I found Father Payne one morning reading a letter with knitted brows.
Presently he cast it down on the table with a gesture of annoyance. "What a
fool one is to argue!" he said--and then stopping, he said, "But you wanted
something--what is it?" It was a question about some books which was soon
answered. Then he said: "Stay a few minutes, won't you, unless you are
pressed? I have got a tiresome letter, and if you will let me pour out my
complaint to you, I shall be all right--otherwise I shall go about
grumbling and muttering all day, and inventing repartees."
I sate down in a chair. "Yes, do tell me!" I said; "I have really very
little to do this morning, but finish up a bit of work."
He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. "I expect you ought to be at
work," he said, "and if I were conscientious, I should send you away--but
this is rather interesting, I think."
He meditated for a moment, and then went on. "It's this! I have got
involved in an argument with an old friend of mine who is a stiff sort of
High-Churchman--a parson. It's about religion, too, and it's no good
arguing about religion. You only confirm your adversary in his opinion. He
brings forth the bow, and makes ready the arrows within the quiver. I
needn't go into the argument. It's the old story. He objected to something
I said as 'vague,' and I was ass enough to answer him. He is one of those
people who is very strong on dogma, and treats his religion as if it were a
sort of trades' union. He thinks I am a kind of blackleg, not true to my
principles; or rather he thinks that I am not a Christian at all, and only
call myself one for the sake of the associations. Of course he triumphs
over me at every point. He is entrenched in what he calls a logical system,
and he fires off texts as if from a machine-gun. Of course my point is that
all strict denominations have got a severely logical system, but that they
can't all be sound, because they all deduce different conclusions from the
same evidence. All denominational positions are drawn up by able men, and I
imagine that an old theology like the Catholic theology is one of the most
ingenious constructions in the world from the logical point of view. But
the mischief of it all is that the data are incomplete, and many of them
are not mathematically demonstrable at all. They are all coloured by human
ideas and personalities and temperaments, and half of them are intuitions
and experiences, which vary at different times and under different
circumstances. All precise denominational systems are the outcome of the
desire for a precise certainty in the minds of business-like people--the
people who say that they wish to know exactly where they are. Now I don't
go so far as to say, or even to think, that religion will always be as
mysterious a thing as it is now. I fully expect that we shall know much
more about it some day. But we don't at present know very much about the
central things of all--the nature of God, the relation of good and evil,
life after death, human psychology. We have not reached the point of being
able definitely to identify the moral force of the world with the forces
which do not appear to be moral, but are undoubtedly, active--with
realities, that is, as we come into contact with them. There are no
scientific certainties on these points--we simply have not reached that
stage. My friend's view is that out of a certain number of denominations,
one is undoubtedly right. My view is that all are necessarily incomplete.
But the moment I say this, he says that my religion is so vague as not to
be a religion at all.
"Now my own position is this, that I think religion, by which I mean our
relation to the Power behind the world, is the most important fact in the
world, as well as the most absorbingly interesting. Whatever form of
religion I study, I seem to see the same thing going on. The saints,
however much they differ in dogma, seem to me to have a strong family
likeness. Mysticism is a very definite thing indeed, and I have never any
doubt that all mystics have the same or a very similar experience, namely,
the perception of some perfectly definite force--as real a force as
electricity, for instance--with which they are in touch. Something, which
is quite clearly there, is affecting them in a particular way.
"If you ask me what that something is, I don't know. I believe it to be a
sort of life-force, which can and does mingle itself with our own life; and
I believe that we are all affected by it, just as every drop of water on
the earth is affected by the moon's attraction--though we can measure that
effect in an ocean by observing the tides, when we can't measure it in a
basin of water. We are not all equally conscious of it, and I don't know
why that is. Sometimes I am aware of it myself, and sometimes not. But I
have had enough experience of it to feel that something is making signals
to me, affecting me, attracting me. And the reason why I am a Christian is
because in Christianity and in the teaching of Christ I feel the influence
of it in a way that I feel it nowhere else in the same degree. I feel that
Christ was closer to what I recognise as God; knew God better than anyone
that ever lived, and in a different kind of way--from inside, so to speak.
But it's a _life_ that I find in the Gospel, and not a _creed_:
and I believe that this is religion, to be somehow in touch with a higher
life and a higher sort of beauty.
"But I personally don't want this explained and defined and codified. That
seems to me only to hem it in and limit it. The moment I find it reduced to
dogma and rule, to definite channels of grace, to particular powers
entrusted to particular persons, then I begin to be stifled and, what is
worse, bored. I don't feel it to be a logical affair at all--I feel it to
be a living force, the qualities of which are virtue, beauty, peace,
enthusiasm, happiness; all the things which glow and sparkle in life, and
make me long to be different--to be stronger, wiser, more patient, more
interested, more serene. I want to share my secret with others, not to keep
it to myself. But when I argue with my friend, I don't feel it is my secret
but his, and that in his mind the force itself is missing, while a lot of
rules and logical propositions and arrangements have taken its place. It is
just as though I were in love with a girl, and were taken to task by
someone, and informed of a score of conventions which I must observe if I
wish to be considered really in love. I know what love means to me, and I
know, how I want to make love; and the same sort of thing is happening to
lovers all the world over, though they don't all make love in the same way.
You can't codify the rules of love!"
Presently he went on: "It seems to me like this--like seeing the reflection
of the moon. You may see it in the marble basin of a fountain, clear and
distinct. You may see it blurred into ripples on a wind-stirred sea. You
may see it moulded into liquid curves on a swift stream. The changing
shapes of it matter little--you are sure that it is the same thing which is
being reflected, however differently it appears. I believe that human
nature has a power of reflecting God, and the different denominations seem
to me to reflect Him in different ways, like the fountain and the stream
and the sea. But the same thing is there, though the forms seem to vary.
And therefore we must not quarrel with the different attempts to reflect
it--or even be vexed if the fountain tells the sea that it is not
reflecting the moon at all. Take my advice, my boy," he added, smiling,
"and never argue about religion--only try to make your own spirit as calm
and true as you can!"