"What is written by Moses can only be read by God."
--Bikar Proverb.
SECULARISM differs from Christianism in so far as it accepts only the
teachings which pertain to man, and which are consonant with reason and
experience.
Parts of the Bible have moral splendor in them, but no Christian will
allow any one to take the parts he deems true, and reject as untrue
those he deems false. He who ventured to be thus eclectic would be
defamed as Paine was. Thus Christians compel those who would stand by
reason to stand apart from them.
To accept a part, and put that forward as the whole--to pretend or even
to assume it to be the whole--is dishonest. To retain a portion, and
reject what you leave, and not say so, is deceiving. To contend that
what you accept as the spirit of Christianity is in accordance with
all that contradicts it, is to spend your days in harmonising opposite
statements--a pursuit demoralising to the understanding. The Secularist
has, therefore, to choose between dishonesty, the deception of
others and deception of himself, or ethical principles independent of
Christianity--and this is what he does:
The Bible being a bundle of Hebrew tracts on tribal life and tribal
spite, its assumed infallibility is a burden, contradicting and
misleading to all who accept it as a divine handbook of duty.
In papers issued by religious societies upon the Bible it is declared to
be "so complete a system that nothing can be added to it, or taken from
it," and that "it contains everything needful to be known or done." This
is so false that no one, perceiving it, could be honest and not protest
against it in the interest of others. Recently the Bishop of Worcester
said: "It was of no use resisting the Higher Criticism. God had not been
pleased to give us what might be called a perfect Bible."* Then it is
prudence to seek a more trustworthy guide.
* Midland Evening News, 1893.
If money were bequeathed to maintain the eclectic criticism of the
Scripture, it would be confiscated by Christian law. So to stand apart
is indispensable self-defence. Individual Christians, as I well know,
devote themselves with a noble earnestness to the service of man, as
they understand his interests; but so long as Christianity retains the
power of fraud, and uses it, Christianism as a system, or as a cause,
remains outside the pale of respect. Prayer, in which the oppressed and
poor are taught to trust, is of no avail for protection or food, and the
poor ought to know it. The Bishop of Manchester declared, in my hearing,
that the Lord's Prayer will not bring us "daily bread," but that "it
is an exercise of faith to ask for what we shall not receive." But if
prayer will not bring "daily bread," it is a dangerous deception to keep
up the belief that it will. The eyes of forethought are closed by trust
in such aid, thrift is an affront to the generosity of heaven, and
labor is foolishness. But, alas! aid does not come by supplication. The
prayer-maker dies in mendicancy. It is not reverence 'to pour into
the ears of God praise for protection never accorded. Dean Stanley,
admirable as a man as well as a saint, was killed in the Deanery,
Westminster, by a bad drain, in spite of all his Collects. Dean Farrar
has been driven from St. Margaret's Rectory, in Dean's Yard, by another
drain, which poisons in spite of the Thirty-nine Articles; and Canon
Eyton refuses to take up his residence until the sanitary engineers have
overhauled* the place, which, notwithstanding the invocations of
the Church, Providence does not see to. To keep silence on the
non-intervention of Providence would be to connive at the fate of those
who come to destruction by such dependence.
"O mother, praying God will save
Thy sailor!
While thy head is bowed,
His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud
Drops in his vast and wandering grave!"
* See Westminister Gazette London Letter, November 19, 1895.
True respect would treat God as though at the least he is a gentlemen.
Christianity does not do this. No gentleman would accept thanks for
benefits he had not conferred, nor would he exact thanks daily and
hourly for gifts he had really made, nor have the vanity to covet
perpetual thanksgivings. He who would respect God, or respect himself,
must seek a faith apart from such Christianity.
A divine, who excelled in good sense, said: "Dangerous it were for the
feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High. Our
soundest knowledge is, to know that we know him not; _and our safest
eloquence concerning Him is our silence_; therefore it be-hoveth our
words to be wary and few."*
Mrs. Barbauld may have borrowed from Richard Hooker her fine line:
"Silence is our least injurious praise."**
* Ecclesiastical Polity, book I., | 2.
** Charles Lamb was of this opinion when he remarked: "Had I
to say grace, I would rather say it over a good book than
over a mutton chop." Christians say grace over an
indigestible meal. But perhaps they are right, since they
need supernatural aid to assimilate it.
An earnest Christian, not a religious man (for all Christians are not
religious), assuming the professional familiarity with the mind of God,
said to me: "Should the Lord call you to-day, are you prepared to meet
Him?" I answered: Certainly; for the service of man in some form is
seldom absent from my thoughts, and must be consonant with his will.
Were I to pray, I should pray God to spare me from the presumption of
expecting to meet him, and from the vanity and conceit of thinking that
the God of the universe will take an opportunity of meeting me.
Who can have moral longing for a religion which represents God as
hanging over York Castle to receive the soul of Dove, the debauchee, who
slowly poisoned his wife, and whose final spiritual progress was posted
day by day on the Castle gates until the hour of the hangman came?
Dove's confession was as appalling as instructive. It ran thus:
"I know that the Eternal One,
Upon His throne divine,
Gorged with the blood of His own Son,
No longer thirsts for mine.
"Many a man has passed his life
In doing naught but good,
Who has not half the confidence I have
In Jesus Christ, His blood."*
* From a volume of verse privately circulated in Liverpool
at the time, by W. H. Rathbone.
By quoting these lines, which Burns might have written, the writer is
sorry to portray, in their naked form, principles which so many cherish.
But the anatomy of creeds can no more be explained, with the garments
of tradition and sentiment upon them, than a surgeon can demonstrate
the structure of the body with the clothes on. Divine perdition is an
ethical impossibility.
Christianism is too often but a sour influence on life. It tolerates
nature, but does not enjoy it. Instead of giving men two Sundays, as it
might,--one for recreation and one for contemplation,--it converts the
only day of the poor into a penal infliction. It is always more or less
against art, parks, clubs, sanitation, equity to labor, freedom, and
many other things. If any Christians eventually accept these material
ideas, they mostly dislike them. Art takes attention from the Gospel.
In parks many delight to walk, when they might be at chapel or
church. Clubs teach men toleration, and toleration is thought to
beget indifference. Sanitation is a form of blasphemy. Every Christian
sings:--
"Diseases are Thy servants, Lord;
They come at Thy command."
But sanitation assassinates these "servants of the Lord." In every
hospital they are tried, condemned, and executed as the enemies of
mankind. If labor had justice, it would be independent, and no longer
hopeless, as the poor always are. Freedom renders men defiant of
subjection, which all priests are prone to exercise. Secularism has
none of this distrust and fear. It elects to be on the side of human
progress, and takes that side, withstand it who may. Thus, those who
care for the improvement of mankind must act on principles dissociated
from doctrines repellent to humanity and deterrent of ameliorative
enterprise.