But mobs must be faced if civilization is to be saved. It did not need
the present war to show that neither the iconographic Christ nor the
Christ of St. Paul has succeeded in effecting the salvation of human
society. Whilst I write, the Turks are said to be massacring the
Armenian Christians on an unprecedented scale; but Europe is not in a
position to remonstrate; for her Christians are slaying one another by
every device which civilization has put within their reach as busily as
they are slaying the Turks. Barabbas is triumphant everywhere; and the
final use he makes of his triumph is to lead us all to suicide with
heroic gestures and resounding lies. Now those who, like myself, see the
Barabbasque social organization as a failure, and are convinced that the
Life Force (or whatever you choose to call it) cannot be finally beaten
by any failure, and will even supersede humanity by evolving a higher
species if we cannot master the problems raised by the multiplication
of our own numbers, have always known that Jesus had a real message,
and have felt the fascination of his character and doctrine. Not that
we should nowadays dream of claiming any supernatural authority for him,
much less the technical authority which attaches to an educated
modern philosopher and jurist. But when, having entirely got rid of
Salvationist Christianity, and even contracted a prejudice against
Jesus on the score of his involuntary connection with it, we engage on a
purely scientific study of economics, criminology, and biology, and
find that our practical conclusions are virtually those of Jesus, we
are distinctly pleased and encouraged to find that we were doing him an
injustice, and that the nimbus that surrounds his head in the pictures
may be interpreted some day as a light of science rather than a
declarations of sentiment or a label of idolatry.
The doctrines in which Jesus is thus confirmed are, roughly, the
following:
1. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the son of God; and God
is the son of man. God is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in
truth, and not an elderly gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are
members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor
without injuring or helping yourself. God is your father: you are here
to do God's work; and you and your father are one.
2. Get rid of property by throwing it into the common stock. Dissociate
your work entirely from money payments. If you let a child starve you
are letting God starve. Get rid of all anxiety about tomorrow's dinner
and clothes, because you cannot serve two masters: God and Mammon.
S. Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge. Love your neighbor as
yourself, he being a part of yourself. And love your enemies: they are
your neighbors.
4. Get rid of your family entanglements. Every mother you meet is as
much your mother as the woman who bore you. Every man you meet is as
much your brother as the man she bore after you. Don't waste your time
at family funerals grieving for your relatives: attend to life, not to
death: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and
better. In the kingdom of heaven, which, as aforesaid, is within you,
there is no marriage nor giving in marriage, because you cannot devote
your life to two divinities: God and the person you are married to.
Now these are very interesting propositions; and they become more
interesting every day, as experience and science drive us more and more
to consider them favorably. In considering them, we shall waste our time
unless we give them a reasonable construction. We must assume that the
man who saw his way through such a mass of popular passion and illusion
as stands between us and a sense of the value of such teaching was quite
aware of all the objections that occur to an average stockbroker in
the first five minutes. It is true that the world is governed to a
considerable extent by the considerations that occur to stockbrokers in
the first five minutes; but as the result is that the world is so badly
governed that those who know the truth can hardly bear to live in it,
an objection from an average stockbroker constitutes in itself a prima
facie case for any social reform.