Closely related to this heresy that God is magic, is the heresy that
calls him Providence, that declares the apparent adequacy of cause and
effect to be a sham, and that all the time, incalculably, he is pulling
about the order of events for our personal advantages.
The idea of Providence was very gaily travested by Daudet in “Tartarin
in the Alps.” You will remember how Tartarin’s friend assured him that
all Switzerland was one great Trust, intent upon attracting tourists and
far too wise and kind to permit them to venture into real danger,
that all the precipices were netted invisibly, and all the loose rocks
guarded against falling, that avalanches were prearranged spectacles and
the crevasses at their worst slippery ways down into kindly catchment
bags. If the mountaineer tried to get into real danger he was turned
back by specious excuses. Inspired by this persuasion Tartarin behaved
with incredible daring. . . . That is exactly the Providence theory of
the whole world. There can be no doubt that it does enable many a timid
soul to get through life with a certain recklessness. And provided there
is no slip into a crevasse, the Providence theory works well. It would
work altogether well if there were no crevasses.
Tartarin was reckless because of his faith in Providence, and escaped.
But what would have happened to him if he had fallen into a crevasse?
There exists a very touching and remarkable book by Sir Francis
Younghusband called “Within.” [Williams and Norgate, 1912.] It is the
confession of a man who lived with a complete confidence in Providence
until he was already well advanced in years. He went through battles and
campaigns, he filled positions of great honour and responsibility, he
saw much of the life of men, without altogether losing his faith. The
loss of a child, an Indian famine, could shake it but not overthrow it.
Then coming back one day from some races in France, he was knocked down
by an automobile and hurt very cruelly. He suffered terribly in body and
mind. His sufferings caused much suffering to others. He did his utmost
to see the hand of a loving Providence in his and their disaster and
the torment it inflicted, and being a man of sterling honesty and a fine
essential simplicity of mind, he confessed at last that he could not do
so. His confidence in the benevolent intervention of God was altogether
destroyed. His book tells of this shattering, and how labouriously
he reconstructed his religion upon less confident lines. It is a book
typical of an age and of a very English sort of mind, a book well worth
reading.
That he came to a full sense of the true God cannot be asserted, but how
near he came to God, let one quotation witness.
“The existence of an outside Providence,” he writes, “who created us,
who watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful Father,
we have found impossible longer to believe in. But of the existence of a
Holy Spirit radiating upward through all animate beings, and finding its
fullest expression, in man in love, and in the flowers in beauty, we
can be as certain as of anything in the world. This fiery spiritual
impulsion at the centre and the source of things, ever burning in us,
is the supremely important factor in our existence. It does not always
attain to light. In many directions it fails; the conditions are too
hard and it is utterly blocked. In others it only partially succeeds.
But in a few it bursts forth into radiant light. There are few who
in some heavenly moment of their lives have not been conscious of its
presence. We may not be able to give it outward expression, but we know
that it is there.” . . .
God does not guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess restraining
and correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would fly into the air,
there is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly for you or keep an
ill-tended engine going; if you would cross a glacier, no God nor angel
guides your steps amidst the slippery places. He will not even mind your
innocent children for you if you leave them before an unguarded fire.
Cherish no delusions; for yourself and others you challenge danger and
chance on your own strength; no talisman, no God, can help you or those
you care for. Nothing of such things will God do; it is an idle dream.
But God will be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane or the
dark ice-cave God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed,
it is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die
with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He
will come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether it
is you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up in his
victory.