THE CLERICAL SHAM
THROUGHOUT the preceding chapters there have been resentful or
disdainful references to the Churches, and it may be suspected that,
in assailing other people's prejudices, I have cherished and
proceeded upon the anti-clerical prejudice. A very cursory examination
will, however, suffice to show that these criticisms were sound and
pertinent, and are not due to some mysterious antipathy to the
profession to which I once belonged. Few of those ugly or mischievous
traditions which form what I have called the smothering ash in the
intellectual activity of the nation have not the general support of
the clergy. Few of the reforms here suggested do not meet their
hostility. They constitute one of the most injurious conservative
forces in modern life. Their bodies are strewn over the whole
battlefield of the nineteenth century, and not one in a thousand of
them fought on the side of progress. The esteem in which they are
still widely held and the pretexts by which they guard this esteem are
the last, and by no means the least, of those shams which hamper our
advance and distract our energy.
A full and detailed indictment of the clergy would fill several
columns, and I must confine myself here to two or three considerations
which are at once sufficiently drastic and easily demonstrable. I will
therefore be content to show:
1. That the clergy claim and receive a large measure of public
confidence on the ground that they are the guardians of the most
sacred and beneficent truths, yet impose on the less educated masses
a preposterous collection of untruths, or statements which many of
their own scholars, and most lay scholars, regard as untrue.
2. That the clergy pose as the most sensitive and effective custodians
of our morals, yet their procedure is unjust, spiteful, and deceptive
to an extent which would not be tolerated in any lay profession.
3. That the clergy represent that their creed civilised Europe and is
necessary for the maintenance of its civilisation, yet their influence
and their ideas retarded the evolution of European civilisation for
centuries, and retard it to-day wherever they have sufficient power or
are immune from weighty criticism.
In enumerating the untruths which are still imposed by the clergy, I
will not linger over the Old Testament. When you censure them to-day
for attaching a sacred value to this collection of ancient Jewish
literature, they are apt to reply that your criticism is forty years
out of date. Every educated clergyman, they exclaim, now acknowledges
that the Old Testament is a mixture of Babylonian legends, primitive
tribal traditions, and moral literature of a naïve and very
interesting description. Whether this statement is true or no I must
leave to the judgment of those who have a closer acquaintance with the
modern clergy. Only two years ago I was persuaded, in an idle hour on
a liner, to listen to a sermon delivered by a young clergyman who had
just issued, with honours, from a highly modern Wesleyan college. It
was on the miracles of Moses in the wilderness--ingeniously relieved
by references to such other miracles as the appearance of a cross to
Constantine--and accepted them as literally as did Peter the Hermit.
Religious periodicals and books and parish-magazines suggest that
there is a good deal still of this medieval credulity; or that, at
least, the number of "educated clergymen" must be somewhat
restricted. But let us accept the assurance that the educated clergy
do accept the Old Testament at its true historical value. In which
case we must be content to express our surprise that no clergyman
seems to have the least scruple about imposing these things on young
children, and rustic congregations, and less cultivated races--than
which there is no more cowardly form of untruth: and that some of the
most notoriously unreliable and barbaric pages of the Old Testament
are read, Sunday by Sunday, as "the word of God" in all the
Christian Churches of the world, under the official orders of every
ecclesiastical authority in the world.
However, since these cultivated ecclesiastics smile at our criticism
of the Old Testament, and see nothing improper in a deception of the
ignorant, of which any body of professional laymen would be incapable,
let us turn to the New Testament. It is always useful to consider the
attitude of the clergy in its historical perspective. A hundred years
ago they were defending against the Deists the absolute truthfulness
of the Old Testament. Christ had promised the Holy Spirit to the
Church: the Holy Spirit could not possibly tolerate untruth: therefore
the teaching of the Church for sixteen centuries must be right. Within
two generations they have, in a great number, abandoned the inerrancy
of the Old Testament, without abandoning the Holy Spirit. It seems
only the other day when Cardinal Newman pleaded wistfully that we were
not compelled, under pain of eternal damnation, to believe that
Tobit's dog did really wag its tail. However, outside Scotland
clergymen do seem to be free to form their own opinions on such
allegations as that a whale swallowed a man and housed him for three
days. But in thus admitting that "inspiration" was consistent with
error, they have put the New Testament also in the hand of the critic.
It is well to remember, too, that this modern criticism of the Bible
is conducted almost entirely by divines. The average churchgoer has an
impression that these terrible people who are known as "the Higher
Critics" are anti-clerical laymen: possibly lascivious gentlemen
whose real ambition is to undermine the salutary discipline imposed by
the Churches. They are, of course, on the contrary, nearly all
ordained clergymen, and very conscientious clergymen, of some branch
of the Church. Rationalists never criticise the Bible. It has become a
branch of theological scholarship. I once--having been challenged by
the local clergyman, who promptly disappeared when I arrived--gave a
lecture on the divinity of Christ to an audience of Presbyterian
artisans, and assured them that the views and arguments I put before
them were taken solely from the works of distinguished and highly
honoured theologians. Their amazement and horror were most amusing.
They had not the dimmest idea that controversy on these points lay
merely between advanced and not-advanced members of the Christian
clergy; and that their local oracle had, in effect, merely been
imposing on them the opinions of the less learned divines in
opposition to the more learned.
And this fact dispenses me from the need to drag the reader into the
somewhat tiring labyrinth of proof and disproof which these warring
theologians have constructed. Nothing could be further from my mind
than the presumptuous and immodest wish to brand the clergy as
dishonest, and their beliefs as superstitious, because I happen to
regard those beliefs as false. Let the position be clearly understood.
A study of the _Hibbert Journal_ or any scholarly theological
periodical, or of any batch of learned theological works, will apprise
any person that what are ordinarily conceived to be the fundamental
positions of the Christian religion are challenged by a large
proportion of distinguished divines. Pleas of "reconstruction" are
constantly put before us; and at the Church of England Congress in
1912 it was plainly decided by the presiding Archbishop of York that
the "advanced" theologians had a legitimate place in the Church.
It is not a question of a few controverted points in the scheme of
Christian doctrine. No point that is specifically Christian is left
unchallenged. The divinity and miracles--especially the miraculous
birth and resurrection--of Christ, the prophecies, the doctrine of
heaven and hell, the divine guidance of the Church, the fall and
redemption of man--all these characteristic doctrines are gravely
disputed within the frontiers of the Churches themselves, wherever
freedom of expression is permitted.
One would prefer to rely on theologians only in such a matter, but for
my purpose it is not immaterial to add that outside the ranks of the
clergy scholarship is overwhelmingly against these doctrines. There
has been a good deal of unsubstantial talk about the beliefs of living
men of intellectual eminence, but resolute efforts have been made of
late years to wring from them a profession of Christian belief, and
the result has been so meagre that my statement is fully justified. A
large number declare that they are on the side of "religion." But
one has only to reflect that even Sir Oliver Lodge warmly professes to
be a Christian--and is, in fact, welcomed to read the lessons in
church--to see how little is conveyed by such expressions. The supreme
effort of the Churches to secure adhesions of this kind is probably
found in Mr. Tabrum's _Religious Beliefs of Scientists_ (1910), and
a study of that extraordinary jumble of the living and the dead, the
distinguished and the obscure, the really believing Christians and the
men who are notoriously not, will convince any person of the failure
of the Churches to obtain the literal adhesion of even a respectable
proportion of our distinguished men: not men of science merely--it is
a stupid error to suppose that the decay of faith is more or less
confined to them--but men of eminence in any department of research or
intellectual life. Not one in ten of them, in any educated country of
the Christian world to-day, has ever professed a belief in the
doctrines or statements I have enumerated; and vague professions of a
regard for religion do not concern me here.
Now I am, as I said, not passing any personal opinion on these
Christian teachings: I am merely drawing attention to their position
in modern life. The uncultivated masses and the body of the clergy who
preach to these masses accept the miraculous birth, death,
resurrection, and all the rest, quite implicitly. Here and there one
finds a preacher who dissents; I am speaking of the mass. At the
middle level of mental culture, among both clergy and laity, dissent
becomes much more frequent. At the highest level of theological
scholarship it would be fair to say that the dissenters are almost, if
not quite, as numerous as the believers; and at the higher level of
lay culture, where opinions may be more freely formed and expressed,
the dissenters are the overwhelming majority. These men may be theists
or agnostics or Christians in the broader sense of the word, but the
great majority of them do not believe in these distinctively Christian
doctrines. Yet the Churches, wherever they are not kept in check by
this critical element, invest these doctrines with the most sacred and
confident character: stamp them as unquestioned truths on the minds of
children and uneducated people, and put them forward as their official
and authoritative doctrines. Nay, there is hardly a theologian in any
church who does not, when Christmas and Easter annually occur, lend
his official and most solemn countenance to these discarded or
disputed traditions.
This would not, could not, be done in any branch of lay culture. One
may justly insist on one's opinion in any disputed theme, but what
would be the attitude of our leaders of culture if any authoritative
historian, philosopher, or scientist attempted to impose on the
inexpert, as an unquestioned truth, some older opinion which a large
proportion of the expert regarded as false or questionable? What would
they say to a responsible teacher in one of these branches of lay
culture who read certain statements to those who trusted him, and said
within his own mind: "This is what people thought a thousand years
ago"? A clergyman told me that it was with this mental reservation
that he read the creeds and gospels on Sundays. What would a
philosopher, or historian, or scientist say, if his department of
culture were an organic association with a public and authoritative
teaching, and this public teaching contained statements which a large
proportion of the leading representatives regarded as false? And what
would he say to any colleagues who urged him to allow these things to
stand because a change might lessen the respect of the general public
for their authority?
This situation reflects gravely on the character of Christian
ministers. One need not attempt the futile task of estimating what
proportion of the clergy believe the things they teach, but we are
constantly receiving proof, especially posthumous proof, that large
numbers of them do not. I have been severely rebuked for suggesting
such a thing, but when I find a group of young Oxford divines saying
plumply, in an important recent work (_Foundations_), that Christian
theology is "out of harmony with science, philosophy, and
scholarship," I can only say that I trust a sufficient number of the
clergy are educated enough to know it. The majority of the clergy are,
however, sufficiently ignorant of "science, philosophy, and
scholarship" to be in good faith, and one ought not to press the
indictment in this sense. At sea I listen occasionally, from some safe
distance, to sermons, and am amazed that even a fair proportion of the
passengers can sit with grave faces during the delivery of such empty
and ignorant vapourings. One reflects that all over the Christian
world priests are similarly dogmatising on the most profound problems
of life, and not one in a thousand of them has an elementary knowledge
of those branches of modern research which a public guide ought to
command. It is not the decay, but the survival, of churchgoing that
perplexes one.
There is, however, another aspect of the matter which requires serious
attention. There have been, from the earliest ages of the Christian
Church, men of superior intelligence and independent character who
refused to submit to the dictation of the clergy. There is no need to
recall how the clergy dealt with them. Christian ministers have in
this regard the most abominable record in the whole history of
civilised religion. Some day it will be put side by side with that of
the priests of Saturn or of Quetzalcotl, who offered human sacrifices.
All that need be noted here is the effrontery with which modern
clerical writers defend their predecessors. If the principles on which
they base their defence are valid, they would again be compelled to
burn heretics if they obtained power. The Church of Rome is bold
enough to acknowledge this. Huxley tells how his distinguished
Catholic friend, Dr. J. Ward, warmly assented to this, but we have had
since then a more authoritative indication. A work of Canon Law which
was published at Rome under the "enlightened" rule of Leo XIII.,
and with his emphatic personal approval--the _Institutiones Juris
Canonici_ of Father de Luca--proves at length the duty of the Church
to put to death heretics.
However, we will not waste rhetoric over the past or over an
impossible future. What policy have the modern clergy, who are unable
to induce the State to burn dissenters, substituted for that of their
predecessors? A policy that is, to a very great extent, unjust,
spiteful, and dishonourable: a policy that, in the very name of truth,
is marked by a more flagrant indifference to truth than you will find
in any other reputable department of modern life.
The first feature of this policy will be seen by any generally
informed person who will take the trouble to read a batch of religious
works or periodicals. He will find numbers of statements of the most
amazing inaccuracy. It is, no doubt, an exceptional thing for a
clerical writer to make a statement which is, to his conscious
knowledge, untrue. The very suggestion seems prejudiced, but is there
a vast difference between imposing official untruths on ignorant
congregations and supporting these untruths by others? The constant
repetition of these ancient and discredited formulæ does not induce a
very punctilious temper in regard to truth. If it is quite lawful to
repeat from the Old or the New Testament historical statements which
are not true or are gravely disputed, why not other historical
statements which have got into ecclesiastical currency?
Usually, however, the attitude of the writer seems to be one of
culpable indifference to the truth or untruth of the statements he
makes. He finds in some previous writer a statement which supports his
case, and he reproduces it without inquiry. If he were a mere layman,
engaged in some branch of profane culture, he would not dare to
repeat, without further inquiry, statements which he found made in his
own sectarian interest by men of no high authority or original
scholarship. The clergy, however, do this habitually, and one is
compelled to conclude that they are more or less indifferent about the
truth of their assertions, if those assertions are favourable to
religion. Just as I write the press reports Dr. R. F. Horton telling
a congregation that a British regiment was saved at Mons by the
appearance of a legion of angels, and assuring his audience that this
silly myth is "repeated by so many witnesses that if anything can be
established by contemporary evidence it is established." The story
has gone the round of our pulpits and religious press.
I am speaking, however, from a particularly wide experience of
religious literature. For thirty years--ten years as a clerical
student or professor, and twenty years as an interested observer of
religious controversy--I have devoted much time to books and journals
of this kind, and I repeat that there is no other branch of literature
so flagrantly inaccurate and unscrupulous. A religious periodical
(_The Christian World_, 20th August 1903), in the course of an
editorial on "Candour in the Pulpit" (meaning lack of candour in
the pulpit), said: "A foremost modern theologian, by no means of the
radical school, has recorded his significant judgment that one of the
main characteristics of apologetic literature is its lack of honesty;
and no one who has studied theology can doubt that it has suffered
more than any other science from equivocal phraseology." When a
journal which has to consult the feelings of a large backward
clientele uses this language, we may conclude that the situation is
really bad. In fact, not even political journalism betrays such gross
carelessness as to the truth of the statements with which it assails
its opponents. "The more sacred our ideas are, the more savagely we
fight for them," said Mr. Chesterton, defending the Inquisition. Mr.
Chesterton's own genial method (except that one recognises the taint
in his _Victorian Age in Literature_) disproves his aphorism. There is
not the slightest excuse for the gross procedure of religious writers.
I have in various works and articles given hundreds of examples of
this procedure, and will be content to deal summarily with two of the
chief types of misrepresentation--those relating to history and those
relating to science. The classical examples in history are the
clerical legends about the morality of the pagans. Here the clerical
lie goes on its way from age to age without the slightest regard of
the progress of historical research. Discoveries in the ruins (such as
the Hammurabi Code, temple-literature, etc.) and a closer scrutiny of
the sources used by the Greek historian Herodotus have made it quite
clear that the old Mesopotamian civilisations were comparable to ours
in moral sentiment and practice. Instead of women having to sacrifice
their virginity in the temples at Babylon, we have abundant evidence
that chastity was demanded and valued in brides, and that the priests
insisted on purity. Every other moral sentiment was equally developed.
We find the same high moral development in Egypt. All this is
disregarded, and the superiority of the Hebrew and Christian sacred
books is maintained by a resolute propagation of ancient fables.
In regard to Greece and Rome the practice is even worse. The
exceptional features of their life are described as normal and general
features, and the very abundant literature which has put in its true
light the character of Athens and Rome is completely ignored. Special
periods of vice under bad emperors (who, in the aggregate, ruled only
seventy years out of three hundred and twenty) are spread over the
whole of Roman history. The gossip and democratic rhetoric of Juvenal
are pressed literally, in spite of the judgment of all serious
historians. The works which exhibit the better side of Rome, and the
inscriptions which show a very high degree of character and
humanitarianism under the Stoics, are wholly suppressed. The balanced
verdict of modern historians is scandalously flouted. At all costs it
must be shown that Europe needed regeneration, and that Christian
morality was far superior to pagan; and so the clergy continue, in
spite of protests from some of their own lay scholars (Emil Reich, for
instance), to draw a flagrantly untruthful picture of the morals of
Greece and Rome.
But this misrepresentation is venial in comparison with the
misrepresentation of later European history. The clerical story of the
moral change that came over Europe when it embraced Christianity is
one of the grossest impostures ever laid on the human mind. Even
clerics like Dean Milman sufficiently refuted it decades ago, but it
flourishes as profitably as ever. From the pulpit of St. Paul's to
the tin chapels of Mudville it is one of the most treasured
traditions, and perhaps no picture is more familiar to Christian
audiences than that of Rome, drunk with its vices, reeling to the foot
of the cross and embracing sobriety. It is a calculated clerical myth
in every line. The Stoics reformed Rome at a time when the Christians
were a mere handful of obscure people, and the magnificent work done
and institutions set up by the Stoics were not sustained by the
Church. Even in regard to the persecutions the clergy still repeat the
legend which modern historians recognise as based on a mass of
medieval forgeries. Civilisation sank rapidly until it touched the
depth of the early Middle Ages, and, as Milman candidly recognised,
the claim that at least virtue increased is the reverse of the truth.
The Church did not denounce or abolish slavery: it discouraged
education: it abased woman: it set back a thousand years the
development of culture. Yet our clerical writers repeat the medieval
falsehoods as fluently as if modern history did not exist.
The later period is just as grossly falsified by Catholic writers, but
here the Protestant--who has somehow convinced himself that the Holy
Spirit abandoned Europe to the devil for a thousand years--begins to
cry for candour. Much of the Protestant literature is uncritical and
unscrupulous in its use of authorities; it is, however, instructive in
comparison with the kind of history purveyed by the "Catholic Truth
Society." There is hardly a candid historian in the Church, even in
Germany and the United States. The latest historian of the Papacy, Dr.
L. Pastor, is certainly entitled to respect for his effort, though
even he does not present all the facts; while men like Cardinal
Gasquet are appallingly one-sided. I am, however, thinking mainly of
the "popular" literature, on which no stricture could be too
severe. Indeed, when it comes to the modern period, both Protestant
and Catholic literature is scandalous. One often finds Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Paine described as "atheists," and the most slovenly
observations on the Revolution. Roosevelt's description of Paine as
a "dirty little atheist" is a good indication of the kind of
literature that even an educated religious man may read.
On the scientific side the inaccuracy and carelessness are just as
great, but the field is too vast for consideration here. The conflict
in regard to evolution has produced an extraordinary literature on the
clerical side, and, to the amusement of students of science, it still
flows from the religious press and refreshes suburban faith. Men who
have never devoted a month to the study of science engage in conflict
with the most authoritative masters of biology, and thrill their
ignorant followers with the vigour and dexterity of their fencing.
These Jesuit and other writers have, of course, set up a lay-figure
for their valiant attacks. They misrepresent the views and motives of
the man they oppose, give garbled quotations from his works, and
support their own antiquated positions by quotations from scientific
men who lived in the earlier phases of the controversy. No trick is
more common in this class of literature than to justify obsolete
statements by quoting "authorities" who died long ago, and leaving
the inexpert reader to suppose that they are modern men of science;
while clerics who could not distinguish a palæolithic from a
civilised skull write pompous essays on such subjects as the evolution
of man. Works of this kind circulate by the hundred in the churches
even to-day, literally deluding millions of people, while the works of
more expert writers are denounced as "against religion" and unfit
to read.
Still more flagrant is the clerical behaviour in rebutting the general
belief that men of science have for the most part abandoned
Christianity. They--with the support of a man like Sir O. Lodge--talk
glibly of the death of "Victorian materialism" and the rebirth of
spiritualism; whereas Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, Darwin, Clifford,
Lewes, and every other Victorian man of science repudiated
materialism. When you ask who the modern men are who have abandoned
the views of the Huxleian generation and come to favour religion, they
produce an extraordinarily confused list of names. I have referred to
their _magnum opus_ in this department, Tabrum's _Religious Beliefs
of Scientists_. It actually includes two prominent members of the
Rationalist Press Association; while men like Lodge and Wallace and
Crookes are included among the more orthodox. Of late years it is the
fashion to impress ignorant congregations with the names of W. James,
Eucken, and Bergson; whereas James and Bergson are not even theists,
and Eucken professes a form of theism which any Church would heatedly
repudiate. The members of the various sects are literally and most
scandalously duped on this point.
I have claimed that the clergy are spiteful and unjust, as well as
careless about truth. There are very few popular religious writers who
seem capable of giving a correct account of the views they are
criticising, and there are very many who manipulate quotations with
the effect of grossly deceiving their readers. Worse still, the clergy
habitually slander their critics, and these slanders live for years in
spite of refutation. Seven years ago they began to circulate a silly
and obviously incredible charge that Professor Haeckel "forged"
illustrations in support of his case, and, though the libel was at
once thoroughly refuted by Professor Schmidt, it is still current.
Only a few months ago I received from India documents which showed
that the Jesuits there were still insisting on it. A friend of mine
informed me that he heard one Scottish preacher, in the course of a
public lecture on Haeckel, assure his audience, on the authority of a
"friend of Haeckel's," that that venerable scientist was a man
of most licentious life! No charge is too gross to repeat, if it
discredits an "enemy of the faith." Dozens of times I have heard
of the wildest calumnies about myself which circulate throughout the
English-speaking world, because I have occasionally written a critical
work (always grossly misrepresented in the Catholic press) about the
Catholic Church. I never belonged to the Catholic priesthood: I was
discharged from it for fraud: I left it in order to marry a nun I had
seduced: and so on. Only the lighter of these things are put in print,
and then always with the name omitted. Only a few months ago a priest
(and Education-Councillor) in a Scottish town gravely assured a
schoolmistress, in the presence of an acquaintance of mine, that his
Church held unshakable proofs of my vicious ways. As usual, my request
that they would say so in print was ignored. Most ex-priests have the
same experience. One of the most refined and religious of these
seceders, a man who became a most respected professor at Oxford, was
pursued by the calumny (never printed) that he had shown indecent
photographs to servant-girls!
This tactic of the Church militant is happily so notorious that little
harm is done among the general public, but Catholics are gravely
deluded, in the hope that they will be induced to refrain from reading
any except their own mendacious literature.
Yet one of the most familiar themes of the men who pursue this tactic
is that they alone can inspire high character! Notoriously insincere
in their professions, teachers of doctrines which the higher culture
of our time and many of their own leading scholars condemn, living in
an atmosphere of untruth and unreality, relying on a literature which
is generally as indifferent to truth as it is to grace, unscrupulously
repeating idle slanders of their opponents, they ask us to believe
that they are genuinely concerned about the future of society if we
continue to reject their authority. It is not strange that the great
cities of the modern world are unmoved by their dirges.
The third point of my indictment is that the clergy have forged the
historical credentials by which they lay claim to our respect. I have
already observed that their version of the history of Europe is
peculiar to their own literature, and I have elsewhere (_The Bible in
Europe_) shown in detail how worthless it is. The "conversion" of
Europe to Christianity in the fourth century was, as every historian
of the period shows, an enforcement of the new religion on Europe by
imperial authority, accompanied by the most violent and bloody
repression of all other religions. We then have the witness of
contemporary Christian writers that this "conversion" was followed
by a general moral and intellectual decline. The great reforms which
Rome had inaugurated were destroyed, and Europe sank into the
ignorance, superstition, and grossness of the Middle Ages. It is quite
true that the triumph of Christianity coincided with the overthrow of
civilisation by the northern tribes, but the Teutonic tribes were not
inferior to the Arabs or Turks (whom Mohammedanism civilised in the
course of a century or two), and the Church soon obtained despotic
power over them. The Eastern Empire, I may add, was _not_ dominated by
the barbarians, yet it also suffered a grave moral and intellectual
decline. The fact is, that the clergy made no effort to induce the
barbarians to restore the old school-system, to reconstruct the Roman
law, to free the slaves (and, later, the serfs), to adjust their high
native ideal of womanhood to the new social order, or to rebuild the
fine civic and philanthropic system of the Romans. Culture fell so low
that the very promising germs of later Greek science were allowed to
die, and nearly the whole of the surviving Greek literature was
unknown in Europe for many centuries. The trade in spurious relics,
the rapacity and unscrupulousness of the Papacy, the coarseness of the
nobles and people, and the general sexual licence of priests and monks
were almost incredible.
This dark age began to receive the first rays of new light in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, and historians are agreed that the new
light came from the civilisation of the Spanish Moors. This it was
that, by introducing Greek literature and its Arab commentators, led
to the early revival of science. But the cult of the grossest relics
and superstitions continued, and the clergy repressed, or inspired
rulers to repress, all dissent with more ferocity than ever. During
the one general persecution of the early Christians by the Romans
about two thousand had suffered for the faith; and only a few hundreds
can be added from the earlier sporadic persecutions. But within fifty
years of the establishment of Christianity in the Empire, tens of
thousands of Donatists, Manichæans, Arians, Pagans, etc., were done
to death, and hundreds of thousands ruined or maltreated, by the
triumphant Christians. In later centuries it was the turn of
Monophysites, Monothelites, etc., and in the first quarter of the
thirteenth century alone more than a million heretics were done to
death in Languedoc. If the Jews and witches and others who suffered on
religious grounds be added, the "butcher's bill" of the new
religion passes ten millions; and beyond these are the countless
millions of those who suffered something less than death.
We look back to-day with feelings of horror on this ghastly carnage,
especially when we remember the absurd character of the doctrines
which the heretics assailed and the immorality of the clergy and monks
who were primarily responsible for the executions and massacres. But
this savage repression of independent thought had consequences of an
even more disastrous nature on European civilisation. It not only
removed from the community many of the more courageous and more
intelligent stocks, but it intimidated others from using their powers,
except in the futile argumentation of the Schoolmen. The result was a
prolonged suspension of the development of the higher culture which
was destined to give Europe its supremacy. It will hardly be doubted
to-day that this culture was contained in the scientific works of the
Greeks, especially the Alexandrian Greeks. The Arabs brought this
culture to Spain, and, chiefly through the mediation of the Jews, it
was slowly introduced into Europe and inspired such scholars as
Gilbert, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and Copernicus. Physics,
chemistry, and medicine began their development. But the fate of Roger
Bacon and Albert and Vesalius sufficiently reminds us of the
Church's attitude toward the new culture, and the story of the
hampering of intellectual progress in the exact study of nature has
been repeatedly told. The scholastic fever, which had absorbed the
energies of most of the acutest minds in Europe, had to disappear, and
the power of the Church to be enfeebled, before the civilisation of
Europe could advance.
The further introduction of Greek literature, when the Turks drove the
Greeks from Constantinople, the invention of printing, the expansion
of commerce and navigation, and the weakening of Church-authority by
the Reformation, opened the modern phase of the development of
European civilisation. It is only for the last of these changes that a
section of the clergy may plausibly claim our gratitude, and even here
we must make reserves. The share of the laity in the Reformation was
greater than the share of the clergy, and the aim of the Reformed
clergy was by no means to free and stimulate the intelligence of
Europe. They frowned on lay culture, and burned their opponents, as
inhumanly as the Roman priests did. It was not until the growth of
sects had further enfeebled ecclesiastical authority, and a large body
of lay scholars had arisen, that Europe became civilised, even in a
generous sense of the word. Then science and philosophy and history
grew to the proportions which distinguish "modern times," and a
resolute social and humanitarian movement began to remove those
appalling injustices of the industrial and political order which the
clergy had witnessed in silence for more than a thousand years.
I repeat that this is not an eccentric view of the development of
European civilisation, but the view taken by historians ever since
their science was emancipated from clerical control. The view which
the clergy still sedulously propagate, that the Christian religion
inspired the civilisation of Europe, is the most preposterous
historical sham which we still entertain. It is unintelligible how a
scholar like Mr. Bryce can give even a qualified support to it. In the
minds of most people it is a pitiful confusion of ideas associated
with one of the most elementary fallacies known to the logician. The
fallacy is the syllogism which suffices for the majority of the
faithful: Europe is the great centre of civilisation, Europe was
Christian during the development of this civilisation, therefore
Christianity was the inspirer of the civilisation. The inference is
foolish enough in itself, but it becomes ludicrous when we reflect on
the facts. Europe was civilised before it became Christian; it
inherited all the best culture and experience of Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Persia, Greece, and Rome. But Europe lost its civilisation when it
became Christian, very largely because the new religion found culture
dangerous to its superstitions and repressed it. And Europe owes its
return to civilisation to the revival of pagan ideas, and it advances
in civilisation in proportion as it discards Christianity.
The confusion of ideas is just as foolish as the fallacy. Europe is
"great" in two very different senses. Most of the white nations
are "great" in the vastness of their territory and the wealth they
have derived from subject peoples. To connect this form of greatness
with the Sermon on the Mount is audacious: it is a practice which
really belongs to the age when English merchants who waxed fat on the
negro-slave trade could complacently give the name "Jesus" to
their vessels. This form of greatness frankly rested on buccaneering.
Europe is great also in intellectual development, with the scientific
and technical achievements to which this has led. We need not ask what
particular Christian sentiment has inspired this; we know too well the
share the clergy have had in repressing it.
Lastly, Europe is great in the cultivation of humane sentiment and the
endeavour to practise social justice. It is here that the clergy
usually claim their usefulness; and there is hardly a bolder
mis-statement in their literature than this. The New Testament
contains not a single moral sentiment that was unknown to the Greeks
and Romans, and to the later Jews: the moral sentiments of the New
Testament are so vague and elementary that not a single priest
denounced slavery for nine hundred years, and not a Church has
denounced war for more than eighteen hundred years: the Christian
ethic was so uninspiring that Europe reeked with vice and crime and
war and social injustice until the end of the eighteenth or beginning
of the nineteenth century: when the reform began, in the nineteenth
century, hardly a single priest aided it (until it had won millions of
adherents), and the bishops almost unanimously opposed it: and the
humanitarianism of modern times is an almost exclusively lay movement,
gaining power and fervour in proportion as we sweep the clergy aside.
Europe was civilised under the Roman and Greek pagans, and it is
civilised, in the same broad sense, under the modern pagans; it was
not civilised in the intervening period, and the worst features of its
life to-day are, not recent outgrowths, but inheritances from the
Christian past.
The pleas which some of the clergy, who know a little history, urge
against this plain generalisation of the historical facts are curious.
The majority, of course, knowing nothing of history, repeat the
conventional untruths, but a few would tell us that this modern
humanitarianism is due to a belated appreciation of the Christian
ethic. Are justice, sympathy, truthfulness, kindness, and honour
confined to the Christian ethic? Was there ever a great moralist, or a
mature civilisation, which failed to appreciate them? Is not the
modern humanitarian movement plainly characterised by a determination
to do good to men, not for a reward in heaven or because Christ (like
so many others) enjoined it, but because you cannot have a fine mind
and character without experiencing this determination? Were there, in
the fifteen hundred years of Christian domination, not enough men with
intelligence enough to perceive the practical bearing of Christ's
ethic? Have these clerical writers frankly abandoned the claim that
the "Spirit of God" guided their predecessors during those fifteen
centuries? And have they read a line of the modern literature which
shows that there is not one humane sentiment in the Gospels that was
not well known to the Jews before the time of Christ?
The case of the clergy is a tissue of sophistry and untruth from
beginning to end. They have done nothing as a body for European
civilisation, in proportion to their power and leisure and resources.
They did not even teach it chastity. They hindered the development of
the culture which it vitally needed, and dissipated its finest
intelligence in the tilling of barren soil. They fought fiercely for
their own wealth and power, and were for fifteen hundred years a
mighty parasitic growth on the working community. They kept the
bandage of illiteracy on the eyes of ninety per cent. of their people
for fifteen hundred years, and dined merrily with the nobles who
exploited the people. They exacted respect in virtue of their supposed
close communion with an all-holy God; and they were themselves,
especially in their highest representatives, immoral and hypocritical
in an appalling proportion, were brutal in coercing their critics,
were traffickers in spurious and sordid relics, and were, when noble
men and women at last won liberty from them, ignorant, slanderous, and
careless of truth as no reputable body of laymen would stoop to
become. Their record is as poor as their opportunity was great, and
the modern world is, in strict proportion to the growth of education,
passing disdainfully by the open doors of their churches. Of the
twelve million inhabitants of the three greatest cities of Europe
hardly two millions attend church; and if it were not for the
incessant, feverish, and highly organised efforts of the clergy
themselves, churchgoing would show a further rapid and enormous
shrinkage. Yet even in this last phase we find them mumbling to
ill-instructed congregations about their glorious record in Europe
(crowned by a war of four hundred million people), about the
wickedness of an age which prefers the indulgence of its passions to
their serene guidance, and about the terrible doom which they foresee
for Europe if it does not return to its medieval guardians.
As I observed in dealing with the political organisation, Christianity
is not a set of ideas but a wealthy and powerful corporation. Once it
was a body of men holding certain beliefs: now it is, in essence, an
organisation for the enforcement of those beliefs. It is, in the main,
this professional or corporate interest which sustains Christianity in
Europe: but it is losing heavily. I have shown (_Decay of the Church
of Rome_) that the oldest branch of the Church has lost about a
hundred million followers in a hundred years. I do not think that the
Protestant Churches, being more progressive and less offensive in
their tactics, have lost so heavily, but the extraordinary decay of
churchgoing in cities like Berlin, London, and New York is
suggestive. In spite of all the tricks and devices of the clergy--the
vestments and concerts, the matrimonial agencies and philanthropic
coercion, the Y.M.C.A.'s and P.S.A.'s and all the rest--the people
still fall away. No proof could be formulated to-day that even the
majority of the people of Europe are Christians.
The thoughtful minority in the religious world are retreating upon the
liberal theism which so many of our cultural leaders profess, or upon
some even more vague mysticism. Into this further province it is not
my intention to go. The world will, no doubt, long remain divided in
opinion, or in sentiment, on fundamental religious issues, and for my
practical purpose this difference is of no account. There is, however,
one last consideration put forward by the clergy which it may be
useful to consider.
It is represented that we are in danger of a triumph of
"materialism," and it is therefore wise to cling, in spite of
their errors, to the Churches which so solidly represent
"spiritualism." Since many people have regarded me as peculiarly
exposed to this danger of falling under the evil spell of
"materialism," I have made eager inquiries among spiritualist
writers as to the nature of "spirit." I am still hopefully
inquiring. Most of the anæmic mystics who gush over the word cannot
tell you what it means. They have a vague conviction that the
spiritual is immensely more important and productive of good than the
material, and that therefore materialism is the most appalling blight
that can fall on a nation. These prophets of evil are, as I have
previously observed, not strong in history. They do not explain how
Confucianism (which Sir Edwin Arnold, accurately enough, calls
materialism) proved so great an inspiration in China and Japan: how
the Stoics (who refused utterly to believe in spirit) wrought so much
good and inspired so fine a character at Rome: or how this
materialistic age of ours is so idealistic. They know only that we
must at all costs cultivate the spiritual--read spiritual writers,
respect spiritual persons, encourage spiritual clergymen and artists
and actors--and loathe materialism from the bottom of our hearts. And
it is therefore quite natural to suppose that all that is precious in
life and progress depends on the belief in the existence of
"spirits."
In point of fact, we have here entangled ourselves in an extraordinary
confusion. The cultivation of intelligence, fine sentiment, and
straight character has nothing whatever to do with the question
whether the mind of man is or is not divisible into parts, or has or
has not "inertia": which are the only philosophic distinctions
between matter and spirit that I have discovered. The tradition of the
spirituality of the mind is responsible for this confusion. _If_ the
mind is a spirit, then spirit is assuredly the source of the finest
things in life, and is far superior to matter. But that is just the
question at issue; and it really does not matter two pins for
practical purposes whether the mind is extended and inert (in the
scientific sense), or unextended and devoid of inertia. One has only
to substitute clear conceptions for vague terms, and the whole
controversy is reduced to absurdity. Whichever side wins in the
academic battle about the nature of mind, it remains as true as ever
that the cultivation of mind is one of the most important aims that
men can set up. Why on earth should we be less disposed to cultivate
the mind of the race if some sudden turn of scientific advance were to
prove it "a function of the brain"? It remains true that our race
owes the position it occupies entirely to mind: that our civilisation
owes its ascendancy over barbarism to mind: and that we rely entirely
on the further cultivation of mind--of intelligence, will, and
emotion--to destroy those shams which impede our progress and curtail
our prosperity and happiness. It is ludicrous to say that we cannot
thus cultivate mind unless we believe it to be an indivisible and
incomprehensible and indefinable something. It would, in fact, be less
absurd to say that we should have more confidence in our power to
cultivate mind if we regarded it as an organic function, subject to
definite treatment.
As to the lapse of a belief in personal immortality, it is not less
absurd to say that this would paralyse our efforts. As Ruskin says on
the point: "The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a
conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted
him." That magnificent preface to _The Crown of Wild Olive_ ought
long ago to have silenced these dismal sophists. The fact is, that
this age of ours, in proportion as it grows indifferent to the old
legends and the appeals of the clergy, rises toward heights which man
never climbed before. The clergy are most amusingly puzzled. Popes
tell us that we are children of perdition, reeling into an earthly
abyss, to say nothing of a deeper beyond: archbishops say that we are
just beginning to realise the true import of Christ's teaching. The
candid man or woman will look searchingly for himself or herself into
the heart of our age, and, if he or she have an accurate knowledge of
earlier ages, will recognise that it throbs with a human idealism,
tenderness, and sympathy which have been unknown in Europe since the
old pagans departed.
Let me end on that note. The religious person will close this work, if
he perseveres to the end, with a series of horrified exclamations.
Socialism! Immoralism! Republicanism! Materialism! Malthusianism! I
shudder under the shower of horrid epithets, yet would ask this
outraged reader to forget "'isms" for a moment and consider a
simple statement of the human faith I here present.
The ideals which I hold in supreme regard are truth in our beliefs and
statements, justice and generosity in our actions, the co-operation of
all men to make the earth happier. I am in temperament no hedonist.
Thirty years of assiduous study, of much severe trial, of stoical
endurance have left me more or less insensible to what men and women
usually call happiness. My personal desires are sated in that I may,
in circumstances of peace and modest comfort, devote myself to
intellectual labour and the employment in the cause of progress of
such influence as I have. I see no purpose imposed on life, and I
therefore conclude that men and women are free to put such purpose on
their collective life as they deem advisable. No purpose seems to be
wiser, grander, or more inspiring than that they should seek to
assuage the last pang of remediable pain and bring sunshine into the
dark places of the earth. For me there is no heaven; and therefore the
spectacle of those thousands passing daily and nightly into the
silence, after lives of pain, misery, or brutality, while we cling to
the barbaric traditions or ill-devised institutions that have come
down to us, is an intolerable goad. Let us have criticism and scrutiny
of all that we do and all that we believe; and let us have courage to
reject all that we think false and purify all that we find corrupted.
Let us assert that mighty power of which we are conscious; and, if it
take ages to undo all the errors of the past and agree upon a plan of
a regenerated earth, let us at least strive to awaken men to a
consciousness of their power and of the evils they have to remove.
These are my suggestions of what is wrong in life and how it may be
righted. It may be materialism, this plain human gospel of mine; but
it seems to me that, if it could be carried into effect, there would
spread gradually over this earth such joy and freedom and prosperity
as men's prophets have babbled of in their dying dreams.
[The End]
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES.
Alterations to the text:
A few spelling corrections.
[End of Book]