being the voice of God, is but "the capitalised instinct of the tribe,"
an empirical fact established by heredity, just like fan-tails in
pigeons; when Mr. Clifford popularises this teaching in St. George's
Hall by announcing that conscience is the voice "of man bidding us to
live for man," and Mr. Leslie Stephen tells us that the Socratic
conception of conscience "is part of an obsolete form of speculation,"
we know precisely what judgment to pass upon their assertions. They
are speaking, one and all, of the historical growth or natural
evolution of that rational faculty in man which they, equally with
their opponents, describe as the conscience. And keeping within those
limits they are strictly accurate in what they say. Who is there that
does not know that time was when the inhabitants of Europe were as
destitute of moral instincts, and therefore of a conscience, as the
Tonga islanders? Who does not know that man, instead of beginning at
the top and tumbling headlong to the bottom, really began at the bottom
and learnt everything by a very severe discipline in the hardest of all
schools, that of experience? Certainly, we are ignorant of none of
those things, and therefore readily assent to Mr. Spencer's teaching
that conscience is not a fixed criterion of morality, but a faculty in
a ceaseless state of transformation, "in a perpetual state of
becoming," that its dicta are, in a certain sense, constantly changing
and improving with the progress and development of the race.
Certainly, as scientists and anthropologists, we should say precisely
the same thing. We should recognise the developed conscience in man as
obedient to the law of growth equally with his physical organisation,
because we know of men now existent in whom the faculty is still in a
very rudimentary state. Every advance in humanitarianism, in our
treatment of men and animals, is evidence to us of the illimitable
capacities of moral expansion in our nature, and therefore of the
growth of conscience, or the moral sentiment.
But are we to conclude therefrom that conscience is nothing more than a
product of organic evolution? It is a shallow philosophy, a surface
system, indeed, which is content with such an estimate, and is only
possible in a school of bald empiricism which imprisons man within the
boundaries of his sense-experience, and resolves him into a string of
feelings bound together, like a rope of sand, by nothing. The truth
is, that Mr. Spencer, Mr. Bain, Mr. Mill and the whole _corps_ of
experimental philosophers are confusing the reality with its outward
manifestation or history. Indeed, by their principles they are
constrained to do so. Once affirm that nothing beyond the reach of
your sensory organs is trustworthy, and conscience must be, like the
nervous system, the development of a shock or a thrill. But it has
never apparently dawned upon these thinkers that the very
distinguishing note of conscience, its compulsory power, its assumption
of authority to command the obedience of the will and its capacity to
torment the soul with an overmastering remorse--to make a man say, "my
sin is greater than I can bear"--is left wholly unexplained and
unaccounted for in the historical analysis with which they favour us.
What we want to know is: Whence has conscience the strange, mysterious
power to influence us even in the sanctuary of our thoughts; why does
the wicked man flee when no one pursueth except that the sleepless eye
of his own outraged conscience is upon him and he cannot tolerate its
reproachful gaze? Nowhere do we feel the inadequacy of the
sense-philosophy more piercingly than in this matter of conscience. It
has cut the world in twain and treated it as a piece of mechanism and
reduced man to the position of an automaton.
But the facts are too strong; Nature is too strong. Every time some
splendid heroism, some complete self-surrender is made; every time some
deed of moral enthusiasm thrills the pulses of the world, or some
lonely man or woman succeeds in crushing some infamous desire; every
time for the sake of the good, for the sake of the right alone, we
resist "even unto blood," conscience is exalted and enthroned above the
stars, lifted utterly out of the low and insignificant category of
physical experiences in which they would vainly endeavour to imprison
it.
The commanding voice is heard throughout the ages, and men will, men
must, ask: Who is it--what is it that spoke? They will not be put off
with the reply that _all_ they hear is an echo of the past,
reverberating throughout the race as the successive generations arise.
Ah! but whence has it power to command me, even in the sanctuary of my
deepest solitude, in the loneliness of my silent thoughts? No
ancestral traditions, no shouts of blessing or curse of multitudes can
influence me there. I am alone in the abysmal depths of my
personality, solitary as though in a desert world, and yet the
mysterious voice is heard, the solemn sense of obligation and duty
makes itself felt. It bids me respect myself, my moral dignity, though
no one be nigh; it bids me chase the phantoms of evil from my mind.
In vain do you attempt to evade its jurisdiction by pointing to the
acknowledged facts that men form different estimates of their duties in
different countries and in different ages. Conscience is not concerned
with that. Such subordinate tasks as the formation of moral codes, the
ascertainment of the conformity or nonconformity of certain precise
acts with morality are the work of the reason. Conscience is no
_theoretical instructor_. Far more than that, it is a _practical
commander_. It speaks but one voice. Obey what you know to be right,
for the right's sake alone. And conscience has never wavered in the
inculcation of that precept. The reason of man has been constantly
advancing, discovering the content of the moral law just as it has been
discovering the content of the geometrical, mathematical or musical
law; but conscience, like the polar star, has been pointing steadily in
one direction, the direction of duty, without error, without failure.
"An erring conscience," says the ethical master, "is a chimera."
We learn, thus, from the teaching of both schools that conscience is at
once the voice of man, the accumulated and concentrated moral
experience of the race, but still more the voice of the eternal Reason
which is revealed to our wondering eyes in the true, the good and the
beautiful. If "this universe in its meanest province is in very deed
the star-domed city of God"; if "the glory of the One breaks through it
all in every place," what are we to say of that which is higher than
the stars, more radiant than the sun, diviner than all worlds--the
conscience of man nobly conformed to the great obedience of the
everlasting laws? What are we to say of lives such as those of Gotama,
Socrates and Christ? Nothing. Like the psalmist of Israel, I am
struck dumb in the presence of a vision so majestical. _Deveni in
altitudinem maris et silui_: "I came unto the great deeps and I held my
peace".
[1] See his well-known essays, "The Ethics of Belief" and "The Ethics
of Religion".
[2] Prof. J. Seth, in his _Study of Ethical Principles_, concludes from
Mr. Huxley's Romanes lecture that "agnosticism could scarcely have been
the final resting place for such a mind".
[3] I have ventured to repeat here a portion of the argument set forth
in the chapter on "Ethics and Theism".
VII.
PRIESTS AND PROPHETS.
One of the most striking characteristics of the ecclesiastic, as
opposed to the religious mind, is its tendency to concentrate its
attention upon detail to the exclusion of fundamental principles. We
are assured that the same habit distinguishes the statesman from the
party man, or mere politician. At any rate, we have had abundant
evidence during the past fifty years--evidence which has been
emphasised during the past year--that the love of detail, of all that
comes under that washing of cups and platters, of first places and
salutations in the market-place, resplendent raiment and broad
phylacteries, which Jesus so summarily denounced in the official
religion of his own time, is still a mark of the ecclesiastic temper in
the England of to-day. If a man--even though that man be a
pope--should question the validity of its "orders," volleys of
sacerdotal refutation are fired from the press, the whole atmosphere is
electric with the controversial charges such profanity provokes. But
let a man proclaim that there is no such institution as "orders" at
all, that true religion, that Christianity, as conceived by its
founder, is destitute of ritual, priest and sacrifice, and everything
is still as a Quakers' meeting. How is it that men will seriously
devote their energies to repelling such side attacks as those directed
against them by rival churches, while they totally neglect to satisfy
an enlightened age as to the validity of the fundamental assumption on
which their entire system reposes? The pope and the Eastern Churches
may be serious rivals in the camp ecclesiastic, but what are our native
pontiffs and priests to reply to men like Hatch, Jowett and Stanley, to
say nothing of Martineau, who roundly proclaim that "orders," as
understood by them, are nothing more nor less than a superstition? For
instance, what would the patrons of the "mass in masquerade" answer to
Stanley's direct and emphatic pronouncement: "In the beginning of
Christianity there was no such institution as the clergy; it grew
naturally out of the increasing needs of the community . . . the
intellectual element in religion requires some one to express it, and
this, in some form or other, will be the clergy"?[1] Surely if there
were no "orders" in the beginning, then a priesthood was no creation of
Jesus, his apostles were no priests, they created, therefore, no
priests, and a priestly caste grew up as an intrusion in Christendom
just as it arose in the religion of the holy Buddha in India, and
attempted, though unsuccessfully, to invade the severely simple
religion of Mohammed.
The view which ethical religion takes of sacerdotalism is very well
known, but it is essential to do more than merely repudiate the notion
of priesthood as an integral portion of religion; our duty is also to
possess ourselves of the facts of history and criticism so as to
satisfy ourselves and others who may need such instruction, that
sacerdotalism is not only not ethical, but is anti-Christian, and that
the greatest anomaly the world presents to-day is that of the clergymen
of the Eastern and Western Churches arrogating to themselves the
possession of powers which the founder of their religion and his
earliest followers not only never exercised, but of which they had not
even a remote conception.
A singular interest has been added to this inquiry by the
recently-revived controversy between two of the many Churches into
which Christendom is divided on the highly debatable matter of Anglican
orders. The said controversy had been in a state of suspended
animation from the time of the Stuarts up to the Tractarian movement,
when it was partially revived, and a fair crop of literature sprang up
around it. It has been reserved, however, for our own days to witness
its complete vivification under the auspices of the High Church
societies and certain _sagrestani_ among "the nobility and gentry" of
our day. To the credit of the female sex, we hear of no ladies being
_prominently_ identified with the movement. Even Oxford, once "the
home of lost causes and impossible ideals," concerns itself with these
_minutiae_ no more. Like the later pantheon of imperial Rome, it
offers its impartial hospitality to representatives of every form of
orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The shadowy warfare is now waged,
apparently, in the London press and magazines, in the bulls of popes
and the responsions of archbishops. Of course, the renewed inquiry set
on foot by the industry and temerity of Lords Halifax and
Nelson--_tanti nominis umbra_ surely, in this latter case, to engage
itself in such a battle--could have but one ending, namely, the
reiterated and emphasised condemnation of our national ecclesiastics as
nothing better than mere laymen, and the renewed degradation of the
officiating curate to the level of his neighbouring Nonconformist
minister who celebrates "the Supper" and preaches in his coat.
The papal representatives in this country have published a rejoinder to
the official reply of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which, if
I may shelter myself behind the authority of the _Times_[2] reviewer,
does not err on the side of dignity, moderation and scholarship. It is
said to be jaunty, perky, off-hand, suggestive of "the smart evening
journalist"--this last is very serious--and, worse than all, it is an
appeal, not to theologians or scholars, nor even to thoughtful and
instructed men, but "to the gallery".
Who the gallery in this particularly Divine comedy may be I really do
not know. I strongly suspect that if the piece were put upon the
boards--and everything is now dramatised, from the trials of Satan to
the Dreyfus case--the gallery would be the emptiest department of the
theatre. And this opinion I am pleased to see confirmed by the closing
remarks of the review above noticed, which warns the Christian bishops
and pastors of the present day that the comparative merits of one set
of "orders" as opposed to those of another set have "little interest
and not much meaning for nine Englishmen out of ten".
But what, I think, the average man would be interested to know is
whether there be such things as "holy orders" at all. Very many of
them are, in this matter, I believe, in the position of those
interesting Asiatics who "knew not whether there be such a thing as a
Holy Ghost," and I think it will be abundantly easy to show that the
ignorance of the ordinary man as to the precise nature of "orders" was
shared in also by our Asiatic friends whose existence is noticed in an
early chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. We shall therefore proceed
to show the groundlessness of the entire controversy from evidence
which satisfactorily establishes that the authentic form of
Christianity, as fixed by its founder and his followers for two
centuries, admits of no such thing as a priesthood in the sense
contemplated by the disputants whose wordy warfare has now, we
understand, been closed for ever.
To begin, then, whence arose the idea of a priest? What is the meaning
of the word? Etymologically, we may take it to be identical with the
Saxon word _preost_, which again is doubtless, though it is not
admitted on all hands, identical with the Greek _presbys_ or elder. A
priest, then, originally and literally, signified senior or elder,
whether in the family or the State. How an elder came to be associated
with religion was in this wise. Every philosopher and anthropologist
has been constrained to admit the presence in man of an instinct of
unity, impelling him not merely to society or intercourse with his
fellows, but to communion with a power unseen. This instinct, as
already defined in a former chapter, is religion. Now the initiatory
development of this aboriginal instinct was very humble, and if we wish
to know what our direct ancestors once were, we need only consult the
record of anthropological research among such savages as the Fijians or
Tonga Islanders. The shape assumed by religion amongst such people was
most probably ancestor or ghost worship. The dead father or chieftain
is still seen in the dreams of his children or people, and the
mysteriousness of the new shape and presence he assumes excites the awe
and reverence which is at the root of the religious habit. The chief
becomes the tutelary deity or protector of his tribe, or locality over
which he ruled. Other chieftains are added to him in course of time,
and soon we have a veritable pantheon of gods, good and evil, whom it
is necessary to placate by certain offices and functions, very much as
it is necessary to covet the favour of powerful men on earth. Whose
duty shall it be to perform such rites? Naturally, it falls to the
head of the family and the head of the State. They are the born
officers of religious functions, the father for his home circle, the
chieftain for his clan or tribe. Thus Livy tells us that Numa, the
Roman king, was accustomed to offer sacrifice, but that the increasing
cares of State caused him to relinquish the office in favour of
specially appointed individuals who were called Flamens, and Mr.
McDonald,[3] in his account of the Blantyre negroes, informs us that
during the temporary absence of a chief, it devolved upon his wife to
take his place at the sacrificial altar. Numberless instances are
supplied in such works as Tylor's, Lubbock's, and Spencer's
_Ecclesiastical Institutions_, which go to show this primatial or
pontifical authority resident in the chief of the State, and the
transference of its offices to subordinate people, who gradually and
naturally became an official body or caste called priests or elders, as
representatives of heads of families, or of the tribe or State.[4] At
any rate, however much interested people may be inclined to dispute the
lowly origin of religion and worship, the indisputable fact remains
that such worship and sacrifice goes on among aboriginal peoples at
this very hour, and there is not one shred of evidence, beyond a
mistaken prejudice, which goes to show that our religion had any other
origin than that.
We may now enter on the further inquiry whether Christianity, meaning
thereby the religion personally professed and practised by Jesus of
Nazara, was a sacerdotal or sacrificial system in the sense already
explained. Such an inquiry necessarily resolves itself into this
further one, namely, whether there is any reliable evidence that the
founder of the Christian religion was himself a priest, taught a
sacerdotal doctrine, or exercised any sacerdotal functions.
Though he died a comparatively young man, if we may believe the gospel
narrative, which makes him to have lived either to thirty-one or
thirty-three years, though Irenaeus emphatically asserts that he lived
to fifty years, we may most assuredly proclaim him a priest in the
sense of elder, or leader of men. One whom schools of thought,
represented by men so opposed as Mill, Renan, Matthew Arnold, Spinoza,
Goethe, Napoleon and Rousseau, conspired to honour must have been
indeed a "king of men". But this is not what is meant by the question.
By priest we mean here what the ecclesiastic means, namely, one who is
set apart by the act of God, signified by some external rite or
ceremony, whereby power is conferred to perform certain definite
functions impossible to the ordinary man. He alone, in virtue of his
consecration, can mediate between man and the Deity, can propitiate him
for the sins of men, can forgive those sins, and mechanically
communicate holiness by the adoption of a definite ceremony and the
pronouncement of a precise formula. Nay, in virtue of his peculiar
status, the priest is able to superinduce a physical sanctity in solid
and liquid substances, like bread and wine, and quite independently of
his own belief, or the belief of the bystanders, or even the
recipients, cause those substances to be no longer what to every
conceivable physical test they still continue to be, but the body and
blood of a man who lived more than 1800 years ago. In a word, a ritual
may be described as "a system of consecrated charms or spells, and the
priest is the great magician who dispenses them".[5]
What we ask, then, is precisely this: Was Jesus a priest in this sense?
Unhesitatingly and most emphatically we reply--and without any fear of
serious attempt at refutation--that he was not, and that, in
consequence, the whole scheme of sacerdotal religion as prevalent in
the Roman and Oriental Christian Churches, and to a moderate extent in
the Anglican Church, is entirely baseless, grounded, not on the
institution of Jesus their reputed founder, but on an infantine
superstition which the third century of Christianity took over from the
Jewish and Pagan traditions which had preceded it. Hence the whole
protracted controversy, which has set no end of theological hair on
end, about the validity of these orders and the invalidity of those, is
so much beating the air, because Christianity, as understood and
instituted by Christ, knows no place, any more than Buddhism or
Mohammedanism, for priest, rite or sacrament.
Let us proceed to offer some evidence for this statement. In the first
place, the whole tenor of Christ's life was not that of the priest, but
of something entirely different; Christ was a prophet. What is a
prophet? We shall very imperfectly appreciate the character of the
prophet if we look upon him as nothing more than an historian "for whom
God has turned time round the other way," so that he reads the future
as if it were the past. Most extraordinary instances of clairvoyance
are brought to our notice in which things, eventually realised, turn
out to have been previously known, but the clairvoyant is not the
prophet. The prophet is the spirit representative of the Supreme
Spirit before our own. He is the image--perfected by intercourse with
the Unseen--of "the Invisible Goodness". He uses no rites, sacraments
or symbols, for he is all that in himself. If his pure, lofty,
ennobling life cannot impress the eternal upon the souls of men, then
assuredly no bread, wine or oil, can do it.[6] Hence, we see, a
prophet is born, not made. No consecration can make one any more than
installing a scene painter in the studio of a Raphael could ensure a
reproduction of a Transfiguration, or the Madonna di Foligno. And no
desecration, no excommunication from church, chapel or sanhedrin can
unmake him. The prophet is one of those royal beings who are kings by
right Divine, aye and human too, for all fall down instinctively before
him. It is the verdict of history that all that is most blessed we owe
to the prophets--not to the priests--to Moses, Confucius, Chrishna,
Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster and Christ.
Now, surely no one can seriously question that the life of Christ as
described in the gospel narrative is of a pronounced anti-sacerdotal
type. He was not of the priestly family, no man laid hands upon him,
he never exercised priestly functions. His teaching so directly tended
to the disparagement of priesthood as such, that the official hierarchy
of his country, quick to perceive it, compassed his death in the
interest of their self-preservation. "What do we, for lo! the whole
world has gone after him?" His first sermon was the announcement of a
prophetic mission. In the synagogue of his own town, among the humble
folk who had seen him grow from boyhood to youth and manhood, he made
the announcement: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord
hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor". If he entered the
stately courts of the temple, it was to teach rather than to worship,
and never to sacrifice. At the close of a day's teaching, he retires
to the hillside of Olivet, and feels the Great Presence in the night
breeze upon his brow and in the heaven above him as deeply as within
the walls of the "Holy Place". It is not, "Lo here, lo there!" for
"the Kingdom of God is within you". A priest would have said the
Divine Presence is upon the altar, but Christ discerns it always and
everywhere. His teaching was almost entirely delivered under the
canopy of heaven--on the mount of beatitudes, in a public street, in
the market-place, from a fishing boat to crowds upon the strand, in a
corn-field, or occasionally in some private dwelling-place. The only
invective that broke the calm of his peaceful speech was directed
against the ruling sacerdotal influence; he was emphatically a "Prophet
of the Most High".