is One who ‘hath + been crucified,’ who hath passed the trial victoriously and + borne the fruits to heaven. I dare not then rest on this + side of the glory.” + </pre> + <p> + I find, too, a still more remarkable expression of the modern spirit in a + tract, “The Call of the Kingdom,” by that very able and subtle, Anglican + theologian, the Rev. W. Temple, who declares that under the vitalising + stresses of the war we are winning “faith in Christ as an heroic leader. + We have thought of Him so much as meek and gentle that there is no ground + in our picture of Him, for the vision which His disciple had of Him: ‘His + head and His hair were white, as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes + were as a flame of fire: and His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it + had been refined in a furnace; and His voice was as the voice of many + waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars; and out of His mouth + proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and His countenance was as the sun + shineth in its strength.’” + </p> + <p> + These are both exceptional utterances, interesting as showing how clearly + parallel are the tendencies within and without Christianity. + </p> + <p> + 4. THE PRIMARY DUTIES + </p> + <p> + Now it follows very directly from the conception of God as a finite + intelligence of boundless courage and limitless possibilities of growth + and victory, who has pitted himself against death, who stands close to our + inmost beings ready to receive us and use us, to rescue us from the + chagrins of egotism and take us into his immortal adventure, that we who + have realised him and given ourselves joyfully to him, must needs be + equally ready and willing to give our energies to the task we share with + him, to do our utmost to increase knowledge, to increase order and + clearness, to fight against indolence, waste, disorder, cruelty, vice, and + every form of his and our enemy, death, first and chiefest in ourselves + but also in all mankind, and to bring about the establishment of his real + and visible kingdom throughout the world. + </p> + <p> + And that idea of God as the Invisible King of the whole world means not + merely that God is to be made and declared the head of the world, but that + the kingdom of God is to be present throughout the whole fabric of the + world, that the Kingdom of God is to be in the teaching at the village + school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market town, in the + mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman’s house. It means that + ultimately no effigy of intrusive king or emperor is to disfigure our + coins and stamps any more; God himself and no delegate is to be + represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters and our receipts, a + perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder. There is no act altogether + without significance, no power so humble that it may not be used for or + against God, no life but can orient itself to him. To realise God in one’s + heart is to be filled with the desire to serve him, and the way of his + service is neither to pull up one’s life by the roots nor to continue it + in all its essentials unchanged, but to turn it about, to turn everything + that there is in it round into his way. + </p> + <p> + The outward duty of those who serve God must vary greatly with the + abilities they possess and the positions in which they find themselves, + but for all there are certain fundamental duties; a constant attempt to be + utterly truthful with oneself, a constant sedulousness to keep oneself fit + and bright for God’s service, and to increase one’s knowledge and powers, + and a hidden persistent watchfulness of one’s baser motives, a watch + against fear and indolence, against vanity, against greed and lust, + against envy, malice, and uncharitableness. To have found God truly does + in itself make God’s service one’s essential motive, but these evils lurk + in the shadows, in the lassitudes and unwary moments. No one escapes them + altogether, there is no need for tragic moods on account of imperfections. + We can no more serve God without blunders and set-backs than we can win + battles without losing men. But the less of such loss the better. The + servant of God must keep his mind as wide and sound and his motives as + clean as he can, just as an operating surgeon must keep his nerves and + muscles as fit and his hands as clean as he can. Neither may righteously + evade exercise and regular washing—of mind as of hands. An incessant + watchfulness of one’s self and one’s thoughts and the soundness of one’s + thoughts; cleanliness, clearness, a wariness against indolence and + prejudice, careful truth, habitual frankness, fitness and steadfast work; + these are the daily fundamental duties that every one who truly comes to + God will, as a matter of course, set before himself. + </p> + <p> + 5. THE INCREASING KINGDOM + </p> + <p> + Now of the more intimate and personal life of the believer it will be more + convenient to write a little later. Let us for the present pursue the idea + of this world-kingdom of God, to whose establishment he calls us. This + kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all mankind upon + certain divine ends. These, we conceive, are first, the maintenance of the + racial life; secondly, the exploration of the external being of nature as + it is and as it has been, that is to say history and science; thirdly, + that exploration of inherent human possibility which is art; fourthly, + that clarification of thought and knowledge which is philosophy; and + finally, the progressive enlargement and development of the racial life + under these lights, so that God may work through a continually better body + of humanity and through better and better equipped minds, that he and our + race may increase for ever, working unendingly upon the development of the + powers of life and the mastery of the blind forces of matter throughout + the deeps of space. He sets out with us, we are persuaded, to conquer + ourselves and our world and the stars. And beyond the stars our eyes can + as yet see nothing, our imaginations reach and fail. Beyond the limits of + our understanding is the veiled Being of Fate, whose face is hidden from + us. . . . + </p> + <p> + It may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality that + the face of that Unknown will not be altogether hidden. . . . + </p> + <p> + But the business of such ordinary lives as ours is the setting up of this + earthly kingdom of God. That is the form into which our lives must fall + and our consciences adapt themselves. + </p> + <p> + Belief in God as the Invisible King brings with it almost necessarily a + conception of this coming kingdom of God on earth. Each believer as he + grasps this natural and immediate consequence of the faith that has come + into his life will form at the same time a Utopian conception of this + world changed in the direction of God’s purpose. The vision will follow + the realisation of God’s true nature and purpose as a necessary second + step. And he will begin to develop the latent citizen of this world-state + in himself. He will fall in with the idea of the world-wide sanities of + this new order being drawn over the warring outlines of the present, and + of men falling out of relationship with the old order and into + relationship with the new. Many men and women are already working to-day + at tasks that belong essentially to God’s kingdom, tasks that would be of + the same essential nature if the world were now a theocracy; for example, + they are doing or sustaining scientific research or education or creative + art; they are making roads to bring men together, they are doctors working + for the world’s health, they are building homes, they are constructing + machinery to save and increase the powers of men. . . . + </p> + <p> + Such men and women need only to change their orientation as men will + change about at a work-table when the light that was coming in a little + while ago from the southern windows, begins presently to come in chiefly + from the west, to become open and confessed servants of God. This work + that they were doing for ambition, or the love of men or the love of + knowledge or what seemed the inherent impulse to the work itself, or for + money or honour or country or king, they will realise they are doing for + God and by the power of God. Self-transformation into a citizen of God’s + kingdom and a new realisation of all earthly politics as no more than the + struggle to define and achieve the kingdom of God in the earth, follow on, + without any need for a fresh spiritual impulse, from the moment when God + and the believer meet and clasp one another. + </p> + <p> + This transfiguration of the world into a theocracy may seem a merely + fantastic idea to anyone who comes to it freshly without such general + theological preparation as the preceding pages have made. But to anyone + who has been at the pains to clear his mind even a little from the + obsession of existing but transitory things, it ceases to be a mere + suggestion and becomes more and more manifestly the real future of + mankind. From the phase of “so things should be,” the mind will pass very + rapidly to the realisation that “so things will be.” Towards this the + directive wills among men have been drifting more and more steadily and + perceptibly and with fewer eddyings and retardations, for many centuries. + The purpose of mankind will not be always thus confused and fragmentary. + This dissemination of will-power is a phase. The age of the warring tribes + and kingdoms and empires that began a hundred centuries or so ago, draws + to its close. The kingdom of God on earth is not a metaphor, not a mere + spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain project; it is the thing + before us, it is the close and inevitable destiny of mankind. + </p> + <p> + In a few score years the faith of the true God will be spreading about the + world. The few halting confessions of God that one hears here and there + to-day, like that little twittering of birds which comes before the dawn, + will have swollen to a choral unanimity. In but a few centuries the whole + world will be openly, confessedly, preparing for the kingdom. In but a few + centuries God will have led us out of the dark forest of these present + wars and confusions into the open brotherhood of his rule. + </p> + <p> + 6. WHAT IS MY PLACE IN THE KINGDOM? + </p> + <p> + This conception of the general life of mankind as a transformation at + thousands of points of the confused, egotistical, proprietary, partisan, + nationalist, life-wasting chaos of human life to-day into the coherent + development of the world kingdom of God, provides the form into which + everyone who comes to the knowledge of God will naturally seek to fit his + every thought and activity. The material greeds, the avarice, fear, + rivalries, and ignoble ambitions of a disordered world will be challenged + and examined under one general question: “What am I in the kingdom of + God?” + </p> + <p> + It has already been suggested that there is a great and growing number of + occupations that belong already to God’s kingdom, research, teaching, + creative art, creative administration, cultivation, construction, + maintenance, and the honest satisfaction of honest practical human needs. + For such people conversion to the intimacy of God means at most a change + in the spirit of their work, a refreshed energy, a clearer understanding, + a new zeal, a completer disregard of gains and praises and promotion. Pay, + honours, and the like cease to be the inducement of effort. Service, and + service alone, is the criterion that the quickened conscience will + recognise. + </p> + <p> + Most of such people will find themselves in positions in which service is + mingled with activities of a baser sort, in which service is a little + warped and deflected by old traditions and usage, by mercenary and + commercial considerations, by some inherent or special degradation of + purpose. The spirit of God will not let the believer rest until his life + is readjusted and as far as possible freed from the waste of these base + diversions. For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by + great inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of his professorship or + research fellowship, which exact an appearance of “practical” results. Or + he may be obliged to lecture or conduct classes. He may be able to give + but half his possible gift to the work of his real aptitude, and that at a + sacrifice of money and reputation among short-sighted but influential + contemporaries. Well, if he is by nature an investigator he will know that + the research is what God needs of him. He cannot continue it at all if he + leaves his position, and so he must needs waste something of his gift to + save the rest. But should a poorer or a humbler post offer him better + opportunity, there lies his work for God. There one has a very common and + simple type of the problems that will arise in the lives of men when they + are lit by sudden realisation of the immediacy of God. + </p> + <p> + Akin to that case is the perplexity of any successful physician between + the increase of knowledge and the public welfare on the one hand, and the + lucrative possibilities of his practice among wealthy people on the other. + He belongs to a profession that is crippled by a mediaeval code, a + profession which was blind to the common interest of the Public Health and + regarded its members merely as skilled practitioners employed to “cure” + individual ailments. Very slowly and tortuously do the methods of the + profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of devoted + men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as a whole, + broadening out from the frowsy den of the “leech,” with its crocodile and + bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and illuminating + co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing and economic + life of the community. + </p> + <p> + And again quite parallel with these personal problems is the trouble of + the artist between the market and vulgar fame on the one hand and his + divine impulse on the other. + </p> + <p> + The presence of God will be a continual light and help in every decision + that must be made by men and women in these more or less vitiated, but + still fundamentally useful and righteous, positions. + </p> + <p> + The trouble becomes more marked and more difficult in the case of a man + who is a manufacturer or a trader, the financier of business enterprise or + the proprietor of great estates. The world is in need of manufactures and + that goods should be distributed; land must be administered and new + economic possibilities developed. The drift of things is in the direction + of state ownership and control, but in a great number of cases the state + is not ripe for such undertakings, it commands neither sufficient + integrity nor sufficient ability, and the proprietor of factory, store, + credit or land, must continue in possession, holding as a trustee for God + and, so far as lies in his power, preparing for his supersession by some + more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights + from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and + sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave + as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich + young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all + that he has must be alike dedicated to God. + </p> + <p> + The plain duty that will be understood by the proprietor of land and of + every sort of general need and service, so soon as he becomes aware of + God, is so to administer his possessions as to achieve the maximum of + possible efficiency, the most generous output, and the least private + profit. He may set aside a salary for his maintenance; the rest he must + deal with like a zealous public official. And if he perceives that the + affair could be better administered by other hands than his own, then it + is his business to get it into those hands with the smallest delay and the + least profit to himself. . . . + </p> + <p> + The rights and wrongs of human equity are very different from right and + wrong in the sight of God. In the sight of God no landlord has a RIGHT to + his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not justified in + drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free to spend the + profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of savings nor of + abstinence. He recognises no right to the “rewards of abstinence,” no + right to any rewards. Those profits and comforts and consolations are the + inducements that dangle before the eyes of the spiritually blind. Wealth + is an embarrassment to the religious, for God calls them to account for + it. The servant of God has no business with wealth or power except to use + them immediately in the service of God. Finding these things in his hands + he is bound to administer them in the service of God. + </p> + <p> + The tendency of modern religion goes far beyond the alleged communism of + the early Christians, and far beyond the tithes of the scribes and + Pharisees. God takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and + acres, he takes skill and influence and expectations. For all the rest of + your life you are nothing but God’s agent. If you are not prepared for so + complete a surrender, then you are infinitely remote from God. You must go + your way. Here you are merely a curious interloper. Perhaps you have been + desiring God as an experience, or coveting him as a possession. You have + not begun to understand. This that we are discussing in this book is as + yet nothing for you. + </p> + <p> + 7. ADJUSTING LIFE + </p> + <p> + This picturing of a human world more to the mind of God than this present + world and the discovery and realisation of one’s own place and work in and + for that kingdom of God, is the natural next phase in the development of + the believer. He will set about revising and adjusting his scheme of life, + his ways of living, his habits and his relationships in the light of his + new convictions. + </p> + <p> + Most men and women who come to God will have already a certain + righteousness in their lives; these things happen like a thunderclap only + in strange exceptional cases, and the same movements of the mind that have + brought them to God will already have brought their lives into a certain + rightness of direction and conduct. Yet occasionally there will be someone + to whom the self-examination that follows conversion will reveal an + entirely wrong and evil way of living. It may be that the light has come + to some rich idler doing nothing but follow a pleasurable routine. Or to + someone following some highly profitable and amusing, but socially useless + or socially mischievous occupation. One may be an advocate at the disposal + of any man’s purpose, or an actor or actress ready to fall in with any + theatrical enterprise. Or a woman may find herself a prostitute or a pet + wife, a mere kept instrument of indulgence. These are lives of prey, these + are lives of futility; the light of God will not tolerate such lives. Here + religion can bring nothing but a severance from the old way of life + altogether, a break and a struggle towards use and service and dignity. + </p> + <p> + But even here it does not follow that because a life has been wrong the + new life that begins must be far as the poles asunder from the old. Every + sort of experience that has ever come to a human being is in the self that + he brings to God, and there is no reason why a knowledge of evil ways + should not determine the path of duty. No one can better devise + protections against vices than those who have practised them; none know + temptations better than those who have fallen. If a man has followed an + evil trade, it becomes him to use his knowledge of the tricks of that + trade to help end it. He knows the charities it may claim and the remedies + it needs. . . . + </p> + <p> + A very interesting case to discuss in relation to this question of + adjustment is that of the barrister. A practising barrister under + contemporary conditions does indeed give most typically the opportunity + for examining the relation of an ordinary self-respecting worldly life, to + life under the dispensation of God discovered. A barrister is usually a + man of some energy and ambition, his honour is moulded by the traditions + of an ancient and antiquated profession, instinctively self-preserving and + yet with a real desire for consistency and respect. As a profession it has + been greedy and defensively conservative, but it has never been shameless + nor has it ever broken faith with its own large and selfish, but quite + definite, propositions. It has never for instance had the shamelessness of + such a traditionless and undisciplined class as the early factory + organisers. It has never had the dull incoherent wickedness of the sort of + men who exploit drunkenness and the turf. It offends within limits. + Barristers can be, and are, disbarred. But it is now a profession + extraordinarily out of date; its code of honour derives from a time of + cruder and lower conceptions of human relationship. It apprehends the + State as a mere “ring” kept about private disputations; it has not begun + to move towards the modern conception of the collective enterprise as the + determining criterion of human conduct. It sees its business as a mere + play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or between men and men. + They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer wrongs, they evade + dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and compensations. The + primary business of the law is held to be decision in these wrangles, and + as wrangling is subject to artistic elaboration, the business of the + barrister is the business of a professional wrangler; he is a bravo in wig + and gown who fights the duels of ordinary men because they are incapable, + very largely on account of the complexities of legal procedure, of + fighting for themselves. His business is never to explore any fundamental + right in the matter. His business is to say all that can be said for his + client, and to conceal or minimise whatever can be said against his + client. The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain and the United + States of America is the judge, and whose habits and interests all incline + him to disregard the realities of the case in favour of the points in the + forensic game, then adjudicates upon the contest. . . . + </p> + <p> + Now this condition of things is clearly incompatible with the modern + conception of the world as becoming a divine kingdom. When the world is + openly and confessedly the kingdom of God, the law court will exist only + to adjust the differing views of men as to the manner of their service to + God; the only right of action one man will have against another will be + that he has been prevented or hampered or distressed by the other in + serving God. The idea of the law court will have changed entirely from a + place of dispute, exaction and vengeance, to a place of adjustment. The + individual or some state organisation will plead ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON + GOOD either against some state official or state regulation, or against + the actions or inaction of another individual. This is the only sort of + legal proceedings compatible with the broad beliefs of the new faith. . . + . Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far as it is not + otherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the methods and + administration of the law. That this was not the case with Christianity is + one of the many contributory aspects that lead one to the conviction that + it was not Christianity that took possession of the Roman empire, but an + imperial adventurer who took possession of an all too complaisant + Christianity. + </p> + <p> + Reverting now from these generalisations to the problem of the religious + from which they arose, it will have become evident that the essential work + of anyone who is conversant with the existing practice and literature of + the law and whose natural abilities are forensic, will lie in the + direction of reconstructing the theory and practice of the law in harmony + with modern conceptions, of making that theory and practice clear and + plain to ordinary men, of reforming the abuses of the profession by + working for the separation of bar and judiciary, for the amalgamation of + the solicitors and the barristers, and the like needed reforms. These are + matters that will probably only be properly set right by a quickening of + conscience among lawyers themselves. Of no class of men is the help and + service so necessary to the practical establishment of God’s kingdom, as + of men learned and experienced in the law. And there is no reason why for + the present an advocate should not continue to plead in the courts, + provided he does his utmost only to handle cases in which he believes he + can serve the right. Few righteous cases are ill-served by a frank + disposition on the part of lawyer and client to put everything before the + court. Thereby of course there arises a difficult case of conscience. What + if a lawyer, believing his client to be in the right, discovers him to be + in the wrong? He cannot throw up the case unless he has been scandalously + deceived, because so he would betray the confidence his client has put in + him to “see him through.” He has a right to “give himself away,” but not + to “give away” his client in this fashion. If he has a chance of a private + consultation I think he ought to do his best to make his client admit the + truth of the case and give in, but failing this he has no right to be + virtuous on behalf of another. No man may play God to another; he may + remonstrate, but that is the limit of his right. He must respect a + confidence, even if it is purely implicit and involuntary. I admit that + here the barrister is in a cleft stick, and that he must see the business + through according to the confidence his client has put in him—and + afterwards be as sorry as he may be if an injustice ensues. And also I + would suggest a lawyer may with a fairly good conscience defend a guilty + man as if he were innocent, to save him from unjustly heavy penalties. . . + . + </p> + <p> + This comparatively full discussion of the barrister’s problem has been + embarked upon because it does bring in, in a very typical fashion, just + those uncertainties and imperfections that abound in real life. Religious + conviction gives us a general direction, but it stands aside from many of + these entangled struggles in the jungle of conscience. Practice is often + easier than a rule. In practice a lawyer will know far more accurately + than a hypothetical case can indicate, how far he is bound to see his + client through, and how far he may play the keeper of his client’s + conscience. And nearly every day there happens instances where the most + subtle casuistry will fail and the finger of conscience point + unhesitatingly. One may have worried long in the preparation and + preliminaries of the issue, one may bring the case at last into the final + court of conscience in an apparently hopeless tangle. Then suddenly comes + decision. + </p> + <p> + The procedure of that silent, lit, and empty court in which a man states + his case to God, is very simple and perfect. The excuses and the special + pleading shrivel and vanish. In a little while the case lies bare and + plain. + </p> + <p> + 8. THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE + </p> + <p> + The question of oaths of allegiance, acts of acquiescence in existing + governments, and the like, is one that arises at once with the acceptance + of God as the supreme and real King of the Earth. At the worst Caesar is a + usurper, a satrap claiming to be sovereign; at the best he is provisional. + Modern casuistry makes no great trouble for the believing public official. + The chief business of any believer is to do the work for which he is best + fitted, and since all state affairs are to become the affairs of God’s + kingdom it is of primary importance that they should come into the hands + of God’s servants. It is scarcely less necessary to a believing man with + administrative gifts that he should be in the public administration, than + that he should breathe and eat. And whatever oath or the like to usurper + church or usurper king has been set up to bar access to service, is an + oath imposed under duress. If it cannot be avoided it must be taken rather + than that a man should become unserviceable. All such oaths are unfair and + foolish things. They exclude no scoundrels; they are appeals to + superstition. Whenever an opportunity occurs for the abolition of an oath, + the servant of God will seize it, but where the oath is unavoidable he + will take it. + </p> + <p> + The service of God is not to achieve a delicate consistency of statement; + it is to do as much as one can of God’s work. + </p> + <p> + 9. THE PRIEST AND THE CREED + </p> + <p> + It may be doubted if this line of reasoning regarding the official and his + oath can be extended to excuse the priest or pledged minister of religion + who finds that faith in the true God has ousted his formal beliefs. + </p> + <p> + This has been a frequent and subtle moral problem in the intellectual life + of the last hundred years. It has been increasingly difficult for any + class of reading, talking, and discussing people such as are the bulk of + the priesthoods of the Christian churches to escape hearing and reading + the accumulated criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the popularly + accepted story of man’s fall and salvation. Some have no doubt defeated + this universal and insidious critical attack entirely, and honestly + established themselves in a right-down acceptance of the articles and + disciplines to which they have subscribed and of the creeds they profess + and repeat. Some have recanted and abandoned their positions in the + priesthood. But a great number have neither resisted the bacillus of + criticism nor left the churches to which they are attached. They have + adopted compromises, they have qualified their creeds with modifying + footnotes of essential repudiation; they have decided that plain + statements are metaphors and have undercut, transposed, and inverted the + most vital points of the vulgarly accepted beliefs. One may find within + the Anglican communion, Arians, Unitarians, Atheists, disbelievers in + immortality, attenuators of miracles; there is scarcely a doubt or a cavil + that has not found a lodgment within the ample charity of the English + Establishment. I have been interested to hear one distinguished Canon + deplore that “they” did not identify the Logos with the third instead of + the second Person of the Trinity, and another distinguished Catholic + apologist declare his indifference to the “historical Jesus.” Within most + of the Christian communions one may believe anything or nothing, provided + only that one does not call too public an attention to one’s eccentricity. + The late Rev. Charles Voysey, for example, preached plainly in his church + at Healaugh against the divinity of Christ, unhindered. It was only when + he published his sermons under the provocative title of “The Sling and the + Stone,” and caused an outcry beyond the limits of his congregation, that + he was indicted and deprived. + </p> + <p> + Now the reasons why these men do not leave the ministry or priesthood in + which they find themselves are often very plausible. It is probable that + in very few cases is the retention of stipend or incumbency a conscious + dishonesty. At the worst it is mitigated by thought for wife or child. It + has only been during very exceptional phases of religious development and + controversy that beliefs have been really sharp. A creed, like a coin, it + may be argued, loses little in practical value because it is worn, or + bears the image of a vanished king. The religious life is a reality that + has clothed itself in many garments, and the concern of the priest or + minister is with the religious life and not with the poor symbols that may + indeed pretend to express, but do as a matter of fact no more than + indicate, its direction. It is quite possible to maintain that the church + and not the creed is the real and valuable instrument of religion, that + the religious life is sustained not by its propositions but by its + routines. Anyone who seeks the intimate discussion of spiritual things + with professional divines, will find this is the substance of the case for + the ecclesiastical sceptic. His church, he will admit, mumbles its + statement of truth, but where else is truth? What better formulae are to + be found for ineffable things? And meanwhile—he does good. + </p> + <p> + That may be a valid defence before a man finds God. But we who profess the + worship and fellowship of the living God deny that religion is a matter of + ineffable things. The way of God is plain and simple and easy to + understand. + </p> + <p> + Therewith the whole position of the conforming sceptic is changed. If a + professional religious has any justification at all for his + professionalism it is surely that he proclaims the nearness and greatness + of God. And these creeds and articles and orthodoxies are not + proclamations but curtains, they are a darkening and confusion of what + should be crystal clear. What compensatory good can a priest pretend to do + when his primary business is the truth and his method a lie? The oaths and + incidental conformities of men who wish to serve God in the state are on a + different footing altogether from the falsehood and mischief of one who + knows the true God and yet recites to a trustful congregation, foists upon + a trustful congregation, a misleading and ill-phrased Levantine creed. + </p> + <p> + Such is the line of thought which will impose the renunciation of his + temporalities and a complete cessation of services upon every ordained + priest and minister as his first act of faith. Once that he has truly + realised God, it becomes impossible for him ever to repeat his creed + again. His course seems plain and clear. It becomes him to stand up before + the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and nature of the + one true God. He must be explicit to the utmost of his powers. Then he may + await his expulsion. It may be doubted whether it is sufficient for him to + go away silently, making false excuses or none at all for his retreat. He + has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of his conforming years. + </p> + <p> + 10. THE UNIVERSALISM OF GOD + </p> + <p> + Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God? + </p> + <p> + This is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it + reappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious + interest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the + Calvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past + and far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists, + in its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God. Arminians seem + merely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his own + free act left men free to accept or reject salvation. To the realist type + of mind—here as always I use “realist” in its proper sense as the + opposite of nominalist—to the old-fashioned, over-exact and + over-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague and + unsatisfying. Just as it distresses the more downright kind of + intelligence with a feeling of disloyalty to admit that God is not + Almighty, so it troubles the same sort of intelligence to hear that there + is no clear line to be drawn between the saved and the lost. Realists like + an exclusive flavour in their faith. Moreover, it is a natural weakness of + humanity to be forced into extreme positions by argument. It is probable, + as I have already suggested, that the absolute attributes of God were + forced upon Christianity under the stresses of propaganda, and it is + probable that the theory of a super-human obstinancy beyond salvation + arose out of the irritations natural to theological debate. It is but a + step from the realisation that there are people absolutely unable or + absolutely unwilling to see God as we see him, to the conviction that they + are therefore shut off from God by an invincible soul blindness. + </p> + <p> + It is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned. + </p> + <p> + Beyond the little world of our sympathies and comprehension there are + those who seem inaccessible to God by any means within our experience. + They are people answering to the “hard-hearted,” to the “stiff-necked + generation” of the Hebrew prophets. They betray and even confess to + standards that seem hopelessly base to us. They show themselves incapable + of any disinterested enthusiasm for beauty or truth or goodness. They are + altogether remote from intelligent sacrifice. To every test they betray + vileness of texture; they are mean, cold, wicked. There are people who + seem to cheat with a private self-approval, who are ever ready to do harsh + and cruel things, whose use for social feeling is the malignant boycott, + and for prosperity, monopolisation and humiliating display; who seize upon + religion and turn it into persecution, and upon beauty to torment it on + the altars of some joyless vice. We cannot do with such souls; we have no + use for them, and it is very easy indeed to step from that persuasion to + the belief that God has no use for them. + </p> + <p> + And besides these base people there are the stupid people and the people + with minds so poor in texture that they cannot even grasp the few broad + and simple ideas that seem necessary to the salvation we experience, who + lapse helplessly into fetishistic and fearful conceptions of God, and are + apparently quite incapable of distinguishing between what is practically + and what is spiritually good. + </p> + <p> + It is an easy thing to conclude that the only way to God is our way to + God, that he is the privilege of a finer and better sort to which we of + course belong; that he is no more the God of the card-sharper or the + pickpocket or the “smart” woman or the loan-monger or the village oaf than + he is of the swine in the sty. But are we justified in thus limiting God + to the measure of our moral and intellectual understandings? Because some + people seem to me steadfastly and consistently base or hopelessly and + incurably dull and confused, does it follow that there are not phases, + albeit I have never chanced to see them, of exaltation in the one case and + illumination in the other? And may I not be a little restricting my + perception of Good? While I have been ready enough to pronounce this or + that person as being, so far as I was concerned, thoroughly damnable or + utterly dull, I find a curious reluctance to admit the general proposition + which is necessary for these instances. It is possible that the difference + between Arminian and Calvinist is a difference of essential intellectual + temperament rather than of theoretical conviction. I am temperamentally + Arminian as I am temperamentally Nominalist. I feel that it must be in the + nature of God to attempt all souls. There must be accessibilities I can + only suspect, and accessibilities of which I know nothing. + </p> + <p> + Yet here is a consideration pointing rather the other way. If you think, + as you must think, that you yourself can be lost to God and damned, then I + cannot see how you can avoid thinking that other people can be damned. But + that is not to believe that there are people damned at the outset by their + moral and intellectual insufficiency; that is not to make out that there + is a class of essential and incurable spiritual defectives. The religious + life preceded clear religious understanding and extends far beyond its + range. + </p> + <p> + In my own case I perceive that in spite of the value I attach to true + belief, the reality of religion is not an intellectual thing. The + essential religious fact is in another than the mental sphere. I am + passionately anxious to have the idea of God clear in my own mind, and to + make my beliefs plain and clear to other people, and particularly to other + people who may seem to be feeling with me; I do perceive that error is + evil if only because a faith based on confused conceptions and partial + understandings may suffer irreparable injury through the collapse of its + substratum of ideas. I doubt if faith can be complete and enduring if it + is not secured by the definite knowledge of the true God. Yet I have also + to admit that I find the form of my own religious emotion paralleled by + people with whom I have no intellectual sympathy and no agreement in + phrase or formula at all. + </p> + <p> + There is for example this practical identity of religious feeling and this + discrepancy of interpretation between such an inquirer as myself and a + convert of the Salvation Army. Here, clothing itself in phrases and images + of barbaric sacrifice, of slaughtered lambs and fountains of precious + blood, a most repulsive and incomprehensible idiom to me, and expressing + itself by shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and rhythmic + pacings that stun and dismay my nerves, I find, the same object sought, + release from self, and the same end, the end of identification with the + immortal, successfully if perhaps rather insecurely achieved. I see God + indubitably present in these excitements, and I see personalities I could + easily have misjudged as too base or too dense for spiritual + understandings, lit by the manifest reflection of divinity. One may be led + into the absurdest underestimates of religious possibilities if one + estimates people only coldly and in the light of everyday life. There is a + sub-intellectual religious life which, very conceivably, when its utmost + range can be examined, excludes nothing human from religious cooperation, + which will use any words to its tune, which takes its phrasing ready-made + from the world about it, as it takes the street for its temple, and yet + which may be at its inner point in the directest contact with God. + Religion may suffer from aphasia and still be religion; it may utter + misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The + methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and + may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry + out in the ecstasy of salvation; the tambourine, that modern revival of + the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum, may still stir dull nerves to a first + apprehension of powers and a call beyond the immediate material compulsion + of life, when the creeds of Christianity are as dead as the lore of the + Druids. + </p> + <p> + The emancipation of mankind from obsolete theories and formularies may be + accompanied by great tides of moral and emotional release among types and + strata that by the standards of a trained and explicit intellectual, may + seem spiritually hopeless. It is not necessary to imagine the whole world + critical and lucid in order to imagine the whole world unified in + religious sentiment, comprehending the same phrases and coming together + regardless of class and race and quality, in the worship and service of + the true God. The coming kingship of God if it is to be more than hieratic + tyranny must have this universality of appeal. As the head grows clear the + body will turn in the right direction. To the mass of men modern religion + says, “This is the God it has always been in your nature to apprehend.” + </p> + <p> + 11. GOD AND THE LOVE AND STATUS OF WOMEN + </p> + <p> + Now that we are discussing the general question of individual conduct, it + will be convenient to take up again and restate in that relationship, + propositions already made very plainly in the second and third chapters. + Here there are several excellent reasons for a certain amount of + deliberate repetition. . . . + </p> + <p> + All the mystical relations of chastity, virginity, and the like with + religion, those questions of physical status that play so large a part in + most contemporary religions, have disappeared from modern faith. Let us be + as clear as possible upon this. God is concerned by the health and fitness + and vigour of his servants; we owe him our best and utmost; but he has no + special concern and no special preferences or commandments regarding + sexual things. + </p> + <p> + Christ, it is manifest, was of the modern faith in these matters, he + welcomed the Magdalen, neither would he condemn the woman taken in + adultery. Manifestly corruption and disease were not to stand between him + and those who sought God in him. But the Christianity of the creeds, in + this as in so many respects, does not rise to the level of its founder, + and it is as necessary to repeat to-day as though the name of Christ had + not been ascendant for nineteen centuries, that sex is a secondary thing + to religion, and sexual status of no account in the presence of God. It + follows quite logically that God does not discriminate between man and + woman in any essential things. We leave our individuality behind us when + we come into the presence of God. Sex is not disavowed but forgotten. Just + as one’s last meal is forgotten—which also is a difference between + the religious moment of modern faith and certain Christian sacraments. You + are a believer and God is at hand to you; heed not your state; reach out + to him and he is there. In the moment of religion you are human; it + matters not what else you are, male or female, clean or unclean, Hebrew or + Gentile, bond or free. It is AFTER the moment of religion that we become + concerned about our state and the manner in which we use ourselves. + </p> + <p> + We have to follow our reason as our sole guide in our individual treatment + of all such things as food and health and sex. God is the king of the + whole world, he is the owner of our souls and bodies and all things. He is + not particularly concerned about any aspect, because he is concerned about + every aspect. We have to make the best use of ourselves for his kingdom; + that is our rule of life. That rule means neither painful nor frantic + abstinences nor any forced way of living. Purity, cleanliness, health, + none of these things are for themselves, they are for use; none are magic, + all are means. The sword must be sharp and clean. That does not mean that + we are perpetually to sharpen and clean it—which would weaken and + waste the blade. The sword must neither be drawn constantly nor always + rusting in its sheath. Those who have had the wits and soul to come to + God, will have the wits and soul to find out and know what is waste, what + is vanity, what is the happiness that begets strength of body and spirit, + what is error, where vice begins, and to avoid and repent and recoil from + all those things that degrade. These are matters not of the rule of life + but of the application of life. They must neither be neglected nor made + disproportionally important. + </p> + <p> + To the believer, relationship with God is the supreme relationship. It is + difficult to imagine how the association of lovers and friends can be very + fine and close and good unless the two who love are each also linked to + God, so that through their moods and fluctuations and the changes of years + they can be held steadfast by his undying steadfastness. But it has been + felt by many deep-feeling people that there is so much kindred between the + love and trust of husband and wife and the feeling we have for God, that + it is reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing. They do so + value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its + permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the + ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it + were, into the very presence and assent of God. There are many who dream + and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more + who would fain be so, and some who are. And from this comes the earnest + desire to make marriage sacramental and the attempt to impose upon all the + world the outward appearance, the restrictions, the pretence at least of + such a sacramental union. + </p> + <p> + There may be such a quasi-sacramental union in many cases, but only after + years can one be sure of it; it is not to be brought about by vows and + promises but by an essential kindred and cleaving of body and spirit; and + it concerns only the two who can dare to say they have it, and God. And + the divine thing in marriage, the thing that is most like the love of God, + is, even then, not the relationship of the man and woman as man and woman + but the comradeship and trust and mutual help and pity that joins them. No + doubt that from the mutual necessities of bodily love and the common + adventure, the necessary honesties and helps of a joint life, there + springs the stoutest, nearest, most enduring and best of human + companionship; perhaps only upon that root can the best of mortal + comradeship be got; but it does not follow that the mere ordinary coming + together and pairing off of men and women is in itself divine or + sacramental or anything of the sort. Being in love is a condition that may + have its moments of sublime exaltation, but it is for the most part an + experience far down the scale below divine experience; it is often love + only in so far as it shares the name with better things; it is greed, it + is admiration, it is desire, it is the itch for excitement, it is the + instinct for competition, it is lust, it is curiosity, it is adventure, it + is jealousy, it is hate. On a hundred scores ‘lovers’ meet and part. + Thereby some few find true love and the spirit of God in themselves or + others. + </p> + <p> + Lovers may love God in one another; I do not deny it. That is no reason + why the imitation and outward form of this great happiness should be made + an obligation upon all men and women who are attracted by one another, nor + why it should be woven into the essentials of religion. For women much + more than for men is this confusion dangerous, lest a personal love should + shape and dominate their lives instead of God. “He for God only; she for + God in him,” phrases the idea of Milton and of ancient Islam; it is the + formula of sexual infatuation, a formula quite easily inverted, as the end + of Goethe’s Faust (“The woman soul leadeth us upward and on”) may witness. + The whole drift of modern religious feeling is against this exaggeration + of sexual feeling, these moods of sexual slavishness, in spiritual things. + Between the healthy love of ordinary mortal lovers in love and the love of + God, there is an essential contrast and opposition in this, that + preference, exclusiveness, and jealousy seem to be in the very nature of + the former and are absolutely incompatible with the latter. The former is + the intensest realisation of which our individualities are capable; the + latter is the way of escape from the limitations of individuality. It may + be true that a few men and more women do achieve the completest + unselfishness and self-abandonment in earthly love. So the poets and + romancers tell us. If so, it is that by an imaginative perversion they + have given to some attractive person a worship that should be reserved for + God and a devotion that is normally evoked only by little children in + their mother’s heart. It is not the way between most of the men and women + one meets in this world. + </p> + <p> + But between God and the believer there is no other way, there is nothing + else, but self-surrender and the ending of self. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE SIXTH + </h2> + <h3> + MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION + </h3> + <p> + 1. THE BIOLOGICAL EQUIVALENT OF SIN + </p> + <p> + If the reader who is unfamiliar with scientific things will obtain and + read Metchnikoff’s “Nature of Man,” he will find there an interesting + summary of the biological facts that bear upon and destroy the delusion + that there is such a thing as individual perfection, that there is even + ideal perfection for humanity. With an abundance of convincing instances + Professor Metchnikoff demonstrates that life is a system of + “disharmonies,” capable of no perfect way, that there is no “perfect” + dieting, no “perfect” sexual life, no “perfect” happiness, no “perfect” + conduct. He releases one from the arbitrary but all too easy assumption + that there is even an ideal “perfection” in organic life. He sweeps out of + the mind with all the confidence and conviction of a physiological + specialist, any idea that there is a perfect man or a conceivable perfect + man. It is in the nature of every man to fall short at every point from + perfection. From the biological point of view we are as individuals a + series of involuntary “tries” on the part of an imperfect species towards + an unknown end. + </p> + <p> + Our spiritual nature follows our bodily as a glove follows a hand. We are + disharmonious beings and salvation no more makes an end to the defects of + our souls than it makes an end to the decay of our teeth or to those + vestigial structures of our body that endanger our physical welfare. + Salvation leaves us still disharmonious, and adds not an inch to our + spiritual and moral stature. + </p> + <p> + 2. WHAT IS DAMNATION? + </p> + <p> + Let us now take up the question of what is Sin? and what we mean by the + term “damnation,” in the light of this view of human reality. Most of the + great world religions are as clear as Professor Metchnikoff that life in + the world is a tangle of disharmonies, and in most cases they supply a + more or less myth-like explanation, they declare that evil is one side of + the conflict between Ahriman and Ormazd, or that it is the punishment of + an act of disobedience, of the fall of man and world alike from a state of + harmony. Their case, like his, is that THIS world is damned. + </p> + <p> + We do not find the belief that superposed upon the miseries of this world + there are the still bitterer miseries of punishments after death, so + nearly universal. The endless punishments of hell appear to be an exploit + of theory; they have a superadded appearance even in the Christian system; + the same common tendency to superlatives and absolutes that makes men + ashamed to admit that God is finite, makes them seek to enhance the merits + of their Saviour by the device of everlasting fire. Conquest over the + sorrow of life and the fear of death do not seem to them sufficient for + Christ’s glory. + </p> + <p> + Now the turning round of the modern mind from a conception of the universe + as something derived deductively from the past to a conception of it as + something gathering itself adventurously towards the future, involves a + release from the supposed necessity to tell a story and explain why. + Instead comes the inquiry, “To what end?” We can say without mental + discomfort, these disharmonies are here, this damnation is here—inexplicably. + We can, without any distressful inquiry into ultimate origins, bring our + minds to the conception of a spontaneous and developing God arising out of + those stresses in our hearts and in the universe, and arising to overcome + them. Salvation for the individual is escape from the individual distress + at disharmony and the individual defeat by death, into the Kingdom of God. + And damnation can be nothing more and nothing less than the failure or + inability or disinclination to make that escape. + </p> + <p> + Something of that idea of damnation as a lack of the will for salvation + has crept at a number of points into contemporary religious thought. It + was the fine fancy of Swedenborg that the damned go to their own hells of + their own accord. It underlies a queer poem, “Simpson,” by that + interesting essayist upon modern Christianity, Mr. Clutton Brock, which I + have recently read. Simpson dies and goes to hell—it is rather like + the Cromwell Road—and approves of it very highly, and then and then + only is he completely damned. Not to realise that one can be damned is + certainly to be damned; such is Mr. Brock’s idea. It is his definition of + damnation. Satisfaction with existing things is damnation. It is surrender + to limitation; it is acquiescence in “disharmony”; it is making peace with + that enemy against whom God fights for ever. + </p> + <p> + (But whether there are indeed Simpsons who acquiesce always and for ever + remains for me, as I have already confessed in the previous chapter, a + quite open question. My Arminian temperament turns me from the Calvinistic + conclusion of Mr. Brock’s satire.) + </p> + <p> + 3. SIN IS NOT DAMNATION + </p> + <p> + Now the question of sin will hardly concern those damned and lost by + nature, if such there be. Sin is not the same thing as damnation, as we + have just defined damnation. Damnation is a state, but sin is an incident. + One is an essential and the other an incidental separation from God. It is + possible to sin without being damned; and to be damned is to be in a state + when sin scarcely matters, like ink upon a blackamoor. You cannot have + questions of more or less among absolute things. + </p> + <p> + It is the amazing and distressful discovery of every believer so soon as + the first exaltation of belief is past, that one does not remain always in + touch with God. At first it seems incredible that one should ever have any + motive again that is not also God’s motive. Then one finds oneself caught + unawares by a base impulse. We discover that discontinuousness of our + apparently homogeneous selves, the unincorporated and warring elements + that seemed at first altogether absent from the synthesis of conversion. + We are tripped up by forgetfulness, by distraction, by old habits, by + tricks of appearance. There come dull patches of existence; those + mysterious obliterations of one’s finer sense that are due at times to the + little minor poisons one eats or drinks, to phases of fatigue, ill-health + and bodily disorder, or one is betrayed by some unanticipated storm of + emotion, brewed deep in the animal being and released by any trifling + accident, such as personal jealousy or lust, or one is relaxed by + contentment into vanity. All these rebel forces of our ill-coordinated + selves, all these “disharmonies,” of the inner being, snatch us away from + our devotion to God’s service, carry us off to follies, offences, + unkindness, waste, and leave us compromised, involved, and regretful, + perplexed by a hundred difficulties we have put in our own way back to + God. + </p> + <p> + This is the personal problem of Sin. Here prayer avails; here God can help + us. From God comes the strength to repent and make such reparation as we + can, to begin the battle again further back and lower down. From God comes + the power to anticipate the struggle with one’s rebel self, and to resist + and prevail over it. + </p> + <p> + 4. THE SINS OF THE INSANE + </p> + <p> + An extreme case is very serviceable in such a discussion as this. + </p> + <p> + It happens that the author carries on a correspondence with several + lunatics in asylums. There is a considerable freedom of notepaper in these + institutions; the outgoing letters are no doubt censored or selected in + some way, but a proportion at any rate are allowed to go out to their + addresses. As a journalist who signs his articles and as the author of + various books of fiction, as a frequent NAME, that is, to any one much + forced back upon reading, the writer is particularly accessible to this + type of correspondent. The letters come, some manifesting a hopeless + disorder that permits of no reply, but some being the expression of minds + overlaid not at all offensively by a web of fantasy, and some (and these + are the more touching ones and the ones that most concern us now) as + sanely conceived and expressed as any letters could be. They are written + by people living lives very like the lives of us who are called “sane,” + except that they lift to a higher excitement and fall to a lower + depression, and that these extremer phases of mania or melancholia slip + the leash of mental consistency altogether and take abnormal forms. They + tap deep founts of impulse, such as we of the safer ways of mediocrity do + but glimpse under the influence of drugs, or in dreams and rare moments of + controllable extravagance. Then the insane become “glorious,” or they + become murderous, or they become suicidal. All these letter-writers in + confinement have convinced their fellow-creatures by some extravagance + that they are a danger to themselves or others. + </p> + <p> + The letters that come from such types written during their sane intervals, + are entirely sane. Some, who are probably unaware—I think they + should know—of the offences or possibilities that justify their + incarceration, write with a certain resentment at their position; others + are entirely acquiescent, but one or two complain of the neglect of + friends and relations. But all are as manifestly capable of religion and + of the religious life as any other intelligent persons during the lucid + interludes that make up nine-tenths perhaps of their lives. . . . Suppose + now one of these cases, and suppose that the infirmity takes the form of + some cruel, disgusting, or destructive disposition that may become at + times overwhelming, and you have our universal trouble with sinful + tendency, as it were magnified for examination. It is clear that the mania + which defines his position must be the primary if not the cardinal + business in the life of a lunatic, but his problem with that is different + not in kind but merely in degree from the problem of lusts, vanities, and + weaknesses in what we call normal lives. It is an unconquered tract, a + great rebel province in his being, which refuses to serve God and tries to + prevent him serving God, and succeeds at times in wresting his capital out + of his control. But his relationship to that is the same relationship as + ours to the backward and insubordinate parishes, criminal slums, and + disorderly houses in our own private texture. + </p> + <p> + It is clear that the believer who is a lunatic is, as it were, only the + better part of himself. He serves God with this unconquered disposition in + him, like a man who, whatever else he is and does, is obliged to be the + keeper of an untrustworthy and wicked animal. His beast gets loose. His + only resort is to warn those about him when he feels that jangling or + excitement of the nerves which precedes its escapes, to limit its range, + to place weapons beyond its reach. And there are plenty of human beings + very much in his case, whose beasts have never got loose or have got + caught back before their essential insanity was apparent. And there are + those uncertifiable lunatics we call men and women of “impulse” and + “strong passions.” If perhaps they have more self-control than the really + mad, yet it happens oftener with them that the whole intelligent being + falls under the dominion of evil. The passion scarcely less than the + obsession may darken the whole moral sky. Repentance and atonement; + nothing less will avail them after the storm has passed, and the sedulous + preparation of defences and palliatives against the return of the storm. + </p> + <p> + This discussion of the lunatic’s case gives us indeed, usefully coarse and + large, the lines for the treatment of every human weakness by the servants + of God. A “weakness,” just like the lunatic’s mania, becomes a particular + charge under God, a special duty for the person it affects. He has to + minimise it, to isolate it, to keep it out of mischief. If he can he must + adopt preventive measures. . . . + </p> + <p> + These passions and weaknesses that get control of us hamper our usefulness + to God, they are an incessant anxiety and distress to us, they wound our + self-respect and make us incomprehensible to many who would trust us, they + discredit the faith we profess. If they break through and break through + again it is natural and proper that men and women should cease to believe + in our faith, cease to work with us or to meet us frankly. . . . Our sins + do everything evil to us and through us except separate us from God. + </p> + <p> + Yet let there be no mistake about one thing. Here prayer is a power. Here + God can indeed work miracles. A man with the light of God in his heart can + defeat vicious habits, rise again combative and undaunted after a hundred + falls, escape from the grip of lusts and revenges, make head against + despair, thrust back the very onset of madness. He is still the same man + he was before he came to God, still with his libidinous, vindictive, + boastful, or indolent vein; but now his will to prevail over those + qualities can refer to an exterior standard and an external interest, he + can draw upon a strength, almost boundless, beyond his own. + </p> + <p> + 5. BELIEVE, AND YOU ARE SAVED + </p> + <p> + But be a sin great or small, it cannot damn a man once he has found God. + You may kill and hang for it, you may rob or rape; the moment you truly + repent and set yourself to such atonement and reparation as is possible + there remains no barrier between you and God. Directly you cease to hide + or deny or escape, and turn manfully towards the consequences and the + setting of things right, you take hold again of the hand of God. Though + you sin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest of + you. Nothing but utter blindness of the spirit can shut a man off from + God. + </p> + <p> + There is nothing one can suffer, no situation so unfortunate, that it can + shut off one who has the thought of God, from God. If you but lift up your + head for a moment out of a stormy chaos of madness and cry to him, God is + there, God will not fail you. A convicted criminal, frankly penitent, and + neither obdurate nor abject, whatever the evil of his yesterdays, may + still die well and bravely on the gallows to the glory of God. He may step + straight from that death into the immortal being of God. + </p> + <p> + This persuasion is the very essence of the religion of the true God. There + is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented of, can stand + between God and man. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + </h2> + <h3> + THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + </h3> + <p> + 1. THE WORLD DAWN + </p> + <p> + As yet those who may be counted as belonging definitely to the new + religion are few and scattered and unconfessed, their realisations are + still uncertain and incomplete. But that is no augury for the continuance + of this state of affairs even for the next few decades. There are many + signs that the revival is coming very swiftly, it may be coming as swiftly + as the morning comes after a tropical night. It may seem at present as + though nothing very much were happening, except for the fact that the old + familiar constellations of theology have become a little pallid and lost + something of their multitude of points. But nothing fades of itself. The + deep stillness of the late night is broken by a stirring, and the morning + star of creedless faith, the last and brightest of the stars, the star + that owes its light to the coming sun is in the sky. + </p> + <p> + There is a stirring and a movement. There is a stir, like the stir before + a breeze. Men are beginning to speak of religion without the bluster of + the Christian formulae; they have begun to speak of God without any + reference to Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence. The Deists and + Theists of an older generation, be it noted, never did that. Their + “Supreme Being” repudiated nothing. He was merely the whittled stump of + the Trinity. It is in the last few decades that the western mind has + slipped loose from this absolutist conception of God that has dominated + the intelligence of Christendom at least, for many centuries. Almost + unconsciously the new thought is taking a course that will lead it far + away from the moorings of Omnipotence. It is like a ship that has slipped + its anchors and drifts, still sleeping, under the pale and vanishing + stars, out to the open sea. . . . + </p> + <p> + 2. CONVERGENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS + </p> + <p> + In quite a little while the whole world may be alive with this renascent + faith. + </p> + <p> + For emancipation from the Trinitarian formularies and from a belief in an + infinite God means not merely a great revivification of minds trained + under the decadence of orthodox Christianity, minds which have hitherto + been hopelessly embarrassed by the choice between pseudo-Christian + religion or denial, but also it opens the way towards the completest + understanding and sympathy and participation with the kindred movements + for release and for an intensification of the religious life, that are + going on outside the sphere of the Christian tradition and influence + altogether. Allusion has already been made to the sympathetic devotional + poetry of Rabindranath Tagore; he stands for a movement in Brahminism + parallel with and assimilable to the worship of the true God of mankind. + </p> + <p> + It is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is + entirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an evil + entanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is too easily + assumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with renunciation, not + merely of self but of being, with the escape from all effort of any sort + into an exalted vacuity. This is indeed neither the spirit of China nor of + Islam nor of the every-day life of any people in the world. It is not the + spirit of the Sikh nor of these newer developments of Hindu thought. It + has never been the spirit of Japan. To-day less than ever does Asia seem + disposed to give up life and the effort of life. Just as readily as + Europeans, do the Asiatics reach out their arms to that fuller life we can + live, that greater intensity of existence, to which we can attain by + escaping from ourselves. All mankind is seeking God. There is not a nation + nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at this moment by + the spirit of God in them towards the discovery of God. This is not an age + of despair but an age of hope in Asia as in all the world besides. + </p> + <p> + Islam is undergoing a process of revision closely parallel to that which + ransacks Christianity. Tradition and mediaeval doctrines are being thrust + aside in a similar way. There is much probing into the spirit and + intention of the Founder. The time is almost ripe for a heart-searching + Dialogue of the Dead, “How we settled our religions for ever and ever,” + between, let us say, Eusebius of Caesarea and one of Nizam-al-Mulk’s tame + theologians. They would be drawn together by the same tribulations; they + would be in the closest sympathy against the temerity of the moderns; they + would have a common courtliness. The Quran is but little read by + Europeans; it is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that it does + not contain; there is much confusion in people’s minds between its text + and the ancient Semitic traditions and usages retained by its followers; + in places it may seem formless and barbaric; but what it has chiefly to + tell of is the leadership of one individualised militant God who claims + the rule of the whole world, who favours neither rank nor race, who would + lead men to righteousness. It is much more free from sacramentalism, from + vestiges of the ancient blood sacrifice, and its associated sacerdotalism, + than Christianity. The religion that will presently sway mankind can be + reached more easily from that starting-point than from the confused + mysteries of Trinitarian theology. Islam was never saddled with a creed. + With the very name “Islam” (submission to God) there is no quarrel for + those who hold the new faith. . . . + </p> + <p> + All the world over there is this stirring in the dry bones of the old + beliefs. There is scarcely a religion that has not its Bahaism, its + Modernists, its Brahmo Somaj, its “religion without theology,” its + attempts to escape from old forms and hampering associations to that + living and world-wide spiritual reality upon which the human mind almost + instinctively insists. . . . + </p> + <p> + It is the same God we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the same + God. + </p> + <p> + So that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental + and disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may be and + most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood of religious + unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs, sweeping away the + old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and shrines, the last crumb of + the Orphic victim and the last rag of the Serapeum, and turning all men + about into one direction, as the ships and houseboats swing round together + in some great river with the uprush of the tide. . . . + </p> + <p> + 3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH? + </p> + <p> + Among those who are beginning to realise the differences and identities of + the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions of + organisation and assembly are being discussed. Every new religious + development is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces, and + it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their faith + there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to + determine sources and to form original congregations, especially among + people with European traditions. + </p> + <p> + These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are imitative. + This time there has been no revelation here or there; there is no claim to + a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men have thought and + sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology has cleared away. + There seems no need therefore for special teachers or a special + propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem to insist upon + differences. The Christian precedent of a church is particularly + misleading. The church with its sacraments and its sacerdotalism is the + disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful interpolations there is + no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood sacrifices or the mysteries + of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses were superadded after his + martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a gospel; he sent out not medicine + men but apostles. + </p> + <p> + No doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to God. They become + naturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise God, each will be + disposed in his own fashion to call his neighbour’s attention to what he + sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a post card; + this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells positively but + because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little doubt have I that we + do) need special propagandas and organisations to discuss errors and keep + back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free speech and restrain the + enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want a church to keep our + faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for that there is no need for + orthodoxies and controlling organisations of statement. It is for each man + to follow his own impulse, and to speak to his like in his own fashion. + </p> + <p> + Whatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name of + the true God must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of + religion. + </p> + <p> + The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation in + dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the + unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by robes + and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom Christ + detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of a + church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs of men, + for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the collecting of + eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution of bread, the + notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and suchlike affairs. + The better we organise such things, the freer and better equipped we leave + men’s minds for nobler purposes, for those adventures and experiments + towards God’s purpose which are the reality of life. But all organisations + must be watched, for whatever is organised can be “captured” and misused. + Repentance, moreover, is the beginning and essential of the religious + life, and organisations (acting through their secretaries and officials) + never repent. God deals only with the individual for the individual’s + surrender. He takes no cognisance of committees. + </p> + <p> + Those who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most + mistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to + purchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one’s + sense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you know + where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of God for ESPRIT DE + CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to keep + anniversaries and establish sacramental ceremonies. The disposition to + form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all too + strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such + organisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living + faith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so much + as a definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for worship + and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little manifest + good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for God to irradiate + your soul. + </p> + <p> + All these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition. + </p> + <p> + 4. ORGANISATIONS UNDER GOD + </p> + <p> + Yet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out about God. + They want to share this great thing with all mankind. + </p> + <p> + Why should they not shout and share? + </p> + <p> + Let them express all that they desire to express in their own fashion by + themselves or grouped with their friends as they will. Let them shout + chorally if they are so disposed. Let them work in a gang if so they can + work the better. But let them guard themselves against the idea that they + can have God particularly or exclusively with them in any such + undertaking. Or that so they can express God rather than themselves. + </p> + <p> + That I think states the attitude of the modern spirit towards the idea of + a church. Mankind passes for ever out of the idolatry of altars, away from + the obscene rites of circumcision and symbolical cannibalism, beyond the + sway of the ceremonial priest. But if the modern spirit holds that + religion cannot be organised or any intermediary thrust between God and + man, that does not preclude infinite possibilities of organisation and + collective action UNDER God and within the compass of religion. There is + no reason why religious men should not band themselves the better to + attain specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics, there is no + objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not against + subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations that may + claim to be comprehensive. + </p> + <p> + For example there is no reason why one should not—and in many cases + there are good reasons why one should—organise or join associations + for the criticism of religious ideas, an employment that may pass very + readily into propaganda. + </p> + <p> + Many people feel the need of prayer to resist the evil in themselves and + to keep them in mind of divine emotion. And many want not merely prayer + but formal prayer and the support of others, praying in unison. The writer + does not understand this desire or need for collective prayer very well, + but there are people who appear to do so and there is no reason why they + should not assemble for that purpose. And there is no doubt that divine + poetry, divine maxims, religious thought finely expressed, may be heard, + rehearsed, collected, published, and distributed by associations. The + desire for expression implies a sort of assembly, a hearer at least as + well as a speaker. And expression has many forms. People with a strong + artistic impulse will necessarily want to express themselves by art when + religion touches them, and many arts, architecture and the drama for + example, are collective undertakings. I do not see why there should not + be, under God, associations for building cathedrals and suchlike great + still places urgent with beauty, into which men and women may go to rest + from the clamour of the day’s confusions; I do not see why men should not + make great shrines and pictures expressing their sense of divine things, + and why they should not combine in such enterprises rather than work to + fill heterogeneous and chaotic art galleries. A wave of religious revival + and religious clarification, such as I foresee, will most certainly bring + with it a great revival of art, religious art, music, songs, and writings + of all sorts, drama, the making of shrines, praying places, temples and + retreats, the creation of pictures and sculptures. It is not necessary to + have priestcraft and an organised church for such ends. Such enrichments + of feeling and thought are part of the service of God. + </p> + <p> + And again, under God, there may be associations and fraternities for + research in pure science; associations for the teaching and simplification + of languages; associations for promoting and watching education; + associations for the discussion of political problems and the + determination of right policies. In all these ways men may multiply their + use by union. Only when associations seek to control things of belief, to + dictate formulae, restrict religious activities or the freedom of + religious thought and teaching, when they tend to subdivide those who + believe and to set up jealousies or exclusions, do they become + antagonistic to the spirit of modern religion. + </p> + <p> + 5. THE STATE IS GOD’S INSTRUMENT + </p> + <p> + Because religion cannot be organised, because God is everywhere and + immediately accessible to every human being, it does not follow that + religion cannot organise every other human affair. It is indeed essential + to the idea that God is the Invisible King of this round world and all + mankind, that we should see in every government, great and small, from the + council of the world-state that is presently coming, down to the village + assembly, the instrument of God’s practical control. Religion which is + free, speaking freely through whom it will, subject to a perpetual + unlimited criticism, will be the life and driving power of the whole + organised world. So that if you prefer not to say that there will be no + church, if you choose rather to declare that the world-state is God’s + church, you may have it so if you will. Provided that you leave conscience + and speech and writing and teaching about divine things absolutely free, + and that you try to set no nets about God. + </p> + <p> + The world is God’s and he takes it. But he himself remains freedom, and we + find our freedom in him. + </p> + <p> + THE ENVOY + </p> + <p> + So I end this compact statement of the renascent religion which I believe + to be crystallising out of the intellectual, social, and spiritual + confusions of this time. It is an account rendered. It is a statement and + record; not a theory. There is nothing in all this that has been invented + or constructed by the writer; I have been but scribe to the spirit of my + generation; I have at most assembled and put together things and thoughts + that I have come upon, have transferred the statements of “science” into + religious terminology, rejected obsolescent definitions, and + re-coordinated propositions that had drifted into opposition. Thus, I see, + ideas are developing, and thus have I written them down. It is a secondary + matter that I am convinced that this trend of intelligent opinion is a + discovery of truth. The reader is told of my own belief merely to avoid an + affectation of impartiality and aloofness. + </p> + <p> + The theogony here set forth is ancient; one can trace it appearing and + disappearing and recurring in the mutilated records of many different + schools of speculation; the conception of God as finite is one that has + been discussed very illuminatingly in recent years in the work of one I am + happy to write of as my friend and master, that very great American, the + late William James. It was an idea that became increasingly important to + him towards the end of his life. And it is the most releasing idea in the + system. + </p> + <p> + Only in the most general terms can I trace the other origins of these + present views. I do not think modern religion owes much to what is called + Deism or Theism. The rather abstract and futile Deism of the eighteenth + century, of “votre Etre supreme” who bored the friends of Robespierre, was + a sterile thing, it has little relation to these modern developments, it + conceived of God as an infinite Being of no particular character whereas + God is a finite being of a very especial character. On the other hand men + and women who have set themselves, with unavoidable theological + preconceptions, it is true, to speculate upon the actual teachings and + quality of Christ, have produced interpretations that have interwoven + insensibly with thoughts more apparently new. There is a curious modernity + about very many of Christ’s recorded sayings. Revived religion has also, + no doubt, been the receiver of many religious bankruptcies, of Positivism + for example, which failed through its bleak abstraction and an unspiritual + texture. Religion, thus restated, must, I think, presently incorporate + great sections of thought that are still attached to formal Christianity. + The time is at hand when many of the organised Christian churches will be + forced to define their positions, either in terms that will identify them + with this renascence, or that will lead to the release of their more + liberal adherents. Its probable obligations to Eastern thought are less + readily estimated by a European writer. + </p> + <p> + Modern religion has no revelation and no founder; it is the privilege and + possession of no coterie of disciples or exponents; it is appearing + simultaneously round and about the world exactly as a crystallising + substance appears here and there in a super-saturated solution. It is a + process of truth, guided by the divinity in men. It needs no other + guidance, and no protection. It needs nothing but freedom, free speech, + and honest statement. Out of the most mixed and impure solutions a growing + crystal is infallibly able to select its substance. The diamond arises + bright, definite, and pure out of a dark matrix of structureless + confusion. + </p> + <p> + This metaphor of crystallisation is perhaps the best symbol of the advent + and growth of the new understanding. It has no church, no authorities, no + teachers, no orthodoxy. It does not even thrust and struggle among the + other things; simply it grows clear. There will be no putting an end to + it. It arrives inevitably, and it will continue to separate itself out + from confusing ideas. It becomes, as it were the Koh-i-noor; it is a + Mountain of Light, growing and increasing. It is an all-pervading + lucidity, a brightness and clearness. It has no head to smite, no body you + can destroy; it overleaps all barriers; it breaks out in despite of every + enclosure. It will compel all things to orient themselves to it. + </p> + <p> + It comes as the dawn comes, through whatever clouds and mists may be here + or whatever smoke and curtains may be there. It comes as the day comes to + the ships that put to sea. + </p> + <p> + It is the Kingdom of God at hand. + </p> + <p> + THE END <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s God The Invisible King, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD THE INVISIBLE KING *** + +***** This file should be named 1046-h.htm or 1046-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/4/1046/ + +Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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