It is a common mistake of apologists to set down all general
improvements and signs of improvements to the credit of the particular
religion or political theory they defend. Every good Liberal knows that
bad harvests are due to Tory government. Every good Tory knows that
his Party alone is to thank for the glorious certainties that Britannia
rules the waves, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that
journeymen tailors earn fourpence an hour more than they were paid in
the thirteenth century.
Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and
the condition of the masses, to Free Trade. Things are better than
they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago.
_Ergo_--there you are.
There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships,
about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and
telephones; about education and better facilities of travel; about the
Factory Acts and Truck Acts; about cheap books and newspapers; and who
so base to whisper of Trade Unions, and Agitators, and County Councils?
So it is with the Christian religion. We are more moral, more civilised,
more humane, the Christians tell us, than any human beings ever were
before us. And we owe this to the Christian religion, and to no other
thing under Heaven.
But for Christianity we never should have had the House of Peers, the
_Times_ newspaper, the Underground Railway, the _Adventures of Captain
Kettle_, the Fabian Society, or Sir Thomas Lipton.
The ancient Greek Philosophers, the Buddhist missionaries, the Northern
invaders, the Roman laws and Roman roads, the inventions of printing,
of steam, and of railways, the learning of the Arabs, the discoveries
of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Hunter, Laplace, Bacon,
Descartes, Spencer, Columbus, Karl Marx, Adam Smith; the reforms
and heroisms and artistic genius of Wilberforce, Howard, King Asoka,
Washington, Stephen Langton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais,
and Shakespeare; the wars and travels and commerce of eighteen hundred
years, the Dutch Republic, the French Revolution, and the Jameson Raid
have had nothing to do with the growth of civilisation in Europe and
America.
And so to-day: science, invention, education, politics, economic
conditions, literature and art, the ancient Greeks and Oriental Wisdom,
and the world's Press count for nothing in the moulding of the nations.
Everything worth having comes from the pulpit, the British and Foreign
Bible Society, and the _War Cry_.
It is not to our scientists, our statesmen, our economists, our authors,
inventors, and scholars that we must look for counsel and reform: such
secular aid is useless, and we shall be wise to rely entirely upon His
Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In the England of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was paramount,
there was a cruel penal code, there was slavery, there were barbarous
forest laws, there were ruthless oppression and insolent robbery of the
poor, there were black ignorance and a terror of superstition, there
were murderous laws against witchcraft, there was savage persecution
of the Jews, there were "trial by wager of battle," and "question" of
prisoners by torture.
Many of these horrors endured until quite recent times. Why did
Christianity with its spiritual and temporal power, permit such things
to be?
Did Christianity abolish them? No. Christianity nearly always opposed
reform. The Church was the enemy of popular freedom, the enemy of
popular education; the friend of superstition and tyranny, and the
robber baron.
Those horrors are no more. But Christianity did not abolish them. They
were abolished by the gradual spread of humane feelings and the light
of knowledge; just as similar iniquities were abolished by the spread of
humane doctrines in India, centuries before the birth of Christ.
Organised and authoritative religion the world over makes for ignorance,
for poverty and superstition. In Russia, in Italy, in Spain, in
Turkey, where the Churches are powerful and the authority is tense, the
condition of the people is lamentable. In America, England, and Germany,
where the authority of the Church is less rigid and the religion is
nearer Rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent,
and less superstitious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seems
less beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist.
The worst found and worst taught class in England is that of the
agricultural labourers, who have been for centuries left entirely in the
hands of the Established Church.
It may be urged that the French, although Catholics, are as intelligent
and as prosperous as any nation in the world. But the French are a
clever people, and since their Revolution have not taken their religion
so seriously. Probably there are more Sceptics and Rationalists in
France than in any other country.
My point is that the prosperity and happiness of a nation do not depend
upon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy and
intelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they have
attained.
It is because organised and authoritative religion opposes education and
liberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. And
this is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians,
that their religion is the root from which the civilisation and the
refinement of the world have sprung.