DRURY LANE THEOLOGY
SUCH were some of our disciples. I do not think that church or chapel
would have done them much good. Preachers are like unskilled doctors
with the same pill and draught for every complaint. They do not know
where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which robs us of
life. If any of these persons just described had gone to church or
chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set topics, none of
which would have concerned them. Their trouble was not the forgiveness
of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the personality of the Holy Ghost, or
the doctrine of the Eucharist. They all _wanted_ something distinctly.
They had great gaping needs which they longed to satisfy, intensely
practical and special. Some of these necessities no words could in any
way meet. It was obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken
away from his gallery and his copying if he was to live—at least in
sanity. He had fortunately learned shorthand, and M’Kay got him
employment on a newspaper. His knowledge of his art was by no means
perfect at first, but he was sent to attend meetings where _verbatim_
reports were not necessary, and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we
tried to remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an
out-of-doors porter. The poor man was now at least in the open air, and
freed from insolent tyranny. This, however, was help such as anybody
might have given. The question of most importance is, What gospel had we
to give? Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday? What was our
justification? In the first place, there was the simple quietude. The
retreat from the streets and from miserable cares into a place where
there was peace and room for reflection was something. It is all very
well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff at religious
services. To the poor the cathedral or the church might be an immense
benefit, if only for the reason that they present a barrier to worldly
noise, and are a distinct invitation by architecture and symbolic
decoration to meditation on something beyond the business which presses
on them during the week. Poor people frequently cannot read for want of
a place in which to read. Moreover, they require to be provoked by a
stronger stimulus than that of a book. They willingly hear a man talk if
he has anything to say, when they would not care to look at what he said
if it were printed. But to come more closely to the point. Our main
object was to create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even
some joy in it. That was our religion; that was the central thought of
all we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything. We
admitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, and everything
which did help us. Our attempts, to any one who had not the key, may
have seemed vague and desultory. We might by a stranger have been
accused of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in this subject and
now in that, but after a while he would have found that though we were
weak creatures, with no pretence to special knowledge in any subject, we
at least knew what we meant, and tried to accomplish it. For my own
part, I was happy when I had struck that path. I felt as if somehow,
after many errors, I had once more gained a road, a religion in fact, and
one which essentially was not new but old, the religion of the
Reconciliation, the reconciliation of man with God; differing from the
current creed in so far as I did not lay stress upon sin as the cause of
estrangement, but yet agreeing with it in making it my duty of duties to
suppress revolt, and to submit calmly and sometimes cheerfully to the
Creator. This surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning
of all the forms of worship which we have seen in the world. Pain and
death are nothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed
scepticism, and even insurrection by them, ever since men came into
being. Always, however, have the majority, the vast majority of the
race, felt instinctively that in this scepticism and insurrection they
could not abide, and they have struggled more or less blindly after
explanation; determined not to desist till they had found it, and
reaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes irrational and absurd
to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to the thoughtful.
I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason why all great religions
should be treated with respect, and in a certain sense preserved. It is
nothing less than a wicked waste of accumulated human strivings to sneer
them out of existence. They will be found, every one of them, to have
incarnated certain vital doctrines which it has cost centuries of toil
and devotion properly to appreciate. Especially is this true of the
Catholic faith, and if it were worth while, it might be shown how it is
nothing less than a divine casket of precious remedies, and if it is to
be brutally broken, it will take ages to rediscover and restore them. Of
one thing I am certain, that their rediscovery and restoration will be
necessary. I cannot too earnestly insist upon the need of our holding,
each man for himself, by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not
be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for only so will it become
_our_ faith. The halt in indifference or in hostility is easy enough and
seductive enough. The half-hearted thinks that when he has attained that
stage he has completed the term of human wisdom. I say go on: do not
stay there; do not take it for granted that there is nothing beyond;
incessantly attempt an advance, and at last a light, dim it may be, will
arise. It will not be a completed system, perfect in all points, an
answer to all our questions, but at least it will give ground for hope.
We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death. I do
not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to these great
arguments against us. We never so much as sought for one, knowing how
all men had sought and failed. But we were able to say there is some
compensation, that there is another side, and this is all that man can
say. No theory of the world is possible. The storm, the rain slowly
rotting the harvest, children sickening in cellars are obvious; but
equally obvious are an evening in June, the delight of men and women in
one another, in music, and in the exercise of thought. There can surely
be no question that the sum of satisfaction is increasing, not merely in
the gross but for each human being, as the earth from which we sprang is
being worked out of the race, and a higher type is being developed. I
may observe, too, that although it is usually supposed, it is erroneously
supposed, that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us. Simple
suspense is in fact very rare, for there are few persons so constituted
as to be able to remain in it. It is dogmatism under the cloak of doubt
which pulls us down. It is the dogmatism of death, for example, which we
have to avoid. The open grave is dogmatic, and we say _that man has
gone_, but this is as much a transgression of the limits of certitude as
if we were to say _he is an angel in bliss_. The proper attitude, the
attitude enjoined by the severest exercise of the reason is, _I do not
know_; and in this there is an element of hope, now rising and now
falling, but always sufficient to prevent that blank despair which we
must feel if we consider it as settled that when we lie down under the
grass there is an absolute end.
The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immense
help. No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon what
lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is
loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic. The
beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider it
as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is a
constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of the
universe. Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjectures arise,
shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot help believing as
irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction—that the sphere of that
understanding of ours, whose function it seems to be to imprison us, is
limited.
Going through a churchyard one afternoon I noticed that nearly all the
people who were buried there, if the inscriptions on the tombstones might
be taken to represent the thoughts of the departed when they were alive,
had been intent solely on their own personal salvation. The question
with them all seemed to have been, shall _I_ go to heaven? Considering
the tremendous difference between heaven and hell in the popular
imagination, it was very natural that these poor creatures should be
anxious above everything to know whether they would be in hell or heaven
for ever. Surely, however, this is not the highest frame of mind, nor is
it one to be encouraged. I would rather do all I can to get out of it,
and to draw others out of it too. Our aim ought not so much to be the
salvation of this poor petty self, but of that in me which alone makes it
worth while to save me; of that alone which I hope will be saved,
immortal truth. The very centre of the existence of the ordinary
chapel-goer and church-goer needs to be shifted from self to what is
outside self, and yet is truly self, and the sole truth of self. If the
truth lives, _we_ live, and if it dies, we are dead. Our theology stands
in need of a reformation greater than that of Luther’s. It may be said
that the attempt to replace the care for self in us by a care for the
universal is ridiculous. Man cannot rise to that height. I do not
believe it. I believe we can rise to it. Every ordinary unselfish act
is a proof of the capacity to rise to it; and the mother’s denial of all
care for her own happiness, if she can but make her child happy, is a
sublime anticipation. It may be called an instinct, but in the course of
time it will be possible to develop a wider instinct in us, so that our
love for the truth shall be even maternally passionate and
self-forgetting.
After all our searching it was difficult to find anything which, in the
case of a man like John the waiter, for example, could be of any service
to him. At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in his case the
problem presented itself in its simple nakedness. What comfort is there
discoverable for the wretched which is not based upon illusion? We could
not tell him that all he endured was right and proper. But even to him
we were able to offer something. We did all we could to soothe him. On
the Sunday, at least, he was able to find some relief from his labours,
and he entered into a different region. He came to see us in the
afternoon and evening occasionally, and brought his boy. Father and son
were pulled up out of the vault, brought into the daylight, and led into
an open expanse. We tried above everything to interest them, even in the
smallest degree, in what is universal and impersonal, feeling that in
that direction lies healing. We explained to the child as well as we
could some morsels of science, and in explaining to him we explained to
the father as well. When the anguish begotten by some outbreak on the
part of the wife more violent than usual became almost too much to bear,
we did our best to counsel, and as a last consolation we could point to
Death, divine Death, and repose. It was but for a few more years at the
utmost, and then must come a rest which no sorrow could invade. “Having
death as an ally, I do not tremble at shadows,” is an immortal quotation
from some unknown Greek author. Providence, too, by no miracle, came to
our relief. The wife died, as it was foreseen she must, and that weight
being removed, some elasticity and recoil developed itself. John’s one
thought now was for his child, and by means of the child the father
passed out of himself, and connected himself with the future. The child
did in fact teach the father exactly what we tried to teach, and taught
it with a power of conviction which never could have been produced by any
mere appeals to the reason. The father felt that he was battered,
useless, and a failure, but that in the boy there were unknown
possibilities, and that he might in after life say that it was to this
battered, useless failure of a father he owed his success. There was
nothing now that he would not do to help Tom’s education, and we joyfully
aided as best we could. So, partly I believe by us, but far more by
nature herself, John’s salvation was wrought out at least in a measure;
discord by the intervention of another note resolved itself into a kind
of harmony, and even through the skylight in the Strand a glimpse of the
azure was obtained.
I hope my readers, if I should ever have any, will remember that what I
wish to do is to give some account of the manner in which we sought to be
of service to the small and very humble circle of persons whom we had
collected about us. I have preserved no record of anything; I am merely
putting down what now comes into my mind—the two or three articles, not
thirty-nine, nor, alas! a third of that number—which we were able to
hold. I recollect one or two more which perhaps are worth preservation.
In my younger days the aim of theologians was the justification of the
ways of God to man. They could not succeed. They succeeded no better
than ourselves in satisfying the intellect with a system. Nor does the
Christian religion profess any such satisfaction. It teaches rather the
great doctrine of a Remedy, of a Mediator; and therein it is profoundly
true. It is unphilosophical in the sense that it offers no explanation
from a single principle, and leaves the ultimate mystery as dark as
before, but it is in accordance with our intuitions. Everywhere in
nature we see exaction of penalties down to the uttermost farthing, but
following after this we discern forgiveness, obliterating and
restorative. Both tendencies exist. Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more
so, for she visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; but there
is in her also an infinite Pity, healing all wounds, softening all
calamities, ever hastening to alleviate and repair. Christianity in
strange historical fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of
her into a biography and a creed.
We endeavoured to follow Christianity in the depth of its distinction
between right and wrong. Herein this religion is of priceless value.
Philosophy proclaims the unity of our nature. To philosophy every
passion is as natural as every act of saintlike negation, and one of the
usual effects of thinking or philosophising is to bring together all that
is apparently contrary in man, and to show how it proceeds really from
one centre. But Christianity had not to propound a theory of man; it had
to redeem the world. It laid awful stress on the duality in us, and the
stress laid on that duality is the world’s salvation. The words right
and wrong are not felt now as they were felt by Paul. They shade off one
into the other. Nevertheless, if mankind is not to be lost, the ancient
antagonism must be maintained. The shallowest of mortals is able now to
laugh at the notion of a personal devil. No doubt there is no such thing
existent; but the horror at evil which could find no other expression
than in the creation of a devil is no subject for laughter, and if it do
not in some shape or other survive, the race itself will not survive. No
religion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such
profound earnestness on the bisection of man—on the distinction within
him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and the lower,
heaven and hell. What utter folly is it because of an antique vesture to
condemn as effete what the vesture clothes! Its doctrine and its sacred
story are fixtures in concrete form of precious thoughts purchased by
blood and tears.
I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts. The
theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say. I can
only reply that we did our best. We said all we knew, and we would most
thankfully have said more, had we been sure that it must be true. I
would remind, too, those of our judges who think that we were such
wretched mortals, blind leaders of the blind, that there have been long
ages during which men never pretended to understand more than we
professed to understand. To say nothing of the Jews, whose meagre system
would certainly not have been thought either satisfying or orthodox by
modern Christians, the Greeks and Romans lived in no clearer light than
that which shines on me. The critics, too, will condemn because of our
weakness; but this defect I at once concede. The severest critic could
not possibly be so severe as I am upon myself. I _know_ my failings.
He, probably, would miss many of them. But, again I urge that men are
not to be debarred by reason of weakness from doing what little good may
lie within reach of their hands. Had we attempted to save scholars and
thinkers we should have deserved the ridicule with which no doubt we
shall be visited. We aspired to save nobody. We knew no salvation
ourselves. We ventured humbly to bring a feeble ray of light into the
dwellings of two or three poor men and women; and if Prometheus, fettered
to his rock, dwelt with pride on the blind hopes which he had caused to
visit mortals, the hopes which “stopped the continued anticipation of
their destiny,” we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we thought that
what we were doing was not altogether vanity.