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diff --git a/old/1046.txt b/old/1046.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9496e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1046.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4393 @@ +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] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD THE INVISIBLE KING *** + + + + +Produced by Donald Lainson + + + + + +GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + +by H. G. Wells + + + +CONTENTS + + +PREFACE + +1. THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION + +2. HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT + +3. THE LIKENESS OF GOD + +4. THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS + +5. THE INVISIBLE KING + +6. MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION + +7. THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + +THE ENVOY + + + + +PREFACE + + +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. + +His matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is only incidentally and +because it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinal Christianity. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + +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. + +H. G. W. + +Dunmow, May, 1917. + + + + +GOD THE INVISIBLE KING + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION + + +1. MODERN RELIGION HAS NO FOUNDER + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +2. MODERN RELIGION HAS A FINITE GOD + + +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." . . . + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. . . . + + + +3. THE INFINITE BEING IS NOT GOD + + +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?" + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +4. THE LIFE FORCE IS NOT GOD + + +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. . . . + +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. + + + +5. GOD IS WITHIN + + +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. + +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! + +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. + + + +6. THE COMING OF GOD + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +"Closer he is than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." + +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. + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND + +HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT + + +1. HERESIES ARE MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOD + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + + + +2. HERESIES OF SPECULATION + + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. . . . + + * 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. + +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. + + + +3. GOD IS NOT MAGIC + + +One of the most universal of these natural misconceptions of God is to +consider him as something magic serving the ends of men. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + + + +4. GOD IS NOT PROVIDENCE + + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + + +"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." . . . + + +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. + + +5. THE HERESY OF QUIETISM + + +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. + +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. + + + +6. GOD DOES NOT PUNISH + + +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. . . . + + * 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. + +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. + +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. + + + +7. GOD AND THE NURSERY-MAID + + +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. + +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. + +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! . . . + +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: + + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"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: + +"'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.' + +"That is addressed to a child six years of age. + +"'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.'" . . . + + +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. + + + +8. THE CHILDREN'S GOD + + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + + + +9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE LIKENESS OF GOD + + +1. GOD IS COURAGE + +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. + +And firstly, GOD IS COURAGE. + + + +2. GOD IS A PERSON + + +And next GOD IS A PERSON. + +Upon this point those who are beginning to profess modern religion are +very insistent. It is, they declare, the central article, the axis, of +their religion. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + +And take another image. . . . Who bears affection for this or that +spadeful of mud in my garden? Who cares a throb of the heart for all the +tons of chalk in Kent or all the lumps of limestone in Yorkshire? But +men love England, which is made up of such things. + +And so we think of 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. + +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. + + +3. GOD IS YOUTH + + +The third thing to be told of the true God is that GOD IS YOUTH. + +God, we hold, began and is always beginning. He looks forever into the +future. + +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,-- + + "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste + Brought death into the world and all our woe." + +But the 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. . . . + + + +4. WHEN WE SAY GOD IS LOVE + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS + + + +1. THE SCIENTIFIC ATHEIST + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + +"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." + + +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. + +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! + +(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?) + +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? + + +"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. + + * 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. + +"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. . . . + +"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. + +"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." + + +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. . . . + +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. + +This altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our God--an +altar rather indistinctly inscribed. + + + +2. SACRIFICE IMPLIES GOD + + +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. + +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." + +But if it comes to that, am I anything more than the formula that +satisfies all my forms of consciousness? + +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. + +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: + + +"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? + +"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. + +"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." + + +And again: + + +"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." + + +And again: + + +"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." + + +"Pisgah--the Promised Land!" Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as if he +were half-way to "Oh! Beulah Land!" and the tambourine. + +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. + + + +3. GOD IS AN EXTERNAL REALITY + + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +4. ANOTHER RELIGIOUS MATERIALIST + + +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." + +From that discussion, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell presently comes to this most +definite and interesting statement: + + +"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." + + +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. + +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. + + + +5. A NOTE ON A LECTURE BY PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY + + +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: + + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"At any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of." + + +There the passage and the lecture end. + +I would urge that here again is an inadvertent witness to the reality of +God. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + + + +6. RELIGION AS ETHICS + + +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: + + +"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. . . . + +"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. . . ." + + +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: + + +"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.'" + + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +THE INVISIBLE KING + + +1. MODERN RELIGION A POLITICAL RELIGION + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +2. THE WILL OF GOD + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +3. THE CRUCIFIX + + +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. + + * 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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. . . . + +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.* + + * 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." + +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.'" + +These are both exceptional utterances, interesting as showing how +clearly parallel are the tendencies within and without Christianity. + + + +4. THE PRIMARY DUTIES + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +5. THE INCREASING KINGDOM + + +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. . . . + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +6. WHAT IS MY PLACE IN THE KINGDOM? + + +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?" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + + + +7. ADJUSTING LIFE + + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + + + +8. THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE + + +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. + +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. + + + +9. THE PRIEST AND THE CREED + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +10. THE UNIVERSALISM OF GOD + + +Are any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God? + +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. + +It is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + + + +11. GOD AND THE LOVE AND STATUS OF WOMEN + + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +But between God and the believer there is no other way, there is nothing +else, but self-surrender and the ending of self. + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION + + + +1. THE BIOLOGICAL EQUIVALENT OF SIN + + +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. + +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. + + + +2. WHAT IS DAMNATION? + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +(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.) + + + +3. SIN IS NOT DAMNATION + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +4. THE SINS OF THE INSANE + + +An extreme case is very serviceable in such a discussion as this. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. + +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. + + + +5. BELIEVE, AND YOU ARE SAVED + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +CHAPTER THE SEVENTH + +THE IDEA OF A CHURCH + + + +1. THE WORLD DAWN + + +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. + +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. . . . + + + +2. CONVERGENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS + + +In quite a little while the whole world may be alive with this renascent +faith. + +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. + +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. + +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. . . . + +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. . . . + +It is the same God we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the +same God. + +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. . . . + + + +3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH? + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +All these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition. + + + +4. ORGANISATIONS UNDER GOD + + +Yet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out about +God. They want to share this great thing with all mankind. + +Why should they not shout and share? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +5. THE STATE IS GOD'S INSTRUMENT + + +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. + +The world is God's and he takes it. But he himself remains freedom, and +we find our freedom in him. + + + +THE ENVOY + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +It is the Kingdom of God at hand. + + +THE END + + + + + + + +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.txt or 1046.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 + +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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