"The secret of Genius is to suffer no fiction to live."
--Goethe.
THEOLOGIANS had so choked the human mind with a dense undergrowth of
dogmas that it was like cutting through an African forest, such as
Stanley encountered, to find the paths of truth.
On that path, when found, many things unforeseen before, became plain.
The siren songs of orthodoxy were discovered to have strange discords of
sense in them.
1. The Guide of God seemed to be very human--not authentic, not
consistent--containing things not readable nor explainable in the
family; pagan fictions, such as the Incarnation reluctantly believable
as the device of a moral deity. Men of genius and of noble ethical
sympathy do however deem it defensible. In any human book the paternal
exaction of such suffering as fell to Christ, would be regarded with
alarm and repugnance. Wonder was felt that Scripture, purporting to
contain the will of deity, should not be expressed so unmistakably that
ignorance could not misunderstand it, nor perversity misconstrue it. The
gods know how to write.
2. The origin of all things has excited and disappointed the curiosity
of the greatest exploring minds of every age. That the secret of the
universe is undisclosed, is manifest from the different and differing
conjectures concerning it. The origin of the universe remains
unknowable. What awe fills or rather takes possession of the mind which
comprehends this! Why existence exists is the cardinal wonder.
3. Pleasant and free from anxiety, life would be were it true, that
Providence is a present help in the day of need. Alas, to the poor it is
evident that Providence does not interfere, either to befriend the good
in their distress, or arrest the bad in the act of crime.
4. The power of prayer has been the hope of the helpless and the
oppressed in every age. Every man wishes it was true that help could be
had that way. Then every just man could protect himself at will against
his adversaries. But experience shows that all entreaty is futile to
induce Providence to change its universal habit of non-intervention.
Prayer beguiles the poor but provides no dinner. Mr. Spurgeon said at
the Tabernacle that prayer filled his meal barrel when empty. I asked
that he should publish the recipe in the interests of the hungry. But he
made no reply.
5. There is reason to think that original sin is not anything more than
original ignorance. The belief in natural depravity discourages all
efforts of progress. The primal imperfection of human nature is only
effaceable by knowledge and persistent endeavor. Even in things lawful
to do, excess is sin, judged by human standards. There may be error
without depravity.
6. Eternal perdition for conscientious belief, whether erroneous or
not, is humanly incredible. The devisors of this doctrine must have
been unaware that belief is an affair of ignorance, prejudice, custom,
education, or evidence. The liability of the human race to eternal
punishment is the foundation on which all Christianity (except
Unitarianism) rests. This awful belief, if acted upon with the sincerity
that Christianity declares it should be, would terminate all enjoyment,
and all enterprise would cease in the world. None would ever marry. No
persons, with any humanity in their hearts would take upon themselves
the awful responsibility of increasing the number of the damned. The
registrar of births would be the most fiendish clerk conceivable. He
would be practically the secretary of hell.
The theory that all the world was lost through a curious and
enterprising lady, eating an apricot or an apple, and that three
thousand or more years after, mankind had to be redeemed by the murder
of an innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a
deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme.
Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument against the
existence of God whereas it is merely against the attributes of deity,
as ascribed to him by Christianity. If God be not moral, in the human
sense of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is only he
whose principles of justice, men can understand, that men can
trust. Prof. T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and
dispassionateness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said: "The
suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things he is responsible
for evil as well as for good, and it appears utterly irreconcilable with
our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he
has in fact done himself." The poet concurs with the philosopher when he
exclaims:
"The loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds."*
* Browning.
Christianity indeed speaks of the _love_ of God in sending his son
to die for the security of others. But not less is the heart of the
intelligent and humane believer torn with fear, as he thinks what
must be the character of that God who could only be thus appeased.
The example of self-sacrifice is noble--but is it noble in any one
who deliberately creates the necessity for it? The better side of
Christianity seems overshadowed by the worse.
7. Future life is uncertain, being unprovable and seemingly improbable,
judging from the dependence of life on material conditions. Christians
themselves do not seem confident of another existence. If they were
_sure_ of it, who of them would linger here when those they love and
honor have gone before? Ere we reach the middle of our days, the joy of
every heart lies in some tomb. If the Christian actually believed that
the future was real, would he hang black plumes over the hearse, and
speak of death as darkness? No! the cemeteries would be hung with joyful
lights, the grave would be the gate of Paradise. Every one would find
justifiable excuse for leaving this for the happier world. All tenets
which are contradicted by reason had better not be.
Many preachers now disown, in controversy, these doctrines, but until
they carry the professions of the platform into the statute book,
the rubric, and the pulpit, such doctrines remain operative, and the
Churches remain answerable for them. Nonconformists do not protest
against a State Church on account of its doctrines herein enumerated.
When the doctrines which conflict with reason and humanity are disowned
by authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denominations, the duty
of controverting them as impediments to progress will cease.
It may be said in reply to what is here set forth as tenets of Christian
Scripture, that the writer follows the letter and not the spirit of the
word. Yes, that is what he does. He is well aware of the new practice of
seeking refuge in the "spirit," of "expanding" the letter and taking a
"new range of view." He however holds that to drop the "letter" is to
drop the doctrine. To "expand" the "letter" is to change it. New "range
of view" is the term under which desertion of the text is disguised.
But "new range" means new thought, which in this insidious way is put
forward to supersede the old. The frank way is to say so, and admit
that the "letter" is obsolete--is gone, is disproved, and that new views
which are truer constitute the new letter of progress. The best thing to
do with the "dead hand" is to bury it. To try to expand dissolution is
but galvanising the corpse and tying the dead to the living.