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THE HEARTS OF MEN
BY H. FIELDING
AUTHOR OF "THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1901
PRINTED BY KELLY'S DIRECTORIES LIMITED,
LONDON AND KINGSTON.
DEDICATION.
To F. W. FOSTER.
As my first book, "The Soul of a People," would probably never have been
completed or published without your encouragement and assistance, so the
latter part of this book would not have been written without your
suggestion. This dedication is a slight acknowledgment of my
indebtedness to you, but I hope that you will accept it, not as any
equivalent for your unvarying kindness, but as a token that I have not
forgotten.
CONTENTS.
DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION 1
INTRODUCTION 4
PART I.
I. OF WHAT USE IS RELIGION? 13
II. EARLY BELIEFS 21
III. IDEAL AND PRACTICE 28
IV. SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY--I 37
V. SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY--II 45
VI. WHENCE FAITHS COME 55
VII. THE WISDOM OF BOOKS 64
VIII. GOD 72
IX. LAW 84
X. THE WAY OF LIFE 92
XI. HEAVEN 101
PART II.
XII. THEORIES AND FACTS 113
XIII. CREED AND INSTINCT 124
XIV. RELIGIOUS PEOPLE 136
XV. ENTHUSIASM 145
XVI. STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS 155
XVII. MIND AND BODY 165
XVIII. PERSONALITY 173
XIX. GOD THE SACRIFICE 185
XX. GOD THE MOTHER 196
XXI. CONDUCT 202
XXII. MEN'S FAITH AND WOMEN'S FAITH 212
XXIII. PRAYER AND CONFESSION 221
XXIV. SUNDAY AND SABBATH 233
XXV. MIRACLE 242
XXVI. RELIGION AND ART 254
XXVII. WHAT IS EVIDENCE? 266
XXVIII. THE AFTER DEATH 277
XXIX. OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM 287
XXX. WAS IT REASON? 298
XXXI. WHAT RELIGION IS 308
XXXII. THE USE OF RELIGION 316
THE HEARTS OF MEN.
RELIGION.
"The difficulty of framing a correct definition of religion is very
great. Such a definition should apply to nothing but religion, and
should differentiate religion from anything else--as, for example,
from imaginative idealisation, art, morality, philosophy. It should
apply to everything which is naturally and commonly called religion: to
religion as a subjective spiritual state, and to all religions, high or
low, true or false, which have obtained objective historical
realisation."--_Anon._
"The principle of morality is the root of religion."--_Peochal._
"It is the perception of the infinite."--_Max Mueller._
"A religious creed is definable as a theory of original
causation."--_Herbert Spencer._
"Virtue, as founded on a reverence for God and expectation of future
rewards and punishment."--_Johnson._
"The worship of a Deity."--_Bailey._
"It has its origin in fear."--_Lucretius and others._
"A desire to secure life and its goods amidst the uncertainty and evils
of earth."--_Retsche._
"A feeling of absolute dependence, of pure and entire
passiveness."--_Schleiermacher._
"Religious feeling is either a distinct primary feeling or a peculiar
compound feeling."--_Neuman Smyth._
"A sanction for duty."--_Kant._
"A morality tinged by emotion."--_Matthew Arnold._
"By religion I mean that general habit of reverence towards the divine
nature whereby we are enabled to worship and serve God."--_Wilkins._
"A propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man, which are
supposed to control the course of nature and of human life."--_J. G.
Frazer._
"The modes of divine worship proper to different tribes."--_Anon._
"The performance of duty to God and man."
It is to be noted that all the above are of Europeans acquainted
practically with only Christianity.
* * * * *
The following are some that have been given me by Orientals:
"The worship of Allah."--_Mahommedan._
"A knowledge of the laws of life that lead to happiness."--_Buddhist._
"Doing right."
"Other-worldliness."
INTRODUCTION.
Some time ago I wrote "The Soul of a People." It was an attempt to
understand a people, the Burmese; to understand a religion, that of
Buddha. It was not an attempt to find abstract truth, to discuss what
may be true or not in the tenets of that faith, to discover the secret
of all religions. It was only intended to show what Buddhism in Burma is
to the people who believe in it, and how it comes into their lives.
Yet it was impossible always to confine the view to one point. It is
natural--nay, it is inevitable--that when a man studies one faith,
comparison with other faiths should intrude themselves. The world, even
the East and West, is so bound together that you cannot treat of part
and quite ignore the rest. And so thoughts arose and questions came
forward that lay outside the scope of that book. I could not write of
them there fully. Whatever question arose I was content then to give
only the Buddhist answer, I had to leave on one side all the many
answers different faiths may have propounded. I could not discuss even
where truth was likely to be found. I was bound by my subject. But in
this book I have gone further. This is a book, not of one religion nor
of several religions, but of religion. Mainly, it is true, it treats of
Christianity and Buddhism, because these are the two great
representative faiths, but it is not confined to them. Man asks, and has
always asked, certain questions. Religions have given many answers. Are
these answers true? Which is true? Are any of them true? It is in a way
a continuation of "The Soul of a People," but wider. It is of "The
Hearts of Men."
* * * * *
Before beginning this book I have a word to say on the meanings that I
attach to the word "Christianity" and a few other words, so that I may
be more clearly understood.
There was a man who wrote to me once explaining why he was a Christian,
and wondering how anyone could fail to be so.
"I look about me," he said, "at Christian nations, and I see that they
are the leaders of the world. Pagan nations are far behind them in
wealth, in happiness, in social order. I look at our Courts and I find
justice administered to all alike, pure and without prejudice. Our
crime decreases, our education increases, and our wealth increases even
faster; the artisan now is where the middle class was a hundred years
ago, the middle class now lives better than the rich did. Our science
advances from marvel to marvel. Our country is a network of railroads,
our ships cover the seas, our prosperity is unbounded, and in a greater
or less degree all Christian nations share it. But when we turn to Pagan
nations, what do we see? Anarchy and injustice, wars and rebellions,
ignorance and poverty. To me no greater proof of the truth of
Christianity can be than this difference. In fact, it is Christianity."
I am not concerned here to follow the writer into his arguments. He is
probably one of those who thinks that all our civilisation is due to a
peculiar form of Christianity. There are others who hold that all our
advance has been made in spite of Christianity. I am only concerned now
with the meaning of the word. The way I use the word is to denote the
cult of Christ. A Christian to me means a man who follows, or who
professes to follow, the example of Christ and to accept all His
teaching; to be a member of a Church that calls itself Christian. I use
it irrespective of sects to apply to Catholic and Greek Church, Quaker
and Skopek alike. I am aware that in Christianity, as in all religions,
there has been a strong tendency of the greater emotions to attract the
lesser, and of the professors of any religion to assume to themselves
all that is good and repudiate all that is evil in the national life. I
have no quarrel here with them on the subject. Nor do I wish to use the
word in any unnecessarily narrow sense. Are there not also St. Paul and
the Apostles, the Early Fathers? So be it. But surely the essence of
Christianity must be the teaching and example of Christ? I do not gather
that any subsequent teacher has had authority to abrogate or modify
either that teaching or example. As to addition, is it maintained
anywhere that the teaching and example are inadequate? I do not think
so. And therefore I have defined my meaning as above. Let us be sure of
our words, that we may know what we are talking about.
In the word "religion" I have more difficulty. It does not carry any
meaning on its face as Christianity does. It is an almost impossible
word to define, or to discover the meaning of. It is so difficult that
practically all the book is an attempt to discover what "religion" does
mean. I nearly called the book, "What is the Meaning of Religion?"
In the beginning I have given a few of the numerous meanings that have
been applied to the word. It will be seen how vague they are. And at
the end I have a definition of my own to give which differs from all.
But as I have frequently to use the word from the beginning of the book,
I will try to define how I use it.
By "religion," then, generally I mean a scheme of the world with some
theory of how man got into it and the influences, mostly supernatural,
which affect him here. It usually, though not always, includes some code
of morality for use here and some account of what happens after death.
This is, I think, more or less the accepted meaning.
And there are the words Spirit and Soul.
I note that in considering origins of religion the great first
difficulty has been how the savage evolved the idea of "God" or "Spirit"
as opposed to man. Various theories have been proposed, such as that it
evolved from reasoning on dreams. To me the question is whether such an
idea exists at all. It may be possible that men trained in abstract
thought without reference to fact, the successors of many generations of
men equally so trained, do consider themselves to have such a
conception. I have met men who declared they had a clear idea of the
fourth dimension in Mathematics and of unending space. There may be
people who can realise a Spirit which has other qualities than man. In
some creeds the idea is assumed as existing. But personally I have never
found it among those who make religion as distinguished from those who
theorise upon it. The gods of the simpler religious people I have met,
whether East or West, have been frankly only enlarged men, with the
appetites and appearances and the powers of men. They differ from men
only in degree, never in kind. They require food and offerings, they
have passions, sometimes they have wives. The early gods are but men. If
they are invisible, so can man be; if they are powerful, so are kings.
It is only a question of degree, never of kind. I do not find that the
God that the Boers appeal to so passionately has any different qualities
in their thoughts from a marvellous man. Truly they will say, "No, God
is a Spirit." Then if you reply, "So be it; tell me how a Spirit differs
from a man, what qualities a Spirit has that are inconceivable in man,"
they cannot go on; and the qualities they appeal to in their God are
always very human qualities--partiality, forgiveness, help, and the
like.
Many men will say they believe things which they do not understand. I
enter into the subject so fully later I do not want to write more now. I
only wish to define that the word God, as I use it, in no wise means
more than "the Personality who causes things."
And again about soul. What is soul? The theologian gets up and answers
at once that soul exists independent of the body. So be it. Then who has
the conception? And what is it like when you have got it? Have
Christians it? Then why can they not understand resurrection of the soul
without also the resurrection of the body? They cannot. Look at the
facts. It is such a fact it has actually forced itself into the creeds.
Angels have bodies and also wings. Ghosts have bodies and also clothes.
They are recognisable. I know a ghost who likes pork for supper. They
sometimes have horses and all sorts of additions. The body may be filmy,
but it is a body. Gas is filmy and quite as transparent as a ghost.
Perhaps the people who have put the transmigration of souls as one of
their religious tenets really have the conception of a soul apart from
any body. I doubt it even here. But this also will come later.
Meanwhile, when I use the word "soul" or "spirit," I do not infer that
it is separable from the body or inseparable. I mean simply the essence
of that which is man; the identity, the ego existing in man as he _is_.
I think, indeed, this is the correct meaning. We say that a city has
fifty thousand souls. Have they no bodies? When I wrote "The Soul of a
People" I certainly did not omit their bodies or ignore them. On the
contrary. And no one supposed I did. I do not either mean to postulate
the inseparability of body and soul. Soul means essence.
Finally, there is the word reason. What is that? By reason I mean the
faculty of arranging and grouping facts. It is the power of perspective
which sees facts in their proper relation to other facts. The facts
themselves are supplied as regards the outer world by the senses of
sight and hearing and taste, of touch and sympathy; and as regards the
inner world of sensations, such as hate, and love, and fear by the
ability to feel those sensations.
Reason itself cannot supply facts. It can but arrange them. By placing a
series of facts in due order the existence of other facts may be
suspected, as the existence of Neptune was deduced from certain known
aberrations. The observation of Neptune by the telescope followed.
In other words, reason may be called "the science of facts."
* * * * *
I offer no apology for this introduction. Most of the confusion of
thought, most of the mistiness of argument, is due to the fact that
people habitually use words without any clear idea of their meaning. A
reviewer of "The Soul of a People" declared that Buddhism was a
philosophy, not a religion. I asked him to give me a list of what he
accepted as religions, and then to furnish a definition of religion that
would include all these and exclude Buddhism. I am still waiting. No
doubt he had never tried to really define what he meant by his words.
Instead of using words as counters of a fixed value he threw them about
as blank cheques, meaning anything or nothing.
When you find confusion of argument in a book, want of clearness of
expression, when you see men arguing and misunderstanding each other,
there is nearly always one reason. Either they are using words in
different senses or they have no clear idea themselves of what they mean
by their words. Ask ten men what they mean when they say, Art, beauty,
civilisation, right, wrong, or any other abstract term, and see if _one_
can give a satisfactory explanation.
This is an error I am trying to avoid.
CHAPTER I.
OF WHAT USE IS RELIGION?
Of what use is religion?
All nations, almost all men, have a religion. From the savage in the
woods who has his traditions of how the world began, who has his ghosts
and his devils to fear or to worship, to the Christian and the Buddhist
with their religion full of beautiful conceptions and ideas--all people
have a religion.
And the religion of men is determined for them by their birth. They are
born into it, as they are into their complexions, their habits, their
language. The Continental and Irish Celt is a Roman Catholic, the Teuton
is a follower of Luther, the Slav a member of the Greek Church. The
Anglo-Saxon, who is a compromise of races, has a creed which is a
compromise also, and the Celt of England has his peculiar form of
dissent, more akin perhaps in some ways to Romanism than to Lutheranism.
A Jew is and has been a Jew, a Hindu is a Hindu, Arabs and Turks are
Mahommedans.
It is so with all races of men. A man's religion to-day is that into
which he is born, and those of the higher and older races who change are
few, so very few they but serve strongly to emphasize the rule.
There have been, it is true, periods when this has not been so. There
have been times of change, of conversions, of rapid religious evolution
when the greater faiths have gathered their harvests of men, when
beliefs have spread as a flood threatening to engulf a world. No one has
ever done so. Each has found its own boundary and stayed there. Their
spring tide once passed they have ceased to spread. They have become,
indeed, many of them, but tideless oceans, dead seas of habit ceasing
even to beat upon their shores. Many of them no longer even try to
proselytise, having found their inability to stretch beyond their
boundaries; others still labour, but their gains are few--how few only
those who have watched can know.
Some savages are drawn away here or there, but that is all. The greater
faiths and forms of faith, Catholicism, Lutheranism, the Greek Church,
Mahommedanism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many others, remain as they
were. Their believers are neither converted nor convert. Men born into
them remain as they were born. They do not change, they are satisfied
with what they have.
They are more than satisfied; they are often, almost always,
passionately attached to their faith.
There is nothing men value more than their religion. There is nothing so
unbearable to them as an attack upon it. No one will allow it. Even the
savage clings to his fetish in the mountain top and will not permit of
insult to it. Men will brave all kinds of disaster and death rather than
deny their faith, that which their fathers believed. It is to all their
highest possession. The Catholic, the Chinese ancestor worshipper, the
Hindu, the Calvinist, the Buddhist, the Jew--their names are too
numerous to mention--none yields to any other in this. It is true of all
faiths. No one faith has any monopoly of this enthusiasm. It is common
to all.
But wherein lies the spell that religion has cast upon the souls of men?
The influence is the same. What is the secret of it?
Can it be that there is some secret common to all religions, some
belief, some doctrine that is the cause of this? If so, what is it? If
there is such a common secret, why is it so hidden?
For hidden it certainly is.
Nothing can be more certain than that no one religion recognises any
such secret in the others. It is the very reverse. The more a man clings
to his own religion the more he scorns all others. Far from
acknowledging any common truth, he denounces all other faiths as
mistaken, as untrue; nay, more, they are to him false, deliberately
false; the enthusiast believes them wicked, the fanatic in his own faith
calls all others devilish. The more a man loves his religion the more he
abominates all others. A Christian would scorn the idea of the essence
of his faith being common to all others, or any other. If there be any
common truth it is a very secret truth.
Is there any secret truth? If so, what is it?
There is a further question.
There is probably no one thing that we learn with more certainty than
this, that whatever exists, whatever persists, does so because it
fulfils a want, because it's of use. It is immaterial where we look, the
rule is absolute. In the material world Darwin and others have shewn it
to us over and over again. When anything is useless it atrophies. So
have the snake and the whale lost their legs, and man his hairy skin and
sense of scent. Males have lost their power of suckling their young;
with females this power has increased. Need developes any thing or any
quality; when it becomes needless it dies. Where we find anything
flourishing and persistent we are sure always that it is so because it
is wanted, because it fills a need.
Religion in some form or another has always existed, has increased and
developed, has grown and gained strength.
Therefore religion, all religions that have existed have filled some
need, all religions that now exist do so because they fulfil some
present use. From the way their believers cherish them the need is a
great and urgent one. These religions are of vital use to their
believers.
What is this great common need and yearning that all men have, and
which, to men in sympathy with it, every religion fulfils?
Can it be that all men have a like need and that all religions have a
common quality which serves that need?
Can it be possible that all races, the Englishman, the Negro, the
Italian, the Russian, the Arab, the Chinaman, and the Pathan, have the
same urgent necessity, and that their urgent necessity is answered by so
many varying religions? If so, what is this necessity which religion
alone can fill, what is this succour that religion alone can give? What
is the use of religion?
These are some of the questions I ask, other men have asked the
same--not many. The majority of men never ask themselves anything of the
sort. They are born into a religion, they live in it more or less, they
die in it. They may question its accuracy in one point or another, for
each man to some extent makes his own faith; but nearly all men take
their faith much as they find it and make the best of it. It does not
occur to them to say, "Why should I want a religion at all? Why not go
without?" They feel the necessity of it. Even the very few who reject
their own faith almost always try for some other, something they hope
will meet their necessity. They will prefer one faith to another. But
they do not first consider why they want a faith at all. They do not
ask, "Of what use is any religion?"
Yet this is in the main the subject of this book, these questions are
the ones I ask, the questions to which I seek an answer. I will repeat
them.
Why are all peoples, all men religious? Is the necessity a common
necessity? If so, what is it?
Why does one form of religion appeal to one people and another to
another people, while remaining hateful to all the rest?
Notwithstanding their common hate, have all religions a common secret?
And if so, what is that?
This book of mine is in part the story of a boy who was born into a
faith and who lost it; it tries to explain why he lost it.
It is the story of a man who searched for a new faith and who did not
find it, because he knew not what he sought. He knew not what religion
was nor why he wanted it. He knew not his need. He sought in religion
for things no religion possesses. He was ill yet he knew not his
disease, and so he could find no remedy. And finally it is an attempt to
discern what religion really means, what it is, what is the use of it,
what men require of it.
There may be among my readers some who will read the early chapters and
will then stop. They will feel hurt perhaps, they will think that there
is here an attack upon their religion, upon all they hold as the Truth
of God. So they will close the book and read no more. I would beg of my
readers not to judge me thus. I would ask them if they read at all to
read to the end. It may be that then they will understand. Even if it be
not so, that the early chapters still seem to be hard, is it not better
to hear such things from a friend than from an enemy? Be sure there are
very many who say and who feel very much harder things than this boy
did. Is it not as well to know them?
These early chapters are of a boy's life; they may be, they should be if
truly written, full of the hardness of youth, its revolt from what it
conceives to be untrue, its intense desire to know, its stern rejection
of all that is not clear and cannot be known. Yet they must be written,
for only by knowing the thoughts of the boy can the later thoughts of
the man be understood?
And I am sure that those who read me to the end, though they may
disagree with what I say, will admit this: that, thinking as I do of
religion, I would not unnecessarily throw a stone at any faith, I would
not thoughtlessly hurt the belief of any believer, no matter what his
religion; because I think I have learnt not only what his faith is to
him, but why it is so, because I have found the use of all religion.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY BELIEFS.
The boy of whom I am about to write was brought up until he was twelve
entirely by women. He had masters, it is true, who taught him the usual
things that are taught to boys, and he had playfellows, other boys; but
the masters were with him but an hour or two each day for lessons, and
of the boys he was always the eldest.
Those who have studied how it is that children form their ideas of the
world, of what it is, of what has to be done in it, of how to do it,
will recognise all that this means; for children obtain their ideas of
everything, not from their lessons nor their books nor their teachers,
but from their associates. A teacher may teach, but a boy does not
believe. He believes not what he is told, but what he sees. He forms to
himself rules of conduct modelled on the observed conduct of other
people. Their ideas penetrate his, and he absorbs and adapts them to
his own wants. In a school with other boys, or where a boy has as
playfellows boys older than himself, this works out right. The knowledge
and ideas of the great world filter gradually down. Young men gain it
from older men, the young men pass it to the elder boys, and the bigger
to the smaller, each adapting it as he takes. Thus is wisdom made
digestible by the many processes it passes through, and the child can
take it and find it agree with him.
But with a child brought up with adults and children younger than
himself this is not so. From the latter he can learn nothing; he
therefore adapts himself to the former. He listens to them, he watches
them, unconsciously it is true, but with that terrible penetrative power
children possess. He learns their ideas, and, tough as they may prove to
him, he has to absorb them, and he has not the digestive juice, the
experience that is required to assimilate them. They are unfit for his
tender years, they do not yield the nourishment he requires. He suffers
terribly. A man's ideas and knowledge are not fit for a boy.
And if a man's, how much less a woman's? A boy will become a man; what
he has learnt of men is knowledge of the right kind, though of the wrong
degree. But what he learns from women is almost entirely unsuitable in
kind and in degree. The ideas, the knowledge, the codes of conduct, the
outlook on life that suit a woman are entirely unfitted for a boy.
Consider and you must see how true it is.
This boy, too, was often ill and unable to play, to go out at all
sometimes for weeks in the winter. He seemed always ailing. Thus he had
to spend much of his time alone, and when he was tired of reading or of
wood carving, or colouring plates in a book, he thought. He had often so
much time to think that he grew sick of thought. He hated it. He would
have given very much to be able to get out and run about and play so as
not to think, to be enabled to forget that he had a brain which would
keep on passing phantoms before his inner eyes. There was nothing he
hated so much, nothing he dreaded so deeply as having nothing to do but
think. In later years he took this terror to his heart and made it into
an exceedingly great pleasure, but to the child it was not so.
Therefore, when he was twelve and was sent at last to a large school, he
was different to most boys at that age; for his view of the world, his
knowledge of it, his judgment of it, were all obtained from women. He
saw life much as they did, through the same glasses, though with
different sight. His ideas of conduct were a woman's ideas, his
religion was a woman's religion.
Are not a woman's ideas of conduct the same as a man's? Is not a woman's
Christianity the same as a man's Christianity, if both be Christianity?
And I reply, No! A thousand times no! There is all the world between
them, all that world that is between woman and a man.
As to man's religion I will speak of it later. The woman's ideas of
conduct and religion which this child had absorbed were these. He
believed in the New Testament. I do not mean he disbelieved the Old
Testament, but he did not think of it. Religion to him meant the
teaching of Christ, that very simple teaching that is in the Gospel.
Conduct to him meant the imitation of Christ and the observance of the
Sermon on the Mount. He thought this was accepted by all the world--the
Christian world at least--as true, that everyone, men as well as women,
accepted this teaching not as a mere pious aspiration, not as an
altruistic ideal, but as a real working theory. War was bad, all war.
Soldiers apparently were not all bad--he had been told of Christian
soldiers, though he had no idea how such a contradiction could
occur--but at least they were a dreadful necessity. Wealth and the
pursuit of wealth were bad, wicked even, though here again there were
exceptions. Learning was apt to be a snare. The world was very wicked,
consciously wicked, which accounted for the present state of affairs,
and most people would certainly go to hell. The ideal life was that of a
very poor curate in the East End of London, hard working and unhappy.
These are some of the ideas he learnt, for this is the religion of all
the religious women of England; of all those who are in their way the
very salt of the nation. Their belief is the teaching of Christ, and
that is what this boy learnt. This is what "conduct" and "religion"
meant to him.
I must not be misunderstood. I do not intend to suggest that this boy
was any better than other boys, that his life was less marked by the
peccadilloes of childhood. He was probably much as other boys are as far
as badness or goodness is concerned. His acts, I doubt not, did not very
much differ from theirs. After all, neither boys nor men are very much
guided either by any theoretical "Rule of Life," nor by any view of what
is the true Religion. He acted according to his instincts, but having so
acted the difference between him and other boys came in. Other boys'
instincts led them to poach a trout out of a stream, and rejoice in
their success if they were not caught. This boy's instinct also led him
to poach a trout if he could, but he did not rejoice over it. Poaching
was stealing, and that was a deadly sin. He was aware of that and was
afraid.
Other boys' instincts made them fight on occasions and be proud of it,
whether victor or vanquished, to boast of it publicly perhaps; anyhow,
not to keep it a secret or be ashamed of it. This boy's instincts also
led him several times into fights; but whether victor or not--it was
usually not--he could not appear to be proud of it. The Sermon on the
Mount told him he ought not to have fought that boy who struck him, but
should have turned the other cheek, and he knew very well that it would
be regarded as a sin. It must be kept secret and he must be ashamed of
it, and so with many things. It never occurred to him then to doubt that
the Sermon on the Mount did really contain the correct rule of life for
him, and that any breach of it must be a deadly sin. Among other results
this friction between the natural boy and the rule of conduct he was
taught he ought to adopt, gave the boy a continual sensation of being
wrong. He knew he was continually breaking the Sermon on the Mount and
also other rules of the New Testament. He was perfectly sure he did not
live at all like Christ, and he had a strong, but never then
acknowledged certainty, that he didn't want to. All this, with the
continual reproof of those around him, gave him an incessant feeling of
being wicked. He could not live up to these rules, and he was a very
wicked little boy bound for hell, so he thought of himself.
It is difficult to imagine anything worse for a boy than this. Tell a
boy he is bad, lead him to believe he is bad, make much of his little
sins, reprove him, mourn over him as one of wicked tendencies, and you
will make him wicked. Perpetual struggle to attain an impossible and
unnatural ideal is destructive to any moral fibre. For the boy soon
begins to distrust himself, his own efforts, his own good intentions. He
fails and fails, and he loses heart and begins to count on failure as
certain. Then later he abandons effort as useless. What is the good of
trying without any hope of success? It is useless and foolish. To save
appearances he must pretend, and that is all. But at the time he went to
school he had not quite come to that, for the stress of the world had
not yet fallen upon him. He still believed in what he was taught was the
ideal of life, and tried, in a childish, uncertain way, to act up to
it.
CHAPTER III.
IDEAL AND PRACTICE.
Such was the boy who went to school, and such was the mental and moral
equipment with which he started.
He found himself in a new world. He had stepped out of a woman's world
into a man's, out of the New Testament into the Old, out of dreams into
reality. For the ideas and beliefs, the knowledge and understanding, the
code of morality and conduct, in a big school, are those of the world.
This filters down from the world of men to the world of little boys, and
the latter is the echo of the former. It is an echo of the great world
sounded by childish hearts, but still a true echo. Then this boy began
to learn new things, a new morality vastly different from the old. And
this is what he learnt: that it is not wrong to fight, but right.
Fighting is not evil but good, all kinds of fighting. The profession of
a soldier is a great and worthy one, perhaps the highest. To fight men,
to kill them and subdue them, is not bad but good--provided, of course,
it is in a good cause. A war is not a regrettable necessity, but a very
glorious opportunity. Both men and boys rejoice to know of battles
greatly fought, of blood and wounds, of death and victory. It makes the
heart bound to hear of such things. Everyone should wish to be able to
do them--in a good cause. Is not the cause of our country always a good
cause? When this boy arrived at school he learnt suddenly that a war was
going on. It was a small frontier war such as we often have. He had not
heard of it at home. Now he heard of it all day. Masters announced
publicly any victory, holidays were given for them, out of school hours
the boys talked of little else. The illustrated papers were full of
sketches of the war, and the weekly papers of accounts of marches and
battles. Boys who had relations, fathers, or uncles, or elder brothers,
at the front rose into sudden fame. Big boys who were hoping to pass
into Sandhurst or Woolwich were heroes; the school was full of the
enthusiasm of the success of our armies. Parties were formed and
generals were appointed; hillocks in the play green were defended and
assaulted, and many grievous blows were given in these mimic fights. One
boy nearly lost his eye. To the boy of which I am writing all this was
new, it was new and delightful, and extraordinarily wicked.
This was not his only awakening, this was not the only subject on which
he learnt new rules. Soldiers must fight, and so must boys, if
necessary, in a good cause. To a soldier all causes are good when his
country bids; to a boy all causes are good when his school code tells
him. Turn the other cheek? Be called a funk and a coward, be derided and
scorned by all the school, be told to be ashamed, and, worse than all,
feel that he ought to be and was ashamed? Not so. Not so. A boy must
fight, too, when his schoolboy honour bids. He even learnt more still
than this. Battle was not always a disagreeable necessity, it was in
itself often a pleasure. "To drink delight of battle with his peers" is
no poet's rhetorical phrase; it is a truth. There is a sheer muscular
physical pleasure in fighting, as all boys know. True blows hurt, but
the blows that hurt most are not on the body, and there is, too, a moral
strength, a moral pleasure, that comes from battles. It is not
disgraceful to fight, it is not even disgraceful to be beaten, but it
would often be very disgraceful not to fight, to turn the other cheek.
All wars are not bad things. They are the storms of God stirring up the
stagnant natures to new purity and life. The people that cannot fight
shall die. He learnt this lesson, not as I have written it. He did not
realise it, he did not put it into words as I have done. It sank into
him unconsciously as the previous teaching had done--and sorely they
disagreed with each other. He learnt other lessons, many of them, in the
same way. He learnt that money is not an evil but a good. When he found
his pocket-money short this soon dawned upon him, and the lesson did not
end there. He found that wealth was almost worshipped, that it had very
great power. He found everyone engaged in the race for wealth, everyone.
His spiritual pastors and masters were no more exempt than anyone else.
They encouraged the race. A boy's schooling was looked upon as his
preparation for the battle of life in which he was to struggle for money
and honours. Men who had attained them were held up to his admiration.
Not the pale-faced curates of the East End, but the great statesman and
soldier, the bishops, the lawyers, the writers, the successful merchants
who had once been at the school, were emblazoned on the wall. No meek,
struggling curate would find a niche there. The race was to the strong,
not the weak. He was learning the law of the survival of the fittest,
and he was further learning that the Sermon on the Mount is not a guide
to be the fittest, in this world at any rate.
I must try again and guard against misconception. The school was a good
school, the tone was good, the masters were all men of high character,
of considerable learning. No school could have been better taught; but
this was the teaching of the school, as it is and must be of all schools
that are worth anything: a boy must be brought up on truths, not
imaginings; he must learn laws, not aspirations; he must be prepared for
the world as it is, not as a visionary might see it.
Therefore this boy learnt at school the great code of conduct which
obtains in the world. Shortly, it is this: not to be quarrelsome, but to
be ready always to fight for a good cause, be the fighting with sword or
fist, with pen or tongue, by word or deed, and when fighting to hit hard
and spare not. He learnt to desire and strive for wealth and honour,
which are good things, not in immoderate excess, which injures other
forms of happiness, but in due and proper amount. He learnt that he
should speak the truth in most things, but not in all. There are worse
things than some lies. There are some lies that are not a disgrace, but
an honour. He learnt that learning was not a snare, but a very necessary
and very admirable thing also, and of all learning that knowledge of the
world, the wicked world, the flesh and the devil, was the most
necessary. Such in broad lines were what he learnt from his
schoolfellows, the code filtered down from above, the code of a public
school. A very admirable code, but how different from what he had first
learnt. There were worlds between them, the immensity that lies between
fact and ideal.
And yet all this time, while this public school code was being driven
into him by precept and example, by coercion and by blows, all this
while, every morning at prayers and every Sunday thrice, he heard the
other code taught in the school chapel. The masters taught it, and the
boys were supposed to accept and believe it--during chapel hours. Once
chapel was over, once Monday morning came, and the other code ruled. No
one remembered the theoretic code of Christ. Boys who brought it forward
in daily life were disliked. They were not bullied, no! but they were
left alone. The tone of the school would never have allowed bullying for
such a cause, but there was an instinctive repulsion to those boys who
talked religion. The others inwardly accused them of cant. Boys who
alleged religious reasons for refusing to fight, to poach, to smoke
occasionally, to commit other little breaches of discipline, were
suspected of bringing forth religion as a cloak to hide the fact that
they were afraid to fight and poach and that smoking made them sick.
That they were very often rightly suspected this boy had no doubt. It
was his first introduction to cant, and it surprised him. Was, then, the
attempt to realise the precepts of Christ in daily life either a folly
or an hypocrisy? As far as he could see it was both.
It must not, of course, be imagined that he thus faced the problem and
gave this answer. He no more faced the problem than any other boy does,
than the great majority of men do. He simply grew up according to his
surroundings, agreeing with them, accepting the rule he found accepted,
developing as his environments made him. But although he did not
mentally face and enumerate his difficulties, he was aware of them just
the same. He was clearly conscious of a conflict between fact and
theory, between teaching and example, between reality and dreams. He
became year after year also more clearly aware of a repugnance rising
within him to religion and to religious teaching. He shrank from it
without realising why. He supposed it was just his natural sin. It was,
of course, that he was proving its unreality as a guide to life. He
began to shrink, too, from all religious topics, from religious services
and religious books. They jarred on him. He found himself also losing
his reverence for his religious teachers--for all his teachers, in
fact--for they all professed religion. Their words had grated on him
first, the difference between what they professed to believe and what he
knew they did believe. Unaware of the reason till much later, almost
unconsciously there grew up in him a contempt towards all his teachers
and masters, a sense that they must be and were hypocrites and
impostors. He found himself at eighteen far adrift from all guidance and
counsel, shunning religion because he saw that the teachings of Christ
were quite unadapted for the world he had to live in, scornful of and
contemning his teachers for what seemed to him hypocrisy.
It was not a satisfactory state for a boy, and the less so because it
was still almost unconscious. He felt all that I have said, the
avoidance, the dislike, but he had not yet faced it to himself and said,
"Why does Christianity jar upon me and seem unreal, what are its
difficulties?" Nor, "What is it that causes my dislike and contempt of
my teachers? They are better men in all ways than I am. They are good
men. I shall never be as good. I honour them in their lives. I admit
that. What is the difficulty?" He was adrift without compass or pilot,
and he did not know it. Yet he was already far from the safe harbour of
trust and belief. The storms and darkness of the sea of life were before
him, and there was no star by which he could steer. He made no effort,
raised as yet no alarm, for he knew not that his anchor had dragged,
that he had lost hold, perhaps never to regain it.
CHAPTER IV.
SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY--I.
About this time he read the "Origin of Species" and "The Descent of
Man." This surprised him. It was not only that this was his first
introduction to the science of biology, his first peep behind the
curtain of modern forms into the coulisses of the world that interested
him, but there was here contained a complete refutation, a disastrous
overthrow, of all that system of the Creation which he had been taught.
If Darwin was right, and he seemed to be right--nay, even his once
adversaries now admitted he was right, if not in his details yet in his
broad outline--if he was right then was Genesis all wrong. There was
never any garden of Eden, never any seven days' creation, never any
making of woman out of a rib; the world was not six thousand years old,
but millions. Man himself could count his pedigree back tens of
thousands of years. It was a fable; and not only was it a fable, but
this fable contained as a kernel not a truth--then it would be
understood--but a falsehood. The theory of the whole story was that man
had fallen, that he used to be perfect, that he walked with God, but
that he fell. Such was the idea. And the continuation was that Christ
was required to atone to God for man's disobedience, to lead man slowly
back to the Paradise he had lost.
And now it was clear that the garden of Eden was all a fable, that man
had never been perfect, that he had evolved slowly out of the beast. He
had risen, not fallen, and stood now higher than ever before. The first
part was false, and if so, must not the sequence be false also? As a
whole the fable held together; destroy the foundation and the
superstructure must come crashing into ruin. Oh! it was all false, the
whole of it, Old and New Testament together, an old woman's tale. And
then suddenly his eyes were opened. He saw many things. His instincts
that he had not understood were now clear. Yes, of course, the
supernatural part was all a fable, a mistake; nay, more, it taught the
reverse of truth, and the moral part of it was all wrong too. The
morality of the Old Testament was that of a savage, the morality of the
New a remarkable ideal totally unfit for the world as it is now or ever
has been. The man who followed it would commit a terrible error. It was
therefore untrue also; more than merely untrue, it was dangerous, as a
false teacher must be. For long he had instinctively seen that this was
so, now he knew why. At the touch of science the whole fabric of
religion fell into dust. Christianity was a fraud, and there was an end
of it.
But still the church bells rang and the people went there. Priests
preached this belief and people held to it. Darwin had written more than
ten years before and his book had been accepted, but still religion had
not fallen. Men and women, as far as he could see nearly all men and
women, still professed themselves Christians. How was all this possible?
How could it be that this disproved Jewish fable still held together? It
was wonderful. There must be a reason. What is it?
Can it be possible, he thought, that there is an explanation, that
religion can justify itself, that it may still have reason? There are
people who call themselves scientific theologians. They write books and
they preach, and they can be asked questions. What have they to say? So
this boy collected some of his difficulties and tried to find out what
scientific theology thought of them. Let me name briefly some of them:--
_The Fall of Man._--Theology says he fell, science says he rose. What
does Scientific Theology say?
_The Character of God._--In the Old Testament God is represented
frequently as bloodthirsty, as partial to the Jews, as unjust, as given
to anger, as changeable. How is this?
Again, God is represented as the only Almighty, the only All-present,
All-seeing, All-powerful; yet without a doubt the facts detailed show
the Devil to be certainly All-present, and, as far as man here is
concerned, has considerably more power and influence than God. God made
the world, but the Devil possesses it. Why?
_Prayer._--How can this be necessary? If God knows best what is good for
us, why pray to Him? Can He be influenced? The Bible says yes. Then is
not this a very extraordinary thing, that if God knows what is best for
us, He should have to be asked to do it--that He won't do it unless
asked?
About Christ. He was God, yet He died to atone to Himself for the sin of
man. What is the meaning of all this? Why did God allow man to crucify
Himself in order to atone to Himself for a former sin of man, and what
is the meaning of all this? Has it any?
Most important of all, as to the example and teaching of Christ
regarding conduct. What did it mean, and why did everyone profess it and
no one believe it?
These, of course, were not all his difficulties. There were hundreds of
them. There is not a verse in the Old or New Testament, not a dogma, not
a belief of Christianity, that does not furnish ground for question.
These I have mentioned are but some of the most prominent. They will
serve as examples of what he sought to learn.
And these were the answers he received.
The History of the Creation is an allegory. It is not in conflict with
science, but in accordance with it. There is no difficulty. The seven
days of creation mean seven periods; we do not know how long these were.
The chronology of Archbishop Usher was, of course, in error. It is a
wonderful testimony to the inspiration of the Bible, the accuracy with
which the account of Creation therein fits in with the facts we have
recently learnt.
The story of Adam and Eve is an allegory of life. A child is born
innocent and pure, and he falls. The knowledge therein referred to, the
fruit, means useless questions into the secrets of God, such questions
as you are now engaged in. Had you accepted Christianity as a child does
you would never have fallen into the slough of infidelity in which you
are now. You, like Eve, have been tempted by the Devil with the fruit of
the knowledge of good and evil, and have fallen. But the help of Christ,
the knowledge that he died for you, can now save you. That is the
answer.
You ask of the character of God in the Old Testament. You say that He is
represented by His acts as revengeful, as unjust, as hasty, as very
partial. Man cannot criticise the acts of God. He may seem to you so,
but are you sure you can judge rightly? God cannot be all these. His
injustice, His revengefulness, His partiality were merely effects
produced in your mind. They do not exist. He is all-merciful, and
all-seeing, and all-powerful. If the Devil seems to have more power in
the world than God, it is simply because God allows him. If the Devil
seems all-present it is because he has legions of demons to do his will.
God is all-merciful, all-powerful, all-just; believe this and you will
do well. The answers to your difficulties about prayer are also very
simple. God is not influenced by prayer. He is merciful and will always
do what He knows to be best for you, whether you pray or not; but He has
ordained prayer for you, not because of its effect on Him, but because
of its effect upon yourself. Prayer, humiliation, softens the heart of
the suppliant. His cry to God will not change God, but will change him.
This is the explanation. It is very simple, is it not?
The doctrine of the Trinity can be best understood from an analogy of
man. Consider how a man can be a father, a husband, and a son all at
once. There is no difficulty here. Where, then, is the difficulty with
God? God as the Father of man, the righteous Judge who punishes man for
his wickedness, He vindicated His law; but God the Son, the pitying
nature of God, had compassion on man, and therefore gave Himself as a
sacrifice for man; God the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, entered into
man's heart and sanctified it. Cannot you thus understand the manifold
nature of God?
The teaching of Christ? His example? You do not understand that? Was not
His life the perfect life, His teaching the perfect teaching? You say
that this teaching cannot be followed now in its entirety. Is it not the
wickedness of man that prevents it? Did each man act up to this
teaching, to this example, would it not be a perfect world? Let each man
try his best and the world will improve. Such as I have written were the
answers he found to his questions. I do not say that these are always
the answers that are given. It may be there are others. It may be that
in the years that have passed since then new explanations have been
evolved.
Although I do not think that is so, as only a year ago I saw some of
these very replies written in a well-known Review as the authoritative
answer of scientific theology to these difficulties. However that may
be, these are the answers the boy received, such were the guides given
to lead him out of the darkness of scepticism into the light of faith.
CHAPTER V.
SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY--II.
What thought the boy of these explanations? Do you think they helped him
at all? Do you think he was able to accept them as real? Did they throw
any light into the darkness of his doubts?
The boy took them and considered them. He considered them fairly, I am
sure; he would have accepted them if he could. For what he was looking
for was simply guidance and light. He had no desire for aught but this.
If he revolted now from the faith of his people it was because he found
there neither teaching he could accept nor help. If the scientific
theologian shewed him that the error was in him and not in the faith the
boy would, I think, have been glad. So he took these explanations and
considered them, and this is what he thought.
They tell me that the seven days of creation are seven epochs. I did
not ask that. To my question whether man has fallen, as the Bible says,
or risen, as science declares, no reply has been given.
There is only a specious likening of a man's life, saying that man falls
from the innocence of his childhood to sin through the knowledge of
evil, and requires redemption. My question is avoided, and a new sophism
given me which is also untrue. A child is not innocent. It is only
ignorant and weak. Its natural impulses are those of a savage. It
requires to learn the knowledge of good and evil to subdue these
instincts. This symbolism of the child is utterly false. A child is to
us a very beautiful thing because its tenderness, its helplessness, its
clinging affection awaken in us feelings of love, of protection, which
we feel are beautiful. All men should, all men I think do, love
children, but the beauty is in the man's emotions that are awakened, not
in those qualities of the children that awaken them.
To go beyond this and say that a child should be a model to man is to
display ignorance of what children are, to mistake effect for cause, to
exalt childishness into a virtue. Theologians use this argument, which
is merely a play upon our affection for children, to try and induce us
to accept their theology with the same ignorant confidence that a child
accepts all it is told by its parents. It would suit theologians for all
men to be babes in this sense, in their senselessness. But if theology
will bear the light of reason, why ask us to accept it blindly? Why? Is
it because it will not bear scrutiny?
And surely of all the answers, this answer about the character of God is
the most extraordinary. "God is not really unjust or partial, or
revengeful. That is merely the impression His acts make on us." Truly
here is an argument. How can anyone, even God, be judged except in His
acts? If His acts are revengeful, is not He revengeful? "No!" says the
theological scientist, "that is merely your ignorance. Events make a
wrong impression on you."
How, then, am I to judge which are wrong and which are right
impressions? God acts, as it seems to me, angrily; He is not angry. On
other occasions He acts, as it seems, mercifully. How am I to know that
this impression of mercy is not an error? How, in fact, am I to know
that anything exists at all? If God's anger and partiality and
changeableness are merely impressions of my mind, are not all His
attributes merely impressions also, and do not exist? In fact, is not
God Himself merely an impression and He does not exist? Where are you
going to stop? The theologian will doubtless say, "When I tell you."
But then he is unfortunately arrogating to himself an authority which
does not exist, an authority to twist and turn the Bible to suit his own
sophisms, an authority to bind your mind which no one has given him.
Impressions forsooth. What impressions can any candid mind have of the
scientific theologian? And when the boy read the explanation of the
difference between the all-presence of God and the all-presence of
Satan, I am afraid he laughed.
But prayer is a serious matter. No one can feel anything but sorrow to
see the explanation of God and prayer. The theological scientist again
repeats the Bible words and has his own explanation. No, God is not
moved by prayer. This is merely another wrong impression of ours, an
impression taken from the Bible words. The action of prayer is not
objective, but subjective; its effect is not on God, but on you.
Now mark what he has led himself into. Prayer will purify a man. To ask
God for what he wants won't make the slightest difference in God's acts,
but will in your own feelings. Nevertheless, as of course no one would
or could pray unless he hoped to be answered, man must be told that God
does listen. But this is not true. Therefore, according to theological
science, the Bible directly tells us a falsehood in order to lead us
into a good action. Is there any escape from this? There is none. The
whole meaning and reason of prayer is that God _does_ listen, that He
_does_ forgive if asked, that He _does_ help us and save us. Unless a
man held this belief firmly he would not pray. Try and you will see.
Imagine to yourself, as the theologian declares, that God is quite
unmoved by prayer, and that the action of prayer is subjective, and see
if you can get up any prayer at all. It is impossible. How much fervency
will there be in a request you know will not be granted or attended to?
How much subjective action will follow that prayer? The subjective
action is absolutely dependent on your belief that God does listen and
is influenced by your prayer. But the scientific theologian says your
premise is false.
Can you imagine this theologian's prayer? Can you see him kneeling and
uttering supplications to a god whom he knows he cannot affect or
influence, and pausing now and then to see how the subjective effect on
himself was getting on? But it is not even a subject to be bitter over,
only to be sad. Truly, if I wanted to make a man an atheist and a
scoffer, a railer at all religion, at all religious emotions, at all
that is best in our natures, I would take him to a scientific
theologian and have him taught the scientific theological theory of
prayer.
And again, though the boy understood how a man could be the son of his
father, the husband of his wife, the father of his son, three different
relations to three people, it did not help him to understand how he
could be so to one person. A man cannot be his own son and his own
father, and have proceeding from him a third person different and yet
the same. The argument seemed to him childish.
As to the teaching of Christ, of what use is a teaching that is suitable
only to an ideal state of things? Is it any use to me to tell me that if
everyone agreed at once to follow this teaching the world would be
perfect? Even if this were true, what would be the use? The world never
has accepted it and does not do so now. No one does except a few people
who are called visionaries or fanatics. Even the Quakers only accept a
part, and it is well for them that their fellow citizens do not accept
even that part, or these Quakers would soon be robbed of their wealth. A
nation of Quakers would be a nation of slaves. All this talk of what
would happen if at a given signal all the world became perfect is
useless dream talk. I want realities. This code of Christ is not a
reality. No quicker way of destroying civilization and all that it
means could be desired than by attempting to follow it. We must be ready
and prepared to fight other nations, we must have armies and navies, and
we must honour them. We must have magistrates, and police, and prisons,
and gallows.
"I went," thought the boy, "to these theological scientists, for help in
my everyday life, for clear directions and explanations, and what do
they give me? A mass of words meaning nothing, words and words, and
tangled thoughts; evasion and misrepresentation, misty dreams and
cloud-hidden ideals. They cannot explain, and therefore the whole thing
is false. There is no truth anywhere in it. The whole teaching of the
Bible, from the Creation down to the incarnation of Christ and His
second coming, is one huge mistake. Why people keep on believing it I
cannot say. But anyhow I have found out its falseness, and I will not.
Let it all go. It will make no difference and be rather an advantage.
What use have I ever had from this religion that has been dinned into
me? It gave me false ideas of the world and nature which I have had to
unlearn. It gave me an unworkable code of conduct which I never tried to
follow, but I got into trouble for it. To call oneself a Christian is
merely a way of talking. No one is so really, and the only difference
between me and the others will be that while they are not Christians but
think they are, I am not a Christian and know I am not."
Was the boy glad or sorry? I do not know. I think perhaps he was both.
He felt like a man who has shaken off a burden, a load that contained
mere weight and no useful thing. He would step more lightly in future.
But he felt, too, like a man who has skirted a precipice, secure in that
a railing fenced him in from danger, when he suddenly discovers that the
railing is decayed to the core and will vanish at a touch. He felt dizzy
and afraid, and the feeling grew upon him.
May be, he thought, it is a good thing to have a religion. People of all
faiths, of all nations, seem to cling to theirs very strongly. It is the
one thing they cannot bear to lose. Yet I do not know what they get from
it. At least I do not know what people get from Christianity. What I
look for in a faith are these three things.
I wish an explanation of my origin, of the origin of man and his
relation to this world, and to what there may be beyond this world. I
want an explanation I can accept, and that is not contradicted by the
knowledge we acquire from other sources than religion.
And I want a guide to life. I want a guide to life as it is. For I have
to live in the world as it exists, and I would have help and direction
to do so well. I want a teaching and an example I can refer to in my
everyday troubles.
Finally, I would know something of the Hereafter. I would desire to hear
of the after death. I cannot believe that all non-Christians, including
myself and the majority of Christians, go to hell. That is repulsive.
Nor can I believe in the heavens they tell us of. If all be true that
they tell us, it has no attraction this Christian heaven. To be for ever
singing praises is not life but monotony. Did any man in health, and
strength, and sanity ever yearn to die in order to reach this Heaven
they tell us of? Did not Aucassin say long ago that if he were to
believe the monks Heaven was a place for the poor and maimed, the
foolish, the childish and silly, the stupid, the cowards, the ugly, the
undesirable, the failures of earth, and that he cared not for it?
Whoever was unfit for earth was the more fit for heaven. No! If there is
another world it must be different from the conceptions of Heaven and
Hell as are taught. And I would know. These seem to me the essentials of
religion. They are the three things I want. I have not found them. It
may be that in the other greater faiths that hold the world I may find
what I seek. I cannot say. But meanwhile I must do without. It is better
to have no compass than a faulty one. It is better to watch for the
stars, even if the night be thick and it be hard to see.
Such, I think, was what he thought. Whether he ever found what he
sought, whether any faith can give what he asks, whether indeed these
three things are essentials of religion at all, will be found in the
latter part of the book. This part is but the introduction to explain
why and by whom the search was made, and what was sought.
CHAPTER VI.
WHENCE FAITHS COME.
From the East has come all our light. All world religions have begun
there, have grown there, have mostly spread there.
Brahminism and Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, Mahommedanism and
Parseeism, the cult of the Taoists and Confucians, every belief that has
been a great belief, that has led man captive, has come from the East.
Even the Mythologies of Greece and Rome were from Asiatic sources, from
Babylon and Chaldea. In the North we have originated only Thor and Odin,
Balder and the Valkyries.
I do not think anyone who has lived in the East can doubt why this has
been so. Where is it man's thoughts are deepest and strongest, where is
it that his heart responds to the heart of the world until they beat
throb for throb?
It is never in the North; for the cold winds and dreary skies, the rain
and cloud and gloom, do not draw a man out from himself, but drive him
in. Every keen breeze that blows, every shower, every grey day, reminds
him not of his soul but of his body. It must be kept warm, it must be
fed, it must be housed. He cannot forget that the outside world must be
guarded against, is an enemy to be feared.
And man must live in houses with other people. He cannot be alone, he
cannot ever feel alone with just himself and the world. Yet it is only
in solitude, when alone with Nature, that she will talk to you. For her
voice is very low, and there must be a great silence before she will
tell her secrets.
But there in the East it is not so. For weeks and months, for half the
year may be, one perfect day is joined to another by more perfect
nights.
Only there can man be alone. Only there, in the limitless silence of the
desert, in the unending forests, can you live and forget all other men,
and yourself almost, and be alone with Him who is God.
You want but little, no house to shelter you, no fire, but very little
food and drink and clothes. You do not feel that restless desire to do
something born of cold winds and skies. Your roof by day is the palm or
tamarind, by night you watch the stars wheeling over your head. There
is no one to commune with but Nature, and if you love her as she should
be loved; if you woo her as she would be wooed; if you can send out your
soul to lose itself with her in the wonders of the infinite, then shall
you hear the music of the stars.
Thus has all religion come from the land of the sun: light is the fount
of faith.
Never till you have been to the East can you know what faith is. Have we
not religion, nay religions, in the North? Yes, but not as they have
there. Do we not believe in the West? Yes, but not as they believe.
Faith lies there in the great distances, in the dawn, the noon, the
sunset, in the holiness of the dark. It has sunk into the heart of man.
Consider, what do you see when you land anywhere in the East, what
strikes you most, what is most prominent, not in the landscape, but in
the people?
It is their religion.
You watch the people in the streets and you ask, Why has the merchant in
that shop trident marks on his forehead? Because he is a Hindu and
follows Vishnu. And that clerk who gave me money in the bank, why has he
those other marks? Because he is a Brahmin. And that money-lender seems
to have rubbed his forehead with ashes? He is a Chetty.
They carry their religion about with them, they are proud of it, they
desire all men to know it. See that man's beard, he is a Mahommedan; and
yonder man with a green turban, he is a Seyid. They would not desire you
to doubt it.
Did you ever see Englishmen praying in the streets? Perhaps never.
Certainly if ever you have seen it you condemned it as unnatural. "Let
him pray at home," you have thought. "He is parading his piety." But
here in the East it is different.
Go by the morning train, leave Rangoon Station when the sun is shining
on the great pagoda, and you will see men and women and children lean
out of the carriage windows to salute it, to murmur a prayer. The
Mahommedan spreads his cloth and turns to Mecca, and prays no matter
where he may be. He is not ashamed. It does not seem to him strange. He
does it absolutely naturally, as all these people do all the things that
pertain to their faiths. Neither his fellow-believers nor the adherents
of other faiths wonder.
The Hindu may hate the Mahommedan for social reasons, and the Buddhist
may hate both, but they do not despise each other for being religious.
It would never occur to a Hindu to despise or jeer at a Mahommedan for
spreading his cloth at the street corner and praying. He thinks the
faith a mistaken faith, _he_ would not have it. But if a man is a
Mahommedan it is right of him to pray, of course.
I have never heard, no one has ever heard, one Oriental jeer at another
for being religious, for obeying the commands of his faith. But I have
heard Christians and teachers of Christianity do so very often. We will
jeer at a Mahommedan for praying, at a Hindu for observing his caste, at
a Buddhist for raising his hands in honour to his pagoda, at a Chinaman
for protecting the graves of his fathers. For in the West we have never
known what real religion is. We have it not ourselves, and so we cannot
recognise and honour it in others. No brave man will mock at another
brave man, though an enemy; no one who has loved mocks at another lover,
though he love strange things. Only those jeer who do not know, and the
Christians of the West jeer at the faiths of the East, at the simple
natural religion of the people, because they know not what religion of
the heart can be.
In Europe, what difference does a man's faith make? None. He may live a
lifetime with other men and no one know or care what his faith may be.
Unless he is a poor man and in need of mission, it is considered
impertinence to ask. But here in the East a man's faith is everything.
You cannot get away from it even for a moment. It is an essential part
of him.
There is another thing that strikes one very soon. These Oriental
religions have little or no organisation. Here in Europe there is
nothing so organised as religion. Consider the Catholic faith and the
organisation of Rome. It is a marvel of government, of very strict
government indeed. And the other forms of Western Christianity are not
much behind. The Greek Church is organised as a branch of Government.
So, too, to a lesser extent is the Anglican Church, and if the
Dissenting bodies, as we call them, are not connected with the State,
they have nevertheless a strong system of government.
These organisations are not now, of course, so strong as they were. They
used to drag the men into religion by force, by State aid, they used to
insist on conformity and punish laxity of observance. That is now gone,
but a strong and continuous pressure still exists, exerted by the
Churches in many ways. All Churches in Europe are always having
"missions." Our great cities are full of them, and the country is not
free of them. There has to be a continual shepherding of the flock or
the Church might dwindle sadly. Men have to be preached at and caught
one way or another. All through Europe immense sums are spent yearly in
Christianising the poor.
In the East nothing of this exists. There is no head of Hinduism; that
of the Sultan in Mahommedanism is merely nominal; how slight the
organisation is of Buddhism those who have read my former book will
know.
Hindus are guided by the race of Brahmins, who in turn are guided by no
one. They are a great community themselves, without any organisation or
binding authority. They need no Pope, no Acts of Uniformity. They are
Brahmins because they are so. And so it may be said in general. Faiths
in the East require no strong organisations to hold them together.
Religion is innate in the believers. It seems wonderful. And they have
no missions. If a man feels the need of faith he will seek it and obtain
it. It is there for him if he will come. And all do come. How many
millions in Europe, even in England, have no religious usages? Can you
in the East find one man?
When you think of Europe and its faiths you seem to be in a garden where
the hedges are carefully clipped and the flowers are trained and pruned,
and where you may not walk on the grass. It is all order, and method,
and restriction, for the flowers are exotics and would die without the
tending, they would vary if they were not kept true to type. But the
East is Nature's garden, where the flowers grow wild everywhere; no one
tends them or cares for them, but each grows his own way, developes his
own power and strength, from the lowest grasses to the gorgeous orchid
or the poison lily.
Therefore it may be that in this East, this country whence all religions
have come, where the whole air breathes of faiths and all life is full
of them, the man who has lost his early beliefs may learn new ones.
There is so much to choose from, so many varieties of thought and
emotion.
In this Empire of ours are all the great religions. It is the home of
Brahminism, of the mystical forms of Hinduism, beyond which it has never
spread. There are more Mahommedans here than under the Sultan of Roum.
There are the Parsees here, fugitives long ago from Persia on account of
their faith, the only sun worshippers who are left. There are Jews who
came here no one can tell how long ago, there are Christians who date
back may be eighteen centuries, there are Armenians and Arabs. Within
this Empire live the only race professing a Buddhism that is pure and
without superstition; and beside these there are a hundred other cults,
superstitions, or religions, call them what you will.
From the spirit worship of the Shan plateau to the dignified philosophic
theories of the Brahmo Somaj is a space as wide as the world can show,
yet may it be bridged with religions that differ but by small degrees
till the whole be passed.
If anyone want a faith here are enough and to spare. "Therefore,"
thought the boy, who had now become a man, "I will seek here for what I
want. I know what I want. I have it clearly before me. I have even
written it down. It is not as if I was undertaking a blind search for
something of which I was not sure. These are my three essentials: a
reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of
conduct, a promise in the after life that gives me something to really
desire, to really hope for, to be a haven towards which I may steer. I
will take each subject, each section of a subject, separately and read
it up. I will read up these faiths from books, I will study them as I
can from the people, and I will see what they are. Surely somewhere can
be found what I desire, what I desire so greatly to find."
CHAPTER VII.
THE WISDOM OF BOOKS.
Therefore the man got books and read them. He read books on Hinduism,
many of them; he read the Vedas and the sacred hymns. He learnt of
Vishnu and Siva, of Krishna and the milkmaids. He found books on caste
and read them, of how these were originally four castes which
subdivided. He read of suttee and the car of Juggernauth. He then turned
to Mahommedanism and the life of Mahommed. He read the Koran. He learned
the early history of the faith, of its rise, of the glory of its result,
of the fall of its great Empire. He saw it had much to do with Judaism,
there were great similarities, there were also differences. He read of
Parseeism, that taught by Zoroaster which they call fire worship; he
read of Jainism, of the cult of the Sikhs, of many another strange
faith; he learned of the spirit worship of the aboriginal tribes among
the mountains, of Phallic worship and its monstrosities.
He read of Confucius and his teachings, of Laotze and his doctrines, of
ancestor worship among the Chinese, of Shintoism in Japan.
Most of all he read about Buddhism. There was something here that
attracted him more than in all the rest. In the life of Gaudama the
Buddha he found a beauty that came to him as a charm, in the teachings
of the Great Teacher there seemed to him a light such as he had not
seen. Mystery and miracle and the supernatural had always jarred on him,
they had an unpleasant savour, as of appeals to the lowest elements in
the minds of the credulous and ignorant. Truth he thought should not
need such meretricious attractions. Here was a faith that needed none of
these things. It could exist without them. It contained explanations,
not dogmas. It was reasonableness instead of hysteria, it denounced
mysticism and the cult of the supernatural.
It took the man several years to read these books, and he lived those
years much alone. His house lay half up a mountain side. Below him lay
tangled masses of hills clothed with dense forest, with here and there a
clearing. Before him was a jagged mountain wall, behind a great bare
dome of rock. It was always wonderful to sit and watch, to see the sun
rise in gold and crimson behind the peaks, while all below lay in a
white mist; to watch the sun rays fall and the mist grow thinner,
showing faint outlines of tree clump and hill contour, till all the mist
was gone and the world was full of golden light. Daily he saw the marvel
of the dawn. He learnt to love it as the most beautiful of things, most
beautiful because full of the promise of untold glory. For the most part
his life was very lonely. There were the labourers who worked for him,
the black, half-nude people who came in gangs in May and left in
February of each year. They were not of his world. He directed their
work, he paid them, but he did not know them. He wondered at them, that
was all, and there were scattered here and there throughout the hills
other Europeans, who lived much the same life as he did, and whom he met
occasionally at their houses or his, or at the club ten miles away. He
liked them, some of them were his best friends, a great part of his life
was theirs also.
But there was, aside from his friends, aside from the merry meetings,
the games, the chaff, the laughter, another life apart. There was a life
he lived to himself, in another world it seemed. His world was of the
mountain and the fell, of the brooks that laughed down the precipice,
of the giant trees, the tangled creepers, the delicate orchid far above.
His thoughts were with them and with his books, for they should be
brothers. He read and he watched, and he tried to understand; he asked
of nature the meaning of these religions, to tell him the secret that he
would know. What is the truth of things--what do you mean? And I----What
do _I_ mean? What is the secret of it all?
The mountains and the trees answered him and told him secrets, the
secrets of their hearts, but not the secret he would know. They murmured
to him of many things, of beauty, of love, of peace, of forgetfulness.
They sang the world's slumber song.
But of whence, of how, of whither they told him nothing, only they
ceased talking when he asked, they ceased their song and there was
silence. They could not tell.
So he lay upon the rocks and read, and the hills and trees wondered
because they knew not of what he read. "Take care," they whispered; "why
trouble? Life is so short, surely it were wise to make the best of it;
for no one can answer what you ask. We die and fall and new trees grow
again, the hills are newly clad each year. The old return in new forms.
We can tell of ourselves, we are not afraid. Our lives are full of
delight. Death has no terror for us. But you? Of you we know nothing. We
have no echo to your words."
Yet the man read on. He dreamed and read and dreamed again.
"I have three wants," he said. "I would know whence I came, I would have
some rule to live by, I would know whither I am going. Religions, many
religions profess to tell men these things, surely somewhere there will
be truth. Nearly all men are satisfied with their religion, cannot I
find one that satisfies me? It is so little that I ask, I have here so
many answers. Amongst them I will be able to find what I want."
Therefore he read on. But in the thoughts of many teachers there is not
clearness, but confusion. In a multitude of counsellors there is not
wisdom, only mist, only the strange shadows made by many lights. He
found that he did not gain. "Sometimes," he said, "I agree with one,
sometimes with another. No one seems to be altogether true. There is
Truth, perhaps, but not the whole Truth. This will not do."
At last he said to himself that he would make a system. He would take
certain ideas from various faiths, he would put them together, he would
compare them one by one and see what he learnt.
There is, he said, the First Cause. What do religions say about this
First Cause? There is Brahma, and Jehovah, and Ahriman, with Ormuz;
there is the Buddhist doctrine of Law, there is the Christian Trinity.
These are some of the chief ideas. What can be made of them? Have they a
common truth? Are the great religions utterly at variance about this
First Cause, or can they agree? I will take this point and consider it
first. What is the First Cause? Then I will pass to another. What does
life mean? Why are we here? Is there any explanation of this? For what
object does man exist? To what end? He did not mean what is the end of
man, but what is the object of man, of life? To whom is it a benefit
that man exists? To God--if there be a God? If not, to whom? It cannot
be that existence is an aimless freak, that it has no object. But what
can this object be? What was to be gained by creating man at all? That
was question number two. There is no answer to this question.
There were many other questions that he asked. And when he had framed a
question he sat down to his books to find the answer. He worked at them
as problems to be solved. He sought in the various faiths described in
his books the answers to these problems. What he found will be shown in
the next few chapters; but let it be understood again how and why he
sought.
He had been born in a faith and brought up in it, and had abandoned it.
He left it because he sought in it certain helps to thought and to life
that it seemed to him religion ought to give. More, it seemed to him
that these answers were of the very essence of religion. His fathers'
faith gave him answers he could not accept, it gave him a rule of life
he could not follow, that seemed to him untrue. Yet would he not be
satisfied with ignorance, he would search further. He wanted a religion,
a belief, and he would find it.
For I want it to be understood very clearly that he was no scoffer, no
denier of religion. It was the very reverse. He so much wanted a faith,
it seemed to him such an eminently necessary thing, that he would not be
content till he had one that he could really accept and believe. He
hated doubt and half acceptance. He wanted a truth that appealed to him
as a whole truth, that held no room for doubt.
"All men," he said, "have religion. They love their faiths, they find in
them help and consolation and guidance, at least they tell me so. Why
am I to be left out? Men say that religion is a treasure beyond words.
Then I, too, would share in the treasure. But I cannot take what has
been offered me. It does not seem to me to be true. I _cannot_ believe
it. This religion repels me. I cannot say how greatly it repels me. They
say it is beautiful. It must be so to some. It is not so to me. Its
music to me is not music, but harshest discord. It is not surely that I
have no desire for religion, no eye for beauty, no ear for harmony, I
know it is not that. No man loves beauty more than I do. There are
things in this faith I have rejected that appeal to me. I see in other
faiths, too, ideas that are beautiful. But no one seems all true, and
none answers my three questions. Yet will I look till I find.
"And meanwhile there are the hills and the woods. These are my dreams.
"But surely in my scheme I shall discover something."
CHAPTER VIII.
GOD.
Sitting on the hillside when the hot season was coming near its end he
saw the thunderstorms come across the hills. From far away they came,
black shadows in the distance, and the thunder like far off surf upon
the shore. Nearer they would grow and nearer, passing from ridge to
ridge, their long white skirts trailing upon the mountain sides, until
they came right overhead and the lightning flashed blindingly, while the
thunder roared in great trumpet tones that shuddered through the gorges.
The man watched them and he saw how gods were born. It was Thor come
back again--Thor with his hammer, Thor with his giant voice. Thus were
born the gods, Thor and Odin, Balder God of the Summer Sun, Apollo and
Vulcan, Ahriman and Ormuz, night and day.
So were born all the gods. You can read of it in Indian, in Greek, in
Roman, in Norwegian mythology, in any mythology you like. You can see
the belief living still among the Chins, the Shans, the Moopers; for
them the storm-wind and earthquake, the great rivers and the giant
hills, all these have causes, and they who cause them are gods. From
these have grown all the ideas of God that the peoples hold now. They
were originally local, local to the place, local to the people, and as
the people progressed so did their ideas of God.
It seemed to the man lying on his hillside easy to follow how it all
arose; for, indeed, was it not going on about him? Did not the forest
people speak of a god in the great bare rock behind him? Were there not
gods in the ravines, gods in the hidden places of the hills? It was so
easy to realise as he watched the storm-cloud bursting before him, as
the lightning flashed and the thunder trumpet sounded in the hills, that
men should personify these. Nay, more, he saw the wild men about him
actually personifying them. He could understand.
God was the answer to a question; as the question grew so did the
reply.
The savage asks but little. He does not ask "Who am I?" "Who made the
world, and why?" Such questioning comes but in later years. He fears the
thunder; it is to him a great and wonderful and overpowering thing. It
forces itself upon his notice, and he explains it as the voice of a
greater man, a God. He lives in the heavens, for His voice comes from
thence. The giant peaks that swathe themselves in clouds, the volcano
and the earthquake, the great river flowing for ever to the sea, with
its strange floods, its eddies, its deadly undertow, in these too must
be gods. These are the first things that force themselves upon his dim
observance. He wonders, and from his wonder is born a god. But as he
grows in mental stature, in power of seeing, in power of feeling, he
observes other forces. How is the heaven held up, the great heavy dome
as he imagines it? It is Atlas who does so. There is a god of the Autumn
and Spring, of the Summer and Winter. So he personifies all forces he
perceives but does not understand. For he has no idea of force except as
emanating from a Person, of life which is not embodied in some form like
his own or that of some animal. Whenever anything is done it must be
Some One who does it, and that Some One is like himself, only greater
and stronger.
There is not in the savage god any conception differing from that of
man. There is not in any god any realisable conception different from
that of man. The savage god is hungry and thirsty, requires clothes and
houses, has in all things passions and wants like a man. That makes the
god near to the man. With later gods is it different? God can be
realised only by means of the qualities He shares with man. Deduct from
your idea of God all human passions, love and forgiveness, and mercy,
and revenge, and punishment, and what is left? Only words and
abstractions which appeal to no one, and are realisable by no one.
Declare that God requires neither ears to hear nor eyes to see, nor legs
to walk with, nor a body, and what is left? Nothing is left. When
anyone, savage or Christian, realises God he does so by qualities God
shares with man. God is the Big Man who causes things. That is all. To
say that God is a spirit and then to declare that a spirit differs in
essence from a man is playing with words. No realisable conception does
or can differ.
The conception of force by itself is but a very late idea. As one by
one the phenomena of nature attract man's observation he personifies
them. It will be noticed that unless a force intrudes itself on him he
does not personify it. What people ever personified gravity? And why
not? Surely gravity is evident enough. Every time a savage dropped a
stone on his toes he would recognise gravity. But no. That a stone falls
to the ground because a force draws it is an idea very late to enter
man's brain. It seems to him, as he would say, the nature of a stone to
fall. And then gravity acts always in the same way. It is not
intermittent--like lightning, for instance. Therefore he never conceives
of gravity as a force at all. When men had come to perceive that it was
a force, they had passed the personifying stage. But the savage
personified each force as he perceived it. First the sun and storm, till
at last he came to himself and began to study his own life. He had good
and bad luck; that was Fortune. Evil deeds are done, and good; he is
beginning to classify and generalise; there are gods of Good and Evil.
He has come to Ormuz and Ahriman little by little; as his power of
generalising progresses, he drops the smaller gods. They disappear, they
are but attributes of greater gods. And as he grows in mental grasp and
makes himself the centre of his world, so does the God of Man become the
God of Nature too. The greater absorbs the lesser.
The God who cared for man, the God of his past, of his present, of his
future, is become the great God. He rules all the gods until he alone is
God.
So it seemed to the man that God arose, never out of reason, always out
of instinct. There was no difference. It is all the same story. There is
innate in all men a tendency to personify the forces they cannot
understand. Because they want an explanation, and personality is the
only one that offers at first. To attribute effects to persons is
aboriginal science. To attribute them to natural laws is later science.
Each is the answer to the same question. Men personify forces in
different ways according to their mental and emotional stature, to their
capacity for generalising. They express their ideas in different ways
according to their race and their country. The Hindu began with a god in
each force, to represent each idea, and so the lower people still
remain, afraid of many gods. But those of mental stature gradually
generalised, till at last they came to one God, Brahm, and the lesser
gods as emanating from him. This was a hierarchy; and then finally the
greatest thinkers came to one God only, and the idea that the lesser
gods are but representatives of His manifold nature. You can see all the
stages before you now. It is simply a question of brain power, and the
sequence remains the same. First the lesser, then the greater. It is
never the other way on.
So does Christian mythology personify three ideas of God, as a Trinity,
as three Persons in One, and a Devil. The Hindu would express such a
conception of God by a god with three heads. Christianity, rejecting
such crude symbolism, does so by a mystical creed. The Devil is being
dropped. But the Jew and the Mahommedan have only one God. All force
emanates from Him. He is the Cause of all things. He is One.
And yet it is not a reasoned answer, but an instinctive one. The savage,
no more than the Christian, does not reason out his God. The feeling,
the understanding of God is innate, abiding--never the result of a
mental process. The idea of God is a thing in itself; it grows with the
brain, but it is not the result of any process of the brain; just as a
forest tree grows the greater in richer soil.
As the idea of gods increased in majesty, as the numbers decreased and
became merged in three, in two, or in one, so did their power increase.
The gods were at first but local, local to the place, local to the
tribe. So was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was jealous of
the other gods. And gradually their local god or gods grew into the God
of the whole world. It was only a question of mental development, of the
power of generalisation in conception. Man conceived a ruler of the
world in the Roman Emperor before he conceived an all-powerful God. The
man as he meditated, as he watched, would see the stages before his
eyes. There was the savage, the Kurumba and Moopa with his many gods in
the hills all about; there were the Hindus, the traders whose temples
shewed white in the groves beneath, many steps higher in civilisation
with their supreme Brahm and minor gods emanating from him; there was
the Moslem with his "God is God." He had the stages before his eyes.
Therefore when he came to consider this question of God he found in
God-worship in Hinduism, Parseeism, Mahommedanism, Judaism,
Christianity, no differing conception. They held all the same idea in
different shapes. There was nothing new. God, one or multiple, made the
world according to His own good pleasure, ruled it according to His
will. The savage knew most of God, because his god was but a man
enlarged and the nearer to him for that. With greater contemplation the
crudities have been removed, the manlike qualities disappear one by one,
until with the few greatest thinkers they are all gone. God has become a
"Spirit," an abstraction, an unthinkable, incomprehensible God that is
of no use to anyone; for He cannot be influenced by prayer, He has no
passions to be roused, He has become lost in the heavens, an inscrutable
force. Such was the evolution of God.
Only when he came to Buddhism was there a new thing. He found no longer
God or gods, but Law. That was indeed new, that was indeed very
different from the other faiths. The world came into being under Law, it
progressed under Law, it would end, if it ever did end, under Law. And
this Law was unchanged, unchangeable for ever. Let me consider, he said,
these two conceptions, Personality and Law.
What is this world to the Buddhist? It is a place that has evolved and
is evolving under Law. He does not speak of God creating one thing or
another, but of a sequence of events. The Buddhist was Darwin two
thousand years before Darwin. He saw the rule of Law long before our
scientific men found it in the stars. I do not think it is so easy to
follow the origin of this idea as it is of the idea of God. With the
latter we have the stages before our eyes, but how the Buddhist idea of
law arose we can only conjecture. It is not, I think, an instinct like
the knowledge of God. It is more of a mental process, like the reasoning
of science. It is a negation as opposed to an assertion. It is the
negative pole. It must surely have arisen like modern science from the
observation of facts. I do not say that the idea of law is absent from
other faiths. You see it in the Commandments. Certain sequences were
recognised, but with Judaism they were ascribed to the order of a
Personality. Buddhism, like science, knows of no Personality. The laws
of a Theocracy were always liable to change and correction. The laws of
the Buddhist are inviolable. The Christian thinks laws can be violated,
the Buddhist knows they are inviolable.
You cannot break a law. It is true that many declare otherwise, that
Charles Kingsley in a famous lecture declared you could break the law of
gravity. "The law is," says he, "that a stone should fall to the earth;
but by stretching out your hand you can prevent the stone falling. Thus
you can break the law." So argued Charles Kingsley, so think mistily
many men because they have never troubled to define the words they use.
There is no law that a stone should fall to the earth. The law of
gravity is that bodies attract each other directly as their mass, and
inversely as the square of the distance. You do not break this law by
holding a stone in your hand. Nay, you can feel it acting all the time
you do so. You cannot break this law. You cannot break any law. Law is
another word for the inevitable. Whom did the Greeks put above all the
gods? It was [Greek: anachke], Necessity. Did, then, the Greeks see that
behind all their personification of forces Law ruled? It may be so. They
have the two ideas, God and Law. It is perhaps the old battle of free
will and destination. And which is true? To the Greek Necessity was
behind God, to the Theist God is behind Law. The laws are but His
orders. He can break them and change them and modify them. And yet, it
is so hard to see clearly how Theists can avoid the difficulty. If God's
laws are perfect truths they cannot be alterable. Only the imperfect
would be changed. Yet if God's laws are perfect, is not He, too, bound
by them? And if He be bound, is not His free will, His omnipotence
limited? Surely God cannot transgress His own laws of righteousness; is
there not "necessity" to Him too? But if this be so, then where is the
need of any knowledge beyond the knowledge of law? If it be indeed
eternal, as the Buddhists say, what need for more? In the science of
nature we need not go beyond, we cannot. In the science of man, who is
but part of nature, why should we do so? Is it not better, truer, more
beautiful to believe in everlasting laws of righteousness that rule the
world than to believe that a Personality has to be always arranging and
interfering? Would we not in a state prefer perfect laws to a perfect
king, who, however, was imperfect in this that his laws were imperfect
and had to be checked in their working? Which is the more perfect
conception? Surely that of law. If crime and ignorance, if mistake and
waywardness brought always inevitably their due punishment and
correction, where is a ruler needed? It is imperfection that requires
changing.
CHAPTER IX.
GOD AND LAW.
Think what a difference, what an immense difference, it makes to a man
which he believes, how utterly it alters all his attitude to the
Unknown, to the Infinite, whether he believes in God or in Law. For
among all religions, all faiths, all theories of the unknown there are
only these two ideas, Personality or Law, free will or inevitableness.
And how different they are.
In the face of eternity there are two attitudes: that of the Theist,
whether Christian or Jew, Hindu or spirit worshipper; and that of the
Buddhist, the believer in Law. To the believer in God or in gods, what
is the world and what is man? They are playthings in the hands of the
Almighty. God is responsible to no one, He knows no right and wrong, no
necessity beyond Himself, all He does must be right. He is All-powerful.
Man must crouch before Him in fear. If man suffer he must not cry out
against God; he must say in due submissiveness, "Thy will be done." A
man must even be thankful that matters are not worse. If in a shipwreck
many are drowned and few, bereft of all but life, are hardly saved, what
must they do? They must render thanks to God that He didn't drown them
too. Not because they are aware of being punished for any sin, that does
not come to man in calamity. You cannot imagine a common sin that
engulphs men and women, children and babes, from all countries, of all
professions, of many religions, in one common disaster. No! God can be
bribed, not with presents perhaps now, but with reverence. It is the
cringe that deprecates uncontrollable Power. It is the same feeling that
makes the savage lay a fruit or a flower before the Spirit of the Hills
lest he too be killed by the falling rocks.
For what do men imagine God to be? Do you think that each man holds one
wonderful conception of God? Not so. The civilised man's idea of God is
as the savage idea. Each man builds to himself his own God, out of his
ideals, civilised or savage. Truly, if you ask a man to tell you his
idea of God he will answer you vaguely out of his creeds or sacred
books; but if you watch that man's actions towards God, you will soon
discover that his God is but his ideal man glorified.
To a tender woman her God is but the extreme of the tenderness, the
beauty, the compassion which she feels, and the narrowness which she has
but does not realise. And cannot you see in your mind's eye the German
Emperor's God clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a German
pickelhaube and swearing German oaths? Man's God is but what he admires
most in himself. He can be propitiated, he can be bribed. The savage
does it with a bowl of milk or a honey cake, the mediaeval man did it
with a chapel or a painted window. You say this idea has ceased. Have
you ever prayed to God and said, "Spare me this time and I will be good
in future. I will do this. I will do that." Or, more beautifully, "Spare
him that I love and let the punishment fall on me. Let me bear his
sins." Is not the very idea of atonement expressed by Christ's life? A
price has to be paid to God. He must be bought off. Man's attitude
before God must be that of the child, submissive with downcast eyes,
full of praise, never daring to blame. "Tell me and I will obey, do not
punish me or I perish." Then there is the attitude of the believer in
eternal law. For him the world holds no caprice, no leaning to one side
or another, no revenge, no mercy. Each act carries with it an inevitable
result: reward if the act be good, punishment if it be bad. You can
break a command of God. He may tell you to do a thing and you may
refuse. You cannot break a law. It is the inevitable, the everlasting.
You cannot rebel against law. The sin is not rebellion, but ignorance.
The attitude is not submission, but inquiry, the thirst for truth. Adam
lost Eden because he sought for the knowledge of good and evil. But the
law-believer says that only in wisdom, only in truth, is there any hope.
He stands before the eternal verities with clear eyes to see them, with
a strong heart to bear what his ignorance may make him suffer. Out of
his pain he will learn the sequences of life. He has gained much.
What has he lost? Are not mercy and fatherly care, forgiveness and love,
beautiful things? Yet they, too, are of God. If you know not of Him,
only of Law, have you not lost out of your life some of the greatest
thoughts? How will you comfort your heart when it is sore if you have
not God? Is prayer nothing?
Truly, said the man, these are beautiful things. If I could have them
alone. But I cannot. I fear the other qualities more than I love these.
I would have neither. I would be a man and live under Law. It seems to
me enough. If Law be absolute I see no room for God.
Over against him were the long ridges of the hills where the rain-clouds
gathered from the south. He saw them come in great masses surging up the
valleys and hiding the contours of the hills. The lightning flashed
across the peaks and the thunder echoed in long-drawn trumpet blasts.
"The savage," he said, "saw there only gods warring with one another.
Now with wiser eyes we see the reign of Law. We do not know all the
laws; we cannot even yet tell how much rain will come, whether it will
be famine or plenty. We cannot see the Law, but we never doubt the Law
is there. With man it is the same. Births and deaths, suicides and
murders, are they too not all under Law? Why should not man's soul be so
too? Where is the need of God?"
As he came down the mountain side the rain was falling heavily, as it
can only in the tropics. The dry hollows were already streams, the
streams were foaming torrents. "They act under Law," he said. "Their
life is bounded all by Law." And then of a sudden, watching the foaming
water, he saw more clearly.
"True, the stream runs within its banks, but banks do not make the
stream. Gravity, that drags down these waters, acts in certain sequence,
but that sequence is not gravity. Gravity is a force. When we enumerate
the law we do not define, or know, or understand the force, only the way
it acts. Force is force, and law is law. They are not the same. They do
not explain each other. What a dead thing would law be that had no force
acting within it. Truly, I must see more clearly. Law does not deny
force; nay, but it predicates it--is, in fact, an outcome of it. Law is
a sequence along which force acts; neither can exist without the other.
All force is ruled by law. Yes, but what is force--what are any of the
forces that exist: gravity, and electricity, and heat, and life? Forms
of motion? May be; but whence the motion?
"Ah me!" said the man, "then am I back again at the beginning. Have I
learnt nothing? I thought law might suffice, but it will not. If law is
inevitable, then are we but helpless atoms following the stream of
necessity. Then is freewill dead. Yet there is freewill. There is force,
there is life, whence come these forces? And if one say that force is
God, what then?
"Perhaps there is this: there are two truths--there is God and there is
Law. Both are true, as there is destiny and there is freewill. But how
can that be? I see it is so, that it must be so. But how? Is it that
there are facets of some great truth behind which we can never know?"
The man was weary. "What have I gained? Only that I have a truth, which
I cannot understand, which gives me no help, or but little? Have I
gained anything to help me in life? I have gained this, perhaps, that if
Law be not a full explanation, it is true, as far as it goes; if not a
whole truth, yet it is a truth. Why go further? The scientist cares for
nothing more when he has learned the laws of gravity. He is content to
be ignorant of whence the force comes, because he can go no further. In
the battle of life is not this enough? Can we not, too, be as the
scientist, denying nothing, but searching only for that which we can
know and which will be useful to us? If force be God, yet should His
ways not be mysterious. Let us not shut our eyes and comfort ourselves
in ignorance by saying, 'There is no Law; God is inscrutable, God knows
no Law. He is inexpressible, changeable and uncertain.' But truly there
is Law. Behind the gods, behind God, there _is_ [Greek: anachke], there
is Necessity, there is an unfailing sequence of events, which is
righteousness. Let us learn then what righteousness is. Let us learn
what is true in order to do what is right."
* * * * *
But after all it is all speculation. There is no evidence. It is a
theory built on nothing. What is the value of it? Nothing at all. What
is to be gained by all this? Only barren words, finely spun theories
made of air. Where is the proof of God or of Law? There is none.
CHAPTER X.
THE WAY OF LIFE.
Perhaps it does not matter. It may be that all this speculation about
the First Cause, about the Ruling Power of the world, is unnecessary.
What matter if God be inscrutable, if He has given us commands for our
lives that are clear, if He has laid down for us His will that we should
follow. Even if Law be not a full explanation, even if a knowledge of
all Law would not mean a knowledge of everything, what would this
signify if we can see enough of the laws that govern our lives so to
order ourselves as to reach the goal? Whether the Theist be right or the
Buddhist, in his theories of the world, the main question with which we
are concerned is ourselves. Has any religion a working code of life that
is true, that is adapted to us as we are, that is not in conflict with
facts and common sense? What matters its name or its supposed origin? Is
there such a thing? So thought the man, turning from abstract ideas to
real necessities. After all, what I and all men want is not abstract
ideas, whether of God or Law, but present help and guidance. Has any God
taught any believer a perfect code of life, has any Buddhist searcher
discovered the natural Law of life? For if so I would know them. Never
mind the whence or how, give me the facts.
It seemed to him, looking back in the beginning of faiths, that morals,
that rules of life had no part there. When the Northman saw Thor in the
thunder there was no moral code there. The Greek gods were frankly not
so much immoral, which predicates a code of morals, as unmoral. They
knew of no such thing. It is the same with all the early gods, with the
Hindu gods and those of all other early beliefs. The Chin savage on the
Burmese frontier sees gods in the great peaks, but these gods demand
from him no moral observance, they impress upon him no moral standard.
All that the early gods demanded was fear, reverence, worship. Even the
Jehovah of the Jews asked at first only this. It is not till you get to
the third commandment that conduct comes in, and the moral code was
scanty. The early gods of all kinds, of all faiths, had no moral code
either for themselves or man. They demanded only obedience and fear and
worship. The moral code came later.
It seems unnecessary now to consider whence they came, how they grew,
why they became added to the worship of the gods, which was all that
early religion meant. Some of that will come elsewhere. It is immaterial
here which is only the man's search after a code, any code that would
act. For it remains that all faiths when once they had left the
elementary stage did add a code of conduct as part of their religion,
saying it came from God, or was an immutable law, and tried to induce
men to follow it by declaring that it alone would lead to happiness
hereafter. All the greater faiths have these codes. "And I," said the
man to himself as he searched, "I care nothing whence the code is
supposed to have come, truly or falsely, as long as I find it. I want a
guide to life as it is. Has any faith such a guide? For each declare
that it alone has. Show me these rules to life."
The books showed him. They showed him codes of all degrees, from the
simplest to the most complex, from the plain cult of courage, the very
first and most necessary of all virtues, to the immensely complicated
code of observances of the Brahmin; and outside religions there were the
philosophies of Greece and Rome, of India and China, of Persia and
Germany, and Scotland.
Now should man so order his life as to live righteously here, and to be
of good repute before man and his own conscience? How shall a man so
form himself here that if indeed there be a life hereafter he may enter
it without fear? What are these codes?
It seemed to him that there ran in some ways a great sameness through
the creeds, that up to a certain stage they differed but little. Courage
against the foe, courage to face suffering, truth and honesty, and later
mercy and compassion, charity of act and thought, courtesy and beauty of
mind; these were the additions the faiths made, little by little, to the
ground-work of reverence of the gods. And so they grew, adding bit by
bit, as civilisation increased and necessity dictated. They added many
of them sanitary rules, observances for washing, for cooking, for
choosing food, incorporating with religion whatever practice found
useful, and thereby giving a sanctity which it would otherwise have
lacked. Sometimes rules were added to preserve the race pure, as with
the Jews or the Hindus, evolving in the latter religion into the vast
system of caste that separates the different races, all of whom call
themselves Hindus. With the two faiths as just mentioned the tendency
was to narrowness and restriction, to the exclusion of other races; with
others, such as the Mahommedan and Buddhist, it was to expansion, to the
acceptance of other peoples, until at last some great Prophet arose to
give coherence and form to the whole and include it in the sacred books.
So arose the codes, the man thought. But this hardly matters. What are
the codes?
It seemed to him that out of all the faiths only two held codes that
rose much above the level of savage conduct. We cannot go back to the
codes of Moses or Mahommed; we cannot accept the narrow racial
limitations of Hinduism; we have outgrown the simple ethics of Zoroaster
and the Egyptians. The teachings of Confucius and Laotze are strange to
us, and the philosophies, if they seem clear, are so singularly
unconvincing. They lack so greatly all that appeals to mankind; they are
so much codes in the head and not for the heart; they are as
mathematical drawings compared to a work of art; they do not ring true.
And so there were quickly left for him only two, the codes of Christ and
of Buddha, the examples of the two greatest prophets the world has
known.
And between the teachings of the great Teacher who lived two thousand
and five hundred years ago, and that of the man God of the Christians
six hundred years later, what difference is there? They start from
different beginnings, they work towards perhaps different ends; but in
the methods, in the rules of life, what difference is there? That which
was taught by the sea of Galilee is but the echo of the words spoken
long before below the Himalayan Hills. They are the same, read them. The
two greatest faiths the world has known, the two greatest teachers that
ever came to man to help him in his need, have brought him the same
message. Believe not in the world, believe not in wealth, in power, in
greatness, in strength. These are not what man should seek. Nay, but
leave the world behind you because it is all evil, all very evil.
Nothing of this world is of any value. In a man's heart is his greatest
treasure. Make therefore your heart pure from the world. Leave it all
and turn to God, to righteousness. Cultivate your own soul apart from
all the pleasures of life. The other world can be gained only by
abjuring this. Wealth and honour and ambition, all the glories of the
world, are but traps to catch you. Even the loves we love are wrong. The
Buddha left his wife and child. The Christ never married, and denied
even his mother any love beyond that of a disciple. It is all the same.
Their lives, their teachings are the same.
The man sighed as he read. Surely, he said, these are hard things to
believe, that the world is evil. No, but it is not evil. That a man can
only fit himself for heaven by being unfit for earth. I cannot believe
this. I have not changed since I thought this over as a boy. This is not
a true code, not a true rule, not a true faith, whether Christian or
Buddhist. I did not believe then, a boy; I do not believe now, a man.
The world is not evil. There is evil there, but so much of good. There
are stains there truly, but so much of beauty. Do you think I can watch
the sun rise, the daily marvel which is beyond words, and hate the
world? Can I see the man I love, the men who have helped me, who have
been with me, the men who are my friends, and say that they are of a
world that is evil? And the women, the girls, the children, are their
lives for us nothing? Are they of a world that we must abjure? It is
never so. Truly, there are in these teachings, whether of the Christ or
of the Buddha, much that is of beauty, much, so much that touches our
hearts, I had at times fain believe. But I find in the world beauty
also, beauty that comes as near, that comes nearer than they do. When a
man is honest and honourable and true, and rises to great position, to
be spoken well of by all men, is that an evil thing? Is the wealth that
comes of the keen brain, the strong will, a calamity? Are our loves, our
hopes, our fears but evil? Yet they are of the world. Beautiful as is
the teaching, there are in the world things far more beautiful. I will
never believe, never, that the world and flesh are partners to the
Devil. I will never believe that.
"And more," said the man slowly. "No one ever does believe it--none but
a very few. The world has rejected it always; not from wickedness, but
because the teaching is never true. They do not acknowledge their
disbelief. No! The Christians and the Buddhists maintain their faith by
words. But in secret, in their own hearts, before the world, in the
action of their own hands, have they ever acknowledged these beliefs?"
Neither the Christ nor the Buddha are the models men follow, because men
are sure that, though there be truth in their teachings yet it is not
all the truth, though there be beauty yet are there other beauties as
great, nay greater than these. The world is never evil, and if it were,
to follow these doctrines would not be the way to make it better.
Then the man turned from his books again to the world beneath him, he
came to reality from dreams. I have learnt nothing? No, but I have
learnt something. I have learned what I have yet to learn. And I have
learned more. I know why I disbelieve, because I love the world as it
is, and because I will never believe that what calls to my heart from
there is wrong. The beauty of things is the truth of things. And in
truth and beauty is the voice of God as surely, nay more surely than in
the voice of any prophet of two thousand years ago.
CHAPTER XI.
HEAVEN.
"I am not getting on very well," he thought. "I have looked for three
things, and two I am sure I have not found. I have found nowhere any
explanation of the Universe, of the First Cause; I have found nowhere
any true rule of life. Yet these are two of the three 'truths' that the
faiths offer to me as inducements to believe. 'We will give you,' they
say, 'a theory of this world and of its origin which is true, which will
help you in this life because it will show you what you are and the
world is, and whence you came. We will give you through this troublous
life a guide that will never fail you, a staff that will never break.
And finally, if you believe, you shall attain after death the happiness
that is without end.'"
So they promise, and of their promises I have tried two. Have I found
that they give what they declare? Is there anywhere any belief of the
First Cause that is true, that is the whole truth? There is none. And is
there any guide to life that can be followed in sincerity and truth?
There is none. There remains only heaven. There remains only the bribe,
the promise of happiness, if we will believe as they declare, if we will
do as they say.
It may be that here is the secret, that I shall come now to the answer;
it may be that this is the key to all. If there is in the heaven they
promise us such a fulfilment of glory, such an appeal to our hearts that
they cannot but answer, what matter the rest? Happiness is our end in
life. For what do we strive all our days but for happiness, for truth,
for joy, for the beauty of life? What matter that in the theory of the
First Cause we can see no truth, that in the rule of life I can find
only a contradiction of beauty, if in the end in heaven these are
attained? The end, if the end be perfect, will reveal the truth and the
beauty in the ways that are now hid. What is this heaven?
When we think of heaven, when with our eyes shut we try to recall all
they have taught us of the Christian heaven, what are the images that
come up? It seems as if we went back all those years to when we were
little lads beside our mothers, and as the fire flickered across the
unlit room, full of strange shadows, we said our childish prayers and
leant our heads heavy with sleep upon her knee. It is our mothers that
tell us of the heaven, whither they would that we should go, that urge
us with imaginings of beauty to come to be "good." It is a childish
heaven of which we learn, a heaven full of girl angels with white wings
and floating dresses, of golden harps, of pearly gates, of everlasting
song. There are, I think, no men there, only girls; no sheep, but fleecy
lambs. It is a heaven that appeals only to them. And is it very
different when we grow up? Indeed I think not. It is the same heaven
always, the same conception full of childish things. Did you ever hear a
sermon on the heaven, did you ever read a book, did you ever listen to a
discourse that did not take you back again in memory to that far-off
fire-lightened room of childhood? Surely there is nothing in all the
world so babyish as the general idea of the Christian heaven. Can you
imagine a _man_ there, a man with great deep voice and passion-laden
eyes, a man with the storms of life still beating on his soul amid these
baby faces and white wings? "Ah," said the man, "they must make us into
infants that we may enter their heaven. When I revolted against it as a
boy as but a kindergarten, without even the distraction of being put in
the corner, was I wrong?"
May be, for there are things beyond this. "In my Father's house are many
mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." "Eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." "The
peace of God which passeth all understanding." "Where God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes." These are not childish things.
Happiness that hath no sorrow, light that knows no shadow, glory that
never ends.
I read a book long ago; I have forgotten the name of it, I have
forgotten who wrote it, and I remember that at the time I did not
understand it. The book was on the subject of perfect happiness, on
heaven, which is postulated as the ideal peace. And what this book tried
to show--what, indeed, it showed, I think--was that happiness if
_perfect_ was near akin to annihilation. The argument ran something like
this. "You are happy in some particular employment, say in singing a
hymn, in some particular attitude, let us say in kneeling. If your
happiness in this act and attitude is perfect, they will endure for
ever. You will pass eternity kneeling and singing the same hymn. For
consider, Why do you ever change your acts, your attitudes? Because a
particular act or a certain attitude has become wearisome. But if it be
stated that your happiness is _perfect_ you can never feel satiety,
never feel any desire for change. The wish for change is born of the
feeling of wearisomeness. You have had enough of one thing, you want
another. But if you are perfectly happy this cannot be. Life would
become a monotony, a satiety near akin to death. And if indeed peace be
the highest happiness, then would this perfect peace be so near
annihilation that the difference would only lie in that your
consciousness of happiness still remained." Thus did this writer show
that if the Christian heaven be as declared, _perfect_ happiness, so it
must be almost indistinguishable from death.
I do not think this writer had ever read of the Buddhist Nirvana, I do
not remember that he ever even alluded to it. He was thinking of the
Christian heaven and trying to make out what it was like, and that was
what he found. He, taking the Christian ideal and working it to its
inevitable conclusion, arrived at the same result as Buddhist teachers
starting from such widely different premises have arrived at: the
Christian heaven and the Buddhist peace are the same.
Readers of my former work, "The Soul of a People," will remember how the
Buddhists arrive at Nirvana. It is the "Great Peace." Life is the
enemy. Life is change, and change is misery. The ideal is to have done
with life, to be steeped in the Great Peace. Thus do the purer ideas of
the Christian heaven and the Buddhist heaven agree. It is the "Peace
that passeth all understanding" for each.
And yet perfect happiness, sleep without waking, light without shadow,
joy without sorrow, gaiety without eclipse. Can this ever be heaven? Let
us look back on our lives, we who have lived, and let us think. Let us
close our eyes that the past may come before us and we may remember.
What are the most beautiful memories that come before us, that make our
hearts beat again with the greatest music they have known, that bring
again to our eyes the tears that are the water of the well of God? What
have been the greatest emotions of our lives? There has been struggle
and effort, unceasing effort, crowned maybe with success, but maybe not,
effort that we know has brought out all that is best in us, that we
rejoice to remember. There will be no effort in heaven, only rest; there
is no defeat, and therefore no victory, only peace. Therefore also,
because we can have no enemies there we shall have no friends. Our
friends! How we can remember them. We have loved them because we have
hated others. But in heaven there is no hate, only an equality of
indifference. Heaven is nothing but joy. But consider, has joy been the
most beautiful thing in your life, is it joy that sounded the deepest
harmonies? Remember how you have stood upon that faraway hillside and
laid to rest your comrade beneath the forest shadows? Was it not
beautiful what your heart sang to you while you said "Farewell," and
tears came to your eyes? There are no farewells in heaven.
There are women you have loved, women whose eyes have grown large and
soft as you have spoken to them in the dusk of evenings long ago. You
have loved them because they were women. What will they be in heaven?
And the children! Think of that childless heaven. Think of the children
who laugh and play, and come to you to laugh with them, who cry and come
to you for comfort. They will require no comfort from you in heaven, and
how much will you lose? The child angels are never naughty. They can
never come to you and hide their heads upon your shoulder and say "I was
wrong. I am very sorry. Please forgive me." None of these notes shall
ever sound in heaven. There are no tears there. But do you not know
that the greater beauties can only be seen through tears, which are
their dew?
What is it that sounds the deeper notes of our lives? Is it sunshine,
happiness, gaiety? Is it any attribute of the heavens of the religions?
Surely it is never so. It is the troubles of life, the mistakes, the
sorrows, the sin, the shadow mysteries of the world, that sound in our
hearts the greater strings.
And are these to be mute in your heavens? Are we to fall to lesser notes
of eternal praise, of eternal thanksgiving? Prophets of the faiths, what
are these heavens of yours? Is there in them anything to draw our
hearts? Have you pointed to us what we really would have? Your sacred
books are full of your descriptions, of your enticements; you have
beggared all the languages in words to describe what you would have us
long for. And what have you gained? Is there any one man, one woman, one
child, not steeped in the uttermost incurable disease, in feeble old
age, who would change the chances of his life here for any of your
heavens? There is no one. Or if you were to say to a man, "Choose. You
shall be young again, and strong, or you shall go to heaven." Which
would he choose? Therefore, ye teachers of the faiths, are your promises
vain. I do not believe in nor do I fear your hells, those crude places
of fire and pitch and little black devils. I care not for your heavens;
I would not go there, not to any of them, neither to the happy hunting
ground, nor to heaven, nor to the garden of the Houris nor to Nirvana,
_not if they be as you tell me they are_. Nor do I want to merge my
identity in the Infinite. This life is good enough for me, while I
retain health and strength. I am not tempted. Nor is anyone tempted.
Whom have you persuaded? You know that you have enticed no one. No one
is deceived. Men will die for many things, they will leap to accept
death--but not for your heavens. All men _fear_ death and what is
beyond, the righteous who you say have earned heaven no less than the
unrighteous. All faiths have had their martyrs, but that is different.
They have died to preserve their souls, as soldiers die to preserve
their honour, gladly. Even the godly do not believe. They will have
nothing of your heavens. I cannot understand how either Christian or
Buddhist came to imagine such unattractive, unreasonable heavens.
And so they have all failed. No religion gives us an intelligible First
Cause, no religion gives us a code of conduct we can follow, no
religion offers us a heaven we would care to attain.
There are many definitions of religion. I have written some on my first
page. It will be seen that they all hinge on one of these ideas, either
that religion is a theory of causation, or it is a code of conduct, or
that it is concerned with future rewards and punishments.
But if indeed religion have any or all of these meanings, then is
religion false, then are all religions false. And more, no one who
thinks over the subject, no one who takes it seriously would believe any
one of them, could take any as a satisfactory explanation. No one
accepts any code of religious conduct as absolutely workable, no one is
attracted by their heavens. I am sure of these things.
Then shall I sit down with Omar Khayyam and say:--
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went."
Shall I say all religion is but windy theory and no one cares for it?
Neither do I.
The man put down his books and laughed. No one believes? But every man
believes, or would like to believe. Every man is at heart more or less
religious. I see that in daily life as I go. Why? Why? What is it he
finds? I will not give up. I will not come out at that same door. I will
try again in a new line. I must be on the wrong road. Let me try back
and consider. What is it in religion that we see and love and feel is
true? Who are the people that we would be like? Is it the scientific
theologian with his word-confusion about homoiousios? Is it the Hindu
sophist making theories of Brahm? Is it the Buddhist word-refiner
speculating on Karma? Surely it is not any of these people. It is the
street preacher crying to the crowd, "Come and be saved"; it is the
peasant with bowed head in the sunset listening to the Angelus; it is
the priest in his livelong lonely exile. These _are_ Christians, and
their thoughts are the religion worth knowing. It is they who are near
God. I care not for the intricate intellectual mazes a Hindu can make
with his brain, but I care for the coolie. I can see him now, putting
his little ghi before the god, giving out of his poverty to the
mendicant. It is he who knows God, even if his God be but the God of the
hill above him. And it is the woman crying at the pagoda foot for
succour; it is the reverent crowds that look upon the pagoda while their
eyes fill with tears; it is the Buddhist monk, far away beneath the
hills, living his life of purity and example that I reverence. They
_have_ religion. I will go to them and ask them what it is. I am sure it
is not what the theologians of all creeds have told me. What do these
poor know of thought and speculation? They do not think, they _know_.
What is it that they know? Not certainly what the professional divines
tell me.
I do not believe these thinkers or their thoughts. If I believed that
what they say is religion--is, in fact, so--I would have done with it.
That is where most men end. They ask the divines what religion is. The
divines produce their theories and creeds. The enquirer looks and
examines and reflects. For he says, "If the professional men don't know
what their own faith is, who does?" But I will not end so. I _will_ know
wherein the truth of religion lies. I will now go to those who know,
because they _know_, not because they think. My books shall be the
hearts of men.
PART II.