God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world.
--R. Browning, Pippa Passes.
The Apostles' Creed, with which the Apostles never had anything to do,
begins with the words "I believe in God the Father Almighty." The last
word, "Almighty," is an adjective which we owe to the metaphysical genius
of Christian theologians; and the first words, "I believe," are the
customary shibboleth of the priests of every religion. For the rest,
this extract from the Creed is taken from the Lord's Prayer, which
itself is a brief selection from common Jewish prayers before the days
of Jesus. According to the evangelists--whoever _they_ were--Jesus
taught his disciples to pray to "Our Father which art in Heaven for
a number of things which no one ever obtained by that process.
Nevertheless the petition is offered up, generation after generation, by
millions of Christians, whose hands are first folded in the gesture of
prayer on their mothers' knees, and whose lips are taught at the same
time a form of words that clings to them for life.
"Our Father!" The words are pretty and touching. When the child hears
them he thinks of some one like his own father, but immensely bigger and
more powerful; and as the child is taught that all the necessaries and
comforts of life he enjoys, at the expense of his parents' labor and
loving care, are really gifts from the Father behind the scenes, it is
no wonder that this mysterious being becomes the object of gratitude and
affection.
_Which art in Heaven!_ Up there in the region of dreams, beyond the
sailing clouds, far away through the deep blue, where imagination builds
its fairy palace of delight, and God sits on his golden throne, and
swift, bright angels speed forth to execute his commands. Tell a child
anything you please about that land of fancy and you will be believed,
especially if the tale comes from beloved lips, or from lips that bear
the glamor of authority. And what the child is to the adult, early or
savage man is to the civilisee. To the African negroes the highest god
is the Sky; the great deity _Dyu_ of our Aryan ancestors was the Sky;
the Greek _Zeue_ and the Latin _Jupiter_ were both the Heaven-Father;
and we still say "Heaven forgive me!" or "Fear the vengeance of Heaven!"
This Heaven, however, is no longer credible to any one with a tincture
of science. Hard as the truth to a child or a savage, the sky is not a
reality, but an optical illusion. For forty or forty-five miles from the
earth's surface there is a belt of atmosphere, growing rarer and rarer
as it approaches the infinite ocean of æther. Gone for ever is the old
delusion of a solid Heaven overhead, with windows in it, through which
God and the angels looked down upon the earth and its inhabitants. And
what site is there for Heaven out in the cold blackness of space?
That Heaven is gone, and where is Our Father? Science shows us a
world of absolute order, in which what we call the laws of nature--the
observed sequence and recurrence of phenomena--are never broken. The
world was not fashioned for man's dwelling, nor is it maintained for his
benefit. Towards the poles he freezes, towards the equator he burns. The
rain nourishes his crops or rots them, without asking his pleasure; the
sea bears him or drowns him, with equal unconcern; the lightning slays
him or spares him, whether good, bad or indifferent, as he happens to be
in or out of the line of its dazzling flight; famine pinches his! cheeks
if he cannot procure food; the pestilence seizes upon his nerves and
blood unless he learns the antidote to its ravages. He stands amidst
the play of terrific forces, and only preserves himself by vigilance,
patience, courage and industry. If he falls the enemy is upon him, and
the doom of the vanquished is death. Nature shows him no mercy. His
mistakes are as fatal as his crimes.
"God" has been in his "Heaven" for eternity, but all is _not_ right with
the world. Man is always endeavoring to improve it, but what assistance
comes from above? A Father in Heaven would be a glorious fact. But who
can believe it? "Our Father" is utterly careless of his children. The
celestial Rousseau sends all his offspring to the Foundling.
The late hard weather has thrown thousands of honest men out of
employment, and increased the death-rate alarmingly. Where is the wisdom
of this? Where is the goodness? The worst of men would alter it if they
could. But God, they say, can do it, and he does not. Yet they still
look up and say "Our Father." And the Father looks down with a face as
blenchless as the Sphinx's, gazing forthright across the desert sands.
What father would permit in his family the gross disparities we see in
human life? One gorges and another starves; one is bloated and another
is death's counterfeit; one is dressed in three-piled velvet and another
goes in looped and windowed rags; one is idle and another slaves; one
is sated with pleasure and another is numbed with pain; one lolls in a
palace and another shivers in a hovel. What human father would not be
ashamed to treat his children with such infamous partiality?
Look at the physical and moral filth, and the mental abasement, in our
great Christian cities, where new churches are constantly built for the
worship of God, where Bibles are circulated by the million, and where
hundreds of sleek gentlemen flourish on the spoils of philanthropy. Read
Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story of East-end life; read the lucubrations
of General Booth; listen to the ever-swelling wail over the poverty,
misery, and degradation of hosts of our people; and then say if it
is not high time to cease all this cant about Our Father which art in
Heaven.
Man has always been his own Savior. His instrument is science, his
wisdom is self-help. His redemption begins when he turns his eyes from
the delusive Heaven and plucks up his heart from the fear of Hell.
Despair vanishes before the steady gaze of instructed courage. Hope
springs as a flower in the path of endeavor.