CONCLUSION
§ 1. A Summary.
The hostile evidence appears to be overwhelming. Christianity cannot
be true. Provided that we see things as they really are, and not as
we wish them to be, we cannot but come to this conclusion. Let me
recall to the reader's mind the more salient points.
Chapter I.: The Situation.--All over Christendom a great conflict has
commenced between naturalists and supernaturalists. The real attitude
of the laity, and especially of the cultured portion of it, is far more
sceptical than the clergy imagine, or, at any rate, are prepared to
admit. They do not realise that agnostics and semi-believers have, not
deliberately perhaps, but none the less really, joined in a conspiracy
of silence, either on account of their conviction of the need for
Christianity as a restraint during the prevalence of ignorance, or
on account of their regard for public and private opinion and vested
interests, or last but not least, on account of sheer indifference. To
put it frankly, the Churches have for their chief ally nowadays the
trinity of ignorance, insincerity, and indifference. Not only is this
alliance one which they ought to be the first to repudiate, but it
cannot be depended upon in the near future. Though a mind be built,
as it were, in water-tight compartments, a flood of truth that is
strong enough will burst them open.
Christianity and science are not reconciled. The character of the
present wave of scepticism differs from that of all others in the
history of Christianity or of mankind, in that it has the support
of modern knowledge. It has all the appearance of a wave that will
increase in strength, and finally destroy all the present faiths of
the world. Plenty of "cheap" agnosticism, of a priori "infidelity," is
still to be met with, and of this, as Professor Huxley once remarked,
a man of the calibre of Butler, of the "Analogy," can easily make
short work; but the scepticism of the modern scientist is of another
kind. It arises from a mastery of the laws of Nature. The Christian
apologies to meet this scepticism are unsatisfactory to the last
degree. Often they are based on premises the truth of which is open to
the gravest doubt, or they betray ignorance of established facts. They
are also conflicting, so that the arguments of the advanced and the
arguments of the conservative are mutually destructive, the latter
frequently bearing out the contentions of the rationalist regarding
the former. For these reasons they are totally unconvincing. Meanwhile
the main issue of the conflict is confused and delayed by various
side issues, which have nothing really to do with the question of
Christianity's truth. There is further delay through the currency of
a number of popular fallacies.
Chapter II.: Miracles.--Belief in miracles is necessary if Christianity
be true. The various attempts to explain miracles are evasions,
not solutions of a difficulty, and are as specious as they are
conflicting. Few thinkers could bring themselves to agree with Canon
Mason that miracles are no longer needed because "the Holy Spirit,
with His eternal freshness of life, does not cramp Himself by obsolete
and antiquated methods of action." [317] The fundamental miracles
are not historical facts. The evidence for all miracles is totally
inadequate. No miracle has ever occurred.
Chapter III.: Modern Bible Criticism.--All non-Christian and
some Christian theologians accept the conclusions of the Higher
Criticism in their entirety, while many learned divines accept much
that is destructive of beliefs that have been held for nearly two
millenniums. The critics show that the Bible is not historically true,
and explain that "we must turn from external details to the great
spiritual truths which underlie them." As observed by the Dean of
Canterbury, [318] "they only say that they are not historical; what
they mean is that they are not true." The strictly orthodox and the
rationalist are at one in agreeing that historic truth is essential
to Christianity; that Christianity claims to be built not on ideas,
but on facts; and that the far-fetched explanations of the advanced
school cannot be accepted. The rationalist, however, finds himself
forced to admit the validity of the destructive criticisms, and also
finds further grounds for unbelief in the silence of historians,
in the manner in which the alleged revelation was transmitted, and
in those sober facts which so completely impugn the divinity of Jesus.
Chapter IV.: Comparative Mythology.--The similarity of beliefs,
customs, and teachings in ancient religions with those in the
Christian religion are as numerous as they are remarkable. These
parallels deprive Christianity of any claim to originality, and
furnish an explanation of its origin which completely destroys our
belief in its truth. The theory of a progressive revelation is the
outcome of dire necessity, for the survival of Christianity depends
upon its acceptance. This theory is for many and cogent reasons
quite untenable. It is not, and cannot be, accepted by the strictly
orthodox. The latter endeavour, therefore, to disprove the closeness
of the parallels, or, failing this, to prove that they are Christian
accretions. Enlightened divines, on the other hand, acknowledge the
parallels, and rely upon the theory of progressive revelation to
explain them.
Chapter V.: Evolution.--For the benefit of those who may be
ill-informed on the subject, the theory of evolution is explained,
and convincing proofs of our animal origin are submitted. The theory
is generally accepted by the cultured, though much ignorance and
prejudice concerning it still prevail. The evolutionary processes are
completely at variance with the Bible and with our ideas of God. The
Churches as a body do not accept evolution willingly, and are chary
in acknowledging its truth in their public utterances. Many of their
most distinguished members are, however, evolutionists, and these
profess that evolution is helpful to belief. Their arguments are
singularly unconvincing. The doctrine of the Fall is untenable.
Chapter VI.: Theistic Proofs.--Many, honestly deeming themselves to be
Christians, are in reality either deists or non-Christian theists. The
recognised arguments for Theism are the evidences of a First Cause,
of design and directivity, and of benevolence. Not one of these is
accepted by more than a very small minority of scientific men. The
evidence of design and directivity is more apparent than real, while,
with regard to benevolence, it would be easier to demonstrate the very
reverse. The evidence from religious experience is another argument,
which has recently been submitted to the cultured, as a final proof
of the existence of the spiritual world. This argument is shown not
only to be full of absurdities, but indirectly to furnish natural
explanations for much that has hitherto puzzled mankind, and led to
belief in the supernatural.
Chapter VII.: Popular Arguments.--Finally, there are certain popular
arguments which help to confirm the believer, and to determine the
friendly attitude of the average unbeliever. Broadly speaking, they
are all comprised under two main assertions--Christianity's power
for good, and the universality of the religious instinct. So long as
we confine ourselves to a shallow and biassed examination, the flaws
in these assumptions will pass unnoticed; but when we submit them to
a closer examination, with open minds, we find that they cannot be
substantiated by the facts of either ancient or modern history.
I may be permitted to add that I attach the greatest importance to
the object-lesson now presented to us by Russia and Japan. Not only
have we here an excellent illustration of the fallacies concerning the
power of Christianity and the connection between conduct and belief,
but this illustration has been given to the whole world. Among the
millions who have watched events, thousands upon thousands must have
some inkling of the place that religion holds in the minds of these
two peoples, and, therefore, must have found much that will cause
them to modify their opinions concerning these popular arguments. I
cannot imagine any other conjunction of circumstances which could
have resulted in such a broadcast sowing of the seeds of scepticism.
The Main Conclusion.--It is customary in Christian apologetics
to palliate the inadequacy of any one particular argument or set
of arguments for belief by reminding us that we must take into
consideration the combined weight of all the other (equally inadequate)
arguments. The apologist of unbelief has no need to ask this of
his readers. On the contrary, he is able to point out a number of
arguments, each of which is, of itself, fully sufficient to warrant
their joining the ranks of the unbelievers. For instance, he can point
to any one of the following as fairly conclusive evidence:--The dismal
failure [319] of Christianity after nearly two thousand years' trial;
the apparent impossibility of and complete want of evidence for the
miracles on which Christianity is founded; the destructive criticism
of the Bible, which cannot be gainsaid; the intensely grave suspicions
thrown upon the originality of Christianity by the revelations of
comparative mythology; the various dilemmas arising from the accepted
doctrine of evolution; the inadequacy and conflicting character of the
so-called Theistic proofs (proofs of a personal Deity); and, finally,
the fallacies in arguments hitherto so popular and faith-producing. We
cannot get away from facts. Modern knowledge forces us to admit that
the Christian Faith cannot be true.
Having arrived at this main conclusion, the unbeliever is at once
confronted with many burning questions. I shall endeavour to outline
the answers to those that seem the more pressing; but the subject
is a large one, and cannot be adequately treated in a few short
paragraphs. The main difficulty is, of course, the morality problem,
and, if that admits of a favourable solution, we shall be in a better
position to consider the next question: Should the unbeliever keep
his unbelief to himself, or should he speak out?
§ 2. Why Lead a Moral Life?
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
Let me say at once that if, after the elimination of all untruths
from Christianity, we could build a belief in God and immortality on
the residue, we should then have a far more powerful incentive to
right conduct than anything that I am about to urge. I fully admit
that to tell the ordinary mortal brought up in the Christian faith
to do right for right's sake will often be futile, inspiring though
the sentiment may be for some few of us. I admit also the fact that
morality always tends to the well-being of the individual and the
race. It is the one and only sound argument for the working of any
ethical purpose in nature, and, if we can feel that in leading the
moral life we are helping to carry out some high purpose in which we
are personally concerned, such a belief will certainly be of great
ethical value. In the following argument, however, I hope to show that,
even without a religious incentive, we have all-sufficient reasons
for leading the moral life. At present our morality is bound up with
a belief which is false, and which people are beginning to feel and
know to be false. Therefore it is more than ever necessary that we
should learn more of those reasons for morality which do not depend
upon this or that belief.
THE NECESSITY FOR MORALITY.
The man who does not realise that any such cogent reasons exist
will argue: "I quite understand that the welfare of society depends
upon the moral conduct of its members; but why should I care for
the good of society? There are many immoral things which I can do
without being found out--without any harm coming to me, directly or
indirectly. Neither do I believe in the familiar adage, 'Follow nature,
and you cannot go wrong.' Civilisation is continually wrestling with
nature; we go against nature a thousand times a day. Why should I not
follow nature just so far as I can get out of my nerves a maximum
of pleasure at the expense of a minimum of pain? Tell me, then,
you who do not believe in hell or heaven, you who think we can live
under a system of morality which entirely dispenses with supernatural
sanctions, why should I lead a moral life?"
To this question I would reply by another: "Have you no self-respect,
the commonest and most universal incentive to right conduct, and one
which necessarily includes respect for others? Even if your body had
health, would your mind have peace without morality?" The essence of
happiness is a contented mind. Bodily ailments and other misfortunes,
not of your own making, may often mar your efforts to obtain this
desirable frame of mind; but the nearest approach to it that is
possible will be gained by leading the moral life. Righteousness
contributes usually to success and invariably to happiness, because
it is in harmony with the needs and laws of health and social
life. Note, please, that I say "contributes." We are not speaking now
of circumstances beyond man's control--the calamities and catastrophes,
daily and hourly occurring, in accordance with nature's inexorable
laws, which would not be affected either way by man's conduct. Also,
as there are conditions under which the body may not be affected
by immorality discreetly pursued, it will be better to confine our
attention to that which is always affected--the mind. This will be
recognised more clearly when we grasp the fact that the true origin of
the guide to conduct lies in the instincts inherited from our animal
ancestors. [320]
Man is a social animal, and in his relations with his fellow-men his
moral instinct is largely a development of the social instinct. To
secure the happiness of the individual as well as of the community,
this instinct demands satisfaction. There is nothing which depresses
the mind of man or beast more than a thwarted instinct. Life, as
Aristotle has well said, is energy which each individual exercises
on those subjects in which he most delights. Man's proper and natural
pleasures must consist in the operations by which his work is done and
his task accomplished. But various circumstances will often prevent
a man or woman from exercising his or her special aptitudes. Thus a
natural instinct is disappointed, and complete happiness is out of the
question. In the case of the social instinct, its satisfaction, so far
as possible, is a supreme necessity, if there is to be any approach to
contentment of mind. To attain it there is only one course open--the
moral life. Should the individual choose the immoral life, and should
he even succeed in following it without suffering social ostracism,
he will certainly injure not only the happiness of the community,
but also his own chances of such real and permanent happiness as this
world might otherwise have afforded him.
USELESSNESS OF VAGUE THREATS.
But, it may be objected, the average man will not be deterred from
wrong-doing by the fear of vague consequences; he is only concerned to
snatch the immediate pleasure (or what seems to him to be a pleasure),
to satisfy a momentary lust, to secure the gratification of his senses
on the "bird-in-the-hand" principle. That is all very true, of course,
and incidentally it accounts for the failure of Christianity or any
other belief that relies for its ethical effect on a system of vague
threats and promises. But once get rid of the nebulosity, and all is
changed--so long, that is, as the brain is healthy, and the supremacy
of reason acknowledged. Emotions of hate, cupidity, sensuality, and
the like, are always liable, as are all other emotions, to cloud the
reason--to derange the brain temporarily; how much more so when there
is no clear perception of disagreeable consequences? No man in his
senses will act with entire disregard of consequences; it is only
when they are not sufficiently clear that they are disregarded. It
is absurd to suppose that the ordinary man is such an unthinking
animal that he never studies ultimate consequences. The most selfish
men and women--and the religious world is not without its fair share
of them--think of the morrow. No one more so. It is the exceptional
individual of the happy-go-lucky sort, with no enemy but himself,
on whom it is difficult to impress the need of thinking ahead.
THE NEED FOR AN EARLY EDUCATION IN ETHICAL PRINCIPLES.
My contention, then, is that a feeling of certainty regarding
ultimate consequences is, above all others, the most powerful factor
in influencing conduct. This certainty will be attained through, and
only through, the medium of education. Knowing this, it is the duty of
parents and teachers to be continually implanting in the minds of the
young the objects of right-doing and the consequences of wrong-doing,
wholly apart from questions of belief, not only because such teaching
enshrines a great truth, but because this truth is liable to be
lost sight of in the mists of theological dogmas and metaphysical
theories. Children, it is true, adopt moral principles out of regard
for social and parental authority, and not as the result of reasoned
conviction, so that at first the scientific reasons for right conduct
will doubtless be to some extent unappreciated. But, meanwhile, a habit
of mind will be forming, and, as the new teaching will appeal to the
common sense of the growing mind, and not to its credulity, a reasoned
conviction will shortly follow. Conduct developed in this manner,
free from theological speculations, is based on a firm foundation,
which no later experiences in life will be able to upset. It is not
nebulous. It is not susceptible of change through an alteration in
religious views. It is true. The future generation, so brought up,
will regard the consequences of immorality with complete certitude,
and will do so without having to extricate themselves, as the present
generation must, from objectionable habits of thought and conduct
engendered by erroneous teaching.
THE OBJECT-LESSON FURNISHED BY THE JAPANESE.
This is no abstract theory. We have a concrete and magnificent
example before us in a nation whose character is formed entirely by
non-theological instruction. I refer, of course, to the Japanese. There
are no people more refined, courteous, gentle, amiable, and innately
æsthetic than these Latins of the Orient; no people more brave,
hardy, and self-controlled; none more cleanly and healthy in body and
happy in mind. The Japanese army, by its perfection of transport,
commissariat, and equipment, its surgical and sanitary work, its
discipline and dash, its passionate patriotism and its humanity to
the conquered, surpasses the armies of the Christian nations who
send their missionaries to Japan. With regard to sexual morality,
"it must be remembered," as Professor Inazo Nitobe remarks, "that,
whatever charges may be made against the Japanese people, the same
charge can be, and is, actually made against every country, England
not excluded, by travellers, since it is usually the worst, the
lax, side of life to which a foreigner is first introduced." [321]
Personally, I should say that the charge could be met by pointing
to the acknowledged virtues and physical condition of the Japanese,
and asking, "Can these be the result of vicious habits?"
There are certain significant circumstances in connection with the
present moral condition in Japan which we must not omit to take into
consideration. "Untruthfulness, dishonesty, and brutal crime," says
Lafcadio Hearn, speaking of Old Japan, "were rarer then than now,
as official statistics show; the percentage of crime having been for
some years steadily on the increase--which proves, among other things,
that the struggle for existence has been intensified. The virtue
of Japanese wives was generally in all ages above suspicion." [322]
"If there has been a serious relapse among us," says another writer,
"it has been the result of the shock occasioned by our contact with the
new civilisation, and fortunately not the consequence of the abandoning
of a belief in future punishment by an offended God." [323] (What food
for thought--falling off in morality attributed to over-population and
contact with a Christian civilisation!) How do the Japanese hope to
solve this new problem? By Christianity? Not at all. "Men are beginning
to see," continues the same writer, "that in the domain of morality the
excellent precepts and propositions by which their fathers were guided
under the old régime, but which have since fallen into disrepute,
are fundamentally correct, and that, with slight adaptations in the
light of the new civilisation, the old code of morality will serve
their purpose under the altered circumstances of the new era."
Only the charge of lack of commercial morality has any foundation
in fact, and, with regard to this, here is the true explanation,
given, not by a Japanese apologist, but by a Christian missionary:
"The Japanese are often charged, and with good reason, with a lack
of commercial morality. In days when the military virtues reigned
supreme, the handling of trade was deemed an employment which no
gentleman would take up; hence the commerce of the country is largely
in the hands of men who do not represent her best traditions. Again,
certain restrictions of mercy were always granted in the undertaking
of a contract, whereas foreigners naturally regard a contract as
binding unconditionally. But, in both respects, methods of trade are
improving, and in the excellent commercial schools it is taught that
'Honesty is the best policy.' Among members of the humblest ranks
of life the most striking instances of honesty will be met with; a
jinrikisha man will run after you with the parcel you have forgotten,
a shopkeeper will walk to your house to bring you a few cents he
accidentally overcharged you." [324]
As to their purely secular education and the severance of belief from
conduct, Baron Suyematsu remarks that, "to the outsiders who have
not grown up in an atmosphere of this kind, it may appear somewhat
difficult to comprehend how boys and girls could be thoroughly
imbued with moral sentiments without connecting them in some way
with religion; but when these are taught with thoroughness, basing
their systematic exposition on the duties of human beings towards one
another and to the State, and on the noble tradition of their [the
children's] own community and the characteristic virtues of their
forefathers in which they ought to rejoice, and when appeals are
made to the honour and pride which one should feel and value, and,
above all, to the conscience of individuals, one's thoughts appear
to become imbued with the lessons conveyed, and moral notions thus
taught seem to become, per se, a kind of undefined, but nevertheless
potent and serviceable, religion." [325] Again, Baron Suyematsu tells
us elsewhere that "the educated classes consider that he who does what
is good for good's sake, and not for a fear of anything exterior, is
the most courageous man, and to be courageous is the most important
feature of Bushido. The probability is that, were a Japanese gentleman
a devout adherent of any particular form of religion, he would rather
conceal it than make a display of it." [326]
The words of other than Japanese writers may not be without some
interest. A Christian friend of mine, once an English professor
in a Japanese college, wrote to me lately: "I must admit that the
Japanese do seem to have attained without Christianity a higher
status than most Christian nations. Indeed, they appear to attain
personal and national excellence without religion at all." Again,
another Englishman, who has spent a lifetime and occupies a high
position in Japan, remarks (in the course of a letter replying to my
queries): "There is not the remotest chance of Christianity becoming
the religion of the State. For the last two centuries and a half the
educated class have adopted the Agnostic ethical system of Confucius,
which, once understood and embraced, can never be dislodged by the
Christian or any other variety of theologian."
Yet Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, closes his book, The
Witness of the Influence of Christ, with the familiar assertion of
the inseparability of religion and ethics. It is an assertion which,
now more than ever, the Churches are reiterating. Why? Is it not
because they find that many are beginning to doubt its truth? I fear
reiteration will not make it any truer. Only facts will appeal to
the man who looks below the surface, and these all tend the other way.
In the Hibbert Journal for October, 1905, there is an article
contributed by the editor which deserves the earnest attention of all
thoughtful men. It is entitled "Moral Supremacy of Christendom." The
following quotations from it will suffice to show the far-reaching
importance of the questions it raises: "Christendom, as a whole, long
accustomed to treat all pagan races as morally inferior to herself,
now stands confronted by a non-Christian civilisation, of vast power
and splendid promise, whose claim to moral equality, at least, cannot
be disregarded, except by those who are morally blind.... The hold of
Christianity upon the peoples of the Western world is rooted in the
conviction that this is the religion which produces the best men. To
a greater degree than is commonly recognised, each Church or sect of
Christendom thus derives its confidence from the final court of ethical
appeal. Whatever ground be alleged for a given doctrine, whether of
Scripture, authority, or reason, the argument would instantly lose
its force if it were to appear that the ethical result of denying
the doctrine was superior to that which followed its acceptance."
CRIMINALITY.
To return to the arguments of rational morality. A man may say:
"I don't care a bit about this social instinct you tell me of; I
don't know that I possess it. It is no use your prating to me about
my happiness of mind, and the necessity of my being in harmony with
my surroundings. I prefer to gratify the instinct--the passion--that
I do feel, regardless of the consequences to others. Of course, I
shouldn't like everybody else to do the same. That is the beauty of my
scheme, and I am not going to miss my opportunity in the short space
of existence you tell me is all that lies before me. If it pleases
me to make a beast of myself, I shall do so." All I can say is that
a man who really means that this is what he would do, if not deterred
by belief, is an unfortunate, with criminal tendencies--is, in fact,
of unsound mind. His reasoning, too, is unsound. He must expect others
to follow his example, as his argument is that the whole world would
become immoral and lawless without belief. He would suffer, therefore,
with the rest, and then would be the first, if sane, to co-operate
with his fellow-sufferers in putting down lawlessness. The most savage
tribe looks after its own interests according to its lights. A man
who disregards the interest of all but himself becomes an Ishmael, an
outlaw, a criminal; and, in the approaching Rationalistic age, he will
be specially "taken care of," and treated as any other insane person.
What are the causes of criminality? The Devil--man's sinful nature--the
Religionist will reply. What does Science reply? Dr. McEwen, of
Glasgow, relates in the Lancet how a labourer, after falling on his
head from a scaffolding, developed immoral tendencies. A tumour had
formed on his brain. This was successfully removed by trepanning, and
the immoral tendencies disappeared. Again, Dr. Lydston tells us that
Flesch examined the brains of fifty criminals, and found imperfections
in all. "Vice and crime," says Dr. Lydston, "will one day be shown more
definitely than ever to be a matter to be dealt with by medical science
rather than by law." [327] When brain defects (whether inherited or
caused by environment) affecting the moral faculties, are universally
recognised as the real source of criminal tendencies; when disease
of the brain is no longer regarded as a disease of the soul--then,
and not till then, will criminality materially diminish. Science will
triumphantly succeed where Religion has dismally failed.
The sooner, therefore, criminality is looked upon as a disease of the
brain, and dealt with accordingly, the better it will be for the human
race. A day will surely come when, as Mr. Wells predicts, [328] "crime
and bad lives will be the measure of a State's failure." The modern
Theist now admits that it is God's pleasure to employ law, and not the
suspension of law, to work out His purposes. Why, then, whether we are
Theists or Agnostics, should we not study and apply those laws for our
moral improvement? Even now we are doing so. Rationalism has taught
us that prevention is better than cure, and its great ally, Science,
is helping both in the prevention and the cure. But the process will
be considerably accelerated when our energies and our fortunes are
spent altogether in this direction, instead of being frittered away
in futile attempts to obtain the same results by "spiritual" methods.
OUR AIDS.
Again the supernaturalist may say: "I grant you, for the sake of
argument, that, setting aside the ills of 'outrageous fortune,' the
secret of happiness lies in obeying the social instinct; but human
nature is weak, and requires assistance. How do you propose to replace
the aid derived from belief? I am not a Japanese. I am not an Oriental,
with an extraordinary power of self-abnegation for the sake of an
idea. I am a phlegmatic Englishman, and I am not at all sure that, even
if I had had this Bushido instilled into me, my character would have
been any stronger than it is now after a Christian education." Here
let me again repeat that I do not for one moment contend that, if
Christianity were true as now interpreted by liberal theology, or,
again, if Theism, with its assurance of a benevolent God, were true,
that, as Neo-Christians or Theists, we should not find belief helpful
in our efforts to lead a moral and therefore innocently happy life;
but an agnosticism regarding all supernatural beliefs appears to
be the only possible attitude for an enlightened world, and it is
this situation that we have now to face. Is there anything, then,
that can in any way take the place of the ethical assistance [329]
afforded by belief in God and an after-life?
The answer of Rationalism has already been indicated--it is to the
force of environment (in its broadest sense) that we must look in our
struggle with hereditary weaknesses. We cannot get rid of our inherited
qualities; but we can modify them by changing our environment. If our
early education, our early environment, has been neglected, we still
have it in our power to remedy, or partly remedy, this unfortunate
circumstance by our choice of present environment. The hard case is
that of a man so situated that to change his evil environment seems
well-nigh impossible. Therefore it is that the reduction of pernicious
environments is of paramount importance to the race, and this truth
the rationalistic spirit of the age is now forcing to the front. Also,
if the individual takes no interest in posterity, and refuses to study
the question of heredity, the day will come when the law of the land
will see to it that the sins or diseases of the fathers shall not be
visited upon the children "unto the third and fourth generation." It is
the quality, not the quantity, of our children that we have to keep to
the forefront. [330] The methods will be simple, if somewhat drastic;
but the need to apply them will continue to lessen in proportion as
the laws of heredity and environment are better kept in view. "Over
the past, represented by our own heredity, we have no control. We
cannot change the facts which have made the degenerate, the neurotic,
the hysterical, and the criminal; but these are only names for human
beings who, by a certain train of causation, have had certain impulses
developed and others left fallow or suppressed. A different train of
causation will awaken the capabilities to hold these impulses in due
check. This future, now represented by the environment, is greatly
within our power. Heredity being but the transmitted effects of past
environments, we have to make a suitable environment for growing
organisms if we wish to mould them to our ideals; and this is the
meaning of education." [331]
THE IMPORTANCE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY.
Finally, it is very necessary that the origin of morality (as indicated
by Spencer in his Data of Ethics, by Darwin in his Descent of Man,
by Prince Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, and by
Dr. C. W. Saleeby in his Evolution: The Master-Key) should be better
understood. Hitherto the question of morality has been dealt with
on wrong lines, [332] and this applies to the teaching not only
of Christian but also of non-Christian religionists. It applies
to the works of those speculative philosophers who have denied the
empirical origin of man's moral feeling, and who have had recourse
to subtle and unconvincing theories in order to assign a supernatural
origin to the moral senses. These thinkers, in attempting to explain
the "distinction of man," the "why of existence," and the "aim of
nature," set themselves the hopeless task of explaining a process which
entails untold suffering upon sentient beings, and in which the modern
Rationalist is unable to discover any ethical principle whatsoever.
Too much prominence cannot be given to the later conclusions of
modern thought so eloquently set forth by Prince Kropotkin. Much as I
appreciate all Mr. S. Laing's writings, and especially, perhaps, the
chapter on "Practical Life" with which he closes his admirable work,
Modern Science and Modern Thought, I cannot agree with him when he
says (p. 113 of the R. P. A. Cheap Reprint): "For practical purposes
it is comparatively unimportant how this [the moral] standard got
there." It is, in my humble opinion, very important, for the reasons
that are clearly demonstrated by Prince Kropotkin and other modern
ethicists. So soon as the Darwinian theory of the origin of morals
is fully accepted, great strides in the development of an improved
morality will surely follow. In fine, "science, far from destroying
the foundations of ethics, as it is so often accused of doing,
gives to evolutionist ethics a philosophical certitude where the
transcendental thinker had only a vague intuition to rely upon." [333]
OPINIONS OF ETHICISTS.
Let me now quote some instructive utterances by Rationalists [334]:--
"The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all,
with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there
is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about
things beyond the possibilities of knowledge. She [Science] knows
that the safety of morality lies neither in the adoption of this or
that philosophical speculation, nor this or that theological creed,
but in a real and living belief in that fixed order of nature which
sends social disorganisation upon the track of immorality, as surely
as it sends physical disease after physical trespasses. And of that
firm and lively faith it is her mission to be priestess." [335]
"Theological apologists, who insist that morality will vanish if
their dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider the fact that,
in the matter of intellectual veracity, science is already a long way
ahead of the Churches; and that, in this particular, it is exerting
an educational influence on mankind of which the Churches have shown
themselves utterly incapable." [336]--Huxley.
"A moral life is that form of existence which is based upon obedience
to natural and social law.... By long transmission and inheritance
of mental and physical qualities a certain moral sense, so to say,
has been developed, now called 'conscience,' which suggests acts
often amounting to self-sacrifice, and condemns and represses others,
pleasant and even profitable to the individual, because detrimental to
the race. Altruism and Utilitarianism have come to be so insensibly
blended that it is difficult to detect where the one ends and
the other begins.... We have attained a natural and instinctive
preference for what is good and noble in conduct, irrespective of
self-interest, just as we have risen to an instinctive appreciation of
fine music and delicate perfume.... The moral life is derived from the
universal experience of mankind, approved by the wisdom of the wise,
and justified by the fate of the foolish." [337] ["We needs must love
the noblest when we see it."]--The Author of "Supernatural Religion."
"The Supernaturalists charge the system of the Rationalists with a
lack of any effective motive that can constrain ordinary and average
men to live a moral life. 'It is all very well,' they say, 'for your
Spinozas, your Stuart Mills, and such like, to affect independence
of supernatural sanctions, because they are exceptional men, and
have powers of discernment and will, by which they appropriate to
themselves the moral doctrine and practice of Christianity, while
they refuse to acknowledge their debt.'... I daresay I might, with
some success, retort the argument of Supernaturalism. 'It is all very
well,' I might say, 'for your apostles and saints, for your Augustines
and Luthers and Bunyans, to depend on supernatural sanctions, because
they are exceptional men, and have powers of imagination which turn
shadows into substance.'... There is such a thing as self-respect;
no man likes to feel ashamed of himself. There are very few who are
not strongly moved by a desire to see wife and children or parents
happy. Such influences as these have far more to do with moulding human
life and resisting selfish passion than any fear of hell or desire of
heaven, or any philosophical principles. And such influences as these
will survive even when open denial of supernatural sanction becomes
as general as tacit disbelief is now." [338]--J. Allanson Picton.
"For the mass of mankind two motives serve to direct the main course
of ethics. These are Prudence and Sympathy.... Prudence is the
first step in morality.... Sympathy did not wait to be called into
life by religion. It was born among the brutes.... In the case of
man the sympathy which issues first through the natural emotions of
family and sex is spread over an ever-widening area by the power of
imagination. A greater faculty of entering into the feelings of others
goes along with a deeper sensitiveness to their pains and joys. Their
experience becomes ours. Our self is blended with theirs. We pity
their actual sufferings, and, calling up in imagination the suffering
our conduct might entail, we shrink from committing a wrong.... Pity
is the characteristic mark of the later ethics." [339]--F. J. Gould.
"One can say without exaggeration that the most religious times
and the most religious peoples, or those in which or among whom the
power of the Church has been the strongest, have, generally speaking,
been the most immoral. One has evidence enough in the horrors of the
Middle Ages, and, if to-day it be otherwise, it is not to religion
we owe the change, but to the spread of education and the progress
of intelligence.... It is one of the fatalest and most widespread of
errors that morality without religion is impossible. It has long been
scientifically acknowledged that morality, as such, is far older than
religion.... Morality comes only as the consequence and result of the
inevitable necessities of social intercourse." [340]--Ludwig Büchner.
"The religion of the lower orders of Welshmen may be said to be high
in the scale, while their morality is decidedly low.... What savage
nations have been raised out of their degradation by Christianity?... I
look upon the doctrine of future rewards and punishments as radically
bad, and as bad for savages as for civilised men."--Alfred Russel
Wallace. [341]
"Heaven and hell have no more relation to the question than any other
punishments. The hell which a thoroughly bad man dreads can only be a
hell of physical suffering; and, if he abstains from crime through fear
of fire, he is not a good man, but a bad man in chains." [342]--Leslie
Stephen.
"Where is the seat of authority for what is moral? This is a very
old question. Manu, the Indian law-giver, answers it in four ways:
It rests on revelation (scuti); it rests on tradition (smriti);
it rests on the behaviour of good people; and, lastly, it rests on
inward satisfaction. I believe that, in the end, the last is the
supreme authority." [343]--F. Max Müller.
"Whatever power the threats of punishment and the promises of reward
in an after-life may have had in lawless and superstitious ages,
they have now but the smallest effect on conduct; their remoteness
exhausts their power, and, moreover, the belief in them is slowly
decaying.... All the law and commandments are in the Golden Rule;
all ethics in the teaching that, if man be true to himself, he cannot
be false to his fellows." [344]--Edward Clodd.
"The first step towards the elaboration of a morality which should
exercise a lasting influence is to base it upon an ascertained
truth.... The function of ethics is not so much even to insist upon the
defects of man, and to reproach him with his 'sins,' as to act in the
positive direction by appealing to man's best instincts.... It tells to
man that, if he desires to live a life in which all forces--physical,
intellectual, and emotional--should find a full exercise, he must,
once and for all, abandon the idea that such a life is attainable
on the path of disregard for others.... What is wanted now is a
new comprehension of morality in its methods, which must be freed
from both the transcendental survivals and the narrow conceptions
of Philistine utilitarianism. The importance of mutual aid in the
evolution of the animal world and human history may be taken as
a positive established scientific truth.... Mutual aid, justice,
morality, are thus the consecutive steps of an ascending series,
revealed to us by the study of the animal world and man. It is not
something imposed from the outside: it is an organic necessity which
carries in itself its own justification." [345]--Prince Kropotkin.
"We do not see any convincing reason why morals should be based upon
the teaching of a special denomination, in face of the fact that we
can be upright and brave without the help of a creed with a God or
deities at its other end." [346]--Professor Okakura.
"I regard religion itself as quite unnecessary for a nation's life;
science is far above superstition; and what is religion, Buddhism or
Christianity, but superstition, and therefore a possible source of
weakness to a nation? I do not regret the tendency to freethought and
atheism, which is almost universal in Japan, because I do not regard
it as a source of danger to the community." [347]--Marquis Ito.
"Cardinal Newman once said: 'Give me the children of England,
and England shall be Roman Catholic.' We say: 'Put the children
of England under the best moral influences, and England shall be
righteous.'" [348]--The Moral Instruction League.
NOTE ON SYSTEMATIC MORAL INSTRUCTION.
A Memorial was lately addressed to the Local Education Authorities of
the country. Among the signatories are Lord Rosebery, Lord Roberts,
Lord Wolseley, Lord Kelvin, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York,
a number of bishops, "General" Booth, Dr. Horton, Dr. Campbell,
the Vice-Chancellors of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
etc. They recommend that the eight or ten years of school life
should provide the opportunity, not only for imparting knowledge,
but for inculcating those habits of self-restraint, conscientiousness,
fidelity, honour, and kindness which are needful alike for individual
self-respect and national well-being. (The Code of Regulations for
Public Elementary Schools [1906] has since appeared. It states
emphatically: "Moral Instruction should form an important part
of every elementary school curriculum.") Sir Oliver Lodge has
urged the same thing in the Nineteenth Century. At last, then,
it has been influentially recognised that these things are not
taught in schools, or, if so, are taught in an indifferent and
unsystematic manner. What a reflection upon Christian methods of
upbringing hitherto! Unfortunately, coupled with this desire for
effective moral training, the signatories of the Memorial express a
hope that Bible teaching will be continued. I say "unfortunately,"
because the ethical value of the Bible is inextricably intertwined
with supernatural beliefs that are demonstrably false. Any temporary
success of such teaching, while the children are still uninformed of
the real nature of the Bible, will be heavily discounted in after
years--at a time, too, when assistance from the ethical teaching
of childhood will be most needed. It is an unfortunate circumstance
that the Church must necessarily be fearful regarding the separation
of belief and morality--must set her face against non-theological
moral instruction. It is no use disguising the fact. Her fears are
perfectly well founded--such teaching would tend to the further
spread of unbelief. On the other hand, it is equally clear that,
if any temporary harm comes of this spread--a spread which, in any
case, cannot be stopped, though it can be delayed--it will be because
our children have been taught that religious belief is the chief,
if not the only, sanction for the moral life. The Church, in fact,
will be directly responsible for the evil. Is it not time, then,
for all thoughtful men and women to be up and doing? Is it not time
the truth should be told? In the following sections we shall see that
this course is advisable on every ground.
§ 3. Should the Truth be Told?
"Wise and prudent conduct demands before all things that we should
see the facts as they are; and those are not least among England's
helpers who, regardless of consequences, in all ages have taught
her children, by using their reason, to distinguish what is false
from what is true." [349]
Presuming that we have come to the conclusion that Christianity is
not true, are we to say so, or are we to be silent? A believer,
with ideas so advanced that his belief amounts to little more
than "a reverent agnosticism" concerning the fundamental dogmas of
Christianity, is still able to speak out, because while he destroys
he also constructs. He has new interpretations of Christianity to
offer us. The unbeliever can offer no such interpretations. He simply
believes Christianity to be untrue, and, should he give his reasons,
he knows he may persuade others to think so also. He must, therefore,
it seems, keep his unbelief to himself, unless he is prepared to show
that the destruction of belief will be beneficial. In considering this
question of frank avowal of our unbelief, we must not forget that,
try as we may to avoid it, we are bound from time to time to find
ourselves in a position where we have to choose between telling the
truth or telling a lie; while our silence, or any manoeuvre with
intent to deceive, is one continual evasion of the truth. Is it
not time, as John Morley urges, [350] to abandon "those habits of
hypocritical conformity and compliance which have filled the air of
the England of to-day with gross and obscure mists"? In moral life
truth is our guide, so that the arguments for its repression must be
irrefutable. Now, if it can be shown that the objections to candour
are more imaginary than real, not only are we robbed of the excuse
for further concealment, but we are morally bound to fly our true
colours openly. Nor is this all. Should it become plain to us that
actual good will come of truth-telling, or that the probable good far
outweighs the possible evil, it behoves us to take an active part in,
or at least to lend our support to, the spread of truth.
(a) "MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRÆVALEBIT."
One very natural objection of unbelievers, who are not actually
disbelievers, is that there may be, after all, some truth in
Christianity. We find here every shade of opinion, from that of
the man who still hopes that Christianity may be proved true in
all essentials, to that of the man who thinks that Christianity
may be the symbol of a truth. But, I ask, Will not Christianity,
if true in any shape or form, benefit by truth-telling? Will it not
thereby assume its true form, whatever that may eventually prove to
be, and is not that a consummation to be desired? Many believers
stoutly maintain that Christianity can be only strengthened by
attack; so that, on the face of this assertion, it would appear both
justifiable and desirable to take them at their word, and, without
more ado, proceed to attack Christianity. Certain it is that, so far,
Rationalistic attacks have done inestimable good in disclosing its
errors in doctrine and practice. As Mr. Morley caustically remarks, the
efforts of the heterodox have taught the Church to be better Christians
than they were a hundred years ago. If Christianity, purified in the
cleansing fire of modern criticism, be the true faith, and the theory
of progressive revelation can be accepted, are not this truer faith
and this peculiarly rapid progress of revelation during late years
the product of scepticism? It is the sceptics who have succeeded
in forcing the Church to reconsider her doctrines and discover new
truths, and, wonderful as it may appear, they have thus been God's
special instruments in this more perfect revelation of Himself. Why,
then, should you hesitate to speak out? Christianity evidently has
to be re-stated if it is to survive, and this re-statement must be
complete, for on it rests the only chance of reclaiming the unbeliever,
of arresting the further spread of infidelity, and of converting the
cultured heathen--the only chance of a universal belief in God and
Immortality. Of the result you have no cause for fear. If there be
a God, He is a God of Truth, and the Truth will prevail.
(b) OBSCURANTISM HAS HAD ITS DAY.
The Rev. V. F. Storr, at the Liverpool Church Congress (1904),
advocated telling the truth regarding established facts, and asked:
"In how many pulpits are the opening chapters of Genesis frankly
treated as legendary? How many teachers in schools, if called upon to
give a lesson on the Fall, would make plain to the children that the
framework of the story is imaginative? Are not the teachers creating
for them the very difficulties which, when they come to mature years,
will make shipwreck of their faith?" These remarks were received in
dead silence by the audience, and the President was vociferously
cheered when he asked: "Are we to tell the children that these
narratives are mere fables, with a moral teaching, or, as Dr. Wace
says, that they are true and historical, only clothed in an Eastern
symbolism? I prefer to stand with Dr. Wace." On the other hand, Dean
Farrar advocated a diametrically opposite course. "We must," he said,
[351] "vaccinate them [the children] with criticism to save them
from the small-pox of scepticism." His successor at Canterbury has,
it would appear, a "conscientious objection" to this vaccination;
and well he may, for it would be far more likely to promote the
disease than to bestow immunity from it.
I should mention that Dr. Wace also said, at the same Church Congress:
"If I were on Mr. Blatchford's side, and wanted to attack Christianity,
I should desire nothing better than that the results of criticism
concerning Genesis, as these results predominate even in the most sober
critical circles, should be adopted by the Christian Church, because
this would afford a means of attacking Christianity with greater
force than anything else, since it would enable me to start with this
vantage-ground, that all the Jews and all the apostles--I dare not
speak of our Lord--were mistaken in their view of God's relation to His
own people." Obscurantism is therefore recommended because the purpose
is a pious one--namely, to confute the unbeliever and to maintain
the Faith. The anti-Christian must be deprived of his vantage-ground
by the denial of truth. It is the old, old story of "pious fraud,"
the mainstay of the Christian Faith. We are to imitate (though in a
lesser degree) the practices of the Latin and Greek Churches, and
continue to play upon people's credulity and ignorance. We are to
understand that pious frauds are still considered legitimate weapons
to employ in the defence of Christianity. Surely such weapons should
be allowed to fall into disuse for the simple reason--if on no higher
grounds--that the spread of education is rendering them obsolete.
The days of obscurantism are numbered. "Many a man in the workshop
to-day knows more about the Bible and Church history than many a monk
and bishop a few generations ago." [352] The Church of England cannot
"shut herself in behind walls of tottering traditions." [353] Christian
Fathers can no longer publish their own writings in the names of
disciples and apostles in order to insure their acceptance. Evidence
against the truth of Christianity can no longer be destroyed or
suppressed by persecution. "Miracles" can no longer be worked,
except where people are still grossly credulous or ignorant. True it
is that passages of the Bible can still be read in church which every
educated man knows to be (to use a mild term) unhistorical, and which,
to console his conscience, he calls allegorical. True, in our churches,
with but few exceptions, the white lie of silence is daily told. But
even mild pious frauds of this nature will soon be a thing of the
past. The Higher Critics and the advanced school of the Church will
see to it. They are beginning to speak out--why should not you?
The obscurantist would do well to take to heart the answer of Bishop
Colenso to the clergyman who reproached him with depraving one of his
parishioners by criticisms of the Pentateuch. "The blame," he replied,
"would be more fittingly attached to the teachers who lead people to
rest their faith in God and duty on a foundation of falsehood which
every new wave of thought is sweeping away." [354] Shall we, to give
a glaring instance of pious obstruction, revert to the time--not many
years ago--when the use of anæsthetics in surgery was denounced from
the pulpit, on the ground of impiety? I think not. Nowadays one can
hardly keep one's countenance in recalling the words of those who
seriously, and, as they thought, piously, said that they would rather
suffer any pain than "enter the presence of their Maker in a state
of intoxication." We no longer listen to those who would forbid us
either to taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge or to give it to
others. Obscurantism, dogma's best friend, is breathing its last. It
can therefore no longer be depended upon.
(c) THE EFFECT ON MORALITY.
Anxiety with regard to the effect on morality, private and public,
chiefly accounts, no doubt, for the present conspiracy of silence. I
have already gone into this question in some detail, [355] and we have
seen that belief and morality are not necessarily Siamese twins, and
that, when the belief is false, and still more, of course, when it
is suspected or known to be false, it is no longer of any possible
ethical value, but quite the reverse. Should you demur, I have a
question to ask, which is this: Now that, whether we wish it or no,
the truth about Christianity is fast leaking out, and, consequently,
disbelief is rapidly spreading, how is it that you, how is it that
the State, how is it that the majority outside the Church, display
so peculiarly little anxiety? I confess I am at a loss to understand,
unless it be that you and they have realised that morality is a thing
apart from belief, and therefore feel that there is little cause for
uneasiness. There is, however, an element of danger, and, temporary
though it may be, it is sure, if disregarded, to affect the private
and public morality of our own times.
(d) THE REAL DANGER.
The real danger lurks, where least suspected, in the very method which
you advocate as the safest--the method of a gradual infiltration. In
many matters such a method is undoubtedly sound. A reformation
involving a complete revolution in opinions is best carried out
gradually and tentatively, and, in this respect, nature's slow
processes of evolution provide a useful lesson for the too ardent
reformer. I do not suggest a cataclysm, or suppose it possible. But I
do say that your infiltration process must be carefully watched and
tended, although a policy of masterly inactivity and laissez-faire
may appeal to you as the easiest; I do say with Mr. Trevelyan that
"true opinions do not spread always, and of their own force; but
sometimes, and only by dint of courageous avowal"; [356] I do say that
in this particular instance it is absolutely necessary that, side
by side with a knowledge of the untruth of the Christian religion,
there should be inculcated a knowledge of the true origin and need
of morality; I do say that the infiltration process need not and
ought not to be prolonged indefinitely, and that insincerity of
any kind affects character banefully; I do say that you should not
allow your children to be taught a false belief and a false basis of
morality. This conspiracy of silence is as mistaken and mischievous as
that by which boys and girls are allowed to find out for themselves
what they should have had properly put to them by their parents and
guardians. When the Church teaching, when the dogmas contained in the
Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, are removed, the rational teaching
must take its place at once.
(e) THE CONSOLATIONS OF BELIEF, AND THE DISTRESS WE MAY CAUSE BY
OUR CANDOUR.
We cannot stop to inquire how this or that private interest will suffer
when the theological mist has been dispelled. When machinery was
invented--or, again, when slavery was abolished--enormous interests
were affected. Such things will always adjust themselves. There is
one difficulty, however, which we all feel very strongly, and which
cannot be passed over lightly. We have to consider the distress of mind
which the truth will cause to those who still firmly believe, and for
whom their religion is so great a consolation that to be robbed of
it would make life objectless--a dreary desert of despair. Have we,
then, any right to disturb people's belief, and to lacerate their
feelings? It would almost appear, as Mr. Winwood Reade remarks,
that "we can do nothing that is exclusively and absolutely good. Le
genre humain n'est pas placé entre le bien et le mal, mais entre le
mal et le pire." Just as multitudes of martyrs are now suffering in
unhappy Russia for the sake of its eventual reform, just as throughout
history mankind owe their elevation to misfortune and their happiness
to misery, so here, also, it seems as if the elevation and happiness
in store for mankind after their liberation from superstition can
only be achieved through suffering. The revolution will be bloodless,
but it cannot be altogether tearless. Let us see whether the mental
anguish will be as great as we imagine, and also whether it is not
in the power of each one of us to adopt a line of conduct which will
tend towards a vast reduction in the number of those who must pass
through the vale of tears.
Are you and I any unhappier than the believer? Many of us have gone
through an ordeal more or less severe before finally relinquishing
our cherished beliefs. I will speak of that presently. But are we
now any less happy than our fellows who are believers? Except for the
unhappiness which our outspoken confession of belief may have brought
upon us, surrounded as we are by believers and professing believers,
I think we can, with confidence, say we are not; while this possible
cause of unhappiness is precisely the one which will disappear as soon
as the vast multitude of unbelievers agree to tell the truth. No longer
then shall we seem, as now, to be in a minority. Very good. We are,
or should be, quite as happy as believers; may we not suppose that,
after the effect of a rude awakening from a beautiful dream has passed
off, the convert to unbelief will settle down into the same condition
of mind as ourselves? We are free from anxiety regarding the terrible
fate that some of our Christian brethren still see fit to hold over
us; but in place of their anxiety concerning an eternal after-life,
which may be blissful or may be gruesome, the worst we expect is an
eternal peace--an undisturbed sleep, such as we hope for every night
when we retire to rest.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
We are Agnostics, and, though some may preserve an agnosticism
concerning the continuance of consciousness after death, we are all
of us resigned to the inevitable.
And if there be no meeting past the grave,
If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest;
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep,
For God still "giveth his belovèd sleep,"
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best. [357]
Can we state it as our honest opinion that the consolations of
belief enter into the every-day life of the average man, influencing
thereby his happiness? We cannot. Only on rare occasions, in times
of bereavement, or in time of his own approaching death, will he turn
to his belief for consolation. Does he obtain then the consolation he
looks for? Again the answer must be in the negative. Here and there we
come across examples of a happy resignation such as we should expect
to find; but usually it is far otherwise. No one nurses his grief
longer than the average Christian; no one is more unwilling to die--he
is really more anxious to live than Hindoo, Parsee, Mohammedan, or
Buddhist believer, or Japanese Agnostic. Whether it be that Agnosticism
engenders a spirit of resignation, it is difficult to say; but the
fact remains that no one accepts the ills of life more cheerfully,
no one meets his death more bravely, than the average Agnostic. How
often one hears of the deaths of unbelievers quite as beautiful in
their serene calm as those of devout believers. To give examples
recently before the public, we have the heart-stirring accounts of
the last moments of two well-known Agnostics, the late Sir Leslie
Stephen, the author of An Agnostic's Apology, and the late George Jacob
Holyoake, the founder of Secularism. These may be exceptional cases;
but such are exceptional, also, among believers. According as a man
is possessed of self-control, or is naturally fearless or resigned,
so will his conduct or feelings be affected. We are speaking, mind
you, of averages; and I maintain that bereavements and death are met
by the average Agnostic with as much resignation as by the average
Christian who has religious consolation to fall back upon.
The fear of death supplies the chief motive for religion. Even the
emotion called forth by the death of a friend is not solely the feeling
of the loss. It is partly because death has been brought very near to
us. Now, as the consolation afforded by religion in our last hours
is continually held up to us by the priest as a reward for belief,
one would expect to find that occasions where this consolation was
unnecessary would be few and far between. It is, however, quite the
reverse. Eliminating the cases of sudden death, how seldom are these
consolations of utility? Inquire, if you doubt, from any medical
man what are his experiences among the dying; how many are not even
aware that they are dying; how many are too much taken up with their
physical sufferings, and too anxious to be relieved from them, to
think of anything else; how many die in a space of time so brief,
reckoning from the moment when they are first made aware of their
dying condition, that the case is practically one of sudden death;
how many are unconscious from the time when their life is first
in danger; how many have the knowledge of their approaching death
carefully concealed from them by kind-hearted doctors and relations,
albeit both the patient and his attendants say they believe in a
supremely happy existence after death? Far more often than not the
religious consolation so frequently and solemnly held up to us by
the priest as an inducement to believe is never enjoyed. Does it not
furnish a damaging commentary on one of the strongest arguments for
belief--the argument from religious consolation?
Taking these facts into consideration, we find ourselves able to
approach the question of disturbing belief with a somewhat lighter
heart. Still, we have to remember that these hopes and fears,
sedulously implanted by the Church, have taken deep root. Could we
be sure of impressing believers with our own convictions concerning
the consolations of religion, all would be well; but we cannot be
sure. Here lies the crux. The idea that they are deriving, and will
derive, consolation when the dread moment is at hand has become far
too fixed for painless extraction. You may only succeed in partially
divesting them of their belief, making them thoroughly miserable to
no purpose; or, if you do succeed, it may only be after you have put
them to considerable mental distress. What is to be done, then? It
is a hard question. Feeling this, we give the matter up in despair,
and remain silent. And so the truth which we might have spread,
each one of us in his own circle, remains unspoken.
Worse still, the untruth is perpetuated by permitting our children to
be brought up in the false beliefs of our believing friends. This,
at least, should make us pause and reflect. Are we justified in
keeping silence? Are we justified in making no effort to save the
future generation from mental distress, or from what is far worse, a
demoralising indifference? The dilemma is great, but that is no reason
for shirking it. It must be faced, and the pros and cons carefully
weighed. Is there, haply, no middle course that we may steer? We should
not unnecessarily cause distress to the aged who have, all their days,
cherished this belief, who have arrived at a time of life when ideas
are not easily changed, and who feel that that life is now drawing
to a close, and that they now more than ever require the consolation
they have built their hopes upon. We should spare their feelings all
we can; but we must, so it seems to me, put both them and ourselves to
such distress as may arise from telling them plainly, when absolutely
necessary, that we do not believe in the truth of Christianity, and
do not think it right to bring up our children to what we consider
is a false belief. We have seen that religious tolerance is the
growing spirit of the age, that some of our greatest divines extol
[358] the virtues of the Agnostic, and condemn [359] obscurantism
and the odium theologicum. Shall we then, after all, in these days,
cause so very much distress by our confessions of unbelief? As a rule,
I think we shall not.
(f) CAN WE ALTER PEOPLE'S BELIEFS?
Another objection to "speaking out" is that we can never alter people's
beliefs. Many well-known Agnostics still hold this opinion. In his
essay, "The Religion of All Sensible Men," Sir Leslie Stephen expresses
this opinion in the following words: "I do not wish to underrate modern
progress; but surely there is something grotesque in the hypothesis
that the average shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is too
clever to believe in the creeds of his forefathers. I fancy that no
one has yet ascertained that the brain of to-day is more capacious
than the brains of the contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul.... Can you
pierce his [the intelligent citizen's] armour of stolid indifference
by arguments about the principle of evolution and the survival of the
fittest?... The improbability that ancient creeds should simply survive
must, therefore, depend upon other conditions than the increase of the
average intelligence.... I would not conceal my own views, but neither
would I feel anxious to thrust them upon others; and for the very
simple reason that conversion appears to me to be an absurdity. You
cannot change a man's thoughts about things as you can change the books
in his library." [360] With all due respect to the late Sir Leslie
Stephen, I contend that there is one gigantic fallacy underlying this
argument. He forgets, or appears to forget, that beliefs are built
upon premises, the errors in which one may be able to demonstrate
absolutely without having to enter into learned dissertations on the
principle of evolution. He declares that he does not wish to underrate,
but he certainly does underrate, modern progress. Surely the average
shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is capable of understanding
that practically nothing is left of the foundations upon which his
forefathers built their beliefs; that they have crumbled away under
the influence of a knowledge that was not in the possession of the
contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul? "The laws of thought," as Herbert
Spencer says, "are everywhere the same, and the ideas of a rational
being are, under the conditions in which they occur, rational." [361]
It is ignorance, coupled with superstition, that is at the root of
all the different beliefs of mankind. Superstition may remain, though
even this may be questioned, considering that people brought up from
their childhood as Agnostics are wholly devoid of any superstitious or
so-called religious instinct. Ignorance can in any case be dispelled,
and if this does not actually destroy supernatural beliefs, it will at
least modify them. Even the working man will not remain satisfied with
a theology which maintains the necessity for a foundation of facts,
and yet is unable to prove them. Therefore, confident of the utility,
let us unravel all that is clearly false in belief, and disseminate
the result of our investigations among our fellows. In this way,
men who are in all essentials seeking the same goal may be led to
pursue, if not the same path, yet at least convergent paths. The
common sophisms that it is useless to inquire too deeply into beliefs,
since you will never arrive at the absolute truth, and that you will
never get two men to think alike, account for much of the prevalent
indifference. Absolute truth may always remain beyond the ken of man;
but that is no reason why he should not go on trying to get as near
it as possible, and the first step is the elimination of untruth.
(g) CAN BELIEFS BE USEFUL THOUGH FALSE?
It is strange to find non-Christians arguing that the persistence
of the Christian belief is a sign of its utility; it is no more so
than it is of its truth. Christianity did not make good men what they
are, but good men have made Christianity what it is. Besides, a false
belief cannot possibly serve a good purpose after its real character
has become known. Mr. Fielding urges [362] that whatever exists,
whatever persists, does so because it fills a want, because it is of
use. He points his argument by alluding to the fact that when anything
is useless it atrophies, and he instances how the snake and the whale
have lost their legs, human kind their hairy skin and keener sense of
smell, and so on. In this simile he is making an assertion which begs
the question. He assumes that supernatural belief is not an atrophied
organ; the Rationalist contends that it is, and that it has been proved
to be so. Belief, indeed, is strikingly analogous to an organ which,
owing to its having no further useful purpose, has atrophied and become
rudimentary. It may have served some purpose in bygone ages; but now,
in its present state, it is a source of weakness, like the splint
bone of a horse--or rather of danger, like the vermiform appendage of
man. The analogy, fortunately, does not hold good in every respect,
for a false belief is an appendage of human nature which can be
safely, though perhaps not always painlessly, removed. Indeed, it
is an open question whether all religion (in its theological sense)
is not "an unessential quality which has been mechanically attached
to it, and which, consequently, it may at any time throw off without
experiencing any serious loss." [363]
(h) IS A NEW RELIGION [364] REQUIRED?
If the latter be a correct estimate of the place religion occupies in
man's nature, it furnishes a reply to one of the objections to Agnostic
propaganda--the objection that, before we discard an existing belief,
we must be prepared to substitute a new belief in its place. It is
this objection that has given rise to those speculative philosophies
which the common sense of the vast majority has rightly decided are
unsatisfactory; a decision that the Church has not unnaturally seized
upon as a triumphant vindication of the truth of Christianity.
Against this objection to militant Rationalism, this plea for silence,
I may be permitted to enter my protest in the weighty words of a
well-known writer. "It is alleged," says the author of Supernatural
Religion, "that, before existing belief is disturbed, the iconoclast
is bound to provide a substitute for the shattered idol. To this we may
reply that speech or silence does not alter the reality of things. The
recognition of truth cannot be made dependent on consequences, or be
trammelled by considerations of spurious expediency. Its declaration in
a serious and suitable manner to those who are capable of judging can
never be premature. Its suppression cannot be effectual, and is only a
humiliating compromise with conscious imposture. In so far as morality
is concerned, belief in a system of future rewards and punishments,
although of an intensely degraded character, may, to a certain extent,
have promoted observance of the letter of the law in darker ages,
and even in our own times; but it may, we think, be shown that
education and civilisation have done infinitely more to enforce its
spirit. How far Christianity has promoted education and civilisation
we shall not here venture adequately to discuss. We may emphatically
assert, however, that whatever beneficial effect Christianity has
produced has been due, not to its supernatural dogmas, but to its
simple morality. Dogmatic theology, on the contrary, has retarded
education and impeded science.... Even now the friction of theological
resistance is a constant waste of intellectual power.... The choice of
a noble life is no longer a theological question, and ecclesiastical
patents of truth and uprightness have finally expired. Morality,
which has ever changed its complexion and modified its injunctions
according to social requirements, will necessarily be enforced as
part of human evolution, and is not dependent on religious terrorism
or superstitious persuasion. If we are disposed to say: Cui bono? and
only practise morality, or be ruled by right principles, to gain a
heaven or escape a hell, there is nothing lost, for such a grudging
and calculated morality is merely a spurious imitation which can as
well be produced by social compulsion." [365] "If," as George Eliot
once pithily remarked, "you feel no motive to common morality but
a criminal bar in heaven, you are decidedly a man for the police on
earth to keep their eye upon."
(i) WHY BE SO IMPATIENT OF ERROR?
There is one more argument against militant Rationalism which demands
our attention. "Why should we be so impatient of error?" asks Sir
Leslie Stephen. "The enormous majority of the race has, on any
hypothesis, been plunged in superstitions of various kinds, and, on
the whole, it has found that it could thrive and be decently happy and
contented in its ignorance. Science declines to accept catastrophes;
and no catastrophe would be more startling than a sudden dispersal
of the mists that have obscured the human intelligence for so many
ages. If they grow a little thinner in our time, we may well be
content; but is it not childish to be impatient about the rate of
development of these vast secular [age-long] processes? Why be in
such a hurry to 'change the errors of the Church of Rome for those of
the Church of the Future'?" [366] I hope I have already answered this
question to the satisfaction of some at least of my readers. I have
shown that there is a very real danger in further concealment--in
keeping up the farce. But let this pass. The reason why we should
be impatient of error--why the truth should be told--is that the
elimination of error will usher in an era of greater happiness.
In order that we may the more clearly perceive this, I shall
now conclude this book with a rapid survey of the arguments for
Rationalism.
§ 4. The Outlook.
When Rationalism reigns supreme,--
1. Morality will be founded on a firm basis. Its origin and necessity
being better understood, it will also be better practised, whether
in commerce, in politics, or in our social relations--i.e., both in
our public and in our private conduct. Also the present atmosphere of
religious insincerity will be cleared. Relieved of this temptation
to deceive our neighbour and even ourselves, our moral fibre will
be strengthened, and we shall be far less likely to be hypocrites in
other matters.
2. Social evils will stand a better chance of being redressed.
3. All religious intolerance will disappear once and for all.
4. An era of peace and happiness may at last be realised, because the
methods of its attainment will be scientific and rational. We shall
have recognised the fact that a gospel which proclaims a sword and
eternal damnation cannot at the same time be a gospel of good tidings,
cannot bring "Peace on earth, goodwill towards men."
It may be said that such optimism is absurd, but is it really so?
Morality.--Have we not seen [367] that morality can be taught apart
from belief, and, indeed, that it is better so taught? May we not
reasonably expect, therefore, that morality will advance side by
side with Rationalism? In the famous words of Kant, "The death
of dogma is the birth of morals." Our moral progress has not been
checked by the machinations of devils, but rather by our belief in
such personages. Also by our ignorance--ignorance of the origin and
purpose of morality, ignorance of the true causes of immorality,
ignorance of the laws of heredity and environment. Science is the
good fairy who will assist moral weaklings, and reduce their numbers
in succeeding generations. Supernatural religion was perhaps a phase
through which humanity had to grope towards the light of reason and
knowledge. "But we are now facing the dawn of that better and happier
day when piety shall be confined within the sphere of the natural, when
morals shall be looked upon and cultivated as essential conditions
of a truly blessed social life, and when all mankind shall aim,
not at imaginary happiness in a purely imaginary realm, but at real
prosperity in a profoundly real world. This would be the exaltation,
not destruction, of morality; the glorification, not annihilation,
of the sense of responsibility; the enthronement, not repudiation,
of the joy of altruistic service." [368]
Social Problems.--Broad-minded divines are now exalting the service
of man as it has never before been exalted. "Serve men," they say,
"and you will find God. Help men, and Christ is here." [369] "The
test of Christianity is," Canon Wilson informs us, "the resolve
and the power of Christians to solve social problems. If the Bible
inspires Christians with the zeal and the wisdom and the love
needed for this task, no one will dispute its claims to be verily
'the Word of God.'" [370] This inspiration to improve the lot of
our fellow-creatures furnishes, we are told, the final test of the
Bible's truth. We are entitled to ask, therefore, How comes it that
the inspiration has hitherto so signally failed to manifest itself, and
that it only appears now when the aspirations of the democracy can no
longer be disregarded? To give an example from history, did not slavery
flourish side by side with the Christian Church? [371] Was it not
abolished only when the further development of humanitarian principles
caused men's hearts to rebel against its cruelty and injustice?
The Church is at last devoting more attention to social evils and
to the removal of their causes. What has taught her this duty if it
be not the growing spirit of nationalism? [372] The Church has been
forced, as it were, to keep pace with the rise of Rationalism. It
is her only chance of prolonging her existence. Her new attitude in
this respect will undoubtedly be the means of confusing the issue--the
truth of Christianity--for some years to come. Therefore it is that,
while thankful for the improvement, it is our bounden duty to expose
the real truth of the matter--to see that Rationalism is not robbed of
its due meed of praise, that the merit of the improvement is ascribed
to its proper source.
Also we are to see that the process of improvement is not
delayed. Undoubtedly the progress of Rationalism will ultimately
involve important changes in political institutions and philosophic
theories; but it is the cure of social evils which cannot be wrought
too soon. In proportion as we accept the natural and reject the
supernatural diagnosis of social diseases so shall we alleviate and
possibly cure them.
Religious Tolerance.--Have we not seen that religious intolerance has
been the evil genius which throughout the history of Christianity has
been an enemy of progress and a lively cause of strife and misery? "The
Christian Church has been more cruel and shed more human blood than
any other Church or institution in the world. Let the Jew alone bear
witness among the crowd of victims." [373] Also, Christians, in the
course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater
severities on each other than they have ever experienced from the
zeal of infidels. [374]
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
To-day, despite the rise and influence of Rationalism in Europe,
"racial and religious prejudice are certainly present among us, and
they form a latent source of cruelty and injustice which can at any
time, if we are weak enough or wicked enough to give it free play,
stain the land with the most amazing oppressions." [375] Religious
animus, even in a country priding itself on its tolerant spirit, has
by no means burnt itself out. Do we not see it flaring up again in the
"War of the Kirks," the Education controversy, and the arguments for
the retention of the Athanasian Creed?
It is necessary, as Buckle observes, [376] that men should learn to
doubt, before they begin to tolerate; and that they should recognise
the fallibility of their own opinions, before they respect the opinions
of their opponents. We may never entirely agree on questions that
are for the present at least shrouded in mystery; but, though the old
adage, "Quot homines, tot sententiæ," may remain true for all time,
wide differences of opinion will disappear, and with them the odium
theologicum. There can only be intolerance where belief is dogmatic,
and that the religion of the future will never be. The uncertainty, the
reasons why others may not be able to accept this or that philosophic
speculation, will be recognised.
If any discoveries await us, we are sure, at all events, that they will
not confirm a dogma that would consign the greater portion of the human
race to unspeakable and eternal torment; they will not confirm Christ's
description of the Last Judgment, when the Son of Man is to say:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
Devil and his angels." It is the fashion nowadays for Latitudinarians
to explain away everything that appears too incongruous or vindictive,
and the word "everlasting" is said to be a mistranslation; but the
meaning of one at least of the sayings attributed to Jesus is only too
clear: "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt. xxii. 14.) What,
then, is to become of the many? If we are to believe the "Word of God,"
their awful fate, temporary or otherwise, is certain--"Whosoever was
not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire"
(Rev. xx. 15); or again, "And shall cast them into a furnace of fire:
there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. xiii. 42). It is
cruel doctrines of this kind that have arrested the growth of love and
pity, and Rationalism is therefore the sworn enemy of such doctrines,
as well as of the religious intolerance which springs from them.
Peace. [377]--In an address by the late Archbishop of Canterbury,
when Bishop of London, delivered at the Polytechnic, Regent Street,
[378] we are presented with an argument of Christian apologetics, the
weight of which rests upon the presumption that Christ did not wish the
Church to begin with any bloodshed! "It is sometimes questioned," said
Dr. Temple, "by those who would throw discredit upon the narrative,
that our Lord tells them [the disciples] to go into Galilee, and yet
He intended to see them that evening. But the whole thing is perfectly
clear to those who consider the circumstances. Our Lord appeared to
them in the evening, and there can be no doubt that He intended to
do so even when He told these women that they were to desire all the
disciples to go down into Galilee. But it was of great importance that
there should be no gathering of the disciples in Jerusalem, because the
inevitable result would have been an alarm on the part of the Jews,
and Pontius Pilate would have been compelled, in order to keep the
city perfectly quiet, to disperse such an assembly by force; and it
is likely enough that the Church would have begun with bloodshed. But
our Lord did not choose to have any such beginning. He told them all
to go into Galilee." Are there any grounds for this presumption, any
grounds for presuming that God ever wishes to prevent bloodshed? None
whatever from a study of history. None whatever from a study of the
Bible. None whatever from a study of Christ's own words: "Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace,
but a sword."
Look at the present day! "We live in a time," exclaims the Kaiser,
[379] "in which every young German capable of bearing arms must be
ready to step forward for his Fatherland." "The signs of the times
make it the duty of the nation to strengthen its defences against
unrighteous attacks." [380] "History, viewed as a whole," says Major
Stewart Murray, [381] warningly, "is nothing but a succession of
struggles for existence among rival nations, in which, in the long run,
only the strong armed survive." Similar notes of warning are echoing
and re-echoing through the length and breadth of Christendom. Is
this no reflection upon Christianity's power for good? Look at
the picture! Christian nations all armed to the teeth, with their
"powder dry" and their "swords keen," each distrustful of the other,
each ready to spring at the other's throat.
What has the Rationalist to say to this state of things? What
remedy does he propose to apply? The prophets foretell that we
can look forward to the abolition of war only when the engines of
destruction--flying ships armed with weapons of death, for example--are
of so fearful a nature that it will at last be brought home to mortals
that this clumsy and barbarous machine for settling disputes is too
absurd, too suicidal for further employment. But need we wait long
weary years, burdened with the thousand and one curses of war and
militarism, [382] till this supreme horror has been invented?
In the resolution adopted at the Fourteenth Peace Congress [383] we
find the following stirring appeal: "We are beginning to understand
that the rights of the citizen within the State can only be fully
respected when, by the establishment of international juridical
order, absolute security shall be obtained for all nations. The
demand for this international security is becoming daily more urgent,
on the one hand because modern progress binds together millions of
the most diverse interests, on the other hand because the stream of
democracy, or what it would be more proper to call the aspirations of
the masses of the people after happiness, is rising continually in
an immense and irresistible flood. International security can only
be assured by federation; so federation will come about, for it is
indispensable as liberty to the citizen, as air to the lungs. But it
behoves us to see that it comes before we are laid in the tomb. What
we ought to labour for with an unresting ardour is that federation
should be accomplished while we are yet alive, so that we may not
be thwarted of the legitimate share of happiness that belongs to us
here below." Yes, this strikes the right chord; but before the hopes
of these peace enthusiasts can be fulfilled Rationalism must have
advanced considerably further than it has up to the present. At the
third National Peace Congress held at Birmingham on June 13th and 14th,
1906, the opinion was expressed that the King and the working classes
were already on the side of peace, and it only remained, therefore,
to convert the Church and the middle classes. How are we to set about
their conversion? Even if we could persuade the Church that war was
not an essential to the welfare of nations, we could hardly expect her
to agree with us at present either as to the cause or the cure of the
evil. The prime cause of war is Nature's cruel law, the "struggle for
existence"; and the Rationalist's proposals for its alleviation run
counter to the teachings of the Church. For this among other cogent
reasons, I conceive that it behoves us to see that the truth about
Christianity be known "before we are laid in the tomb," and that "what
we ought to labour for with an unresting ardour" is that this "should
be accomplished while we are yet alive, so that we may not be thwarted
of the legitimate share of happiness that belongs to us here below."
The close association of war and religion has never ceased to act
for the injury of mankind. The "Lord of Hosts," the "Lord mighty in
battle," is expected to take interest in bloodshed rather than in the
pursuits of peace, and to be always ready to join in the fray--to
fight for His People; both sides, be it remembered, claiming His
assistance. True Christianity owns as its Master a Prince of Peace; but
in no particular has its failure in practice been more marked than in
its impotency to carry out this, one of its chief missions. Why? Apart
from religion being frequently the actual occasion of the strife, [384]
is it not because it has always meddled in politics, always supported
rulers in their ambitions, in their land-hunger? Is it not because
religion has too often submitted to be "a 'kept' priest to bless or
ban as the passion or self-interest of its employer dictated?" [385]
It is as futile as it is insincere for a Tsar [386] to preach peace,
when he, or rather his counsellors, are imbued with a hunger for
other people's property, and, hypocrites that they are, hide their
real motives under the cloak of religion, calling it, forsooth,
the spreading of a Christian civilisation. Every Rationalist, every
Freethinker, is an honest advocate of peace. [387] He is not so
irrational, so immoral I might say, as to propose the settlement of
disputes by arbitration, and at the same time to entertain nefarious
projects calculated to render this method impracticable. So long
as Christian nations remain unmindful of the Tenth Commandment, he
acknowledges with sorrow that we must continue armed and ready to do
battle; but he looks forward with confidence to the day when there
will be such an overwhelming body of men earnestly and sincerely
desirous of peace that war will be impossible, simply because the
preponderating voice of each and every nation will be against it--will
"seek peace and ensue it." He anticipates a time when men will realise
that they are not only citizens of this or that country, but fellow
citizens also on the same planet.
§ 5. Concluding Remarks.
An eminent theologian tells us: "Reason is the only faculty we have
wherewith to judge concerning anything, even Revelation itself." [388]
How is it, then, that Religionist and Rationalist arrive at such
contrary conclusions? The explanation is simple enough: the Religionist
trusts, the Rationalist distrusts, his emotions. Which is in the
right? The survival of religious belief will largely depend upon the
view men may ultimately take upon this question. Whether religion be no
more than "morality touched by emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it,
[389] or whether all religions are only different ways of expressing a
reality which transcends experience and correct expression, we cannot,
on that account, accept dogmas that are untrue; we cannot pretend that
a supernatural revelation has been vouchsafed to us. We may surmise,
as Sir Henry Thompson supposed, that the "eternal and infinite energy
behind phenomena" is what we call "God"; but we have to admit that
this God is an unknown God, and that all attempts to unravel the
mystery that surrounds our own fate are the merest guesses in the
dark. Does a surmise--a belief if you will have it so--of this kind
afford any religious satisfaction? If this Eternal Energy possesses
what we should call a mind, can we worship a Supreme Intelligence
"Which stoops not either to bless or ban,
Weaving the woof of an endless plan"?
Can we worship the Unknown? Can we, like the Athenians of old,
erect altars to the Unknown God? I trow not. The age of ignorance
and superstition is slowly, but none the less surely, passing away,
never again to return.
Sir Oliver Lodge believes [390] in "the ultimate intelligibility of
the universe," and with this opinion many of us will agree. Perhaps our
present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp
the deepest things by their aid, or perhaps they will suffice as they
are, and only a further acquisition of knowledge may be required. In
any case, one sees no reason why, because we have no acceptable theory
of life or of death now, we must therefore be equally ignorant many
centuries, or even a single century, hence. On the other hand, it is,
of course, quite possible that these mysteries may remain for ever
unexplained. It may transpire that Haeckel's assumption of a monism
in the physical world, and his identification of vital force with
ordinary physical and chemical forces, are incorrect. It may transpire
that Professor le Conte was wrong in regarding vital force as just
so much withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical
forces. Radio-activity and the cyanic theory [391] may not furnish a
satisfactory solution of the problem of the first appearance of life
upon this globe. But one thing, at all events, our present knowledge
seems clearly to indicate: the solution of the problem cannot be in
accord with the Christian dogmas. Should the secrets of our existence
still lie concealed in the womb of time, their birth will be the death,
not the renascence, of the dying creeds of to-day.
Meanwhile our present course is clearly defined: we should search
out and expose all false premises of belief. Only in this way can
we hope to arrive a little nearer to the ultimate truth. Also,
what is of much greater consequence, when all that is demonstrably
untrue in the world's beliefs has been pointed out and acknowledged,
believers and unbelievers will be in far better accord concerning
all that is vital to the well-being of the human race. "We cannot,"
as Mr. Trevelyan pertinently remarks, [392] "alter the nature of the
Unknown by conceiving it to be other than that which it is; but we
can get a wrong basis for ethics, and a false sentimental outlook on
everything, by reason of false beliefs."
By all means let those who can, continue to cherish the "larger
hope"--why should they not, while all is unknown?--and let the
metaphysicians continue to translate their wishes and aspirations
into philosophical language; but the guiding spirit in human affairs
should be, and one day will be, a scientific humanitarianism working
on rational principles for the peace and happiness of all mankind.
"Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace."
APPENDIX
Chapter I.
P. 5, lines 12-14.--The Copernican system was gradually accepted,
and so were the discoveries which followed up to fifty years ago.
Copernicus's book, The Revolution of the Celestial Bodies, was printed
a few days before his death, in 1543. The system was condemned by
a decree of Pope Paul V., in 1616, which was not revoked till 1818
by Pius VII. The great Kepler (d. 1630) was an astrologer as well
as astronomer, and thought the stars were guided by angels. While
his mind had a strong grasp of positive scientific truth, it also
had an irresistible tendency towards mystical speculation. In those
days Science and Religion were easily reconciled. It was fortunate
for Newton that he made his discovery of the law of gravitation in a
rather more enlightened age and country, otherwise he would inevitably
have shared the terrible fate of Giordano Bruno at the hands of the
Church's emissaries.
Even in the early eighteenth century the light of science had hardly
got beyond the first glimmering of dawn. Mathematics and astronomy
were the only sciences which had passed into the positive and final
stage. Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, were not yet
in a position to speak with authority even on subjects in their own
province. Read a popular apologetic work of the eighteenth century;
read Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation, edition 1724,
and you will find that a defender of the faith had in those days
a comparatively easy task. Science being still in its infancy,
Dr. Samuel Clarke gave reasons for the truth of Christian dogmas,
which, though they could not be controverted then, would now be
considered the most abject nonsense. Bead also Mr. S. Laing's remarks
on p. 13 of A Modern Zoroastrian, where he tells us that when he was
"a student at Cambridge, little more than fifty years ago, astronomy
was the only branch of natural science which could be said to be
definitely brought within the domain of natural law, and that only
as regards the law of gravity and the motions of the heavenly bodies,
for little or nothing was known as to their constitution."
P. 5, lines 18-19.--The vast antiquity of the earth.
"It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that 500 to 1,000 million
years may have elapsed since the birth of the moon" (see Professor
Darwin's Presidential address at the meeting of the British Association
in Johannesburg on August 30th, 1905).
P. 8, lines 27-9.--He is well aware of the odium he would incur
should he proclaim his heterodox views concerning the popular
religion.
Nor is it easy for even a well-known man to get his heterodox views
published where they will be widely read. Sir Hiram Maxim wrote
lately to the Literary Guide concerning his letter in the "Do We
Believe?" correspondence, saying "it was necessary for my letter to
have a slight coating of ecclesiastical sugar, otherwise it would not
have been published." Does the Church realise the extent to which men
of science coat their popular writings with "ecclesiastical sugar"? The
retail bookselling trade in England is still largely in the hands of
persons belonging to the various sects, and, even where this is not
so, few dare to push the works of glaringly heterodox writers. As an
example of the difficulties which beset the way of a too truth-loving
author, we may notice that it took three years before 2,000 copies of
Mr. Samuel Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought could be sold,
and its sale brought him no pecuniary profit.
P. 19, lines 2-3.--He [Sir Oliver Lodge] has never yet professed
belief in a personal God.
He has now done so. In an article entitled "First Principles of
Faith," appearing in the Hibbert Journal for July, 1906, he has
drawn up a new formula of faith, which commences: "I believe in one
Infinite and Eternal Being, a guiding and loving Father, in whom all
things consist." He continues: "I believe that the Divine Nature is
specially revealed to man through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lived
and taught and suffered in Palestine 1,900 years ago, and has since
been worshipped by the Christian Church as the immortal Son of God,
the Saviour of the world." This reconstructed Christian (?) creed has
been deftly worded; but this, at least, is clear--the Virgin-birth,
Resurrection, and Ascension form no part of the religious belief of Sir
Oliver Lodge. The full text of the "Catechism" which he has designed
for the use of teachers and others interested in the education of
the young appears in the Standard of December 14th, 1906.
P. 20, line 31.--The religious naturally wish to discredit science.
It is a common assertion of the pious that modern science has
continually to retrace its steps, and admit that it was mistaken in
its facts and theories. The following pronouncement by Professor Ray
Lankester, in his Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the
British Association (held at York in 1906), should disillusion them:
"During the last few years an idea has spread abroad that some of
the more recent discoveries of science have revolutionised scientific
ideas--have upset former theories, or have reversed them. Nothing is
further from the truth."
P. 25, lines 19-20.--They [Agnostics] "exhibit the very temper
which Christ blesses."
Canon Scott Holland's precise words were: "It is no petulant boy
making his petulant repudiation, but a man with steady and deliberate
judgment, weighing, examining, testing, and still, at last to his own
sorrow, to his own confessed cost, bravely facing what he deems to
be the fact, and pronouncing, 'I am not of the Body; I cannot share
the life of the Christian community.' And yet, if we look at him,
we recognise in every detail of his character the lines that lead
to Christ. He illustrates and exhibits the very temper which Christ
blesses; he is pure, unselfish, humble, and good.... He may say what he
pleases, but Christ has not forsworn him." Subsequently he acknowledges
in moving terms that, as the populations are emerging from out of
their darkness, so they are repudiating the name of Christ. But he
gives no explanation for a circumstance so perplexing to a Christian.
Let me not be misunderstood to say that this extremely lenient view
towards the Agnostic is the usual one at present. On the contrary, the
Bishop of Moray voices the opinion of the majority of the orthodox when
(at the Diocesan Synod held at Inverness Cathedral in the autumn of
1904) he challenges the wisdom of this sympathetic attitude, and asks:
"Is this a time to banish into silence, or relegate to an inferior
position, the great bulwark of the Faith--the Athanasian Creed?" We
are to understand that the curses of the Creed are reserved, not for
the man who is born of heathen parents, but for the man who, often
with much uprooting of his dearest hopes, and at the cost of losing
many friends and even his original means of livelihood, decides that
he must forsake the Faith. It seems to me that, before converting the
heathen, it would be only fair that the terrible fate they will incur
by any subsequent recantation should be distinctly explained to them.
Again, the Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon, in his pamphlet, Atheism and Faith,
represents the Atheist in the guise of the Tempter "holding out the
bribe of free indulgence of all the passions to our youth, our working
classes, our governing classes, and our capitalists." Clergymen who
speak with such bitterness and make such sweeping assertions really
betray the weakness of their own case. For it is a psychological fact
that men are always angriest when they know they are not quite in
the right. It is also a statistical fact (so far as statistics can be
relied upon for facts) that crime among disbelievers is proportionately
small, while among the staunchest believers, the Roman Catholics,
it is proportionately large.
P. 29, line 23.--Excite prejudice by the use of a condemnatory
adjective.
The Riddle of the Universe was described as a "book of rubbish" by
Father Gerard, a member of the "Society of Jesus." He has not the
least authority for such an indictment. On the contrary, every single
biologist would tell him that he was himself talking rubbish. The
Turin Academy crowned it as the best book written in the last four
years of the nineteenth century. Clergymen seem to prefer to get
their science from apologetic works only. How many, I wonder, have
ever read the masterly exposition of the case for Haeckel--Haeckel's
Critics Answered, by Joseph McCabe?
P. 30, lines 13-14.--"In relief of doubt."
A work entitled In Relief of Doubt, by the Rev. R. E. Welsh, a
Presbyterian minister, is an attempt by an exceedingly earnest man to
remove doubts concerning the Bible. There is an introductory note by
the Bishop of London. The book is written in what the Bishop terms a
"racy" style, and has the merit of much straightforwardness; but few
well-informed, and at the same time open-minded, readers would agree
with the conclusions of the author. The argument that St. Paul was
a contemporary of Christ is one of the principal features; but see
Chap. II., § 3, and Chap. III., § 2.
P. 31, lines 27-8.--The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
In Priests and People in Ireland, by Michael McCarthy, there is a
complete exposé of the methods and results of Christian teaching in
this portion of the British Isles, and a portrait of a typical Roman
Catholic priest which demonstrates his elevating (?) influence. Also
see Twelve Years in a Monastery and Life in a Modern Monastery,
by Joseph McCabe.
P. 33, lines 32-3.--The Roman Catholic Church is more consistent.
"The Papal Church, founded, to a large extent, on superstition
and ignorance, has ever been afraid of knowledge, of study, and
education; hence she only consulted her own life's interests when, in
the Middle Ages, she decreed knowledge to be identical with heresy,
and heresy to be punishable by death." These words are quoted from
The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, by the Rev. Alexander Robertson,
D.D., a book accorded a flattering reception by the King of Italy in
1903. Again, Lord Macaulay, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church
in the first chapter of his History of England, says that, "during
the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has
been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has
been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of
life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been made
in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile
provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty,
in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor."
P. 38, line 7.--Gifts for the needy.
The exhortation to "give to the poor" is a precept of all the great
religions. Indiscriminate giving was inculcated by the disciples of
Christ, who were the poor, and Asiatic poor at that. The pity of
it is that often more harm than good is done because the "Divine"
command does not specify the deserving poor. Hence that wholesale
pauperisation of which the evil effects are especially apparent among
the Jews and in Oriental countries.
Chapter II.
P. 44, lines 22-3.--Mansel, Mozley, Farrar, Westcott, on Miracles.
Dean Mansel said: "If there be one fact recorded in Scripture which
is entitled, in the fullest sense of the word, to the name of a
miracle, the Resurrection of Christ is that fact. Here, at least,
is an instance in which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall
with our belief in the supernatural.... A superhuman authority needs
to be substantiated by superhuman evidence, and what is superhuman
is miraculous" (pp. 3 and 35 of Aids to Faith, 4th ed.).
Canon Mozley said: "Miracles and the supernatural contents of
Christianity must stand or fall together" (Bampton Lectures, 1865).
Dean Farrar said: "However skilfully the modern ingenuity of
semi-belief may have tampered with supernatural interpositions, it is
clear to every honest and unsophisticated mind that, if miracles be
incredible, Christianity is false" (The Witness of History to Christ,
Hulsean Lectures for 1870, 2nd ed., p. 25).
Bishop Westcott said: "The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle,
and, if it can be shown that a miracle is either impossible or
incredible, all further inquiry into the details of its history
is superfluous from a religious point of view" (The Gospel of the
Resurrection, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 34). See also Archbishop Trench's
Notes on Miracles.
P. 44, lines 28-9.--The opinion of the majority of our living
dignitaries.
This has been made abundantly clear by the unanimous reply of a
large number of Bishops to a correspondent of the Record, who had
written letters to them stating that he had heard that "not a single
Bishop on the bench to-day believed in the miraculous in religion"
(reported in the daily papers towards the close of January, 1905).
P. 48, lines 25-6.--Some even hold that it [devil-possession]
still exists.
Thus, in the introduction to Pastor Hsi (a book of which 24,000
copies were printed between 1903 and 1905), the Rev. D. E. Hoste,
General Director of the China Inland Mission, not only expresses
this belief, but seeks to explain why devil-possession should now
be chiefly confined to heathen lands. "Careful observation and
study of the subject have," he says, "led many to conclude that,
although in lands where Christianity has long held sway the special
manifestations we are now considering are comparatively unknown,
the conditions among the heathen being more akin to those prevailing
when and where the Gospel was first propagated, it is not surprising
that a corresponding energy of the powers of evil should be met with
in missionary work to-day." He would have us believe, apparently,
that the atmosphere of holiness in Christendom is so overpowering
that the Devil and his crew are rendered less active! Taking him
seriously, can he also explain how it is that God permits devils
to perform such pranks? Not only is the house "swept and garnished"
that they may "enter in, and dwell there"; but in the case of Saul
we are told that they were purposely sent by God! (See Luke xi. 25,
26, and 1 Sam. xviii. 10 and xix. 9.)
The importance of this question is brought home to us by Mr. Benn in
his History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, where
he says (p. 454): "The witness of Jesus to the Fatherhood of God as
a personal spirit amounts to no more than his witness to personal
devils as authors of disease; and the witness of the Evangelists to
their Master's authorship of the Sermon on the Mount is less unanimous
than their witness to the destruction by diabolical agency of the
Gadarene swine."
P. 49, lines 13-14.--The feeding of the five thousand.
Bishop Ingram attaches the utmost importance to the truth of this
miracle. In a sermon published in the Church Times of October 7th,
1904, he is reported to have said: "It is the worst policy of defence
to throw over the miracle of feeding the five thousand, or our Lord's
power over disease and death, and then expect to keep the faith of
the world in His incarnation, His Virgin-birth, and His resurrection."
P. 61, line 14.--The simple theory of the spiritists.
Dr. Moncure Conway relates, in his Autobiography, how it was a
spiritualist séance which made him realise the kind of frenzy that
took possession of those early Christians who really believed that
a dead man had returned to life. See also Professor Lombroso on
"spiritualistic" phenomena, p. 396.
P. 64, lines 20-1.--Few of us have ever had our belief tested.
Persons who have never spent their lives, or a portion of their
lives, among the heathen, have never had their faith put to the
fullest test, for in such an environment they would find faith's
difficulties considerably enhanced. I remember, a few days after my
arrival in India, a certain Bishop looking me in the face and, with a
kindly hand upon my shoulder, saying: "You will find life much more
difficult in India." He referred, of course, to the religious life,
and was quite right, although, probably, he was thinking chiefly of the
example that I should find set me by my fellow Christians; while, as
mine was largely a camp life, it was more the insight into the belief
of my native companions which affected me. There, all around you, are
simple folk believing in what you know to be absurd; you are brought
face to face with ignorance and superstition; you see how faith can
be misplaced, and how trusting natures can be deceived. It sets you
thinking whether, after all, you too may not be deceived; whether
the possession of an unlimited capacity for faith has the virtue in
it which the priest tells you it has, whether, in fact, faith is a
reliable guide. Should you attempt to convert an educated native,
you not only find that the task is hopeless, but that you are asking
him to accept a belief which is as unfounded and unproven as the one
he already holds. Anyone wishing to form some idea of an experience
of this sort should read The Bible: Is it the Word of God? by Thomas
Lumsden Strange, formerly a judge of the High Court of Madras. The
way the observations are cast in the shape of a conversation between a
student of the Bible and a cultured native of India brings home many
Bible difficulties which largely escape the notice and consideration
of the devout. I have taken my illustration from this book.
Chapter III.
P. 77, lines 11-12.--Encyclopædia Biblica.
(My best thanks are due to Mr. C. T. Gorham for permitting me to make
a free use of his notes on the Enc. Bib.)
In case the reader may jump to the conclusion that this is a work
compiled by collecting the most heretical views from all parts of
the globe (as I was informed by the librarian when I inquired for
the book in a Cathedral library), let me call attention to the list
of contributors, among whom will be found many English ministers of
the Gospel. For instance:--
The Rev. Archibald R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and
Semitic Languages, Edinburgh.
The Rev. C. F. Burney, M.A., Lecturer in Hebrew, and Fellow of
St. John's College, Oxford.
The Rev. Claude Hermann Walter Johns, M.A., Hon. Sec. Camb. Pupil
Teachers' Centre.
The Rev. George Adam Smith, M.A., D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew
and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow.
The Very Rev. J. A. Robinson, D.D., Dean of Westminster.
The Rev. Owen Charles Whitehouse, M.A., Principal and Professor
of Biblical Exegesis and Theology in the Countess of Huntingdon's
College, Cheshunt, Herts.
The Rev. R. H. Charles, M.A., D.D., Professor of Biblical Greek,
Trinity College, Dublin.
The Rev. Samuel Rolles Driver, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew,
Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
The Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., Oriel Professor of the
Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, Canon of Rochester.
The Rev. T. Witton Davies, B.A., Ph.D., Professor of Old Testament
Literature, North Wales Baptist College, Bangor; Lecturer in
Semitic Languages, University College.
The Rev. William E. Addis, M.A., Lecturer in Old Testament
Criticism, Manchester College, Oxford.
The Rev. William Henry Bennett, Litt.D., D.D., Professor of
Biblical Languages and Literature, Hackney College, London,
and Professor of Old Testament Exegesis, New College, London.
The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of
Divinity, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
The Rev. A. B. Davidson, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old
Testament Exegesis, United Free Church New College, Edinburgh.
The Rev. George Buchanan Gray, M.A., Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield
College, Oxford.
The rapid advance of Bible criticism in late years is well seen by
comparing articles in Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1860), in
the Encyclopædia Britannica, signed W. R. S. (between 1875 and 1888),
and in the Encyclopædia Biblica (1899 to 1903). Even the comparatively
conservative Hastings's Dictionary (1898-1902, with extra volume 1904)
contains articles which would have been condemned as heretical half
a century ago. Speaking of the Enc. Bib. and Hasting's Dictionary,
Mr. Benn remarks (in his History of Rationalism) that, "as regards the
Old Testament, their respective attitudes do not essentially differ,
Wellhausen's theory being accepted by both."
P. 80, line 18.--We have note got the stone and read the
inscriptions.
For a popular account of this interesting discovery (upon the site
of Susa, the ancient city of the Persian kings, in December, 1901)
see The Hammurabi Code, by Chilperic Edwards.
P. 103, line 16-17.--A disputed passage in Tacitus.
The sceptical theory is that, had it been genuine, the passage would
not have been overlooked by all the early Christian writers in the
various disputations with objectors, and especially by Tertullian,
who quoted largely from his works, and the ecclesiastical historian
Eusebius, who was zealous in his defence of the Faith and greedy of
materials with which to support it. (An important French student
of Tacitus holds that the whole Annals is medieval!) On the other
hand, the style is thoroughly Tacitean, containing a number of
words and expressions elsewhere used by the author, and more or less
characteristic of him, yet without any such elaborate over-imitation
as we should expect to find even in a skilful forgery. Nor is the
subject-matter perhaps less characteristic, while the MS. evidence
is in favour of the passage being genuine. Taking it to be so,
what, after all, does it amount to? Merely this. Christ was put
to death by Pontius Pilate, and a very large number of Christians
were put to death in a horrible manner by Nero. The passage occurs
in Tacitus, Annals, XV., 44, and runs as follows: "Consequently,
to get rid of the accusation, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted
the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations,
called by the populace 'Christians.' Christus, from whom the name
had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of
Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate,
and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment,
again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil,
but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every
part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly,
an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their
information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the
crime of firing the city, as of hatred of mankind. Mockery of every
sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts,
they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or
were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination
when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle."
P. 107, lines 19-20.--The true likeness of our Lord had been
miraculously transmitted.
Presumably my informant was referring to the legend of St. Veronica,
since the equally absurd History of the Likeness of Christ (translated
by E. A. Wallis Budge) closes with these words: "And the angel took
the likeness from where it was standing, and he removed it; and no
man hath ever seen it since."
Chapter IV.
P. 121, line 22.--Born in a cave.
"Justin Martyr the Apologist, who, from his birth at Shechem, was
familiar with Palestine, and who lived less than a century after the
time of our Lord, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is,
indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and the
Western Churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded
in Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability" (see p. 20
of the cheap edition [1906] of Farrar's Life of Christ). The grotto of
the manger in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem is certainly a
cave. Embedded in the rock is a much-kissed silver star bearing the
inscription: "Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est."
P. 122, line 6.--Krishna was slain.
The Vishnu Purâna speaks of his being shot in the foot with an
arrow. Other accounts state that he was suspended on a tree. "On
raconte fort diversement la mort de Crishna. Une tradition remarquable
et avérée le fait périr sur un bois fatal (un arbre), ou il fut
cloué d'un coup de flèche" (quoted from Mons. Guigniaut's Religion de
l'Antiquité, by Higgins; Anacalypsis, vol. i., p. 144). In the accounts
given in the Mahâbhârata, Vishnu Purâna, and Bhagavat Purâna, the
slaying is unintentional, but predestined. There appears to have been a
crucifixion myth in ancient India; but Godfrey Higgins' assumption that
Krishna was crucified rests mainly on an oversight of the archæologist
Moor (see J. M. Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, pp. 294-9).
P. 123, lines 24-5.--Almost every important episode of the life
of Christ.
"With the remarkable exception of the death of Jesus on the cross
and of the doctrine of atonement by vicarious suffering, which is
absolutely excluded by Buddhism, the most ancient of the Buddhistic
records known to us contain statements about the life and the
doctrines of Gautama Buddha which correspond in a remarkable manner,
and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the
Gospels about the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ" (quoted from
p. 50 of Bunsen's Angel Messiah).
P. 124, line 1.--Buddha was miraculously born.
Maya dreams that she is carried by archangels to heaven, and that there
the future Buddha enters her right side in the form of a superb white
elephant. Rhys Davids relates this legend on p. 183 of his Buddhism,
and in a footnote he says: "Csoma Korösi refers in a distant way
to a belief of the later Mongol Buddhists that Maya was a virgin
(As. Res. xx. 299); but this has not been confirmed. St. Jerome says
(Adversus Jovin., bk. 1): 'It is handed down as a tradition among the
Gymnosophists of India that Buddha, the founder of their system, was
brought forth by a virgin from her side.'" In Samuel Beal's Romantic
History of Buddha (from the Chinese version) we read of Buddha's
miraculous birth, and that there is ground to assume the prevalence
of this belief for centuries before Christ. Bunsen, again (p. x. of
his Angel-Messiah), speaks of the "Virgin Maya, on whom, according to
Chinese tradition, the Holy Ghost had descended"; and elsewhere (e.g.,
pp. 10 and 25) he adopts this version of the legend. Dr. Knowling,
in his apologetic work, Our Lord's Virgin Birth and the Criticism
of Today, pp. 53-4, lays stress upon the grotesqueness of the idea
that a man should enter his mother's womb in the form of a white
elephant. But, as Dr. Rhys Davids explains (p. 184 of Buddhism),
there is nothing bizarre when the origin of the poetical figure has
been ascertained. The belief was borrowed from the older sun-worship,
"the white elephant, like the white horse [cf. Rev. vi. 2 and xix. 11,
14], being an emblem of the sun, the universal monarch of the sky."
P. 126, lines 1-2.--He was very early regarded as omniscient and
absolutely sinless.
Dr. Rhys Davids's remarks on the early growth of myths concerning
Buddha, coming as they do from a champion of the Christian cause,
are full of significance for anyone who permits himself to think and
who keeps an open mind. He says (p. 182 of Buddhism): "The belief
soon sprang up that he could not have been, that he was not, born as
ordinary men are; that he had no earthly father; that he descended
of his own accord into his mother's womb from his throne in heaven;
and that he gave unmistakeable signs, immediately after his birth,
of his high character and of his future greatness."
We have a perfect illustration of the possibility and rapidity of
the legend-making process in the nineteenth century. The Bab (or
"gateway") was a Persian reformer who suffered martyrdom at the hands
of the authorities in 1850. Within forty years an evidently mythical
version of his life was current among his followers in the form of a
Gospel. Babism inculcates a high morality, and there is a likelihood of
its becoming paramount in Persia. For further information on this new
religion see Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, by Myron H. Phelps
(Putnam).
P. 127, line 10.--Born of the Virgin Isis.
It is true, as Dr. Knowling points out (p. 56 of The Virgin Birth),
and as I have personally seen, that in the inscriptions and scenes in
the temple of Luxor "we have at least some elements of the glorifying
of sensual desire which is so far removed from the chaste restraint
and simplicity of the Evangelists." But the parallel is not a whit
the less admissible because the same story appears in a fresh garb
to suit the higher ideals of a new religion.
P. 130, note 1.--Mexican Antiquities.
Most of Viscount Kingsborough's life and fortune was devoted to his
illustrated work, Antiquities of Mexico (nine volumes and a portion
of a tenth volume, imperial folio, London, 1830-48). No anti-Christian
spirit inspired his labours; on the contrary, he attempted to prove a
Jewish migration to Mexico. Though the attempt failed, he bequeathed
to posterity an invaluable work on the ancient religion of Mexico.
P. 131, line 26.--Healing miracles, such as those performed
by Jesus.
Conyers Middleton, formerly principal librarian of Cambridge
University, tells us that in the temples of Æsculapius all kinds
of diseases were believed to be publicly cured, by the pretended
help of the Deity, in proof of which there were erected in each
temple columns of brass or marble, on which a distinct narrative of
each particular cure was described. There is a remarkable fragment
of one of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Gruter in
his collection (just as it was found in the ruins of the temple of
Æsculapius in the Tiber island), which gives an account of two blind
men restored to sight by Æsculapius, in the open view, and with the
loud acclamation of the people, acknowledging the manifest power of
the god. Compare St. Matthew ix. 27-30. Is it not truly marvellous to
think that exactly the same sort of thing is going on at the various
miracle-working shrines of Christendom at the present moment? Is it
not also surprising to hear certain divines in our own country speak
of the alleged miracles of the early Church as if they were real,
and as if it were a sort of lost art due to our poorer faith in modern
times? I am referring to sermons preached lately from various pulpits
on the subject of Christian Science and Faith-cures.
P. 133, line 20.--Acted in Athens five hundred years before the
Christian era.
In the Nineteenth Century for March, 1905, Mr. Slade Butler points out,
in his article on "The Greek Mysteries and the Gospel Narrative,"
that in the first century after Christ these mysteries, in one
form or another, had become the recognised religion of the Greek
world. Mr. Butler takes in turn all the main features of the Gospel
narratives, and shows their close resemblance to incidents of the
Greek mystery-dramas. The baptism of John, the triumphal procession in
honour of Jesus, His clearing of the temple, the cursing of the fig
tree, the Last Supper, the mocking of Jesus in His death-agony, are
shown to have striking parallels in the sacred mysteries of the Greeks.
P. 133, line 23.--Even Bacchus ... was a slain Saviour.
Dupuis, The Origin of all Religious Worship, pp. 135 and 258; Higgins,
Anacalypsis, vol. ii., p. 102; Knight, The Symbolical Language of
Ancient Art and Mythology, p. xxii., note, and p. 98, note.
P. 134, lines 7-8.--Pagan crucifixions of the young incarnate
divinities of India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt.
We have it on the authority of a Christian Father that the Pagans
adored crosses; for Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second and
third centuries, writing to the Pagans, says: "The origin of your
god is derived from figures moulded on a cross" (Apol., chap. xvi.;
Ad Nationes, chap. xii.). At the present moment, both in Europe
and America, the Egyptian cross or "life" sign is a fashionable
ornament, under the name of crux ansata (or cross with a handle). Its
pious wearers are, of course, quite unaware that it is the phallic
emblem! Could anything more conclusively demonstrate the prevailing
ignorance of comparative mythology? [393]
P. 138, note.--The probable date of the origin of the story
[of Buddha, Chinese version].
"A very valuable date, later than which we cannot place the origin
of the story, may be derived from the colophon at the end of the last
chapter of the book. It is there stated that the Abhinish Kramana Sûtra
is called by the school of the Dharmaguptas Fo-pen-hing-king.... We
know from the 'Chinese Encyclopædia,' Kai-yuen-shi-kian-mu-lu,
that the Fo-pen-hing was translated into Chinese from the Sanscrit
(the ancient language of Hindostan) so early as the eleventh year
of the reign of Wing-ping (Ming-ti), of the Han dynasty--i e., 69 or
70 A.D. We may therefore safely suppose that the original work was in
circulation in India for some time previous to that date." (Quoted from
the Introduction to Mr. S. Beal's Romantic History of Buddha.) Thus,
as the writer of the article on the Gospels in the Enc. Bib. observes,
when referring to the parallels: "The proof that the Buddhistic
sources are older than the Christian must be regarded as irrefragable."
P. 148, line 21.--Modern non-Christian beliefs, Parallels in the
rites of.
Very similar ceremonies are to be found among the heathen to-day. For
instance, something very like our Eucharistical rite is performed in
modern Japan. Looking on at a service in a Shinto temple, I was much
struck by the extraordinary similarity of the whole ceremony. It was
a sort of High Mass with Gregorian music. The blessed wafers are not
eaten on the premises, but are taken away by the worshippers to be
used in time of sickness. The worshippers, I may mention, were all
of the poorer and more ignorant classes.
P. 150, line 10.--Their blood was drunk in the form of wine.
Regarding this, Mr. Grant Allen remarks: When Dionysus became the
annual or biennial vine-god victim, "it was inevitable that his
worshippers should have seen his resurrection and embodiment in the
vine, and should have regarded the wine it yielded as the blood of
the god."
P. 156, lines 19-20.--Adopting their dates for the birth and death
[and resurrection] of their Saviours.