(September, 1880.)
A bishop once twitted a curate with preaching indifferent orthodoxy.
"Well," answered the latter, "I don't see how you can expect me to be as
orthodox as yourself. I believe at the rate of a hundred a year, and you
at the rate of ten thousand." In the spirit of this anecdote we should
expect an archbishop to be as orthodox as the frailty of human nature
will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the rate of fifteen
thousand a year should be able to swallow most things and stick at
very little. And there can be no doubt that the canny Scotchman who has
climbed or wriggled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared
to go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he regards the
doctrines of the Church very much as did that irreverent youth mentioned
by Sidney Smith, who, on being asked to sign the Thirty-nine Articles,
replied "Oh yes, forty if you like." The clean linen of his theology is
immaculately pure. Never has he fallen under a suspicion of entertaining
dangerous or questionable opinions, and he has in a remarkable degree
that faculty praised by Saint Paul of being all things to all men, or
at least as many men as make a lumping majority. What else could be
expected from a Scotchman who has mounted to the spiritual Primacy of
England?
His Grace has recently been visiting the clergy and churchwardens of
his diocese and delivering what are called Charges to them. The third of
these was on the momentous subject of Modern Infidelity, which seems to
have greatly exercised his mind. This horrid influence is found to
be very prevalent, much to the disconcertion of his Grace, who felt
constrained to begin his Charge with expressions of despondency, and
only recovered his spirits towards the end, where he confidently relies
on the gracious promise of Christ never to forsake his darling church.
Some of the admissions he makes are worth recording--
"I can," he says, "have no doubt that the aspect of Christian society
in the present day is somewhat troubled, that the Church of Christ and
the faith of Christ are passing through a great trial in all regions
of the civilised world, and not least among ourselves. There are dark
clouds on the horizon already breaking, which may speedily burst into
a violent storm.... It is well to note in history how these two
evils--superstition and infidelity--act and react in strengthening each
other. Still, I cannot doubt that the most [? more] formidable of
the two for us at present is infidelity.... It is indeed a frightful
thought that numbers of our intelligent mechanics seem to be alienated
from all religious ordinances, that our Secularist halls are well
filled, that there is an active propagandism at work for shaking belief
in all creeds."
These facts are of course patent, but it is something to get an
Archbishop to acknowledge them, His Grace also finds "from above, in the
regions of literature and art, efforts to degrade mankind by denying our
high original:" the high original being, we presume, a certain simple
pair called Adam and Eve, who damned themselves and nearly the whole
of their posterity by eating an apple six thousand years ago. The
degradation of a denial of this theory is hardly perceptible to
untheological eyes. Most candid minds would prefer to believe in Darwin
rather than in Moses even if the latter had, which he has not, a single
leg to stand on. For the theory of our Simian origin at least involves
progression in the past and perhaps salvation in the future of our
race, while the "high original" theory involved our retrogression and
perdition. His grace wonders how these persons can "confine their hopes
and aspirations to a life which is so irresistibly hastening to its
speedy conclusion." But surely he is aware that they do so for the very
simple reason that they know nothing of any other life to hope about
or aspire to. One bird in the hand is worth twenty in the bush when the
bush itself remains obstinately invisible, and if properly cooked is
worth all the dishes in the world filled only with expectations. His
grace likewise refers to the unequal distribution of worldly goods,
to the poverty and misery which exist "notwithstanding all attempts to
regenerate society by specious schemes of socialistic reorganisation."
It is, of course, very natural that an archbishop in the enjoyment of a
vast income should stigmatise these "specious schemes" for distributing
more equitably the good things of this world; but the words "blessed be
ye poor" go ill to the tune of fifteen thousand a year, and there is a
grim irony in the fact that palaces are tenanted by men who profess
to represent and preach the gospel of him who had not where to lay his
head. Modern Christianity has been called a civilised heathenism; with
no less justice it might be called an organised hypocrisy.
After a dolorous complaint as to the magazines "lying everywhere for the
use of our sons and daughters," in which the doctrines both of natural
and of revealed religion are assailed, the Archbishop proceeds to deal
with the first great form of infidelity, namely Agnosticism. With
a feeble attempt at wit he remarks that the name itself implies a
confession of ignorance, which he marvels to find unaccompanied by
"the logical result of a philosophical humility." A fair account of the
Agnostic position is then given, after which it is severely observed
that "the better feelings of man contradict these sophisms." In proof
of this, his Grace cites the fact that in Paris, the "stronghold of
Atheistical philosophy," the number of burials that take place without
religious rites is "a scarcely appreciable percentage." We suspect the
accuracy of this statement, but having no statistics on the subject by
us, we are not prepared to dispute it. We will assume its truth; but
the important question then arises--What kind of persons are those who
dispense with the rites of religion? Notoriously they are men of
the highest intellect and character, whose quality far outweighs the
quantity of the other side. They are the leaders of action and thought,
and what they think and do to-day will be thought and done by the masses
to-morrow. When a man like Gambetta, occupying such a high position and
wielding such immense influence, invariably declines to enter a church,
whether he attends the marriage or the funeral of his friends, we
are entitled to say that his example on our side is infinitely more
important than the practice of millions who are creatures of habit
and for the most part blind followers of tradition. The Archbishop's
argument tells against his own position, and the fact he cites, when
closely examined, proves more for our side than he thought it proved for
his own.
Atheism is disrelished by his Grace even more than Agnosticism. His
favorite epithet for it is "dogmatic." "Surely," he cries, "the boasted
enlightenment of this century will never tolerate the gross ignorance
and arrogant self-conceit which presumes to dogmatise as to things
confessedly beyond its ken." Quite so; but that is what the theologians
are perpetually doing. To use Matthew Arnold's happy expression, they
talk familiarly about God as though he were a man living in the next
street. The Atheist and the Agnostic confess their inability to fathom
the universe and profess doubts as to the ability of others. Yet they
are called dogmatic, arrogant, and self-conceited. On the other hand,
the theologians claim the power of seeing _through_ nature up to
nature's God. Yet they, forsooth, must be accounted modest, humble, and
retiring.
"O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"
These abominable Atheists are by no means scarce, for, says his Grace,
"practical Atheists we have everywhere, if Atheism be the denial of
God." Just so; that is precisely what we "infidels" have been saying for
years. Christianity is utterly alien to the life of modern society,
and in flagrant contradiction to the spirit of our secular progress. It
stands outside all the institutions of our material civilisation. Its
churches still echo the old strains of music and the old dogmatic tones
from the pulpit, but the worshippers themselves feel the anomaly of its
doctrines and rites when they return to their secular avocations. The
Sunday does nothing but break the continuity of their lives, steeping
them in sentiments and ideas which have no relation to their experience
during the rest of the week. The profession of Christendom is one thing,
its practice is another. God is simply acknowledged with the lips
on Sunday, and on every other day profoundly disregarded in all the
pursuits of life whether of business or of pleasure. Even in our
national legislature, although the practice of prayer is still retained,
any man would be sneered at as a fool who made the least appeal to the
sanctions of theology. An allusion to the Sermon on the Mount would
provoke a smile, and a citation of one of the Thirty-nine Articles be
instantly ruled as irrelevant. Nothing from the top to the bottom of
our political and social life is done with any reference to those
theological doctrines which the nation professes to believe, and to the
maintenance of which it devotes annually so many millions of its wealth.
In order to pose any member of the two great divisions of "infidelity,"
the Archbishop advises his clergy to ask the following rather comical
questions:--
"Do you believe nothing which is not capable of being tested by the
ordinary rules which govern experience in things natural? How then do
you know that you yourself exist? How do you know that the perceptions
of your senses are not mere delusions, and that there is anything
outside you answering to what your mind conceives? Have you a mind? and
if you have not, what is it that enables you to think and reason, and
fear, and hope? Are these conditions of your being the mere results
of your material organism, like the headache which springs from
indigestion, or the high spirits engendered by too much wine? Are
you something better than a vegetable highly cultivated, or than
your brothers of the lower animals? and, if so, what is it that
differentiates your superiority? Why do things outside you obey your
will? Who gave you a will? and, if so, what is it? I think you must
allow that intellect is a thing almost divine, if there be anything
divine; and I think also you must allow that it is not a thing to be
propagated as we propagate well-made and high-bred cattle. Whence came
Alexander the Great? Whence Charlemagne? And whence the First Napoleon?
Was it through a mere process of spontaneous generation that they sprang
up to alter by their genius and overwhelming will the destinies of the
world? Whence came Homer, Shakespeare, Bacon? Whence came all the
great historians? Whence came Plato and all the bright lights of divine
philosophy, of divinity, of poetry? Their influence, after all, you must
allow to be quite as wide and enduring as any produced by the masters
of those positive material sciences which you worship. Do you think that
all these great minds--for they are minds, and their work was not the
product of a merely highly organised material frame--were the outcome
of some system of material generation, which your so-called science can
subject to rule, and teach men how to produce by growth, as they grow
vegetables?"
The Archbishop is not a very skilful physician. His prescription shows
that he has not diagnosed the disease. These strange questions might
strike the infidel "all of a heap," as the expressive vernacular has
it, but although they might dumbfounder him, they would assuredly
not convince. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were not so exalted a
personage we should venture to remark that to ask a man how he knows
that he exists betrays a marvellous depth of ignorance or folly.
Ultimate facts of consciousness are not subjects of proof or disproof;
they are their own warranty and cannot be transcended. There is,
besides, something extraordinary in an archbishop of the church to
which Berkeley belonged supposing that extreme idealism follows only the
rejection of deity. Whether the senses are after all delusory does not
matter to the Atheist a straw; they are real enough to him, they
make his world in which he lives and moves, and it is of no
practical consequence whether they mirror an outer world or not. What
differentiates you from the lower animals? asks his Grace. The answer is
simple--a higher development of nervous structure. Who gave you a will?
is just as sensible a question as Who gave you a nose? We have every
reason to believe that both can be accounted for on natural grounds
without introducing a supernatural donor. The question whether
Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Bacon and Shakespeare came through a process
of spontaneous generation is excruciatingly ludicrous. That process
could only produce the very lowest form of organism, and not a
wonderfully complex being like man who is the product of an incalculable
evolution. But the Archbishop did not perhaps intend this; it may be
that in his haste to silence the "infidel" he stumbled over his own
meaning. Lastly, there is a remarkable naïveté in the aside of the final
question--"for they are minds." He should have added "you know," and
then the episode would have been delightfully complete. The assumption
of the whole point at issue in an innocent parenthesis is perhaps to be
expected from a pulpiteer, but it is not likely that the "infidel"
will be caught by such a simple stratagem. All these questions are so
irrelevant and absurd that we doubt whether his Grace would have the
courage to put one of them to any sceptic across a table, or indeed from
any place in the world except the pulpit, which is beyond all risk of
attack, and whence a man may ask any number of questions without the
least fear of hearing one of them answered.
The invitation given by his grace, to "descend to the harder ground
of strictest logical argumentation," is very appropriate. Whether
the movement be ascending or descending, there is undoubtedly a vast
distance between logical argumentation and anything he has yet advanced.
But even on the "harder" ground the Archbishop treads no more firmly.
He demands to know how the original protoplasm became endowed with life,
and if that question cannot be answered he calls upon us to admit
his theory of divine agency, as though that made the subject more
intelligible. Supernatural hypotheses are but refuges of ignorance.
Earl Beaconsfield, in his impish way, once remarked that where knowledge
ended religion began, and the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to share
that opinion. His Grace also avers that "no one has ever yet been able
to refute the argument necessitating a great First Cause." It is very
easy to assert this, but rather difficult to maintain it. One assertion
is as good as another, and we shall therefore content ourselves with
saying that in our opinion the argument for a great First Cause was (to
mention only one name) completely demolished by John Stuart Mill, who
showed it to be based on a total misconception of the nature of cause
and effect, which apply only to phænomenal changes and not to the
apparently unchangeable matter and force of which the universe is
composed.
But the overwhelming last argument is that "man has something in him
which speaks of God, of something above this fleeting world, and
rules of right and wrong have their foundation elsewhere than in man's
opinion.... that there is an immutable, eternal distinction between
right and wrong--that there is a God who is on the side of right." Again
we must complain of unbounded assertion. Every point of this rhetorical
flourish is disputed by "infidels" who are not likely to yield to
anything short of proof. If God is on the side of right he is singularly
incapable of maintaining it; for, in this world at least, according to
some penetrating minds, the devil has hitherto had it pretty much his
own way, and good men have had to struggle very hard to make things even
as equitable as we find them. But after all, says his Grace, the supreme
defence of the Church against the assaults of infidelity is Christ
himself. Weak in argument, the clergy must throw themselves behind his
shield and trust in him. Before his brightness "the mists which rise
from a gross materialistic Atheism evaporate, and are scattered like the
clouds of night before the dawn." It is useless to oppose reason to such
preaching as this. We shall therefore simply retort the Archbishop's
epithets. Gross and materialistic are just the terms to describe a
religion which traffics in blood and declares that without the shedding
of it there is no remission of sin; whose ascetic doctrines malign our
purest affections and defile the sweetest fountains of our spiritual
health; whose heaven is nothing but an exaggerated jeweller's shop, and
its hell a den of torture in which God punishes his children for the
consequences of his own ignorance, incapacity or crime.