THE whole Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent
necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature,
and shielding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the
key-note of the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with
its thousand intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator,
the man Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite
mouthpiece, whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the
face of God, lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity,
have been the men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze
straight up into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that
intervened between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it,
as one of them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to
fall on the naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him
who had called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands
to the Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they
would have been the very first to protest against, and have been made
into mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those
who dared not seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the
braver souls, who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between
their brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of
demonstrating the radical errors from which spring all the so-called
"schemes of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting
from the Christian hypothesis.
We will admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we
may thus see the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between
God and man is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that
is wrong in principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special
manifestation of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother,
saint, angel, or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright
as human beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we
refuse to have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.
We will take mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if
Jesus were really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting
that the coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result
of the love of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_God_ so loved the
world that _He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the
world is, then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator
for the work of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the
bosom of the Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time.
But now a startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has
"atoned for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood
of his cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator
for men. What does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply?
Only this--_a complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_.
After the yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute
sacrifice to win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His
children at His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in
the future; human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with
tears. He turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He
refuses to clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so
long, unless they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor,
and come armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a
procedure must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for
one absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one
difficulty, they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from
the first. So they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to
forgive and welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in
opposition to the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any
favour to the sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the
utmost. A Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing
before the Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice
clamours for punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified
and placed in opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled.
But when we remember that each personified quality is really but a
portion, so to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is
divided against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the
harmonious mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It
sees warring elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures
successive waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it
imagines clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that
unchanging Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as
realised by the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first
by one motive and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point
unwaveringly in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same
as perfect mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe
would be in confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that
could be inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled
mercy, which is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human
infirmity which men have transferred to their idea of God.
A man who has announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out
of his resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's
innocence, new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may
have been over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator
may indeed step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the
Eternal Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God?
Can His knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be
swayed by prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?
But if His judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection,
and all left for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change,
_i.e._, to become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall
be punished, the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's
feelings that He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets
it go unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish
the erring child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He
is just He is most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty
of the due punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the
sinner! and no mediator--thanks be to God for it!--shall ever cause to
waver for one instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of
Humanity.
But the theory we are considering has another fatal error in it:
it ascribes imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as
desiring to forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or
wrong. If it be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice
opposes this forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly
right. Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is
perfect--as He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly
perfect, and its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could
happen to His whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier
of right--and Justice _is_ right--interposed between God and His desire,
then His Will is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose
between admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or
detracting from the Eternal Perfection.
It is obvious that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the
moment, the Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea
of mediation. That the mediator should be God is totally beside the
question, and in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity
does nothing more than introduce a new element of confusion into the
affair; for we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is
One, even according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged
from sinners, pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God
pleads to Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to
another--but we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed
which compels its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their
Maker! which babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces
its foolish contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his
mediation is at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will
is the will of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who
wills to welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and
embrace, what further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus
is one with God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of
sinners, and the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to
the friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you
and Jesus; and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This
reasoning is irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to
their mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly
derogate from his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive
those whom Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this
difference between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that
he is distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God.
It is the proper perception of this fact which has introduced into
the Roman Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly
implored. Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother,
his apostles, some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a
Roman Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted
by the most orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus
by the Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by
the orthodox, in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost
farthing; and Mary is represented as standing between him and the
sinners for whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the
idea which makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the
deification of Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps
the deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to
approach _her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of
men, as the Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this
superstition of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected
by all earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching
for the living God.
We see, then, that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change
in the supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence
in the justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into
consideration the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied
in man's endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal
Father. As we study Nature and try to discover from its workings
something of the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only
a ruling Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads
in an adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses
of a ruling Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a
glad relief from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in
on every side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power
which works in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of
that feeling of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for
a mediator. For being placed here without our request, and even without
our consent, we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to
demand that the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means
by which we can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a
_conscious_ Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible;
but those who believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is
responsible for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to
say thus is to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous
irreverence, I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe
to the Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they
themselves would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and
that they who fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not
bow the knee before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge,
were it not that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure.
All good in man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from
the pure depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on
earth is a pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal
Father-Heart. Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease
beating; they fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false.
When will they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which
encircles the universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite
because God is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which
it can be said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love
does not rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the
Life-Giver and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is
not cradled in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in
between man and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason
and the Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent
absurdity. Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most
sacred concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His
offspring; between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever
it may be, saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of
Nazareth, let him come down from a position which none can rightly hold.
To elevate the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make
him into an offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn
into anger, and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in
talking about the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God,
we must remind them that, if there be a God at all, He _must_ be just,
and that, therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin
to babble about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must
ask them what in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely
they do not think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and
jealous of His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any
sense, the Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and
revengeful Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never--I assert
boldly--have caught the smallest glimpse of _God_. They may have seen
a "magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never
prostrated themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this
vast universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so
great. How _can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands
go back on the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are
but the natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable
in their action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law
results in happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression
of law is not inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural
outcome of the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no
mediator can save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you,
and then cast yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come
between you and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if
we studied laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of
going blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will
interpose to shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity.
Happily for mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of
law in which we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that
their happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at
last be some chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will
work for things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical
importance that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed,
because on it hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do
our own work. This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and
it has failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has
not succeeded in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to
bring salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also
the more hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own
salvation. For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none
can stay the action of the eternal law which links sorrow with
transgression, and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on
our path upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness
as we list, but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be
recovered, and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for
there is none who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built
up for himself, or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed
his road.
Does the sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and
whimper out that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold
of the bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by
hot-houses and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness
of changeless law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's
breadth. But in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him
submit to the laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's
force; conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your
side; "humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the
Universal Law, "and He shall lift you up."
So much for mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study
the Christian idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us
God, however it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us
altogether out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between
themselves and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them;
they must push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too,
through whom all His benefits shall filter.
"Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it
bears a very definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from
the power of sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save
from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that
there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive.
But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the
salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from
sin, but "because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath
of God." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the
antithesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the
antithesis of damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that
Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the
nobleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this
is _not_ the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word
"salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of
the living God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is
so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of
conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being
hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful
flames of the destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in
an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate
protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which
is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no
language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea
that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here;
we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which
offers to take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between
our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us
salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of
His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's
heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies
to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these
suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the
Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and
childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to
refute.
"Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e passo."
But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they
cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample
down these superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth
refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in
no wisdom that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written
on our hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are
conscious that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink
from it. To fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last
thing we should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who
should bear our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson,
turn us into spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer
as this, could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal.
We should trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a
humility so profound, that if we could change His laws we should not
dare to interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to
complain of it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in
steadfast obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should
desire to fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into
the hands of God.
Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus
all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they
say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were
this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving
Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true
description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's
wife, we would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths
of His hell rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would
mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at
their despair. Were it thus indeed--
"O King of our salvation,
Many would curse to thee, and I for one!
Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy damnation,
Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun.
"Is it not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian
writer, "if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer
everlasting torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth
while_; it is not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as
true that which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is
not worth while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty
to escape a hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or
bend our heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with
everlasting burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie,
truth, and cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to
suffer in hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy
while others suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could
sing alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed
by the anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself--were He such as
Christians paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth,
of righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_,
and we can suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these
as the price of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as
we paced the golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river
of the water of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians
offer us in the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to
us as the gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we
reject, wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of
our glad hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a
stern and bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in
the name of the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is
holy, and just, and loving.
But happily many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from
this idea of salvation from the God in whom they say they place all
their hopes. They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they
prefer not to speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and
is moulding the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its
own cruel side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not
yet spread, does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain,
in Mexico, we see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is
too strong for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The
old wine is being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We
may, however, rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to
prevail, and are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His
revenge. The Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine
out from His world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts
about Him are fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever,
and when men perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly
and horrible must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular
Christian ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the
limbo of rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already
dead, and their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass
the souls of living men.