The religions of all nations are derived from each
nation's different reception of the poetic genius,
which is everywhere called the spirit of prophecy.
_Blake._
The Christian has not escaped the dangers of the common lot. He too,
despite his own contrary principles, has, from the beginning of the
Christian Church, been tempted as we all are to trust to mechanism and
even to sacrifice in its favour the powers of life. We ought not to be
surprised; what else can reasonably be expected? A good machine, whether
it be made of steel and brass, or of language, or of settled formulae
and plans, or of any other product of life, is an admirable servant. It
is convenient; it brings satisfaction to widespread and deeply-rooted
needs of life itself. Moreover there is nothing mysterious (so it
seems), or even problematic, about it. The plain man is not called upon
to question or wonder or speculate in regard to anything behind it, any
powers or vague connexions with powers, not understood. The good machine
does what it has to do and there's an end of it. A man knows where he is
when he has such a thing—or when it has him. There is even a sense of
comfort and security in being ruled and cared for by it, as, for
example, in the case of the machinery of a State.
In this difficult world there seems, indeed there is, need for something
of the kind to supply a considerable part of our religious demand. We
are social beings; we are, as we are beginning to see more plainly,
brothers in a community; we must organize our religion as we organize
everything else in which the community of persons has its common
interest. And God, the Christian may say, and has said, would not leave
us, has not left us, to uncertainty and to our questioning and wondering
and speculative adventure. He has provided answers to our questions,
facts in response to our wondering, an open view for our speculation.
Or, to put it in another way, he has given us a 'plan' or 'scheme,' or
an ecclesiastical apparatus, of salvation; he has revealed religious
truth to us and marked out an established method of approaching him and
securing our own safety in respect of his judgement and our destiny at
his hands. Nothing of so great importance has been left, could have been
left, in the hands of men, to find out or not find out—poor creatures
that we are.
Now, there is truth behind this, both as to the part of God and as to
the part of man in the matter. We are social, we are brethren, we must
organize. God, so all Christians say and many philosophers, no more
leaves us to ourselves than he leaves to itself any part of his worlds.
But Christians formally declare in their Creed that he is no
machine-maker; he is Lord and Giver of Life. They complain, too, against
science on the ground that (as they have come to believe) it must of its
constant character set material mechanism above life in the order of the
world. They are pledged to oppose this; and when they complain against
science for a fault and failure which is soon—so many biologists and
philosophers declare—to be a fault and a failure of the past, they are
faithful to their pledge. But they are men, with the faults and failures
of men. Habit has its snares for them; the complication of needs that
meets them in their effort to maintain themselves, body, mind and
spirit, in the world, entangles them. The short cut, the provided means,
everything and anything that seems to make matters easy or safe—in
short, the logical or legalistic or institutional machine—is attractive.
And for most men this machine in any of its protean forms, is perhaps
only the more attractive the more valued is the treasure it seems to
ensure or to protect. The faith once for all delivered—how precious that
is! Salvation in this world and the next—can anything be of greater
import for man? Let us make these things secure, whatever else we risk.
Only fools or the reckless would embrace chances of adventure where so
much is at stake.
So, in spite of the Christian avowal of the superiority and the
supremacy of life over its instruments, Christianity has everywhere
given disastrous place to the letter and the tool.
Against this the first prophet and the last, in every religion, must
always protest. It is the enemy of enemies for all prophets. You can see
war waged against it in the Old Testament; you can see that war carried
to the utmost in the Gospel of the New. Now the challenge rings among us
more clearly than it has rung for this long time. And, as ever, it has
new notes and a new phrasing of its music.... That, perhaps, is why so
many of us fail to recognize it for what it is. That, certainly, is why
the due honour paid to prophets of the past does not prevent men from
stoning or neglecting those of the present. The voice is always
different, because it is the voice of life.
The use and need for the prophet is a fact not only in religion but in
all the arts and in philosophy. He alone keeps any one of these in touch
with life, or rather recalls it to life when it has been encumbered or
perhaps even arrested by that which life has made. He is, in very deed,
the voice of the encumbered spirit making itself heard, proclaiming in
one fashion or another that the pursuit of beauty and truth as well as
of holiness is of the spirit, and must have the spirit's liberty or it
will altogether fail. In the arts and in philosophy we do not call him a
prophet, but often, in the arts, we speak of him (when we have recovered
from the shock he gives) as 'inspired,' and in philosophy we call him
'great.' Great he is and inspired—we could hardly choose better and more
deeply significant words. He is the enlarger of life and the bearer of
the spirit, whether he uses the language of philosophy, of poetry,
painting or music, or of religion. But always he comes waging war upon
our superstitious devotion to the things that have once been made,
proclaiming either divine truth or divine beauty or divine holiness
(according to his mission), as that for the sake of which they must ever
be remade.
* * * * *
We who have learnt our lesson from science as well as from philosophy
should be sure friends to the prophet. We have learnt enough of the
story of life to see that from its beginning on the earth it strove
towards liberty, towards the indetermination by circumstance and the
freedom of choice that man has reached. We have seen life lost in mere
material size and crushed by the weight of material protective armour;
and we know what these things mean. We know, too, what entanglement in
habit means for our own selves. We are good and sure friends of the
prophet. Or we may be, if we will.
It is high time that he should find such friends—men ready to meet him
with that in their minds which prepares his way before him. He has too
long been the voice driven to cry in the wilderness. Too long and too
often he has found men opposing him with a settled prejudice in favour
of the vested interests—the sanctified, it may be, and glorified vested
interests—of law and order and creed, of institution and crystallized
opinion. It is time that a new atmosphere should be made about him and
that these things should be visibly set in their right place and held at
their right value. When this is done the secret materialism of his
opponents will be brought to light. For, however it may be disguised,
all overvaluing of the instrumental product of life's activity comes of
the undue depreciation of living spirit and the undue appreciation of
its means. Science and philosophy, in teaching us now to seek for the
true relation of matter and spirit, are also teaching us to lend a
willing ear to the prophet. When we have learnt to see in man the
beginning of a synthesis of order and freedom in a vital harmony not
manifest in those starry heavens to which men point as the standing
witness of God against prophets of new freedom, we are ready to confess,
if we have found our God, that in him that perfect synthesis is declared
and in man it is foreshadowed and to be pursued.
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