Here we may return to the narrative called The Acts of the Apostles,
which we left at the point where the stoning of Stephen was followed
by the introduction of Paul. The author of The Acts, though a good
story-teller, like Luke, was (herein also like Luke) much weaker in
power of thought than in imaginative literary art. Hence we find Luke
credited with the authorship of The Acts by people who like stories and
have no aptitude for theology, whilst the book itself is denounced
as spurious by Pauline theologians because Paul, and indeed all the
apostles, are represented in it as very commonplace revivalists,
interesting us by their adventures more than by any qualities of mind
or character. Indeed, but for the epistles, we should have a very poor
opinion of the apostles. Paul in particular is described as setting a
fashion which has remained in continual use to this day. Whenever he
addresses an audience, he dwells with great zest on his misdeeds before
his pseudo conversion, with the effect of throwing into stronger
relief his present state of blessedness; and he tells the story of that
conversion over and over again, ending with exhortations to the hearers
to come and be saved, and threats of the wrath that will overtake them
if they refuse. At any revival meeting today the same thing may be
heard, followed by the same conversions. This is natural enough; but
it is totally unlike the preaching of Jesus, who never talked about his
personal history, and never "worked up" an audience to hysteria. It
aims at a purely nervous effect; it brings no enlightenment; the most
ignorant man has only to become intoxicated with his own vanity, and
mistake his self-satisfaction for the Holy Ghost, to become qualified as
an apostle; and it has absolutely nothing to do with the characteristic
doctrines of Jesus. The Holy Ghost may be at work all round producing
wonders of art and science, and strengthening men to endure all sorts
of martyrdoms for the enlargement of knowledge, and the enrichment and
intensification of life ("that ye may have life more abundantly"); but
the apostles, as described in The Acts, take no part in the struggle
except as persecutors and revilers. To this day, when their successors
get the upper hand, as in Geneva (Knox's "perfect city of Christ") and
in Scotland and Ulster, every spiritual activity but moneymaking and
churchgoing is stamped out; heretics are ruthlessly persecuted; and such
pleasures as money can purchase are suppressed so that its possessors
are compelled to go on making money because there is nothing else to do.
And the compensation for all this privation is partly an insane conceit
of being the elect of God, with a reserved seat in heaven, and partly,
since even the most infatuated idiot cannot spend his life admiring
himself, the less innocent excitement of punishing other people for not
admiring him, and the nosing out of the sins of the people who, being
intelligent enough to be incapable of mere dull self-righteousness, and
highly susceptible to the beauty and interest of the real workings
of the Holy Ghost, try to live more rational and abundant lives. The
abominable amusement of terrifying children with threats of hell is
another of these diversions, and perhaps the vilest and most mischievous
of them. The net result is that the imitators of the apostles,
whether they are called Holy Willies or Stigginses in derision, or, in
admiration, Puritans or saints, are, outside their own congregations,
and to a considerable extent inside them, heartily detested. Now nobody
detests Jesus, though many who have been tormented in their childhood in
his name include him in their general loathing of everything
connected with the word religion; whilst others, who know him only by
misrepresentation as a sentimental pacifist and an ascetic, include him
in their general dislike of that type of character. In the same way a
student who has had to "get up" Shakespear as a college subject may hate
Shakespear; and people who dislike the theatre may include Moliere in
that dislike without ever having read a line of his or witnessed one of
his plays; but nobody with any knowledge of Shakespear or Moliere could
possibly detest them, or read without pity and horror a description
of their being insulted, tortured, and killed. And the same is true
of Jesus. But it requires the most strenuous effort of conscience to
refrain from crying "Serve him right" when we read of the stoning of
Stephen; and nobody has ever cared twopence about the martyrdom of
Peter: many better men have died worse deaths: for example, honest Hugh
Latimer, who was burned by us, was worth fifty Stephens and a dozen
Peters. One feels at last that when Jesus called Peter from his boat,
he spoiled an honest fisherman, and made nothing better out of the wreck
than a salvation monger.