This is an age of "series." Every publisher issues one, and the number
of them is legion. As far as possible they are written by "eminent
hands," as old Jacob Tonson used to call his wretched scribblers in
Grub-street garrets. But not every publisher can secure such an eminent
hand as a live Archbishop, This has been achieved, however, by Messrs.
Sampson, Low, Marston, and Company. Having projected a series of
"Preachers of the Age," they were fortunate enough to enlist the
Archbishop of Canterbury under their banner. His Grace, as it is
etiquette to call him, though his natural name is Edward White Benson,
leads off the publishers' attack on the British public with a volume of
sermons entitled _Living Theology_. It is well printed on good paper,
the binding is appropriate, and the price of three-and-sixpence puts it
within the reach of the great middle-class public which cares for such
things. We are far from sharing the opinion of a carper who remarked
that, as sermons go, this volume is rather dear. Thirteen sermons by an
Archbishop! Could any man in his senses expect them for less money?
The real wonder is that a man with £15,000 a-year should condescend to
publish at all. We ought to feel thankful that he does not charge us a
guinea a volume.
Prefixed to the thirteen sermons, at fourpence apiece, including the
binding, is an excellent photogravure portrait of the Archbishop. The
face is keen and scholarly, and not unpleasant. A noticeable nose, a
large fluent mouth, shrewd eyes, and a high well-shaped head, make on
the whole an agreeable picture. Something about the features shows the
preacher, and something more the ecclesiastic. It is the type, and the
best type, of the learned priest. Nobody could look at this portrait and
call Edward White Benson a fool. But is any one in danger of doing so?
Would not every one admit some ability in the unhereditary recipient
of fifteen thousand a year? Parsons are not a brilliant body, but to
wriggle, or climb, or rise to the top of the Black Army involves the
possession of uncommon faculties.
The Archbishop is seldom eloquent, in the popular sense of the word;
but his style has a certain force and color, always within the limits of
exquisite breeding. If he consigned you to Gehenna, he would do it with
bland graciousness; and if he swore at all, he would swear in Latin. His
language in these sermons, as in another volume we noticed a year
ago, is pure and nervous, with an etymological reason for every word.
Sometimes he is quite felicitous. Now and then he uses metaphor with
skill and illumination. The habitual concreteness of his style shows the
clearness of his perceptions. Occasionally he is epigrammatic "Strong
enemies," he says in one place, "are better to us than weak friends.
They show us our weak points." Finer and higher is another passage in
the same sermon--"The yearning of multitudes is not in vain. After
yearning comes impulse, volition, movement." It would be difficult, if
not impossible, to better this, unless a great poet cast it in the mould
of a metaphor.
We confess that, on the whole, we have read the Archbishop's sermons
with some pleasure, as well as with much attention. It is to his credit
that he defies a superficial reading. We do not expect to find another
volume in the series at all comparable with his. Dr. Maclaren, who comes
second, is on a lower level, and the next descent to Mr. Price Hughes is
a fall into a slough of incapable and reckless sentimentalism.
_Living Theology_ is the title of the Archbishop's volume, but this is
a misnomer, for the title belongs only to the first sermon. It misled us
in this general application, as it will probably mislead others. We took
it to be a setting forth of so much theology as the Archbishop thought
_living_, in contradistinction to what he allowed to be _dead_. But we
find a very miscellaneous lot of sermons, sometimes rather on Church
work than on Church teaching. The title, therefore, is what Walt Whitman
would call "a suck and a sell." Yet it is hardly worth while to labor
the complaint, for titles are often better than the pages that follow
them. Sometimes, indeed, a writer puts all his head into the title, and
the rest of the book displays his imbecility. But this cannot be said of
the Archbishop.
Another difficulty is this. The Archbishop's sermons are hard for a
Freethinker to criticise. He seldom expounds and rarely argues. He
addresses an audience who take the fundamentals of Christianity for
granted. Yet he lays himself open here and there, and where he does so
we propose to meet him.
In the first sermon Dr. Benson is surely going beyond his actual belief
in referring to "the earliest race of man, with whom the whole race so
nearly passed away." He can scarcely take the early chapters of Genesis
literally at this time of day. In the very next sermon he speaks
cheerfully of the age of Evolution. That sermon was preached at St.
Mary's, Southampton, to the British Association in 1882. It is on "The
Spirit of Inquiry." "The Spirit of Inquiry," he says, "is God's spirit
working in capable men, to enlarge the measure and the fulness of
man's capacity." But if _capable_ men are necessary, to say nothing
of favorable conditions, the working of God's spirit seems lost in
the natural explanation. Still, it is pleasant to find the Archbishop
welcoming the Spirit of Inquiry, under any interpretation of its
essence; and it may be hoped that he will vote accordingly when the
Liberty of Bequest Bill reaches the Upper Chamber. It is also pleasant
to read his admission that the Spirit of Inquiry (we keep his capitals)
"has made short work not only of the baser religions, but of the baser
forms of ours"--to wit, the Christian. Some of those "baser forms" are
indicated in the following passage:
"I know not whether any stern or any sensuous religion of heathendom
has held up before men's astonished eyes features more appalling or
more repulsive than those of the vindictive father, or of the arbitrary
distributor of two eternities, or again of the easy compromiser of
offences in return for houses and lands. Dreadful shadows under which,
thousands have been reared."
Dreadful shadows indeed! And not thousands, but countless millions, have
been reared under them. Those dreadful shadows were for centuries the
universal objects of Christian worship. They still hover over Spurgeon's
tabernacle and a host of other houses of God. But they are hateful to
Dr. Benson. To him the God of orthodoxy, the God of the Thirty-nine
Articles, is dead. He dismisses Predestination, a vindictive God, and
Everlasting Torment. He speaks of the very "prison" where Christ is
said to have preached after his death, as a place "where spirits surely
unlearn many a bias, many a self-wrought blindness, many a heedless
error." Hell is therefore a place of purgation, which is certainly an
infinite improvement on the orthodox idea of eternal and irremediable
woe, however it fall(s) below the conception that the Creator has no
right to punish his own failures.
Let the reader note who makes these admissions of the intellectual
and moral death of the "baser forms" of Christianity. It is not an
irresponsible _franc-tireur_ of the Black Army, nor an expelled soldier
like Mr. Voysey, nor a resigned soldier like Dr. Momerie. It is the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest dignitary of the Church of
England.
His Grace does not reflect--he cannot afford to reflect--that as the
dead theology of to-day was the living theology of the past, so the
living theology of to-day may be the dead theology of to-morrow.
The Archbishop still dogmatises, even in this sermon on the Spirit of
Inquiry. In opposition to the man of science who knows of no limits
to nature, he declares that "There is a _sum_ of created things, and
therefore a real end (however far off) to what can be known of them."
In a certain sense, truly, there _is_ an end to what can be known of
nature, for human knowledge must ever be relative and not absolute. But
the Archbishop's limit is not qualitative in man; it is quantitative
in the universe. Herein he goes beyond the bounds of knowledge, and
indulges in the very dogmatism for which he reprehends the materialist.
It is dogmatism also to assert that "the soul has every reason to
believe itself absolutely eternal." Absolutely is a word of vast
significance. How can it apply to "the soul"? Were "the soul" to subsist
eternally in the future, it could not be _absolutely_ eternal if it once
began to be. "Every reason" is also too comprehensive. Dr. Benson may
think he has good reasons for "the soul's" immortality, but he must be
aware that divines of his own church have held the contrary doctrine.
Before the Spirit of Inquiry, says Dr. Benson, every other religion
than Christianity fades away; though he has admitted that some parts of
Christianity, the "baser forms," have shared the same fate. Every fresh
conquest of the Spirit of Inquiry has "brought out some trait in the
character, or some divine conception in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth."
This sweeping statement is supported by "three very clearly marked"
instances.
The first is that science shows us the unity of life. "The latest
discovered laws involve at least this, that the Life of man is one
Life." And this is "no more than the scientific verification of what was
long ago stated, and by Christians (at least for a while) acted on."
In support of the Christian idea of the Unity of Life the Archbishop
cites St. Paul, who once asked in a callous way if God cared for oxen.
Had the Archbishop appealed to Jesus he would have found the oracle
dumb, or something worse; for the Nazarene distinctly told his apostles
to preach only to the Jews, and leave the Samaritans and Gentiles in
darkness. St. Paul took a flight beyond this narrow patriotism. It was
he, and not the personal disciples of Jesus, who broke down the barriers
between Jew and Gentile. It was he who scorned the idea that Jesus, to
use his own language, was only sent to the lost sheep of the house ot
Israel. It was he, and not Peter, or James, or John, who said that God
had made all nations of one blood; he who declared "ye are all one in
Christ." Yet it is easy to make too much of this; for St. Paul did not
include the heathen and unbelievers within the fold of brotherhood;
and when he asserted the fatherhood of God, he appealed to the previous
utterance of a Greek poet, thus conceding his own want of originality.
One might imagine, too, that the old Jewish story of Creation--which in
turn was not original--involved the common descent of the human race;
and as this idea was almost, if not quite, universal, being based on the
obvious generic resemblance of the various races of mankind, it seems
a stretch of fancy to put it forward as "a Christian statement" in some
way connected with "Jesus of Nazareth."
The Archbishop's second instance of the concurrence of modern progress
with the teaching of Jesus, is, to say the least of it, peculiar. "From
the liberty to inquire," he says, "comes the liberty to express the
results of inquiry. And this is the preamble of the Charter of Jesus
Christ."
We defy Dr. Benson to find a single plain passage about freedom of
thought in the teachings of Jesus. The Nazarene was fond of saying, "He
that hath ears to hear let him hear." But it was reserved for Ingersoll
to say, "He that hath a brain to think let him think."
The Archbishop goes on to claim Darwin as "our aged Master"--Darwin, who
rejected Christianity for forty years of his life! He quotes from Beale
the sentence, "Intellectual work of every kind must be free." "And the
New Testament," he adds, "is still the one volume of books on religion
which accepts thia whole statement."
This is a bold--some would say a brazen--assertion. If the New Testament
teaches anything clearly, it teaches that belief is necessary to
salvation. That doctrine stifles free speech and extinguishes inquiry.
Why investigate if you may be damned for your conclusions? And why allow
investigation if another man's errors may involve your perdition? These
questions have been answered logically enough by the Christian Church,
and the "Charter of Jesus Christ" has been the worst of spiritual
oppressions. No religion has been so intolerant as the Christian.
Mohammedanism has been far less bigoted. Buddhism has the proud
distinction of never having persecuted one human being in twenty-four
centuries. The Archbishop's third instance is fantastic to the point of
grotesqueness. Both Christianity and the spirit of Inquiry, he says,
are at one in "the demand for fruit." Does he mean to imply that other
religions set their faces against "fruit"? Buddhism is quite imperative
about moral duties. Mohammedanism gets itself obeyed in matters of
conduct, while Christianity is quite ineffectual. Drink, gambling, and
prostitution abound in Christian countries; in the Mohammedan world
they have been sternly repressed. This is admitted by Dr. Benson in his
volume on _Christ and his Times_; admitted, and even emphasised; so that
he may, as it were, be confuted out of his own mouth.
If we take a leap to the penultimate sermon in the present volume, we
find Archbishop Benson indulging in the same kind of loose statement and
inconsequential reasoning. Its title is "Christ's Crucifixion, an All
in All." The preacher scorns the Greek notion of the Crucifixion as "the
shocking martyrdom of a grand young moralist." Such a notion, he says,
is "quite inconsistent with the facts." Either we know not what Christ
taught, or else he was more than man. And the Archbishop sets about
proving this by means of a series of leaps over logical chasms.
After dilating on the innocence of Christ, who was certainly guilty
according to the Mosaic law, and deserving of death according to the
express command of Jehovah, the Archbishop writes as follows:
"Then we look back through our eighteen centuries, and we see that
before the age of three-and-thirty he had fashioned sayings, had
compacted thoughts, had expressed principles about duty, about the
relative worth of things, about life, about love, about intercourse
with God, about the formation of character, the relation of classes, the
spirit of law, the essence of government, the unity of man, which had
not existed, or which were not formulated when he opened his lips, but
which have been and are the basis of society from the time they were
known till now."
This is a tissue of false assumptions. The sayings, thoughts, and
principles of Jesus _did_ exist before, and they _were_ formulated when
he opened his lips. Not one original utterance is ascribed to him in
the whole of the Gospels. It is idle to bandy generalisations; let
the Archbishop select specimens of Christ's teaching, and we will find
parallels to them, sometimes better and more wisely expressed, in the
utterances of his predecessors. Nor is it true that Christ's teachings
have been, or are, the basis of society. Society exists in defiance of
them. It is never based, and it never will be based, on any abstract
teaching. Its basis is _self-interest_, ever increasing in complexity,
and ever more and more illuminated by the growth of knowledge.
Take the case of oaths. Jesus said plainly, "Swear not at all." But
when earthly potentates wanted their subjects to swear fidelity, the
Christian priests discovered that Jesus meant, "Swear only on special
occasions." And it was reserved for an Atheist, in the nineteenth
century, to pass an Act allowing Christians to obey Jesus Christ.
Take the injunction, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."
Society could never exist upon such a basis, so the clergy find that
Jesus, like Polonius, spoke tropically. Every Christian is busy laying
up treasures on earth, and Archbishop Benson is well to the front in the
competition.
Having made ridiculous claims for Jesus Christ, the Archbishop proceeds
in this wise: "Next ask yourself whether a stainless, loving, sincere,
penetrating person like that makes or enlarges on unfounded declarations
as to matters of fact. Is it consistent with such a character?" Now
Jesus speaks of "the immense importance of his own person," he speaks
of "My flesh, My blood" as of vital power, he says "I and my Father
are one." Could he have been deceived? Well, why not? Honesty does not
guarantee us against error. The best of men have been mistaken, And
sincere natures are most liable to be deceived by taking subjective
impressions for external realities.
There is another explanation which the Archbishop is too shrewd to pass
over in silence. Perhaps others said those things for Jesus, perhaps
they "attributed to him sayings which he did not utter." But this, the
Archbishop says, only multiplies the difficulty and the astonishment;
for, to put it briefly, his biographers in that case were as good at
predicting and inventing as himself. And why not? Do we not know that
the story of the woman taken in adultery, which is finely told, and has
all along been thought to contain some of Christ's most characteristic
teaching, does not exist in the earlier manuscripts? It was invented by
an unknown writer. And if one unknown writer could (and did) invent this
story, other unknown writers may have invented every part of the Gospel
narratives.
The attempt to make Jesus sponsor for himself is the last refuge of
hard-driven Christians. The frame of mind it evinces is seen in Dr.
Benson's interpretation of the exclamation "I thirst," ascribed to
Jesus on the cross. Crucifixion produced an intolerable thirst, and the
exclamation is very natural; but Dr. Benson says that Jesus meant "I
thirst for souls," and and adds that "no man can doubt" it. Such are
the shifts to which Christians are reduced when they cling to faith in
defiance of reason.
Dr. Benson's "living theology" is dead theology. It is sentimentalism
and make-believe. Perfectly scriptural doctrines are cast aside
while others are arbitrary retained. Vague talk about "Christ and him
crucified" takes the place of time-honored dogmas, logically deduced
from the "Word of God," and stamped with the deliberate approval of
councils and synods. Christianity, in short, is becoming a matter
of personal taste and preference. The time is approaching when every
Christian will have a Christianity of his own.
This is the moral of the Archbishop's volume. Had space permitted we
should have liked to notice other features of his sermons. In one place
he says that "the so-called Secularist is the man who deprives things
secular of all power and meaning and beauty." We think that he deprives
Christianity of all meaning, and that being gone its "power" and
"beauty" are idle themes of wasted eloquence.