Modern Substitutes for Christianity Part 5

The Great Being, Humanity, is only an abstraction.[12] 'There is no such thing in reality,' Princ.i.p.al Caird reminds us, 'as an animal which is no particular animal, a plant which is no particular plant, a man or humanity which is no individual man. It is only a fiction of the observer's mind.' There is logical force as well as humorous ill.u.s.tration in the contention of Dean Page Roberts, that there is no more a humanity apart {113} from individual men and women than there is a great being apart from all individual dogs, which we may call Caninity, or a transcendent Durham ox, apart from individual oxen, which may be named Bovinity.'[13] Nor does the geniality of Mr.

Chesterton render his argument the less telling: 'It is evidently impossible to wors.h.i.+p Humanity, just as it is impossible to wors.h.i.+p the Savile Club: both are excellent inst.i.tutions to which we may happen to belong. But we perceive clearly that the Savile Club did not make the stars and does not fill the universe. And it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the Trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to wors.h.i.+p a being who is ninety million persons in one G.o.d, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.'[14]

Can it be doubted that the Great Being, {114} the sum of human beings, is less conceivable, less worthy of wors.h.i.+p than the Great Being, the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?[15] Can it be doubted that the claim of Humanity to wors.h.i.+p is less credible if we exclude the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus, from our view? Can it be doubted that the Positivist motto, 'Live for others,' gains a force and a meaning unapproached elsewhere from the Life and Death of Him Who said, 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His Life a ransom for many?' Humanity knit together in One, purified from every stain, glorious and adorable, is a lofty and inspiring idea, but nowhere has it been disclosed save in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made Flesh, the Brightness of the Father's glory and the Express Image of His Person.

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Dr. Richard Congreve owns that much of the Religion of Humanity exists already in the Christian Faith, but, in one respect, he a.s.serts that the Religion of Humanity can claim to be entirely original. 'We accept, so have all men. We obey, so have all men. We venerate, so have some in past ages, or in other countries. We add but one other term, we love.'[16] That is what distinguishes this new religion and proves its superiority to the old: its votaries have attained this new principle and mode of life: they love one another. The boldness of the claim may stagger us. We turn over the pages of the New Testament. We see that Love is the fulfilling of the Law; is the end of the commandment; is the sum of the Law and the Prophets; is placed at the very summit of Christian graces; is the bond of perfectness; {116} is manifested in a Life and a Death which, after nineteen centuries, remain without a parallel. We recall the touching legend that in his old age the Apostle S. John was daily carried into the a.s.sembly of the Ephesian Christians, simply repeating to them, over and over, the words, 'Love one another. This is our Lord's command, fulfil this and nothing else is needed.' We recall that in early centuries the sympathy and helpfulness by which Christians of all ranks and races were united called forth from heathen spectators the amazed and respectful exclamation, 'See how these Christians love one another!'

Recalling these things, we cannot but be startled that, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, a teacher should, with any expectation of being believed, have ventured to affirm that the great discovery which it has been reserved for the present day to make is that of loving one another. Ignorance of Christianity, misrepresentation {117} of Christianity, we may well call it: ignorance inconceivable, misrepresentation inconceivable: and yet, as we consider the state of Christendom, do we not see what palliates the ignorance and the misrepresentation? Have we not reason to confess that, if the commandment be not new, universal obedience to it would be new indeed?

May the calm a.s.surance that love is foreign to Christianity not startle us into the conviction that we have forgotten what, according to our Lord's own declaration, the chief feature of Christianity ought to be?

'By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.'

VI

'How can we,' it has been well said, 'be asked to give the name of Religion of Humanity to a religion that ignores the greatest human being that ever lived, and the very source from which the Religion of Humanity {118} sprang?'[17] Man in himself, man so full of imperfections, man having no connection with any world but this, man unallied to any Power higher, n.o.bler than himself, is this to be our G.o.d? Which is more reasonable: to set up the race of man, unpurified, unredeemed, worthless and polluted, as the object of adoration, or to maintain that 'Man indeed is the rightful object of our wors.h.i.+p, but in the roll of ages, there has been but one Man Whom we can adore without idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus'?[18] The Religion of Humanity, so called, would have us wors.h.i.+p Man apart from Christ Whom yet all acknowledge to be the glory of mankind, but we call on men to wors.h.i.+p Christ Jesus, for in Him we see Man without a stain, we see our nature redeemed and consecrated, we see ourselves brought nigh to the Infinite G.o.d. We adore Humanity, but Humanity {119} in its purity: we adore Humanity, but only as manifesting in the Only Begotten Son the glory of the Eternal Father. Thus we place no garland around the vices of the human race: thus we abase, and thus we exalt: thus are we humbled to the dust, thus are we raised to the highest heavens. Apart from Christ, the magnitude of the creation may well depress and overwhelm: apart from Christ the human race is morally imperfect instead of being a fit object of blind adoration. Seeing Christ, we not only feel our inconceivable nothingness in presence of the Infinite Majesty, but we stand erect and unpresumptuously say, 'We wonder not that Thou art mindful of those for whom that Son of Man lived and died, we are in Him partakers of the Divine Nature. There thou beholdest Thine Own Image.'

Made in the image of G.o.d, such is the ideal of Man that comes to us from the beginning of his history; and such is the ideal {120} that once, and once only, has been realised. '_Ecce h.o.m.o_! Behold the Man!' said Pontius Pilate, in words more full of significance than he knew, pointing to the victim of priestly hatred and popular fickleness.

Behold the Man! man as he ought to be, the Image of G.o.d. Before that Divine Humanity we reverently bow, to that Divine Humanity we humbly consecrate ourselves, in fellows.h.i.+p with It alone we learn and manifest the true worth and dignity of Man.

One writing frantically to exalt mankind and to depreciate Christianity, tells us how he sat on a cliff overhanging the seash.o.r.e and gazed upon the stars, murmuring, 'O prodigious universe, and O poor ignorant, that could believe all these were made for him!' but the sight of a steams.h.i.+p caused him to rejoice at the triumph of Art over Nature, and to exclaim, 'If man is small in relation to the universe, he is great in relation to the earth: he abbreviates distance and time, {121} and brings the nations together.' Then he saw that man is ordained to master the laws of which he is now the slave; he believed that if man could understand this mission, a new religion would animate his life, and, in the strength of this revelation, the writer says that he sang in ecstasy to the waters and winds and birds and beasts, he felt a rapture of love for the whole human race, he resolved to preach the New Gospel far and wide, and proclaim the glorious mission of mankind.[19]

On the whole the Old Gospel will be found as enn.o.bling, as inspiring, as practical as the New. All that this new Gospel aims at, we, as Christians, already believe: and we possess a Divine Token, a Sacred Pledge which is foreign to it: we believe that a higher destiny is in store for us than even the construction of wonders of mechanical skill.[20] Stripped of all rhetoric, the conclusion of unbelief in G.o.d and Immortality can only {122} be 'Man is what he eats': the conclusion of Christianity, 'There is but one object greater than the soul, and that is its Creator.'

One in a certain place testified, saying, 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels: Thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.' For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see JESUS Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. We see Him Who is our Brother and our Forerunner within the veil; and in His Exaltation we behold our own.[21] No vision of the future can surpa.s.s that which the Christian Church {123} has cherished from the beginning, that we shall all 'come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of G.o.d, unto a Perfect Man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ ... from Whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.'

[1] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 67.

[2] Sh.e.l.ley, _Prometheus Unbound_.

[3] Thomas Carlyle.

[4] _Man's Destiny_, p. 31,

[5] Aubrey de Vere.

[6] _Creed of a Layman_, p. 76.

[7] Frederic Harrison, _Creed of a Layman_.

[8] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 14.

[9] _Memories and Thoughts_, p. 15.

[10] Appendix XIV.

[11] _Creed of a Layman_.

[12] Appendix XV.

[13] _Some Urgent Questions in Christian Lights_.

[14] _Heretics_, p. 96.

[15] Appendix XVI.

[16] Appendix XVII.

[17] E. A. Abbott, _Through Nature to Christ_.

[18] Frederick William Robertson, _Sermon on John's Rebuke of Herod_.

[19] Winwood Reade, _The Outcast_.

[20] Appendix XVIII.

[21] Appendix XIX.

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THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST

'Ye believe in G.o.d, believe also in Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 1.

'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 6.

'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'--S. JOHN xiv. 9.

'Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'--ACTS iv. 12.

'He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.'--2 S. JOHN 9.

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