IV

A curious illustration of the fact that Morality, to be permanent,

needs the inspiration of Religion, that Morality, at its best and

purest, tends to become Religion, is {41} afforded in such a work as

Dr. Stanton Coit's _National Idealism and a State Church_. Dr. Coit

has for twenty years been engaged in founding ethical societies, and

his high and disinterested aims need not be called in question. But

the book is evidence that in order to support the lofty principles

which he so earnestly expounds, he is obliged to call in the aid of

principles which he imagined himself to have discarded. He begins by

denying the Supernatural in every shape and form. He will have none of

a personal God, or of a personal immortality. There is no higher being

than Man. All trust must be shifted from supernatural to human

agencies. 'Combined human foresight, the general will of organised

society, assumes the role of Creative Providence.' 'This is, then, the

presupposition of all moral judgment in harmony with which I would

reconstruct the religions of the world: that no crime and no good deed

that happens in this world shall {42} ever be traced to any other moral

agencies than those actually inhabiting living human bodies and

recognised by other human beings as fit subjects of human rights and

privileges.' In other words, Morality, Morality alone, Morality

without any sanction from Above, or any hope from Beyond, is the

all-sufficient strength and ennoblement of man.

But what is the superstructure which Dr. Stanton Coit proceeds to build

upon this foundation? One would naturally expect that Prayer and

Churches and Sacraments would have no place. But these are exactly

what he insists on retaining; these will apparently be more important,

more necessary, in the future than in the past. 'We should appropriate

and adapt the materials furnished us by the rites and ceremonies of the

historic Church. As the woodbird, bent on building her nest, in lieu

of better materials makes it of leaves and of feathers from her breast,

so may we use what is familiar, old, {43} and close at hand. It is all

ours; and the homelike beauty of the Church of the future will be

enhanced by the ancient materials wrought into its new forms.' So much

enhanced, indeed, that most people will be inclined to tolerate the new

forms simply because of the ancient materials which are allowed to

remain. Among the ancient materials which Dr. Coit appropriates or

adapts, prayer occupies a prominent place. And he is severe upon

those, _e.g._, Comte and Dr. Congreve, who would banish petition from

the sphere of worship. He delights in pointing out that, in despite of

themselves, they include requests for personal blessings. Nor is

prayer to be a mere aspiration or inarticulate longing of the soul.

'No mental activity can become definite, coherent, and systematic, and

remain so, except it be embodied and repeated in words.... A petition

that does not, or cannot, or will not, formulate itself in words, and

let the lips move to shape them, and the {44} voice to sound them, and

the eye to visualise them on the written or printed page, becomes soon

a mere torpor of the mind, or a meaningless movement of blind unrest,

or a trick of pretending to pray. Perfected prayer is always spoken.'

To whom, or to what, this prayer, uttered or unexpressed, is to be

offered, may be difficult of comprehension. It is not to God, as we

have hitherto employed that sacred name; but Dr. Coit insists that the

word 'God' shall be retained, and that we have no right to deny to this

God the attribute of Personality. 'Any one who worships either a

concrete social group or an abstract moral quality may justly protest

against the charge that his God is impersonal: he may insist that it is

either superpersonal or interpersonal, or both.' The worship of Nature

appears to be discouraged, and to be considered as of comparatively

little worth. 'We dare never forget that moral qualities stand to us

in a {45} different dynamic relation from the grass and the stars and

the sea--no effects upon us or upon these will result from petitions

even of a most righteous man to them. But no one can deny that prayers

to Purity, Serenity, Faith, Humanity, England, Man, Woman, to Milton,

to Jesus, do create a new moral heaven and a new earth for him who

thirsts after righteousness.' Leaving the name of our Lord out of the

discussion, why should a prayer to Serenity have more moral influence

than a prayer to the Sea? Why should a prayer to the Stars be less

efficacious than a prayer to Milton, whose soul was like a star and

dwelt apart? We have only to invest the stars and the sea with certain

qualities evolved from our own imagination to make them as worthy of

worship as either Milton or Serenity. Dr. Coit is scathing in his

criticism of the Positivist prayers, whether of Comte or of Dr.

Congreve: they are 'screamingly funny': 'the most monstrous {46}

absurdity ever perpetrated by a really good and great man.' The

epithets are possibly justified; but are they quite inapplicable to one

who supposes that an invocation of the Living and Eternal God means no

more than an invocation of England, or Faith, or Woman? It is only

when God has become to us an abstraction that an abstraction can take

the place of God.

A manual of services fitted to a nation's present needs is what,

according to Dr. Coit, is required to ensure the progress and triumph

of the ethical movement. 'Until the new idealism possesses its own

manual of religious ritual, it cannot communicate effectively its

deeper thought and purpose. The moment, however, it has invented such

a means of communication, it would seem inevitable that a rapid moral

and intellectual advancement of man must at last take place, equal in

speed and in beneficence to the material advancement which followed

{47} during the last century in the wake of scientific inventions.'

The ritual of ethical societies will not outwardly differ much from the

ritual to be found in existing religions. Its details have yet to be

arranged or 'invented.' The only things certain are that a book of

prayers ought to be provided at once, and that in Swinburne's _Songs

before Sunrise_ may be found an 'anthology of prayer suitable for use

in the Church of Humanity,' prayers 'as sublime and quickening in

melody and passion as anything in the Hebrew prophets or the Litany of

the Church.'

Dr. Coit does not denounce theology as theology, he even insists on

being himself ranked among theologians. His readers may be surprised

to learn on what doctrines he dwells with particular fondness. He

laments that belief in the existence and power of the devil should be

waning. 'We may not believe in a personal devil, but we must believe

in a devil who acts very like a person.' {48} He predicts that teachers

will more and more teach a doctrine of hell-fire. Out of kindness they

will terrify by presenting the evil effects, indirect and remote, of

selfish thoughts and dispositions. 'We must frighten people away from

the edge of the abyss which begins this side of death.' Finally,

though, of course, the word is not used in the ordinary sense, the

necessity of the doctrine of the Incarnation is upheld. 'The

Incarnation must for ever remain a fundamental conception of religion.

Until all men are incarnations of the principle of constructive moral

beneficence, and to a higher degree, Jesus will remain pre-eminent; and

it is quite possible that in proportion as he is approached, gratitude

to him will increase rather than diminish.' 'Even should any one ever

in the future transcend him, still it will only be by him and in glad

acknowledgment of the debt to him. There never can in the future be a

dividing of the world into Christianity {49} and not Christianity. It

will only be a new and more Christian Christianity, compatible with

liberty and reason.'

Thus the drift and tendency of this book bring us back, however

unintentionally, to the Faith of which it appears, at first sight, to

be the renunciation. It establishes irresistibly that Morality, to be

living and permanent, must have religious sanction and inspiration,

that we need to be delivered from the awful thraldom of evil, that the

supreme realities are the things which are unseen; that prayer is the

life of the soul; that public worship is a necessity; that in Christ

the greatest redemptive power has been embodied, and the purest vision

of the Eternal has been granted; and that, in its adaptation to human

needs, its fostering of human aspirations, its ministering to human

sorrows, its renewal of human penitence, its consecration of life and

its hope in death, no Ethical Society yet devised gives any {50}

symptom of being able to supplant the Church of Him Who said, 'Come

unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you

rest.'

V

Now, from the fact that Morality at its best assumes a religious tinge,

merges itself in Religion, we may legitimately infer that, without the

inspiration of Religion, Morality at its best will not long prevail.[2]

'Love, friendship,' said Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, '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 all of

these put together, and I think that if Christian Theology were

exploded, Christian Charity would not survive it.'[3] At present, when

Religion has pervaded everything with its sacred sanctions, it is easy

to say that Religion {51} would not be greatly missed were it

discarded, and that Morality would be unaffected. This is pure

conjecture. To test its worth we should need a state of society from

which every vestige of Religion had disappeared. It will not do to

retain any of the beliefs or the customs which owe their origin to a

sense of the Unseen and Eternal, to a sense of any Power above

ourselves, ruling our destinies and instilling into our minds thoughts

and desires and hopes beyond the visible and the material. If

Morality, in the limited acceptation of the term, is sufficient for the

elevation and welfare of mankind, it is not to be supported by any

admixture of Religion: it must prove its power by itself. Religion

must be utterly abolished, its every sanction must be universally

rejected, its every impulse must have universally ceased before it can

be contended with any measure of assurance that the world will be none

the worse, may be even the better, for its vanishing.

{52}

If Religion is a delusion, remember what must be eliminated from our

convictions. There can be no higher tribunal than that of man by which

our actions can be judged.[4] A life of outward propriety is the

utmost that can be demanded of us, if it is only against the wellbeing

of our neighbour or the promotion of our own happiness that we can

transgress. What has human law to do with our hearts? What

legislation can deal with 'envy, hatred, malice, and all

uncharitableness,' unless they manifest themselves in outward acts? A

base, unloving, impure, acrimonious, untruthful man may crawl through

life, never having been arrested, never having been sentenced to any

term of penal servitude. He can stand erect before all the laws of the

country and say, 'All these have I kept from my youth up.' And unless

there be a higher law than the law of man, unless there be a law

written on our hearts by the Finger of {53} God, unless there be One to

whom, above and beyond all earthly appearances, we can mournfully

declare, 'Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,' nothing more can be

reasonably demanded. If there is nothing higher than the visible, it

can be only visible results which are of any value. The giving of

money to help the needy, and the giving of money in order to obtain a

reputation for generosity, must stand on the same level. The widow's

mite will be worth infinitely less than the shekels which come from

those who devour widows' houses. If there be none to search the heart,

none save poor frail fellow-mortals to whom we must give account, what

an incentive to purity of motive and loftiness of aspiration is

removed! But let men talk as they will, there is a conscience in them

which whispers, It does matter whether our hearts as well as our

actions are right; it does matter whether we have good motives, good

intentions; there is a scrutiny of hearts, {54} making and to be made

more fully yet; there is One before Whom, even though we have not

broken the law of the land, we confess with anguish, Against Thee have

I sinned and done evil in Thy sight: where I appear most

irreproachable, Thine eye detecteth error: it is not the occasional

trespass that I have chiefly to lament, it is the sin that is almost

part and parcel of my very being, the sin that corrodes even where it

does not glare, the sin that undermines even where it does not crash.