Religious Perplexities Part 2

This does not prove the idea untrue to reality; it may conceivably be used as a strong argument to the contrary. At the same time it puts us on our guard, warning us to look out for other forms of "domestication"

which may be less in accord with essential truth than the one I have just mentioned. Certainly it is extremely difficult to find any form of the idea of G.o.d which has retained a purely spiritual or religious character throughout the entire course of its history. Between the conception of Deity implied in the teachings of Jesus and the conception as it appears in "G.o.d save the King" the distance is immense; and few theologians I imagine would be so hardy or so patriotic as to affirm that the latter conception is nearer to the Divine Reality.

The theologian who takes up the proof of the existence of G.o.d should make it clear, both to himself and to his audience, at which end of this long line, which has not been one of "development," he lays the emphasis. Any proof of the existence of "the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" would certainly prove the non-existence of the being adumbrated in "G.o.d save the King"; and vice versa. Which may be expanded into a more general proposition. Reasons given in favour of a spiritual or religious conception of G.o.d become less and less valid exactly in proportion as we approach its secular modifications; while reasons given in favour of these latter are worthless as proofs of the spiritual reality. Most of our difficulties in believing in G.o.d arise from the fact that G.o.d, in our meaning of the term, is no longer "spirit" (as Jesus said), but spirit shorn of its freedom and reduced to the dimensions of some human utility or purpose--that is, not "spirit" at all.

For these reasons I will venture to suggest to anyone who is perplexed by doubts about the reality of G.o.d, not to trust the fortunes of his faith too unreservedly to the field of mere argumentation. If he does so he runs a serious risk of falling, without being aware of it, into one of the many grooves of thought, which alien interests have cut deep into the ground of theological controversy, leading the mind in a direction contrary to that in which spiritual reality is to be found.

Neither let him deem himself an atheist because he cannot believe in the Deity adumbrated by "G.o.d save the King." Rather let him conceive it possible that G.o.d is speaking to him in his refusal to believe in _that_ G.o.d. Let him seek G.o.d in the very heart of his doubts about G.o.d, saying to himself words such as these:

"G.o.d, if there be such an one, will reveal himself as a companion spirit in my endeavour to achieve a better-than-what-is; incidentally therefore in my rejection of all debased, or even man-made, images of himself. He will not consent to be the servant of men's designs, or the ally of their policies, not even when these things clothe themselves in great words spelt with capital letters--like Democracy.

He will not even submit to the shackles of their forms of thought."

I suggest further that the only final mode of ascertaining whether or no such a G.o.d exists is _by experiment_, standing or falling by the issue, and resorting to the methods of argumentation only to confirm or elucidate the results so obtained. The experiment first, the argumentation second.

But of what nature is the experiment in question? I conceive it being made in the following manner:

"Of the many G.o.ds, or conceptions of G.o.d, that are offered me, the only one I am concerned to believe in, and should find it a calamity not to believe in, is the G.o.d who is sympathetic, and _actively_ sympathetic, on the lines of my determination to achieve a better-than-what-is.

Omnipotence and Omniscience I could dispense with if need be; the disappearance of the Cosmic Potentate would not leave me orphaned; the Absolute does not enthral me and I should suffer no nightmare were I to learn that it did not exist. But were I forced to admit that the universe, as a whole, is quite indifferent to this desire of mine to achieve a better-than-what-is, that there is nothing in its nature which shares my interest in that matter, nothing there that backs me up, nothing to which the failure or success of my attempt makes the slightest difference, then indeed a dark and cruel blight would fall upon my soul.

"To that blight I may have to submit. But I will not submit until I have tested the universe in the only way that is open to me. I will trust it as a friend. There are those about me who say that my trust will not be betrayed, having made the same experiment themselves. They remind me that the world I am living in is not _any_ kind of world, but just the one particular kind needed by a soul whose business it is to create new values, in the way of Truth, Beauty and Goodness; that its laws, forces and material readily lend themselves to the purpose of anyone who will use them for that high creative end, turning out, in fact, to be the very kind of laws, forces and material which such an one needs. Well then, I will see. I will base my life on the a.s.sumption that somewhere, in the height above or in the depth below, Power is waiting to back me up. That Power, if I find it, shall be my G.o.d. Is it not reasonable to suppose that, if it exists, it will find some means of making me aware of its presence? That then shall be my experiment, and I will abide by the result."

A person who reasons with himself in this manner is taking the most practical, and the wisest means I know of to determine the question whether G.o.d exists. For my own part I should view his experiment with hope proportioned to his sincerity. Frankly, I should expect him to make discovery of the Living G.o.d, as a reality, as a companion, as a friend. Whether to the reality, companion, friend, so discovered he gave the name "G.o.d," or some other name, I should not regard as a matter of supreme importance. If he chose to call it Christ, or more simply "the Spirit," I should not quarrel with him. The discovery is far too momentous to be imperilled for a name. Its value lies not in its name but in its _reality_. "Few things are easier," says John Henry Newman, "than to use the name of G.o.d and mean nothing by it."

Call it then by a name which means something, and not by a name which means nothing.

All religious testimony, so far as I can interpret its meaning, converges towards a single point, namely this. There is that in the world, call it what you will, which responds to the confidence of those who trust it, declaring itself, to them, as a fellow-worker in the pursuit of the Eternal Values, meeting their loyalty to it with reciprocal loyalty to them, and coming in at critical moments when the need of its sympathy is greatest; the conclusion being, that wherever there is a soul in darkness, obstruction or misery, there also is a Power which can help, deliver, illuminate and gladden that soul. This is the Helper of men, sharing their business as Creators of Value, nearest at hand when the worst has to be encountered; the companion of the brave, the upholder of the loyal, the friend of the lover, the healer of the broken, the joy of the victorious--the G.o.d who is spirit, the G.o.d who is love.

Had more been heard about this, the G.o.d of religion, and less about that other--the lawyer's G.o.d, whose main concern is the policing of his universe--our religious perplexities would not be what they are. I do not say they would be easier. They might be harder. But they would lose their character as irritants and become, instead, incentives to humane relations.h.i.+ps, to n.o.ble living and to creative work. For there are two kinds of religious perplexity. In the one, perplexity overcomes religion; in the other, religion overcomes perplexity. "We are perplexed, yet not unto despair."

_III_

_Perplexity in the Christian Religion_

Those who are wondering in what form Christianity is destined to survive, or whether it will survive at all,[1] would be well advised to keep in mind two significant facts, discernible enough even when the view is limited to our own country, but obvious on a wider survey of what is going forward in foreign lands: first, that the lay mind has definitely pa.s.sed beyond clerical control; second, that the most active religious minds, both among the clergy and the laity, but among the laity most of all, are learning to use their own eyes in the search for G.o.d, instead of looking for Him through the ill-matched lenses of Jew-Greek binoculars, and are gradually ceasing to think about Christ and his religion in terms of the recognized "isms"--Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Modernism, Trinitarianism, Unitarianism, or any other. They have pa.s.sed beyond all that and are probing deeper ground. They are judging spiritual things by spiritual.

If these things are so, and somewhat exceptional opportunities of observing have convinced me that they are,[2] it would seem to follow that the form in which Christianity is destined to survive (if it survives at all) will not be the form of any of the "isms" aforesaid.

In other words, even if the battle of the "isms," as this is now carried on by professional controversalists and mainly on clerical ground, were to issue in the final victory of one of them over the others--of which at present there is little prospect--this would decide nothing as to the fortunes of Christianity in the world at large.

Thus, though we have no indication of what the surviving form of Christianity will be, we have a pretty clear indication of what it will not be. Beyond this it seems impossible to cast the horoscope of Christianity at the present time. Its fortunes have always been unpredictable; each new development a surprise to those who witnessed it. "As the lightning ... so shall be the coming of the Son of Man."

The application of this to what follows will be obvious as we proceed.

To Bishop Gore's denial that Christianity has failed, on the ground that "it has never been tried," Mr Graham Wallas makes the effective reply that a religion that has been adopted by the great States of the world for fifteen centuries and never been "tried" is a religion that has failed. In this Mr Wallas follows the proper method of judging Christianity by its own high standards, which certainly require that it should have been tried ere this. "What thou doest do _quickly_" was spoken to Judas Iscariot. Does it follow that "What thou doest do slowly, putting it off, if it so pleases, for fifteen centuries" was intended to be the motto of the Christian Church?

The command to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor" was doubtless spoken "to a particular young man on a particular occasion."

But the parable of the Good Samaritan, with its pungent ending "go and do thou likewise," was also spoken to a particular lawyer on a particular occasion. And so with the teachings of Christ in general.

All his universals were seen in particulars. If, then, we are to discharge everything that was spoken "to particular individuals on particular occasions" as inapplicable to modern conditions, or to the world at large, we shall find that there is not much left that we can apply to anything. What, indeed, remains? The "spirit" of it all?

Yes: but a very different spirit from that which makes these convenient excisions. Many of the alleged excuses for the failure of Christianity have been pitched in this key. They are unconvincing.

Others fall back on the magic words "slow and gradual," words that have induced many persons to believe that the slower and more gradual a process is the more surely it is divine--as against an earlier thought which armed the G.o.ds with thunderbolts. The convenience of this excuse is that no depth of failure can be so extreme as not to be covered by it--just as, in the case cited above, no betrayal of Christ's principles can be so complete as not to be covered by the plea that the principles in question "were spoken to particular individuals on particular occasions." But though the one argument is as convenient as the other, it is no more satisfactory to an honest man.

How has it come to pa.s.s that respectable Christian apologists have fallen into such flagrant dishonesties?

The cause, I believe, lies in the habit mentioned in the first section of this book--the habit, namely, of applying carnal logic (admirable for carnal purposes) to divine things, not judging spiritual things by spiritual. Anyone who studies this cla.s.s of apologetics will be struck by their resemblance to a well-known type of political speech, when the spokesman of some discredited Government which has broken all the promises given at the election, attempts to befool his const.i.tuents into believing that the promises have been kept. It is all a matter of artfully adjusting the emphasis--the art, as somebody has said "of keeping the public quiet about one thing by making them noisy about another." There is, I say, a significant resemblance between this method and that of the Christian apologist when, for example, he exalts the benevolence promoted by Christianity and ignores the parallel fact that no other religion has developed such ferocious internal differences nor been so cruel in its persecution of unbelievers. There have been moments in the history of Christianity--or of what was called so--when the slaughter of a million men, or the wiping out of an entire civilization, meant no more to the leaders of the Church than it did, by his own confession, to Napoleon. Witness the treatment meted out by Cortes, in the name of Christ and of his Holy Mother, to the Aztecs of Mexico. But the searchlight is seldom switched on to these things, and even when it is "slow and gradual" will cover them.

This application of carnal logic to things divine, this judging the success of Christianity by the standard of success which pa.s.ses muster in the crime-stained record of human society--as though it were the business of religion to keep pace with the dawdling, creeping, cowardly movement of mankind to better things, and not to hasten it with urgent calls to repent of its hesitancy--this is only one form, though perhaps the crowning form, in which the Kingdom that is not of this world has been surrendered by its deluded guardians to the kingdoms which are.

In that surrender, so long an established fact that we have lost sight of its malign implications, so deeply engrained into our mental habits that we have almost forgotten that it exists, lies the true cause of the failure of Christianity, and incidentally of its once atrocious tendency to persecute. For failure most unquestionably there has been: tragic but not irretrievable, if men have the courage to face the facts. Let it be acknowledged! Let an end come swiftly to the invention of sophistries to prove the contrary. That way lies failure deeper still.

The Christian Religion, in the course of its long history, has become entangled with a mult.i.tude of things which do not properly belong to it, with philosophies, with dogmatic systems, with political ideas, with the vested interests of great inst.i.tutions; and especially with the habits of mind which have grown up with these things, this last, the entanglement with deeply entrenched habits of mind, being the most formidable of them all. These entanglements are another name for our perplexities. They are so many and so deep that it becomes a matter of difficulty to extract the original genius of Christianity, to recover its original impulse and power.

It has become the fas.h.i.+on to rejoice in these entanglements. Men say that Christianity, by becoming entangled with these foreign elements, has permeated them with its spirit, acting upon them like leaven and so transfiguring them with its own value. That view I cannot share: at least not without great reservations. Were it not truer to say that these foreign elements, these outside things, these worldly philosophies and inst.i.tutions, have rather permeated Christianity with their spirit than suffered Christianity to permeate them with its own?

No one in his senses will deny that Christianity has done something to make these worldly things better. They would all be much worse than they are if Christianity had never touched them. But, on the other hand, Christianity would be much better than it is if they had never touched it. They have distorted it; have maimed it; have devitalized it at essential points. Dean Inge is speaking the truth when he says that Christianity has become secularized. It has become secularized not only in its outward form, but in something far deeper, namely, in its habits of thought, in its standard of values, and especially in its strivings for power, this last being the characteristic vice of the kingdoms that are of this world. Is it not a fact that for a long time past the Churches of Christendom have been engaged in strife as to who shall be greatest? There can be no surer sign of secularization than that.

Christianity, in the official, or authorized presentation of it, is a _smothered_ religion; smothered almost to the point of total asphyxiation and collapse, but not quite; smothered by the vested interests of great inst.i.tutions, and by the ambitions, fears and self-seekings that such interests breed; smothered by the elaborate theological defences that Christians have built, not against Antichrist, but against each other; smothered by anxieties, not unnatural in these embroilments, for its own future. If you take Christianity along with its entanglements, enc.u.mbrances and unnatural alliances: if you present it with all the secular baggage which the ages have fastened upon it, you will then find it a hopelessly perplexing thing, a thing which neither Reason nor Faith, whether acting singly or in combination, can accept.

But alongside the authorized version, and sometimes hidden within it as an inextinguishable spark of life, Christianity has an unauthorized version, which the former has often repressed, persecuted and condemned to the hangman or to the eternal flames. Of this unauthorized version a fair copy exists in the hearts of men, a fairer copy in the hearts of women, and the fairest copy of all in the hearts of children--for Christianity is preeminently a religion of the young. It is the unauthorized version which has kept Christianity alive through the ages and defied the smotherers even to this day.

Turning to the sources of Christianity in the first three Gospels we are struck by an immense contrast. There is no money in the purse, no victuals in the wallet, no munitions in the magazine, no baggage-train, no commissariat, no provision for trench warfare, and no thought of it.

We are in the presence of elemental realities, more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory, more majestic than the successor of St Peter in all his pomp. We are in another atmosphere. All this apparatus of defence and apology, of preaching and propaganda, of church policies and chapel oppositions,--things which have given a form so strangely artificial to our conceptions of Christianity--are here either secondary or absent altogether. Religion, instead of being concentrated into strong Sunday doses, is here a pervasive, un.o.btrusive presence, that cometh not with observation, the luminous background of human conduct, the hiding-place of the light which irradiates the whole picture of man's life. Even the name of G.o.d, which comes to our lips so easily--too easily--was used by Jesus with a reverential rarity.

You may read whole pages of the Gospels without finding it once.

Jesus, we say, preached the Fatherhood of G.o.d and the Brotherhood of Man. But he was not _always_ preaching them, and as a matter of fact he never mentioned either of them in exactly those terms. He enforced them, ill.u.s.trated them, revealed them, exemplified them, by living as though they were true, which is a very different thing from "preaching"

them. His days were spent going about doing good, his preaching being little more than a comment that arose naturally from the good that he did. The Gospel is neither a sermon nor a treatise on religion; but a _story_, which tells how Christianity began in something that happened, in a deed that was done, in a life that was lived. It abounds in parables and is a parable itself, revealing things hidden from the foundation of the world.

The order in which _we_ take these elements of religion--first, moral and religious propaganda, then performance to follow--is here reversed.

The performance comes first; the propaganda, which reduces itself to the very simple form "Go and do thou likewise," comes afterwards. The proportions, too, are different. Instead of an immense campaign of preaching which leaves little energy for doing the things preached about, the work done, the life lived here overshadow everything else.

The accusation of Carlyle against modern civilization, that it has run to seed in mere talk, parliamentary eloquence, stump oratory, and such like, has no application to the birth of the Christian religion.

Something to talk about, something worth talking about, was furnished before the talking began.

There we touch the dynamic principle of Christianity, cut free from its entanglements with a ma.s.s of things that do not belong to it; the power which still keeps it alive under a mountain of verbal accretions that would smother anything less divine. In the beginning was the deed: go thou and do likewise. So presented, Christianity is not perplexing; but quite the most convincing religion ever offered either to the intellect or the heart. The perplexities have arisen from the reversal of the true order; from the attempt to subordinate the thing done to the thing said; to lay the foundations in argument and propaganda which can only be laid in actual performance; and from the loss of reality and the descent into hollowness and windiness which inevitably follows when the talkers get the upper hand of the doers, or when theology gets the upper hand of religion, which is the same thing. The deeds that I do, these bear witness of me. What other conceivable witness could there be?

Not only has Christianity evolved an inst.i.tutional selfishness which shows plain signs of having been copied from the kingdoms that are of this world--the strife among churches as to which shall be greatest proves that--but the very form of its thought has become infected with ideas from the same source. Even philosophers have a difficulty of getting away from the notion that the universe is an immense political state, which most a.s.suredly it is not; while careless thinkers will constantly refer to the laws of nature as though they were legal enactments, to which they bear no resemblance. At no point has Christianity become more deeply secularized. Instead of the Kingdom which is _not_ of this world transfiguring the kingdoms that are, lifting them up to its own level, where every term of law is translated into a term of love, and the very notion of a Kingdom pa.s.ses into that of a Father's house of many mansions, the reverse process has taken place. Love has forsaken its mission of converting law to its own essence, and become a timid and apologetic fugitive, harried by the police.

No wonder that men declare themselves perplexed by Christianity. No wonder they find this mixture unacceptable. No wonder that official Christianity, tied up as it is with a political system which manages its own business none too well, is continually breaking down under the a.s.saults of a critical age, which has grown almost as tired of the one thing as of the other.

I am far from saying that Christianity excludes the idea of G.o.d as the moral Governor of the universe or forbids us so to think of him. But it does not _begin_ with that idea, as we are apt to do. It allows us to arrive at it, perhaps, at the end of a long pilgrimage in experience; but if we never get there at all it makes no lamentation, pulls no long face, and does not treat us as lost souls. It does not say "Begin with the idea of a Cosmic Potentate and make everything else fit in with that." It does not require us to dismiss from our minds as blasphemous every thought of G.o.d which makes him other than the omnipotent legislator of the universe. In the religion of Jesus I am struck by the absence, by the total absence, of all these pompous conceptions of the Divine Nature, which show such speaking signs of having originated under lawyers' wigs.

The idea that I do find seems to have originated in a very intimate and loving comrades.h.i.+p with man and with nature. Indeed, the religion of Jesus is precisely this spirit of comrades.h.i.+p raised to its highest power, the spirit which perceives itself to be "not alone," but lovingly befriended and supported, extending its intuitions to the heart of the world, to the core of reality, and finding there the fellows.h.i.+p, the loyalty, the powerful response, the _love_, of which the finest fellows.h.i.+ps and loyalties of earth are the shadows and the foretaste. In its essence the Gospel is a call to make the same experiment, the experiment of comrades.h.i.+p, the experiment of fellows.h.i.+p, the experiment of trusting the heart of things, throwing self-care to the winds, in the sure and certain faith that you will not be deserted, forsaken nor betrayed, and that your ultimate interests are perfectly secure in the hands of the Great Companion. This insight, this sure and firm apprehension of a spirit at hand, swiftly responsive to any trust we have in its answering fidelity, coming our way the moment we beckon it, motionless and irresponsive till we hoist the flag of our faith and claim its fellows.h.i.+p, but then mighty to save--this is the centre, the kernel, the growing point of the Christian religion, which, when we have it all else is secure, and when we have it not all else is precarious. G.o.d, said Jesus, is spirit: man is spirit no less; and when the two meet in fellows.h.i.+p there is religion.

I am approaching my conclusion and must gather up my threads.

All along my theme has been that we make a mistake when we look to religion to relieve us of the perplexities and difficulties of life, whether intellectual or moral. In a sense we should look for the opposite. Religion will bring our perplexities to a focus; will concentrate them on a point; will show us in one clear and burning vision the depth of the mystery that confronts us in life. But in raising our difficulties to that high level it will raise our nature to a higher level still, by liberating faith, courage and love, qualities that spring from a single root. In revealing the world as a world fit for heroes to live in, that is, a difficult world, it will arouse also the heroic spirit in ourselves, which is fit to live under those conditions. It will give us a part to play in life which puts our souls on their mettle at many points, but it will also give the spiritual power which stands the strain and even rejoices in it. It will show the Cross we have to bear; but it will also show the Christ who bears it, and will awaken the Christ, as a victorious principle, within us all. Pain and suffering it will not remove; but it will quicken a divine substance within us, which is more than conqueror over these things. And, lastly, when courage, faith and love have won the victory at the supreme point of their trial, and so established themselves as the ruling powers, it will turn these qualities back upon life as a whole, will interpenetrate everything with their energy, and transfigure everything with their radiance, and raise everything to their level, and so fill the world with music and beauty and joy.

So, then, in expecting religion to reconcile the world with our notions of a "good time"; to smooth and simplify our path; to accommodate itself to what we, in our weaker moments, desire--in looking for this we look for what is not forthcoming. Religion will meet us, not on the level of our weakest moments, but on the level of our strongest. It will give us power rather than satisfaction; courage to face danger rather than safeguards against it; inspiration rather than explanation.

Whatever satisfaction it brings will come through the power; whatever safeguards, through the courage; whatever explanation, through the inspiration. It will not teach us to see no evil in the world; but immensely increase our resources for dealing with evil when seen. A power in the world which is for ever on the side of those who are brave enough to trust it, causing all things to work together for their ultimate good, and making them conquerors, and more than conquerors, over whatever confronts them, whether in life or in death,--this, and nothing less than this, is what we have to expect and to ask for. Our mistake has been not that we have asked for too much, but that we have asked for too little.

A true religion will be optimistic. It will end in a radiant and joyous vision of the meaning of life. But it will not begin with that, will not give us that for nothing. The radiant and joyous vision will not come to us through listening to arguments, through proving that there is more happiness than misery in the world, through shutting our eyes to the dark side of things and looking only at the bright, through crying "Peace, peace" when there is no peace, nor by any of the cheap and shallow devices on which mere verbal optimism is made to rest. We must win our optimism at the sword's point. We must pay the price. We must go through "the Dark Valley" and not listen to the man who thinks he knows of a way round. At certain stages of the journey we shall see the whole creation, as St Paul did, groaning and travailing together in pain until now; and only at the last stage, when loyalty has stood the test, shall we see this world of suffering and death delivered, by redeeming love, into the glorious liberty of the children of G.o.d.