A little somnolence seems to have overtaken religious controversy
of late. We are either weary of it or have grown so tolerant of our
differences that we find it scarcely worth while to discuss them. By
dint of rubbing against each other in the pages of the Reviews, in the
clubs, and at dinner parties, the sharp angles of our opinions have
been smoothed down. Ideas remain in a fluid state in this temperate
season of sentiment, and do not, as in old days, crystallize into
sects. We have become almost as conciliatory respecting our views as
the Chinese whom Huc describes as carrying courtesy so far as to praise
the religion of their neighbors and depreciate their own. “You, honored
sir,” they were wont to say, “are of the noble and lofty religion of
Confucius. I am of the poor and insignificant religion of Lao-tze.”
Only now and then some fierce controversialist, hailing usually from
India or the colonies where London amenities seem not yet to have
penetrated, startles us by the desperate earnestness wherewith he
disproves what we had almost forgotten that anybody seriously believes.
As a result of the general “laissez _croire_” of our day, it has come
to pass that a question has been mooted which, to our fathers, would
have seemed preposterous: “Is it of any consequence what we believe,
or whether we believe anything? Suppose that by-and-by we all arrive
at the conclusion that Religion has been altogether a mistake, and
renounce with one accord the ideas of God and Heaven, having (as M.
Comte assures us) outgrown the theological stage of human progress;
what then? Will it make any serious difference to anybody?”
Hitherto, thinkers of Mr. Bradlaugh’s type have sung pæans of welcome
for the expected golden years of Atheism, when “faiths and empires” will
“Gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”
Christians and Theists of all schools, on the other hand, have
naturally deprecated with horror and dread such a cataclysm of faith
as sure to prove a veritable Ragnarok of universal ruin. In either
case it has been taken for granted that the change from a world of
little faith, like that in which we live, to a world wholly destitute
of faith, would be immensely great and far-reaching; and that at the
downfall of religion not only would the thrones and temples of the
earth, but every homestead in every land, be shaken to its foundation.
It is certainly a step beyond any yet taken in the direction of
scepticism to question this conclusion, and maintain that such a
revolution would be of trivial import, since things would go on with
mankind almost as well without a God as with one.
The man who, with characteristic downrightness, has blurted out most
openly this last doubt of all—the doubt whether doubt be an evil—is,
as my readers will have recognized, Mr. Justice Stephen. In the
concluding pages of one of his sledge-hammerings on the heads of his
adversaries, in the _Nineteenth Century_ for last June, he rung the
changes upon the idea (with some reservations, to be presently noted)
as follows:—
“If human life is in the course of being fully
described by science, I do not see what materials
there are for any religion, or, indeed, what would be
the use of one, or why it is wanted. We can get on
very well without one, for though the view of life
which science is opening to us gives us nothing to
worship, it gives us an infinite number of things to
enjoy.... The world seems to me a very good world,
if it would only last. It is full of pleasant people
and curious things, and I think that most men find
no great difficulty in turning their minds away
from its transient character. Love, friendship,
ambition, science, literature, art, politics,
commerce, professions, trades, and a thousand other
matters, will go equally well, as far as I can see,
whether there is, or is not, a God or a future
state.”—_Nineteenth Century_, No. 88, p. 917.
Had these noteworthy words been written by an obscure individual, small
weight would have attached to them. We might have observed on reading
them that the—not wise—person who three thousand years ago “said in
his heart, there is no God,” had in the interval plucked up courage
to say in the magazines that it does not signify whether there be one
or not. But the dictum comes to us from a gentleman who happens to
be the very antithesis of the object of Solomon’s detestation, a man
of distinguished ability and unsullied character, of great knowledge
of the world (as revealed to successful lawyers), of almost abnormal
clear-headedness; and lastly, strangest anomaly of all! who is the
representative of a family in which the tenderest and purest type of
Protestant piety has long been hereditary. It is the last utterance
of the devout “Clapham School,” of Venn, Stephen, Hannah More and
Wilberforce, which we hear saying: “I think we could do very well
without religion.”
As it is a widely received idea just now that the Evolution theory is
destined to coil about religion till it strangle it, and as it has
become the practice with the scientific party to talk of religion as
politicians twenty years ago talked of Turkey, as a Sick Man destined
to a speedy dissolution, it seems every way desirable that we should
pay the opinion of Sir James Stephen on this head that careful
attention to which, indeed, everything from his pen has a claim. Those
amongst us who have held that Religion is of priceless value should
bring their prepossessions in its favor to the bar of sober judgment,
and fairly face this novel view of it as neither precious Truth nor
yet disastrous Error, but as an unimportant matter of opinion which
Science may be left to settle without anxiety as to the issue. We ought
to bring our Treasure to assay, and satisfy ourselves once for all
whether it be really pure gold or only a fairy substitute for gold, to
be transformed some day into a handful of autumn leaves and scattered
to the winds.
To estimate the part played by Religion in the past history of the
human race would be a gigantic undertaking immeasurably above my
ambition.[1] A very much simpler inquiry is that which I propose
to pursue: namely, one into the chief consequences which might be
anticipated to follow the downfall of such Religion, as at present
prevails in civilized Europe and America. When these consequences have
been, however imperfectly, set in array we shall be in a position to
form some opinion whether we “can do very well without religion.” Let
me premise:—
1. That by the word Religion I mean definite faith in a Living and
Righteous God; and, as a corollary therefrom, in the survival of the
human soul after death. In other words, I mean by “religion” that
nucleus of simple Theism which is common to every form of natural
religion, of Christianity and Judaism; and, of course, in a measure
also to remoter creeds, which will not be included in the present
purview. Further, I do _not_ mean Positivism, or Agnosticism, or
Buddhism, exoteric or esoteric; or the recognition of the “Unknown
and Unknowable,” or of a “Power not ourselves which makes for
righteousness.” These may, or may not, be fitly termed “religions;” but
it is not the results of their triumph or extinction which we are here
concerned to estimate. I shall even permit myself generally to refer to
all such phases of non-belief as involve denial of the dogmas of Theism
above-stated as “Atheism;” not from discourtesy, but because it would
be impossible at every point to distinguish them, and because, for the
purposes of the present argument, they are tantamount to Atheism.
2. That I absolve myself from weighing against the advantages of
Religion the evils which have followed its manifold corruptions. Those
evils, in the case even of the Christian religion, I recognize to have
been so great, so hideous, that during their prevalence it might have
been plausibly—though even then, I think, not truly—contended that
they out-balanced its benefits. But the days of the worst distortions
of Christianity have long gone by. The Christianity of our day tends,
as it appears to me, more and more to resume the character of the
_Religion of Christ_, _i.e._, the religion which Christ believed and
lived; and to reject that other and very different religion which
men have taught in Christ’s name. As this deep and silent but vast
change comes over the spirit of the Christianity of modern Europe, it
becomes better and better qualified to meet fearlessly the challenge,
“Should we do well without religion in its Christian shape?” But it is
not my task here to analyze the results of any one type of religion,
Christian, Jewish, or simply Theistic; but only to register those of
_Religion itself_, as I have defined it above, namely, faith in God and
in immortality.
I confess, at starting on this inquiry, that the problem “Is religion
of use, or can we do as well without it?” seems to me almost as
grotesque as the old story of the woman who said that we owe vast
obligation to the Moon, which affords us light on dark nights,
whereas we are under no such debt to the Sun, who only shines by day,
_when there is always light_. Religion has been to us so diffused a
light that it is quite possible to forget how we came by the general
illumination, save when now and then it has blazed out with special
brightness. On the other hand, all the moon-like things which are
proposed to us as substitutes for Religion,—friendship, science,
art, commerce, and politics,—have a very limited area wherein they
shine at all, and leave the darkness around much as they found it.
It is the special and unique character of Religion to deal with the
whole of human nature _all_ our pleasures and pains and duties and
affections and hopes and fears, here and hereafter. It offers to the
Intellect an explanation of the universe (true or false we need not
now consider); and, pointing to Heaven, it responds to the most eager
of its questions. It offers to the Conscience a law claiming authority
to regulate every act and every word. And it offers to the Heart an
absolutely love-worthy Being as the object of its adoration. Whether
these immense offers of Religion are all genuine, or all accepted by us
individually, they are quite unmatched by anything which science, or
art, or politics, or commerce, or even friendship, has to bestow. The
relation of religion to us is not one-sided like theirs, but universal,
ubiquitous; not moon-like, appearing at intervals, but sun-like,
forming the source, seen or unseen, of all our light and heat, even
of the warmth of our household fires. Strong or weak as may be its
influence on us as individuals, it is the greatest thing with which
we have to do, from the cradle to the grave. And this holds good
whether we give ourselves up to it or reject it. It is the one great
acceptance, or “_il gran rifiuto_.” Nothing equally great can come in
our way again.
In an estimate of the consequences which would follow a general
rejection of religion, we are bound to take into view the two classes
of men—those who are devout and those who are not so—who would, of
course, be diversely affected by such a revolution of opinion. As
regards the first, every one will concede that the loss of so important
a factor in their lives would alter those lives radically. As regards
the second, after noting the orderly and estimable conduct of many
of them, the observer might, _per contra_, not unfairly surmise that
they would continue to act just as they do at present were religion
universally exploded. But ere such a conclusion could be legitimately
drawn from the meritorious lives of non-religious men in the present
order of society, we should be allowed (it is a familiar remark) to
see the behavior of a whole nation of Atheists. Our contemporaries are
no more fair samples of the outcome of Atheism than a little party
of English youths who had lived for a few years in Central Africa
would be samples of Negroes. It would take several thousand years to
make a full-blooded Atheist out of the scion of forty generations of
Christians. Our whole mental constitutions have been built up on food
of religious ideas. A man on a mountain top, might as well resolve
not to breathe the ozone in the air, as to live in the intellectual
atmosphere of England and inhale no Christianity.
As, then, it is impossible to forecast what would be the consequences
of universal Atheism hereafter by observing the conduct of individual
Atheists to-day, all that can be done is to study bit by bit the
changes which must take place should this planet ever become, as is
threatened, a _Faithless World_. In pursuing this line of inquiry it
will be well to remember that every ill result of loss of faith and
hope which we may now observe will be _cumulative_ as a larger and
yet larger number of persons, and at last the whole community, reject
religion together. Atheists have been hitherto like children playing
at the mouth of a cavern of unknown depth. They have run in and out,
and explored it a little way, but always within sight of the daylight
outside, where have stood their parents and friends calling on them to
return. Not till the way back to the sunshine has been lost will the
darkness of that cave be fully revealed.
I shall now register very briefly the more obvious and tangible changes
which would follow the downfall of religion in Europe and America, and
then devote my available space to a rather closer examination of those
which are less manifest; the drying up of those hidden rills which now
irrigate the whole subsoil of our civilization.
* * * * *
The first visible change in the Faithless World, of course, would be
the suppression of Public and Private Worship and of Preaching; the
secularization or destruction everywhere of Cathedrals, Churches, and
Chapels; and the extinction of the Clerical Profession. A considerable
_hiatus_ would undoubtedly be thus made in the present order of things.
Public Worship and Preaching, however much weariness of the flesh
has proverbially attended them, have, to say the least, done much to
calm, to purify, and to elevate the minds of millions; nor does it
seem that any multiplication of scientific Lectures or Penny Readings
would form a substitute for them. The effacement from each landscape
of the towers and spires of the churches would be a somewhat painful
symbol of the simultaneous disappearance from human life of heavenly
hope and aspiration. The extinction of the Ministry of Religion, though
it would be hailed even now by many as a great reformation, would be
found practically, I apprehend, to reduce by many perceptible degrees
the common moral level; and to suppress many highly-aimed activities
with which we could ill dispense. The severity of the strictures always
passed on the faults of clergymen testifies to the general expectation,
not wholly disappointed, that they should exhibit a loftier standard
of life than other men; and the hortative and philanthropic work
accomplished by the forty or fifty thousand ministers of the various
sects and churches in England alone, must form, after all deductions,
a sum of beneficence which it would sorely tax any conceivable secular
organization to replace in the interests of public morality.
Probably the Seventh Day Rest would survive every other religious
institution in virtue of its popularity among the working classes, soon
to be everywhere masters of legislation. The failure of the Tenth Day
holiday in the first French Revolution would also forestall any further
experiments in varying the hebdomadal interval so marvellously adapted
to our mental and physical constitution. As, however, all religious
meaning of the day would be lost, and all church-going stopped,
nothing would hinder the employment of its hours from morning to night
as Easter Monday and Whit Monday are now employed by the millions in
our great cities. The nation would, therefore, enjoy the somewhat
doubtful privilege of keeping fifty-six Bank Holidays instead of four
in the year. Judicial and official oaths of all sorts, and Marriage
and Burial rites, would, of course, be entirely abolished. A gentleman
pronouncing the _Oraison Funèbre_ outside the crematorium would replace
the old white-robed parson telling the mourners;—
“Beneath the churchyard tree,
In solemn tones, and yet not sad,
Of what man is, what man shall be.”
Another change more important than any of these, in Protestant
countries, would be the reduction of the Bible to the rank of an
historical and literary curiosity. Nothing (as we all recognize) but
the supreme religious importance attached to the Hebrew Scriptures
could have forced any book into the unique position which the Bible
has now held for three centuries in English and Scottish education.
Even that held by the Koran throughout Islam is far less remarkable,
inasmuch as the latter (immeasurably inferior though it be) is the
supreme work of the national literature, whereas we have adopted the
literature of an alien race. All the golden fruit which the English
intellect has borne from Shakespeare downwards may be said to have
grown on this priceless Semitic graft upon the Aryan stem.
But as nothing but its religious interest, over and above its
historical and poetical value, could have given the Bible its present
place amongst us, so the rejection of religion must quickly lower its
popularity by a hundred degrees. Notwithstanding anything which the
Matthew Arnolds of the future may plead on behalf of its glorious
poetry and mines of wisdom, the youth of the future “Faithless World”
will spare very little time from their scientific studies to read a
book brimming over with religious sentiments which to them will be
nauseous. Could everything else remain unchanged after the extinction
of religion in England, it seems to me that the unravelling of this
Syrian thread from the very tissue of our minds will altogether alter
their texture.
Whether the above obvious and tangible results of a general
relinquishment of religion would all be _disadvantageous_ may,
possibly, be an open question. That they would be _trifling_, and that
things would go on much as they have done after they had taken place,
seems to me, I confess, altogether incredible.
I now turn to those less obvious consequences of the expected downfall
of religion which would take place silently.
The first of these would be the _belittling_ of life. Religion has been
to us hitherto (to rank it at its lowest), like a great mountain in
a beautiful land. When the clouds descend and hide the mountain, the
grandeur of the scene is gone. A stranger entering that land at such
a time will commend the sweetness of the vales and woods; but those
who know it best will say, “Ichabod!—The glory has departed.” To do
justice to the eminent man whose opinion concerning the practical
unimportance of religion I am endeavoring to combat, he has seen
clearly and frankly avowed this ennobling influence of religion, and,
as a corollary, would, I presume, admit the _minifying_ consequences of
its general abandonment.[2] If the window which Religion opens out
on the infinite expanse of God and Heaven, immeasurably enlarges and
lightens our abode of clay, the walling of it up cannot fail to narrow
and darken it beyond all telling. Human nature, ever pulled two ways
by downward and by aspiring tendencies, cannot afford to lose all the
aid which religious ideas offer to its upward flight. Only when they
disappear will men perceive how the two thoughts—of this world as
_God’s world_, and of ourselves as Immortal beings,—have, between
them, lighted up in rainbow hues the dull plains of earth. When they
fade away, all things, Nature, Art, Duty, Love, and Death, will seem to
grow grey and cold. Everything which casts a glamour over life will be
gone.
Even from the point of view of Art (of which in these days perhaps too
much is made), life will lose _poetry_ if it lose religion. Nothing
ever stirs our sympathies like it, or like a glimpse into the inner
self of our brother man, as affected by repentance, hope, and prayer.
The great genius, of George Eliot revealed this to her; and, Agnostic
as she was, she rarely failed to strike this resonant string of human
nature, as in “Adam Bede,” “Silas Marner,” and “Janet’s Repentance.”
French novelists who have no knowledge of it, and who describe the
death of a man as they might do that of an ox, while they galvanize our
imaginations, rarely touch the outer hem of our sympathies. Religion
in its old anthropomorphic forms was the great inspirer of sculpture,
painting, poetry, science, and almost the creator of architecture.
Phidias, Dante, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Milton, Handel, and the
builders of the Egyptian temples and mediæval cathedrals, were all
filled with the religious spirit, nor can we imagine what they would
have been without it. In the purer modern types of religion, while
music and architecture would still remain in its direct service, we
should expect painting and sculpture to be less immediately concerned
with it than in old days, because unable to touch such purely spiritual
ideas. But the elevation, aspiration, and reverence which have their
root in religion must continue to inspire those arts likewise, or
they will fall into triviality on one side (as there seems danger in
England), or into obscene materialism on the other, as is already
annually exemplified on the walls of the Paris _Salon_.
Again, it will not merely belittle life, it will _carnalize_ it to
take Religion out of it. The lump without the leaven will be grosser
and heavier than we have dreamed. Civilization, as we all know, bore
under Imperial Rome, and may assume again any day, the hateful type in
which luxury and cruelty, art and sensuality, go hand in hand. That it
ever changed its character and has come to mean with us refinement,
self-restraint, chivalry, and freedom from the coarser vices, is surely
due to the fact that it has grown up _pari passu_ with Christianity.
In truth it needs no argument to prove that, as the bestial tendencies
in us have scarcely been kept down while we believed ourselves to be
immortal souls, they will have it still more their own way when we feel
assured we are only mortal bodies.
And the life thus belittled and carnalized will be a more cowardly
life than men have been wont to lead while they had a Providence over
them and a heaven waiting for them. Already, I fear, we may see some
signs of this new poltroonery of reflective prudence, which holds that
death is the greatest of all evils, and disease the next greatest;
and teaches men to prefer a “whole skin” to honor and patriotism, and
health to duty. Writing of this Hygeiolatry elsewhere, I have remarked
that it has almost come to be accepted as a canon of morals that any
practice which, in the opinion of experts, conduces to bodily health,
or tends to the cure of disease, becomes _ipso facto_ lawful; and
that there are signs apparent that this principle is bearing fruit,
and that men and women are beginning to be systematically selfish and
self-indulgent where their health is concerned, in modes not hitherto
witnessed. In public life it is notorious that whenever a Bill comes
before Parliament concerning itself with sanitary matters there is
exhibited by many of the speakers, and by the journalists who discuss
it, a readiness to trample on personal and parental rights in a way
forming a new feature in English legislation, and well deserving of
the rebuke it has received from Mr. Herbert Spencer. As to military
courage, I fear it will also wane amongst us, as it seemed to have
waned amongst the French atheistic soldiery at Metz and Sedan. Great as
are the evils of war, those of a peace only maintained by the nations
because it had become no longer possible to raise troops who would
stand fire, would be immeasurably worse.
From the general results on the community, I now pass to consider those
on the life of the individual which may be expected to follow the
collapse of Religion.
Mr. Mallock in his “New Republic,” made the original and droll remark
that even Vice would lose much of its savor were there no longer any
morality against which it might sin. As Morality will probably not
expire—though its vigor must be considerably reduced—by the demise
of its Siamese twin, Religion, it would seem that Vice need not fear,
even in such a contingency, the entire loss of the pleasures of
disobedience. Nevertheless (to speak seriously), it is pretty certain
that the temperature of all moral sentiments will fall so considerably
when the sun of religion ceases to warm them that not a few will perish
of cold. The “Faithless World” will pass through a moral Glacial
Period, wherein much of our present fauna and flora will disappear.
What, for example, can become, in that frigid epoch of godlessness,
of _Aspiration_, the sacred passion, the _ambition sainte_ to become
perfect and holy, which has stirred at one time or other in the breast
of every son of God; the longing to attain the crowning heights of
truth, goodness, and purity? This is surely not a sentiment which can
live without faith in a Divine Perfection, existing somewhere in the
universe, and an Immortal Life wherein the infinite progress may be
carried on. Even the man whose opinions on the general unimportance of
religion I am venturing to question in these pages, admits frankly
enough that it is not the heroic or saintly character which will be
cultivated after the extinction of faith. Among the changes which he
anticipates, one will be that “the respectable man of the world, the
_lukewarm, nominal Christian_, who believed as much of his creed as
happened to suit him, and _led an easy life_, will turn out to have
been right after all,” Precisely so. The _easy life_ will be the ideal
life in the “Faithless World;” and the life of Aspiration, the life
which is a prayer, will be lived no more. And the “lukewarm” men of the
world, in their “easy lives,” will be all the easier and more lukewarm
for leading them thenceforth unrebuked by any higher example.
Again, Repentance as well as aspiration will disappear under the
snows of atheism. I have written before on this subject in this
REVIEW,[3] and will now briefly say that Mr. Darwin’s almost
ludicrously false definition of Repentance is an illustration of
the inability of the modern scientific mind to comprehend spiritual
phenomena; much less to be the subject of them. In his _Descent of
Man_, this great thinker and most amiable man describes Repentance
as a natural return, after the satisfaction of selfish passions, to
“the instinct of sympathy and good will to his fellows which is still
present and ever in some degree active” in a man’s mind.... “And then,
a sense of dissatisfaction will inevitably be felt” (_Descent of Man_,
p. 90). Thus even on the showing of the great philosopher of evolution
himself, Repentance (or rather the “dissatisfaction” he confounds with
that awful convulsion of the soul) is only to be looked for under
the very exceptional circumstances of men in whom the “instinct of
sympathy and good will to their fellows” is ever present, and moreover
_reasserts itself after they have injured them_—in flat opposition to
ordinary human experience as noted by Tacitus, _Humani generis proprium
est odisse quem læseris_.
The results of the real spiritual phenomenon of Repentance (not Mr.
Darwin’s child’s-play) are so profound and far-reaching that it cannot
but happen that striking them out of human experience will leave
life more shallow. No soul will survive with the deeper and riper
character which comes out of that ordeal. As Hawthorne illustrated it
in his exquisite parable of _Transformation_, men, till they become
conscious of sin, are morally little more than animals. Out of hearts
ploughed by contrition spring flowers fairer than ever grow on the
hard ground of unbroken self-content. There bloom in them Sympathy
and Charity for other erring mortals; and Patience under suffering
which is acknowledged to be merited; and lastly, sweetest blossom of
all! tender Gratitude for earthly and heavenly blessings felt to be
free gifts of Divine love. Not a little, perhaps, of the prevalent
disease of pessimism is owing to the fact that these flowers of
charity, patience, and thankfulness are becoming more and more rare as
cultivated men cease to feel what old theologians used to call “the
exceeding sinfulness of sin;” or to pass through any vivid experiences
of penitence and restoration. As a necessary consequence they never
see the true proportions of good and evil, joy and grief, sin and
retribution. They weigh jealously human Pain; they never place human
Guilt in the opposite scale. There is little chance that any man will
ever feel how sinful is sin, who has not seen it in the white light of
the holiness of God.
The abrogation of Public Worship was mentioned above as one of the
visible consequences of the general rejection of religion. To it must
here be added a still direr and deeper loss, that of the use of Private
Prayer—whether for spiritual or other good, either on behalf of
ourselves or of others; all Confession, all Thanksgiving, in one word
all effort at communion of the finite spirit with the Infinite. This is
not the place in which this subject can be treated as it would require
to be were the full consequences of such a cessation of the highest
function of our nature to be defined. It may be enough now to say that
the Positivists in their fantastic device of addresses to the _grand
être_ of Humanity as a substitute for real prayer to the Living God,
have themselves testified to the smaller—the subjective—part of the
value of the practice. Alas for our poor human race if ever the day
should arrive when to Him who now “heareth prayer,” flesh shall no
longer come!
With Aspiration, Repentance, and Prayer renounced and forgotten, and
the inner life made as “easy” as the outward, we may next inquire
whether in the “Faithless World” the relations between man and man
will either remain what they have been, improve or deteriorate? I have
heard a secularist lecturer argue that the love of God has been a
great hindrance to the love of man; and I believe it is the universal
opinion of Agnostics and Comtists that the “enthusiasm of Humanity”
will flourish and form the crowning glory of the future after religion
is dead. It is obvious, indeed, that the social virtues are rapidly
eclipsing in public opinion those which are personal and religious; and
if Philanthropy is not to be enthroned in the “Faithless World,” there
is no chance for Veracity, Piety, or Purity.
But, not to go over ground which I have traversed already in this
REVIEW, it will be enough now to remark that Mr. Justice
Stephen, with his usual perspicacity, has found out that there is here
a “rift within the lute,” and frankly tells us that we must not expect
to see Christian Charity after the departure of Christianity. He thinks
that temperance, fortitude, benevolence, and justice will always be
honored and rewarded, but—
“If a purely human morality takes the place of
Christian morals, self-command and self-denial, force
of character shown in postponing the present to the
future (_qy._, selfish prudence?) will take the place
of self-sacrifice as an object of admiration. Love,
friendship, good-nature, kindness, carried to the
height of sincere and devoted affection will always
be the chief pleasures of life, whether Christianity
is true or false; but Christian charity is not the
same as any of these or of all of them put together,
and I think, if Christian theology were exploded,
Christian charity would not survive it.”
Even if the same sentiment of charity were kept alive in a “Faithless
World,” I do not think its ministrations would be continued on the same
lines as hitherto. The more kind-hearted an atheist may be (and many
have the kindest of hearts) the less, I fancy, he could endure to go
about as a comforter among the wretched and dying, bringing with him
only such cold consolation as may be afforded by the doctrine of the
“Survival of the Fittest.” Every one who has tried to lighten the
sorrows of this sad world, or to reclaim the criminal and the vicious,
knows how immense is the advantage of being able to speak of God’s love
and pity, and of a life where the bereaved shall be reunited to their
beloved ones. It would break, I should think, a compassionate atheist’s
heart to go from one to another death-bed in cottage or workhouse or
hospital, meet the yearning looks of the dying, and watch the anguish
of wife or husband or mother, and be unable honestly to say: “This is
not the end. There is Heaven in store.” But Mr. Justice Stephen speaks,
I apprehend, of another reason than this why Christian charity must
not be expected to survive Christianity. The truth is (though he does
not say it) that the charity of Science is not merely _different_ from
the charity of Religion; it is an _opposite_ thing altogether. Its
softest word is _Væ Victis_. Christianity (and like it I should hope
every possible form of future religion) says, “The strong ought to bear
the burdens of the weak. Blessed are the merciful, the unselfish, the
tender-hearted, the humble-minded.” Science says, “The supreme law of
Nature is the Survival of the Fittest; and that law, applied to human
morals, means the remorseless crushing down of the unfit. The strong
and the gifted shall inherit the earth, and the weak and simple go
to the wall. Blessed are the merciless, for they shall obtain useful
knowledge. Blessed are the self-asserting, for theirs is the kingdom of
this world, and there is no world after it.”
These Morals of Evolution are beginning gradually to make their way,
and to be stated (of course in veiled and modest language) frequently
by those priests of science, the physiologists. Should they ever obtain
general acceptance, and Darwinian morality take the place of the Sermon
on the Mount, the old _droit du plus fort_ of barbarous ages will be
revived with more deliberate oppression, and the last state of our
civilization will be worse than the first.
Behind all these changes of public and general concern, lies the
deepest change of all for each man’s own heart. We are told that in
a “Faithless World” we may interest ourselves in friendship, and
politics, and commerce, and literature, science, and art, and that “a
man who cannot occupy every waking moment of a long life with some or
other of these things must be either very unfortunate in regard to his
health, or circumstances, or else must be a poor creature.”
But it is not necessary to be either unfortunate oneself or a very
“poor creature” to feel that the wrongs and agonies of this world of
pain are absolutely intolerable unless we can be assured that they will
be righted hereafter; that “there is a God who judgeth the earth,” and
that all the oppressed and miserable of our race, aye, and even the
tortured brutes, are beheld by Him. It is, I think, on the contrary,
to be a “poor creature” to be able to satisfy the hunger of the soul
after justice, the yearning of the heart for mercy, with such pursuits
as money-getting, and scientific research, and the writing of clever
books, and painting of pretty pictures. Not that which is “poorest” in
us, but that which is richest and noblest, refuses to “occupy every
moment of a long life” with our own ambitions and amusements, or to
shut out deliberately from our minds the “Riddle of the painful Earth.”
A curse would be on us in our “lordly pleasure-house” were we to do it.
Even if it be possible to enjoy our own good fortune regardless of
the woes of others, is it not rather a pitiful wreck and remnant of
merely selfish happiness which it is proposed to leave to us? “The
world,” we are told, “is full of pleasant people and curious things,”
and “most men find no difficulty in _turning their minds away_ from
its transient character.” Even our enjoyment of “pleasant people and
curious things” must be held, then, on the condition of reducing
ourselves—philosophers that we are, or shall be—to the humble level
of the hares and rabbits!—
“Regardless of their doom the little victims play.”
Surely the happiness of any creature, deserving to be called Rational,
depends on the circumstance whether he can look on Good as “the final
goal of ill,” or believe Ill to be the final goal of any good he has
obtained or hopes for;—whether he walk on a firm, even if it be a
thorny road, or tread on thin, albeit glittering ice, destined ere long
to break beneath his feet? The faith that there is an ORDER
tending everywhere to good, and that JUSTICE sooner or later
will be done to all,—this, almost universal, faith to which the
whole literature of the world bears testimony, seems to me no less
indispensable for our selfish happiness than it is for any unselfish
satisfaction in the aspect of human life at large. If it be finally
baulked, and we are compelled to relinquish it for ever at the bidding
of science, existence alike on our own account and that of others will
become unendurable.
In all I have said hitherto, I have confined myself to discussing the
probable results of the downfall of religion on men in general, and
have not attempted to define what they would be to those who have been
fervently religious; and who we must suppose (on the hypothesis of
such a revolution) to be forcibly driven by scientific arguments out
of their faith in God and the life to come. To such persons (and there
are, alas! many already who think they have been so driven, and to whom
the sad result is therefore the same) the loss must needs be like that
of the darkening of the sun. Of all human sorrows the bitterest is to
discover that we have misplaced our love; labored and suffered in vain;
thrown away our heart’s devotion. All this, and much more, must it be
to _lose God_. Among those who have endured it there are, of course, as
we all know, many who have reconciled themselves to the loss, and some
tell us they are the happier. Yet, I think to the very last hour of
life there must remain in every heart which has once _loved_ God (not
merely believed in or feared Him) an infinite regret if it can love Him
no more; and the universe, were it crowded with a million friends, must
seem empty when that Friend is gone.
As to human Love and Friendship, to which we are often bidden to turn
as the best substitutes for religion, I feel persuaded that, above all
other things they must deteriorate in a “Faithless World.” To apples
of Sodom must all their sweetness turn, from the hour in which men
recognize their transitory nature. The warmer and more tender and
reverential the affection, the more intolerable must become the idea of
eternal separation; and the more beautiful and admirable the character
of our friend, the more maddening the belief that in a few years, or
days, he will vanish into nothingness. Sooner than endure the agony
of these thoughts, I feel sure that men will check themselves from
entering into the purer and holier relations of the heart. Affection,
predestined to be cast adrift, will throw out no more anchors, but
will float on every wave of passion or caprice. The day in which it
becomes impossible for men to vow that they will love _for ever_ will
almost be the last in which they will love nobly and purely at all.
But if these things hold good as regard the prosperous and healthy, and
those still in the noon of life, what is to be said of the prospects
in the “Faithless World,” of the diseased, the poverty-stricken, the
bereaved, the aged? There is no need to strain our eyes to look into
the dark corners of the earth. We all know (though while we ourselves
stand in the sunshine we do not often _feel_) what hundreds of
thousands of our fellow-mortals are enduring at all times, in the way
of bodily and mental anguish. When these overtake us, or when Old Age
creeps on, and
“First our pleasures die, and then
Our hopes, and then our fears,”
is it possible to suppose it will make “little difference” what we
believe as to the existence of some loving Power in whose arms our
feebleness may find support; or of another life wherein our winter may
be turned once more to spring? If we live long enough, the day must
come to each of us when we shall find our chief interest in our daily
newspaper most often in the obituary columns, till, one after another
nearly all the friends of our youth and prime have “gone over to the
majority,” and we begin to live in a world peopled with spectres. Our
talk with those who travel still beside us is continually referring to
the dead, and our very jests end in a sigh for the sweet old laughter
which we shall never hear again. If in these solemn years we yet have
faith in God and Immortality, and as we recall one dear one after
another,—father, mother, brother, friend,—we can say to ourselves,
“They are all gone into the world of light; they are all safe and
rejoicing in the smile of God;” then our grief is only mourning; it
is not despair. Our sad hearts are cheered and softened, not turned
to stone by the memories of the dead. Let us, however, on the other
hand, be driven by our new guide, Science, to abandon this faith and
the hope of eternal reunion, then, indeed, must our old age be utterly,
utterly desolate. O! the mockery of saying that it would make “no great
difference!”
We have been told that in the event of the fall of religion, “life
would remain in most particulars and to most people much what it
is at present.” It appears to me, on the contrary, that there is
actually _nothing_ in life which would be left unchanged after such a
catastrophe.
* * * * *
But I have only conjured up the nightmare of a “Faithless World.”
GOD LIVES; and in His light we shall see light.—_Contemporary
Review._