entitled “Christianity and Faith.” The first portion of this was a
recapitulation of the principal arguments of the two previous sermons,
and then he made a statement utterly opposed to the whole purpose of his
sermons. I will deal with the exact purport, if I do not read to you the
precise words he uttered. He said, It is a waste of time to endeavour to
satisfy the consistent sceptic. He said, We Christians, have absolutely
nothing in common with the consistent sceptic. If that be true, why did
the Bishop come to preach the course of sermons to win back sceptics to
the Church? Why did the Dean and Chapter inaugurate the course of
sermons, if it was, in their opinion, impossible to satisfy the sceptic?
Why did the Bishop say it was not only to strengthen the faith of those
in the church, but to win back those who had left it? If it be not
possible to win them back, then the whole course of sermons was a mere
pretence, and I put it that the Bishop was, either consciously or
unconsciously, misleading his hearers as to his real views, or that he
did not know what he was talking about. The Bishop offered some advice
to Christians for dealing with sceptics. He said, Before you allow a
sceptic to put your belief to the proof, ask him what is it that he
believes. That is what you have no right to do. The sceptic does not
come to you at all to force his opinions on you. You come to him when he
is in the cradle, and by aid of early habit and repetition of phrases in
lieu of thoughts, you put your religion into him, you train him to accept
your religion in school, you fashion his brain-power before it has
stability for resistance. He has a right to express his disbelief in
your religion, and you have no right to pretend to answer him with a mere
What do you believe? There is no equality in the two positions; religion
is law-protected, scepticism is law-condemned; and the Bishop has no
right to take such ground: a sceptic’s ignorance would be no evidence of
a believer’s knowledge. But give the Bishop the full benefit of the
ground, and what does it amount to except that, after the Dean and
Chapter had made a parade of their desire to answer infidelity, declaring
that they would have the most competent man, this most competent man is
obliged to say, The only way I advise you to meet modern infidelity is by
admitting in effect, that you can do no more for your faith than to ask
the infidel, What do you believe? I dismiss this; it is of so trifling a
character that if it had not formed a prominent part of the Bishop’s
sermon, it would not have been worth noticing. The Bishop, in dealing
with Christianity and Faith, said that morality is built on faith, and
that in order to be moral and have a code of morality, we must exercise
an act of faith, and believe in our higher and better nature. What is
our better nature, judging by the Churchman’s standard? The Articles of
the Church of England declare that our nature is always lusting to do
evil. The Litany says that each man is always trying to do wickedly, and
entreats the Lord to deliver us from the lusts of the flesh. How then
can we be asked to trust in a higher or better nature, which the Church
declares is a nature fallen, depraved, and constantly tending to evil?
The doctrine of the Bible is that there is none who does good, that man’s
thoughts are evil continually. It is sufficient for me to quote the
Litany in which the Bishop took part before his sermon, which said that
we are all miserable sinners, and prayed God to be merciful to us. How
can we rise to our higher and better nature, if the existence of that
higher and better nature be authoritatively denied? The Bishop says
there is an eternal opposition in our nature, between what he calls the
sceptical understanding and the spiritual faculty, between the mind which
we share with the animal and “the soul, which we Christians believe we
specially derive from God.”
Let us clear away a little difficulty here. By mind I mean the totality
of cerebral ability and its results in activity, and I deny that we share
mind with any other animal at all. Each animal has the mind special and
peculiar to its own organisation; and diverse races of men have diverse
characters and degrees of mind, limited by, and resulting from, their
organisation and its development. But it is the Bible, and not the
sceptic, that says the mind of man and the minds of all other animals are
on a level. The Bishop says that the sceptic would degrade man to the
level of the beast. You have only to take the Bible and you will read:
“I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that
God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves
are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth
beasts; even one thing befalleth them . . . so that a man hath no
pre-eminence above a beast.”
If the doctrine is degrading, it is the Bible that teaches the doctrine,
and not the sceptic. Freethinkers never contend for anything of the
kind. On the contrary, we say that the superiority of the intellect is
distinctly marked in its development, that not only are men mentally
superior to all other animals, but that some races of men are vastly
superior to others. What does the Bishop mean by opposition between mind
and soul? He did not trouble to give any evidence of the existence of
what he calls soul as apart from mind. I challenge any one who may
follow me to give me any evidence of any sort of existence apart from
mind, that we can call soul. The Bishop said that there is a constant
opposition between the intellectual faculty, the mind which we share in
common with the beast, and the spiritual soul. I deny that the Bishop
advanced the slightest proof of—or gave any clue to—any such soul. I
deny that it is possible for any man to conceive the existence of two
separate existences in man: one, mind; the other, soul. As to the
opposition between them, the Bishop says that God created man’s
intellectual faculties, and that he also endowed man with a soul; and
that the soul is hostile to the mind; and that the mind is low and
grovelling, always in hostility to the soul. He thus makes God put into
man a degrading nature, always hostile to religion, and in a constant
struggle with the soul. No more degrading supposition can be made
respecting God, who is thus pictured as a malicious fiend; and if the
Bishop had intended to make infidels, he could not have contrived more
effectual means than the preaching this doctrine.
The Bishop, after dealing with the manner in which the spiritual part of
our nature overcomes what he calls the animal, the intellectual or mental
part of our nature—for he used all these words to describe the natural
man at war with the spiritual man—says that the manner in which the
spiritual conquers the other, is only by the unconscious training of the
man in Christian society. The Bishop says that God has made many
millions of men, and given them minds in opposition to their souls, that
these minds are strong enough to lead men to evil, and they cannot be
brought to God, unless in Christian society; so that the Buddhists, the
Brahmins, the Mohammedans, and men of all other persuasions must
necessarily be damned, because, having no Christian society, there is not
amongst them the means of overcoming this natural mind. This is a pretty
specimen of Christian teaching. But the Bishop is not even content with
this. Having told us that Christianity is founded on an act of faith,
and that faith is trust, he tells us that he believes that we are better,
nobler, than our understanding would persuade us we are. Having told us
that we have a wicked nature, a depraved mind in conflict with the
spirit, he says that our morality is also to be founded on an act of
faith, that we are really better and nobler that we suppose. Where do we
find the evidence to justify this act of faith? We are, according to the
Bishop and his Church, all miserable sinners, nor can we do good without
the help of God. There is that subtle serpent the devil constantly
working in us, and our nature is in league against God. The Bishop says
the only way to overcome this horrid nature is by the training of man in
Christian society, and yet two minutes after, he tries to persuade us
that we are better, nobler than he and his church say we are. He says,
in fact, we are all very wicked. Adam ate an apple 6,000 years ago, and
we are, in consequence, all degraded and depraved; yet we are really
nothing of the kind. The Bishop stated that the effect of belief in our
nobler, better nature is the improvement of our character, and it is by
believing in what is better and nobler, and in the possibility of being
better and nobler, that we grow better. _Ergo_, so long as men believe
they are born in a state of natural depravity, and that of themselves
they cannot do good, so long as the mass of men believe that those are
depraved to damnation who cannot get trained in Christian society, so
long as they believe that millions of men will be lost because they live
without even hearing of Christ at all, so long they must be degraded by
that belief. They must believe that God made the majority of mankind for
damnation and the minority for salvation; their faith must make
themselves into the incarnations of vileness and God into an almighty
fiend.
The Bishop, not content with such subtle logic, goes on to illustrations
drawn from the Bible, and speaks of the temptation of Jesus in the
wilderness. He said there is a moral to be drawn from this temptation
story, because Jesus is said to have been with the wild beasts, and there
was a deep meaning in this saying. I do read the Gospels sometimes, and
therefore puzzled myself about these wild beasts, not having read much of
them. I remembered the Jesus-God being taken up a high mountain and
shown all the kingdoms of the earth, as a possible bribe if he would
worship his own creature the devil. I remembered his being taken up to a
pinnacle of the temple and invited to cast himself down; but I did not
remember, nor do I now remember, anything about wild beasts, save a few
words in the Gospel of Mark, and it is not even there shown that these
wild beasts had anything to do with the Lord’s temptation. Whether the
Bishop has a special version of his own I do not know.
Another point of the Bishop was, that when lower natures have to
contemplate higher natures, there is some mystery or contradiction to the
lower natures. The man who tries to predetermine your decision on an
alleged matter of fact, by declaring that it is too mysterious for you to
understand, and that being mysterious, you must accept it as he explains
it, is a juggler with his intellect, and takes a position to which he has
no right. The Bishop was good enough to talk of our degrading creed.
Let him talk of his own degrading creed. Our creed has not invented a
bottomless pit filled to its brink with brimstone for everlasting
torture, nor has it manufactured a devil more mighty than God to destroy
God’s work. Our degrading creed, at any rate, does not despair of human
kind, nor tell us that we should be poor here in order to be rich
hereafter, and be miserable here that we may be happy bye and bye, when
the life-ability for happiness is entirely gone. We don’t despair of
human kind, we assert the improvability of the human race and we say if
we make this life as good as we can, we shall not be affrighted from our
task by any declaration that we may be unhappy hereafter.
But the Bishop went further, and carrying the war into our camp, he
declared that it was in consequence of faith in Christ that men did
Christian work, and he spoke of men doing good work among the sick, and
poor, and ignorant, and wretched, day by day because they were
Christians. Does he mean to say that Mohammedans, and Buddhists, and
Brahmins have amongst them no kindly work for one another? Does he mean
to say that men cannot be human unless they have the special Christian’s
creed? But this Christian work has been going on for 1800 years, so at
least the Bishop says. Let us turn the pages of its history over and
read what it has really done. When Christianity was cradled in the
world, Italy and Greece had their poets, painters, sculptors, men of
literary fame, orators, comedians, and tragedians. Wait for a century or
two till your much-vaunted Christianity has, by the aid of forgery,
fraud, and manufactured miracle, acquired some force. Wait till the
priests, crushing out all other learning, have become the sole literary
power in Europe. Did they teach the people? No, they kept the people
ignorant. (A voice, “No.”) If any one says no, I will show century
after century what Christianity has been. Your first century I will not
trouble with until you show me its actual pages; your second and third
centuries are crowded with the fabrication of forged evidences, the
canonisation of pretended saints; your fourth century shows the same
work, and marks also the quarrels commencing amongst yourselves for the
spoils now large enough to excite good Christians against each other; in
the fifth century Salvian one of your own presbyters, said the Christian
Church had become such a sink of vice, that it was a species of sanctity
for any one to be a little less vicious than the others. He says of his
fellow Christians that they lie and cheat, are adulterers and murderers;
that it is easier to find a Christian guilty of all these crimes than one
guilty of none. Take the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth
centuries of Christianity, when infidelity was almost powerless, before
Voltaire lived, before Spinosa wrote, before Bruno trod Europe round, and
you have in these centuries, when Christianity was the most powerful, the
dark ages of this European world, when all literature was stopped, all
philosophy was hindered, all science manacled by the Church. What was
the Christian work in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries,
when Christians marched to the Holy Land? Let the plundered and
miserable countries tell; let burned villages and ravished women show the
way in which the soldiers of the Cross manifested their religion even to
their fellow Christians. Let these pages of blood and rapine be read for
Christian work. Where then was liberty or popular rights? When the
king, the barons, and the priests were in power, did Christianity help
the people to get liberty? It is only within the last 300 years, since
the rise of heresy in Europe, that the people have gained any freedom.
The Church of England may say, This is not our work; but it is a branch
of the Church of Rome, and ought not to repudiate the trunk it grew from.
Nay, it has not even the same right to plead to us as the Church of Rome.
The Church of Rome is consistent, and says to its followers, You on
religion are unable to think, we will and we do think for you. The
Church of England says, You have a right to think for yourselves, but
damns you if you think differently from the Church. You say that
hospitals are the fruits of Christianity. Where, save in the
monasteries, were the hospitals for 1500 years? You boast of schools.
Where were these at all for 1500 years? There were even in this country
none worthy of the name for little children till Robert Owen set his
example at New Lanark. You talk of going into the back streets, but is
it not true that squalor, misery, and vice, crowd the back streets
because the Bishops and the English Church have taken so much from the
people, and have so hindered the populace from self-improvement, that
they have only back streets themselves to live in, while they build
palaces for the king, and magnificent structures for the Church? I
attack the Church of England because the Church has challenged me. I
attack it as a leech that for centuries has sucked the life-blood out of
the people, and which, with the power to aid and help civilisation, has
done nothing but retard it.
The Bishop said, Let us suppose the existence of a supremely righteous,
true, and holy being; let us suppose a revelation from such a being; what
do you suppose such a revelation should be like? and he urged that the
Christian possessed such a revelation as groundwork for his faith. I
hold the supposed revelation in my hand. What does it reveal? That God
made man and woman in the same day, but that he made them separately, the
man long before the woman. That God gave them the fruit of every tree
for food, but prohibited them from eating the fruit of one tree, and
never intended that of another to be eaten by them; that he placed the
man and woman in a garden within reach of the tree whose fruit they were
forbidden to eat on pain of death, but the fruit of which was made good
for food and pleasant to the eyes; that God made a serpent more subtle
than all the beasts of the field; that this serpent tempted Eve, and she
ate the forbidden fruit, and gave to the man who ate also, and thus both
fell; that God, who had foreseen and predestined all this terrible farce,
cursed for Adam’s sake all human kind, millions being thus involved in
Adam’s ruin. That all this was the work of an all-wise and all-good God,
with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. This God, who is not
a man that he can repent, afterwards repented that he had made man, and,
although not subject to passions, it grieved him at his heart, and he
resolved to destroy all mankind. That, man’s thoughts being wicked, this
God of love and forgiveness, of long suffering and loving kindness,
destroyed not only the full-grown man and woman, but also the little
child as yet without thought. Man’s thoughts being wicked, God drowned
the whole world, including bird, beast, and creeping thing. Did you ever
picture to yourselves this story of the flood? Just paint in imagination
a mother with her child in her arms, wearily toiling up some hill,
slippery with the falling waters. See her fleeing from the waves coming
swift behind, like ravenous wolves, with gaping mouths greedy for her
life. Imagine her cry to heaven for mercy, not for herself alone, not so
much for herself, but for her child, a child, which sucking at her
breast, as yet knows no sin. Then picture your all-loving and merciful
God shutting his ears to her wild shrieks for mercy, and drowning her and
her babe in the flood.
Did you ever picture to yourselves the scene when, the world being again
peopled, its inhabitants intended to build a tower that would reach to
heaven, and God, the all-wise, hearing of it in heaven, where he then
resided, came down to earth to see whether the rumour was true, and
finding that it was, confounded the language of men? Do you recollect
how God chose Abraham—and I don’t deny that he was worth choosing, a man
who was just 75 years old when he had lived 135 years—how God, the
infinite and omnipresent, came down from heaven and told Abraham that in
his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed; and that
Abraham, though so old that his body was “as good as dead,” should have a
son in his old age? Have you read how God, who cannot lie, with a
covenant and an oath promised a certain land to Abraham, and how he never
gave him “so much as to set his foot on?” Have you read how Sarah, it
having ceased to be with her after the manner of women, laughed when God
made the promise of a son; how God asked why she laughed; and how Sarah,
whose faith is praised, denied to God’s very face that she had laughed at
all? Have you read that God said, I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and
of Jacob; that Jacob proved to be a knave and a liar; that Jacob made a
conditional bargain with the Almighty God, that if the Lord would do
certain things for him, then the Lord should be his God? Have you read
how God promised to protect Abraham’s children, and how they became
slaves in Egypt, and how he left them to be oppressed? Have you read
how, hearing their cries, God took them out of Egypt, amongst a number of
nations who had committed no crime against the Jews, but were created by
God to be destroyed by his chosen people? Have you traced the track of
blood and murder from Egypt to Palestine? Have you read how God gave the
Israelites the right to make war on any city, and if the inhabitants made
peace, then they were tributaries, but if not “I, the Lord God, will
deliver them into thy hands; thou shalt smite them utterly, and leave
alive nothing that breatheth?”
I say that this is not a revelation of love; it is the revelation, the
outgrowth of the instincts, of a barbarous and brutal people. My Lord
Bishop, not content with relying on this revelation, after telling us
that the existence of a Deity cannot be demonstrated, seeks to supply us
with a demonstration by a vague reference to the argument from design.
He says that there are in the universe evidences of a designer. This
argument from design is a most dangerous one, for the existence of stings
and fangs may be evidences of a designing malevolence; but permit me to
dismiss the argument with a quotation from Sir William Hamilton. He
says:
“We are utterly unable to conceive that it is possible for the
complement of existence to have been either increased or diminished.
We cannot, on the one hand, conceive of nothing becoming something,
or on the other hand, of something becoming nothing.”