In the face of such tremendous indictments, what is the duty incumbent
on us who profess and call ourselves Christians? Certainly not that we
should abjure the name, but that we should remember what the name
signifies. We ought to consider our ways, to give ourselves to
self-examination. There must be something amiss when such hideous
portraits can be painted with any expectation of their being taken as
correct likenesses. It is right {20} that we should repel with
indignation the ludicrous and intolerable caricatures which are
presented as our belief, the unwarrantable consequences which are
deduced from it. It is right that we should remove misapprehensions
and refute calumnies; but, above all it is necessary that we should
take heed to our own conduct and our own character. The scandals which
we have so much reason to deplore owe their existence, not to
Christianity, but to the absence of Christianity. And the very sneers
which greet any departure from rectitude or morality on the part of a
professing Christian prove that such a departure is not a
manifestation, but a renunciation of Christianity, that what is
expected of Christians is the highest and the best that human nature
can produce.
'If,' argues Mr. Blatchford, 'if to praise Christ in words and deny Him
in deeds be Christianity, then London is a Christian city and England
is a Christian nation. For it is {21} very evident that our common
English ideals are anti-Christian, and that our commercial, foreign,
and social affairs are run on anti-Christian lines.'[17] As Mr.
Blatchford's life is spent in deploring the baseness of 'our common
English ideals,' and in exposing the iniquity of the methods in which
'our commercial, foreign, and social affairs' are conducted, the
logical inference would seem to be that, as anti-Christian ideals and
anti-Christian lines have so signally failed, it might be well to give
Christian ideals and Christian lines a trial. 'In a really humane and
civilised nation,' Mr. Blatchford maintains, 'there should be, and
there need be, no such thing as Poverty, Ignorance, Crime, Idleness,
War, Slavery, Hate, Envy, Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Vice. But,' he
continues his curious argument, 'this is not a humane and civilised
nation, and never will be while it accepts Christianity as its
religion. These,' {22} so he adds as an irresistible conclusion,
'these are my reasons for opposing Christianity.'[18] Very good
reasons, if Christianity taught such a creed and encouraged such a
morality. But that any human being should give such a description of
the purpose of Christian Faith indicates either that the describer is
swayed by blindest prejudice or else that no genuine Christian has ever
crossed his path.
'What if some do not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of
God of none effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a
liar.' Truth continues to be truth, though people who talk much about
it may be false. Goodness continues to be goodness, though people who
sing its praises may be thoroughly depraved. Generosity does not cease
to be generosity, though its beauty should be extolled by a miser.
Courage does not cease to be courage, though its heroism should be
extolled by a coward. Temperance {23} is temperance, though we should
be assured of the fact by the thick speech of a drunkard. The virtue
is admirable, even when those who acknowledge how admirable it is do
not practise it.
That Christianity towers so far above the attainments of its average
disciples, nay, above the attainments of its saintliest, is itself a
kind of evidence of its divine origin. 'When the King of the Tartars,
who was become Christian,' says Montaigne, 'designed to come to Lyons
to kiss the Pope's feet, and there to be an eyewitness of the sanctity
he hoped to find in our manners, immediately our good S. Louis sought
to divert him from his purpose: for fear lest our inordinate way of
living should, on the contrary, put him out of conceit with so holy a
belief. And yet it happened quite otherwise to this other, who going
to Rome to the same end, and there seeing the dissolution of the
Prelates and people of that time, settled {24} himself so much the more
firmly in our religion, considering how great the force and dignity of
it must necessarily be that could maintain its dignity and splendour
amongst so much corruption and in so vicious hands.' God's truth
abides whether men receive it or deny it. Christ is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life, though every so-called Christian should become
apostate. The woes of the world are to be cured by more Christianity,
not by less; and on us, in whose hands have been placed its holy
oracles, rests the responsibility of proving its inestimable advantage
ourselves and of conferring it on all mankind.
Wherever Christianity has really flourished, untold blessings have been
the result.[19] With all the sad deficiencies and sadder perversions
by which its course has been chequered, no influence for good can be
compared with it in elevating character, in diffusing peace and {25}
goodwill, in fitting men to labour and to endure. The diffusion of the
spirit of Christianity is a synonym for the diffusion of all that tends
to the true well-being of the world. Only as genuine Christianity, the
Christianity of Christ, prevails, will mankind be morally and
spiritually lifted into a higher sphere. Put together the wisest and
most ennobling suggestions of those who regard Christianity as obsolete
and you find that it is virtually Christianity which is delineated. It
is in the prevalence of principles and practices which, however they
may be designated, are in reality Christian, that the salvation of
society and of individuals will be found. In the absence of such
principles and practices will be found the secret of ruin, disorder,
dissolution, and decay.
It is false Christianity against which the tornado of abuse is really
directed. Where genuine Christianity appears, and is recognised as
genuine, it commands respect. {26} Even the most virulent of recent
assailants, who seriously considers that, until we get rid of the
'incubus of the modern Christian religion, our civilisation will so
surely decay that we shall become an entirely decadent race,' and who
complacently announces that 'it will not be difficult to create a faith
and a religion which will serve the needs of humanity where
Christianity has so signally failed,' even he is graciously pleased to
allow, 'I have no quarrel with Christianity as a code of morals. The
Sermon on the Mount, no matter who preached it, is quite sufficient, if
its teaching was only practised instead of preached, to make this world
an eminently desirable place in which to live. My quarrel is concerned
with the professional promoters and organisers of religion who have
made the very name of Christianity to stink in the nostrils of honest
men.' In other words, it is not to Christianity, but to Christians by
whom it is misrepresented, that he is opposed, and he {27} cannot
refrain from granting, though surely with transparent inconsistency,
that it is by the noble lives of Christians that Christianity has been
so long preserved. 'It won, with its beauty and sentiment, the
allegiance of many who were true and manly. And it is such as these
who have raised the Gospel from the slough of infamy. It is such as
these who, in the darkest ages, have perpetuated by the goodness of
their lives the faith that is left to-day. It is the virtues of
Christians, not the virtue of Christianity, that keeps the faith
alive.'[20] The very opposite is nearer the truth. The virtues of
Christians are simply the outcome of the virtue of Christianity: it is
the vices of Christians which compose the deepest 'slough of infamy'
into which the Gospel has ever been plunged.
But from all these charges and counter-charges, it would seem to be
clear that real {28} Christianity compels respect even where it is
viewed with aversion, that its progress is hindered by nothing so much
as by the unworthiness of its adherents, that it gains assent by
nothing so much as by the manifestation of Christian lives.
Will any one venture to deny that the world would be vastly improved
were every one in it to be a genuine Christian, animated by Christian
motives, doing Christian deeds? The revolution would be immense,
indescribable: it would be the end of all evil: it would be the
establishment of all good. No man's hand would be against another, all
would strive together for the welfare of the whole, there would be no
contention save how to excel in love and in good works. The human
imagination cannot depict anything more glorious, more ennobling, than
the will of God done on earth as it is done in heaven, and this is what
would be if the thoughts of every heart were brought {29} into
captivity to the obedience of Christ. The most splendid dreams of the
most exalted visionaries would be more than fulfilled: everything true
and lovely and of good report would be ratified and confirmed:
everything false and vile would be changed and purified, and nothing to
hurt or destroy or defile would remain. The fulfilment of that ideal
is simply the universal prevalence of Christianity, the universal
triumph of Christ.
The systems and tendencies at which we are about to glance owe their
vitality to the Faith which they attempt to supersede. They are, in so
far as they are good, either tending towards Christianity or borrowing
from it. The insufficiency of mere material well-being, the
irresistible association of Religion with Morality, the worship of the
Universe, the worship of Humanity, all are signs of the ineradicable
instinct of the Unseen and Eternal, of the unquenchable thirst for the
Living God; and belief in the Living {30} God finds its noblest
illustration and confirmation in Him Who said, 'He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father,' in Him to whom the searching scrutiny of
critical inquirers, as well as the fervid devotion of believers, bears
so marvellous a witness. We hope to show not only that the abolition
of Christianity might 'be attended with sundry inconveniences,' or that
the assumption of there being 'nothing in' Christianity is 'not so
clear a case,' but we hope to show that if, amid present perplexity and
estrangement, many feel themselves obliged to go back and walk no more
with Christ, we, for our part, as we hear His voice of tender reproach,
'Will ye also go away?' can only, with heartfelt conviction, give the
answer, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life.'
[1] Tennyson, _In the Children's Hospital_.
[2] _The Martyrdom of Man_.
[3] _The Churches and Modern Thought_.
[4] _Parsons and Pagans_.
[5] _Secularists' Manual_.
[6] _God and my Neighbour_.
[7] _Ibid_.
[8] _Earthward Pilgrimage_.
[9] Dean Church, _Pascal and other Sermons_, p. 348.
[10] Appendix I.
[11] Appendix II.
[12] _Queen Mab_.
[13] Hans Faber, _Das Christentum der Zukunft_.
[14] Appendix.
[15] Sir Leslie Stephen, _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century_,
vol. i. p. 144
[16] Appendix IV.
[17] _God and my Neighbour_.
[18] _God and my Neighbour_, ch. ix. p. 197.
[19] Appendix V.
[20] _Parsons and Pagans_.
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