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Theosophy House
My Path to Atheism
By
Annie Besant
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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[Third
Edition]
Freethought
Publishing Company,
63, Fleet
Street, E.C.
1885.
TO
THOMAS SCOTT,
WHOSE NAME IS
HONORED AND REVERED WHEREVER
FREETHOUGHT
HAS--
WHOSE WIDE
HEART AND GENEROUS KINDNESS WELCOME
ALL FORMS OF
THOUGHT, PROVIDED THE THOUGHT
BE EARNEST
AND HONEST;
WHO KNOWS NO
ORTHODOXY SAVE THAT OF HONESTY, AND
NO RELIGION
SAVE THAT OF GOODNESS;
TO WHOM I OWE
MOST GRATEFUL THANKS,
AS ONE OF THE
EARLIEST OF MY FREETHOUGHT FRIENDS,
AND AS THE
FIRST WHO AIDED ME IN MY NEED;--
TO HIM
I DEDICATE
THESE PAGES, KNOWING THAT,
ALTHOUGH WE
OFTEN DIFFER IN OUR
THOUGHT, WE
ARE ONE IN OUR DESIRE FOR TRUTH.
ANNIE BESANT.
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PREFACE TO
FIRST EDITION.
The Essays
which form the present book have been written at intervals
during the
last five years, and are now issued in a single volume
without
alterations of any kind. I have thought it more useful--as
marking the
gradual growth of thought--to reprint them as they were
originally
published, so as not to allow the later development to mould
the earlier
forms. The essay on "Inspiration" is, in part, the oldest
of all; it
was partially composed some seven years ago, and re-written
later as it
now stands.
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The first
essay on the "Deity of Jesus of
before I left
the Church of England, and marks the point where I broke
finally with
Christianity. I thought then, and think still, that to
cling to the
name of Christian after one has ceased to be the thing
is neither
bold nor straightforward, and surely the name ought, in all
fairness, to
belong to those historical bodies who have made it their
own during
many hundred years. A Christianity without a Divine Christ
appears to me
to resemble a republican army marching under a royal
banner--it
misleads both friends and foes. Believing that in giving up
the deity of
Christ I renounced Christianity, I place this essay as the
starting-point
of my travels outside the Christian pale. The essays
that follow
it deal with some of the leading Christian dogmas, and are
printed in
the order in which they were written. But in the gradual
thought-development
they really precede the essay on the "Deity of
Christ".
Most inquirers who begin to study by themselves, before they
have read any
heretical works, or heard any heretical controversies,
will have
been awakened to thought by the discrepancies and
inconsistencies
of the Bible itself. A thorough knowledge of the Bible
is the
groundwork of heresy. Many who think they read their Bibles never
read them at
all. They go through a chapter every day as a matter of
duty, and
forget what is said in Matthew before they read what is said
in John;
hence they never mark the contradictions and never see the
discrepancies.
But those who _study_ the Bible are in a fair way to
become
heretics. It was the careful compilation of a harmony of the
last chapters
of the four Gospels--a harmony intended for devotional
use--that
gave the first blow to my own faith; although I put the doubt
away and
refused even to look at the question again, yet the effect
remained--the
tiny seed, which was slowly to germinate and to grow up,
later, into
the full-blown flower of Atheism.
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The trial of
Mr. Charles Voysey for heresy made me remember my own
puzzle, and I
gradually grew very uneasy, though trying not to think,
until the
almost fatal illness of my little daughter brought a sharper
questioning
as to the reason of suffering and the reality of the love of
God. From
that time I began to study the doctrines of Christianity from
a critical
point of view; hitherto I had confined my theological reading
to devotional
and historical treatises, and the only controversies
with which I
was familiar were the controversies which had divided
Christians;
the writings of the Fathers of the Church and of the modern
school which
is founded on them had been carefully studied, and I had
weighed the
points of difference between the Greek, Roman, Anglican, and
Lutheran
communions, as well as the views of orthodox dissenting schools
of thought;
only from Pusey's "Daniel", and Liddon's "Bampton
Lectures",
had I
gathered anything of wider controversies and issues of more vital
interest. But
now all was changed, and it was to the leaders of the
pain had been
so! rude when real doubts assailed and shook me, that I
had steadily
made up my mind to investigate, one by one, every Christian
dogma, and
never again to say "I believe" until I had tested the object
of faith; the
dogmas which revolted me most were those of the Atonement
and of
Eternal Punishment, while the doctrine of Inspiration of
Scripture
underlay everything, and was the very foundation of
Christianity;
these, then, were the first that I dropped into the
crucible of
investigation. Maurice, Robertson, Stopford Brooke, McLeod,
Campbell, and
others, were studied; and while I recognised the charm
of their
writings, I failed to find any firm ground whereon they could
rest: it was
a many-colored beautiful mist--a cloud landscape, very
fair, but
very unsubstantial. Still they served as stepping stones away
from the old
hard dogmas, and month by month I grew more sceptical as
to the
possibility of finding certainty in religion. Mansel's Bampton
lectures on
"The Limits of Religious Thought" did much to increase the
feeling; the
works of F. Newman, Arnold, and Greg carried on the
same work; some
efforts to understand the creeds of other nations, to
investigate
Mahommedanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all led in the same
direction,
until I concluded that inspiration belonged to all people
alike, and
there could be no necessity of atonement, and no eternal
hell prepared
for the unbeliever in Christianity. Thus, step by step,
I renounced
the dogmas of Christianity until there remained only, as
distinctively
Christian, the Deity of Jesus which had not yet been
analysed. The
whole tendency of the
to increase
the manhood at the expense of the deity of Christ; and with
hell and
atonement gone, and inspiration everywhere, there appeared
no _raison
d'etre_ for the Incarnation. Besides, there were so many
incarnations,
and the Buddhist absorption seemed a grander idea. I now
first met
with Charles Voysey's works, and those of Theodore Parker and
Channing, and
the belief in the Deity of Jesus followed the other dead
creeds. Renan
I had read much earlier, but did not care for him; Strauss
I did not
meet with until afterwards; Scott's "English Life of Jesus",
which I read
at this period, is as useful a book on this subject as
could be put
into the hands of an inquirer. From Christianity into
simple Theism
I had found my way; step by step the Theism melted into
Atheism;
prayer was gradually discontinued, as utterly at variance with
any dignified
idea of God, and as in contradiction to all the results
of scientific
investigation. I had taken a keen interest in the later
scientific
discoveries, and
my old bonds.
Of John Stuart Mill I had read much, and I now took him up
again; I
studied Spinoza, and re-read Mansel, together with many other
writers on
the Deity, until the result came which is found in the essay
entitled
"The Nature and Existence of God ". It was just before this was
written that
I read Charles Bradlaugh's "Plea for Atheism" and his "Is
there a
God?". The essay on "Constructive Rationalism" shows how we
replace the
old faith and build our house anew with stronger materials.
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The path from
Christianity to Atheism is a long one, and its first steps
are very
rough and very painful; the feet tread on the ruins of the
broken faith,
and the sharp edges cut into the bleeding flesh; but
further on
the path grows smoother, and presently at its side begins to
peep forth
the humble daisy of hope that heralds the spring tide, and
further on
the roadside is fragrant with all the flowers of summer,
sweet and
brilliant and gorgeous, and in the distance we see the promise
of the
autumn, the harvest that shall be reaped for the feeding of man.
Annie Besant.
1878.
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ON THE DEITY
OF JESUS OF
"WHAT
think ye of Christ, whose son is he?" Humane child of human
parents, or
divine Son of the Almighty God? When we consider his purity,
his faith in
the Father, his forgiving patience, his devoted work
among the
offscourings of society, his brotherly love to sinners
and
outcasts--when our minds dwell on these alone,--we all feel the
marvellous
fascination which has drawn millions to the feet of this
"son of
man," and the needle of our faith begins to tremble towards the
Christian
pole. If we would keep unsullied the purity of our faith
in God alone,
we are obliged to turn our eyes some times--however
unwillingly--towards
the other side of the picture and to mark the human
weaknesses
which remind us that he is but one of our race. His harshness
to his
mother, his bitterness towards some of his opponents, the marked
failure of
one or two of his rare prophecies, the palpable limitation of
his
knowledge--little enough, indeed, when all are told,--are more
than enough
to show us that, however great as man, he is not the
All-righteous,
the All-seeing, the All-knowing, God.
No one,
however, whom Christian exaggeration has not goaded into unfair
detraction,
or who is not blinded by theological hostility, can fail
to revere
portions of the character sketched out in the three synoptic
gospels. I
shall not dwell here on the Christ of the fourth Evangelist;
we can
scarcely trace in that figure the lineaments of the Jesus of
I propose, in
this essay, to examine the claims of Jesus to be more
than the man
he appeared to be during his lifetime: claims--be it
noted--which
are put forward on his behalf by others rather than by
himself. His
own assertions of his divinity are to be found only in the
unreliable
fourth gospel, and in it they are destroyed by the sentence
there put
into his mouth with strange inconsistency: "If I bear witness
of myself, my
witness is not true."
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It is evident
that by his contemporaries Jesus was not regarded as God
incarnate.
The people in general appear to have looked upon him as a
great
prophet, and to have often debated among themselves whether he
were their
expected Messiah or not. The band of men who accepted him
as their
teacher were as far from worshipping him as God as were their
fellow-countrymen:
their prompt desertion of him when attacked by his
enemies,
their complete hopelessness when they saw him overcome and put
to death, are
sufficient proofs that though they regarded him--to quote
their own
words--as a "prophet mighty in word and deed," they never
guessed that
the teacher they followed, and the friend they lived with
in the
intimacy of social life was Almighty God Himself. As has been
well pointed
out, if they believed their Master to be God, surely when
they were attacked
they would have fled to him for protection, instead
of
endeavouring to save themselves by deserting him: we may add that
this would
have been their natural instinct, since they could never
have imagined
beforehand that the Creator Himself could really be taken
captive by
His creatures and suffer death at their hands. The third
class of his
contemporaries, the learned Pharisees and Scribes, were as
far from
regarding him as divine as were the people or his disciples.
They seem to
have viewed the new teacher somewhat contemptuously at
first, as one
who unwisely persisted in expounding the highest doctrines
to the many,
instead of--a second Hillel--adding to the stores of
their own
learned circle. As his influence spread and appeared to be
undermining
their own,--still more, when he placed himself in direct
opposition,
warning the people against them,--they were roused to a
course of
active hostility, and at length determined to save themselves
by destroying
him. But all through their passive contempt and direct
antagonism,
there is never a trace of their deeming him to be anything
more than a
religious enthusiast who finally became dangerous: we never
for a moment
see them assuming the manifestly absurd position of men
knowingly
measuring their strength against God, and endeavouring to
silence and
destroy their Maker. So much for the opinions of those who
had the best
opportunities of observing his ordinary life. A "good man,"
a
"deceiver," a "mighty prophet," such are the recorded
opinions of his
contemporaries:
not one is found to step forward and proclaim him to be
Jehovah, the
God of
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One of the
most trusted strongholds of Christians, in defending their
Lord's
Divinity, is the evidence of prophecy. They gather from the
sacred books
of the Jewish nation the predictions of the longed-for
Messiah, and
claim them as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of
But there is
one stubborn fact which destroys the force of this
argument: the
Jews, to whom these writings belong, and who from
tradition and
national peculiarities may reasonably be supposed to be
the best
exponents of their own prophets, emphatically deny that these
prophecies
are fulfilled in Jesus at all. Indeed, one main reason for
their
rejection of Jesus is precisely this, that he does not resemble in
any way the
predicted Messiah. There is no doubt that the Jewish nation
were eagerly
looking for their Deliverer when Jesus was born: these very
longings
produced several pseudo-Messiahs, who each gained in turn
a considerable
following, because each bore some resemblance to the
expected
Prince. Much of the popular rage which swept Jesus to his
death was the
re-action of disappointment after the hopes raised by the
position of
authority he assumed. The sudden burst of anger against one
so benevolent
and inoffensive can only be explained by the intense hopes
excited by
his regal entry into
those hopes
by his failing to ascend the throne of David. Proclaimed
as David's
son, he came riding on an ass as king of
himself to be
welcomed as the king of
of the
prophecies ended, and the people, furious at his failing them,
rose and
clamoured for his death. Because he did _not_ fulfil the
ancient Jewish
oracles, he died: he was too noble for the _rôle_ laid
down in them
for the Messiah, his ideal was far other than that of a
conqueror,
with "garments rolled in blood." But even if, against all
evidence,
Jesus was one with the Messiah of the prophets, this would
destroy,
instead of implying, his Divine claims. For the Jews were pure
monotheists;
their Messiah was a prince of David's line, the favoured
servant, the
anointed Jehovah, the king who should rule in His name: a
Jew would
shrink with horror from the blasphemy of seating Messiah on
Jehovah's
throne remembering how their prophets had taught them that
their God
"would not give His honour to another." So that, as to
prophecy, the
case stands thus: If Jesus be the Messiah prophesied of
in the old
Jewish books, then he is not God: if he be not the Messiah,
Jewish
prophecy is silent as regards him altogether, and an appeal to
prophecy is
absolutely useless.
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After the
evidence of prophecy Christians generally rely on that
furnished by
miracles. It is remarkable that Jesus himself laid but
little stress
on his miracles; in fact, he refused to appeal to them
as
credentials of his authority, and either could not or would not work
them when met
with determined unbelief. We must notice also that the
people, while
"glorifying God, who had given such power unto _men_,"
were not
inclined to admit his miracles as proofs of his right to claim
absolute
obedience: his miracles did not even invest him with such
sacredness as
to protect him from arrest and death. Herod, on his trial,
was simply
anxious to see him work a miracle, as a matter of curiosity.
This stolid
indifference to marvels as attestations of authority is
natural
enough, when we remember that Jewish history was crowded with
miracles,
wrought for and against the favoured people, and also that
they had been
specially warned against being misled by signs and
wonders.
Without entering into the question whether miracles are
possible, let
us, for argument's sake, take them for granted, and see
what they are
worth as proofs of Divinity. If Jesus fed a multitude with
a few loaves,
so did Elisha: if he raised the dead, so did Elijah and
Elisha; if he
healed lepers, so did Moses and Elisha; if he opened
the eyes of
the blind, Elisha smote a whole army with blindness
and afterwards
restored their sight: if he cast out devils, his
contemporaries,
by his own testimony, did the same. If miracles prove
Deity, what
miracle of Jesus can stand comparison with the divided Red
the rushing
waters of the
these men
worked by _conferred_ power and Jesus by _inherent_, we can
only answer
that this is a gratuitous assumption, and begs the whole
question. The
Bible records the miracles in equivalent terms: no
difference is
drawn between the manner of working of Elisha or Jesus; of
each it is
sometimes said they prayed; of each it is sometimes said
they spake.
Miracles indeed must not be relied on as proofs of divinity,
unless
believers in them are prepared to pay divine honours not to Jesus
only, but
also to a crowd of others, and to build a Christian Pantheon
to the new
found gods.
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So far we
have only seen the insufficiency of the usual Christian
arguments to
establish a doctrine so stupendous and so _prima facie_
improbable as
the incarnation of the Divine Being: this kind of negative
testimony,
this insufficient evidence, is not however the principle
reason which
compels Theists to protest against the central dogma of
Christianity.
The stronger proofs of the simple manhood of Jesus remain,
and we now
proceed to positive evidence of his not being God. I
propose to
draw attention to the traces of human infirmity in his noble
character, to
his absolute mistakes in prophecy, and to his evidently
limited knowledge.
In accepting as substantially true the account
of Jesus
given by the evangelists, we are taking his character as
it appeared
to his devoted followers. We have not to do with slight
blemishes,
inserted by envious detractors of his greatness; the history
of Jesus was
written when his disciples worshipped him as God, and his
manhood, in
their eyes, reached ideal perfection. We are not forced to
believe that,
in the gospels, the life of Jesus is given at its highest,
and that he
was, at least, not more spotless than he appears in these
records of
his friends. But here again, in order not to do a gross
injustice, we
must put aside the fourth gospel; to study his character
"according
to S. John" would need a separate essay, so different is
it from that drawn
by the three; and by all rules of history we should
judge him by
the earlier records, more especially as they corroborate
each other in
the main.
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The first
thing which jars upon an attentive reader of the gospels is
the want of
affection and respect shown by Jesus to his mother. When
only a child
of twelve he lets his parents leave
home, while
he repairs alone to the temple. The fascination of the
ancient city
and the gorgeous temple services was doubtless almost
overpowering
to a thoughtful Jewish boy, more especially on his first
visit: but
the careless forgetfulness of his parents' anxiety must be
considered as
a grave childish fault, the more so as its character is
darkened by
the indifference shown by his answer to his mother's grieved
reproof. That
no high, though mistaken, sense of duty kept him in
felt that
"his Father's business" detained him in
is evident
that this sense of duty would not have been satisfied by a
three days'
delay. But the Christian advocate would bar criticism by an
appeal to the
Deity of Jesus: he asks us therefore to believe that
Jesus, being
God, saw with indifference his parents' anguish at
discovering
his absence; knew all about that three days' agonised search
(for they,
ignorant of his divinity, felt the terrible anxiety as to
his safety,
natural to country people losing a child in a crowded city);
did not, in
spite of the tremendous powers at his command, take any
steps to
re-assure them; and finally, met them again with no words of
sympathy,
only with a mysterious allusion, incomprehensible to them, to
some higher
claim than theirs, which, however, he promptly set aside to
obey them. If
God was incarnate in a boy, we may trust that example as a
model of
childhood: yet, are Christians prepared to set this early
piety and
desire for religious instruction before their young children
as an example
they are to follow? Are boys and girls of twelve to be
free to
absent themselves for days from their parents' guardianship
under the
plea that a higher business claims their attention? This
episode of
the childhood of Jesus should be relegated to those "gospels
of the
infancy" full of most unchildlike acts, which the wise discretion
of
Christendom has stamped with disapproval. The same want of filial
reverence
appears later in his life: on one occasion he was teaching,
and his
mother sent in, desiring to speak to him: the sole reply
recorded to
the message is the harsh remark: "Who is my mother?" The
most practical
proof that Christian morality has, on this head,
outstripped
the example of Jesus, is the prompt disapproval which
similar
conduct would meet with in the present day. By the strange
warping of
morality often caused by controversial exigencies, this want
of filial
reverence has been triumphantly pointed out by Christian
divines; the
indifference shown by Jesus to family ties is accepted as a
proof that he
was more than man! Thus, conduct which they implicitly
acknowledge to
be unseemly in a son to his mother, they claim as natural
and right in
the Son of God, to His! In the present day, if a person is
driven by
conscience to a course painful to those who have claims on his
respect, his
recognised duty, as well as his natural instinct, is to try
and make up
by added affection and more courteous deference for the pain
he is forced
to inflict: above all, he would not wantonly add to that
pain by
public and uncalled-for disrespect.
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The attitude
of Jesus towards his opponents in high places was marked
with
unwarrantable bitterness. Here also the lofty and gentle spirit
of his whole
life has moulded Christian opinion in favour of a course
different on
this head to his own, so that abuse of an opponent is now
commonly
called _un_-Christian. Wearied with three years' calumny and
contempt, sore
at the little apparent success which rewarded his labour,
full of a sad
foreboding that his enemies would shortly crush him, Jesus
was goaded
into passionate denunciations: "Woe unto you, Scribes and
Pharisees,
hypocrites... ye fools and blind... ye make a proselyte
twofold more
the child of hell than yourselves... ye serpents, ye
generation of
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Surely
this is not
the spirit which breathed in, "If ye love them which love
you, what
thanks have ye?... Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, pray for
them that persecute you." Had he not even specially
forbidden the
very expression, "Thou fool!" Was not this rendering evil
for evil,
railing for railing?
It is painful
to point out these blemishes: reverence for the great
leaders of
humanity is a duty dear to all human hearts; but when homage
turns into
idolatry, then men must rise up to point out faults which
otherwise
they would pass over in respectful silence, mindful only of
the work so
nobly done.
I turn then,
with a sense of glad relief, to the evidence of the limited
knowledge of
Jesus, for here no blame attaches to him, although _one_
proved
mistake is fatal to belief in his Godhead. First as to prophecy:
"The Son
of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels:
and then
shall he reward every man according to his works. Verily I say
unto you,
There be some standing here which shall not taste of death
till they see
the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Later, he amplifies
the same
idea: he speaks of a coming tribulation, succeeded by his own
return, and
then adds the emphatic declaration: "Verily I say unto
you, This
generation shall not pass till all these things be done." The
non-fulfilment
of these prophecies is simply a question of fact: let
men explain
away the words now as they may, yet, if the record is true,
Jesus did
believe in his own speedy return, and impressed the same belief
on his
followers. It is plain, indeed, that he succeeded in impressing
it on them,
from the references to his return scattered through the
epistles. The
latest writings show an anxiety to remove the doubts which
were
disturbing the converts consequent on the non-appearance of Jesus,
and the
fourth gospel omits any reference to his coming. It is worth
remarking, in
the latter, the spiritual sense which is hinted at--either
purposely or
unintentionally--in the words, "The hour... _now_ is when
the dead
shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear
shall
live." These words may be the popular feeling on the advent of the
resurrection,
forced on the Christians by the failure of their Lord's
prophecies in
any literal sense. He could not be mistaken, _ergo_ they
must spiritualise
his words. The limited knowledge of Jesus is further
evident from
his confusing Zacharias the son of Jehoiada with Zacharias
the son of
Barachias: the former, a priest, was slain in the temple
court, as
Jesus states; but the son of Barachias was Zacharias, or
Zachariah,
the prophet.* He himself owned a limitation of his knowledge,
when he
confessed his ignorance of the day of his own return, and said
it was known
to the "Father only." Of the same class of sayings is
his answer to
the mother of James and John, that the high seats of
the coming
kingdom "are not mine to give." That Jesus believed in the
fearful
doctrine of eternal punishment is evident, in spite of the
ingenious
attempts to prove that the doctrine is not scriptural:
that he, in
common with his countrymen, ascribed many diseases to the
immediate
power of Satan, which we should now probably refer to natural
causes, as
epilepsy, mania, and the like, is also self-evident. But on
such points
as these it is useless to dwell, for the Christian believes
them on the
authority of Jesus, and the subjects, from their nature,
cannot be
brought to the test of ascertained facts. Of the same
character are
some of his sayings: his discouraging "Strive to enter
in at the
strait gate, _for_ many," etc.; his using in defence of
partiality
Isaiah's awful prophecy, "that seeing they may see and not
perceive,"
etc.; his using Scripture at one time as binding, while he,
at another,
depreciates it; his fondness for silencing an opponent by an
ingenious
retort: all these things are blameworthy to those who regard
him as man,
while they are shielded from criticism by his divinity to
those who
worship him as God. There morality is a question of opinion,
and it is
wasted time to dwell on them when arguing with Christians,
whose moral
sense is for the time held in check by their mental
prostration
at his feet. But the truth of the quoted prophecies, and
the
historical fact of the parentage of Zachariah, can be tested, and on
these Jesus
made palpable mistakes. The obvious corollary is, that being
mistaken--as
he was--his knowledge was limited, and was therefore human,
not divine
.
·
See Appendix,
page 12.
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In turning to
the teaching of Jesus (I still confine myself to the three
gospels), we
find no support of the Christian theory. If we take his
didactic
teaching, we can discover no trace of his offering himself as
an object of
either faith or worship. His life's work, as teacher, was
to speak of
the Father. In the sermon on the Mount he is always striking
the keynote,
"your heavenly Father;" in teaching his disciples to
pray, it is
to "Our Father," and the Christian idea of ending a prayer
"through
Jesus Christ" is quite foreign to the simple filial spirit
of their
master. Indeed, when we think of the position Jesus holds in
Christian
theology, it seems strange to notice the utter absence of any
suggestion of
duty to himself throughout this whole code of so-called
Christian
morality. In strict accordance with his more formal teaching
is his
treatment of inquirers: when a young man comes kneeling, and,
addressing
him as "Good Master," asks what he shall do to inherit
eternal life,
the loyal heart of Jesus first rejects the homage, before
he proceeds
to answer the all-important question: "Why callest thou _me_
good: there
is none good but one, that is, God." He then directs the
youth on the
way to eternal life, and _he sends that young man home
without one
word of the doctrine on which, according to Christians,
his salvation
rested_. If the "Gospel" came to that man later, he would
reject it on
the authority of Jesus, who had told him a different "way
of
salvation;" and if Christianity is true, the perdition of that young
man's soul is
owing to the defective teaching of Jesus himself. Another
time, he
tells a Scribe that the first commandment is that God is
one, and that
all a man's love is due to Him; then adding the duty of
neighbourly
love, he says: "There is _none other_ commandment greater
than
these:" so that "belief in Jesus," if incumbent at all, must
come
after love to
God and man, and is not necessary, by his own testimony,
to
"entering into life." On Jesus himself then rests the primary
responsibility
of affirming that belief in him is a matter of secondary
importance,
at most, letting alone the fact that he never inculcated
belief in his
Deity as an article of faith at all. In the same spirit of
frank loyalty
to God are his words on the unpardonable sin: in answer
to a gross
personal affront, he tells his insulters that they shall be
forgiven for
speaking against him, a simple son of man, but warns them
of the danger
of confounding the work of God's. Spirit with that of
Satan,
"because they said" that works; done by God, using Jesus as His
instrument,
were done by Beelzebub.
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There remains
yet one argument of tremendous force, which can only
be
appreciated by personal meditation. We find Jesus praying to
God, relying
on God, in his greatest need crying in agony to God for
deliverance,
in his last: struggle, deserted by his friends, asking why
God, his God,
had also forsaken him. We feel how natural, how true to
life, this
whole account is: in our heart's reverence for that noble
life, that
"faithfulness unto death," we can scarcely bear to think of
the insult
offered to it by Christian lips: they take every beauty
out of it by
telling us that through all that struggle Jesus was
the Eternal,
the Almighty, God: it is all apparent, not real: in his
temptation he
could not fall: in his prayers he needed no support: in
his cry that
the cup might pass away he foresaw it was inevitable: in
his agony of
desertion and loneliness he was present everywhere with
God. In all
that life, then, there is no hope for man, no pledge of
man's
victory, no promise for humanity. This is no _man's_ life at all,
it is only a wonderful
drama enacted on earth. What God could do is no
measure of
man's powers: what have we in common with this "God-man?"
This Jesus,
whom we had thought our brother, is after all, removed from
us by the
immeasurable distance which separates the feebleness of man
from the
omnipotence of God. Nothing can compensate us for such a loss
as this. We
had rejoiced in that many-sided nobleness, and its very
blemishes
were dear, because they assured us of his brotherhood to
ourselves: we
are given an ideal picture where we had studied a history,
another Deity
where we had hoped to emulate a life. Instead of the
encouragement
we had found, what does Christianity offer us?--a perfect
life? But we
knew before that God was perfect: an example? it starts
from a different
level: a Saviour? we cannot be safer than we are with
God: an
Advocate? we need none with our Father: a Substitute to endure
God's wrath
for us? we had rather trust God's justice to punish us as
we deserve,
and his wisdom to do what is best for us. As God, Jesus can
give us
nothing that we have not already in his Father and ours: as man,
he gives us
all the encouragement and support which we derive from every
noble soul
which God sends into this world, "a burning and a shining
light":
"Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of
His light For us in the dark to rise
by."
As God, he
confuses our perceptions of God's unity, bewilders our reason
with endless
contradictions, and turns away from the Supreme all those
emotions of
love and adoration which can only flow towards a single
object, and
which are the due of our Creator alone: as man, he gives us
an example to
strive after, a beacon to steer by; he is one more leader
for humanity,
one more star in our darkness. As God, all his words would
be truth, and
but few would enter into heaven, while hell would overflow
with victims:
as man, we may refuse to believe such a slander on our
Father, and
take all the comfort pledged to us by that name. Thank God,
then, that
Jesus is only man, "human child of human parents;" that
we need not
dwarf our conceptions of God to fit human faculties, or
envelope the
illimitable spirit in a baby's feeble frame. But though
only man, he
has reached a standard of human greatness which no other
man, so far
as we know, has touched: the very height of his character is
almost a
pledge of the truthfulness of the records in the main: his life
had to be
lived before its conception became possible, at that period
and among
such a people. They could recognise his greatness when it was
before their
eyes: they would scarcely have imagined it for themselves,
more
especially that, as we have seen, he was so different from the
Jewish ideal.
His code of morality stands unrivalled, and he was the
first who taught
the universal Fatherhood of God publicly and to the
common
people. Many of his loftiest precepts may be found in the books
of the
Rabbis, but it is the glorious prerogative of Jesus that he
spread abroad
among the many the wise and holy maxims that had hitherto
been the
sacred treasures of the few. With him none were too degraded
to be called
the children of the Father: none too simple to be worthy of
the highest
teaching. By example, as well as by precept, he taught that
all men were
brothers, and all the good he had he showered at their
feet.
"Pure in heart," he saw God, and what he saw he called all to see:
he longed
that all might share in his own joyous trust in the Father,
and seemed to
be always seeking for fresh images to describe the freedom
and fulness
of the universal love of God. In his unwavering love of
truth, but
his patience with doubters--in his personal purity, but his
tenderness to
the fallen--in his hatred of evil, but his friendliness
to the
sinner--we see splendid virtues rarely met in combination. His
brotherliness,
his yearning to raise the degraded, his lofty piety, his
unswerving
morality, his perfect self-sacrifice, are his indefeasible
titles to
human love and reverence. Of the world's benefactors he is the
chief, not
only by his own life, but by the enthusiasm he has known to
inspire in
others: "Our plummet has not sounded his depth:" words fail
to tell what
humanity owes to the Prophet of
the great Christian
heroes have based their lives: from the foundation
laid by his
teaching the world is slowly rising to a purer faith in God.
We need now
such a leader as he was--one who would dare to follow the
Father's will
as he did, casting a long-prized revelation aside when
it conflicts
with the higher voice of conscience. It is the teaching
of Jesus that
Theism gladly makes its own, purifying it from the
inconsistencies
which mar its perfection. It is the example of Jesus
which Theists
are following, though they correct that example in some
points by his
loftiest sayings. It is the work of Jesus which Theists
are carrying
on, by worshipping, as he did, the Father, and the Father
alone, and by
endeavouring to turn all men's love, all men's hopes, and
all men's
adoration, to that "God and Father of all, who is above all,
and through
all, and," not in Jesus only, but "_in us all_."
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APPENDIX:
"Josephus mentions a Zacharias, a son of Baruch ('Wars of
the Jews,'
Book iv., sec. 4), who was slain under the circumstances
described by
Jesus. His name would be more suitable at the close of the
long list of
Jewish crimes, as it occurred just before the destruction
of
death of
Jesus, it is clear that he could not have referred to it;
therefore, if
we admit that he made no mistake, we strike a serious
blow at the
credibility of his historian, who then puts into his mouth a
remark never
uttered."
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A COMPARISON
BETWEEN THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE THREE SYNOPTICS
EVERY one, at
least in the educated classes, knows that the authenticity
of the fourth
gospel has been long and widely disputed. The most
careless
reader is struck by the difference of tone between the simple
histories
ascribed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the theological and
philosophical
treatise which bears the name of John. After following
the three
narratives, so simple in their structure, so natural in their
style, so
unadorned by rhetoric, so free from philosophic terms,--after
reading
these, it is with a feeling of surprise that we find ourselves,
plunged into
the bewildering mazes of the Alexandrine philosophy, and
open our
fourth gospel to be told that, "In the beginning was the word,
and the word
was with God, and the word was God." We ask instinctively,
"How did
John, the fisherman of
Greek
schools, and why does he mix up the simple story of his master
with the
philosophy of that 'world which by wisdom knew not God?'"
The general
Christian tradition is as follows: The spread! of
"heretical"
views about the person of Jesus alarmed the "orthodox"
Christians,
and they appealed to John, the last aged relic of the
apostolic
band, to write a history of Jesus which should confute their
opponents,
and establish the essential deity of the founder of their
religion. At
their repeated solicitations, John wrote the gospel which
bears his
name, and the doctrinal tone of it is due to its original
intention,--a
treatise written against Cerinthus, and designed to
crush, with
the authority of an apostle, the rising doubts as to
the
pre-existence and absolute deity of Jesus of
non-Christians
and Christians--including the writer of the gospel--are
agreed. This
fourth gospel is not--say Theists--a simple biography
of Jesus
written by a loving disciple as a memorial of a departed and
cherished
friend, but a history written with a special object and to
prove a
certain doctrine. "
echoes Dr.
Liddon. "These are written that ye may believe that Jesus
is the
Christ, the Son of God," confesses the writer himself. Now, in
examining the
credibility of any history, one of the first points
to determine
is whether the historian is perfectly unbiassed in his
judgment and
is therefore likely give facts exactly as they occurred,
un-coloured
by views of his own. Thus we do not turn to the pages of a
Roman
Catholic historian to gain a fair idea of Luther, or of William
the Silent,
or expect to find in the volumes of Clarendon a thoroughly
faithful
portraiture of the vices of the Stuart kings; rather, in
reading the
history of a partisan, do we instinctively make allowances
for the
recognised bias of his mind and heart. That the fourth gospel
comes to us
prefaced by the announcement that it is written, not to give
us a history,
but to prove a certain predetermined opinion, is, then,
so much doubt
cast at starting on its probable accuracy; and, by the
constitution
of our minds, we at once guard ourselves against a too
ready
acquiescence in its assertions, and become anxious to test its
statements by
comparing them with some independent and more impartial
authority.
The history may be most accurate, but we require proof
that the
writer is never seduced into slightly--perhaps
unconsciously--colouring
an incident so as to favour the object he
has at heart.
For instance, Matthew, an honest writer enough, is often
betrayed into
most non-natural quotation of prophecy by his anxiety to
connect Jesus
with the Messiah expected by his countrymen. This latent
wish of his
leads him to insert various quotations from the Jewish
Scriptures
which, severed from their context, have a verbal similarity
with the
events he narrates. Thus, he refers to Hosea's mention of the
Exodus:
"When
out of
"prophecy"
of an alleged journey of Jesus into
as this shows
us how a man may allow himself to be blinded by a
pre-conceived
determination to prove a certain fact, and warns us to
sift carefully
any history that comes to us with the announcement that
it is written
to prove such and such a truth.
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Unfortunately
we have no independent contemporary history--except a
sentence of
Josephus--whereby to test the accuracy of the Christian
records; we
are therefore forced into the somewhat unsatisfactory task
of comparing
them one with another, and in cases of diverging testimony
we must
strike the balance of probability between them.
On examining,
then, these four biographies of Jesus, we find a
remarkable
similarity between three of them, amid many divergencies of
detail; some
regard them, therefore, as the condensation into writing
of the oral
teaching of the apostles, preserved in the various Churches
they
severally founded, and so, naturally, the same radically, although
diverse in
detail. "The synoptic Gospels contain the substance of the
Apostles'
testimony, collected principally from their oral teaching
current in
the Church, partly also from written documents embodying
portions of
that teaching."* Others think that the gospels which we
possess, and
which are ascribed severally to Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
are all three
derived from an original gospel now lost, which was
probably
written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and variously translated into
Greek.
However this may be, the fact that such a statement as this has
been put
forward proves the striking similarity, the root identity, of
the three
"synoptical gospels," as they are called. We gather from them
an idea of
Jesus which is substantially the same: a figure, calm, noble,
simple, generous;
pure in life, eager to draw men to that love of the
Father and
devotion to the Father which were his own distinguishing
characteristics;
finally, a teacher of a simple and high-toned morality,
perfectly
unfettered by dogmatism. The effect produced by the sketch of
the Fourth
Evangelist is totally different. The friend of sinners has
disappeared
(except in the narrative of the woman taken in adultery,
which is
generally admitted to be an interpolation), for his whole time
is occupied
in arguing about his own position; "the common people"
who followed
and "heard him gladly" and his enemies, the Scribes and
Pharisees,
are all massed together as "the Jews," with whom he is in
constant
collision; his simple style of teaching--parabolic indeed, as
was the
custom of the East, but consisting of parables intelligible to
a child--is
exchanged for mystical discourses, causing perpetual
misunderstandings,
the true meaning of which is still wrangled about by
Christian
theologians; his earnest testimony to "your heavenly Father"
is replaced
by a constant self-assertion; while his command "do this and
ye shall
live," is exchanged for "believe on me or perish."
* Alford.
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How great is
the contrast between that discourse and the Sermon on
the Mount....
In the last discourse it is His Person rather than his
teaching which
is especially prominent. His subject in that discourse is
Himself.
Certainly he
preaches himself in His relationship to His redeemed; but
still he
preaches above all, and in all, Himself. All radiates from
Himself, all
converges towards Himself.... in those matchless words all
centres so
consistently in Jesus, that it might seem that "Jesus Alone is
before
us."* These and similar differences, both of direct teaching and
of the more
subtle animating spirit, I propose to examine in detail; but
before
entering on these it seems necessary to glance at the disputed
question of
the authorship of our history, and determine whether, if it
prove
apostolic, it _must_ therefore be binding on us.
I leave to
more learned pens than mine the task of criticising
and drawing
conclusions from the Greek or the precise dogma of the
evangelist,
and of weighing the conflicting testimony of mighty names.
From the
account contained in the English Bible of John the Apostle, I
gather the
following points of his character: He was warm-hearted to his
friends,
bitter against his enemies, filled with a fiery and unbridled
zeal against
theological opponents; he was ambitious, egotistical,
pharisaical.
I confess that I trace these characteristics through all
the writings
ascribed to him, and that they seem to be only softened by
age in the
fourth gospel. That John was a warm friend is proved by his
first
epistle; that he was bitter against his enemies appears in his
mention of
Diotrephes, "I will remember his deeds which he doeth,
prating
against us with malicious words;" his unbridled zeal was rebuked
by his
master; the same cruel spirit is intensified in his "Revelation;"
his ambition
is apparent in his anxiety for a chief seat in Messiah's
kingdom; his
egotism appears in the fearful curse he imprecates on those
who alter
_his_ revelation; his pharisaism is marked in such a feeling
as, "we
know _we_ are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."
Many of these
qualities appear to me to mark the gospel which bears
his name; the
same restricted tenderness, the same bitterness against
opponents,
the same fiery zeal for "the truth," i.e., a special
theological
dogma, are everywhere apparent.
* Liddon.
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The same
egotism is most noticeable, for in the other gospels John
shares his
master's chief regard with two others, while here he is
"_the_
disciple whom Jesus loved," and he is specially prominent in the
closing
scenes of Jesus' life as the _only_ faithful follower. We should
also notice
the remarkable similarity of expression and tone between
the fourth
gospel and the first epistle of John, a similarity the more
striking as
the language is peculiar to the writings attributed to
John. It is,
however, with the utmost diffidence that I offer these
suggestions,
well knowing that the greatest authorities are divided on
this point of
authorship, and that the balance is rather against the
apostolic
origin of the gospel than for it. I am, however, anxious
to show that,
_even taking it as apostolic_, it is untrustworthy and
utterly
unworthy of credit. If John be the writer, we must suppose
that his long
residence in
memories, so
that he speaks of "the Jews" as a foreigner would. The
stern Jewish
monotheism would have grown feebler by contact with the
subtle
influence of the Alexandrine tone of thought; and he would have
caught the
expressions of that school from living in a city which was
its second
home. To use the Greek philosophy as a vehicle for Christian
teaching would
recommend itself to him as the easiest way of approaching
minds imbued
with these mystic ideas. Regarding the master of his youth
through the
glorifying medium of years, he gradually began to imagine
him to be one
of the emanations from the Supreme, of which he heard so
much.
Accustomed to the deification of Roman emperors, men of infamous
lives, he
must have been almost driven to claim divine honours for _his_
leader. If
his hearers regarded _them_ as divine, what could he say to
exalt _him_
except that he was ever with God, nay, was himself God? If
John be the
writer of this gospel, some such change as this must have
passed over
him, and in his old age the gradual accretions of years must
have
crystallised themselves into a formal Christian theology. But if we
find, during
our examination, that the history and the teaching of this
gospel is
utterly irreconcilable with the undoubtedly earlier synoptic
gospels, we
must then conclude that, apostolic or not, it must give
place to
them, and be itself rejected as a trustworthy account of the
life and
teaching of Jesus of
The first
striking peculiarity of this gospel is that all the people
in it talk in
exactly the same style and use the same markedly peculiar
phraseology,
(a) "The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things
into his
hand." (b) "For the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all
things that
Himself doeth." (c) "Jesus, knowing that the Father had
given all
things into his hand." These sentences are evidently the
outcome of
the same mind, and no one, unacquainted with our gospel,
would guess
that (a) was spoken by John the Baptist, (b) by Jesus, (c)
by the writer
of the gospel. When the Jews speak, the words still run in
the same
groove: "If any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth His will,
him He
heareth," is not said, as might be supposed, by Jesus, but by the
man who was
born blind. Indeed, commentators are sometimes puzzled, as
in John iii.
10-21, to know where, if at all, the words of Jesus stop
and are
succeeded by the commentary of the narrator. In an accurate
history
different characters stand out in striking individuality, so
that we come
to recognise them as distinct personalities, and can even
guess
beforehand how they will probably speak and act under certain
conditions.
But here we have one figure in various disguises, one voice
from
different speakers, one mind in opposing characters. We have here
no beings of
flesh and blood, but airy phantoms, behind whom we see
clearly the
solitary preacher. For Jesus and John the Baptist are two
characters as
distinct as can well be imagined, yet their speeches are
absolutely
indistinguishable, and their thoughts run in the same groove.
Jesus tells
Nicodemus: "We speak that we do know and testify that we
have seen,
and ye receive not our witness; and no man hath ascended
up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven." John says to his
disciples:
"He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath
seen and
heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony."
But it is
wasting time to prove so self-evident a fact: let us rather
see how a
Christian advocate meets an argument whose force he cannot
deny.
"The character and diction of our Lord's discourses entirely
penetrated
and assimilated the habits of thought of His beloved Apostle;
so that in
his first epistle he writes in the very tone and spirit of
those
discourses; and when reporting the sayings of his former teacher,
the Baptist,
he gives them, consistently with the deepest inner truth
(!) of
narration, the forms and cadences so familiar and habitual to
himself."*
It must be left to each individual to judge if a careful and
accurate
historian thus tampers with the words he pretends to narrate,
and thus
makes them accord with some mysterious inner truth; each
too must
decide as to the amount of reliance it is wise to place on a
historian who
is guided by so remarkable a rule of truth. But further,
that the
"character and diction" of this gospel are moulded on that of
Jesus, seems
a most unwarrantable assertion. Through all the recorded
sayings of
Jesus in the three gospels, there is no trace of this very
peculiar
style, except in one case (Matt. xi. 27), a passage which comes
in abruptly
and unconnectedly, and stands absolutely alone in style
in the three
synoptics, a position which throws much doubt on its
authenticity.
It has been suggested that this marked difference of style
arises from
the different auditories addressed in the three gospels and
in the
fourth; on this we remark that (a), we intuitively recognise such
discourses as
that in Matt. x. as perfectly consistent with the usual
style of
Jesus, although this is addressed to "his own;" (b), In this
fourth gospel
the discourses addressed to "his own" and to the Jews are
in exactly
the same style; so that, neither in this gospel, nor in
the synoptics
do we find any difference--more than might be reasonably
expected--between
the style of the discourses addressed to the disciples
and those
addressed to the multitudes. But we _do_ find a very marked
difference
between the style attributed to Jesus by the three synoptics
and that put
into his mouth by the fourth evangelist; this last being a
style so
remarkable that, if usual to Jesus, it is impossible that its
traces should
not appear through all his recorded speeches. From which
fact we may,
I think, boldly deduce the conclusion that the style in
question is
not that of Jesus, the simple carpenter's son, but is one
caught from
the dignified and stately march of the oratory of Ephesian
philosophers,
and is put into his mouth by the writer of his life. And
this
conclusion is rendered indubitable by the fact above-mentioned,
that all the
characters adopt this poetically and musically-rounded
phraseology.
* Alford.
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Thus our
first objection against the trustworthiness of our historian
is that all
the persons he introduces, however different in character,
speak exactly
alike, and that this style, when put into the mouth of
Jesus, is
totally different from that attributed to him by the three
synoptics. We
conclude, therefore, that the style belongs wholly to the
writer, and
that he cannot, consequently, be trusted in his reports of
speeches. The
major part, by far the most important part, of this gospel
is thus at
once stamped as untrustworthy.
Let us next
remark the partiality attributed by this gospel to Him Who
has
said--according to the Bible--"all souls-are Mine." We find the
doctrine of
predestination, i.e., of favouritism, constantly put
forward.
"_All that the Father giveth me_ shall come to me." "No man can
come to me except
the Father draw him." "That of all _which He hath given
me_ I should
lose nothing." "Ye believe not, _because_ ye are not of
my
sheep." "Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they
believed not
on him: _that the saying_ of Esaias the prophet _might be
fulfilled._"
"Therefore, they _could not believe because_ that Esaias
said,"
&c. "I have chosen you out of the world." "Thou hast given
him
power over
all flesh, that he should give eternal life to _as many as
Thou hast
given him?_" "Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none
of them is
lost, but the son of perdition, _that the Scriptures might
be
fulfilled._" These are the most striking of the passages which teach
that doctrine
which has been the most prolific parent of immorality and
the bringer
of despair to the sinner. Frightfully immoral as it is, this
doctrine is
taught in all its awful hopelessness and plainness by this
gospel: some
"_could not_ believe" because an old prophet prophesied
that they
should not-So, "according to St. John," these unbelieving Jews
were
pre-ordained to eternal damnation and the abiding wrath of God.
They were
cast into an endless hell, which "they _could not_" avoid. We
reject this
gospel, secondly, for the partiality it dares to attribute
to Almighty
God.
We will now
pass to the historical discrepancies between this gospel and
the three
synoptics, following the order of the former.
It tells us
(ch. i) that at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was at
Bethabara, a
town near the junction of the Jordan with the Dead Sea;
here he gains
three disciples, Andrew and another, and then Simon Peter:
the next day
he goes into Galilee and finds Philip and Nathanael, and on
the following
day--somewhat rapid travelling--he is present, with
these
disciples, at Cana, where he performs his first miracle, going
afterwards
with them to Capernaum and Jerusalem. At Jerusalem, whither
he goes for
"the Jews' passover," he drives out the traders from the
temple, and
remarks, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I
will raise it
up:" which remark causes the first of the strange
misunderstandings
between Jesus and the Jews, peculiar to this Gospel,
simple
misconceptions which Jesus never troubles himself to set right.
Jesus and his
disciples then go to the Jordan, baptising, whence Jesus
departs into
Galilee with them, because he hears that the Pharisees know
he is
becoming more popular than the Baptist (ch. iv. 1-3). All this
happens
before John is cast into prison, an occurrence which is a
convenient note
of time. We turn to the beginning of the ministry of
Jesus as
related by the three. Jesus is in the south of Palestine, but,
hearing that
John is cast into prison, he departs into Galilee, and
resides at
Capernaum. There is no mention of any ministry in Galilee and
Judaea before
this; on the contrary, it is only "from that time" that
"Jesus
_began_ to preach." He is alone, without disciples, but, walking
by the sea,
he comes upon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and calls
them. Now if
the fourth gospel is true, these men had joined him in
Judaea,
followed him to Galilee, south again to Jerusalem, and back to
Galilee, had
seen his miracles and acknowledged him as Christ, so it
seems strange
that they had deserted him and needed a second call, and
yet more
strange is it that Peter (Luke v. i-ii) was so astonished and
amazed at the
miracle of the fishes. The driving out of the traders from
the temple is
placed by the synoptics at the very end of his ministry,
and the
remark following it is used against him at his trial: so was
probably made
just before it. The next point of contact is the history
of the 5000
fed by five loaves (ch. vi.), the preceding chapter relates
to a visit to
Jerusalem unnoticed by the three: indeed, the histories
seem written
of two men, one the "prophet of Galilee" teaching in its
cities, the
other concentrating his energies on Jerusalem. The account
of the
miraculous, feeding is alike in all: not so the succeeding
account of
the conduct of the multitude. In the fourth gospel, Jesus
and the crowd
fall to disputing, as usual, and he loses many disciples:
among the
three, Luke says nothing of the immediately following
events, while
Matthew and Mark tell us that the multitudes--as would be
natural--crowded
round him to touch even the hem of his garment. This is
the same as
always: in the three the crowd loves him; in the fourth it
carps at and
argues with him. We must again miss the sojourn of Jesus in
Galilee,
according to the three, and his visit to Jerusalem, according
to the one,
and pass to his entry into Jerusalem in triumph. Here we
notice a most
remarkable divergence: the synoptics tell us that he
was going up
to Jerusalem from Galilee, and, arriving on his way at
Bethphage, he
sent for an ass and rode thereon into Jerusalem: the
fourth gospel
relates that he was dwelling at Jerusalem, and leaving it,
for fear of
the Jews, he retired, not into Galilee, but "beyond Jordan,
into the
place where John at first baptised," i.e., Bethabara, "and
_there he
abode_" From there he went to Bethany and raised to life a
putrefying
corpse: this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the
earlier
historians in proof of their master's greatness, though
"much
people of the Jews" are said to have seen Lazarus after his
resurrection:
this miracle is also given as the reason for the active
hostility of
the priests, "from that day forward." Jesus then retires
to Ephraim
near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and
thence in
triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people "for that they
heard that he
had done this miracle." The two accounts have absolutely
nothing in
common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding
events of the
synoptics exclude those of the fourth gospel, as does the
latter
theirs. If Jesus abode in Bethabara and Ephraim, he could not
have come
from Galilee; if he started from Galilee, he was not abiding
in the south.
John xiii.-xvii. stand alone, with the exception of the
mention of
the traitor. On the arrest of Jesus, he is led (ch. xviii.
13) to Annas,
who sends him to Caiaphas, while the others send him
direct to
Caiaphas, but this is immaterial. He is then taken to Pilate:
the Jews do
not enter the judgment-hall, lest, being defiled, they could
not eat the
passover, a feast which, according to the synoptics, was
over, Jesus
and his disciples having eaten it the night before. Jesus is
exposed to
the people at the sixth hour (ch. xix. 14), while Mark tells
us he was
crucified three hours before--at the third hour--a note of
time which
agrees with the others, since they all relate that there
was darkness
from the sixth to the ninth hour, i.e., there was thick
darkness at
the time when, "according to St. John," Jesus was exposed.
Here our
evangelist is in hopeless conflict with the three. The accounts
about the
resurrection are irreconcilable in all the gospels, and
mutually
destructive. It remains to notice, among these discrepancies,
one or two
points which did not come in conveniently in the course of
the
narrative. During the whole of the fourth gospel, we find Jesus
constantly
arguing for his right to the title of Messiah. Andrew speaks
of him as
such (i. 41); the Samaritans acknowledge him (iv. 42); Peter
owns him (vi.
69); the people call him so-(vii. 26, 31, 41); Jesus
claims it
(viii. 24); it is the subject of a law (ix. 22); Jesus speaks
of it as
already claimed by him (x. 24, 25); Martha recognises it
(xi. 27). We
thus find that, from the very first, this title is openly
claimed by
Jesus, and his right to it openly canvassed by the Jews.
But--in the
three--the disciples acknowledge him as Christ, and he
charges them
to "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ" (Matt. xvi.
20; Mark
viii. 29, 30; Luke ix. 20, 21); and this in the same year that
he blames the
Jews for not owning this Messiahship, since he had told
them who he
was. "from the beginning" (ch. viii. 24, 25); so that, if
"John"
was right, we fail to see the object of all the mystery about it,
related by
the synoptics.
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We mark, too,
how Peter is, in their account,
praised for
confessing him, for flesh and blood had not revealed it to
him, while in
the fourth gospel, "flesh and blood," in the person of
Andrew,
reveal to Peter that the Christ is found; and there seems little
praise due to
Peter for a confession which had been made two or three
years earlier
by Andrew, Nathanael, John Baptist, and the Samaritans.
Contradiction
can scarcely be more direct. In John vii. Jesus owns that
the Jews know
his birthplace (28), and they state (41, 42) that he comes
from Galilee,
while Christ should be born at Bethlehem. Matthew and Luke
distinctly
say Jesus was born at Bethlehem; but here Jesus confesses
the right
knowledge of those who attribute his birthplace to Galilee,
instead of
setting their difficulty at rest by explaining that though
brought up at
Nazareth, he was born in Bethlehem. But our writer was
apparently-ignorant
of their accounts. We reject this gospel, thirdly,
because its
historical statements are in direct contradiction to the
history of
the synoptics.
The next
point to which I wish to direct attention is the relative
position of
faith and morals in the three synoptics and the fourth
gospel. It is
not too much to say that on this point their teaching is
absolutely
irreconcilable, and one or the other must be fatally in the
wrong. Here
the fourth gospel clasps hands with Paul, while the others
take the side
of James. The opposition may be most plainly shown by
parallel
columns of quotations:
"Except your righteousness "He that _believeth on the_
Son
exceed that of the scribes and hath everlasting life."--iii. 36.
Pharisees, ye shall _in no
case_ enter Heaven."--Matt. v. 20.
"Have
we not prophesied in
"He that believeth on Him _is
thy name and in thy name done not condemned_."--iii. 18.
many wonderful works?"
"Then will I profess unto them...
Depart...ye that work iniquity."
--Matt. vii. 22, 23.
"If thou
wilt enter into life,
"He that believeth not the Son
keep the commandments."--Mark shall not see life."--iii. 36.
x. 17-28.
"Her sins, which are many, are "If ye believe not that I am he
forgiven, _for she loved_ much."-- ye shall die in your sins."--viii.
Luke
vii. 47. 24.
These few
quotations, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are
enough to
show that, while in the three gospels _doing_ is the test of
religion, and
no profession of discipleship is worth anything unless
shown by
"its fruits," in the fourth _believing_ is the cardinal matter:
in the three
we hear absolutely nothing of faith in Jesus as requisite,
but in the
fourth we hear of little else: works are thrown completely
into the
background and salvation rests on believing--not even in
God--but in
Jesus. We reject this gospel, fourthly, for setting faith
above works,
and so contradicting the general teaching of Jesus himself.
The relative
positions of the Father and Jesus are reversed by the
fourth
evangelist, and the teaching of Jesus on this head in the three
gospels is
directly contradicted. Throughout them Jesus preaches the
Father only:
he is always reiterating "your heavenly Father;" "that
ye may be the
children of your Father," is his argument for forgiving
others;
"your Father is perfect," is his spur to a higher life; "your
Father
knoweth," is his anodyne in anxiety; "it is the Father's good
pleasure,"
is his certainty of coming happiness; "_one_ is your Father,
which is in
heaven," is, by an even extravagant loyalty, made a reason
for denying
the very name to any other. But in the fourth gospel all is
changed: if
the Father is mentioned at all, it is only as the sender of
Jesus, as
_his_ Witness and _his_ Glorifier. All love, all devotion, all
homage, is
directed to Jesus and to Jesus only: even "on the Christian
hypothesis
the Father is eclipsed by His only begotten Son."* "All
judgment"
is in the hands of the Son: he has "life in himself;" "the
work of
God" is to believe on him; he gives "life unto the world;" he
will
"raise" us "up at the last day;" except by eating him there
is "no
life;" he
is "the light of the world;" he gives true freedom; he is the
"one
shepherd: none can pluck" us out of his hand; he will "draw all men
unto"
himself: he is the "Lord and Master," "the truth and the
life;"
what is even
asked of the Father, _he_ will do; he will come to his
disciples and
abide in them; his peace and joy are their reward. Verily,
we need no
more: he who gives us eternal life, who raises us from the
dead, who is
our judge, who hears our prayers, and gives us light,
freedom, and
truth, He, He only, is our God; none can do more for us
than he: in
Him only will we trust in life and death. So, consistently,
the Son is no
longer the drawer of believers to the Father, but the
Father is
degraded into becoming the way to the Son, and none can come
to Jesus
unless Almighty God draws them to him. Jesus is no longer the
way into the
Holiest, but the Eternal Father is made the means to an end
beyond
himself.
* Voysey.
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For this
fifth reason, more than for anything else, we reject this
gospel with
the most passionate earnestness, with the most burning
indignation,
as an insult to the One Father of spirits, the ultimate
Object of all
faith and hope and love.
And who is
this who thus dethrones our heavenly Father? It is not even
the Jesus
whose fair moral beauty has exacted our hearty admiration. To
worship _him_
would be an idolatry, but to worship him--were he such as
"John"
describes him--would be an idolatry as degrading as it would
be baseless.
For let us mark the character pourtrayed in this fourth
gospel. His
public career begins with an undignified miracle: at a
marriage,
where the wine runs short, he turns water into wine, in order
to supply men
who have already "well drunk" (ch. ii. 10). [We may ask,
in passing,
what led Mary to expect a miracle, when we are told that
this was the
first, and she could not, therefore, know of her son's
gifts.] The
next important point is the conversation with Nicodemus,
where we
scarcely knew which to marvel at most, the stolid stupidity
of a
"Master in Israel" misunderstanding a metaphor that must have been
familiar to
him, or the aggressive way in which Jesus speaks as to the
non-reception
of his message before he had been in public many months,
and as to
non-belief in his person before belief had become possible.
We then come
to the series of discourses related in ch. v. 10.
Perfect
egotism pervades them all; in all appear the same strange
misunderstandings
on the part of the people, the same strange
persistence
in puzzling them on the part of the speaker. In one of them
the people
honestly wonder at his mysterious words: "How is it that he
saith, I come
down from heaven," and, instead of any explanation, Jesus
retorts that
they should not murmur, since no man _can_ come to him
unless the
Father draw him; so that, when he puts forward a statement
apparently
contrary to fact--"his father and mother we know," say the
puzzled
Jews--he refuses to explain it, and falls back on his favourite
doctrine:
"Unless you are of those favoured ones whom God enlightens,
you cannot
expect to understand me." Little wonder indeed that "many
of his
disciples walked no more with" a teacher so perplexing and so
discouraging;
with one who presented for their belief a mysterious
doctrine,
contrary to their experience, and then, in answer to their
prayer for
enlightenment, taunts them with an ignorance he admits was
unavoidable.
The next important conversation occurs in the temple,
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and here
Jesus, the friend of sinners, the bringer of hope to the
despairing--this
Jesus has no tenderness for some who "believed on him;"
he ruthlessly
tramples on the bruised reed and quenches the smoking
flax. First
he irritates their Jewish pride with accusations of slavery
and low
descent; then, groping after his meaning, they exclaim, "We have
one Father,
even God," and he--whom we know as the tenderest preacher
of that
Father's universal love--surely he gladly catches at their
struggling
appreciation of his favourite topic, and fans the hopeful
spark into a
flame? Yes! Jesus of Nazareth would have done so. But
Jesus,
"according to St. John," turns fiercely on them, denying the
sonship he
elsewhere proclaims, and retorts, "Ye are of your father,
the
devil." And this to men who "believed on him;" this from lips
which
said,
"_One_ is your Father," and He, in heaven. He argues next with the
Pharisees, and
we find him arrogantly exclaiming: "_all_ that ever came
before me
were thieves and robbers." What, all? Moses and Elijah, Isaiah
and all the
prophets? At length, after he has once more repulsed some
inquirers,
the Jews take up stones to stone him, as Moses commanded,
because
"thou makest thyself God." He escapes by a clever evasion, which
neutralises
all his apparent assertions of Divinity. "Other men have
been called
gods, so surely I do not blaspheme by calling myself God's
son."
Never let us forget that in this gospel, the stronghold of the
Divinity of
Jesus, Jesus himself explains his strongest assertion "I and
my Father are
one" in a manner which can only be honest in the mouth of
a man.* We
pass to the celebrated "last discourse." In this we find
the same
peculiar style, the same self-assertion, but we must note,
in addition,
the distinct tritheism which pervades it. There are
three
distinct Beings, each necessarily deprived of some attribute of
Divinity:
thus, the Deity is Infinite, but if He is divided He becomes
finite, since
two Infinites are an impossible absurdity, and unless
they are
identical they must bound each other, so becoming finite.
Accordingly
"the Comforter" cannot be present till Jesus departs,
therefore
neither Jesus nor the Comforter can be God, since God is
omnipresent.
Since, then, prayer is to be addressed to Jesus as God,
the low
theory of tri-theism, of a plurality of Gods, none of whom is
a perfect
God, is here taught. In this discourse, also, the Christian
horizon is
bounded by the figure of Jesus, the office of the Comforter
is
sub-servient to this one worship, "he shall glorify me." Jesus, at
last, prays
for his disciples, markedly excluding from his intercession
"the
world" he was said to have come to save, and, as throughout this
gospel,
restricting all his love, all his care, all his tenderness to
"these,
whom Thou hast given me." Here we come to the essence of the
spirit which
pervades this whole gospel. "I pray for them; I pray not
for the
world: not for them who are of their father the devil, nor for
my betrayer,
the son of perdition." This is the spirit which Christians
dare to
ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth, the tenderest, gentlest,
widest-hearted
man who has yet graced humanity. This is the spirit, they
tell us,
which dwelt in _his_ bosom, who gave us the parables of the
lost sheep
and the prodigal son. "No," we answer, "this is not the
spirit of the
Prophet of Nazareth, but" (Dr. Liddon will pardon the
appropriation)
"this is the temper of a man who will not enter the
public baths
along with the heretic who has dishonoured his Lord."
* "For a good work we stone thee not,
but for blasphemy;
and because that thou being a man makest
thyself God." Jesus
answered them, "Is it not written in
your law, I said, ye
are gods? If he called them gods unto whom
the word of God
came (and the scripture cannot be broken),
say ye of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent
into the world,
Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the
son of God?"
This is the
spirit of the writer of the gospel, not of Jesus: the
egotism of
the writer is reflected in the words put into the mouth of
his master;
and thus the preacher of the Father's love is degraded into
the seeker of
his own glory, and bearing witness of himself, his witness
becomes
untrue. I must also draw attention to one or two cases of
unreality
attributed to Jesus by this gospel. He prays, on one occasion,
"because
of the people who stand by:" he cries on his cross, "I thirst,"
not because
of the burning agony of crucifixion, but in order "that
the
Scriptures might be fulfilled:" a voice answers "his prayer,"
"not
because of
me, but for your sakes." This calculation of effect is very
foreign to
the sincere and open spirit of Jesus. Akin to this is the
prevarication
attributed to him, when he declines to accompany his
brethren to
Judaea, but "when his brethren were gone up then went he
also up to
the feast, not openly but as it were in secret." All this
strikes us
strangely as part of that simple, fearless life.
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We reject
this gospel, sixthly, for the cruel spirit, the arrogance, the
self-assertion,
the bigotry, the unreality, attributed by it to Jesus,
and we
denounce it as a slander on his memory and an insult to his noble
life.
We may,
perhaps, note, as another peculiarity of this gospel--although I
do not enter
here into the argument of the divinity of Jesus,--that when
Dr. Liddon,
in his celebrated Bampton Lectures, is anxious to prove
the Deity of
Jesus _from his own mouth_, he is compelled to quote
exclusively
from this gospel. Such a fact as this cannot be overlooked,
when we
remember that "St. John's gospel is a polemical treatise"
written to
prove this special point. We cannot avoid noting the
coincidence.
We have now
gone through this remarkable record and examined it in
various
lights. At the outset we conceded to our opponents all the
advantage
which comes from admitting that the gospel _may_ be written
by the
Apostle John; we have left the authorship a moot point, and
based our
argument on a different ground. Apostolic or non-apostolic,
Johannine or
Corinthian, we accept it or reject it for itself, and not
for its
writer. We have found that all its characters speak alike in a
marked and
peculiar style--a style savouring of the study rather than
the street,
of Alexandria rather than Jerusalem or Galilee. We
have glanced
at its immoral partiality. We have noted the numerous
discrepancies
between the history of this gospel and that of the three
synoptics. We
have discovered it to be equally opposed to them in morals
as in
history: in doctrine as in morals. We have seen that, while it
degrades God
to enthrone Jesus in His stead, it also degrades Jesus,
and so lowers
his character that it defies recognition. Finally, we
have found it
stands alone in supporting the Deity of Jesus from his own
mouth.
I know not
how all this may strike others; to me these arguments are
simply
overwhelming in their force. I tear out the "Gospel according to
St.
John" from the writings which "are profitable" "for
instruction
in
righteousness." I reject it from beginning to end, as fatally
destructive
of all true faith towards God, as perilously subversive of
all true
morality in man, as an outrage on the sacred memory of Jesus of
Nazareth, and
as an insult to the Justice, the Supremacy, and the Unity
of Almighty
God.
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ON THE
ATONEMENT.
THE Atonement
may be regarded as the central doctrine of Christianity,
the very
_raison d'ętre_ of the Christian faith. Take this away, and
there would
remain indeed a faith and a morality, but both would have
lost their
distinctive features: it would be a faith without its
centre, and a
morality without its foundation. Christianity would be
unrecognisable
without its angry God, its dying Saviour, its covenant
signed with
"the blood of the Lamb:" the blotting out of the Atonement
would deprive
millions of all hope towards God, and would cast them
from
satisfaction into anxiety from comfort into despair. The warmest
feelings of
Christendom cluster round the Crucifix, and he, the
crucified
one, is adored with passionate devotion, not as martyr for
truth, not as
witness for God, not as faithful to death, but as the
substitute
for his worshippers, as he who bears in their stead the wrath
of God, and
the punishment due to sin. The Christian is taught to see in
the bleeding Christ
the victim slain in his own place; he himself should
be hanging on
that cross, agonised and dying; those nail-pierced hands
ought to be
his; the anguish on that face should be furrowed on his own;
the weight of
suffering resting on that bowed head should be crushing
himself inta
the dust. In the simplest meaning of the words, Christ is
the sinner's
substitute, and on him the sin of the world is laid: as
Luther
expressed it, he "is the greatest and only sinner;" literally
"made
sin" for mankind, and expiating the guilt which, in very deed, was
transferred
from man to-him.
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I wish at the
outset, for the sake of justice and candour, to
acknowledge
frankly the good which has been drawn forth by the preaching
of the Cross.
This good has been, however, the indirect rather than the
direct result
of a belief in the Atonement. The doctrine, in itself, has
nothing
elevating about it, but the teaching closely connected with
the doctrine
has its ennobling and purifying side. All the enthusiasm
aroused in
the human breast by the thought of one who sacrificed himself
to save his
brethren, all the consequent longing to emulate that love by
sacrificing
all for Jesus and for those for whom he died, all the moral
gain caused
by the contemplation of a sublime self-devotion, all these
are the fruits
of the nobler side of the Atonement. That the sinless
should stoop
to the sinful, that holiness should embrace the guilty in
order to
raise them to its own level, has struck a chord in men's bosoms
which has
responded to the touch by a harmonious melody of gratitude
to the divine
and sinless sufferer, and loving labour for suffering and
sinful man.
The Cross has been at once the apotheosis and the source of
self-sacrificing
love. "Love ye one another _as_ I have loved you: not
in word but
in deed, with a deep self-sacrificing love:" such is the
lesson which,
according to one of the most orthodox Anglican divines,
"Christ
preaches to us from His Cross." In believing in the Atonement,
man's heart
has, as usual, been better than his head; he has passed over
the dark side
of the idea, and has seized on the divine truth that the
strong should
gladly devote themselves to shield the weak, that labour,
even unto
death, is the right of humanity from every son of man. It is
often said
that no doctrine long retains its hold on men's hearts which
is not
founded on some great truth; this divine idea of self-sacrifice
has been the
truth contained in the doctrine of the Atonement, which has
made it so
dear to many loving and noble souls, and which has hidden its
"multitude
of sins"--sins against love and against justice, against God
and against
man. Love and self-sacrifice have floated the great error
over the
storms of centuries, and these cords still bind to it many
hearts of
which love and self-sacrifice are the glory and the crown.
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This said, in
candi d'homage to the good which has drawn its inspiration
from Jesus
crucified, we turn to the examination of the doctrine itself:
if we find
that it is as dishonouring to God as it is injurious to man,
a crime
against justice, a blasphemy against love, we must forget all
the sentiments
which cluster round it, and reject it utterly. It is well
to speak
respectfully of that which is dear to any religious soul,
and to avoid
jarring harshly on the strings of religious feeling, even
though the
soul be misled and the feeling be misdirected; but a time
comes when
false charity is cruelty, and tenderness to error is treason
to truth. For
long, men who know its emptiness pass by in silence the
shrine
consecrated by human hopes and fears, by love and worship, and
the
"times of this ignorance God (in the bold figure of Paul) also winks
at;" but
when "the fulness of the time is come," God sends forth some
true son of
his to dash the idol to the ground, and to trample it into
dust. We need
not be afraid that the good wrought by the lessons derived
from the
Atonement in time past will disappear with the doctrine itself;
the mark of
the Cross is too deeply ploughed into humanity ever to be
erased, and
those who no longer call themselves by the name of Christ
are not the
most backward scholars in the school of love and sacrifice.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The history
of this doctrine has been a curious one. In the New
Testament the
Atonement is, as its name implies, a simply making at one
God and man:
_how_ this is done is but vaguely hinted at, and in order
to deduce the
modern doctrine from the Bible, we must import into
the books of
the New Testament all the ideas derived from theological
disputations.
Words used in all simplicity by the ancient writers must
have attached
to them the definite polemical meaning they hold in the
quarrels of
theologians, before they can be strained into supporting a
substitutionary
atonement. The idea, however, of "ransom" is connected
with the work
of Jesus, and the question arose, "to whom is this ransom
paid?"
They who lived in those first centuries of Christianity were
still too
much within the illumination of the tender halo thrown by
Jesus round
the Father's name, to dream for a moment that their redeemer
had ransomed
them from the beloved hands of God. No, the ransom was paid
to the devil,
whose thrall they believed mankind to be, and Jesus, by
sacrificing
himself, had purchased them from the devil and made them
sons of God.
It is not worth while to enter on the quaint details of
this scheme,
how the devil thought he had conquered and could hold Jesus
captive, and
was tricked by finding that his imagined gain could not
be retained
by him, and so on. Those who wish to become acquainted
with this
ingenious device can study it in the pages of the Christian
fathers: it
has at least one advantage over the modern plan, namely,
that we are
not so shocked at hearing of pain and suffering as
acceptable to
the supposed incarnate evil, as at hearing of them being
offered as a
sacrifice to the supreme good. As the teaching of Jesus
lost its
power, and became more and more polluted by the cruel thoughts
of savage and
bigoted men, the doctrine of the atonement gradually
changed its
character. Men thought the Almighty to be such a one as
themselves,
and being fierce and unforgiving and revengeful, they
projected
their own shadows on to the clouds which surrounded the
Deity, and
then, like the shepherd who meets his own form reflected
and magnified
on the mountain mist, they recoiled before the image they
themselves
had made. The loving Father who sent his son to rescue his
perishing
children by sacrificing himself, fades away from the hearts of
the Christian
world, and there looms darkly in his place an awful form,
the
inexorable judge who exacts a debt man is too poor to pay, and who,
in default of
payment, casts the debtor into a hopeless prison, hopeless
unless
another pays to the uttermost farthing the fine demanded by the
law. So, in
this strange transformation-scene God actually takes the
place of the
devil, and the ransom once paid to redeem men from Satan
becomes the
ransom paid to redeem men from God. It reminds one of the
quarrels over
the text which bids us "fear him who is able to destroy
both body and
soul in hell," when we remain in doubt whom he is we are
to fear,
since half the Christian commentators assure us that it refers
to our Father
in heaven, while the other half asseverate that the devil
is the
individual we are to dread. The seal was set on the "redemption
scheme"
by Anselm in his great work, "_Cur Deus Homo_" and the doctrine
which had
been slowly growing into the theology of Christendom was
thenceforward
stamped with the signet of the Church. Roman Catholics
and
Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, alike believed in the
vicarious and
substitutionary character of the atonement wrought by
Christ. There
is no dispute between them on this point. I prefer to
allow the
Christian divines to speak for themselves as to the character
of the
atonement: no one can accuse me of exaggerating their views, if
their views
are given in their own words. Luther teaches that "Christ
did truly and
effectually feel for all mankind, the wrath of God,
malediction
and death." Flavel says that "to wrath, to the wrath of an
infinite God
without mixture, to the very torments of hell, was Christ
delivered,
and that by the hand of his own father." The Anglican homily
preaches that
"sin did pluck God out of heaven to make him feel the
horrors and
pains of death," and that man, being a firebrand of hell and
a bondsman of
the devil, "was ransomed by the death of his own only and
well-beloved
son;" the "heat of his wrath," "his burning wrath,"
could only be
"pacified" by Jesus, "so pleasant was this sacrifice and
oblation of
his son's death." Edwards, being logical, saw that there was
a gross
injustice in sin being twice punished, and in the pains of
hell, the
penalty of sin, being twice inflicted, first on Christ, the
substitute of
mankind, and then on the lost, a portion of mankind. So
he, in common
with most Calvinists, finds himself compelled to restrict
the atonement
to the elect, and declared that Christ bore the sins, not
of the world,
but of the chosen out of the world; he suffers "not for
the world,
but for them whom Thou hast given me." But Edwards adheres
firmly to the
belief in substitution, and rejects the universal
atonement for
the very reason that "to believe Christ died for all is
the surest
way of proving that he died for none in the sense Christians
have hitherto
believed." He declares that "Christ suffered the wrath of
God for men's
sins;" that "God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ
underwent the
pains of hell for," sin. Owen regards Christ's sufferings
as "a
full valuable compensation to the justice of God for all the sins"
of the elect,
and says that he underwent "that same punishment which....
they
themselves were bound to undergo."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The doctrine
of the Christian Church--in the widest sense of that
much-fought-over
term--was then as follows, and I will state it in
language
which is studiously moderate, _as compared with the orthodox
teaching_ of
the great Christian divines. If any one doubts this
assertion,
let him study their writings for himself. I really dare
not transfer
some of their expressions to my own pages. God the Father
having cursed
mankind and condemned them to eternal damnation, because
of Adam's
disobedience in eating an apple--or some other fruit, for the
species is
only preserved by tradition, and is not definitely settled
by the
inspired writings--and having further cursed each man for his own
individual
transgressions, man lay under the fierce wrath of God, unable
to escape,
and unable to pacify it, for he could not even atone for his
own private
sins, much less for his share of the guilt incurred by his
forefather in
Paradise. Man's debt was hopelessly large, and he had
"nothing
to pay;" so all that remained to him was to suffer an eternity
of torture,
which sad fate he had merited by the crime of being born
into an
accursed world. The second person of the Trinity moved to pity
by the
helpless and miserable state of mankind, interposed between the
first person
of the Trinity and the wretched sinners; he received into
his own
breast the fire-tipped arrows of divine wrath, and by suffering
inconceivable
tortures, equal in amount to an eternity of the torments
of hell, he
wrung from God's hands the pardon of mankind, or of a
portion
thereof. God, pacified by witnessing this awful agony of one who
had from all
eternity been "lying in his bosom" co-equal sharer of his
Majesty and
glory, and the object of his tenderest love, relents
from his
fierce wrath, and consents to accept the pain of Jesus as
a substitute
for the pain of mankind. In plain terms, then, God is
represented
as a Being so awfully cruel, so implacably revengeful,
that pain
_as_ pain, and death _as_ death, are what he demands as a
propitiatory
sacrifice, and with nothing less than extremest agony can
his fierce
claims on mankind be bought off. The due weight of suffering
he must have,
but it is a matter of indifference whether it is undergone
by Jesus or
by mankind. Did not the old Fathers do well in making the
awful ransom
a matter between Jesus and the devil?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
When this
point is pressed on Christians, and one urges the dishonour
done to God
by painting him in colours from which heart and soul recoil
in shuddering
horror, by ascribing to him a revengefulness and pitiless
cruelty in
comparison with which the worst efforts of human malignity
appear but
childish mischief, they are quick to retort that we are
caricaturing
Christian doctrine; they will allow, when overwhelmed with
evidence,
that "strong language" has been used in past centuries, but
will say that
such views are not now held, and that they do not ascribe
such harsh
dealing to God the Father. Theists are therefore compelled to
prove each
step of their accusation, and to quote from Christian writers
the words
which embody the views they assail. Were I simply to state
that
Christians in these days ascribe to Almighty God a fierce wrath
against the
whole human race, that this wrath can only be soothed by
suffering and
death, that he vents this wrath on an innocent head, and
that he is
well pleased by the sight of the agony of his beloved Son,
a shout of
indignation would rise from a thousand lips, and I should be
accused of
exaggeration, of false witness, of blasphemy. So once more I
write down
the doctrine from Christian dictation, and, be it remembered,
the sentences
I quote are from published works, and are therefore, the
outcome of
serious deliberation; they are not overdrawn pictures taken
from the
fervid eloquence of excited oratory, when the speaker may
perhaps be
carried further than he would, in cold blood, consent to.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Stroud makes
Christ drink "the cup of the wrath of God." Jenkyn says,
"he
suffered as one disowned and reprobated and forsaken of God." Dwight
considers
that he endured God's "hatred and contempt." Bishop Jeune
tells us that
"after man had done his worst, worse remained for Christ
to bear. He
had fallen into his father's hands." Archbishop Thomson
preaches that
"the clouds of God's wrath gathered thick over the whole
human race:
they discharged themselves on Jesus only;" he "becomes a
curse for us,
and a vessel of wrath." Liddon echoes the same sentiment:
"the
apostles teach that mankind are slaves, and that Christ on the
Cross is
paying their ransom. Christ crucified is voluntarily devoted
and accursed:"
he even speaks of "the precise amount of ignominy and
pain needed
for the redemption," and says that the "divine victim" paid
more than was
absolutely necessary.
These
quotations seem sufficient to prove that the Christians of the
present day
are worthy followers of the elder believers. The theologians
first quoted
are indeed coarser in their expressions, and are less
afraid of
speaking out exactly what they believe, but there is no
real
difference of creed between the awful doctrine of Flavel and the
polished
dogma of Canon Liddon. The older and the modern Christians
alike believe
in the bitter wrath of God against "the whole human race."
Both alike
regard the Atonement as so much pain tendered by Jesus to the
Almighty
Father in payment of a debt of pain owed to God by humanity.
They alike
represent God as only to be pacified by the sight of
suffering.
Man has insulted and injured God, and God must be revenged by
inflicting
suffering on the sinner in return. The "hatred and contempt"
God launched
at Jesus were due to the fact that Jesus was the sinner's
substitute,
and are therefore the feelings which animate the Divine
heart towards
the sinner himself. God hates and despises the world. He
would have
"consumed it in a moment" in the fire of his burning wrath,
had not
Jesus, "his chosen, stood before him in the gap to turn away his
wrathful
indignation."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Now, how far
is all this consistent with justice? Is the wrath of God
against
humanity justified by the circumstances of the case, so that we
may be
obliged to own that some sacrifice was due from sinful man to his
Creator, to
propitiate a justly incensed and holy God? I trow not. On
this first
count, the Atonement is a fearful injustice. For God has
allowed men
to be brought into the world with sinful inclinations, and
to be
surrounded with many temptations and much evil. He has made
man
imperfect, and the child is born into the world with an imperfect
nature. It is
radically unjust, then, that God should curse the work
of His hands
for being what He made them, and condemn them to endless
misery for
failing to do the impossible. Allowing that Christians are
right in
believing that Adam was sinless when he came from his Maker's
hands, these
remarks apply to every other living soul since born into
the world;
the Genesis myth will not extricate Christians from the
difficulty.
Christians are quite right and are justified by facts when
they say that
man is born into the world frail, imperfect, prone to sin
and error;
but who, we ask them, made men so? Does not their own Bible
tell them
that the "potter hath power over the clay," and, further, that
"we are
the clay and thou art the potter?" To curse men for being men,
_i.e._,
imperfect moral beings, is the height of cruelty and injustice;
to condemn
the morally weak to hell for sin, _i.e._, for failing in
moral
strength, is about as fair as sentencing a sick man to death
because he
cannot stand upright. Christians try and avoid the force of
this by
saying that men should rely on God's grace to uphold them, but
they fail to
see that this _very want of reliance_ is part of man's
natural
weakness. The sick man might be blamed for falling because he
did not lean
on a stronger arm, but suppose he was too weak to grasp
it? Further,
few Christians believe that it is impossible in practice,
however
possible in theory, to lead a perfect life; and as to "offend in
one point is
to be guilty of all," one failure is sufficient to send the
generally
righteous man to hell. Besides, they forget that infants are
included
under the curse, although _necessarily_ incapable of grasping
the idea
either of sin or of God; all babies born into the world and
dying before
becoming capable of acting for themselves would, we are
taught, have
been inevitably consigned to hell, had it not been for the
Atonement of
Jesus. Some Christians actually believe that unbaptized
babies are
not admitted into heaven, and in a Roman Catholic book
descriptive
of hell, a poor little baby writhes and screams in a red-hot
oven.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
This side of
the Atonement, this unjust demand on men for a
righteousness
they could not render, necessitating a sacrifice to
propitiate
God for non-compliance with his exaction, has had its due
effect on
men's minds, and has alienated their hearts from God. No
wonder that
men turned away from a God who, like a passionate but
unskilful
workman, dashes to pieces the instrument he has made because
it fails in
its purpose, and, instead of blaming his own want of skill,
vents his
anger on the helpless thing that is only what he made it.
Most
naturally, also, have men shrunk from the God who "avengeth and
is
furious" to the tender, pitiful, human Jesus, who loved sinners
so deeply as
to choose to suffer for their sakes. They could owe no
gratitude to
an Almighty Being who created them and cursed them, and
only
consented to allow them to be happy on condition that another paid
for them the
misery he demanded as his due; but what gratitude could
be enough for
him who rescued them from the fearful hands of the living
God, at the
cost of almost intolerable suffering to himself? Let us
remember that
Christ is said to suffer the very torments of hell, and
that his
worst sufferings were when "fallen into his father's hands,"
out of which
he has rescued us, and then can we wonder that the
crucified is
adored with a very ecstasy of gratitude? Imagine what it is
to be saved
from the hands of him who inflicted an agony admitted to be
unlimited,
and who took advantage of an infinite capacity in order to
inflict an
infinite pain. It is well for the men before whose eyes this
awful spectre
has flitted that the fair humanity of Jesus gives them a
refuge to fly
to, else what but despair and madness could have been the
doom of those
who, without Jesus, would have seen enthroned above the
wailing
universe naught but an infinite cruelty and an Almighty foe.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We see, then,
that the necessity for an atonement makes the Eternal
Father both
unjust in his demands on men and cruel in his punishment of
inevitable
failure; but there is another injustice which is of the
very essence
of the Atonement itself. This consists in the vicarious
character of
the sacrifice: a new element of injustice is introduced
when we
consider that the person sacrificed is not even the guilty
party. If a
man offends against law, justice requires that he should be
punished: the
punishment becomes unjust if it is excessive, as in the
case we have
been considering above; but it is equally unjust to allow
him to go
free without punishment. Christians are right in affirming
that moral
government would be at an end were men allowed to sin with
impunity, and
did an easy forgiveness succeed to each offence. They
appeal to our
instinctive sense of justice to-approve the sentiment that
punishment
should follow sin: we acquiesce, and hope that we have now
reached a
firm standing-ground from which to proceed further in our
investigation.
But, no; they promptly outrage that same sense of justice
which they
have called as a witness on their side, by asking us to
believe that
its ends are attained provided that somebody or other is
punished.
When we reply that _this_ is not justice, we are promptly
bidden not to
be presumptuous and argue from our human ideas of justice
as to the
course that ought to be pursued by the absolute justice of
God.
"Then why appeal to it at all?" we urge; "why talk of justice in
the matter if
we are totally unable to judge as to the rights and wrongs
of the
case?" At this point we are commonly overwhelmed with Paul's
notable
argument--"Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against
God?"
But if Christians value the simplicity and straightforwardness
of their own
minds, they should not use words which convey a certain
accepted
meaning in this shuffling, double sense. When we speak of
"justice,"
we speak of a certain well-understood quality, and we do not
speak of a
mysterious divine attribute, which has not only nothing in
common with
human justice, but which is in direct opposition to that
which we
understand by that name. Suppose a man condemned to death for
murder: the
judge is about to sentence him, when a bystander--as it
chances, the
judge's own son--interposes: "My Lord, the prisoner is
guilty and
deserves to be hanged; but if you will let him go, I will
die in his
place." The offer is accepted, the prisoner is set free, the
judge's son
is hanged in his stead. What is all this? Self-sacrifice
(however
misdirected), love, enthusiasm--what you will; but certainly
not
_justice_--nay, the grossest injustice, a second murder, an
ineffaceable
stain on the ermine of the outraged law. I imagine that,
in this
supposed case, no Christian will be found to assert that justice
was done; yet
call the judge God, the prisoner mankind, the substitute
Jesus, and
the trial scene is exactly reproduced. Then, in the name of
candour and
common sense, why call that just in God which we see would
be so unjust
and immoral in man? This vicarious nature of the Atonement
also degrades
the divine name, by making him utterly careless in
the matter of
punishment: all he is anxious for, according to this
detestable
theory, is that he should strike a blow _somewhere_. Like
a child in a
passion, he only feels the desire to hurt somebody, and
strikes out
vaguely and at random. There is no discrimination used;
the
thunderbolt is launched into a crowd: it falls on the head of the
"sinless
son," and crushes the innocent, while the sinner goes
free. What
matter? It has fallen somewhere, and the "burning fire of
his-wrath"
is cooled. This is what men call the vindication of the
justice of
the Moral Governor of the universe: this is "the act of
God's awful
holiness," which marks his hatred of sin, and his immovable
determination
to punish it. But when we reflect that this justice
is consistent
with letting off the guilty and punishing the innocent
person, we
feel dread misgivings steal into our minds. The justice of
our Moral
Governor has nothing in common with our justice--indeed, it
violates all
our notions of right and wrong.
What if, as
Mr. Vance Smith suggests, this strange justice be consistent
also with a
double punishment of sin; and what if the Moral Governor
should
bethink himself that, having confused
morality by an
unjust--humanly
speaking, of course--punishment, it would be well to
set things
straight again by punishing the guilty after all?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We can never
dare to feel safe in the hands of this
unjust--humanly
speaking--Moral Governor, or predicate
from our
instinctive notions of right and wrong what his requirements
may be. One
is lost in astonishment that men should believe such things
of God, and
not have manhood enough to rise up rebellious against such
injustice--should,
instead, crouch at his feet, and while trying to hide
themselves
from his wrath should force their trembling lips to murmur
some
incoherent acknowledgment of his mercy. Ah! they do not believe it;
they assert
it in words, but, thank God, it makes no impression on their
hearts; and
they would die a thousand deaths rather than imitate, in
their
dealings with their fellow-men, the fearful cruelty which the
Church has
taught them to call the justice of the Judge of all the
earth.
The Atonement
is not only doubly unjust, but it is perfectly futile. We
are told that
Christ took away the sins of the world; we have a right to
ask,
"how?" So far as we can judge, we bear our sins in our own bodies
still, and
the Atonement helps us not at all. Has he borne the physical
consequences
of sin, such as the loss of health caused by intemperance
of all kinds?
Not at all, this penalty remains, and, from the nature
of things,
cannot be transferred. Has he borne the social consequences,
shame, loss
of credit, and so on? They remain still to hinder us as
we strive to
rise after our fall. Has he at least borne the pangs of
remorse for
us, the stings of conscience? By no means; the tears of
sorrow are no
less bitter, the prickings of repentance no less keen.
Perhaps he
has struck at the root of evil, and has put away sin itself
out of a
redeemed world? Alas! the wailing that goes up to heaven from a
world
oppressed with sin weeps out a sorrowfully emphatic, "no, this
he has _not_
done." What has he then borne for us? Nothing, save the
phantom wrath
of a phantom tyrant; all that is real exists the same as
before. We
turn away, then, from the offered atonement with a feeling
that would be
impatience at such trifling, were it not all too
sorrowful, and
leave the Christians to impose on their imagined
sacrifice,
the imagined burden of the guilt of the accursed race.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Further, the
Atonement is, from the nature of things, entirely
impossible:
we have seen how Christ fails to bear our sins in any
intelligible
sense, but can he, in any way, bear the "punishment" of
sin? The idea
that the punishment of sin can be transferred from one
person to
another is radically false, and arises from a wrong conception
of the
punishment consequent on sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt,
so to speak,
thought to be incurred thereby. _The only true punishment
of sin is the
injury caused by it to our moral nature_: all the indirect
punishments,
we have seen, Christ has not taken away, and the true
punishment
can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more than the
transgression
of law. All law, when broken, entails _of necessity_ an
appropriate
penalty, and recoils, as it were, on the transgressor. A
natural law,
when broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so
does a
spiritual law: the injury wrought by the latter is not less
real,
although less obvious. Physical sin brings physical suffering;
spiritual,
moral, mental sin brings each its own appropriate punishment.
"Sin"
has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in using it, of
its real
simple meaning, a breaking of law. Imagine any sane man coming
and saying,
"My dear friend; if you like to put your hand into the fire
I will bear
the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not suffer." It
is quite as
absurd to imagine that if I sin Jesus can bear my consequent
suffering. If
a man lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly
untrue: let
him repent ever so vigorously, he must bear the consequences
of his past
deeds, and fight his way back slowly to truthfulness of
word and
thought: no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own
labour, will
restore to him the forfeited jewel of instinctive candour.
Thus the
"punishment" of untruthfulness is the loss of the power of
being true,
just as the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is
the loss of
the power of grasping. But in addition to this simple and
most just and
natural "retribution," theologians have invented certain
arbitrary
penalties as a punishment of sin, the wrath of God and hell
fire. These
imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally imaginary
atonement,
the natural punishment remaining as before; so after all we
only reject
the two sets of inventions which balance each other, and
find
ourselves just in the same position as they are, having gained
infinitely in
simplicity and naturalness. The punishment of sin is not
an arbitrary
penalty, but an inevitable sequence: Jesus may bear, if his
worshippers
will have it so, the theological fiction of the "guilt of
sin," an
idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness of the Levitical
law, but let
him leave alone the solemn realities connected with the
sacred and
immutable laws of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Doubly
unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be deemed a work of
supererogation
to argue yet further against the Atonement; but its hold
on men's
minds is too firm to allow us to lay down a single weapon which
can be turned
against it. So, in addition to these defects, I remark
that, viewed
as a propitiatory sacrifice to Almighty God, it is
thoroughly inadequate.
If God, being righteous, as we believe Him to be,
regarded man
with anger because of man's sinfulness, what is obviously
the required
propitiation? Surely the removal of the cause of anger,
_i.e._, of
sin itself, and the seeking by man of righteousness. The old
Hebrew
prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is the
true one:
"wherewith shall I come before the Lord," he is asked, with
burnt-offerings
or--choicer still--parental anguish over a first-born's
corpse?
"What doth the Lord require of thee," is the reproving answer,
"but to
do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
But what is
the propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement?
let Canon
Liddon answer: "the ignominy and pain _needed_ for the
redemption."
Ignominy, agony, blood, death, these are what Christians
offer up as
an acceptable sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have
all these in
common with the demands of the Eternal Righteousness, and
how can pain
atone for sin? they have no relation to each other; there
is no
appropriateness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings
are in
keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized nations, and we
understand
the feelings which prompt the savage to immolate tortured
victims on
the altars of his gloomy gods; they are appropriate
sacrifices to
the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from
injuring us
by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire
to inflict,
but they are offensive when given to Him who is the
Friend and
Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as
a
propitiation can have nothing in common with God's will for man, and
must be
utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have
Atonement,
let it at least consist of something which will suit the
Righteousness
and Love of God, and be in keeping with his perfection;
let it not
borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood
and dying
victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Lastly, I
impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human
morality. It
has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened
sinner"
by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a
substitute
who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing
can be more
pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that
he shall
escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement
may meet the
first superficial feelings of a man startled into the
consciousness
of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and
act as an
opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the
cravings of a
heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a
legal
justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers
freedom from
punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true
penitent does
not seek to be shielded from the consequences of his past
errors: he
accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain
the lesson of
future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and
this fatherly
discipline ordained by God, would be a curse and not a
blessing; it
would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless
instruction.
The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea
that
repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another
head; this
doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even
Paul
perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound?"
Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul ejaculates,
"God
forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised.
To the
Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy
death of a
ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror,
he has
snatched at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of
the
lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments
of such an
one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently,
without a
sickening parade of feelings of love towards the God whose
laws, as long
as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian
teachers will
extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with
words of
joyful assurance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns
a saintly
life with a peaceful death. The Atonement has weakened that
stern
condemnation of sin which is the safeguard of purity; it has
softened down
moral differences, and placed the penitent above the
saint; it has
dulled the feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has
taken away
the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for sin; it
has confused
man's sense of justice, outraged his feeling of right,
blunted his
conscience, and misdirected his repentance. It has chilled
his love to
God by representing the universal father as a cruel tyrant
and a
remorseless and unjust judge. It has been the fruitful parent of
all
asceticism, for, since God was pacified by suffering once, he would,
of course, be
pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have
logically
ruined their bodies to save their souls, and crushed their
feelings and
lacerated their hearts to propitiate the awful form
frowning
behind the cross of Christ. To the Atonement we owe it that God
is served by
fear instead of by love, that monasticism holds its head
above the
sweet sanctities of love and home, that religion is crowned
with thorns
and not with roses, that the _miserere_ and not the _gloria_
is the strain
from earth to heaven. The Atonement teaches men to crouch
at the feet
of God, instead of raising loving, joyful faces to meet his
radiant
smile; it shuts out his sunshine from us, and veils us in the
night of an
impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with which Canon
Liddon closes
a sermon on the death of Christ? I quote it to show the
slavish
feeling engendered by this doctrine in a very noble human soul:
"In
ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that should stay His (God's)
arm or invite
his mercy. But may he have respect to the acts and the
sufferings of
his sinless son? Only while contemplating the inestimable
merits of the
Redeemer can we dare to hope that our heavenly Father will
overlook the
countless provocations which he receives at the hands of
the
redeemed." Is this a wholesome sentiment, either as regards our
feelings
towards God or our efforts towards holiness? Is it well to look
to the purity
of another as a makewight for our personal shortcomings?
All these
injuries to morality done by the atonement are completed
by the
crowning one, that it offers to the sinner a veil of "imputed
righteousness."
Not only does it take from him his saving punishment,
but it
nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a
righteousness
which is not his own. It introduces into the solemn
region of
duty to God the legal fiction of a gift of holiness, which is
imputed, not
won. We are taught to believe that we can blind the eyes
of God and
satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that every one whose
purity we
seek to claim as ours, that fair blossom of humanity, Jesus
of Nazareth,
whose mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema at
whited
sepulchres, pure without and foul within. What would he have said
of the
whitewash of unimputed righteousness? Stern and sharp would have
been his
rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved
would have
been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain
deceive God
as well as man.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
These
considerations have carried so great a weight with the most
enlightened
and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that
there has
grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an
atonement of
agony and death is as complete as even we could wish.
They denounce
with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "bloody
sacrifice,"
and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour
done to God
by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that
dieth,"
or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there
is no virtue
in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a
God."
Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering
of the
"well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the
Almighty
Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and
graciousness
of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral
and not a
physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the
Father of
spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory
also, that
the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_
man, in order
to make men acceptable to God. It is, perhaps, scarcely
fair to say
this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad
Church
divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox
to the
Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that
while they
have given up the error of thinking that the death of
Christ
reconciles God to-us, they yet believe that his death, in
some
mysterious manner, reconciles us to God. It is a matter of deep
thankfulness
that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating God,
and so
prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching
reaches
hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the
John Baptist
of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an
atonement at
all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation
by means of a
mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between God and his
child, man;
that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal
of humanity
and propitiated God by showing what a man _could_ be, is
objectionable
in that it represents God as needing to be taught what
were the
capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the
powers of God
in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities
of a simple
man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties
surrounding a
divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in
their
theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent
with a
reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some
unusual
benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death
of a God, and
are swayed alternately by their reason, which places
the
crucifixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs' deaths, and by their
prejudices,
which assign to it a position unique and unrivalled in the
history of
the race. There are, however, many signs that the deity of
Jesus is, as
an article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the
Broad Church
school. The hold on it by such men as the Rev. J. S. Brooke
is very
slight, and his interpretation of the incarnation is regarded
by orthodox
divines with unmingled horror. Their _moral_ atonement, in
turn, is as
the dawn before the sunrise, and we may hope that it will
soon develop
into the real truth: namely, that the dealings of Jesus
with the
Father were a purely private matter between his own soul and
God, and that
his value to mankind consists in his being one of the
teachers of
the race, one "with a genius for religion," one of the
schoolmasters
appointed to lead humanity to God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The theory of
M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting
and
ingenious--it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from
Scotland, the
home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing
between man
and God. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement,
and makes it
consist, so to speak, in leading God and man to understand
one another.
He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of God,
and
vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son
who trusted
in him. He witnessed to God on behalf of men--and this
is the
weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on
substitution--showing
in humanity a perfect sympathy with God's feelings
towards sin,
and offering to God for man a perfect repentance for human
transgression.
I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not
_intend_
substitution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he
must
inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin
and danger,
so no fiction is supposed as between God and Christ. But he
considers
that God, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus,
accepts the
repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is _in
kind_ the
same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of
which his is
the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense,
is the
repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that
men must
share in the mind of Christ as towards God and towards sin, in
order to be
benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus
actually take
part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he
regards as
necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sonship
towards God,
and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to
exemplify. I
trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a
very able and
thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of
the Atonement
compatible with the love and the justice of God; and this
only, of
course, if the idea of _any_ atonement can fairly be said to
be consistent
with justice. The merits of this view are practically that
this work of
Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at
all. The
defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed,
as he argues
from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious
limitation of
God's knowledge (as though God did not understand man
till he was
revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the
punishment
due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the
_raison
d'ętre_ of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge
all
thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not
been shown
for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has
but to be
studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade
people to
_think_ about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine
must be faced
and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense
and justice
of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question
fairly, to
doubt what that answer will be."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON THE
MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.
THE whole
Christian scheme turns on the assumption of the inherent
necessity of
some one standing between the Creator and the creature,
and shielding
the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a
fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God;" such is the
key-note of
the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with
its thousand
intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator,
the man
Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite
mouthpiece,
whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the
face of God,
lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity,
have been the
men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze
straight up
into the awful Face of God. They have dashed aside all that
intervened
between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it,
as one of
them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to
fall on the
naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him
who had
called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands
to the
Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they
would have
been the very first to protest against, and have been made
into
mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those
who dared not
seek God for themselves have clung to the garments of the
braver souls,
who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between
their
brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of
demonstrating
the radical errors from which spring all the so-called
"schemes
of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting
from the
Christian hypothesis.
We will
admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we
may thus see
the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between
God and man
is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that
is wrong in
principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special
manifestation
of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother,
saint, angel,
or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright
as human
beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we
refuse to
have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.
We will take
mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if
Jesus were
really God as well as man. All Christians agree in asserting
that the
coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result
of the love
of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_God_ so loved the
world that
_He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the
world is,
then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator
for the work
of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the
bosom of the
Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time.
But now a
startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has
"atoned
for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood
of his
cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator
for men. What
does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply?
Only this--_a
complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_.
After the
yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute
sacrifice to
win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His
children at
His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in
the future;
human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with
tears. He
turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He
refuses to
clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so
long, unless
they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor,
and come
armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a
procedure
must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for
one
absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one
difficulty,
they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from
the first. So
they represent God as loving sinners, and desiring to
forgive and
welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of God; but, in
opposition to
the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any
favour to the
sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the
utmost. A
Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing
before the
Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice
clamours for
punishment. Two attributes of the Godhead are personified
and placed in
opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled.
But when we
remember that each personified quality is really but a
portion, so
to speak, of the Divine character, we find that God is
divided
against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the
harmonious
mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It
sees warring
elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures
successive
waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it
imagines
clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that
unchanging
Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as
realised by
the thoughtful mind. God is not a man, to be swayed first
by one motive
and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point
unwaveringly
in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same
as perfect
mercy. If God's justice could fail, the whole moral universe
would be in
confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that
could be
inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled
mercy, which
is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human
infirmity which
men have transferred to their idea of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
A man who has
announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out
of his
resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's
innocence,
new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may
have been
over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator
may indeed
step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the
Eternal
Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of God?
Can His
knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be
swayed by
prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?
But if His
judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection,
and all left
for the mediator to do is to persuade God to make a change,
_i.e._, to
become imperfect; or, God having decided that sin shall
be punished,
the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon God's
feelings that
He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets
it go
unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, God is persuaded not to punish
the erring
child. But such is not the case. God is just, and because He
is just He is
most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty
of the due
punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the
sinner! and
no mediator--thanks be to God for it!--shall ever cause to
waver for one
instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of
Humanity.
But the
theory we are considering has another fatal error in it:
it ascribes
imperfection to Almighty God. For God is represented as
desiring to
forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or
wrong. If it
be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice
opposes this
forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly
right.
Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if God is
perfect--as
He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly
perfect, and
its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could
happen to His
whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier
of right--and
Justice _is_ right--interposed between God and His desire,
then His Will
is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose
between
admitting that the desire of God to welcome sinners is just, or
detracting
from the Eternal Perfection.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is obvious
that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the
moment, the
Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea
of mediation.
That the mediator should be God is totally beside the
question, and
in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity
does nothing
more than introduce a new element of confusion into the
affair; for
we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. God, who is
One, even
according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged
from sinners,
pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. God
pleads to
Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one God pleads to
another--but
we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed
which compels
its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their
Maker! which
babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces
its foolish
contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be God, his
mediation is
at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be God, his will
is the will
of God; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is God who
wills to
welcome them. If he, who is God, is content to pardon and
embrace, what
further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus
is one with
God: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of
sinners, and
the Redeemer of the lost. If he be God, we both agree as to
the
friendliness of God to sinners. You need no mediator between you
and Jesus;
and, since he is God, you need no mediator with God. This
reasoning is
irrefragable, unless Christians are content to assign to
their
mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly
derogate from
his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive
those whom
Almighty God chases from before His face. And in making this
difference
between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that
he is
distinct in feeling from God, and therefore cannot be the One God.
It is the
proper perception of this fact which has introduced into
the Roman
Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly
implored.
Jesus, being God, is too awful to be approached: his mother,
his apostles,
some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a
Roman
Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted
by the most
orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus
by the
Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by
the orthodox,
in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost
farthing; and
Mary is represented as standing between him and the
sinners for
whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the
idea which
makes the man Jesus the Mediator between God and man. As the
deification of
Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps
the
deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to
approach
_her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of
men, as the
Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this
superstition
of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected
by all
earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching
for the
living God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We see, then,
that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change
in the
supposed attitude of God towards man, and destroys all confidence
in the
justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into
consideration
the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied
in man's
endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal
Father. As we
study Nature and try to discover from its workings
something of
the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only
a ruling
Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads
in an
adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses
of a ruling
Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a
glad relief
from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in
on every
side. Simple belief in God at all, that is to say, in a Power
which works
in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of
that feeling
of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for
a mediator.
For being placed here without our request, and even without
our consent,
we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to
demand that
the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means
by which we
can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a
_conscious_
Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible;
but those who
believe in a God are bound to acknowledge that He is
responsible
for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to
say thus is
to criticise God's dealings and to speak with presumptuous
irreverence,
I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe
to the
Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they
themselves
would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and
that they who
fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not
bow the knee
before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge,
were it not
that their ignorance shields them from the sterner censure.
All good in
man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from
the pure
depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on
earth is a
pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal
Father-Heart.
Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease
beating; they
fear to rest on God, lest He should play them false.
When will
they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which
encircles the
universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite
because God
is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which
it can be
said, "God is not here," then is there also no spot where love
does not
rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the
Life-Giver
and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is
not cradled
in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in
between man
and a God like this? In the light of the Universal Reason
and the
Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent
absurdity.
Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most
sacred
concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His
offspring;
between the heart of man and the parent Heart of God. Whoever
it may be,
saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of
Nazareth, let
him come down from a position which none can rightly hold.
To elevate
the noblest son of man into this place of mediator is to make
him into an
offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn
into anger,
and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in
talking about
the need of a mediator before they dare to approach God,
we must
remind them that, if there be a God at all, He _must_ be just,
and that,
therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin
to babble
about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must
ask them what
in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely
they do not
think that God is like man, quick to revenge affront and
jealous of
His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any
sense, the
Majesty of God, do they conceive that God is an irascible and
revengeful
Potentate? Those who think thus of God can never--I assert
boldly--have
caught the smallest glimpse of _God_. They may have seen
a
"magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never
prostrated
themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this
vast
universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so
great. How
_can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands
go back on
the sun-dial of Time? All God's so-called chastisements are
but the
natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable
in their
action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law
results in
happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression
of law is not
inflicted by an angry God, but is the simple natural
outcome of
the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no
mediator can
save you from burning; cry earnestly to God to save you,
and then cast
yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come
between you
and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if
we studied
laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of
going
blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will
interpose to
shield us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity.
Happily for
mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of
law in which
we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that
their
happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at
last be some
chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will
work for
things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical
importance
that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed,
because on it
hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do
our own work.
This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and
it has
failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has
not succeeded
in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to
bring
salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also
the more
hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own
salvation.
For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none
can stay the
action of the eternal law which links sorrow with
transgression,
and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on
our path
upward, we may repent and call on God or man for forgiveness
as we list,
but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be
recovered,
and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for
there is none
who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built
up for himself,
or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed
his road.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Does the
sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and
whimper out
that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold
of the
bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by
hot-houses
and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness
of changeless
law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's
breadth. But
in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him
submit to the
laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's
force;
conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your
side;
"humble yourself under the mighty hand of God," who is the
Universal
Law, "and He shall lift you up."
So much for
mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study
the Christian
idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us
God, however
it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us
altogether
out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between
themselves
and God, Christians cry out that He is still too near them;
they must
push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too,
through whom
all His benefits shall filter.
"Saviour,"
is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it
bears a very
definite and noble meaning. God is the Saviour of men from
the power of
sin, and although we may consider that God does _not_ save
from sin in
this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that
there is
nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive.
But the word
"Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the
salvation He
brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour,
Jesus
Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from
sin, but
"because he saves them from hell, and from the fiery wrath
of God."
Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the
antithesis of
sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the
antithesis of
damnation. It is true that Christians may retort that
Jesus
"saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the
nobleness and
the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this
is _not_ the
primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word
"salvation."
"Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of
the living
God," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is
so fearful a
thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of
conversion,
and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being
hidden
"in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful
flames of the
destroying wrath of God. Against all this we, believers in
an Almighty
Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate
protest, with
a depth of abhorrence, with a passion of indignation which
is far too
intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no
language
strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea
that we can
be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here;
we cannot
repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which
offers to
take us out of the hands of God. To push some one in between
our souls and
Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us
salvation
from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of
His Love, to
suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's
heart more
loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies
to which we
will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these
suggestions
are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the
Deity, we
know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and
childish
conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to
refute.
"Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e
passo."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But we see
how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they
cripple their
intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample
down these
superstitions, not because they are in themselves worth
refuting, but
simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in
no wisdom
that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written
on our
hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are
conscious
that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink
from it. To
fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last
thing we
should do; we ought to have no gratitude for a "Saviour" who
should bear
our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson,
turn us into
spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer
as this,
could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal.
We should
trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a
humility so
profound, that if we could change His laws we should not
dare to
interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to
complain of
it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in
steadfast
obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should
desire to
fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into
the hands of
God.
Further, is
it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus
all they say
he is, we should still reject him; that were God all they
say He is, we
would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were
this awful
picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving
Moloch,
endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true
description
of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's
wife, we
would "curse God and die?" we would hide in the burning depths
of His hell
rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would
mock at the
gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at
their
despair. Were it thus indeed--
"O King of our salvation,
Many would curse to thee, and I for one!
Fling Thee Thy bliss, and snatch at Thy
damnation,
Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun.
"Is it
not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian
writer,
"if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer
everlasting
torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth
while_; it is
not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as
true that
which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is
not worth
while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty
to escape a
hell; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or
bend our
heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with
everlasting
burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie,
truth, and
cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to
suffer in
hell, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy
while others
suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could
sing
alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed
by the
anguished wailing of the lost. God Himself--were He such as
Christians
paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth,
of
righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_,
and we can
suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these
as the price
of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as
we paced the
golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river
of the water
of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians
offer us in
the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to
us as the
gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of God;" and this we
reject,
wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of
our glad
hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a
stern and
bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in
the name of
the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is
holy, and just,
and loving.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But happily
many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from
this idea of
salvation from the God in whom they say they place all
their hopes.
They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they
prefer not to
speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and
is moulding
the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its
own cruel
side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not
yet spread,
does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain,
in Mexico, we
see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is
too strong
for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The
old wine is
being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We
may, however,
rejoice that nobler thoughts about God are beginning to
prevail, and
are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His
revenge. The
Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to shine
out from His
world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts
about Him are
fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever,
and when men
perceive that God and Nature are One, all that is ghastly
and horrible
must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular
Christian
ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pass away into the
limbo of
rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already
dead, and
their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and harass
the souls of
living men.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON ETERNAL
TORTURE.
SOME time ago
a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and
strong that
hell was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory
to God and
good to man; that the holiness of God required it as a
preventive,
and the justice of God exacted it as a penalty, of sin.
I listened
quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend
denunciator;
he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the
consciousness
that they were crushing and unassailable. But my eyes were
fixed on the
fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament
of earth, the
visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast
between God's
works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And
all I found
to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard
you mention
the name of God, I should have thought you were speaking of
the
Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling
effect.
Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of
laboured
argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must
be something
wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such
a blow; the
short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's
reasoning.
The various
classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked
in very
different styles by the champions of the great army of
free-thinkers,
who are at the present day besieging the venerable
superstitions
of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many
hallowed
memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has
shed around
his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the
ideal of
Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest
flights of
enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality
and called by
the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded
with every
development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest
Christianity
of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of
Thomas ŕ
Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after
knowledge,
after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been
called by
them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears,
crucified in
human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this,
because he is
dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles,
therefore he
should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of
the
brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be
overthrown,
because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God,
because it
veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things,
but he
himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness
permits, and
this dogma, although persistently battled against, should
be attacked
without anger and without scorn.
There are
other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's
conception of
God, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine
great moral
truths and have become bound up with ennobling lessons; such
is the
doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless
love and of
self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others
again against
which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to
bear, which
are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the
childhood of
the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out
of his
devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults God and degrades
himself by
placing a priesthood or mediator between God and his own
soul. But
there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands
alone in its
atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is
without one
redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards God as
it is
injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly
the bitterest
scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human
emotion
enlisted on the side of an Eternal Hell; it is not hallowed by
human love or
human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations,
nor is it the
outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal
can be made
to any feeling of the nobler side of our nature, nor does
eternal fire
stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower,
baser, part
of man; it excites fear, distrust of God, terror of his
presence; it
may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good;
it sees God
in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the sunshine
which
invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall,
but not in
the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of
the summer
day. Hell has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it
has driven
monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the
nunnery, but
has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father
of all, and
pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the
presence of
God"?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is only
just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine,
that, though
believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most
enlightened
of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice.
It is well
known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison
Maurice,
endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his
strong moral
sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would
reconcile two
contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal,"
struggled to
prove that whatever else it might mean it did _not_ mean
everlasting
in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being
the
antithesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of
the Eternal
One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of God: that
therefore men
could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every
day in this
life, and might so rise in the life to come. Noble was
his protest
against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue
reverence
for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense
in man as the
arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his
labours have
opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or
even hoped. Many
other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word
"eternal"
has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive
there, all
Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not,
cannot, shall
not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of
thought has
laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery;
they have
pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge
Hinnom, or
valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley
the materials
for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not
quenched:"
they show how by a natural transition the place into which
were thrown
the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of
punishment in
the next world, and the valley where children were
sacrificed to
Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From
that valley
Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid
fires ever
creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the
decaying
bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably
much truth,
and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this
explanation,
and so retain their belief in the supernatural character
of the Bible,
while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most
immoral
dogma.
Among the
evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard
to protest
against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev.
Samuel
Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion
of his
"world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on
him. He seems
to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some
cases and of
"everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will
be literally
destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is
eternal by no
means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into
the fire
should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable
does not
prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he
explains as
irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction.
This theory
should have more to recommend it to all who believe in
the
supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church
explanation;
it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture,
and, indeed,
a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible
itself.
It is
scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from
orthodox
Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there
is such a
phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes
in an eternal
hell.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
With these
small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but
for the most
part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of
it even while
duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in
their creed
which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People
of this kind
"do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of
heaven."
Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their
belief
boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the
profession of
it a condition of admittance into their body, while many
High Church
divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in
it is needed
by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I
wish I could
believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize
it, and only
accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to
them. But
what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted
from Father
Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I
take it as a
specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children
are asked:
"How will your body be when the devil has been striking it
every moment
for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of
eighteen is
described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire.
It is pressed
down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into
the skull; it
scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A
boy is
boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle
boiling....
The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The
brain is
boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his
bones."
Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture:
one is in a
red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it
turns and
twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this
little
child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the
faces of all
in hell--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this
man realized
what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a
priest.
Dr. Pusey,
too, has a word to say about hell: "Gather in mind all that
is most
loathsome, most revolting--the most treacherous, malicious,
coarse,
brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains
of human
feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour....
hear those
yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along
the lurid
vault of hell."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Protestantism
chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of hell: "Wilt thou think
it is easy to
lie down in hell, with the breath of the Eternal fanning
the flames?
Wilt thou delight thyself to think that God will invent
torments for
thee, sinner?" "When the damned jingle the burning irons of
their
torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries,
'for
ever.'"
I may allude,
to conclude my quotations, to a description of hell which
I myself
heard from an eminent prelate of the English Church, one who is
a scholar and
a gentleman, a man of moderate views in Church matters,
by no means a
zealot in an ordinary way. In preaching to a country
congregation
composed mainly of young men and girls, he warned them
specially
against sins of the flesh, and threatened them with the
consequent
punishment in hell. Then, in language which I cannot
reproduce,
for I should not dare to sully my pages by repeating what
I then
listened to in horrified amazement, there ensued a description
drawn out in
careful particulars of the state of the suffering body in
hell, so
sickening in its details that it must suffice to say of it that
it was a
description founded on the condition of a corpse flung out on
a dungheap
and left there to putrefy, with the additional horror of
creeping,
slowly-burning flames; and this state of things was to go
on, as he
impressed on them with terrible energy, for ever and ever,
"decaying
but ever renewing."
I should
almost ask pardon of tender-hearted men and women for laying
before them
language so abominable; but I urge on all who are offended
by it that
this is the teaching given to our sons and daughters in the
present day.
Father Furniss, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Spurgeon, an English Bishop,
surely these
are honoured names, and in quoting them I quote from the
teaching of
Christendom. Nor mine the fault if the language be unfit for
printing. I
_quote_, because if we only assert, Christians are quick to
say,
"you are misrepresenting our beliefs," and I quote from writers of
the present
day only, that none may accuse me of hurling at Christians
reproaches
for a doctrine they have outgrown or softened down. Still, I
own that it
seems scarcely credible that a man should believe this and
remain sane;
nay, should preach this, and walk calmly home from his
Church with
God's sunshine smiling on the beautiful world, and after
preaching it
should sit down to a comfortable dinner and very likely
a quiet pipe,
as though hell did not exist, and its awful misery and
fierce
despair.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is said
that there is no reason that we should not be contented in
heaven while
others suffer in hell, since we know how much misery there
is in this
world and yet enjoy ourselves in spite of the knowledge.
I say,
deliberately, of every one who does realise the misery of this
world and
remains indifferent to it, who enjoys his own share of the
good things
of this life, without helping his brother, who does not
stretch out
his hand to lift the fallen, or raise his voice on behalf of
the
down-trodden and oppressed, that that man is living a life which is
the very
antithesis of a Divine life--a life which has in it no beauty
and no
nobility, but is selfish, despicable, and mean. And is this the
life which we
are to regard as the model of heavenly beauty? Is the
power to lead
this life for ever to be our reward for self-devotion
and
self-sacrifice here on earth? Is a supreme selfishness to crown
unselfishness
at last? But this is the life which is to be the lot of
the righteous
in heaven. Snatched from a world in flames, caught up in
the air to
meet their descending Lord, his saints are to return with him
to the heaven
whence he came; there, crowned with golden crowns, they
are to spend
eternity, hymning the Lamb who saved them to the music
of golden
harps, harps whose melody is echoed by the curses and the
wailings of
the lost; for below is a far different scene, for there the
sinners are
"tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the
holy angels
and the presence of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up
for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night."
It is worth
while to gaze for a moment at the scene of future felicity;
there is the
throne of God and rejoicing crowds: "Rejoice over her, thou
heaven, and
ye holy apostles and prophets," so goes out the command, and
they rejoice
because "God has avenged them on her," and again they
said
"Alleluia, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." Truly God
must harden
the hearts of his saints in heaven as of old he hardened
Pharaoh's
heart, if they are to rejoice over the anguished multitude
below, and to
bear to live amid the lurid smoke ascending from the
burning
bodies of the lost. To me the idea is so unutterably loathsome
that I marvel
how Christians endure to retain such language in their
sacred books,
for I would note that the awful picture drawn above is not
of my doing;
it is not the scoffing caricature of an unbeliever, _it is
heaven as
described by St. John the divine_. If this heaven is true I do
not hesitate
to say that it is the duty of every human being to reject
it utterly
and to refuse to enter it. We might even appeal to Christians
by the
example of their own Jesus, who could not be content to remain in
heaven
himself while men went to hell, but came down to redeem them from
endless
suffering. Yet they, who ought to imitate him, who do, many
of them, lead
beautiful lives of self-devotion and compassion, are
suddenly, on
death, to lose all this which makes them "partakers of the
Divine
Nature," and are to be content to win happiness for themselves,
careless that
millions of their brethren are in woe unspeakable. They
are to
reverse the aim of their past lives, they are to become selfish
instead of
loving, hard instead of selfless, indifferent instead of
loving, hard
instead of tender. Which is the better reproduction of the
"mind of
Christ," the good Samaritan tending the wounded man, or the
stern
Inquisitor gloating over the fire which consumes heretics to the
greater glory
of God? Yet the latter is the ideal of heavenly virtue.
Never will
they who truly love man be content to snatch at bliss for
themselves
while others suffer, or endure to be crowned with glory while
they are
crowned with thorns. Better, far better, to suffer in hell and
share the
pains of the lost, than to have a heart so hard, a nature
so degraded,
as to enjoy the bliss of heaven, rejoicing over, or even
disregarding,
the woes of hell.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But there is
worse than physical torture in the picture of hell; pain is
not its
darkest aspect. Of all the thoughts with which the heart of man
has outraged
the Eternal Righteousness, there is none so appalling, none
so
blasphemous, as that which declares that even one soul, made by the
Supreme Good,
shall remain during all eternity, under the power of
sin. Divines
have wearied themselves in describing the horrors of the
Christian
hell; but it is _not_ the furnace of flames, _not_ the undying
worm, _not_
the fire which never may be quenched, that revolt us most;
hideous as
are these images, they are not the worst terror of hell. Who
does not know
how St. Francis, believing himself ordained to be lost
everlastingly,
fell on his knees and cried, "O my God, if I am indeed
doomed to
hate thee during eternity, at least suffer me to love thee
while I live
here." To the righteous heart the agony of hell is a far
worse one
than physical torture could inflict: it is the existence of
men and women
who might have been saints, shut out from hope of holiness
for evermore;
God's children, the work of his hands, gnashing their
teeth at a
Father who has cast them down for ever from the life he might
have given;
it is Love everlastingly hated; good everlastingly trampled
under foot;
God everlastingly baffled and defied; worst of all, it is
a room in the
Father's house where his children may hunger and thirst
after
righteousness, but never, never, can be filled.
"Depart, O sinner, to the chain!
Enter the eternal cell;
To all that's good and true and right,
To all that's fair and fond and bright,
To all of holiness and right,
Bid thou thy last farewell."
Would to God
that Christian men and women would ponder it well and think
it out for
themselves, and when they go into the worst parts of our
great cities
and their hearts almost break with the misery there, then
let them
remember how that misery is but a faint picture of the endless,
hopeless,
misery, to which the vast majority of their fellow-men are
doomed.
Christian
reader, do not be afraid to realise the future in which you
say you
believe, and which the God of Love has prepared for the home of
some of his
children. Imagine yourself, or any dear to you, plunged
into guilt
from which there is no redeemer, and where the voice cannot
penetrate of
him that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. In the
well-weighed
words of a champion of Christian orthodoxy, think there is
no reason to
believe that hell is only a punishment for past offences;
in that dark
world sin and misery reproduce each other in infinite
succession.
"What if the sin perpetuates itself, if the prolonged misery
may be the
offspring of the prolonged guilt?" Ponder it well, and, if
you find it
true, then cast out from your creed the belief in a Jesus
who loved the
lost; blot out from your Bible every verse that speaks of
a Father's
heart; tear from your Prayer-books every page that prays to a
Father in
heaven. If the lowest of God's creatures is to be left in the
foul embraces
of sin for ever, God cannot be the Eternal Righteousness,
the
unconquerable Love. For what sort of Righteousness is that which
rests idly
contented in a heaven of bliss, while millions of souls
capable of
righteousness are bound by it in helpless sin; what sort of
love is that
which is satisfied to be repulsed, and is willing to be
hated? As
long as God is righteous, as long as God is love, so long is
it impossible
that men and women shall be left by him forever in a
state to
which our worst dens of earth are a very paradise of beauty and
purity. Bible
writers may have erred, but "Thou continuest holy, O Thou
worship of
Israel!" There is one revelation that cannot err, and that
is written by
God's finger on every human heart. What man recoils from
doing, even
at his lowest, can never be done by his Creator, from whose
inspiration
he draws every righteous thought. Is there one father,
however
brutalized, who would deliberately keep his child in sin because
of a childish
fault? one mother who would aimlessly torture her son,
keeping him
alive but to torment? Yet this, nothing less,--nay, a
thousand
times more, for it is this multiplied infinitely by infinite
power of
torture,--this is what Christians ask us to believe about our
Father and
our God, a glimmer from the radiance of whose throne falls on
to our earth,
when men love their enemies and forgive freely those who
wrong them If
this so-called orthodox belief is right, then is their
gospel of the
Love of God to the world a delusion and a lie; if this is
true, the
teaching of Jesus to publicans and harlots of the Fatherhood
of God is a
cruel mockery of our divinest instincts; the tale of
the good
Shepherd who could not rest while one sheep was lost is the
bitterest
irony. But this awful dogma is not true, and the Love of God
cradles his
creation; not one son of the Father's family shall be left
under the
power of sin, to be an eternal blot on God's creation, an
endless
reproach to his Maker's wisdom, an everlasting and irreparable
mistake.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
No amount of
argument, however powerful, should make us believe a
doctrine from
which our hearts recoil with such shuddering horror as
they do from
this doctrine of eternal torture and eternal sin. There is
a divine
instinct in the human heart which may be trusted as an arbiter
between right
and wrong; no supernatural revelation, no miracle, no
angel from
heaven, should have power to make us accept as divine that
which our
hearts proclaim as vile and devilish. It is not true faith
to crush down
our moral sense beneath the hoof of credulity; true faith
believes in
God only as a "Power which makes for _Righteousness_" and
recks little
of threats or curses which would force her to accept that
which
conscience disapproves. And what is more, if it were possible that
God were not
what we dream, if he were not "righteous in all his ways
and holy in
all his works," then were it craven cowardice to worship him
at all. It
has been well said, "that to worship simple power, without
virtue, is
nothing but devil-worship;" in that case it were nobler to
refuse to
praise him and to take what he might send. Then indeed we
must say,
with John Stuart Mill, in that burst of passion which reads so
strangely in
the midst of his passionless logic, that if I am told that
this is
justice and love, and that if I do not call it so, God will send
me to hell,
then "to hell I'll go."
I have
purposely put first my strong reprobation of eternal hell,
because of
its own essential hideousness, and because, were it ever
so true, I
should deem myself disgraced by acknowledging it as
either loving
or good. But it is, however, a satisfaction to note the
feebleness of
the arguments advanced in support of this dogma, and to
find that
justice and holiness, as well as love, frown on the idea of an
eternal hell.
The first
argument put forth is this: "God has made a law which
man breaks;
man must therefore in justice suffer the penalty of his
transgression."
This, like so many of the orthodox arguments, sounds
just and
right, and at first we perfectly agree with it. The instinct
of justice in
our own breasts confirms the statement, and looking abroad
into the
world we see its truth proved by facts. Law is around us on
every side;
man is placed in a realm of law; he may-strive against the
laws which
encircle him, but he will only dash himself to pieces against
a rock; he is
under a code which he breaks at his peril. Here is perfect
justice, a
justice absolutely unwavering, deaf to cries, unseducible
by-flatteries,
unalloyed by favouritism: a law exists, break it, and
you suffer
the inevitable consequences. So far, then, the orthodox
argument is
sound and strong, but now it takes a sudden leap. "The
penalty of
the broken law is hell." Why? What common factor is there
between a
lie, and the "lake of fire in which all liars shall have their
part?"
Nature is absolutely against the orthodox corollary, because hell
as a
punishment of sin is purely arbitrary, the punishment might quite
as well have
been something else; but in nature the penalty of a broken
law is always
strictly in character with the law itself, and is derived
from it. Men
imagine the most extraordinary "judgment." A nation is
given to
excessive drinking, and is punished with cattle-plague; or
shows
leanings towards popery, and is chastised with cholera. It is as
reasonable to
believe this as it would be to expect that if a child fell
down stairs
he would be picked up covered with blisters from burning,
instead of
his receiving his natural punishment of being bruised.
Why, because
I lie and forget God, should I be punished with fire and
brimstone?
Fire is not derivable from truth, nor is brimstone a stimulus
to memory.
There is also a strange confusion in many minds about the
punishment of
sin. A child is told not to put his hand into the fire,
he does so,
and is burnt; the burning is a punishment, he is told; for
what? Not for
disobedience to the parent, as is generally said, but for
disregarding
the law of nature which says that fire burns. One often
hears it
said: "God's punishments for sin are not equal: one man sins
once and
suffers for it all his life, while another sins twenty times
and is not
punished at all." By no means: the two men both break a moral
law, and
suffer a moral degradation; one of them breaks in addition some
physical law,
and suffers a physical injury. People see injustice where
none exists,
because they will not take the trouble to distinguish
what laws are
broken when material punishments follow. There is nothing
arbitrary in
nature: cause and effect rule in her realm. Hell is then
unjust, in
the first place, because physical torture has nothing in
common with
moral guilt.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
It is unjust,
secondly, because it is excessive. Sin, say theologians,
is to be
punished infinitely, because sin is an offence committed
against an
infinite being. Of course, then, good must logically be
rewarded
infinitely, because it is duty offered to an infinite being.
There is no
man who has never done a single good act, so every man
deserves an
infinite reward. There is no man who has never done a single
bad act, so
every man deserves an infinite punishment. Therefore every
man deserves
both an infinite reward and an infinite punishment,
"which,"
as Euclid says, "is absurd." And this is quite enough answer to
the
proposition. But I must protest, in passing, against this notion of
"sin
against God" as properly understood. If by this expression is only
meant that
every sin committed is a sin against God, because every sin
is done
against man's higher nature, which is God in man, then indeed
there is no
objection to be made to it. But this is not what is
generally
meant by the phrase. It usually means that we are able, as it
were, to
injure God in some way, to dishonour him, to affront him, to
trouble him.
By sin we make him "angry," we "provoke him to wrath;"
because of
this feeling on his own part he punishes us, and demands
"satisfaction."
Surely a moment's reflection must prove to any
reasonable
being that sin against God in this sense is perfectly
impossible.
What can the littleness of man do against the greatness of
the Eternal!
Imagine a speck of dust troubling the depths of the
ocean, an
aphis burdening an oak-tree with its weight: each is far
more probable
than that a man could ruffle the perfect serenity of God.
Suppose I
stand on a lawn watching an ant-heap, an ant twinkles his
feelers at me
scornfully; do I fly into a passion and rush on the insect
to destroy
it, or seize it and slowly torture it? Yet I am far less
above the
level of the ant than God is above mine.
But I must
add a word here to guard against the misapprehension that
in saying
this I am depriving man of the strength he finds in believing
that he is
personally known to God and an object of his care. Were I
the ant's
creator familiar with all the workings of its mind, I
might regret,
for its sake, the pride and scorn of its maker shown by
its-action,
because it was not rising to the perfection of nature of
which it was
capable. So, in that nature in which we live and move,
which is too
great to regard anything as-little, which is around all and
in all, and
which we believe to be conscious of all, there is--I cannot
but
think--some feeling which, for want of a better term, we must call
a desire for
the growth of his creatures (because in this growth lies
their own
happiness), and a corresponding feeling of regret when they
injure
themselves. But I say this in fear and reverence, knowing that
human
language has no terms in which to describe the nature we adore,
and conscious
that in the very act of putting ideas about him into
words, I
degrade the ideas and they no longer fully answer to the
thought in my
own mind. Silent adoration befits man best in the presence
of his maker,
only it is right to protest against the more degrading
conceptions
of him, although the higher conceptions are themselves far
below what he
really is. Sin then, being done against oneself only,
cannot
deserve an eternity of torture. Sin injures man already, why
should he be
further injured by endless agony? The infliction of pain
is only
justifiable when it is the means of conveying to the sufferer
himself a
gain greater than the suffering inflicted; therefore
punishment is
only righteous when reformatory. But _endless_ torture
cannot aim at
reformation; it has no aim beyond itself, and can only
arise,
therefore, from vengeance and vindictiveness, which we have
shown to be
impossible with God. Hell is unjust, secondly, because its
punishment is
excessive and aimless. It is also unjust, because to avoid
it needs an impossible
perfection. It is no answer to this to say that
there is an
escape offered to us through the Atonement made by Jesus
Christ. Why
should I be called on to escape like a criminal from that
which I do
not deserve? God makes man imperfect, frail, sinful,
utterly
unable to keep perfectly a perfect law: he therefore fails,
and is--what?
To be strengthened? by no means; he is to go to hell. The
statement of
this suffices to show its injustice. We cavil not at the
wisdom which
made us what we are, but we protest against the idea which
makes God so
cruelly unjust as to torture babies because they are unable
to walk as
steadily as full-grown men. Hell is unjust, in the third
place,
because man does not deserve it.
To all this
it will probably be retorted, "you are arguing as though
God's justice
were the same as man's, and you were therefore capable
of judging
it, an assumption which is unwarrantable, and is grossly
presumptuous."
To which I reply: "If by God's justice you do not mean
justice at
all, but refer to some Divine attribute of which we know
nothing, all
my strictures on it fall to the ground; only, do not commit
the
inconsistency of arguing that hell is _just_, when by 'just' you
mean some
unknown quality, and then propping up your theories with
proofs drawn
from human justice. It would perhaps tend to clearness in
argument if
you gave this Divine attribute some other name, instead of
using for it
an expression which has already a definite meaning."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The justice
of hell disposed of, we turn to the love of God. I have
never heard
it stated that hell is a proof of his great love to the
world, but I
take the liberty myself of drawing attention to it in this
light. God,
we are told, existed alone before ought was created; there
perfect in
himself, in happiness, in glory, he might have remained,
say orthodox
theologians. Then, we have a right to ask in the name of
charity, why
did he, happy himself, create a race of beings of whom the
vast majority
were to be endlessly and hopelessly miserable? Was this
love? "He
created man to glorify him." But was it loving to create those
who would
only suffer for his glory? Was it not rather a gigantic, an
inconceivable
selfishness?
"Man may
be saved if he will." That is not to the point; God foreknew
that some
would be lost, and yet he made them. With all reverence I say
it, God had
no right to create sentient beings, if of one of them it can
ever be truly
said, "good were it for that man that he had never been
born."
He who creates, imposes on himself, by the very act of creation,
duties
towards his creatures. If God be self-conscious and moral, it
is an
absolute certainty that the whole creation is moving towards
the final
good of every creature in it. We did not ask to be made; we
suffered not
when we existed not; God, who has laid existence on us
without our
consent, is responsible for our final good, and is bound by
every tie of
righteousness and justice, not to speak of love, to make
the existence
he gave us, unasked, a blessing and not a curse to us.
Parents feel
this responsibility towards the children they bring into
the world,
and feel themselves bound to protect and to make happy those
who, without
them, had not been born. But, if hell be true, then every
man and woman
is bound not to fulfil the Divine command of multiplying
the race,
since by so doing they are aiding to fill the dungeons of
hell, and
they will, hereafter, have their sons and their daughters
cursing the
day of their birth, and overwhelming their parents with
reproaches
for having brought into the world a body, which God was thus
enabled to
curse with the awful gift of an immortal soul.
We must
notice also that God, who is said to love righteousness, can
never crush
out righteousness in any-human soul. There is no one so
utterly degraded
as to be without one sign of good. Among the lowest and
vilest of our
population, we find beautiful instances of kindly feeling
and generous
help. Can any woman be more degraded than she who only
values her
womanhood as a means of gain, who drinks, fights, and steals?
Let those who
have been among such women say if they have not been
cheered
sometimes by a very ray of the light of God, when the most.
degraded has
shown kindness to an equally degraded sister, and when the
very gains of
sin have been purified by being; poured into the lap of a
suffering and
dying companion. Shall love and devotion, however feeble,
unselfishness
and sympathy, however transitory in their action, shall
these stars
of heaven be quenched in the blackness of the pit of hell?
If it be so,
then, verily, God is not the "righteous. Lord who loveth
righteousness."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But we cannot
leave out of our impeachment of hell that it injures man,
as much as it
degrades his conceptions of God. It cultivates selfishness
and fear, two
of his basest passions. There has scarcely perhaps been
born into the
world this century a purer and more loving soul than that
of the late
John Keble, the author of the "Christian Year." Yet what a
terrible
effect this belief had on him; he must cling to his belief in
hell, because
otherwise he would have no certainty of heaven:
"But where is then the stay of
contrite hearts?
Of old they leaned on Thy eternal word;
But with the sinner's fear their hope
departs,
Fast linked as Thy great name to Thee, O
Lord;
That Name by which Thy faithful hope is
past,
That we should endless be, for joy or
woe;--
And if the treasures of Thy wrath could
waste,
Thy lovers must their promised heaven
forego."
That is to
say in plain English: "I cannot give up the certainty of
hell for
others, because if I do I shall have no certainty of heaven for
myself; and I
would rather know that millions of my brethren should
be tormented
for ever, than remain doubtful about my own everlasting
enjoyment."
Surely a loving heart would say, instead, "O God, let
us all die
and remain unconscious for ever, rather than that one soul
should suffer
everlastingly." The terrible selfishness of the Christian
belief
degrades the noblest soul; the horror of hell makes men lose
their self-control,
and think only of their personal safety, just as
we see men
run wild sometimes at a shipwreck, when the gain of a minute
means life.
The belief in hell fosters religious pride and hatred, for
all religious
people think that they themselves at least are sure of
heaven. If
then they are going to rejoice through all eternity over
the
sufferings of the lost, why should they treat them with kindness or
consideration
here? Thus hell, becomes the mother of persecution;
for the
heretic, the enemy of the Lord, there is no mercy and no
forgiveness.
Then the saints persuade themselves that true charity
obliges them
to persecute, for suffering may either save the heretic
himself by
forcing him to believe, or may at least scare others from
sharing his
heresy, and so preserve them from eternal fire. And they
are right, if
hell is true. Any means are justifiable which may save man
from that
horrible doom; surely we should not hesitate to knock a man
down, if by
so doing we preserved him from throwing himself over a
precipice.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Belief in
hell takes all beauty from virtue; who cares for obedience
only rendered
through fear? No true love of good is wrought in man by
the fear of
hell, and outward respectability is of little worth when the
heart and the
desires are unpurified. We may add that the fear of hell
is a very
slight practical restraint; no man thinks himself really bad
enough for
hell, and it is so far off that every one intends to repent
at the last
and so escape it. Far more restraining is the proclamation
of the stern
truth that, in the popular sense of the word, there is no
such thing as
the "forgiveness of sins;" that as a man sows, so shall he
reap, and
that broken laws avenge themselves without exception.
Belief in
hell stifles all inquiry into truth by setting a premium
on one form
of belief, and by forbidding another under frightful
penalties..
"If it be true, as it is true, that all who do not believe
this shall
perish everlastingly, then, I ask, _is it not worth while to
believe?_"
So says a clergyman of the Church of England. Thus he presses
his people to
accept the dogma of the Deity of Jesus, not because it
is-true, but
because it is dangerous to deny it. And this-difficulty
meets us
every day. If we urge inquiry, we are told "it is dangerous;"
if we suggest
a difficulty, we are told "it is safer to believe;" and
so this
doctrine of hell chains down men's faculties and palsies their
intellects,
and they dare not seek for truth at all, lest he who is
Truth should
cast them into hell for it.
It may
perhaps be said by many that I have attacked this dogma with
undue
vehemence, and with excessive warmth. I attack it thus, because I
know the harm
that it is doing, because it saddens the righteous heart
and clouds
the face of God. Only those who have realised hell, and
realising it,
have believed in it, know the awful shadow with which it
darkens the
world. There are many who laugh at it, but they have not
felt its
power, and they forget that a dogma which is only ludicrous
to them is
weighing heavily on many a tender heart and sensitive brain.
Hell drives
many mad: to others-it is a life-long horror. It pales the
sunlight with
its lurid flames; it blackens the earth with the smoke of
its torment;
it makes the Devil an actual presence; it transforms God
into an
enemy, eternity into an awful doom. It takes the spring out of
all
pleasures; it poisons all enjoyments; it spreads gloom over life,
and enshrouds
the tomb in horror unspeakable. Only those who have
felt the
anguish of this nightmare know what it is to wake up into the
sunlight, and
find it is only a disordered dream of the darkness; they
only know the
glorious liberty of heart and soul, with which they lift
up smiling
faces to meet the smile of God, when they can say from the
depths of
their glad hearts, "I believe that God is Light, and in Him is
no darkness at
all; I believe that all mankind is safe, cradled in the
everlasting
arms."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON
INSPIRATION
THERE is a
certain amount of difficulty in defining the word
Inspiration:
it is used in so many different senses by the various
schools of
religious thought, that it is almost necessary to know the
theological opinions
of the speaker before being quite sure of his
meaning when
he talks of a book as being inspired. In the halcyon days
of the
Church, when faith was strong and reason weak, when priests had
but to
proclaim and laymen but to assent, Inspiration had a distinct and
a very
definite meaning. An inspired man spoke the very words of God:
the Bible was
perfect from the "In the beginning" of Genesis to the
"Amen"
of Revelation: it was perfect in science, perfect in history,
perfect in
doctrine, perfect in morals. In that diamond no flaw was
to be seen;
it sparkled with a spotless purity, reflecting back in
many-coloured
radiance the pure white light of God. But when the
chemistry of
modern science came forward to test this diamond, a
murmuring
arose, low at first, but irrepressible. It was scrutinised
through the
microscope of criticism, and cracks and flaws were
discovered in
every direction; then, instead of being enshrined on
the altar,
encircled by candles, it was brought out into the searching
sunlight, and
the naked eye could see its imperfections. Then it was
tested anew,
and some bold men were heard to whisper, "It is no diamond
at all, God
formed in ages past; it is nothing but paste, manufactured
by man;"
and the news passed from mouth to mouth, until the whisper
swelled into
a cry, and many voices echoed, "This is no diamond at all."
And so things
are to-day; the battle rages still; some maintain their
jewel is
perfect as ever, and that the flaws are in the eyes that look
at it; some
reluctantly allow that it is imperfect, but still consider
it a diamond;
others resolutely assert that, though valuable for its
antiquity and
its beauty, it is really nothing but paste.
To take first
the really orthodox theory of inspiration, generally
styled the
"plenary" or "verbal" inspiration of the Bible. It was well
defined
centuries since by Athenagoras; according to him the inspired
writers
"uttered the things that were wrought in them when the Divine
Spirit moved
them, the Spirit using them as a flute-player would blow
into the
flute." The same idea has been uttered in powerful poetry by a
writer of our
own day:--
"Then thro' the mid complaint of my
confession,
Then thro' the pang and passion of my
prayer,
Leaps with a start the shock of His
possession,
Thrills me and touches, and the Lord is
there.
Scarcely I
catch the words of His revealing, Hardly I hear Him, dimly
understand;
Only the power that is within me pealing, Lives on my lips
and beckons
to my hand."
The idea is
exactly the same as that of the Pagan prophetesses: they
became
literally possessed by a spirit, who used their lips to declare
his own
thoughts; so orthodox Christians believe that it is no longer
Moses or
Isaiah or Paul that speaks, but the Spirit of the Father that
speaks in
them. This theory is held by all strictly orthodox believers;
this and this
only is from their lips, inspiration; hard pressed on the
subject they
will allow that the Spirit inspires all good thoughts "in
a
sense," but they will be very careful in declaring that this is only
inspiration
in a secondary sense, an inspiration which diners in kind as
well as in
degree from the inspiration of the writers of the Bible. By
this
mechanical theory, so to speak, it is manifest that all possibility
of error is
excluded; thus, when Matthew quotes from the Old Testament
an utterly
irrelevant historical reference--"when Israel was a child,
then I loved
him and _called my son out of Egypt_", as a prophecy of the
alleged
flight of Jesus into Egypt, and his subsequent return from that
country into
Palestine--we find Dr. Wordsworth, Right Reverend Father
in God, and
Bishop of Lincoln, gravely telling us that "the Holy Spirit
here declares
what had been in His own mind when He uttered these words
by Hosea. And
who shall venture to say that he knows the mind of the
Spirit better
than the Spirit Himself?" Dr. Pusey again, standing
valiantly,
after the manner of the man, to every Church dogma, however
it may be
against logic, against common sense, against reason, or
against
charity, makes a very reasonable inquiry of those who believe
in an outward
and supernatural inspiration, and yet object to the term
verbal.
"How," he asks, "can thought be conveyed to a man's mind except
through
words?" The learned doctor's remark is indeed a very pertinent
one, as
addressed to all those who believe in an exterior revelation.
Thoughts
which are communicated from without can only become known
to man
through the medium of words: even his own thoughts only become
appreciable
to him when they are sufficiently distinct to be clothed
in words (of
course not necessarily _spoken_ words); and we can only
exclude from
this rule such thoughts as may be presented to the mind
through
mental sight or hearing: e.g., music might probably be composed
mentally by
imagining the _sounds_, or mechanical contrivances invented
by imagining
the _objects_; but any argument, any story, which is,
capable of
reproduction in writing, must be thought out in words.
A moment's
thought renders this obvious; if a man is arguing with a
Frenchman in
his own language, he must, to render his arguments clear
and powerful,
_think_ in French. Now, if the Bible be inspired so as to
insure
accuracy, how can this be done except through words; for many
of the facts
recorded must, from the necessity of the case, have been
unknown to
the writers. Suppose for a moment that the Biblical account
of the
creation of the world were true, no man in that case could
possibly have
thought it out for himself. Only two theories can
reasonably be
held regarding this record: one, that it is true, which
implies
necessarily that it is literally true and verbally inspired,
since the
knowledge could only have come from the Creator, and, being
communicated
must have come in the form of words, which words being
God's, must
be literally true; the other, that it ranks with other
ancient
cosmogonies, and is simply the thought of some old writer,
giving his
idea as to the origin of the world around him. I select
the account
of the Creation as a crucial test of the verbal theory of
inspiration,
because any other account in the Bible that I can think of
has a human
actor in it, and it might be maintained--however unlikely
the
hypothesis--that a report was related or written down by one who had
been present
at the incident reported, and the inspiration of the final
writer may be
said to consist in re-writing the previous record which he
may be
directed to incorporate in his own work. But no one witnessed
the creation
of the world, save the Creator, or, at the most, He and
His angels,
and the account given of it must, if true, be word for word
divine; or,
if false--as it is--must be nothing more than human
fancy. We
must push this argument one step further. If the account was
communicated
only to the man's _mind_, in words rising internally to
the inward
ear alone, how could the man distinguish between these
divine
thoughts rising in his mind, and his own human thoughts rising in
exactly the
same manner? Thoughts rise in our minds, we know not how; we
only become
conscious of them when they are there, and, as far as we can
judge, they
are produced quite naturally according to certain laws. But
how is it
possible for us to distinguish whence these thoughts come?
There they
are, ours, not another's--ours as the child is the father's
and mother's,
the product of their own beings. If my thought is not
mine, but
God's, how am I to know this? it is produced within me as my
own, and the
source of one thought is not distinguishable from that of
another.
Thus, those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible are step
by step
driven to allow that not only are words necessary, but spoken
words; if the
Bible be supernaturally inspired at all, then must God
have spoken
not only in human words but also in human voice; if the
Bible be
supernaturally inspired at all, it must be verbally inspired,
and be
literally accurate about every subject on which it treats.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Unfortunately
for the maintainers of verbal inspiration, their theory is
splendidly
adapted for being brought before the bar of inexorable fact.
It is worth
while to remark, in passing, that the infallibility of
the Bible has
only remained unchallenged where ignorance has reigned
supreme; as
soon as men began to read history and to study nature,
they also
began to question scriptural accuracy, and to defy scriptural
authority.
Infallibility can only live in twilight: so far, every
infallibility
has fallen before advancing knowledge, save only the
infallibility
of Nature, which is the infallibility of God Himself.
Protestants
consider Roman Catholics fools, in that they are not able to
see that the
Pope cannot be infallible, because one Pope has cursed
what another
Pope has blessed. They can see in the case of others that
contradiction
destroys infallibility, but they cannot see the force of
the same
argument when applied to their own pope, the Bible. Strong in
their
"invincible ignorance," they bring us a divinely-inspired book;
"good,"
we answer; "then is your book absolutely true, and it will
square with
all known truth in science and history, and will, of course,
never be
self-contradictory." The first important question which arises
in our minds
as we open so instructive a book as a revelation from on
high, refers
naturally to the Great Inspirer. The Bible contains, as
might indeed
be reasonably expected, many statements as to the nature
of God, and
we inquire of it, in the first place, the character of its
Author. May
we hope to see Him in this world? "Yes," answers Exodus.
"Moses
in days gone by spoke to God face to face, and seventy-four
Israelites
saw Him, and eat and drank in His presence." We have scarcely
taken in this
answer when we hear the same voice proceed: "No; for God
said thou
canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live;
while John
declares that no man hath seen Him, and Paul, that no man
neither hath
nor can see Him." Is He Almighty? "Yes," says Jesus. "With
God all
things are possible." "No," retorts Judges; "for He could
not
drive out the
inhabitants of the valley, _because_ they had chariots of
iron."
Is He just? "Yes," answers Ezekiel. "The son shall not bear the
iniquity of
the father; the soul that sinneth _it_ shall die." "No,"
says Exodus.
"The Lord declares that He visits the iniquity of the
fathers upon
the children." Is He impartial? "Yes," answers Peter. "God
is no
respecter of persons." "No;" says Romans, "for God loved
Jacob and
hated Esau
before they were born, that His purpose of _election_ might
stand."
Is He truthful? "Yes; it is impossible for God to lie," says
Hebrews.
"No," says God of Himself, in Ezekiel. "I, the Lord, have
deceived that
prophet." Is He loving? "Yes," sings the Psalmist. "He
is loving
unto every man, and His tender mercy is over all His works."
"No,"
growls Jeremiah. "He will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy on
them." Is
he easily pacified when offended? "Yes," says the Psalmist.
"His
wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye." "No," says
Jeremiah.
"Ye have
kindled a fire in His anger that shall burn for ever." Unable
to discover
anything reliable about God, doubtful whether he be just or
unjust,
partial or impartial, true or false, loving or fierce, placable
or
implacable, we come to the conclusion that at all events we had
better be
friends with Him, and surely the book which reveals His will
to us will at
least tell us in what way He desires us to approach Him.
Does He
accept sacrifice? "Yes," says Genesis: "Noah sacrificed and God
smelled a
sweet savour;" and Samuel tells us how God was prevailed on to
take away a
famine by the sacrifice of seven men, hanged up before the
Lord. In our
fear we long to escape from Him altogether and ask if this
be possible?
"Yes," says Genesis. "Adam and his wife hid from Him in the
trees, and He
had to go-down from His heaven to see if some evil deeds
were rightly
reported to Him." "No," says Solomon. "You cannot hide from
Him, for His
eyes are in every place." So we throw up in despair all
hope of
finding out anything reliable about Him, and proceed to search
for some
trustworthy history. We try to find out how man was made. One
account tells
us that he was made male and female, even in the image of
God Himself;
another that God made man alone, and subsequently formed
a woman for
him out of one of his own ribs. Then we find in one
chapter that
the beasts were all made, and, lastly, that God made "His
masterpiece,
man." In another chapter we are told that God having made
man thought
it not good to leave him by himself, and proceeded to make
every beast
and fowl, saying that he would make Adam a help-meet for
him; on
bringing them to Adam, however, none was found worthy to mate
with him, so
woman was tried as a last experiment. As we read on we find
evident marks
of confusion; double, or even treble, accounts of the same
incident, as,
for instance, the denying a wife and its consequences.
Then we see
Moses fearing Pharaoh's wrath, and flying out of Egypt to
avoid the
king's wrath, and not venturing to return until after his
death, and
are therefore surprised to learn from Hebrews that he forsook
Egypt by
faith, _not fearing_ the wrath of the king. Then we come across
numberless
contradictions in Kings and Chronicles, in prophecy and
history.
Ezekiel prophecies that Nebuchadnezzar shall conquer Tyrus, and
destroy it
and _take all its riches_; and a few chapters afterwards it
is recorded
that he did accordingly attack Tyrus but failed, and that as
he got _no
wages_ for this attack he should have Egypt for his failure.
In the New
Testament the contradictions are endless; Joseph, the
husband of
Mary, had two fathers, Jacob and Heli; Salah is in the same
predicament,
for although the son of Canaan, Arphaxad begat him. When
John was cast
into prison, Jesus _began_ to preach, although He had been
preaching and
gaining disciples while John was still at large. Jesus
sent the
Twelve to preach, telling them to take a staff, and yet bidding
them to take
none. He eat the Passover with His disciples, although He
was crucified
before that feast. He had one title on his cross, but
it is
verbally inspired in four different ways. He rose with many
variations of
date and time, and ascended the same evening, although He
subsequently
went into Galilee and remained on earth for forty days.
He sent word
to His disciples to meet Him in Galilee, and yet suddenly
appeared
among them as they sat quietly together the same evening at
Jerusalem.
Stephen's history contradicts our Old Testament. When Paul
is converted,
his companions hear a voice, although another account says
that they
heard none at all. After his conversion he goes in and out at
Jerusalem
with the Apostles, although, strangely enough, he sees none of
them, except
Peter and James. But one might spend pages in noting these
inconsistencies,
while even one of them destroys the verbal inspiration
theory. From
these contradictions I maintain that one of two things must
follow,
either the Bible is not an inspired book, or else inspiration is
consistent
with much error, as I shall presently show.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
I am quite
ready to allow that the Bible _is_ inspired, and I therefore
lay down as
my first canon of inspiration, that: "Inspiration does
not prevent
inaccuracy." I turn to the second class of orthodox
inspirationists,
who, while allowing that verbal inspiration is proved
impossible by
many trivial inconsistencies, yet affirm that God's
overruling
power ensures substantial accuracy, and that its history
and science
are perfectly true and are to be relied on. To test this
assertion,
we--after noting that Bible history is, as has been remarked
above,
continually self-contradictory--turn to other histories and
compare the
Bible with them. We notice first that many important
Biblical
occurrences are quite ignored by "profane" historians. We
are surprised
to see that while the Babylonish captivity left marks on
Israel which
are plainly seen, Egypt left no trace on Israel's names
or customs,
and Israel no trace on Egypt's monuments. The doctrine of
angels comes
not from heaven, but slips into Jewish theology from the
Persian;
while immortality is brought to light neither by Hebrew prophet
nor by the
Gospel of Jesus, but by the people among whom the Jews
resided
during the Babylonish captivity. The Jewish Scriptures which
precede the
captivity know of nothing beyond the grave; the Jewish
Scriptures
after the captivity are radiant with the light of a life
to come; to
these Jesus adds nothing of joy or hope. The very central
doctrine of
Christianity--the Godhead of Jesus--is nothing but a
repetition of
an idea of Greek philosophy borrowed by early Christian
writers, and
is to be found in Plato and Philo as clearly as in the
fourth Gospel.
Science contradicts the Bible as much as does history;
geology
laughs at its puny periods of creation; astronomy destroys its
heavens, and
asks why this little world took a week in making, while the
sun and moon
and the countless stars were rapidly turned out in twelve
hours;
natural history wonders why the kangaroos did not stay in Asia
after the
Deluge, instead of undertaking the long sea voyage to far
Australia,
and enquires how the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and others,
crossed the
wide ocean to settle in America; archaeology presents its
human bones
from ancient caves, and asks how they got there, if only
six thousand
years have passed since Adam and Eve stood alone in Eden,
gazing out on
the unpeopled earth; the Pyramids point at the negro
type distinct
and clear, and ask how it comes that it was so rapidly
developed at
first, and yet has remained stationary ever since. At last,
science gets
weary of slaying a foe so puny, and goes on its way with a
smile on its
grand, still face, leaving the Bible to teach its science
to whom it
lists. Evidence so weighty crushes all life out of this
second theory
of inspiration, and gives us a second rule to guide us in
our search:
"Inspiration does not prevent ignorance and error." We may
pass on to
the third class of inspirationists, those who believe that
the Bible is
not given to man to teach him either history or science,
but only to
reveal to him what he could not discover by the use of his
natural
faculties--_e g._ the duties of morality and the nature of God.
I must note
here the subtilty of this retreat. Driven by inexorable fact
to allow the
Bible to be fallible in everything in which we can test its
assertions,
they, by a clever strategic movement, remove their defence
to a post
more difficult to attack. They maintain that the Bible is
infallible in
points where no cannonade of facts can be brought to bear
on it. What
is this but to say, that although we can prove the Bible
to be
fallible on every point capable of proof, we are still blindly to
believe it to
be infallible where demonstrated error is, from the nature
of the case,
impossible? As regards the nature of God, we have already
seen that the
Bible ascribes to him virtue and vice indifferently. We
turn to
morality, and here our first great difficulty meets us, for when
we point to a
thing and say, "that is profoundly immoral," our opponents
retort,
"it is perfectly moral." Only the progress of humanity can prove
which of us
is in the right, though here, too, we have one great fact on
our side, and
that is, the conscience in man; already men would rather
die than
imitate the actions of Old Testament saints who did that which
was
"right in the eyes of Jehovah;" and presently they will be bold
enough to
reject in words that which they already reject in deeds. Few
would put the
Bible freely into the hands of a child, any more than
they would
give freely to the young the unpurged editions of Swift and
Sterne; and I
imagine that the most pious parents would scarcely see
with
un-mingled pleasure their son and daughter of fifteen and sixteen
studying
together the histories and laws of the Pentateuch. But taking
the Bible as
a rule of life, are we to copy its saints and its laws?
For instance,
is it right for a man to marry his half-sister, as did the
great ancestor
of the Jews, Abraham, the friend of God?--a union, by the
way, which is
forbidden by Jewish law, although said to be the source of
their race.
Is the lie of the Egyptian midwives right, because Jehovah
blessed them
for it, even as Jael is pronounced blessed by Deborah, the
prophetess,
for her accursed treachery and murder? Is the robbery of the
Egyptians
right, because commanded by Jehovah? Are the old cruel laws
of witchcraft
right, because Jehovah doomed the witch to death? Are
the ordeals
of the Middle Ages right, because derived from the laws
of Jehovah?
Is human sacrifice right, because attempted by Abraham,
enjoined by
Moses, practised by Jephthah, efficacious in turning away
God's wrath
when Saul's seven sons were offered up? Is murder right
because
Phineas wrought atonement by it, and Moses sent his murderers
throughout
the camp to stay God's anger by slaying their brethren? Is
it right that
the persons of women captives should be the prey of the
conquerors,
because the Jews were commanded by Jehovah to save alive the
virgins and
keep them for themselves, except the sixty-four reserved for
himself? Is
the man after God's own heart a worthy model for imitation?
Are Jehu's
lying and slaughter right, because right in the eyes of
Jehovah? Is
Hosea's marriage commendable, because commanded by Jehovah?
or are the
signs of Jeremiah and Ezekiel the less childish and indecent
because they
are prefaced with, "thus saith Jehovah?" Far be it from me
to detract
from the glorious morality of portions of the Bible; but if
the whole
book be inspired and infallible in its moral teaching, then,
of course,
one moral lesson is as important as another, and we have no
right to pick
and choose where the whole is divine. The harsher part of
the Old
Testament morality has burnt its mark into the world, and may
be traced
through history by the groans of suffering men and women, by
burning
witches and tortured enemies of the Lord, by flaming cities and
blood-stained
fields. If murder and rapine, treachery and lies, robbery
and violence,
were commanded long ago by Almighty God; if things are
right and
wrong only by virtue of His command, then who can say that
they may not
be right once more, when used in the cause of the Church,
and how are
we to know that Moses speaks in God's name when he commands
them, and
Torquemada only in his own? But even Christians are beginning
to feel
ashamed of some of the exploits of the "Old Testament Saints,"
and to try
and explain away some of the harsher features; we even hear
sometimes a
wicked whisper about "imperfect light," &c. Good heavens!
what
blasphemy! Imperfect light can mean nothing less than imperfect
God, if He is
responsible for the morality of these writings.
So, from our
study of the Bible we deduce another canon by which we may
judge of
inspiration:
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Inspiration
does not prevent moral error." There is a fourth class of
inspirationists,
the last which clings to the skirts of orthodoxy, which
is always
endeavouring to plant one foot on the rocks of science, while
it balances
the other over the quicksands of orthodox super-naturalism.
The Broad
Church school here takes one wide step away from orthodoxy,
by allowing
that the inspiration of the Bible differs only in degree and
not in kind
from the inspiration common to all mankind. They recognise
the great
fact that the inspiring Spirit of God is the source whence
flow all good
and noble deeds, and they point out that the Bible itself
refers all
good and all knowledge to that one Spirit, and that He
breathes
mechanical skill into Bezaleel and Aholiab, strength into
Samson's
arms, wisdom into Solomon, as much as He breathes the ecstacy
of the
prophet into Isaiah, faith into Paul, and love into John. They
recognise the
old legends as authentic, but would maintain as stoutly
that He spoke
to Newton through the falling of an apple, as that He
spoke of old
to Elijah by fire, or to the wise men by a star. This
school try
and remove the moral difficulties of the Old Testament by
regarding the
history recorded in it as a history which is specially
intended to
unveil the working of God through all history, and so to
gradually
reveal God as He makes Himself known to the world; thus the
grosser parts
are regarded as wholly attributable to the ignorance of
men, and they
delight to see the divine light breaking slowly through
the thick
clouds of human error and prejudice, and to trace in the
Bible the
gradual evolution of a nobler faith and a purer morality.
They regard
the miracles of Jesus as a manifestation that God underlies
Nature and
works ever therein: they believe God to be specially
manifested in
Jewish history, in order that men may understand that He
presides over
all nations and rules over all peoples. To Maurice the
Bible is the
explainer of all earth's problems, the unveiler of God, the
Bread of
Life. There is, on the whole, little to object to in the Broad
Church view
of inspiration, although liberal thinkers regret that, as a
party, they
stop half way, and are still trammelled by the half-broken
chains of
orthodoxy. For instance, they usually regard the direct
revelation of
morality as closed by Jesus and His immediate followers,
although they
allow that God has not deserted His world, nor confined
His
inspiration within the covers of a book. To them, however, the Bible
is still
_the_ inspired book, standing apart by itself, differing from
all other
sacred books. From their views of inspiration, which contains
so much that
is true, we deduce a fourth rule:
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Inspiration
is not confined to written words about God." From a
criticism of
the book, which is held by orthodox Christians, to be
specially
inspired, we have then gained some idea of what inspiration
does _not_
do. It does not prevent inaccuracy, ignorance, error, nor
is it
confined to any written book. Inspiration, then, cannot be an
overwhelming influence,
crushing the human faculties and bearing along
the subject
of it on a flood which he can neither direct nor resist. It
is a
breathing--gentle and gradual--of pure thoughts into impure hearts,
tender
thoughts into fierce hearts, forgiving thoughts into revengeful
hearts. David
calls home his banished son, and he learns that, "even as
a father
pitieth his children, so is the Lord merciful unto them that
fear
Him." Paul wishes himself accursed if it may save his brethren,
and from his
own self-sacrificing love he learns that "God will have
all men to be
saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Thus
inspiration
is breathed into the man's heart. "I love and forgive, weak
as I am; what
must be the depth of the love and forgiveness of God?"
David's
fierce revenge finds an echo in his writings; for man writes,
and not God:
he defaces God by ascribing to Him the passions surging
only in his
own burning Eastern heart: then, as the Spirit moves him to
forgiveness,
his song is of mercy; for he feels that his Maker must be
better than
himself. That part of the Bible is inspired, I do not deny,
in the sense
that all good thoughts are the result of inspiration, but
only as we
share the inspiration of the Bible can we distinguish between
the noble and
the base in it, between the eternal and that which is
fast passing
away. But as we do not expect to find that inspiration,
now-a-days,
guards men from much error, both of word and deed, so we
should not
expect to find it otherwise in days gone by; nor should we
wonder that
the man who spoke of God as showing His tender fatherhood by
punishing and
correcting, could so sink down into hard thoughts of that
loving Father
as to say that it was a fearful thing to fall into His
hands. These
contradictions meet us in every man; they are the highest
and the
lowest moments of the human soul. Only as we are inspired to
love and
patience in our conduct towards men will our words be inspired
when we speak
of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Having thus
seen what inspiration does not do, we must glance at what
it really is.
It is, perhaps, natural that we, rejecting, as we do,
with somewhat
of vehemence, the idea of supernatural revelation, should
oftentimes be
accused of denying all revelation and disbelieving all
inspiration.
But even as we are not atheists, although we deny the
Godhead of
Jesus, so are we not unbelievers in inspiration because we
refuse to
bend our necks beneath the yoke of an inspired Bible. For we
believe in a
God too mighty and too universal to be wrapped in swaddling
clothes or
buried in a cave, and we believe in an inspiration too mighty
and too
universal to belong only to one nation and to one age. As the
air is as
free and as refreshing to us as it was to Isaiah, to Jesus, or
to Paul, so
does the spiritual air of God's Spirit breathe so softly and
as
refreshingly on our brows as on theirs. We have eyes to see and
ears to hear
quite as much as they had in Judea long ago. "If God
be
omnipresent and omniactive, this inspiration is no miracle, but a
regular mode
of God's action on conscious Spirit, as gravitation
on
unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a
universal
uplifting of man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not
sent away
outside of himself to ancient documents for the only rule of
faith and
practice; the Word is very nigh him, even in his heart, and
by this word
he is to try all documents whatever.... Wisdom,
Righteous-ness,
and Love are the Spirit of God in the soul of man;
wherever
these are, and just in proportion to their power, there is
inspiration from
God.... Inspiration is the in-come of God to the
soul, in the
form of Truth through the Reason, of Right through the
Conscience,
of Love and Faith through the Affections and Religious
Element.... A
man would be looked on as mad who should claim miraculous
inspiration
for Newton, as they have been who denied it in the case of
Moses. But no
candid man will doubt that, humanly speaking, it was a
more
difficult thing to write the Principia than to write the Decalogue.
Man must have
a nature most sadly anomalous if, unassisted, he is
able to
accomplish all the triumphs of modern science, and yet cannot
discover the
plainest and most important principles of Religion and
Morality
without a miraculous inspiration; and still more so if, being
able to
discover by God's natural aid these chief and most important
principles,
he needs a miraculous inspiration to disclose minor
details."*
Thus we believe that inspiration from God is the birthright
of humanity,
and to be an heir of God it needs only to be a son of man.
Earth's
treasures are highly priced and hard to win, but God's blessings
are, like the
rain and the sunshine, showered on all-comers.
"'Tis only heaven is given away;
'Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest
comer."
* Theodore Parker.
If
inspiration were indeed that which it is thought to be by the
orthodox
Christians, surely we ought to be able to distinguish its
sayings from
those of the uninspired. If inspiration be confined to the
Christian
Bible, how is it that the inspired thoughts were in many cases
spoken out to
the world hundreds of years before they fell from the
lips of an
inspired Jew? It seems a somewhat uncalled for miraculous
interference for
a man to be supernaturally inspired to inform the world
of some moral
truth which had been well known for hundreds of years to
a large
portion of the race. Or is it that a great moral truth bears
within itself
so little evidence of its royal birth, that it cannot be
accepted as
ruler by divine right over men until its proclamation is
signed by
some duly accredited messenger of the Most High? Then, indeed,
must God be
"more cognizable by the senses than by the soul;" and then
"the eye
or the ear is a truer and quicker percipient of Deity than the
Spirit which
came forth from Him."* Was Paul inspired when he wished
himself
accursed for his brethren's sake, but Kwan-yin uninspired, when
she said,
"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation;
never enter
into final peace alone?" If Jesus and the prophets were
inspired when
they placed mercy above sacrifice, was Manu uninspired
in saying
that a man "will fall very low if he performs ceremonial acts
only, and
fails to discharge his moral duties"? Was Jesus inspired when
he taught
that the whole law was comprehended in one saying, namely,
"Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?" and yet was Confucius
uninspired
when, in answer to the question, "What one word would serve
as a rule to
one's whole life?" he said, "Reciprocity; what you do not
wish done to
yourself, do not to others." Or take the Talmud and study
it, and then
judge from what uninspired source Jesus drew much of His
highest
teaching. "Whoso looketh on the wife of another with a lustful
eye, is
considered as if he had committed adultery."--(Kalah.) "With
what measure
we mete, we shall be measured again."--(Johanan.) "What
thou wouldst
not like to be done to thyself, do not to others; this
is the
fundamental law."--(Hillel.) "If he be admonished to take the
splinter out
of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of
thine
own."--(Tarphon.) "Imitate God in His goodness. Be towards thy
fellow-creatures
as He is towards the whole creation. Clothe the naked;
heal the
sick; comfort the afflicted; be a brother to the children of
thy
Father." The whole parable of the houses built on the rock and on
the sand is
taken out of the Talmud, and such instances of quotation
might be
indefinitely multiplied. What do they all prove? That there is
no
inspiration in the Bible? by no means. But surely that inspiration
is not
confined to the Bible, but is spread over the world; that much
in all
"sacred books" is the outcome of inspired minds at their highest,
although we
find the same books containing gross and low thoughts.
We should
always remember that although the Bible is more specially
a revelation
to us of the Western nations than are the Vedas and the
Zend-Avesta,
that it is only so because it is better suited to our modes
of thought,
and because it has-been one of the agents in our education.
* W. R. Greg.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The reverence
with which we may regard the Bible as bound up with
many-sacred
memories, and as the chosen teacher of many of our greatest
minds and
purest characters, is rightly directed in other nations to
their own
sacred books. The books are really all on a level, with
much good and
much bad in them all; but as the Hebrew was inspired to
proclaim that
"the Lord thy God is one Lord" to the Hebrews, so was the
Hindoo
inspired to proclaim to Hindoos, "There is only one Deity, the
great
Soul." Either all are inspired, or none are. They stand on the
same footing.
And we rejoice to-believe that one Spirit breathes in all,
and that His
inspiration is ours to-day. "The Father worketh hitherto,"
although men
fancy He is resting in an eternal Sabbath. The orthodox
tells us
that, in rejecting the rule of morality laid down for us in the
Bible, and in
trusting ourselves to this inspiration of the free Spirit
of God, our
faith and our morality will alike be shifting and unstable.
But we reck
not of their warnings; our faith and our morality are only
shifting in
this sense, that, as we grow holier, and purer, and wiser,
our
conception of God and of righteousness will rise and expand with our
growth. It
was a golden saying of one of God's noblest sons that "no man
knoweth the
Father save the Son:" to know God we must resemble Him,
as we see in
the child the likeness of the parent. But in trusting
ourselves to
the guidance of the Spirit of God, we are not building the
house of our
faith on the shifting sand; rather are we "dwelling in a
city that
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Wisely was
it sung of
old, "Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but
lost that
build it." Vain are all efforts of priestly coercion; vain
all toils of
inspired books; vain the utter sacrifice of reason and
conscience;
their labour is but lost when they strive to build a temple
of human
faith, strong enough to bear the long strain of time, or the
earthquake-shock
of grief. God only, by the patient guiding of His love,
by the direct
inspiration of His Spirit, can lay, stone by stone, and
timber by
timber, that priceless fabric of trust and love, which shall
outlive all
attacks and all changes, and shall stand in the human soul
as long as
His own Eternity endures.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON THE
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.
IN every
transition-stage of the world's history the question of
education
naturally comes to the front. So much depends on the first
impressions
of childhood, on the first training of the tender shoot,
that it has
always been acknowledged, from Solomon to Forster, that to
"train
up a child in the way he should go" is among the most important
duties of
fathers and citizens. To the individual, to the family, to the
State, the
education of the rising generation is a question of primary
importance.
Plato began the education of the citizens of his ideal
Republic from
the very hour of their birth; the nursing child was taken
from the
mother lest injudicious treatment should mar, in the slightest
degree, the
perfection of the future warrior. On this point modern and
ancient
wisdom clasp hands, and place the education of the child among
the most
important duties of the State. The battle at present raging
between the
advocates of "secular" and "religious" education--to use
the
cant of the
day--is a most natural and righteous recognition of the vast
interests at
stake when Church or State claims the right of training the
sons and
daughters of England. No one has yet attempted to explain why
it should be
"irreligious" to teach writing, or history, or geography;
or why it
should "destroy a child's soul" to improve his mental
faculties. It
is among the "mysteries" of the faith, why it is better
for our poor
to leave' them to grow up in both moral and intellectual
darkness,
than to dissipate the intellectual darkness by some few rays
of knowledge,
and to leave the moral training to other hands. If we left
a starving
man to die because we could only give him bread, and were
unable to
afford cheese in addition, all would unite in declaiming at
our folly:
but "religious" people would rather that our street Arabs
grew up both
heathens and brutes, than that we should improve their
minds without
Christianizing their souls. Better let a lad grow up a
thief and a
drunkard, than turn him into an artizan and a freethinker.
There can
scarcely be a better proof of the unreasonableness of
Christian
doctrine, than the Christian fear of sharpening mental
faculties,
without binding them down, at the same time, in the chains
of dogma.
Only a religion founded on reason can dare to train children's
minds to the
utmost, and then leave them free to use all the power and
keenness
acquired by that training on the investigation of any religious
doctrine presented
to them. We, who have written Tekel on the Christian
faith, share
in the opinion of the Christian clergy, that man's carnal
reason is a
terrible foe to the Christian revelation; but here we begin
to differ
from them, for while they regard this reason as a child of
the devil, to
be scourged and chained down, we do homage to it as to the
fairest
offspring of the Divine Spirit, the brightest earthly reflection
of His glory,
and the nearest image of His "Person"; we would cherish
it, tend it,
nourish it, as our Father's noblest gift to humanity, as
our surest
guide and best counsellor, as the ear which hears His voice,
and the eye
which sees Him, as the sharpest weapon against superstition,
the ultimate
arbiter on earth between right and wrong. To us, then,
education is
ranged on the side of God; we welcome it freely and gladly,
because all
truth, all light, all knowledge, are foes of falsehood, of
darkness, of
ignorance. If we mistake error for truth a brighter light
will set us
right, and we only wish to be taught truth, not to be proved
right.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Most liberal
thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of
the State in
the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be
purely
"secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the
future
citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as
to fit him or
her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has
no right to
insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of
religious
dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the
State of the
pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special
form of
religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the
State to
religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise
maxim of the
great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar
to Caesar,
and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing,
honesty,
regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach
religious
dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the
teachers who
claim to hold the truth of God.
But my object
now is not to draw the line between the duties of Church
and State, of
school and home; nor do I wish to enter the lists of
sectarian
controversy, to break a lance in favour of a new religious
dogma. The
question is rather this: "What are the limits of the
religious
education which it is wise to impose on the young? Is any
dogmatic
teaching to be a part of their moral training, and is the
dogmatism
against which we have rebelled to be revived in a new form?
Are the
fetters which we are breaking for ourselves to be welded
together
again for the young limbs of our children? Are they to be fed
on the husks
which have starved our own religious aspirations, and which
we have
analysed, and rejected as unfit to sustain our moral and mental
vigour? On
the other hand, are our children to grow up without any
religious
teaching at all, without a ray of that sunshine which is
to most of us
the very source of our gladness, and the renewal of our
strength?"
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
I think the
best way of deciding this question is to notice the gradual
development
of the childish body and mind. Nature's indications are a
sure
guide-post, and we cannot go very far wrong in following her hints.
I am now on
ground with which mothers are familiar, though perhaps few
men have
watched young children with sufficient attention to be able to
note their
gradual development. The first instincts of a baby are purely
personal: the
"not-I" is for it nonexistent: food, warmth, cleanliness,
comprise all
its needs and all our duties to it. The next stage is
when the
infant becomes conscious of the existence of something outside
itself: when,
vaguely and indistinctly, but yet decidedly, it shows
signs of
observing the things around it: to cultivate observation, to
attract
attention, slowly to guide it into distinguishing one object
from another,
are the next steps in its education. The child soon
succeeds in
distinguishing forms, and learns to attach different sounds
to different
shapes: it is also taught to avoid some things and to play
with others:
it awakes to the knowledge that while some objects give
pleasure,
others give pain: so far as material things go, it learns
to choose the
good and to avoid the evil. This power is only gained by
experience,
and is therefore acquired but gradually, and after a time,
side by side
with it, runs another lesson; slowly and gradually there
appears a
dawning appreciation of "right" and "wrong." This
appreciation
is not,
however, at first an appreciation of any intrinsic rightness or
wrongness in
any given action; it is simply a recognition on the child's
part that
some of its acts meet with approval, others with disapproval,
from its
elders. The standard of its seniors is unquestioningly
accepted by
the child. The moral sense awakes, but is completely guided
in its first
efforts by the hand of the child's teacher, as completely
as the first
efforts to walk are directed by the mother. Thus it comes
to pass that
the conscience of the child is but the reflex of the
conscience of
its parents or guardians: "right" and "wrong" in a
child's
vocabulary are in the earliest stages equivalent to "reward"
and
"punishment;" its final court of appeal in cases of morality is the
judgment of
the parent.*
* The moral sense does show itself,
however, in very young
children, in a higher form than this; for
we may often
observe in a young child an instinctive
sense of shame at
having done wrong. But the moral sense is
awakened and
educated by the parents' approval and
disapproval. This may
be proved, I think, by the fact that a
child brought up
among thieves and evil-livers will accept
their morality as
a matter of course, and will steal and lie
habitually,
without attaching to either act any idea
of wrong. The moral
sense is inherent in man, and is in no way
_given_ by the
parent; but I think that it is first
aroused and put into
action by the parent; the parent accustoms
the child to
regard certain actions as right and wrong;
this appeals to
the moral sense in the child, and the
child very rapidly is
ashamed of wrong, as wrong, and not simply
from dread of
punishment. I would be understood to mean,
in the text, that
the wish for reward is the first response
of the child to
the idea of an inherent distinction
between different
actions; this feeling rapidly developes
into the true moral
sense, which regards right as right, and
wrong as wrong.
I append this note at the suggestion of a
valued friend, who
feared that the inference might be drawn
from the text that
the moral sense was implanted by the
parent instead of
being, as it is, the gift of God.
It is perhaps
scarcely accurate to call this motive power in the child
a _moral_
sense at all; still, this recognition of some thing which
is immaterial
and intangible, and which is yet to be the guide of its
actions, is a
great step forward from the simple consciousness of outer
and material
objects, and is truly the dawn of that moral sense which
becomes in
men and women the test of right and wrong. So far we have
considered
the growing faculties of the child as regards physical and
moral
development, and I particularly wish to remark that the moral
sense appears
long before any "religious" tendency can be noted. There
is, however,
another side of the complete human character which is very
important,
but which is slow in showing itself in any healthy child; I
mean what may
be called the _spiritual_ sense, in distinction from the
moral; the
sense which is the crowning grace of humanity, the sense
which belongs
wholly to the immortal part of man: the outstretched hands
of the human
spirit groping after the Eternal Spirit; the yearning after
that
all-pervading Power which men call God. I know well that in many
precociously-pious
children this spiritual sense is forced into a
premature and
unwholesome maturity; by means of a spiritual hot-house
the
summer-fruit of piety may be obtained in the spring-time of the
childish heart.
The imitative instinct of childhood quickly reproduces
the
sentiments around it, and set phrases which meet with admiration
flow glibly
from baby-lips. But this strongly developed religious
feeling in a
child is both unnatural and harmful, and can never, because
it is unreal,
produce any lasting good effect. Yet is it none the less
true that, at
an early age, differing much in different children, the
"spiritual
sense" does show signs of awakening; that children soon begin
to wonder
about things around them, and to ask questions which can only
find their
true answer in the name of God. How to meet these questions,
how to train
this growing sentiment without crushing it on the one hand,
and without
unduly stimulating it on the other, is a source of deep
anxiety to
many a mother's heart in the present day. They are unable
to tell their
children the stories which satisfied their own childish
cravings: no
longer can they hold up before the eager faces the picture
of the manger
at Bethlehem, or dim the bright eyes with the story of the
cross on
Calvary; no longer can they fold the little hands in prayer to
the child of
Nazareth, or hush the hasty tongue with the reminder of
the obedience
of the Virgin's son. To a certain extent this is a loss.
A child
quickly seizes the concrete; the idea of the child Jesus or the
man Jesus is
readily grasped by a child's intellect; the God of the Old
Testament,
the "magnified man," is also, though more dimly, understood.
These
conceptions of the childhood of humanity suit the childhood of the
individual,
and it is far more difficult for the child to realize the
idea of God
when he is divested of these materialistic garments. Yet I
speak from
experience when I say that it is by no means impossible to
train a child
into the simplest and happiest feelings as regards the
Supreme
Being, without degrading the Divine into the human. By one name
we can speak
of God by which He will be readily welcomed to the child's
heart, and
that is the name of the Father. Most children are keenly
alive to
natural beauties, and are quick to observe birds, and flowers,
and sunshine;
at times they will ask how these things come there, and
then it is
well to tell them that they are the works of God Thus the
child's first
notions of the existence of a Power he cannot see or feel
will come to
him clothed in the things he loves, and will be free from
any
suggestion of fear.* Even those who regard God from the stand-point
of Pantheism
may use natural objects so as to train the child into a
fearless and
happy recognition of the constant working of the Spirit
of Nature,
and so guard the young mind against that shrinking from, and
terror of
God, which popular Christianity is so apt to induce. The lad
or girl who
grows up with even the habit of regarding God as the calm
and mighty
motive-power of the forces of Nature, changeless, infinite,
absolutely
trustworthy, will be slow to accept in later life the crude
conceptions
which incarnate the creative power in a virgin's womb, and
ascribe
caprice, injustice, and cruelty to the mighty Spirit of the
Universe.
* The ordinary shrinking of a child from
the idea of a
Presence which he cannot see, but which
sees him, will not
be felt by children whose only ideas about
God are that He
is the Father from whose hand come all
beautiful things. In
any home where the parents' thoughts of
God are free from
doubt and mistrust, the children's
thoughts will be the same;
religion, in their eyes, will be
synonymous with
happiness, for God and good will be
convertible terms.
There is a
deep truth in the idea of Pantheism, that "Nature is an
apparition of
the Deity, God in a mask;" that "He is the light of the
morning, the
beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. He is the
One, the
All... The soul of all; more moving than motion, more stable
than rest;
fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of
Nature is
God... He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena." The child
fed on this
food will have scarcely anything to unlearn, even when he
begins to
believe that God is something more than Nature; "the created
All is the
symbol of God," and he will pass easily and naturally on from
seeing God in
Nature to see Him in a higher form.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Of course, as
a Theist, I should myself go much further than this: I
should speak
of all natural glory as but the reflection of the Deity,
or as the
robe in which He veils His infinite beauty; I should bid
my children
rejoice in all happiness as in the gift of a Father who
delights in
sharing His joy with His creatures; I should point out that
the pain
caused by ignorance of, or by breaking natural laws, is God's
way of
teaching men obedience for their own ultimate good: in the
freedom and
fulness of Nature's gifts I should teach them to see the
equal love of
God for all; through marking that in Nature's visible
kingdom no
end can be gained without labour and without using certain
laws, they
should learn that in the invisible kingdom they need not
expect to
find favouritism, nor think to share the fruits of victory
without
patient toil. To all who believe in a God who is also the Father
of Spirits
such teaching as this comes easily; as they themselves learn
of God only
through His works, so they naturally teach their children to
seek Him in
the same way.
The
questions, so familiar to every mother, "Can God see me?" "Where
is
God?"
can only be met with the simple assertion that God sees all, and
is
everywhere. For there are many childish questions which it is wisest
to meet with
statements which are above the grasp of the childish mind.
These
statements may be simply given to the child as statements which it
is too young
either to question or to understand. Nothing is gained
by trying to
smooth down spiritual subjects to the level of a child's
capacity; the
time will come later when the child must meet and answer
for itself
all great spiritual questions; the parent's care should be to
remove all
hindrances from the child's path of inquiry, but not to give
it
cut-and-dried answers to every possible question; religion, to be
worth
anything, must be a personal matter, and each must find it out for
himself; the
wise parent will endeavour to save the child from the pain
of
unlearning, by giving but little formal religious teaching; he cannot
fight the
battle for his child, but he can prevent his being crippled by
a fancied
armour which will stifle rather than protect him; he can give
a few wide
principles to direct him, without weighing him down with
guide-books.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But even the
most general ideas of God should not be forced on a
childish
mind; they should come, so to speak, by chance; they should be
presented in
answer to some demand of the child's heart; they should
be inculcated
by stray words and passing remarks; they should form the
atmosphere
surrounding the child habitually, and not be a sudden "wind
of
doctrine." Of course all this is far more troublesome than to teach
a child a
catechism or a creed, but it is a far higher training. Dogma,
_i e_.,
conviction petrified by authority, should be utterly excluded
from the
religious education of children; a few great axiomatic truths
may be laid
down, but even in these primary truths dogmatism should be
avoided. The
parent should always take care to make it apparent that he
is stating
his own convictions, but is not enforcing them on the child
by his
authority. So far as the child is capable of appreciating them,
the reasons
for the religious conviction should be presented along with
the
conviction itself. Thus the child will see, as he grows older, that
religion
cannot be learned by rote, that it is not shut up in a book, or
contained in
creeds; he will appreciate the all-important fact that free
inquiry is
the only air in which truth can breathe; that one man's faith
cannot justly
be imposed on another, and that every individual soul has
the privilege
and the responsibility of forming his own religion, and
must either
hear God with his own ears, or else not hear Him at all.
We have
noticed that the moral sense awakes before the religious (I must
state my
repugnance to these terms, although I use them for the sake of
clearness;
but morality _is_ religion, although religion is more than
morality, and
the so-called religion which is not morality is worthless
and hateful).
There remains then to consider what we will call the
second side
of religion, although it is by far its most important side.
True religion
consists not only in feelings towards God, but also in
duties
towards men: the first, noble and blessed as they are, should, in
every healthy
religion, give place to the second; for a morally good man
who does not
believe in God at all, is in a far higher state of being
than the man
who believes in God and is selfish, cruel or unjust. Error
in faith is
forgiveable; error in life is fatal. The good man shall
surely see
God, although, for a time, his eyes be holden; the evil man,
though he
hold the noblest faith yet known, shall never taste the joy of
God, until he
turns from sin, and struggles after holiness. Faith first,
and then
morality, is the war-cry of the churches; morality above all,
and let faith
follow in good time, is the watch-word of Theism; so,
among us, the
principal part of the religious training of our children
should be
morality; religious feeling may be over-strained, or give rise
to
self-deception; religious talk may be morbid and unreal; religious
faith may be
erring, and must be imperfect; but morality is a rock which
can never be
shaken, a guide which can never mislead. Whether we are
right or
wrong in our belief about God, whether we are immortal spirits
or perishable
organizations, yet purity is nobler than vice, courage
than
cowardice, truth than falsehood, love than hate. Let us, then,
teach our
children morality above all things. Let us teach them to love
good for its
own sake, without thought of reward, and they will remain
good, even
if, in after life, they should, alas! lose all hope of
immortality
and all faith hi God. A child's natural instinct is towards
good; a tale
of heroism, of self sacrifice, of generosity, will bring
the eager
blood flushing up to a child's face and wake a quick response
and a desire
of emulation. It is therefore well to place in children's
hands tales
of noble deeds in days gone by. Nothing is easier than to
train a child
into feeling a desire to be good for the sake of being so.
There is
something so attractive in goodness, that I have found it more
effectual to
hold up the nobility of courage and unselfishness before
the child's
eyes, than to descend to punishment for the corresponding
faults. If a
child is in the habit of regarding all wrong as something
low and
degrading, he quickly shrinks from it; all mothers know the
instinctive
ambition of children to be something superior and admirable,
and this
instinct is most useful in inculcating virtue. Later in life
nothing ruins
a young man like discovering that morality and religion
are often
divorced, and that the foremost professors of religion are
less
delicately honourable and trustworthy than high-minded "worldly
men;" on
the other hand, nothing will have so beneficial an effect on
men and women
entering life, as to see that those who are most joyful in
their faith
towards God, lead the purest and most blameless lives. "Do
good, be
good" is, as has been well said, the golden rule of life;
"do
good, be good" must be the law impressed on our children's hearts.
Whatever
"eclipse of faith" may await England, whatever darkness of most
hopeless
scepticism, whatever depth of uttermost despair of God, there
is not only
the hope, but the certainty of the resurrection of religion,
if we all
hold fast through the driving storm to the sheet-anchor of
pure
morality, to most faithful discharge of all duty towards man to
love, and
tenderness, and charity, and patience. Morality never faileth;
but, whether
there be dogmas, they shall fail; whether there be creeds,
they shall
cease; whether there be churches, they shall crumble away;
but morality
shall abide for evermore and endure as long as the endless
circle of
Nature revolves around the Eternal Throne.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
NATURAL
RELIGION VERSUS REVEALED RELIGION.
ONE is almost
ashamed to repeat so trite an aphorism as the well-worn
saying that
"history repeats itself." But in studying the course taken
by the
advocates of what is called "revealed religion," in seeing their
disdain of
"mere nature," their scornful repudiation of the idea that
any poor
natural product can come into competition with their special
article,
hall-stamped by heaven itself, I feel irresistibly compelled
to glance
backwards down the long vista of history, and there I see
the conflict
of the present day raging fierce and long. I see the same
serried ranks
of orthodoxy marshalled by bishops and priests, arrayed
in all the
splendour of prescriptive right, armed with mighty weapons
of authority
and thunderbolts of Church anathemas. Their war-cry is the
same as that
which rings in our ears to-day; "revelation" is inscribed
on their
banners and "infallible authority" is the watchword of their
camp. The
Church is facing nature for the first time, and is setting her
revealed
science against natural science. "Mere Nature" is temporarily
getting the
worst of it, and Galileo, Nature's champion, is sorely
pressed by
"revealed truth." I hear scornful taunts at his presumption
in attacking
revealed science by his pretended natural facts. Had they
not God's Own
account of His creation, and did he pretend to know more
about the
matter than God Himself? Was he present when God created the
world, that
he spoke so positively about its shape? Could he declare, of
his own
personal knowledge, that it was sent hurtling through space in
the
ridiculous manner he talked about, and could he, by the evidence of
his own
eye-sight, declare that God was mistaken when He revealed to man
how He
"laid the foundation of the earth that it never should move at
anytime?"
But if he was only reasoning from the wee bit of earth he
knew, was he
not speaking of things he had not seen, being vainly
puffed-up in
his fleshly mind? Was it probable, _ŕ priori_, that
God would
allow mankind to be deceived for thousands of years on so
important a
matter; would in fact--God forgive it!--deceive man Himself
by revealing
through His holy prophets an account of His creation
which was
utterly untrue; nay, further, would carry on the delusion for
century after
century, by working miracles in support of it--for what
but a miracle
could make men unconscious of the fact that they were
being hurried
through space at so tremendous a rate? Surely very little
reverence, or
rather no reverence at all, was needed to allow that God
the Holy
Ghost, who inspired the Bible, knew better than we did how
He made the
world. But, the theologian proceeds, he must remind his
audience
that, under the specious pretext of investigating the creation,
this man,
this pseudo-scientist, was in reality blaspheming the Creator,
by contradicting
His revealed word, and thus "making Him a liar." It
was all very
well to talk about _natural_ science; but he would ask this
presuming
speculator, what was the use of God revealing science to us if
man's natural
faculties were sufficient to discover it for himself? They
had
sufficient proofs of the absurdities of science into which reason,
unenlightened
by revelation, had betrayed men in past ages. The idea of
the Hindoo,
that the world rested on an elephant and the elephant on
a tortoise,
was a sad proof of the incapacity of the acutest natural
intellect to
discover scientific truth without the aid of revelation.
Reason had
its place, and a very noble placer in science; but it must
always bow
before revelation, and not presume to set its puny guesses
against a
"thus sayeth the Lord." Let reason, then, pursue its way with
belief not
unbelief, for its guide. What could reason, with all its
vaunted
powers, tell us of the long-past creation of the world? Eye hath
not seen
those things of ages past, but God hath revealed them to us by
His Spirit. A
darkness that might be felt would enshroud the origin of
the world
were it not for the magnificent revelation of Moses, that "in
six days God
created the heaven and the earth." He might urge how our
conceptions
of God were enlarged and elevated, and what a deep awe
filled the
adoring heart on contemplating the revealed truth, that this
wonderful
earth with its varied beauty, and the heavens above with their
countless
stars, were all called forth out of nothing within the space
of one short
week by the creative fiat of the Almighty. What could this
pseudo-science
give them in exchange for such a revelation as that? Was
it probable,
further, that God would have become incarnate for the sake
of a world that
was only one out of many revolving round the sun? How
irreverent to
regard the theatre of that awful sacrifice as aught less
than the
centre of the universe, the cynosure of angelic eyes, gazing
from their
thrones in the heaven above! Galileo might say that his
heresy does
not affect the primary truths of our holy faith; but this is
only one of
the evasions natural to evildoers--and it is unnecessary
to remark
that intellectual error is invariably the offspring of moral
guilt--for
consider how much is involved in his theory. The inspiration
of Scripture
receives its death-blow; for if fallible in one point, we
have no
reason to conclude it to be infallible in others. If there is
one fact
revealed to us more clearly than another in Holy Scripture, it
is this one
of the steadfastness of our world, which we are distinctly
told,
"cannot be moved." It is plainly revealed to us that the earth was
created and
fixed firmly on its foundations; that then there was formed
over it the
vast vault of heaven, in which were set the stars, and in
this vault
was prepared "the course" for the sun, spoken of, as you will
remember, in
the 19th Psalm, where holy David reveals to us that in the
heavens God
has made a tabernacle for the sun, which "goeth forth from
the uttermost
part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of
it
again." Language has no definiteness of meaning if this inspired
declaration
can be translated into a statement that the sun remains
stationary and
is encircled by a revolving earth. This great revealed
truth cannot
be contradicted by any true science. God's works
cannot
contradict His word; and if for a moment they appear mutually
irreconcileable,
we may be sure that our ignorance is to blame, and that
a deeper
knowledge will ultimately remove the apparent inconsistency.
But it is yet
more important to observe that some of the cardinal
doctrines of
the Church are assailed by this novel teaching. How could
our blessed
Redeemer, after accomplishing the work of our salvation,
ascend from a
revolving earth? Whither did He go? North, south, east, or
west? For, if
I understand aright this new heresy, the space above us
at one time
is below us at another, and thus Jesus might be actually
descending at
His glorious Ascension. Where, too, is that Right Hand of
God to which
He went, in this new universe without top or bottom? How
can we hope
to rise and meet Him in the air at His return, according to
the most sure
promise given to us through the blessed Paul, if He comes
we know not
from what direction? How can the lightning of His coming
shine at once
all round a globe to herald His approach, or how can the
people at the
other side of the world see the sign of the Son of Man in
the heavens?
But I cannot bring myself to accumulate these blasphemies;
all must see
that the most glorious truths of the Bible are bound up
with its
science, and must stand or fall together. And if this is so,
and this
so-called natural science is to be allowed to undermine the
revealed
science, what have we got to rely upon in this world or in the
next? With
the absolute truth of the Bible stands or falls our faith in
God and our
hope of immortality; on the truth of revelation hinges all
morality, and
they who deny to-day the truth of revealed science
will tamper
tomorrow with the truth of revealed history, of revealed
morality, of
revealed religion. Shall we, then, condescend to accept
natural
science instead of revealed; shall we, the teachers of
revelation, condescend
to abandon revealed science, and become the mere
teachers of
nature?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Thunders of
applause greeted the right reverend theologian as he
concluded--he
happened to be a bishop, the direct ancestor in regular
apostolical
succession of a late prelate who inherited among other
valuable
qualities the very argument which closed the speech above
quoted--and
Galileo, the foolish believer in facts and the heretical
student of
mere nature, turned away with a sigh from trying to convince
them, and
contented himself with the fact he knew, and which must surely
announce
itself in the long run. _E pur si muove!_ Fear not, noble
martyr of
science: facts alter not to suit theologies: many a one may
fall crushed
and vanquished before the Juggernaut-car of the Church, but
"God
does not die with His children, nor truth with its martyrs;" the
natural is
the divine, for Nature is only "God in a mask." So, looking
down at that
first great battle-field between nature and revelation I
see the
serried ranks break up and fly, and the excommunicated student
become the
prophet of the future, Galileo the seer, the revealer of the
truth of God.
It is
eternally true that nature must triumph in the long run.
Theories are
very imposing, doubtless, but when they are erected on a
misconception
the inexorable fact is sure to assert itself sooner or
later, and
with pitiless serenity level the magnificent fabric with
the dust. It
is this which gives to scientific men so grave and calm an
attitude;
theologians wrangle fiercely and bitterly because they wrangle
about _opinions_,
and one man's say is as good as another's where both
deal in
intangibles; but the man of science, when absolutely sure of his
ground, _can
afford to wait_, because the fact he has discovered remains
unshaken,
however it be assailed, and it will, in time, assert itself.
When nature
and revelation then come into contact, revelation must go to
the wall; no
outcry can save it; it is doomed; as well try and dam the
rising Thames
with a feather, as seek to bolster up a theology whose
main dogmas
are being slowly undermined by natural science. Of course
no one
nowadays (at least among educated people, for Zadkiel's Almanac
I believe
still protests on Biblical grounds against the heresy of the
motion of the
earth) dreams of maintaining Bible, _i e_., revealed,
science
against natural science; it is agreed on all hands that on
points where
science speaks with certainty the words of the _Bible must
be explained
so as to accord with the dictum of nature_; _i e._, it
is
allowed--though the admission is wrapped up in thick folds of
circumlocution--that
science must mould revelation, and not revelation
science. The
desperate attempts to force the first chapter of Genesis
into some
faint resemblance to the ascertained results of geological
investigations
are a powerful testimony to the conscious weakness of
revealed
science and to the feeling on the part of all intelligent
theologians
that the testimony graven with an iron pen on the rocks
cannot be
contradicted or refuted. In fact so successfully has science
asserted its
own preeminence in its own domain that many defenders of
the Bible
assert loudly, to cover their strategic movement to the rear,
that
revelation was not intended to teach science, and that scientific
mistakes were
only to be expected in a book given to mankind by the
great Origin
of all scientific law. They are freely welcome to find
out any
reasons they like for the errors in revealed science; all
that concerns
us is that their revelation should get out of the way of
advancing science,
and should no longer interpose its puny anathemas
to silence
inquiry into facts, or to fetter free research and free
discussion.
But I
challenge revelation further than this, and assert that when the
dictates of
natural_ religion_ are in opposition to those of revealed
_religion_
then the natural must again triumph over the revealed.
Christianity
has so long successfully impressed on human hearts the
revelation
that natural impulses are in themselves sinful, that in "the
flesh
dwelleth no good thing," that man is a fallen creature, thoroughly
corrupt and
instinctively evil, that it has come to-pass that even those
who would be
liberal if they dared, shrink back when it comes to casting
away their
revelation-crutches, and ask wildly _what_ they can trust
to if they
give up the Bible. Their teachers tell them that if they let
this go they
will wander compassless on the waves of a pathless ocean;
and so
determinedly do they fix their eyes on the foaming waters,
striving to
discern there the trace of a pathway and only seeing the
broken
reflections of the waving torches in their hands, that they do
not raise
their heads and gaze upwards at the everlasting stars, the
silent
natural guides of the bewildered mariner. "Trust to mere nature!"
exclaim the
priesthood, and their flocks fall back aghast, clutching
their
revelation to their bosom and crying out: "What indeed is there to
rely on if
this be taken from us?" Only God. "Mere" God indeed, who is
a very feeble
support after the bolstering up of creeds and dogmas,
of Churches
and Bibles. As the sunshine dazzles eyes accustomed to the
darkness, as
the fresh wind makes shiver an invalid from a heated room,
so does the
light of God dazzle those who live amid the candles of the
Churches, and
the breath of His inspiration blows cold on feeble souls.
But the light
and the air invigorate and strengthen, and nature is a
surer
medicine than the nostrums of the quack physician.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Mere"
God is, in very truth, all that we Theists have to offer the
world in
exchange for the certainties of its Bibles, Korans, Vedas, and
all other
revelations whatsoever. On points where they each speak with
certainty,
our lips are dumb. About much they assert, we confess our
ignorance.
Where they know, we only think or hope. Where they possess
all the
clearness of a sign-post, our eyes can only study the mistiness
of a valley
before the rising sun has dispelled the wreathing clouds.
They proclaim
immortality, and are quite _au fait_ as to the particulars
of our future
life. They differ in details, it is true, as to whether
we live in a
jewelled city, where the dust is gold-dust and the gates
pearls, and
spend our time in attending Sacred Harmonic Societies with
an
archangelic Costa directing perpetual oratorios, or whether we lie in
rose-embowered
arbours with delights unlimited, albeit unintellectual;
but if we
take them one at a time they are most satisfactory in the
absolute
information afforded by each. But we, we can only, whisper--and
the lips of
some of us quiver too much to speak--"I believe in the life
everlasting."
We do not pretend to _know_ anything about it; the belief
is intuitive,
but is not demonstrable; it is a hope and a trust, not an
absolute
knowledge. We entertain a reasonable hope of immortality; we
argue its
likelihood from considerations of the justice and the love
which, as we
believe, rule the universe; we, many of us--as I freely
confess I do
myself--believe in it with a firmness of conviction
absolutely
immovable; but challenged to _prove_ it, we cannot answer.
"Here,"
the revelationists triumphantly exclaim, "is our advantage; we
foretell with
absolute certainty a future life, and can give you all
particulars
about it." Then follows a confused jumble of harps and
houris, of
pasture-field and hunting-grounds; we seek for certainty
and find
none. All that they agree in, _i e_., a future life, we find
imprinted on
our own hearts, a dictate of natural religion; all they
differ in is
contained in their several revelations, and as they all
contradict
each other about the revealed details, we gain nothing from
them. Nature
whispers to us that there is a life to come; revelation
babbles a
number of contradictory particulars, marring the majesty of
the simple
promise, and adding nothing reliable to the sum of human
knowledge.
And the subject of immortality is a fair specimen of what is
taught
respectively by nature and by revelation; what is common to all
creeds is
natural, what is different in each is revealed. It is so with
respect to
God. The idea of God belongs to all creeds alike; it is the
foundation-stone
of natural religion; confusion begins when revelation
steps in to
change the musical whisper of Nature into a categorical
description
worthy of "Mangnall's Questions." Triune, solitary, dual,
numberless,
whatever He is revealed to be in the world's varied sacred
books, His
nature is understood, catalogued, dogmatised on; each
revelation
claims to be His own account of Himself; but each contradicts
its fellows;
on one point only they all agree, and that is the point
confessed by
natural religion--"God is."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
From these
facts I deduce two conclusions: first, that revelation does
not come to
us with such a certainty of its truth as to enable us to
trust it
fearlessly and without reserve; second, that revelation is
quite
superfluous, since natural religion gives us every thing we need.
I. Revelation
gives an uncertain sound. There are certain books in the
world which
claim to stand on a higher ground than all others. They
claim to be
special revelations of the will of God and the destiny of
man. Now
surely one of the first requisites of a Divine revelation is
that it
should be undoubtedly of Divine origin. But about all these
books, except
the Koran of Mahomet, hangs much obscurity both as regards
their origin
and their authorship. "Believers" urge that were the proofs
undoubted
there would be no room for faith and no merit in believing.
They conceive
it, then, to be a worthy employment for the Supreme
Intelligence
to set traps for His creatures; and, there being certain
facts of the
greatest importance, undis-coverable by their natural
faculties, He
proceeds to reveal these facts, but envelopes them in
such
wrappings of mystery, such garments of absurdity, that those of
His creatures
whom he has dowered with intellects and gifted with subtle
brains, are
forced to reject the whole as incredible and unreasonable.
That God
should give a revelation, but should not substantiate it, that
He should
speak, but in tones unintelligible, that His noblest gifts of
reason should
prove an insuperable bar to accepting his manifestation,
are surely
statements incredible, are surely statements utterly
irreconcileable
with all reverent ideas of the love and wisdom of
Almighty God.
Further, the believers in the various revelations all
claim for
their several oracles the supreme position of the exponent of
the Will of
God, and each rejects the sacred books of other nations as
spurious
productions, without any Divine authority. As these revelations
are mutually
destructive, it is evident that only one of them, at the
most can be
Divine, and the next point of the inquiry is to distinguish
which this
is. We, of the Western nations, at once put aside the Hindoo
Vedas, or the
Zendavesta, on certain solid grounds; we reject their
claims to be
inspired books because they contain error; their mistaken
science,
their legendary history, their miraculous stories, stamp them,
in our
impartial eyes, as the work of fallible men; the nineteenth
century looks
down on thee ancient writings as the instructed and
cultured man
smiles at the crude fancies and imaginative conceits of the
child. But
when the generality of Christians turn to the Bible they lay
aside all
ordinary criticism and all common-sense. Its science may be
absurd; but
excuses are found for it. Its history may be false, but
it is twisted
into truth. Its supernatural marvels may be flagrantly
absurd; but
they are nevertheless believed in. Men who laugh at the
visions of
the "blessed Margaret" of Paray-le-Monial assent to the
devil-drowning
of the swine of Gadara; and those who would scorn to
investigate
the tale of the miraculous spring at Lourdes, find
no difficulty
in believing the story of the angel-moved waters of
Bethesda's
pool. A book which contains miracles is usually put aside as
unreliable.
There is no good reason for excepting the Bible from this
general rule.
Miracles are absolutely incredible, and discredit at once
any book in
which they occur. They are found in all revelations, but
never in
nature, they are plentiful in man's writings, but they never
deface the
orderly pages of the great book of God, written by His own
Hand on the
earth, and the stars, and the sun. Powers? Yes, beyond our
grasping, but
Powers moving in stately order and changeless consistency.
Marvels? Yes,
beyond our imagining, but marvels evolved by immutable
laws.
Revelation is incredible, not only because it fails to bring proof
of its truth,
but because the proofs abound of its falsehood; it claims
to be Divine,
and we reject it because we test it by what we know of
His undoubted
works, for men can write books of Him and call them His
revelations,
but the frame of nature can only be the work of that mighty
Power which
man calls God. Revelation depicts Him as changeable, nature
as immutable;
revelation tells us of perfection marred, nature of
imperfection
improving; revelation speaks of a Trinity, nature of one
mighty
central Force; revelation relates interferences, miracles, nature
unbroken
sequences, inviolable law. If we accept revelation we must
believe in a
God Who made man upright but could not keep him so; Who
heard in his
far-off heaven the wailing of His earth and came down to
see if things
were as bad as was reported; Who had a face which brought
death, but
Whose hinder parts were visible to man; Who commanded and
accepted
human sacrifice; Who was jealous, revengeful, capricious, vain;
Who tempted
one king and then punished him for yielding, hardened the
heart of
another and then punished him for not yielding, deceived a
third and
thereby drew him to his death. But nature does not so outrage
our morality
and trample on our hearts; only we learn of a power and
wisdom
unspeakable, "mightily and sweetly ordering all things," and
our hearts
tell of a Father and a Friend, infinitely loving, and
trustworthy,
and good. The God of Nature and the God of Revelation are
as opposed as
Ormuzd and Ahriman, as darkness and light; the Bible and
the universe
are not writ by the same hand.
II.
Revelation then being so utterly untrustworthy, it is satisfactory
to discover,
secondly, that it is perfectly superfluous.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
All man needs
for his guidance in this world he can gain through the use
of his
natural faculties, and the right guidance of his conduct in this
world must,
in all reasonableness, be the best preparation for whatever
lies beyond
the grave. Revelationists assure us that without their books
we should
have no rules of morality, and that without the Bible man's
moral
obligations would be unknown. Their theory is that only through
revelation
can man know right from wrong. Using the word "revelation"
in a
different sense most Theists would agree with them, and would
allow that
man's perception of duty is a ray which falls on him from the
Righteousness
of God, and that man's morality is due to the illumination
of the
inspiring Father of Light. Personally, I believe that God
does teach
morality to man, and is, in very deed, the Inspirer of all
gracious and
noble thoughts and acts. I believe that the source of all
morality in
man is the Universal Spirit dwelling in the spirits He has
formed, and
moving them to righteousness, and, as they answer to His
whispers by
active well-doing--speaking ever in louder and clearer
accents. I
believe also that the most obedient followers of that inner
voice gain
clearer and loftier views of duty and of the Holiest,
and thus
become true prophets of God, revealers of His will to their
fellows. And
this is revelation in a very real sense; it is God
revealing
Himself by the natural working of moral laws, even as all
science is a
true revelation, and is God revealing Himself by the
natural working
of physical laws. For laws are modes of action, and
modes of
action reveal the nature and character of the actor, so that
every law,
physical and moral, which is discovered by truth-seekers and
proclaimed to
the world is a direct and trustworthy revelation of God
Himself. But
when Theists speak thus of "revelation" using the word as
rightfully
applicable to all discoveries and all nobly written religious
or scientific
books, it is manifest that the word has entirely changed
its
signification, and is applied to "natural" and not
"supernatural"
results. We
believe in God working through natural faculties in a
natural way,
while the revelationists believe in some non-natural
communication,
made no one knows how, no one knows where, no one knows
to whom.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Where opposing
theories are concerned an ounce of fact outweighs pounds
of assertion;
and so against the statement of Christians, that morality
is derived
only from the Bible and is undiscoverable by "man's natural
faculties,"
I quote the morality of natural religion, unassisted by what
they claim as
their special "revelation."
Buddha, as he
lived 700 years before Christ, can hardly be said to
have drawn
his morality from that of Jesus or even to have derived any
indirect
benefit from Christian teaching, and yet I have been gravely
told by a
Church of England clergyman--who ought to have known
better--that
forgiveness of injuries and charity were purely Christian
virtues. This
heathen Buddha, lighted only by natural reason and a pure
heart,
teaches: "a man who foolishly does me wrong I will return to him
the
protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him the
more good
shall go from me;" among principal virtues are: "to repress
lust and
banish desire; to be strong without being rash; to bear insult
without
anger; to move in the world without setting the heart on it; to
investigate a
matter to the very bottom; to save men by converting them;
to be the
same in heart and life." "Let a man overcome evil by good,
anger by
love, the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth. For hatred
does not
cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; this is an
old
rule." He inculcates purity, charity, self-sacrifice, courtesy, and
earnestly
recommends personal search after truth: "do not
believe in
guesses"--in assuming something at hap-hazard as a
starting-point--reckoning
your two and your three and your four before
you have
fixed your number one. Do not believe in the truth of that to
which you
have become attached by habit, as every nation believes in the
superiority
of its own dress and ornaments and language. Do not believe
merely
because you have heard, but when of your own consciousness you
know a thing
to be evil abstain from it. Methinks these sayings of
Buddha are
unsurpassed by any revealed teaching, and contain quite as
noble and
lofty a morality as the Sermon on the Mount, "natural" as they
are.
Plato, also,
teaches a noble morality and soars into ideas about the
Divine Nature
as pure and elevated as any which are to be found in the
Bible. The
summary of his teaching, quoted by Mr. Lake in a pamphlet
of Mr.
Scott's series, is a glorious testimony to the worth of natural
religion.
"It is better to die than to sin. It is better to suffer wrong
than to do
it. The true happiness of man consists in being united to
God, and his
only misery in being separated from Him. There is one God,
and we ought
to love and serve Him, and to endeavour to resemble Him
in holiness
and righteousness." Plato saw also the great truth that
suffering is
not the result of an evil power, but is a necessary
training to
good, and he anticipates the very words of Paul--if indeed
Paul does not
quote from Plato--that "to the just man all things work
together for
good, whether in life or death." Plato lived 400 years
before
Christ, and yet in the face of such teaching as his and
Buddha's,--and
they are only two out of many--Christians fling at us the
taunt that
we, rejectors of the Bible, draw all our morality from
it, and that
without this one revelation the world would lie in moral
darkness,
ignorant of truth and righteousness and God. But the light
of God's
revealing shines still upon the world, even as the sunlight
streams upon
it steadfastly as of old; "it is not given to a few men in
the infancy
of mankind to monopolise inspiration and to bar God out of
the soul....
Wherever a heart beats with love, where Faith and Reason
utter their
oracles, there also is God, as formerly in the heart of
seers and
prophets."*
* Theodore Tarker.
It is a
favourite threat of the priesthood to any inquiring spirit: "If
you give up
Christianity you give up all certainty; rationalism speaks
with no
certain sound; no two rationalists think alike; the word
rationalism
covers everything outside Christianity, from Unitarianism to
the blankest
atheism;" and many a timid soul starts back, feeling that
if this is
true it is better to rest where it is, and inquire no more.
To such--and
I meet many such--I would suggest one very simple thought:
does
"Christianity" give any more certainty than rationalism? Just
try asking
your mentor, "_whose_ Christianity am I to accept?" He will
stammer out,
"Oh, the teaching of the Bible, of course." But persevere:
"As
explained by whom? for all claim to found their Christianity on
the Bible: am
I to accept the defined logical Christianity of Pius IX.,
defiant of
history, of science, of common sense, or shall I sit under
Spurgeon, the
denunciator, and flee from the scarlet woman and the cup
of her
fascinations: shall I believe the Christianity of Dean Stanley,
instinct with
his own gracious, kindly spirit, cultured and polished,
pure and
loving, or shall I fly from it as a sweet but insidious poison,
as I am
exhorted to do by Dr. Pusey, who rails at his 'variegated
language
which destroys all definiteness of meaning.' For pity's sake,
good father,
label for me the various bottles of Christian medicine,
that I may
know which is healing to the soul, which may be touched with
caution, as
for external application, and which are rank poison."
All the
priest will find to answer is, that "under sad diversities
of opinion
there are certain saving truths common to all forms of
Christianity,"
but he will object to particularise what they are, and
at this stage
will wax angry and refuse to argue with anyone who shows
a spirit so
carping and so conceited. There is the same diversity in
rationalism
as in Christianity, because human nature is diverse, but
there is also
one bond between all freethinkers, one "great saving
truth"
of rationalism, one article of faith, and that is, that "free
inquiry is
the right of every human soul;" diverse in much, we all agree
in this, and
so strong is this bond that we readily welcome any thinker,
however we
disagree with his thoughts, provided only that he think them
honestly and
allow to all the liberty of holding their own opinions
also. We are
bound together in one common hatred of Dogmatism, one
common love
of liberty of thought and speech.
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It is
probably a puzzle to good and unlearned Christians whence men,
unenlightened
by revelation, drew and still draw their morality. We
answer,
"from mere Nature, and that because Nature and not revelation is
the true
basis of all morality." We have seen the untrustworthiness of
all so-called
revelations; but when we fall back on Nature we are
on firm
ground. Theists start in their search after God from their
well-known
axiom: "If there be a God at all He must be at least as
good as His
highest creature;" and they argue that what is highest and
noblest and
most lovable in man _must_ be below, but cannot be above,
the height
and the nobleness and the loveableness of God. "Of all
impossible
thing, the most impossible must surely be that a man should
dream
something of the Good and the Noble, and that it should prove
at last that
his Creator was less good and less noble than he had
dreamed."*
"The ground on which our belief in God rests is Man. Man,
parent of
Bibles and Churches, inspirer of all good thoughts and good
deeds. Man,
the master-piece of God's work on earth. Man, the text-book
of all
spiritual knowledge. Neither miraculous or infallible, Man is
nevertheless
the only trustworthy record of the Divine mind in things
pertaining to
God. Man's reason, conscience, and affections are the only
true
revelation of his Maker,"** And as we believe that we may glean
some hints of
the Glory and Beauty of our Creator from the glory and
beauty of
human excellence, so we believe that to each man, as he lives
up to the
highest he can perceive, will surely be unveiled fresh heights
of
righteousness, fresh possibilities of moral growth.
* Frances Power Cobbe.
** Rev. Charles Voysey.
To all men
alike, good and evil, is laid open Nature's revelation of
morality, as
exemplified in the highest human lives; and these noble
lives receive
ever the heavenly hall-mark by the instinctive response
from every
human breast that they "are very good." To those only
who live up
to the good they see, does God give the further inner
revelation,
which leads them higher and higher in morality, quickening
their moral
faculties, and making more sensitive and delicate their
moral
susceptibilities. We cannot, as revelationists do, chalk out
all the whole
range of moral perfection: we "walk by faith and not by
sight:"
step by step only is the path unveiled to us, and only as we
surmount one
peak do we gain sight of the peak beyond: the distant
prospect is
shrouded from our gaze, and we are too fully occupied in
doing the
work which is given us to do in this world, to be for ever
peering into
and brooding over the world beyond the grave. We have light
enough to do
our Father's work here; when he calls us yonder it will be
time enough
to ask Him to unveil our new sphere of labour and to
cause His sun
to rise on it. Wayward children fret after some fancied
happiness and
miss the work and the pleasure lying at their feet, and
so petulant
men and women cry out that "man that is born of woman... is
full of
misery," and wail for a revelation to ensure some happier life:
they seem to
forget that if this world is full of misery _they_ are put
here to mend
it and not to cry over it, and that it is our shame and our
condemnation
that in God's fair world so much sin and unhappiness are
found. If men
would try to read nature instead of revelation, if they
would study
natural laws and leave revealed laws, if they would follow
human
morality instead of ecclesiastical morality, then there might be
some chance
of real improvement for the race, and some hope that the
Divine Voice
in Nature might be heard above the babble of the Churches.
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And Nature is
enough for us, gives us all the light we want and all that
we, as yet,
are fitted to receive. Were it possible that God should now
reveal
Himself to us as He is, the Being of Whose Nature we can form
no
conception, I believe that we should remain as ignorant as we are
at present,
from the want of faculties to receive that revelation:
the Divine
language might sound in our ears, but it would be as
unintelligible
as the roar of the thunder-clap, or the moan of the
earthquake,
or the whisper of the wind to the leaves of the cedar-tree.
God is slowly
revealing Himself by His works, by the course of events,
by the
progress of Humanity: if He has never spoken from Heaven in human
language, He
is daily speaking in the world around us to all who have
ears to hear,
and as Nature in its varied forms is His only revelation
of Himself,
so the mind and the heart alone can perceive His presence
and catch the
whispers ot His mysterious voice.
Never yet has been broken
The silence eternal:
Never yet has been spoken
In accents supernal
God's Thought of Himself.
We are groping in blindness
Who yearn to behold Him:
But in wisdom and kindness
In darkness He folds Him
Till the soul learns to see.
So the veil is unriven
That hides the All-Holy,
And no token is given
That satisfies wholly
The cravings of man.
But, unhasting, advances
The march of the ages,
To truth-seekers' glances
Unrolling the pages
Of God's revelation.
Impatience unheeding,
Time, slowly revolving;
Unresting, unspeeding,
Is ever evolving
Fresh truths about God.
Human speech has not broken
The stillness supernal:
Yet ever is spoken
Through silence eternal,
With growing distinctness
God's Thought of Himself.
ON THE NATURE
AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
IT is
impossible for those who study the deeper religious; problems of
our time to
stave off much longer the question which lies at the root
of them all,
"What do you believe in regard to God?" We may controvert
Christian
doctrines, one after another; point by point we may be driven
from the
various beliefs of our churches; reason may force us to see
contradictions
where we had imagined harmony, and may open our eyes
to flaws
where we had dreamed of perfection; we resign all idea of a
revelation;
we seek for God in Nature only; we renounce for ever the
hope (which
glorified our former creed into such alluring beauty) that
at some
future time we should verily "see" God, that "our eyes should
behold the
King in his beauty" in that fairy "land which is very far
off."
But every step we take onwards towards a more reasonable faith
and a surer
light of Truth leads us nearer and nearer to the problem of
problems,
"What is That which men call God?" Not till theologians have
thoroughly
grappled with this question have they any just claim to
be called
religious guides; from each of those whom we honour as our
leading
thinkers we have a right to a distinct answer to this question,
and the very
object of the present paper is to provoke discussion on
this point.
Men are apt
to turn aside somewhat impatiently from an argument about
the Nature
and Existence of the Deity, because they consider that
the question
is a metaphysical one which leads nowhere; a problem the
resolution of
which is beyond our faculties, and the study of which
is at once
useless and dangerous; they forget that action is ruled by
thought, and
that our ideas about God are therefore of vast practical
importance.
On our answer to the question propounded above depends our
whole
conception of the nature and origin of evil, and of the sanctions
of morality;
on our idea of God turns our opinion on the much-disputed
question of
prayer, and, in fact, our whole attitude of mind towards
life, here
and hereafter. Does morality consist in obedience to the will
of a
perfectly moral Being, and are we to aim at righteousness of life
because in so
doing we please God? Or are we to lead noble lives because
nobility of
life is desirable for itself alone, and because it spreads
happiness
around us and satisfies the desires of our own nature? Is our
mental
attitude to be that of kneeling or standing? Are our eyes to
be fixed on
heaven or on earth? Is prayer to God reasonable and helpful,
the natural
cry of a child for help from a Father in Heaven? Or is it,
on the other
hand, a useless appeal to an unknown and irresponsible
force? Is the
mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God,
or a sense of
the necessity of bringing our being into harmony with the
laws of the
universe? It appears to me that these questions are of such
grave and
vital moment that no apology is needed for drawing attention
to them; and
because of their importance to mankind I challenge the
leaders of
the religious and non-religious world alike, the Christians,
Theists,
Pantheists, and those who take no specific name, duly to test
the views
they severally hold. In this battle the simple foot
soldier may
touch with his lance the shield of the knight, and the
insignificance
of the challenger does not exempt the general from the
duty of
lifting the gauntlet flung down at his feet. Little care I
for personal
defeat, if the issue of the conflict should enthrone more
firmly the
radiant figure of Truth. One fault, however, I am anxious
to avoid, and
that is the fault of ambiguity. The orthodox and the
free-thinking
alike do a good deal of useless fighting from sheer
misunderstanding
of each other's standpoint in the controversy. It
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appears,
then, to be indispensable in the prosecution of the following
inquiry that
the meaning of the terms used should be unmistakably
distinct. I
begin, therefore, by defining the technical forms of
expression to
be employed in my argument; the definitions may be good or
bad, that is
not material; all that is needed is that the sense in which
the various
terms are used should be clearly understood. When men fight
only for the
sake of discovering truth, definiteness of expression is
specially
incumbent on them; and, as has been eloquently said, "the
strugglers
being sincere, truth may give laurels to the victor and the
vanquished:
laurels to the victor in that he hath upheld the truth,
laurels still
welcome to the vanquished, whose defeat crowns him with a
truth he knew
not of before."
The
definitions that appear to me to be absolutely necessary are as
follows:--
_Matter_ is
used to express that which is tangible. _Spirit (or
spiritual_)
is used to express those intangible forces whose existence
we become
aware of only through the effects they produce.
_Substance_
is used to express that which exists in itself and by
itself, and
the conception of which does not imply the conception of
anything
preceding it.
_God_ is used
to represent exclusively that Being invested by the
orthodox with
certain physical, intellectual, and moral attributes.
Particular
attention must be paid to this last definition, because the
term
"atheist" is often flung unjustly at any thinker who ventures
to criticise
_the popular and traditional idea_ of God; and different
schools,
Theistic and non-Theistic, with but too much facility, bandy
about this
vague epithet in mutual reproach.
As an
instance of this uncharitable and unfair use of ugly names, all
schools agree
in calling the late Mr. Austin Holyoake an "atheist," and
he accepted
the name himself, although he distinctly stated (as we find
in a printed
report of a discussion held at the Victoria Institute) that
he did not
deny the possibility of the existence of God, but only
denied the
possibility of the existence of that God in whom the orthodox
exhorted him
to believe. It is well thus to protest beforehand against
this name
being bandied about, because it carries with it, at present,
so much
popular prejudice, that it prevents all possibility of candid
and free
discussion. It is simply a convenient stone to fling at the
head of an
opponent whose arguments one cannot meet, a certain way of
raising a
tumult which will drown his voice; and, if it have any serious
meaning at
all, it might fairly be used, as I shall presently show,
against the
most orthodox pillar of the orthodox faith.
It is
manifest to all who will take the trouble to think steadily, that
there can be
only one eternal and underived substance, and that matter
and spirit
must therefore only be varying manifestations of this one
substance.
The distinction made between matter and spirit is then
simply made
for the sake of convenience and clearness, just as we may
distinguish
perception from judgment, both of which, however, are alike
processes of
thought. Matter is, in its constituent elements, the same
as spirit;
existence is one, however manifold in its phenomena; life is
one, however
multiform in its evolution. As the heat of the coal differs
from the coal
itself, so do memory, perception, judgment, emotion, and
will, differ
from the brain which is the instrument of thought. But
nevertheless
they are all equally products of the one sole substance,
varying only
in their conditions. It may be taken for granted that
against this
preliminary point of the argument will be raised the
party-cry of
"rank materialism," because "materialism" is a doctrine of
which the
general public has an undefined horror. But I am bold to say
that if by
matter is meant that which is above defined as substance,
then no
reasoning person can help being a materialist. The orthodox are
very fond of
arguing back to what they call the Great First Cause. "God
is a
spirit," they say, "and from him is derived the spiritual part of
man."
Well and good; they have traced back a part of the universe to
a point at
which they conceive that only one universal essence is
possible,
that which they call God, and which is spirit only. But I then
invite their
consideration to the presence of something which they
do not regard
as spirit, _i e._, matter. I follow their own plan of
argument step
by step: I trace matter, as they traced spirit, back and
back, till I
reach a point beyond which I cannot go, one only existence,
substance or
essence; am I therefore to believe that God is matter only?
But we have
already found it asserted by Theists that he is spirit only,
and we cannot
believe two contradictories, however logical the road
which led us
to them; so we must acknowledge two substances, eternally
existent side
by side; if existence be dual, then, however absurd
the
hypothesis, there must be two First Causes. It is not I who am
responsible
for an idea so anomalous. The orthodox escape from this
dilemma by an
assumption, thus: "God, to whom is to be traced back all
spirit,
_created_ matter." Why, am I not equally justified in assuming,
if I please,
that matter created spirit? Why should I be logical in one
argument and
illogical in another? If we come to assumptions, have not
I as much
right to my assumption as my neighbour has to his? Why may he
predicate
creation of one half of the universe, and I not predicate it
of the other
half? If the assumptions be taken into consideration at
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all, then I
contend that mine is the more reasonable of the two, since
it is
possible to imagine matter as existing without mind, while it is
utterly
impossible to conceive of mind existing without matter. We all
know how a
stone looks, and we are in the habit of regarding that
as lifeless
matter; but who has any distinct idea of a mind _pur et
simple?_ No
clear conception of it is possible to human faculties;
we can only
conceive of mind as it is found in an organisation;
intelligence
has no appreciable existence except as-residing in the
brain and as
manifested in results. The lines of spirit and matter are
not one, say
the orthodox; they run backwards side by side; why then, in
following the
course of these two parallel lines, should I suddenly bend
one into the
other? and on what principle of selection shall I choose
the one I am
to curve? I must really decline to use logic just as far as
it supports
the orthodox idea of God, and arbitrarily throw it down
the moment it
conflicts with that idea. I find myself then compelled
to believe
that one only substance exists in all around me; that the
universe is
eternal, or at least eternal so far as our faculties are
concerned,
since we cannot, as some one has quaintly put it "get to
the outside
of everywhere;" that a Deity cannot be conceived of as apart
from the
universe, pre-existent to the universe, post-existent to the
universe;
that the Worker and the Work are inextricably interwoven, and
in some sense
eternally and indissolubly combined. Having got so far, we
will proceed
to examine into the possibility of proving the existence
of that one
essence popularly called by the name of _God_, under the
conditions
strictly defined by the orthodox. Having demonstrated, as I
hope to do,
that the orthodox idea of God is unreasonable and absurd,
we will
endeavour to discover whether _any_ idea of God, worthy to be
called an
idea, is attainable in the present state of our faculties.
The orthodox
believers in God are divided into two camps, one of
which
maintains that the existence of God is as demonstrable as any
mathematical
proposition, while the other asserts that his existence
is not
demonstrable to the intellect. I select Dr. McCann, a man of
considerable
reputation, as the representative of the former of these
two opposing
schools of thought, and give the Doctor's position in his
own
words:--"The purpose of the following paper is to prove the
fallacy of
all such assumptions" (i e., that the existence of God is an
insoluble problem),
"by showing that we are no more at liberty to deny
His being,
than we are to deny any demonstration of Euclid. He would be
thought
unworthy of refutation who should assert that any two angles of
a triangle
are together greater than two right angles. We would content
ourselves by
saying, 'The man is mad'--mathematically, at least--and
pass on. If
it can be shown that we affirm the existence of Deity
for the very
same reasons as we affirm the truth of any geometric
proposition; if
it can be shown that the former is as capable of
demonstration
as the latter--then it necessarily follows that if we are
justified in
calling the man a fool who denies the latter, we are
also
justified in calling him a fool who says there is no God, and in
refusing to
answer him according to his folly." Which course is a very
convenient
one when you meet with an awkward opponent whom you cannot
silence by
sentiment and declamation. Again: "In conclusion, we believe
it to be very
important to be able to prove that if the mathematician be
justified in
asserting that the three angles of a triangle are equal to
two right
angles, the Christian is equally justified in asserting,
not only that
he is compelled to believe in God, but that he knows Him
(sic). And that
he who denies the existence of the Deity is as unworthy
of serious
refutation as is he who denies a mathematical demonstration."
('A
Demonstration of the Existence of God,' a lecture delivered at the
Victoria
Institute, 1870, pp. I and II.) Dr. McCann proves his very
startling
thesis by laying down as axioms six statements, which, however
luminous to
the Christian traditionalist, are obscure to the sceptical
intellect. He
seems to be conscious of this defect in his so-called
axioms, for
he proceeds to prove each of them elaborately,
forgetting
that the simple statement of an axiom should carry direct
conviction--that
it needs only to be understood in order to be accepted.
However, let
this pass: our teacher, having stated and "proved"
his axioms,
proceeds to draw his conclusions from them; and as his
foundations
are unsound, it is scarcely to be wondered at that his
superstructure
should be insecure, I know of no way so effectual to
defeat an
adversary as to beg all the questions raised, assume every
point in
dispute, call assumptions axioms, and then proceed to reason
from them. It
is really not worth while to criticise Dr. McCann in
detail, his
lecture being nothing but a mass of fallacies and unproved
assertions.
Christian courtesy allows him to call those who dissent from
his
assumptions "fools;" and as these terms of abuse are not considered
admissible by
those whom he assails as unbelievers, there is a slight
difficulty in
"answering" Dr. McCann "according to his" deserts. I
content
myself with suggesting that they who wish to learn how pretended
reasoning may
pass for solid argument, how inconsequent statements
may pass for
logic, had better study this lecture. For my own part, I
confess that
my "folly" is not, as yet, of a sufficiently pronounced
type to
enable me to accept Dr. McCann's conclusions.
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The best
representation I can select of the second orthodox party, those
who admit
that the existence of God is not demonstrable, is the late
Dean Mansel.
In his 'Limits of Religious Thought,' the Bampton Lectures
for 1867, he
takes up a perfectly unassailable position. The peculiarity
of this
position, however, is that he, the pillar of orthodoxy, the
famed
defender of the faith against German infidelity and all forms
of
rationalism, regards God from exactly the same point as does a
well-known
modern "atheist." I have almost hesitated sometimes which
writer to
quote from, so identical are they in thought. Probably neither
Dean Mansel
nor Mr. Bradlaugh would thank me for bracketing their names;
but I am
forced to confess that the arguments used by the one to prove
the endless
absurdities into which we fall when we try to comprehend the
nature of
God, are exactly the same arguments that are used by the
other to
prove that God, as believed in by the orthodox, cannot exist.
I quote,
however, exclusively from the Dean, because it is at once novel
and agreeable
to find oneself sheltered by Mother Church at the exact
moment when
one is questioning her very foundations; and also because
the Dean's
name carries with it so orthodox an odour that his authority
will tell
where the same words from any of those who are outside the
pale of
orthodoxy would be regarded with suspicion. Nevertheless, I
wish to state
plainly that a more "atheistical" book than these Bampton
Lectures--at
least, in the earlier part of it--I have never read; and
had its
title-page borne the name of any well-known Free-thinker,
it would have
been received in the religious world with a storm of
indignation.
The first
definition laid down by the orthodox as a characteristic of
God is that
he is an Infinite Being. "There is but one living and true
God... of
_infinite_ power, &c." (Article of Religion, 1.) It has been
said that
_infinite_ only means _indefinite_, but I must protest against
this
weakening of a well-defined theological term. The term _Infinite_
has always
been understood to mean far more than indefinite; it means
literally
_boundless_: the infinite has no limitations, no possible
restrictions,
no "circumference." People who do not think about the
meaning of
the words they use speak very freely and familiarly of the
"infinitude"
of God, as though the term implied no inconsistency. Deny
that God is
infinite and you are at once called an atheist, but press
your opponent
into a definition of the term and you will generally find
that he does
not know what he is talking about. Dean Mansel points out,
with his
accurate habit of mind, all that this attribute of God implies,
and it would
be well if those who "believe in an infinite God" would try
and realise
what they express. Half the battle of freethought will be
won when
people attach a definite meaning to the terms they use. The
Infinite has
no bounds; then the finite cannot exist. Why? Because in
the very act
of acknowledging any existence beside the Infinite One you
limit the
Infinite. By saying, "This is not God" you at once make him
finite,
because you set a bound to his nature; you distinguish between
him and
something else, and by the very act you limit him; that _which
is not he_ is
as a rock which checks the waves of the ocean; in that
spot a limit
is found, and in finding a limit the Infinite is destroyed.
The orthodox
may retort, "this is only a matter of terms;" but it is
well to force
them into realising the dogmas which they thrust on our
acceptance
under such awful penalties for rejection. I know what "an
infinite
God" implies, and, as apart from the universe, I feel compelled
to deny the
possibility of his existence; surely it is fair that the
orthodox
should also know what the words they use mean on this head,
and give up
the term if they cling to a "personal" God, distinct from
"creation."--Further--and
here I quote Dean Mansel--the "Infinite"
must be
conceived as containing within itself the sum, not only of all
actual, but
of all possible modes of being.... If any possible mode can
be denied of
it... it is capable of becoming more than it now is, and
such a
capability is a limitation. (The hiatus refers to the "absolute"
being of God,
which it is better to consider separately.) "An unrealised
possibility
is necessarily (a relation and) a limit." Thus is orthodoxy
crushed by
the powerful logic of its own champion. God is infinite;
then, in that
case, everything that exists is God; all phenomena are
modes of the
Divine Being; there is literally nothing which is not God.
Will the
orthodox accept this position? It lands them, it is true,
in the most
extreme Pantheism, but what of that? They believe in an
"infinite
God" and they are therefore necessarily Pantheists. If they
object to
this, they must give up the idea that their God is infinite
at all; there
is no half-way position open to them; he is infinite or
finite,
which?
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Again, God is
"before all things," he is the only Absolute Being,
dependent on
nothing outside himself; all that is not God is relative;
that is to
say, that God exists alone and is not necessarily related to
anything
else. The orthodox even believe that God did, at some
former period
(which is not a period, they say, because time then was
not--however,
at that hazy "time" he did), exist alone, _i e._, as what
is called an
_Absolute_ Being: this conception is necessary for all who,
in any sense,
believe in a _Creator_.
"Thou, in Thy far eternity,
Didst live and love alone."
So sings a
Christian minstrel; and one of the arguments put forward for
a Trinity is
that a plurality of persons is necessary in order that God
may be able
to love at the "time" when he was alone. Into this point,
however, I do
not now enter. But what does this Absolute imply? A simple
impossibility
of creation, just as does the Infinite; for creation
implies that
the relative is brought into existence, and thus the
Absolute is
destroyed. "Here again the Pantheistic hypothesis seems
forced upon
us. We can think of creation only as a change in the
condition of
that which already exists, and thus the creature is
conceivable
only as a phenomenal mode of the being of the Creator."
Thus once
more looms up the dreaded spectre of Pantheism, "the dreary
desolation of
a Pantheistic wilderness;" and who is the Moses who has
led us into
this desert? It is a leader of orthodoxy, a dignitary of the
Church; it is
Dean Mansel who stretches out his hand to the universe and
says,
"This is thy God, O Israel."
The two
highest attributes of God land us, then, in the most thorough
Pantheism;
further, before remarking on the other divine attributes, I
would
challenge the reader to pause and try to realise this infinite and
absolute
being. "That a man can be conscious of the infinite is, then,
a supposition
which, in the very terms in which it is expressed,
annihilates
itself.... The infinite, if it is to be conceived at all,
must be
conceived as potentially everything-and actually nothing; for
if there is
anything in general which it cannot become, it is thereby
limited; and
if there is anything in particular which it actually is, it
is thereby
excluded from being any other thing. But again, it must also
be conceived
as actually everything and potentially nothing; for an
unrealised
potentiality is likewise a limitation. If the infinite can
be" (in
the future) "that which it is not" (in the present) "it is by
that very
possibility marked out as incomplete and capable of a higher
perfection.
If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic
feature by
which it can be distinguished from anything else and
discerned as
an object of consciousness." I think, then, that we must be
content, on
the showing of Dr. Mansel, to allow that God is, in his
own
nature--from this point of view--quite beyond the grasp of
our
faculties; _as regards us he does not exist_, since he is
indistinguishable
and undiscernable. Well might the Church exclaim
"Save me
from my friends!" when a dean acknowledges that her God is a
self-contradictory
phantom; oddly enough, however, the Church likes
it, and
accepts this fatal championship. I might have put this argument
wholly in my
own words, for the subject is familiar to every one who has
tried to gain
a distinct idea of the Being who is called "God," but I
have
preferred to back my own opinions with the authority of so orthodox
a man as Dean
Mansel, trusting that by so doing the orthodox may be
forced to see
where logic carries them. All who are interested in
this subject
should study his lectures carefully; there is really no
difficulty in
following them, if the student will take the trouble of
mastering
once for all the terms he employs. The book was lent to me
years ago by
a clergyman, and did more than any other book I know to
make me what
is called an "infidel;" it proves to demonstration the
impossibility
of our having any logical, reasonable, and definite idea
of God, and
the utter hopelessness of trying to realise his existence.
It seems
necessary here to make a short digression to explain, for
the benefit
of those who have not read the book from which I have been
quoting, how
Dean Mansel escaped becoming an "atheist." It is a
curious fact
that the last part of this book is as remarkable for its
assumptions,
as is the earlier portion its pitiless logic. When he ought
in all reason
to say, "we can know nothing and therefore can believe
nothing,"
he says instead, "we can know nothing and therefore let us
take
Revelation for granted." An atheistic reasoner suddenly startles
us by
becoming a devout Christian; the apparent enemy of the faithful
is "transformed
into an angel of light." The existence of God "is
inconceivable
by the reason," and, therefore, "the only ground that can
be taken for
accepting one representation of it rather than another
is, that one
is revealed and the other not revealed." It is the
acknowledgment
of a previously formed _determination_ to believe at any
cost; it is a
wail of helplessness; the very apotheosis of despair. We
cannot have
history, so let us believe a fairy-tale; we can discover
nothing, so
let us assume anything; we cannot find truth, so let us take
the first
myth that comes to hand. Here I feel compelled to part company
with the
Dean, and to leave him to believe in, to adore, and to
love that
which he has himself designated as indistinguishable and
undiscernable;
it may be an act of faith but it is a crucifixion of
intellect; it
may be a satisfaction to the yearnings of the heart, but
it dethrones
reason and tramples it in the dust.
We proceed in
our study of the attributes of God. He is represented as
the Supreme
Will, the Supreme Intelligence, the Supreme Love.
_As the
Supreme Will_. What do we mean by "will?" Surely, in the usual
sense of the
word, a will implies the power and the act of choosing.
Two paths are
open to us, and we will to walk in one rather than in the
other. But
can we think of power of choice in connection with God? Of
two courses
open to us one must needs be better than the other, else
they would be
indistinguishable and be only one; perfection implies that
the higher
course will always be taken; what then becomes of the power
of choice? We
choose because we are imperfect; we do not know everything
which bears
on the matter on which we are about to exercise our will; if
we knew
everything we should inevitably be driven in one direction, that
which is the
_best possible course_. The greater the knowledge, the more
circumscribed
the will; the nobler the nature, the more impossible the
lower course.
Spinoza points out most clearly that the Divinity _could
not_ have
made things otherwise than they are made, because any change
in his action
would imply a change in his nature; God, above all, must
be bound by
necessity. If we believe in a God at all we must surely
ascribe to
him perfection of wisdom and perfection of goodness; we are
then forced
to conceive of him--however strange it may sound to those
who believe,
not only without seeing but also without thinking--as
without will,
because he must always necessarily pursue the course which
is wisest and
best.
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_As the
Supreme Intelligence_. Again, the first question is, what do
we mean by
intelligence? In the usual sense of the word intelligence
implies the
exercise of the various intellectual faculties, and gathers
up into one
word the ideas of perception, comparison, memory, judgment,
and so on.
The very enumeration of these faculties is sufficient to show
how utterly
inappropriate they are when thought of in connection with
God. Does God
perceive what he did not know before? Does he compare one
fact with
another? Does he draw conclusions from this correlation
of perceptions,
and thus judge what is best? Does he remember, as we
remember,
long past events? Perfect wisdom excludes from the idea of God
all that is
called intelligence in man; it involves unchangeableness,
complete
stillness; it implies a knowledge of all that is knowable;
it includes
an acquaintance with every fact, an acquaintance which has
never been
less in the past, and can never be more in the future. The
reception at
any time of a new thought or a new idea is impossible
to
perfection, for if it could ever be added to in the future it is
necessarily
something less than perfect in the past.
_As the
Supreme Love_. We come here to the darkest problem of existence.
Love, Ruler
of the world permeated through and through with pain, and
sorrow, and
sin? Love, mainspring of a nature whose cruelty is sometimes
appalling?
Love? Think of the "martyrdom of man!" Love? Follow the
History of
the Church! Love? Study the annals of the slave-trade! Love?
Walk the
courts and alleys of our towns! It is of no use to try and
explain away
these things, or cover them up with a veil of silence;
it is better
to look them fairly in the face, and test our creeds by
inexorable
facts. It is foolish to keep a tender spot which may not
be handled;
for a spot which gives pain when it is touched implies the
presence of
disease: wiser far is it to press firmly against it, and,
if danger
lurk there, to use the probe or the knife. We have no right
to pick out
all that is noblest and fairest in man, to project these
qualities into
space, and to call them God. We only thus create an ideal
figure, a
purified, ennobled, "magnified" Man. We have no right to
shut our eyes
to the sad _revers de la medaille_, and leave out of our
conceptions
of the Creator the larger half of his creation. If we are
to discover
the Worker from his works we must not pick and choose amid
those works;
we must take them as they are, "good" and "bad." If we only
want an
ideal, let us by all means make one, and call it _God_, if thus
we can reach
it better, but if we want a true induction we must take
_all_ facts
into account. If God is to be considered as the author of
the universe,
and we are to learn of him through his works, then we
must make
room in our conceptions of him for the avalanche and the
earthquake,
for the tiger's tooth and the serpent's fang, as well as for
the
tenderness of woman and the strength of man, the radiant glory of
the sunshine
on the golden harvest, and the gentle lapping of the summer
waves on the
gleaming shingled beach.*
* "I know it is usual for the
orthodox when vindicating the
moral character of their God to say:--'All
the Evil that
exists is of man; All that God has done is
only good.' But
granting (which facts do not substantiate)
that man is the
only author of the sorrow and the wrong
that abound in the
world, it is difficult to see how the
Creator can be free
from imputation. Did not God, according to
orthodoxy, plan
all things with an infallible perception
that the events
foreseen must occur? Was not this accurate
prescience based
upon the inflexibility of God's Eternal
purposes? As, then,
the purposes, in the order of nature, at
least preceded the
prescience and formed the groundwork of
it, man has become
extensively the instrument of doing
mischief in the world
simply because the God of the Christian
Church did not
choose to prevent man from being bad. In
other words, man is
as he is by the ordained design of God,
and, therefore, God
is responsible for all the suffering,
shame, and error,
spread by human agency.--So that the
Christian apology for
God in connection with the spectacle of
evil falls to
pieces."--Note by the Editor.
The Nature of
God, what is it? Infinite and Absolute, he evades our
touch;
without human will, without human intelligence, without human
love, where
can his faculties--the very word is a misnomer--find a
meeting-place
with ours? Is he everything or nothing? one or many? _We
know not. We
know nothing._ Such is the conclusion into which we are
driven by
orthodoxy, with its pretended faith, which is credulity, with
its pretended
proofs, which are presumptions. It defines and maps out
the
perfections of Deity, and they dissolve when we try to grasp them;
nowhere do
these ideas hold water for a moment; nowhere is this position
defensible.
Orthodoxy drives thinkers into atheism; weary of its
contradictions
they cry, "there is _no_ God"; orthodoxy's leading
thinker lands
us himself in atheism. No logical, impartial mind can
escape from
unbelief through the trap-door opened by Dean Mansel: he
has taught us
reason, and we cannot suppress reason. The "serpent
intellect"--as
the Bishop of Peterborough calls it--has twined itself
firmly round
the tree of knowledge, and in that type we do not see, with
the Hebrew,
the face of death, but, with the older faiths, we reverence
it as the
symbol of life.
There is
another fact, an historical one, still on the destructive side,
which appears
to me to be of the gravest importance, and that is the
gradual
attenuation of the idea of God before the growing light of true
knowledge. To
the savage everything is divine; he hears one God's voice
in the clap
of the thunder, another's in the roar of the earthquake,
he sees a
divinity in the trees, a deity smiles at him from the clear
depths of the
river and the lake; every natural phenomenon is the abode
of a god;
every event is controlled by a god; divine volition is at the
root of every
incident. To him the rule of the gods is a stern reality;
if he offends
them they turn the forces of nature against him; the
flood, the
famine, the pestilence, are the ministers of the avenging
anger of the
gods. As civilisation advances, the deities lessen in
number, the
divine powers become concentrated more and more in one
Being, and
God rules over the whole earth, maketh the clouds his
chariot, and
reigns above the waterfloods as a king. Physical phenomena
are still his
agents, working his will among the children of men; he
rains great
hailstones out of heaven on his enemies, he slays their
flocks and
desolates their lands, but his chosen ure safe under his
protection,
even although danger hem them in on every side; "thou shalt
not be afraid
for any terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by
day; for the
pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the sickness
that
destroyeth in the noon-day. A thousand shall fall besides thee, and
ten thousand
at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee....
He shall
defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his
feathers."
(Ps. xci., Prayer-Book.) Experience contradicted this theory
rather
roughly, and it gave way slowly before the logic of facts; it is,
however,
still more or less prevalent among ourselves, as we see when
the siege of
Paris is proclaimed as a judgment on Parisian irreligion,
and when the
whole nation falls on its knees to acknowledge the
cattle-plague
as the deserved punishment of its sins! The next step
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
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forward was
to separate the physical from the moral, and to allow that
physical
suffering came independently of moral guilt or righteousness:
the men
crushed under the fallen tower of Siloam were not thereby proved
to be more
sinful than their countrymen. The birth of science rang the
death-knell
of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power-.
The theory of
God as a miracle worker was dissipated; henceforth if God
ruled at all
it must be as in nature and not from outside of nature; he
no longer
imposed laws on something exterior to himself, the laws could
only be the
necessary expression of his own being. Laws were, further,
found to be
immutable in their working, changing not in accordance with
prayer, but
ever true to a hair's breadth in their action. Slowly, but
surely,
prayer to God for the alteration of physical phenomena is being
found to be
simply a well-meant superstition; nature swerves not for our
pleading, nor
falters in her path for our most passionate supplication.
The
"reign of law" in physical matters is becoming acknowledged even by
theologians.
As step by step the knowledge of _the natural_ advances,
so step by
step does the belief in _the supernatural_ recede; as the
kingdom of
science extends, so the kingdom of miraculous interference
gradually
disappears. The effects which of old were thought to be caused
by the direct
action of God are now seen to be caused by the uniform and
calculable
working of certain laws--laws which, when discovered, it is
the part of
wisdom implicitly to obey. Things which we used to pray for,
we now work and
wait for, and if we fail we do not ask God to add his
strength to
ours, but we sit down and lay our plans more carefully.
How is this
to end? Is the future to be like the past, and is science
finally to
obliterate the conception of a personal God? It is a question
which ought
to be pondered in the light of history. Hitherto the
supernatural
has always been the makeweight of human ignorance; is it,
in truth,
this and nothing else?
I am forced,
with some reluctance, to apply the whole of the above
reasoning to
every school of thought, whether nominally Christian or
non-Christian,
which regards God as a "magnified man." The same
stern logic
cuts every way and destroys alike the Trinitarian and the
Unitarian
hypothesis, wherever the idea of God is that of a Creator,
standing, as
it were, outside his creation. The liberal thinker,
whatever his
present position, seems driven infallibly to the above
conclusions,
as soon as he sets himself to realise his idea of his God.
The Deity
must of necessity be that one and only substance out of which
all things
are evolved under the uncreated conditions and eternal laws
of the
universe; he must be, as Theodore Parker somewhat oddly puts
it, "the
materiality of matter, as well as the spirituality of spirit;"
_i e._, these
must both be products of this one substance: a truth which
is readily
accepted as soon as spirit and matter are seen to be but
different
modes of one essence. Thus we identify substance with the
all-comprehending
and vivifying force of nature, and in so doing we
simply reduce
to a physical impossibility the existence of the Being
described by
the orthodox as a God possessing the attributes of
personality.
The Deity becomes identified with nature, co-extensive
with the
universe; but the God of the orthodox no longer exists; we may
change the
signification of God, and use the word to express a different
idea, but we
can no longer mean by it a Personal Being in the orthodox
sense,
possessing an individuality which divides him from the rest of
the universe.
I say that I use these arguments "with some reluctance,"
because many
who have fought and are fighting nobly and bravely in the
army of
freethought, and to whom all free-thinkers owe much honour, seem
to cling to
an idea of the Deity, which, however beautiful and poetical,
is not
logically defensible, and in striking at the orthodox notion of
God, one
necessarily strikes also at all idea of a "Personal" Deity.
There are
some Theists who have only cut out the Son and the Holy Ghost
from the
Triune Jehovah, and have concentrated the Deity in the Person
of the
Father; they have returned to the old Hebrew idea of God, the
Creator, the
Sustainer, only widening it into regarding God as the
Friend and
Father of all his creatures, and not of the Jewish nation
only. There
is much that is noble and attractive in this idea, and it
will possibly
serve as a religion of transition to break the shock of
the change
from the supernatural to the natural. It is reached entirely
by a process
of giving up; Christian notions are dropped one after
another, and
the God who is believed in is the residuum. This Theistic
school has
not gained its idea of God from any general survey of nature
or from any
philosophical induction from facts; it has gained it only
by stripping
off from an idea already in the mind everything which is
degrading and
revolting in the dogmas of Trinitarianism. It starts, as
I have
noticed elsewhere, from a very noble axiom: "If there be a God at
all he must
be at least as good as his highest creatures," and thus
is instantly
swept away the Augustinian idea of a God,--that monster
invented by
theological dialectics; but still the same axiom makes
God in the
image of man, and never succeeds in getting outside a human
representation
of the Divinity. It starts from this axiom, and the axiom
is prefaced
by an "if." It assumes God, and then argues fairly enough
what his
character must be. And this "if" is the very point on which the
argument of
this paper turns.
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"If
there be a God" all the rest follows, but _is there a God at all_
in the sense
in which the word is generally used? And thus I come to the
second part
of my problem; having seen that the orthodox "idea of God is
unreasonable
and absurd, is there any idea of God, worthy to be called
an idea,
which is attainable in the present state of our faculties?"
The argument
from design does not seem to me to be a satisfactory
one; it
either goes too far or not far enough. Why in arguing from the
evidences of
adaptation should we assume that they are planned by a
mind? It is
quite as easy to conceive of matter as self-existent, with
inherent
vital laws moulding it into varying phenomena, as to conceive
of any
intelligent mind directly modelling matter, so that the
"heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his
handy-work."
It is, I know, customary to sneer at the idea of beautiful
forms
existing without a conscious designer, to parallel the adaptations
of this world
to the adaptations in machinery, and then triumphantly to
inquire,
"if skill be inferred from the one, why ascribe the other to
chance?"
We do not believe in chance; the steady action of law is not
chance; the
exquisite crystals which form themselves under certain
conditions
are not a "fortuitous concourse of atoms:" the only question
is whether
the laws which we all allow to govern nature are immanent in
nature, or
the outcome of an intelligent mind. If there be a lawmaker,
is he
self-existent, or does he, in turn, as has been asked again and
again by
Positivist, Secularist, and Atheist, require a maker? If
we think for
a moment of the vast mind implied in the existence of a
Creator of
the universe, is it possible to believe that such a mind is
the result of
chance? If man's mind imply a master-mind, how much more
that of God?
Of course the question seems an absurd one, but it is quite
as pertinent
as the question about a world-maker. We must come to a
stop
somewhere, and it is quite as logical to stop at one point as at
another. The
argument from design would be valuable if we could prove,
a priori, as
Mr. Gillespie attempted to do,* the existence of a Deity;
this being
proved we might then fairly argue deductively to the various
apparent
signs of mind in the universe. Again, if we allow design we
must ask,
"how far does design extend?" If some phenomena are designed,
why not all?
And if not all, on what principle can we separate that
which is
designed from that which is not? If intellect and love reveal
a design,
what is revealed by brutality and hate? If the latter are not
the result of
design, how did they become introduced into the universe?
I repeat that
this argument implies either too much or too little.*
* "The Necessary Existence of
Deity."
There is but
one argument that appears to me to have any real weight,
and that is
the argument from instinct. Man has faculties which appear,
at present,
as though they were not born of the intellect, and it seems
to me to be
unphilosophical to exclude this class of facts from our
survey of
nature. The nature of man has in it certain sentiments and
emotions
which, reasonably or unreasonably, sway him powerfully
and
continually; they are, in fact, his strongest motive powers,
overwhelming
the reasoning faculties with resistless strength; true,
they need
discipline and controlling, but they do not need to be, and
they cannot
be, destroyed. The sentiments of love, of reverence, of
worship, are
not, as yet, reducible to logical processes; they are
intuitions,
spontaneous emotions, incomprehensible to the keen and cold
intellect.
They may be laughed at or denied, but they still exist in
spite of all;
they avenge themselves, when they are not taken into
account, by
ruining the best laid plans, and they are continually
bursting the
cords with which reason strives to tie them down. I do
not for a
moment pretend to deny that these intuitions will, as our
knowledge of
psychology increases, be reducible to strict laws; we call
them
instincts and intuitions simply because we are unable to trace them
to their
source, and this vague expression covers the vagueness of
our ideas.
Therefore, intuition is not to be accepted as a trustworthy
guide, but it
may suggest an hypothesis, and this hypothesis must then
be submitted
to the stern verification of observed facts. We are not as
yet able to
say to what the instinct in man to worship points, or what
reality
answers to his yearning. Increased knowledge will, we may hope,
reveal to us*
where there lies the true satisfaction of this instinct:
so long as
the yearning is only an "instinct" it cannot pretend to be
logically
defensible, or claim to lay down any rule of faith. But still
I think it
well to point out that this instinct exists in man, and
exists most
strongly in some of the noblest souls.
* "Is there in man any such Instinct?
May not the general
tendency to worship a Deity, everywhere be
the result of the
influence gained by Priests over the mind
by the play of the
mysterious Unknown and Hereafter upon
susceptible
imaginations? Besides, what are we to say
of the immense
number of philosophical Buddhists and
Brahmins, for whose
comfort or moral guidance the idea of a
God or a hereafter
is felt to be quite unnecessary? They
cannot comprehend it,
and consequently acts of worship to God
would be deemed by
them fanatical. It is traditionalists who
either do not
think at all, or think only within a
narrow, creed-bound
circle, that are most devoted to
worshipping Deity; and if
so, may not the whole history of worship
have its origin in
superstition and priestcraft! In that
case, the theory of an
instinct of worship falls to the
ground."--Note by the
Editor.
Of all the
various sentiments which are thus at present "intuitional,"
none is so
powerful, none so overmastering as this instinct to worship,
this
sentiment of religion. It is as natural for man to worship as to
eat. He will
do it, be it reasonable or unreasonable. Just as the baby
crams
everything into his mouth, so does man persist in worshipping
something. It
may be said that the baby's instinct does not prove that
he is right
in trying to devour a matchbox; true, but it proves the
existence of
something eatable; so fetish-worship, polytheism, theism,
do not prove
that man has worshipped rightly, but do they not prove the
existence of
something worshipable! The argument does not, of course,
pretend to
amount to a demonstration; it is nothing more than the
suggestion of
an analogy. Are we to find that the supply is correlated
to the demand
throughout nature, and yet believe that this hitherto
invariable
system is suddenly altered when we reach the spiritual part
of man? I do
not deny that this instinct is hereditary, and that it is
fostered by
habit. The idea of reverence for God is transmitted from
parent to
child; it is educated into an abnormal development, and thus
almost
indefinitely strengthened; but yet it does appear to me that the
bent to
worship is an integral part of man's nature. This instinct has
also
sometimes been considered to have its root in the feeling that
one's
individual self is but a "part of a stupendous whole;" that the
so-called
religious feeling which is evoked by a grand view or a bright
starlight
night is only the realisation of personal insignificance,
and the
reverence which rises in the soul in the presence of the mighty
universe of
which we form a part. Whatever the root and the significance
of this
instinct, there can be no doubt of its strength; there is
nothing
rouses men's passions as does theology; for religion men rush
on death more
readily and joyfully than* for any other cause; religious
fanaticism is
the most fatal, the most terrible power in the world. In
studying
history I also see the upward tendency of the race, and
note that
current which Mr. Matthew Arnold has called "that stream of
tendency, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Of course,
if there be a
conscious God, this tendency is a proof of his moral
character,
since it would be the outcome of his laws; but here again
an argument
which would be valuable were the existence of God already
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
proved, falls
blunted from the iron wall of the unknown. The same
tendency
upwards would naturally exist in any "realm of law," although
the law were
an unconscious force. For righteousness is nothing more
than
obedience to law, and where there is obedience to law, Nature's
mighty forces
lend their strength to man, and progress is secured.
Only by
obedience to law can advance be made, and this rule applies,
of course, to
morality as well as to physics. Physical righteousness is
obedience to
physical laws; moral righteousness is obedience to moral
laws: just as
physical laws are discovered by the observation of natural
phenomena, so
must moral laws be discovered by the observation of social
phenomena.
That which increases the general happiness is right; that
which tends
to destroy the general happiness is wrong. Utility is the
test of
morality. But a law must not be drawn from a single fact or
phenomenon;
facts must be carefully collated, and the general laws of
morality
drawn from a generalisation of facts. But this subject is too
large to
enter upon here, and it is only hinted at in order to note
that,
although there is a moral tendency apparent in the course of
events, it is
rather a rash assumption to take it for granted that the
power in
question is a conscious one: it may be, and that, I think, is
all we can
justly and reasonably say.
Again, as
regards Love. I have protested above against the easiness
which talks
glibly of the Supreme Love while shutting its eyes to the
supreme agony
of the world. But here, in putting forward what may be
said on the
other side of the question, I must remark that there is a
possible
explanation for sorrow and sin which is consistent with
love given
immortality of man and beast, and the future gain may then
outweigh the
present loss. But we are bound to remember that we can only
have a _hope_
of immortality; we have no demonstration of it, and this
is,
therefore, only an assumption by which we escape from a difficulty.
We ought to
be ready to acknowledge, also, that there is love in nature,
although
there is cruelty too; there is the sunshine as well as the
storm, and we
must not fix our eyes on the darkness alone and deny the
light. In
mother-love, in the love of friends, loyal through all doubt,
true in spite
of danger and difficulty, strongest when most sorely
tried, we see
gleams of so divine, so unearthly a beauty, that our
hearts
whisper to us of an universal heart pulsating throughout nature,
which, at
these rare moments, we cannot believe to be a dream. But there
seems, also,
to be a vague idea that love and other virtues could not
exist unless
derived from the Love, &c. It is true that we do conceive
certain
ideals of virtue which we personify, and to which we apply
various terms
implying affection; we speak of a love of Truth, devotion
to Freedom,
and so on. These ideals have, however, a purely subjective
existence;
they are not objective realities; there is nothing answering
to these conceptions
in the outside world, nor do we pretend to believe
in their
individuality. But when we gather up all our ideals, our
noblest
longings, and bind them into one vast ideal figure, which we
call by the
name of God, then we at once attribute to it an objective
existence,
and complain of coldness and hardness if its reality is
questioned,
and we demand to know if we can love an abstraction? The
noblest souls
do love abstractions, and live in their beauty and die for
their sake.
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206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
There
appears, also, to be a possibility of a mind in Nature, although
we have seen
that intelligence is, strictly speaking, impossible. There
cannot be
perception, memory, comparison, or judgment; but may there
not be a
perfect mind, unchanging, calm, and still? Our faculties
fail us when
we try to estimate the Deity, and we are betrayed into
contradictions
and absurdities; but does it therefore follow that He
is not? It
seems to me that to deny his existence is to overstep the
boundaries of
our thought-power almost as much as to try and define it.
We pretend to
know the Unknown if we declare Him to be the Unknowable.
Unknowable to
us at present, yes! Unknowable for ever, in other possible
stages' of
existence?--We have reached a region into which we cannot
penetrate;
here all human faculties fail us; we bow our heads on "the
threshold of
the unknown."
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the
eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this
Vision--were it not He?
Thus sings
Alfred Tennyson, the poet of metaphysics: "if we could see
and
hear"; alas! it is always an "if."
We come back
to the opening of this essay: what is the practical result
of our ideas
about the Divinity, and how do these ideas affect the daily
working life?
What conclusions are we to draw from the undeniable fact
that, even if
there be a "personal God," his nature and existence are
beyond our
faculties, that "clouds and darkness are round about him,"
that he is
veiled in eternal silence and reveals himself not to men?
Surely the
obvious inference is that, if he does-really exist, he
desires to
conceal himself from the inhabitants of our world. I repeat,
that if the
Deity exist, he does-not wish us to know of his existence.
There may be,
in the very nature of things, an impossibility of his
revealing
himself to men; we may have no faculties with which to
apprehend
him; can we reveal the stars and the rippling expanse of ocean
to the
sightless limpet on the rock? Whether this be so or not, certain
is it that
the Deity does not reveal himself; either he cannot or he
will not. And
the reason--I am granting for the moment, for argument's
sake, his
personal existence--is not far to seek; it is blazed upon
the face of
history. For what has been the result of theology upon the
whole? It has
turned men's eyes from earth, to fix them on heaven; it
has bid them
be careless of the temporal, while luring them to grasp at
the eternal;
it has induced multitudes to lavish fervent sentiment
upon a
conception framed by Priests of an incomprehensible God, while
diverting
their strength from the plain duties which Humanity has before
it; it has
taught them to live for the world to come, when they should
live for the
world around them; it has made earth's wrongs endurable
with the hope
of the glory to be revealed. Wisely indeed would the
Deity hide
himself, when even a phantom of him has wrought such fatal
mischief; and
never will real and steady progress be secured until men
acquiesce in
this beneficent law of their nature, which draws a stern
circle of the
"limits of Religious Thought" and bids them concentrate
their
attention on the work they have to do in this world, instead of
being
"for ever peering into and brooding over the world beyond the
grave."
"What is to be our conception of morality, is it to base itself
on obedience
to God, or is it to be sought for itself and its effects?"
When we admit
that God is beyond our knowing, morality becomes at once
necessarily
grounded on utility, or the natural adaptation of certain
feelings and
actions to promote the general welfare of society. As
no revelation
is given to us as one "infallible standard of right and
wrong,"
we must form our morality for ourselves from thought and from
experience.
For example, our moral nature, as educated under the highest
civilisation,
tells us that lying is wrong;* with this hypothesis in our
minds we
study facts, and discover that lying causes mistrust, anarchy,
and ruin;
thence we lay down as a moral law, "Lie not at all." The
science of
morality must be content to grow like other sciences; first
an
hypothesis, round which to group our facts, then from the collected
and collated
facts reasoning up to a solid law. Scientific morality has
this great
advantage over revealed, that it stands on firm, unassailable
ground; new
facts will alter its details, but can never touch its
method; like
all other sciences, it is at once positive and progressive.
* All men do not think lying wrong, e g..
Thugs and old
Spartans. Therefore it is not our moral
nature that
intuitively tells us thus, but our moral
nature as
instructed by the moral ideas prevailing in the society in
which we happen to be living.--Note by the
Editor.
"_Is our
mental attitude to be kneeling or standing?_" When we admit
that the
Deity is veiled from us, how can we pray? When we see that that
law is
inexorable, of what use to protest against its absolute sway?
When we feel
that all, including ourselves, are but modes of Being which
is one and
universal, and in which we "live and move," how shall we pray
to that which
is close to us as our own souls, part of our very selves,
inseparable
from our thoughts, sharing our consciousness? As well talk
aloud to
ourselves as pray to the universal Essence. Children _cry_ for
what they
want; men and women _work_ for it. There are two points of
view from
which we may regard prayer: from the one it is a piece of
childishness
only, from the other it is sheer impertinence. Regarding
Nature's
mighty order, her grand, silent, unvarying march,--the
importunity which
frets against her changeless progress is a mark of the
most extreme
childishness of mind; it shows that complete irreverence
of spirit
which cannot conceive the idea of a greatness before which
the
individual existence is as nothing, and that infantile conceit
which
imagines that its own plans and playthings rival in importance
the struggles
of nations and the interests of distant worlds. Regarding
Nature's laws
as wiser than our own whims, the idea which finds its
outlet in
prayer is a gross impertinence; who are we that we should
take it on
ourselves to remind Nature of her work, God of his duty? Is
there any
impertinence so extreme as the prayer which "pleads" with the
Deity? There
is only one kind of "prayer" which is reasonable, and that
is the deep,
silent, adoration of the greatness and beauty and order
around us, as
revealed in the realms of non-rational life and in
Humanity; as
we bow our heads before the laws of the universe and mould
our lives
into obedience to their voice, we find a strong, calm peace
steal over
our hearts, a perfect trust in the ultimate triumph of the
right, a
quiet determination to "make our lives sublime." Before our
own high
ideals, before those lives which show us "how high the tides of
divine life
have risen in the human world," we stand with hushed voice
and veiled
face; from them we draw strength to emulate, and even dare
struggle to
excel. The contemplation of the ideal is true prayer; it
inspires, it
strengthens, it ennobles. The other part of prayer is work:
from contemplation
to labour, from the forest to the street. Study
Nature's
laws, conform to them, work in harmony with them, and work
becomes a
prayer and a thanksgiving, an adoration of the universal
wisdom, and a
true obedience to the universal law.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"_Is the
mainspring of our actions to be the idea of duty to God, or the
of loyalty to
law and to man's well-being?_" We cannot serve God in any
real sense;
we are awed before the Unknown, but we cannot _serve_ it.
For the
Mighty, for the Incomprehensible, what can we do? But we can
serve man,
ay, and he needs our service; service of brain and hand,
service
untiring and unceasing, service through life and unto-death.
The race to
which we belong (our own families and kinsfolk, and then the
community at
large) has the first claim on our allegiance, a claim from
which nothing
can release us until death drops a veil over our work.
Surely I may
claim that my subject is not an unpractical one, and that
our ideas of
the Nature and Existence of God influence our lives in a
very real
way. If I have substituted a different basis of morality for
that on which
it now stands, if I have suggested a different theory of
prayer, and
offered a different motive for duty, surely these changes
affect the
whole of human life And if one by one these theories ate
denied by the
orthodox, and they reject them because they sever human
life from
that which is called revealed religion, is not my position
justified,
that the ideas we hold of God are the ruling forces of our
lives? that
it is of primary importance to the welfare of mankind that
a false
theory on this point should be destroyed and a more reasonable
faith
accepted?
Will any one
exclaim, "You are taking all beauty out of human life,
all hope, all
warmth, all inspiration; you give us cold duty for filial
obedience, and
inexorable law in the place of God?" All beauty from
life? Is
there, then, no beauty in the idea of forming part of the great
life of the
universe, no beauty in conscious harmony with Nature, no
beauty in
faithful service, no beauty in ideals of every virtue? "All
hope?"
Why, I give you more than hope, I give you certainty: if I bid
you labour
for this world, it is with the knowledge that this world will
repay you a
thousandfold, because society will grow purer, freedom more
settled, law
more honoured, life more full and glad. What is your hope?
A heaven in
the clouds. I point to a heaven attainable on earth. "All
warmth?"
What! You serve warmly a God unknown and invisible, in a sense
the projected
shadow of your own imaginings, and can only serve
coldly your
brother whom you see at your side? There is no warmth in
brightening
the lot of the sad, in reforming abuses, in establishing
equal justice
for rich and poor? You find warmth in the church, but none
in the home?
Warmth in imagining the cloud-glories of heaven, but none
in creating
substantial glories on earth? "All inspiration?" If you want
inspiration
to feeling, to sentiment, perhaps you had better keep to
your Bible
and your creeds; if you want inspiration to work, go and walk
through the
east of London, or the back streets of Manchester. You
are inspired
to tenderness as you gaze at the wounds of Jesus, dead in
Judaea long
ago, and find no inspiration in the wounds of men and women
dying in the
England of to-day? You "have tears to shed for him,"
but none for
the sufferer at your doors? His passion arouses your
sympathies,
but you see no pathos in the passion of the poor? Duty is
colder than
"filial obedience?" What do you mean by filial obedience?
Obedience to
your ideal of goodness and love, is it not so? Then how is
duty cold? I
offer you ideals for your homage: here is Truth for your
Mistress, to
whose exaltation you shall devote your intellect; here is
Freedom for
your General, for whose triumph you shall fight; here is
Love for your
Inspirer, who shall influence your every thought; here is
Man for your
Master--not in heaven but on earth--to whose service you
shall
consecrate every faculty of your being. Inexorable law in the
place of God?
Yes: a stern certainty that you shall not waste your life,
yet gather a
rich reward at the close; that you shall not sow misery,
yet reap
gladness; that you shall not be selfish, yet be crowned with
love, nor
shall you sin, yet find safety in repentance. True, our creed
is a stern
one, stern with the beautiful sternness of Nature. But if we
be in the
right, look to yourselves: laws do not check their action
for your
ignorance; fire will not cease to scorch, because "you did not
know."
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206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We know
nothing beyond Nature; we judge of the future by the present
and the past;
we are content to work now, and let the work to come
wait until it
appears as the work to do; we find that our faculties
are
sufficient for fulfilling the tasks within our reach, and we cannot
waste time
and strength in gazing into impenetrable darkness. We must
needs fight
against superstitions, because they hinder the advancement
of the race,
but we will not fall into the error of opponents and try to
define the
Undefinable.
EUTHANASIA.
I HAVE
already related to you with what care they look after their
sick, so that
nothing is left undone which may contribute either to
their health
or ease. And as for those who are afflicted with incurable
disorders,
they use all possible means of cherishing them, and of making
their lives
as comfortable as possible; they visit them often, and take
great pains
to make their time pass easily. But if any have torturing,
lingering
pain, without hope of recovery or ease, the priests and
magistrates
repair to them and exhort them, since they are unable to
proceed with
the business of life, are become a burden to themselves and
all about
them, and have in reality outlived themselves, they should no
longer
cherish a rooted disease, but choose to die since they cannot but
live in great
misery; being persuaded, if they thus deliver themselves
from torture,
or allow others to do it, they shall be happy after death.
Since they
forfeit none of the pleasures, but only the troubles of life
by this, they
think they not only act reasonably, but consistently with
religion; for
they follow the advice of their priests, the expounders
of God's
will. Those who are wrought upon by these persuasions, either
starve
themselves or take laudanum. But no one is compelled to end his
life thus;
and if they cannot be persuaded to it, the former care and
attendance on
it is continued. And though they esteem a voluntary death,
when chosen
on such authority, to be very honourable, on the contrary,
if any one
commit suicide without the concurrence of the priest and
senate, they
honour not the body with a decent funeral, but throw into a
ditch.*
* Memoirs. A translation of the Utopia,
&c, of Sir Thomas
Moore, Lord High Chancellor of England. By
A. Cayley the
Younger, pp. 102,103. (Edition of 1808.)
In pleading
for the morality of Euthanasia, it seems not unwise to
show that so
thoroughly religious a man as Sir Thomas Moore deemed that
practice so
consonant with a sound morality as to make it one of the
customs of
his ideal state, and to place it under the sanction of the
priesthood.
As a devout Roman Catholic, the great Chancellor would
naturally
imagine that any beneficial innovation would be sure to obtain
the support
of the priesthood; and although we may differ from him on
this head,
since our daily experience teaches _us_ that the priest may
be counted
upon as the steady opponent of all reform, it is yet
not
uninstructive to note that the deep religious feeling which
distinguished
this truly good man, did not shrink from this idea of
euthanasia as
from a breach of morality, nor did he apparently dream
that any
opposition would (or could) be offered to it on religious
grounds. The
last sentence of the extract is specially important; in
discussing
the morality of euthanasia we are not discussing the moral
lawfulness or
unlawfulness of suicide in general; we may protest against
suicide, and
yet uphold euthanasia, and we may even protest against the
one and
uphold the other, on exactly the same principle, as we shall see
further on.
As the greater includes the less, those who consider that a
man has a
right to choose whether he will live or not, and who therefore
regard all
suicide as lawful, will, of course, approve of euthanasia;
but it is by
no means necessary to hold this doctrine because we contend
for the
other. _On the general question of the morality of suicide, this
paper
expresses no opinion whatever_. This is not the point, and we do
not deal with
it here. This essay is simply and solely directed to prove
that there
are circumstances under which a human being has a moral right
to hasten the
inevitable approach of death. The subject is one which is
surrounded by
a thick fog of popular prejudice, and the arguments in
its favour
are generally dismissed unheard. I would therefore crave the
reader's generous
patience, while laying before him the reasons
which dispose
many religious and social reformers to regard it as of
importance
that euthanasia should be legalised.
In the fourth
Edition of an essay on Euthanasia, by P. D. Williams,
jun.,--an
essay which powerfully sums up what is to be said for and
against the
practice in question, and which treats the whole subject
exhaustively--we
find the proposition for which we contend laid down in
the following
explicit terms:
"That in
all cases of hopeless and painful illness, it should be the
recognised
duty of the medical attendant, whenever so desired by the
patient, to
administer chloroform, or such other anaesthetic as may
by-and-by
supersede chloroform, so as to destroy consciousness at once,
and to put
the sufferer to a quick and painless death; all needful
precautions
being adopted to prevent any abuse of such duty; and means
being taken
to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt or question,
that the
remedy was applied at the express wish of the patient."
It is very
important, at the outset, to lay down clearly the limitations
of the
proposed medical reform. It is, sometimes, thoughtlessly stated
that the
supporters of euthanasia propose to put to death all persons
suffering
from incurable disorders; no assertion can be more inaccurate
or more
calculated to mislead. We propose only, that where an incurable
disorder is
accompanied with extreme pain--pain, which nothing can
alleviate
except death--pain, which only grows worse as the inevitable
doom approaches--pain,
which drives almost to madness, and which must
end in the
intensified torture in the death agony--that pain should be
at once
soothed by the administration of an anaesthetic, which should
not only
produce unconsciousness, but should be sufficiently powerful
to end a
life, in which the renewal of consciousness can only be
simultaneous
with the renewal of pain. So long as life has some
sweetness
left in it, so long the offered mercy is not needed;
euthanasia is
a relief from unendurable agony, not an enforced
extinguisher
of a still desired existence. Besides, no one proposes to
make it
obligatory on anybody; it is only urged that where the patient
asks for the
mercy of a speedy death, instead of a protracted one, his
prayer may be
granted without any danger of the penalties of murder or
manslaughter
being inflicted on the doctors and nurses in attendance. I
will lay
before the reader a case which is within my own knowledge,--and
which can be
probably supplemented by the sad experience of almost every
individual,--in
which the legality of euthanasia would have been a boon
equally to
the sufferer and to her family. A widow lady was suffering
from cancer
in the breast, and as the case was too far advanced for the
ordinary
remedy of the knife, and as the leading London surgeons refused
to risk an
operation which might hasten, but could not retard, death,
she resolved,
for the sake of her orphan children, to allow a medical
practitioner
to perform a terrible operation, whereby he hoped to
prolong her
life for some years. Its details are too-painful to enter
into
unnecessarily; it will suffice to say that it was performed by
means of
quick-lime, and that the use of chloroform was impossible.
When the
operation, which extended over days, was but half over,
the
sufferer's strength gave way, and the doctor was compelled to
acknowledge
that even a prolongation of life was impossible, and that
to complete
the operation could only hasten death. So the patient had to
linger on in
almost unimaginable torture, knowing that the pain could
only end in
death, seeing her relatives worn out by watching, and
agonised at
the sight of her sufferings, and yet compelled to live on
from hour to
hour, till at last the anguish culminated in death. Is it
possible for
any one to believe that it would have been wrong to have
hastened the
inevitable end, and thus to have shortened the agony of
the sufferer
herself, and to have also-spared her nurses months of
subsequent
ill-health. It is in such cases as this that euthanasia would
be useful. It
is, however, probable that all will agree that the benefit
conferred by
the legalisation of euthanasia would, in many instances, be
very great;
but many feel that the objections to it, on moral grounds,
are so
weighty, that no physical benefit could countervail the moral
wrong. These
objections, so far as I can gather them, are as follows:--
Life is the
gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only be taken
back by the
giver of life.*
* We, of course, here, have no concern
with theological
questions touching the existence or
non-existence of Deity,
and express no opinion about them.
Euthanasia is
an interference with the course of nature, and is
therefore an
act of rebellion against God.
Pain is a
spiritual remedial agent inflicted by God, and should
therefore be
patiently endured.
_Life is the
gift of God, and is therefore sacred, and must only
be taken back
by the Giver of life_. This objection is one of those
high-sounding
phrases which impose on the careless and thoughtless
hearer, by
catching up a form of words which is generally accepted as an
unquestionable
axiom, and by hanging thereupon an unfair corollary.
The ordinary
man or woman, on hearing this assertion, would probably
answer--"Life
sacred? Yes, of course; on the sacredness of life depends
the safety of
society; anything which tampers with this principle must
be both wrong
and dangerous." And yet, such is the inconsistency of the
thoughtless,
that, five minutes afterwards, the same person will glow
with
passionate admiration at some noble deed, in which the sacredness
of life has
been cast to the winds at the call of honour or of humanity,
or will utter
words ot indignant contempt at the baseness which counted
life more
sacred than duty or principle. That life is sacred is an
undeniable
proposition; every natural gift is sacred, _i e._, is
valuable, and
is not to be lightly destroyed; life, as summing up all
natural
gifts, and as containing within itself all possibilities of
usefulness
and happiness, is the most sacred physical possession which
we own. But
it is _not_ the most sacred thing on earth. Martyrs slain
for the sake
of principles which they could not truthfully deny;
patriots who
have died for their country; heroes who have sacrificed
themselves
for others' good;--the very flower and glory of humanity
rise up in a
vast crowd to protest that conscience, honour, love,
self-devotion,
are more precious to the race than is the life of the
individual.
Life is sacred, but it may be laid down in a noble cause;
life is
sacred, but it must bend before the holier sacredness of
principle;
life which, though sacred, can be destroyed, is as nothing
before the
indestructible ideals which claim from every noble soul the
sacrifice of
personal happiness, of personal greatness, yea, of personal
life.*
* The word "life" is here used
in the sense of "personal
existence in this world." It is, of
course, not intended to
be asserted that life is really
destructible, but only that
personal existence, or identity, may be
destroyed. And
further, no opinion is given on the
possibility of life
otherwhere than on this globe; nothing is
spoken of except
life on earth, under the conditions of
human existence.
It will be
conceded, then, on all hands, that the proposition that life
is sacred
must be accepted with many limitations: the proposition, in
fact, amounts
only to this, that life must not be voluntarily laid down
without grave
and sufficient cause. What we have to consider is, whether
there are
present, in any proposed euthanasia, such conditions as
overbear
considerations for the acknowledged sanctity of life. We
contend that
in the cases in which it is proposed that death should be
hastened,
these conditions do exist.
We will not
touch here on the question of the endurance of pain as a
duty, for we
will examine that further on. But is it a matter of no
importance
that a sufferer should condemn his attendants to a prolonged
drain on
their health and strength, in order to cling to a life which is
useless to
others, and a burden to himself? The nurse who tends, perhaps
for weeks, a
bed of agony, for which there is no cure but death--whose
senses are
strained by intense watchfulness--whose nerves are racked
by witnessing
torture which she is powerless to alleviate--is, by
her
self-devotion, sowing in her own constitution the seeds of
ill-health--that
is to say, she is deliberately shortening her own life.
We have seen
that we have a right to shorten life in obedience to a call
of duty, and
it will at once be said that the nurse is obeying such a
call. But has
the nurse a right to sacrifice her own life--and an
injury to
health is a sacrifice of life--for an obviously unequivalent
advantage? We
are apt to forget, because the injury is partially veiled
to us, that
we touch the sacredness of life whenever we touch health:
every case of
over-work, of over-strain, of over-exertion, is, so to
speak, a
modified case of euthanasia. To poison the spring of life is
as real a
tampering with the sacredness of life as it is to check its
course. The
nurse is really committing a slow euthanasia. Either the
patient or
the nurse must commit an heroic suicide for the sake of the
other--which
shall it be? Shall the life be sacrificed, which is torture
to its
possessor, useless to society, and whose bounds are already
clearly
marked? or shall a strong and healthy life, with all its future
possibilities,
be undermined and sacrificed _in addition to that which
is already
doomed?_ But, granting that the sublime generosity of the
nurse stays
not to balance the gain with the loss, but counts herself as
nothing in
the face of a human need, then surely it is time to urge then
to permit
this self-sacrifice is an error, and that to accept it is a
crime. If it
be granted that the throwing away of life for a manifestly
unequivalent
gain is wrong, that we ought not to blind ourselves to the
fact, that to
sacrifice a healthy life in order to lengthen by a few
short weeks a
doomed life, is a grave moral error, however much it may
be redeemed
in the individual by the glory of a noble self-devotion.
Allowing to
the full the honour due to the heroism of the nurse, what
are we to say
to the patient who accepts the sacrifice? What are we to
think of the
morality of a human being who, in order to preserve the
miserable
remnant of life left to him, allows another to shorten life?
If we honour
the man who sacrifices himself to defend his family, or
risks his own
life to save theirs, we must surely blame him who, on the
contrary,
sacrifices those he ought to value most, in order to prolong
his own now
useless existence. The measure of our admiration for the
one, must be
the measure of our pity for the weakness and selfishness of
the other. If
it be true that the man who dies for his dear ones on the
battlefield
is a hero, he who voluntarily dies for them on his bed of
sickness is a
hero no less brave. But it is urged that _life is the gift
of God, and
must only be taken back by the Giver of life_, I suppose
that in any
sense in which it can be supposed true that life is the gift
of God, it
can only be taken back by the giver--that is to say, that
just as life
is produced in accordance with certain laws, so it can
only be
destroyed in accordance with certain other laws. Life is not the
direct gift
of a superior power: it is the gift of man to man and
animal to
animal, produced by the voluntary agent, and not by God, under
physical
conditions, on the fulfilment of which alone the production of
life depends.
The physical conditions must be observed if we desire to
produce life,
and so must they be if we desire to destroy life. In
both cases
man is the voluntary agent, in both law is the means of his
action. If
life-giving is God's doing, then life-destroying is his doing
too. But this
is not what is intended by the proposers of this aphorism.
If they will
pardon me for translating their somewhat vague proposition
into more
precise language, they say that they find themselves in
possession of
a certain thing called life, which must have come from
_somewhere_;
and as in popular language the unknown is always the
divine, it
must have come from God: therefore this life must only be
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
taken from
them by a cause that also proceeds from _somewhere_--i e.,
from an
unknown cause--i e., from the Divine will. Chloroform comes from
a visible
agent, from the doctor or nurse, or at least from a bottle,
which can be
taken up or left alone at our own choice. If we swallow
this, the
cause of death is known, and is evidently not divine; but if
we go into a
house where scarlet fever is raging, although we are in
that case
voluntarily running the chance of taking poison quite as truly
as if we
swallow a dose of chloroform, yet if we die from the infection,
we can
imagine the illness to be sent from God. Wherever we think the
element of
chance comes in, there we are able to imagine that God rules
directly. We
quite overlook the fact that there is no such thing as
chance. There
is only our ignorance of law, not a break in natural
order. If our
constitution be susceptible of the particular poison
to which we
expose it, we take the disease. If we knew the laws of
infection as
accurately as we know the laws affecting chloroform,
we should be
able to foresee with like certainty the inevitable
consequence;
and our ignorance does not make the action of either set of
laws less
unchangeable or more divine. But in the "happy-go-lucky" style
of thought
peculiar to ignorance, the Christian disregards the fact
that
infection is ruled by definite laws, and believes that health and
sickness are
the direct expressions of the will of his God, and not the
invariable
consequence of obscure but probably discoverable antecedents;
so he boldly
goes into the back slums of London to nurse a family
stricken down
with fever, and knowingly and deliberately runs "the
chance"
of infection--i e., knowingly and deliberately runs the chance
of taking
poison, or rather of having poison poured into his frame.
This he does,
trusting that the nobility of his motive will make the
act right in
God's sight. Is it more noble to relieve the sufferings of
strangers,
than to relieve the sufferings of his family? or is it more
heroic to die
of voluntarily-contracted fever, than of voluntarily-taken
chloroform?
The argument
that _life must only be taken back by the life-giver_,
would, if
thoroughly carried out, entirely prevent all dangerous
operations.
In the treatment of some diseases there are operations that
will either
kill or cure: the disease must certainly be fatal if left
alone; while
the proposed operation may save life, it may equally
destroy it,
and thus may take life some time before the giver of life
wanted to
take it back. Evidently, then, such operations should not
be performed,
since there is risked so grave an interference with the
desires of
the life-giver. Again, doctors act very wrongly when they
allow certain
soothing medicines to be taken when all hope is gone,
which they
refuse so long as a chance of recovery remains: what
right have
they to _compel_ the life-giver to follow out his apparent
intentions?
In some cases of painful disease, it is now usual to produce
partial or
total unconsciousness by the injection of morphia, or by the
use of some other
anaesthetic. Thus, I have known a patient subjected to
this kind of
treatment, when dying from a tumour in the aesophagus; he
was
consequently for some weeks before his death, kept in a state
of almost
complete unconsciousness, for if he were allowed to become
conscious,
his agony was so unendurable as to drive him wild. He was
thus,
although breathing, practically dead for weeks before his death.
We cannot but
wonder, in view of such a case as his, what it is that
people mean
when they talk of "life." Life includes, surely, not only
the
involuntary animal functions, such as the movements of heart and
lungs; but
consciousness, thought, feeling, emotion. Of the various
constituents
of human life, surely those are not the most "sacred" which
we share with
the brute, however necessary these may be as the basis on
which the
rest are built. It is thought, then, that we may rightfully
destroy all
that constitutes the beauty and nobility of human life, we
may kill
thought, slay consciousness, deaden emotion, stop feeling,
we may do all
this, and leave lying on the bed before us a breathing
figure, from
which we have taken all the nobler possibilities of life;
but we may
not touch the purely animal existence; we may rightly
check the
action of the nerves and the brain, but we must not dare to
outrage-the
Deity by checking the action of the heart and the lungs.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We ask, then,
for the legalisation of euthanasia, because it is in
accordance
with the highest morality yet known, that which teaches the
duty of self
sacrifice for the greater good of others, because it is
sanctioned in
principle by every service performed at personal danger
and injury,
and because-it is already partially practised by modern
improvements
in medical science.
_Euthanasia
is an interference with the course of nature, and its
herefore an
act of rebellion against God_. In considering this
objection, we
are placed in difficulty by not being told what sense our
opponents
attach to the word "nature"; and we are obliged once more
to ask pardon
for forcing these vague and high-flown arguments into a
humiliating
precision of meaning. Nature, in the widest sense of the
word,
includes all natural laws: and in this sense it is of course
impossible to
interfere with nature at all. We live, and move, and have
our being in
nature; and we can no more get outside it than we can get
outside
everything. With this-nature we cannot interfere: we can study
its laws, and
learn how to balance one law against another, so as to
modify
results; but this can only be done by and through nature itself.
The
"interference with the course of nature" which is intended in the
above
objection does not of course mean this impossible proceeding; and
it can then
only mean an interference with things which would proceed
in one course
without human agency meddling with them, but which are
susceptible
of being turned into another course by human agency. If
interference
with nature's course be a rebellion against God, we are
rebelling
against God every day of our lives. Every achievement of
civilisation
is an interference with nature. Every artificial comfort we
enjoy is an
improvement on nature. Everybody professes to approve and
admire many
great triumphs of art over nature: the junction by bridges
of shores
which nature had made separate, the draining of nature's
marshes, the
excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what
she has
buried at immense depths in the earth, the turning away of her
thunderbolts
by lightning-rods, of her inundations by embankments, of
her ocean by
breakwaters. But to commend these and similar feats, is
to
acknowledge that the ways of nature are to be conquered, not obeyed;
that her
powers are often towards man in the position of enemies, from
whom he must
wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his
own use, and
deserves to be applauded when that little is rather more
than might be
expected from his physical weakness in comparison to those
gigantic
powers. All praise of civilisation, or art, or contrivance, is
so much
dispraise of nature; an admission of imperfection, which it
is man's
business, and merit, to be always endeavouring to correct or
mitigate.*
* "Essay on Nature," by John
Stuart Mill.
It is
difficult to understand how anyone, contemplating the course of
nature, can
regard it as the expression of a Divine will, which man has
no right to
improve upon. Natural law is essentially unreasoning and
unmoral:
gigantic forces clash around us on every side unintelligent,
and unvarying
in their action. With equal impassiveness these blind
forces
produce vast benefits and work vast catastrophes. The benefits
are ours, if
we are able to grasp them; but nature troubles itself not,
whether we
take them or leave them alone. The catastrophes may rightly
be averted,
if we can avert them; but nature stays not its grinding
wheel for our
moans. Even allowing that a Supreme Intelligence gave
these forces
their being, it is manifest that he never intended man to
be their
plaything, or to do them homage; for man is dowered with reason
to calculate,
and with genius to foresee; and into man's hands is given
the realm of
nature (in this world) to cultivate, to govern, to improve.
So long as
men believed that a god wielded the thunderbolt, so long
would a
lightning-conductor be an outrage on Jove; so long as a god
guided each
force of nature, so long would it be impiety to resist,
or to
endeavour to regulate the divine volitions. Only as experience
gradually
proved that no evil consequences followed each amendment of
nature, were
natural forces withdrawn, one by one, from the sphere
of the
unknown and the divine. Now, even pain, that used to be God's
scourge, is
soothed by chloroform, and death alone is left for nature
to inflict,
with what lingering agony it may. But why should death,
any more than
other ills, be left entirely to the clumsy, unassisted
processes of
nature?--why, after struggling against nature all our
lives, should
we let it reign unopposed in death? There are some natural
evils that we
cannot avert. Pain and death are of these; but we can dull
pain by
dulling feeling, and we can ease by shortening its pangs. Nature
kills by slow
and protracted torture; we can defy it by choosing a rapid
and painless
end. It is only the remains of the old superstition that
makes men
think that to take life is the special prerogative of
the gods.
With marvellous inconsistency, however, the opponents of
euthanasia do
not scruple to "interfere with the course of nature" on
the one hand,
while they forbid us to interfere on the other. It is
right to
prolong pain by art, although it is wrong to shorten it. When a
person is
smitten down with some fearful and incurable disease, they do
not leave him
to nature; on the contrary, they check and thwart nature
in every
possible way; they cherish the life that nature has blasted;
they nourish
the strength that nature is undermining; they delay each
process of
decay which nature sows in the disordered frame; they contest
every inch of
ground with nature to preserve life; and then, when life
means
torture, and we ask permission to step in and quench it, they cry
out that we
are interfering with nature. If they would leave nature to
itself, the
disease would generally kill with tolerable rapidity; but
they will not
do this. They will only admit the force of their own
argument when
it tells on the side of what they choose to consider
right.
"Against nature," is the cry with which many a modern improvement
has been
howled at; and it will continue to be raised, until it is
generally
acknowledged that happiness, and not nature, is the true guide
to morality,
and until men recognises that nature is to be harnessed to
his car of
triumph, and to bend its mighty forces to fulfil the human
will.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
_Pain is a
spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by God, and should
therefore be
patiently endured._ Does anyone, except a self-torturing
ascetic,
endure any pain which he can get rid of? This might be deemed
a sufficient
answer to this objection, for common sense always bids
us avoid all
possible pain, and daily experience tells us that people
invariably evade
pain, wherever such evasion is possible. The objection
ought to run:
"pain is a spiritual remedial agent, inflicted by God,
which is to
be got rid of as soon as possible, but ought to be patiently
endured when
unavoidable." Pain as pain has no recommendations,
spiritual or
otherwise; nor is there the smallest merit in a voluntary
and needless
submission to pain. As to its remedial and educational
advantages,
it as often as not sours the temper and hardens the heart;
if a person
endures great physical or mental pain with unruffled
patience, and
comes out of it with uninjured tenderness and sweetness,
we may rest
assured that we have come across a rare and beautiful nature
of
exceptional strength. As a general rule, pain, especially if it be
mental, hardens
and roughens the character. The use of anaesthetics is
utterly
indefensible, if physical pain is to be regarded as a special
tool whereby
God cultivates the human soul. If God is directly acting on
the
sufferer's body, and is educating his soul by racking his nerves,
by what right
does the doctor step between with his impious anaesthetic,
and by
reducing the patient to unconsciousness, deprive God of his
pupil, and
man of his lesson? If pain be a sacred ark, over which hovers
the divine
glory, surely it must be a sinful act to touch the holy
thing. We may
be inflicting incalculable spiritual damage by frustrating
the divine
plan of education, which was corporeal agony as a spiritual
agent.
Therefore, if this argument be good for anything at all, we
must from
henceforth eschew all anaesthetics, we must take no steps
to alleviate
human agony, we must not venture to interfere with this
beneficent
agent, but must leave nature to torture us it will. But we
utterly deny
that the unnecessary endurance of pain is even a merit,
much less a
duty; on the contrary, we believe that it is our duty to
war against
pain as much as possible, to alleviate it wherever we cannot
stop it
entirely; and, where continuous and frightful agony can only end
in death,
then to give to the sufferer the relief he craves for, in
the sleep
which is mercy. "It is a mercy God has taken him," is an
expression
often heard when the racked frame at last lies quiet, and the
writhed
features settle slowly into the peaceful smile of the dead. That
mercy we
plead that man should be allowed to give to man, when human
skill and
human tenderness have done their best, and when they have left
within their
reach no greater boon than a speedy and painless death.
We are not
aware that any objection, which may not be classed under one
or other of
these three heads, has been levelled against the proposition
that
euthanasia should be legalised. It has, indeed, been suggested that
to put into-a
doctor's hands this "power of life and death," would be
to offer a
dangerous temptation to those who have any special object to
gain by
putting a troublesome person quietly out of the way. But this
objection
overlooks the fact that the patient himself must _ask_ for the
draught, that
stringent precautions can be taken to render euthanasia
impossible
except at the patient's earnestly, or even repeatedly,
expressed
wish, that any doctor or attendant, neglecting to take these
precautions,
would then, as now, be liable to all the penalties for
murder or for
manslaughter; and that an ordinary doctor would no more
be ready to
face these penalties then, than he is now, although he
undoubtedly
has now the power of putting the patient to death with but
little chance
of discovery. Euthanasia would not render murder less
dangerous
than it is at present, since no one asks that a nurse may be
empowered to
give a patient a dose which would ensure death, or that she
might be
allowed to shield herself from punishment on the plea that the
patient desired
it. If our opponents would take the trouble to find out
what we do
ask, before they condemn our propositions, it would greatly
simplify
public discussion, not alone in this case, but in many proposed
reforms.
It may be
well, also, to point out the wide line of demarcation which
separated
euthanasia from what is ordinarily called suicide. Euthanasia,
like suicide,
is a voluntarily chosen death, but there is a radical
difference
between the motives which prompt the similar act. Those who
commit suicide
thereby render themselves useless to society for the
future; they
deprive society of their services, and selfishly evade
the duties
which ought to fall to their share; therefore, the social
feelings
rightly condemn suicide as a crime against society. I do not
say that
under no stress of circumstances is suicide justifiable; that
is not the
question; but I wish to point out that it is justly regarded
as a social
offence. But the very motive which restrains from suicide,
prompts to
euthanasia. The sufferer who knows that he is lost to
society, that
he can never again serve his fellow-men; who knows, also,
that he is
depriving society of the services of those who uselessly
exhaust
themselves for him, and is further injuring it by undermining
the health of
its healthy members, feels urged by the very social
instincts
which would prevent him from committing suicide while in
health, to
yield a last service to society by relieving it from a
useless
burden. Hence it is that Sir Thomas Moore, in the quotation with
which he
began this essay, makes the _social authorities_ of his ideal
state urge
euthanasia as the duty of a faithful citizen, while they
yet
consistently reprobate ordinary suicide as a _lčse-majestę_ a
crime against
the State. The life of the individual is, in a sense, the
property of
society. The infant is nurtured, the child is educated,
the man is
protected by others; and, in return for the life thus given,
developed,
preserved, society has a right to demand from its members a
loyal, self-forgetting
devotion to the common weal. To serve humanity,
to raise the
race from which we spring, to dedicate every talent, every
power, every
energy, to the improvement of, and to the increase of
happiness in,
society, this is the duty of each individual man and
woman. And,
when we have given all we can, when strength is sinking,
and life is
failing, when pain racks our bodies, and the worse agony of
seeing our
dear ones suffer in our anguish tortures our enfeebled minds,
when the only
service we can render man is to relieve him of a useless
and injurious
burden, then we ask that we may be permitted to die
voluntarily
and painlessly, and so to crown a noble life with the laurel
wreath of a
self-sacrificing death.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
ON PRAYER.
THE mania for
Prayer-meetings has lately been largely on the increase,
and the continual
efforts being made to
"Move the arm that moves the
world,"
naturally
draw one's attention strongly to the subject of Prayer; to its
reasonableness,
propriety, and prospect of success. If Prayer to God
be reverent
as towards the Deity, if it be consistent with his
immutability,
with his foreknowledge, with his wisdom, and with
every kind of
trust in his goodness--if it be also, as regards man,
permissible
by science, and approved by experience, then there can be
no doubt at
all that it should be sedulously practised, and should be of
universal
obligation. But if it be at once useless and absurd, if it be
forbidden by
reason and frowned at by common sense, if it weaken man and
be irreverent
towards the Being to whom it is said to be addressed, then
it will be
well for all who practise it to reconsider their position,
and at least
to endeavour to give some solid reason for persisting in a
course which
is condemned by the intellect and is unneeded by the heart.
The practice
of Prayer is generally founded upon the supposed position
held by
man--first, as a creature towards his Creator, and secondly,
as a child
towards his Father in heaven. In its first aspect, it is a
simple act of
homage from the inferior to the superior, parallel to the
courtesy
shown by the subject to the monarch; it is an acknowledgment of
dependence,
and a sign of gratitude for the gifts which are supposed
to be freely
given by God to man--gifts which man has done nothing to
deserve, but
which come from the free bounty of the giver. Putting aside
the whole
question of God as Creator, which is not the point at issue,
we might
argue that, since he brought us into this world without our
request, and
even without our consent, he is in duty bound to see that
we have all
things necessary for our life and happiness in the world in
which he has
thus placed us. We might argue that the "blessings" said
to be
bestowed upon us, such as food, clothing, &c, can only be called
"given"
by a fiction, for that they are won by our own hard toil, and
are never
"gifts from God" in any real sense at all. Further, we might
plead that we
find "bestowed" upon us many things which are decidedly
the reverse
of blessings, and that if gratitude be due to God for some
things, the
contrary of gratitude is due to him for others; and that
if praise be
his right for the one, blame must be his desert for
the second.
We should be thus forced into the logical, but somewhat
peculiar,
frame of mind of the savage, who caresses his fetish when it
hears his
prayers, and belabours it heartily when it fails to help him.
But, taking
the position that Prayer is due from man by reason of his
creaturehood,
it must surely be clear that it cannot be a proper way
of manifesting
a sense of inferiority to degrade the Being to whom the
homage is
offered. Yet Prayer is essentially degrading to God, and the
character
ascribed to him of "a hearer and answerer of Prayer" is a most
lowering
conception of Deity. For God to hear and to answer Prayer
means that
Prayer changes his action, making him do that which he would
otherwise
have abstained from doing; it means that man is wiser than
God, and is
able to instruct him in his duty; and it means that God is
less loving
than he ought to be, and will not bestow upon his creature
that which is
good for him, unless he be importuned into giving it. We
are told that
God is immutable, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever;"
"God is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he
should
repent." If this be true--and surely immutability of purpose must
be a
necessary characteristic of an all-wise and all-good Being--how can
Prayer be
anything more than a childish fretting against the inevitable?
The
Changeless One has planned a certain course of action, and is
steadily
carrying it out; in passionless serenity he goes upon his way;
then man
breaks in with his feeble cries and petulant upbraidings,
and actually
turns God from his purpose, and changes the course of his
providence. If
Prayer does not do this it does nothing at all; either
it changes
the mind of God or it does not. If it does, God is at the
disposal of
man's whim; if it does not, it is perfectly useless, and
might just as
well be left undone. The parable told by Christ about the
unjust judge
(Luke xviii. 1-8) is a most extraordinary representation
of God:
"Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by
her continual
coming she weary me.... And shall not God avenge his own
elect, which
cry day and night unto him?" Verily, the picture of the
divine
justice is not an attractive one! The judge does his duty, not
because it is
his duty, not because the widow needs his aid, not because
her cause is
a just one, but "lest by her continual coming she weary"
him. There is
only one moral to be drawn from this, namely, that God
will not care
for his "elect," because they are "his own;" that he will
not guard
them, because it is his duty; but that, if they cry day and
night to him,
he will attend to them, because the continual cry wearies
him, and he
desires to silence it. In the same way God the immutable
changes at
the sound of Prayer, not because the change will be better or
wiser, but
because man's cry "wearies" him, and he will be quiet if he
obtains his
petition. Surely the idea is as degrading as it can be; it
puts God on a
level with the unwise human parent, who allows himself to
be governed
by the clamour of his children, and gives any favour to
the spoilt
child, if only the child be tiresome enough in its petulant
persistence.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Is Prayer
consistent with the _foreknowledge_ of God? It is one of the
attributes
ascribed to God that he knows all before it happens, and that
the future
lies mapped out before him as clearly as does the past. If
this be so,
is it more reasonable to pray about things in the future
than things
in the past? No one is so utterly irrational as to pray to
God, in so
many words, to change the things that are gone, or to alter
the record of
the past. Yet, is it more rational to ask him to change
the things
that are coming, and to alter the already-written chart of
the future?
In reality, man's own eyes being blinded, he deems his God
such an one
as himself, and where he cannot _see_, he can allow himself
to _hope_.
But there is no excuse from the inexorable logic which
pierces us
with one horn or the other of this dilemma, however we may
writhe in our
efforts to escape them; either God knows the future or he
knows it not;
if he knows it, it cannot be altered, so it is of no use
to pray about
it, everything being already fixed; if he knows it not, he
is not God,
he is no wiser than man. But, then, some Christians argue,
he has
pre-arranged that he will give this blessing in answer to Prayer,
and he
foreknows the Prayer as well as its answer. Then, after all, it
is
pre-determined whether we shall pray or not in any given case, and we
have only to
follow the course along which we are impelled by an
irresistible
destiny; so the matter is beyond all discussion, and the
power to
pray, or not to pray, does not reside in us; if there is a
blessing in
store for us which needs the arm of Prayer to pluck it from
the tree on
which it hangs, we shall inevitably pray for it at the right
moment, and
thus--in his effort to escape from one difficulty--the
praying
Christian has landed himself in a worse one, for absolute
foreknowledge
implies complete determinism, and prevents all human
responsibility
of any kind.
Is Prayer
consistent with the _wisdom_ of God? After all, what does
Prayer mean,
boldly stated? It means that man thinks that he knows
better than
God, and so he tells God that which ought to happen. Is
there any
self-conceit so intolerable as that which pretends to bow
itself in the
dust before him who created and who upholds the infinite
worlds which
make up the universe, and which then sets itself to correct
the ordering
of him who traced the orbits of the planets, and who
measured the
rule of suns? Finite wisdom instructing infinite
wisdom;
mortal reason laying down the course of immortal reason; low
intelligence
guiding supreme intelligence; man instructing God. All this
is implied in
the fact of Prayer, and every man who has prayed, and who
believes in
God, ought to cast himself down in passionate humiliation
before the
wisdom he has insulted and impugned, and ask pardon for
the insolent
presumption which dared to lay hands on the helm of the
Supreme, and
to dream that man could be more wise than God. At least,
those who
believe in God might be humble enough to acknowledge his
superiority
to themselves, and if they demand that homage should be paid
to him by
their brethren, they should also confess him to be wiser and
higher than
they are themselves.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Is Prayer
consistent with _trust in the goodness_ of God? Surely Prayer
is a distinct
refusal to trust, and is a proclamation that we think
that we could
do better for ourselves than God will do for us. If God
be "good
and loving to every man," it is manifest that, without any
pressure
being put upon him, he will do for each the best thing that
can possibly
be done. The people of Madagascar are wiser, in this matter
than the
people who throng our churches and our chapels, for they say,
addressing
the good Spirit, "We need not pray to thee, for thou, without
our prayers,
wilt give us all things that be good for us;" and then they
turn to the
evil Spirit, saying, that they must pray to _him_ lest, if
they do not,
he should work them harm, and send troubles in their way.
Prayer
implies that God judges all good gifts, and will withhold them
unless they
are wrung from his reluctant hands; it denies that he loves
his
creatures, and is good to all. In addition to this, it also
implies that
we will not trust him to judge what is best for us; on the
contrary, we
prefer to judge for ourselves, and to have our own way. If
a trouble
comes, it is prayed against, and God is besought "to remove
his heavy
hand." What does this mean, except that when God sends sorrow,
man clamours
for joy, and when God deems it best that his child should
weep, the
child demands cause for smiles? If people trusted God,
as they
pretend to trust him--if the phrases of the Sunday were the
practice of
the week--if men believed that God's ways were higher than
man's ways,
and his thoughts than their thoughts--then no Prayer would
ever ascend
from earth to the "Throne of grace," and man would welcome
joy and
sorrow, peace and care, wealth and poverty, as wise men welcome
nature's
order, when the rain comes down to swell the seed for the
harvest, and
the sunshine glows down upon earth to burnish the golden
grain.
But, say the
praying Christians, even if Prayer be not defensible as
homage from
the creature to the Creator, in that it lowers our idea of
God, it must
surely yet be natural as the instinctive cry from the child
to the Father
in heaven; and then follow arguments drawn from the family
and the home,
and the need of communion between parent and child. As a
matter of
fact,--taking the analogy, imperfect as it is--do we find much
Prayer, as
from child to parent, in the best and the happiest homes; _is
not the
amount of asking the exact measure of the imperfection of the
relationship?_
The wiser and the kinder the parent, the less will the
child ask
for; rather, it learns from experience to trust the older
wisdom, and
to be contented with the love which is ever giving,
unsolicited,
all good things. At the most, the simple expression of
the child's
wish is all that is needed, if the child desire anything
of which the
parent have not thought; and even this mere statement of a
wish is still
the result of _imperfection, i e._, the want of knowledge
on the
parent's part of the child's mind and heart In this case there
is no
pleading, no urging; the single request and single answer suffice;
there is
nothing which corresponds with the idea of the prophet to
pray to God
and to "give him no rest" until he grant the petition. In a
well-ordered
home, the child who persisted in pressing his request
would receive
a rebuke for his want of trust, and for his conceited
self-sufficiency;
and yet _this_ is the analogy on which Prayer to God
is built up,
and in this fashion "natural instincts" are dragged in, in
order to
support supernatural and artificial cravings.
Leaving
Prayer, as it affects man's relationship to God, let us look at
it as it
regards man's relationship to things around him, and ask if it
be permitted
by our scientific knowledge, and approved by experience and
by history.
The chief lesson of science is that all things work by law,
that we dwell
in a realm of law, and that _nothing_ goes by chance. All
science is
built up upon this idea; science is not possible unless this
primary rule
be correct; science is only the codified experience of the
race, the
observed sequence of to-day marked down for the guidance of
to-morrow,
the teaching of the past hived up for the improvement of
the future.
But all this accumulation and correlation of facts becomes
useless if
laws can be broken--i e., if this observed sequence of
phenomena can
be suddenly broken by the interposition of an unknown and
incalculable force,
acting spasmodically and guided by no discoverable
order of
action. Science is impossible if these "providential
occurrences"
may take place at any moment. A physician, in writing his
prescription,
selects the drugs which experience has pointed out as the
suitable
remedy for the disease under which his patient is labouring.
These drugs
have a certain effect upon the tissues of the human frame,
and the
physician calculates on this effect being produced; but if
Prayer is to
come in as a factor, of what use the physician's science?
Here is
suddenly introduced--to speak figuratively--a new drug of
unknown
power, and the effect of medicine plus Prayer can in no way be
calculated
upon. The prescription is either efficient or non-efficient;
if it be
efficient, Prayer is unnecessary, as the cure would take place
without it;
if it be non-efficient, and Prayer makes up the deficiency,
then medical
science is not needed, for the impotency of the drugs can
always be
balanced by the potency of the Prayer. This argument may be
used as
regards every science. Prayer is put up for a ship which goes to
sea. The ship
is fitted for the perils it encounters, or it is unfit. If
fitted, it
arrives safely without Prayer; if, though unfit, it
arrives,
being guarded by Prayer, then Prayer becomes a factor in the
shipbuilder's
calculations, and sound timbers and strong rivets sink
into minor
importance. If it be argued that to speak thus is to use
Prayer
unfairly, because it is our duty to take every proper means to
ensure
safety, what, is this except to say that, after all, Prayer is
only a
fiction, and that while we bow our knees to God, and pretend to
look to _him_
for safety, we are really looking to the strong timbers of
the
ship-builder, and to the skill of the captain?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Science
teaches, also, that all phenomena are the results of preceding
phenomena,
and that an unbroken sequence of cause and effect stretches
back further
than our poor thoughts can reach. In stately harmony all
Nature moves,
evolving link after link of the endless chain, each link
bound firmly
to its predecessor, and affording, in its turn, the same
support to
its successor. Prayer is put up in the churches for fair
weather; but
rain and sunshine do not follow each other by chance, they
obey a
changeless law. To alter the weather of to-day means to alter
the weather
of countless yesterdays, which have faded away, one after
another,
"into the infinite azure of the past." The weather of to-day
is the result
of all those long-past phases of temperature, and, unless
they were
altered, no change is pos sible to-day. The Prayer that goes
up in English
churches should really run:--"O God, we pray thee to
change all
that thou hast wrought in the past; we, to-day, in this petty
corner of thy
world, are discontented with thy ordering; we desire of
thee, then,
that, to pleasure our fancy, thou wilt unroll the record of
the past, and
change all its order, remoulding its history to suit our
convenience
here to-day." It is difficult to say which is the worse, the
self-conceit
which deems its own petty needs worthy of such complaisance
of Deity, or
the ignorance which forgets the absurdities implied in the
request it
makes. But, after all, it is the ignorance which is to blame:
these Prayers
were written when science was scarcely born; in those days
God was the
immediate cause of each phenomena, sending rain from heaven
when it
pleased him, thundering from heaven against his enemies, pouring
hailstones
from heaven to slay his foes, opening and closing the windows
of heaven to
punish a wicked king or to pleasure an angry prophet. In
those days
heaven was very close to earth: so near that when it opened,
the dying
Stephen could see and recognise the form and features of the
Son of Man;
so near that, lest man should build a tower which should
reach it, God
had himself to descend and discomfit the builders. All
these things
were true to the writers whose words are repeated in
English
churches in the nineteenth century, and they naturally
believed that
what God wrought in days of old he could work also among
themselves.
But knowledge has shattered the fairy fabric which fancy had
raised up;
astronomy built towers--not of Babel--from which men could
gauge the
heaven, and find that through illimitable ether worlds
innumerable
rolled, and that where the throne of God should have been
seen, suns
and planets sped on their ceaseless rounds. Further and
further back,
the ancient God who dwelt among men was pressed back,
till now, at
last, no room is found for spasmodic divine solutions, but
Nature's
mighty order rolls on uninterrupted, in a silence unbroken by
voice and
undisturbed by miraculous volitions, bound by a golden chain
of inviolable
law. The most learned and the most thoughtful Christian
people now
acknowledge that prayer is out of place in dealing with
"natural
order;" but surely it is time that they should make their
voices heard
plainly, so as to erase from the Prayer-book these obsolete
notions, born
of an ignorance which the world has now outgrown. Few
really
_believe_ in the power of Prayer over the weather, but people go
on from the
sheer force of habit, repeating, parrot-like, phrases which
have lost
their meaning, because they are too indolent to exert thought,
or too
fettered by habit to test the Prayer of the Sunday by the
standard of
the week. When people begin to _think_ of what they repeat
so glibly,
the battle of Free Thought will have been won.
Many earnest
people, however, while recognising the fact that Prayer
ought not to
be used for rain, fine weather, and the like, yet think
that it may
be rightly employed to obtain "spiritual benefits." Is
not this idea
also the product of ignorance? When men knew nothing of
natural laws
they thought they could gain natural benefits by Prayer;
now that
people know nothing of "spiritual" laws, they think they can
gain
"spiritual" benefits by Prayer. In each case the Prayer springs
from
ignorance. Is it really more reasonable to expect to gain
miraculous
spiritual strength from Prayer, than to expect to give
vigour, by
Prayer, to arms enfeebled by fever? Growth, slow and steady,
is Nature's
law; no sudden leaps are possible; and no Prayer will give
that
spiritual stature which only develops by continual effort, and by
"patient
continuance in well-doing." The mind--which is probably what
is generally
meant by the word "spirit"--has its own laws, according to
which it
grows and strengthens; it is moulded, formed, developed, as
the body is,
by the play of the circumstances around it, and by the
organisation
with which it comes into the world, and which it has
inherited
from a long race of ancestors. Here, too, inexorable law
surrounds
all, and in mind, as in matter, the "reign of law" Is
all-embracing,
all-compelling.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Is Prayer
approved by experience? It seems necessary here to refer to
the
experience of some, who say that they have found Prayer strengthen
them to meet
a trouble which they had dreaded, or to accomplish a duty
for which
their own ability was insufficient. This appears to be very
probable, but
the reason is not far to seek, and as the explanation of
the increased
strength may be purely natural, it seems unnecessary to
search for a
supernatural cause. Prayer, when earnest and heartfelt,
appears to
exert a kind of reflex action on the person praying, the
petition not
piercing heaven, but falling back upon earth. A duty has
to be done or
a trouble has to be faced; the person affected prays
for help, and
by the intense concentration of his thoughts, and by the
passion of
his desire, he naturally gains a strength he had not, when
he was less
deeply and thoroughly in earnest. Again, the interior
conviction
that a olivine strength is on his side, nerves his heart and
braces his
courage: the soldier fights with a tenfold courage when he
is sure that
endurance will make victory a certainty. But all this is no
proof that
God hears and answers Prayer; if it were so, it would prove
also that the
Virgin Mother, and all the saints, and Buddha, and Brahma,
and Vishnu
were alike hearers and answerers of Prayer. In all cases
the sincere
worshipper gains strength and comfort, and finds the same
"answer"
to his Prayer. Yet surely no one will contend that all these
are
"Prayer-hearing and Prayer-answering" Gods? This fancied answer is
not a proof
of the truth of the worshipper's belief, but is only a proof
_of his
conviction of its truth_; not the soundness of the belief, but
the sincerity
of the conviction, is proved by the glow and ardour which
succeed the
act of Prayer. All the dormant energies are aroused; the
soul's whole
strength is put forth; the worshipper is warmed by the fire
struck from
his own heart, and is thrilled with the electricity which
resides in
his own frame. So far, Prayer is found to be answered,
just as every
strong conviction, however erroneous, is found to confer
increased
strength and vigour on him who possesses it. But, excepting
this, Prayer
is not proved to be efficacious when tested by experience.
How many
Prayers have gone up to the Father in heaven from his children
overwhelmed
in the sea, and drowning in floods, and encircled by fire?
How many
passionate appeals of patriots and martyrs, of exiles and of
slaves? How
many cries of anguish from beside the beds of the dying,
and the fresh
graves of the newly-dead? In vain the wife's wail for the
husband, the
mother's pleading for the only child; no voice has answered
"Weep
not;" no command has replied, "Rise up;" the Prayers have fallen
back on the
breaking heart, poor white-winged birds that have tried
to fly
towards heaven, but have only sunk back to earth, their breasts
bruised and
bleeding from striking against the iron bars of a pitiless
and
relentless fate. So continually has Prayer failed to win an answer,
that, in
spite of the clearness and the force of the Bible promises in
regard to it,
Christians have found themselves obliged to limit their
extent, and
to say that God judges whether or no it will be beneficial
for the
worshipper to grant the petition, and if the Prayer be a
mistaken one
he will, in mercy, withhold the implored-for boon. Of
course, this
prevents Prayer from being ever tested by experience at
all, because
whenever a Prayer remains unanswered the reply is ready,
that "it
was not according to the will of God." This means, that we
cannot test
the value of Prayer in any way; we must accept its worth
wholly as a
matter of faith; we must pray because we are bidden to do
so, and
fulfil an useless form which affords no tangible results. In
this
melancholy position are we landed by an appeal to experience, by
which we are
challenged to test the value of Prayer.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The answer of
history is even yet more emphatic. The Ages of Prayer
are the Dark
Ages of the world. When learning was crushed out, and
superstition was
rampant, when wisdom was called witchcraft, and priests
ruled Europe,
then Prayer was always rising up to God from the countless
monasteries
where men dwarfed themselves into monks, and from the
convents
where women shrivelled up into nuns. The sound of the bell that
called to
Prayer was never silent, and the time that was needed for work
was wasted in
Prayer, and in the straining to serve God the service of
man was
neglected and despised.
There is one
obvious fact that throws into bright relief the absurdity
of Prayer.
Two people pray for exactly opposite things; whose Prayers
are to be
answered? Two armies ask for victory; which is to be crowned?
Amongst
ourselves, now, the Church is divided into two opposing camps,
and while the
Ritualists appeal to God for protection, the Evangelical
clamour also
for his aid. To which is he to bend his ear? which Prayer
is he to
answer? Both appeal to his promises; both urge that his honour
is pledged to
them by the word he has given; yet it is simply impossible
that he
should grant the Prayer of both, because the Prayer of the one
is the direct
contradiction of the prayer of the other.
Again, none
of the believers in Prayer appear to consider, that, if it
were true
that Prayer is so powerful a weapon--if it were true that by
Prayer man
can prevail with God--it would then be madness ever to pray
at all. To
pray would be as dangerous a thing as to put a cavalry sword
into the
hands of a child just strong enough to lift it, but unable to
control it,
or to understand the danger of its blows. Who can tell all
the results
to himself and to others which might flow from a granted
Prayer, a
Prayer made in all honesty of purpose, but in ignorance and
short-sightedness?
If Prayers really brought answers it would be most
wickedly
reckless ever to pray at all, as wickedly reckless as if a
man, to
quench a moment's thirst, pierced a hole in a reservoir of water
which
overhung a town.
But, in spite
of all arguments, in spite of all that reason can urge and
that logic
can prove, it is probable that many will still cling to the
practice of
Prayer, craving for the relief it gives to the feelings
of the heart,
however much it may be condemned by the judgment of the
intellect.
They seem to think that they will lose a great inspiration to
work if they
give up "communion with God," and that they will miss the
glow of
ardour which they deem they have caught from Prayer. But
surely it may
fairly be urged on them that no real good can arise
from
continuing a practice which it is impossible to defend when it is
carefully
analysed. Prayer is as the artificial stimulant which excites,
but does not
strengthen, and lends a factitious brightness, which is
followed by
deeper depression. Those who have prayed most have often
stated that
"seasons of special blessing" are generally followed by
"special
temptations of Satan." The reaction follows on the unreal
excitation,
and the soul that has been flying in heaven grovels upon
earth. To the
patient who is weak and depressed from long illness, the
bright air of
the morning seems chill and cold, and he yearns for the
warmth of the
artificial stimulants to which he has grown accustomed;
yet better
for him is it to gain health from the morning breezes, and
stimulus from
the glad clear sunshine, than to yield to the craving
which is a
relic of his disease. If they who find in communion with God
a sweetness
which is lacking when they commune with their brethren--if
they who
cultivate dependence on God would learn the true dependence of
man on
man--if they who yearn for the invisible would concentrate their
energies on
the visible--then they would soon find a sweetness in labour
which would
compensate for the languor of Prayer, and they would learn
to draw from
the joy of serving men, and from the serene strength of
an earnest
life, a warmth of inspiration, a passion of fervour, an
exhaustless
fount of energy, beside which all Prayer-given ardour would
seem dull and
nerveless, in the glow of which the fancied warmth of
God-communion
would seem as the pale cold moonshine in the glory of the
rising sun.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
CONSTRUCTIVE RATIONALISM.
IT is a
common complaint against the Rationalistic school of thought
that they can
destroy but cannot construct; that they tear down, but do
not build up;
that they are armed only with the axe and with the sword,
and not with
the trowel and the mason's line. "We have had enough of
negations,"
is a common cry; "give us something positive." Much of this
feeling is
foolish and unreasonable; the negation of error, where
error is
supreme, is necessary before the assertion of truth can become
possible.
Before a piece of ground can be sown with wheat, it must be
cleared of
the weeds which infest it; before a solid house can be built
in the place
of a crumbling ruin, the ancient rubbish must be carried
off, and the
rotten walls must be thoroughly pulled down. Destructive
criticism is
necessary and wholesome; the heavy battering-ram of science
must thunder
against the walls of the churches; the swift arrows of
logic must
rain on the black-robed army; the keen lance-points of
irony must
pierce through the leather jerkin of superstition. But the
destruction
of orthodox Christianity being accomplished, there remains
for the
Rationalist much more to do. He has to frame a code which shall
rule in the
place of the code of Moses and of Jesus; he has to found
a morality
which shall replace the morality of the Bible; he has to
construct an
ideal which shall be as attractive as the ideal of the
Churches; he
has to proclaim laws which shall supersede revelation: in a
word, he has
to build up the religion of humanity.
As the
Rationalist looks abroad over the contending armies of faith and
of reason, he
gradually recognises the fact that his new religion, if it
is to serve
as a bond of union, must stand on stable ground, apart from
the warring
hosts. Round the idea of God rages the hottest din of the
battle. The
old, popular, and traditional belief is wounded to
the death,
and is slowly breathing out its life. The philosophical
subtleties of
the metaphysician are beyond the grasp of folk busied
chiefly with
common work. The new school of Theists, believers in a
"spiritual
personal God," stands on a slippery incline, whereon is
no firm
foothold. It simply spreads over the abysses of thought
a sentimental
veil of poetical imaginings, and bows down before a
beatified and
celestial man, whose image it has sculptured out of the
thought-marble
of its sublimest aspirations. If the idea of God be thus
warred over,
thus changing, thus uncertain, it is plain that the new
religion
cannot find its foundation on this shifting and disputed
ground. While
theologians are wrangling about God, plain men are looking
wistfully
over the shattered idols to find the ideal to which they
can cling.
The new religion, then, studying the varying phases of the
God-idea, seizes
on its one permanent element, its idealised resemblance
to man, its
embodiment of the highest humanity; and, grasping this
thought, it
turns to men and says, "In loving God you are only loving
your own
highest selves; in conforming yourselves to the Divine image
you are only
conforming yourselves to your own highest ideals; the
unknown God
whom you ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you; in
serving your
family, your neighbours, your country, you serve this
unknown God;
this God is Humanity, the race to which you belong; this is
the veiled
God whom all generations have worshipped in heaven, while he
trod the
world around them in every human form; this is the only God,
the God who
is manifest in the flesh: "--
"There is no God, O son, If thou be
none."
The first
great constructive effort of the new religion is thus to
transform the
idea of God, and to turn all men's aspirations, all men's
hopes, all
men's labours, into this channel of devotion to humanity,
that so the
practical outcome of the new motive power may be a steady
flow of
loving and energetic work for man, work that begins in the
family, and
spreads, in ever-widening circles, over the whole race.
This
transformation of the central figure necessarily transforms also
the whole
idea of religion, which must take its colour from that centre.
Revelation
from heaven being no longer possible, its place must be
supplied by
study on earth: revealed laws being no longer attainable, it
becomes the
duty of the Humanitarian to discover natural laws. This
duty is the
more cheering from the manifest failure of revealed laws, as
exemplified
in popular Christianity. "Law," in the mouth of the believer
in
revelation, means a command issued by God; the "laws of Nature" are
the rules
laid down by God, in accordance with which all things move;
they are the
behests of the Creator of Nature, the controlling wires of
the
mechanism, held by the hand of God. But "law" in the mouth of
the
Rationalist means nothing more than the observed and registered
invariable
sequence of events. Thus it is said "a stone falls to
the ground in
obedience to the law of gravitation." By the "law of
gravitation"
the Christian would mean that God had ordered that all
stones
_should_ so fall. The Rationalist would simply mean that all
stones _do_
so fall, and that invariable sequence he calls the "law of
gravitation."
Obedience to the laws of Nature replaces, in the religion
of Humanity,
obedience to the laws of God. As there is no inspired
revelation of
these laws the student must carefully and patiently
ascertain
them, either by direct observation, or most often, in the
books of
those who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of
Nature's
code. Scientific books will, in fact, replace the Bible, and by
the study of
the laws of health, both physical, moral, and mental, the
Rationalist
will ascertain the conditions which surround him to which he
must conform
himself if he desires to retain physical, moral, and mental
vigour. This
difference in the authority which is obeyed leads naturally
to the
difference of morality between the orthodox Christian and the
Rationalist.
Christian morality consists of obedience to the will of
God, as
revealed in the Bible. The grand difficulty regarding this
obedience is,
that the will of Jehovah, as revealed to the Jews at
different
times, varies so much from age to age that the most zealous
Christian
must fail to obey all the conflicting behests prefaced by a
"Thus
saith the Lord." God would, of course, never command any one to do
a thing which
was directly wrong, yet God distinctly said: "Thou
shalt not
suffer a Witch to live;" and God sanctioned Slavery, and
God commanded
Persecution on account of religious convictions: true,
Christians plead
that all these laws are obsolete, but what is that but
to
acknowledge that revealed morality is obsolete, _i.e._, that it was
never
revealed by God at all. For a command to persecute must be either
right or
wrong: if right, it is the duty of Christians to obey it,
and to raise
once more the stakes of Smithfield for heretics and
unbelievers;
if wrong, it can never have come from God at all, and must
be
blasphemously attributed to him. In God, Christians tell us there is
no
changeableness, neither shadow of turning; then what pleased him in
long past
ages would please him still, and what he commanded yesterday
would be
right to-day. Thus fatally does revealed morality fail when
tested, and
it becomes impossible to know which particular "will of
God" he
desires that we should obey. Now, once more, the Rationalist
experiences
the advantages of his new motive-power; he has to serve
Humanity, and
is unencumbered by the difficulties attendant upon
"pleasing
God." Not the pleasure of God, but the benefit of man, is
the basis of
his morality. Revealed morality is as a child's garment,
into-which
one should try to force the limbs of a full-grown man; it
is the
morality of the past stereotyped for the use of today, and is
clumsy,
archaic, half-illegible from age. Rational morality, on the
other hand,
grows with the growth of those who follow its dictates; its
errors are
corrected by wider experience, its omissions are filled up by
the
irrefragable arguments of necessity. It is founded upon the needs of
man; his happiness
is its sole object; not only his physical happiness,
not only the
fulfilment of the desires of the body for ease and comfort,
but the
satisfaction also of all the cravings of his intellectual
and moral
powers, the love of truth, the love of beauty, the love of
justice. A
morality founded on this basis can never be overthrown; one
sure test it
affords whereby to decide on the morality or the immorality
of any-given
action: "Is it useful to man? does it tend to the promotion
of human
happiness?" The will of God is doubtful, and is always
disputable,
and therefore it can never form the foundation of a
universal
system of morality, a code which shall unite all men in
obedience. A
code which shall unite all men must needs be founded on
those human
interests which are common to all men. Such a code is the
utilitarian.
For man's happiness is on earth, and can be known and
understood;
the promotion of that happiness is an intelligible aim;
the test of
morality may be applied by every one; it is a system which
everybody can
understand, and which the common sense of each must
approve, for
by it man lives for man, man labours for man, the efforts
of each are
directed to the good of all, and only in the happiness of
the whole can
the happiness of each part be perfected and complete.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
There is much
popular misconception with regard to utilitarianism:
"utility"
is supposed to include only those material things which are
useful to the
body, and which tend to increase physical comfort. But
utility
includes all art; for art cultures the taste and refines the
nature. It thus
adds a thousand charms to life, deepens, softens,
purifies
human happiness. Utility includes all study, for study-awakens
and trains
the intellectual faculties, and therefore increases the
sources of
happiness possible to man. Utility includes all science; for
science is
man's true providence, foreseeing the dangers that threaten
him, and
shielding him against their shock. Science leads man up to
those
intellectual heights where to stand awhile and breathe in the
keen, clear
air after dwelling in the turbid atmosphere of daily toils
and cares, is
as the refreshment of the pure mountain wind to the weary
inhabitant of
the crowded city streets.. Utility includes all love and
search of
truth; for the discovery of a truth is the keenest pleasure of
which the
noblest mind is susceptible. It includes all sublimest virtue;
for
self-sacrifice and devotion yield the purest forms-of happiness
to be found
on earth. In a word, utility includes everything which is
_useful_ in
building up a grander manhood and womanhood, wiser, purer,
truer,
tenderer than that we have to-day.
Such is the
basis of the morality which is to supersede the supernatural
morality of
the Churches; a morality which is: for this life and for
this world,
since we have this life, and are in this world; a morality
which seeks
to ensure human happiness on this side the grave, instead of
dreaming of
it on the other side; a morality which endeavours to carve
solid heavens
here, instead of seeing them in distant cloud-lands, white
and soft and
beautiful, but still only clouds.
One vast
advantage of this humanitarian philosophy is that it endeavours
to train men
into unselfishness, instead of following the popular
Christian
plan of making self the central thought. Self is appealed to
at every step
in the New Testament: if we are bidden to rejoice under
persecution,
it is because "great is your reward in heaven;" if urged
to pray, it
is because "thy Father, which seeth in secret, himself shall
reward thee
openly;" if to be charitable, it is because at the judgment
it will bring
a kingdom as the recompense; if to resign home or wealth,
it is because
we shall receive "a hundredfold in this present life, and
in the world
to come life everlasting;" even the giver of a cup of cold
water
"shall in no wise lose his reward." It is one system of bribes,
mingling the
thought of personal pain with every effort of human
improvement
and human happiness, and thereby directly fostering and
encouraging selfishness
and gilding it over with the name of religion
and piety.
Humanitarian morality, on the other hand, while utilising the
natural and
rightful craving for individual happiness as a motive-power,
endeavours to
accustom each to look to, and to labour for, the happiness
of all,
making that general happiness the aim of life. Thus it gradually
weakens the
selfish tendencies and encourages the social, holding
up ever the
noble ideal by the very contemplation of its beauty
transforming
its votaries into its likeness. "Vivre pour au-trui," is
the motto of
the utilitarian code; and in so living the fullest and
happiest life
for self is really attained; so closely drawn are the
bands that
bind men together that happiness and unhappiness re-act from
one to another,
and as the general standard of happiness rises higher
and higher,
the wheels of social life run more and more easily, with
less of
friction, less of jar, and therefore with increased comfort to
each
individual member. While Christianity developes selfishness by
its continual
cry of "Save thyself," Utilitarianism gradually developes
unselfishness
by the nobler whisper, "Save others, and in so doing
thou shalt
thyself be saved." Delivered from every debasing fear of an
unknowable
and inscrutable power, Utilitarianism works with a single
heart and a
single eye for the happiness of the race, stamping with
the brand of
"wrong" every act the general repetition of which would be
harmful to
society, or the tendency of which is injurious, and sealing
as
"right" every act which brightens human life, and makes the general
happiness
more perfect, and more widely spread. As morality rises higher
and higher,
human judgment will grow keener and purer, and in the times
to come
probably many an act now approved on all sides will be seen to
be harmful,
and will therefore become marked as immoral, while, on the
other hand,
acts that are now considered wrong, because "offensive
to God,"
will be seen to be beneficial to man, and will therefore be
accepted by
all as moral. Thus Utilitarian morality can never be a bar
to progress,
for it will become higher and nobler as man mounts upwards.
Revealed
morality is as a milestone on the road of the world's onward
march: it
marks how far the world had travelled when its tables of
law were
first set up in its place: as a milestone, it is useful,
interesting,
and instructive, and none would desire to destroy it; but
if the
milestone be removed from its post as a mark of distance, and be
laid across
the road as a barrier which none must overclimb in days to
come, then it
becomes necessary for the pioneers of progress to hew
it to pieces
that men may go on their way unchecked, and this revealed
morality now
lies across the upward path of the world, and must be
broken in pieces
with the hammer of logic and the axe of common sense,
so that we
may press ever higher up the mountain of progress, whose
summit is hid
in everlasting cloud.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
And what has
constructive Rationalism to say to us, when we stand face
to face with
the mighty destroyer of all living things? "Your creed may
do well
enough to live by," say-objectors, "but is it good to die by?"
A creed that
is good in life must needs be good in death, and never yet
was a
hero-life closed by a coward death. What can better smooth the bed
of the dying
man than the knowledge that the world is the happier for
his living,
that he leaves it better than he found it, that he has
helped to
raise and to purify it? What easier pillow to rest the dying
head on than
the memory of a useful life? The Rationalist has no fear
lurking around
his death-bed; no lurid gleams from a hell on the other
side lighten
around him as his breath begins to fail; no angry God
frowns on him
from the great white throne; no devil stands beside him
to drag him
down into the bottomless pit; quietly, peacefully, happily,
without fear
and without dread, he passes out of life. As calmly as the
tired child
lies down to sleep in its mother's arms, and passes into
dreamless
unconsciousness, so calmly does the Rationalist lie down in
the arms of
the mighty mother, and pass into dreamless unconsciousness
on her bosom.
To the
Rationalist, the future of the race replaces in thought the
future of the
individual; for that he thinks, for that he plans, for
that he
labours. A heaven upon earth for those who come after him, such
is his
inspiration to effort and to self-devotion. He seeks the smile of
man instead
of the smile of God, and finds in the thought of a happier
humanity the
spur that Christians seek in the thought of pleasing God.
His hopes for
the future spread far and wide before him, but it is a
future to be
inherited by his children in this same world in which he
himself
lives; freer and fuller life, wider knowledge, deepened and more
polished
culture--all these are to be the heritage of the generations
to come, and
it is his to make that heritage the richer by every grander
thought and
nobler deed that he can do to-day.
Let us place
side by side the dogmas of Christianity and the motive
power of the
Rationalist, and see which of these two is the gladder
life-moulder
of man. Christianity has a God in heaven, all powerful and
all-wise, who
in ages gone by made the universe and fore-ordained all
that should
happen in time to come; who created man and woman with a
serpent to
tempt them, and made for them the opportunity of falling;
who, having
made the opportunity, forced them to take it. It is said
that Adam and
Eve were free agents, but they were nothing of the kind,
for the lamb
was slain from the foundation of the world: the sacrifice
was offered
before the sin was committed; and the sacrifice being made,
the sin was
its necessary consequence. If Adam had been free, he might
not have
sinned, and then there would have been a slain lamb and no
sin for which
he could atone; but God, having provided the Saviour,
was obliged
to provide the sinner, and therefore he made the tree of
knowledge and
sent the tempter to entrap the parents of mankind. They
fell,
according to God's predestination, and thus became accursed, and
then the
waiting Redeemer was revealed, and "the divine scheme" was
complete.
Accursed for a sin in which they had no part, the children of
Adam are born
with an evil nature, and being evil they act evilly, and
thereby sink
lower and lower; at their feet yawns a bottomless pit, and
the road to
it is broad, easy, and pleasant; above their heads shines
a luxurious
heaven, and the path is narrow, steep, and rugged. Their
nature--God-given
to all--drags them downwards; the Holy Ghost--God
given to
some--drags them upwards: immortality is their inheritance, and
"few
there be that find" immortal happiness, while "many there be that
go in"
at the gate of hell to immortal woe; a severance, bitter beyond
all earthly
bitterness of parting, is in store for all, since, at the
great day of
judgment, "one shall be taken and the other left," and
there will
not be a family some of whose members will not be lost for
ever. Eternal
life, to the vast majority, is to mean eternal torment,
and they are
to be "salted with fire," burning yet never burnt up,
consuming
ever but never consumed. Towards the gaining of heaven,
towards the
avoidance of hell, all human effort must be turned. "What
shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?" All
life must be one striving "to enter in at the strait gate,
for many
shall seek to enter in and shall not be able;" poverty,
oppression,
misery, what matters it? the "light affliction which is but
for a moment
worketh a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
Thus this
world is forgotten for the sake of another, crushed out of
sight beneath
the overwhelming grandeur of eternity; the spur to human
effort is
blunted by the infinitesimal importance of time as compared
with
eternity; bad government, bad laws, injustice, tyranny, pauperism,
misery, all
these things need not move us, for "we seek a better
country, that
is a heavenly;" we are "strangers and pilgrims;" "here we
have no
continuing city, but we seek one to come;" "our citizenship is
in heaven,"
and there also is our home. True, Christians do not carry
out into
daily life these phrases and thoughts of their creed, but in
so much as
they do not they are the less Christian, and the more
imbued with
the spirit of Rationalism. Rationalists they are, the vast
majority, six
days in the week, and are only Christians on the Sunday.
To come out
of, these old world dreams into Rationalism is like coming
into the open
air after a hothouse. Rationalism clears away the terrible
God of
orthodoxy, the fall, the serpent, the Saviour, the hell, the
devil.
"Work, toil, struggle," it cries to man; "the ills around you
are not the
appointment of God, not the effects of his curse; they arise
from your own
ignorance, and may all be cleared away by your own study,
and your own
effort. Salvation? Yes, you need saviours, but the saviours
must save you
from earthly woes and not from the wrath of God; save
yourselves,
by thought, by wisdom, by earnestness. Redemption? yes,
you need
redeeming, but the redemption you want is from vice, from
ignorance,
from poverty, and must be wrought out by human effort.
Prayer? yes,
you need praying for, but the prayer you want is work
compelling
the result; not crying out for what you desire, but winning
it by labour
and by toil. The world stretches wide before you, capable
of paying you
a thousandfold for all you do for it. Life is in your
hands, full
of all glorious possibilities; throw away your dreams of
heaven, and
make heaven here; leave aside visions of the life to come,
and make
beautiful the life which is."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Full of hope,
full of joy, strong to labour, patient to endure, mighty
to conquer,
goes forth the new glad creed into the sad grey Christian
world; at her
touch men's faces soften and grow purer, and women's eyes
smile instead
of weeping; at last, at last, the heir arises to take
to himself
his own, and the negation of the usurped sovereignty of
the popular
and traditional God over the world developes into the
affirmation
of the rightful monarchy of man.
THE BEAUTIES
OF THE PRAYER-BOOK.
MORNING PRAYER.
"HABIT,
is second nature," saith a wise old saw, so it must be from
custom that
it has become natural to Church people to repeat placidly,
week after
week, the same palpable self-contradictions and absurdities.
A sensible,
shrewd man of business puts away his papers on the Saturday
night, and
apparently locks his mind up with them in his desk; certain
it is that he
"Goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,"
and yet never
discovers that his boys are repeating the most
contradictory
responses, while the parson is enunciating as axioms the
most
startling propositions.
When the
preliminary silence in church is broken by the "sentences,"
the first
words that fall from the clergyman's lips are a distinct
declaration
of the conditions of salvation: "When the wicked man turneth
away from his
wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which
is lawful and
right, he shall save his soul alive;" and we are further
instructed as
to our sins, that "if we confess our sins, He is
faithful and
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all
unrighteousness." These very plain statements take high and
comprehensible
ground. God is supposed to desire that man should be
righteous,
and is, therefore, naturally satisfied when "the wicked
forsakes his
way and the unrighteous man his path." We proceed, then, to
confess our
sins, and after Mrs. A., whose eyes are straying after her
neighbour's
bonnet, has confessed that she is erring and straying like a
lost sheep,
and Mrs. B., who is devising a way to make an old dress look
new, has
owned plaintively that she is following the devices of her own
heart; and
Squire C, of the rubicund visage and broad shoulders, has
sonorously
remarked that there is no health in him, and his son, with
the joyous
face, has cheerfully acknowledged that he is a miserable
sinner--after
these very appropriate and reasonable confessions, to a
Divine Being
who "seeth the heart," and may therefore be supposed to
take them for
what they are worth, have been duly gone through, we are
somewhat
puzzled to hear the clergyman announce that God "pardoneth and
absolveth all
them that truly repent, _and unfeignedly believe His holy
Gospel._"
What is this sudden appendix to the before-declared conditions
of salvation?
We had been told that if we confessed our sins God's
faithfulness
and justice would cause him to forgive us; here we have
duly done so,
and surely the language is sufficiently strong; we are
yet suddenly
called upon to believe a "holy Gospel" as a preliminary
to
forgiveness. But we are not yet, to use a colloquialism, out of the
wood; for
while we are moodily meditating on this infraction of our
contract the
time slips on unobserved, and, it being a feast-day, we
are startled
by a stern voice conveying the cheerful intelligence,
"Whosoever
will be saved, _before all things_, it is necessary that he
hold the
Catholic Faith. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and
undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." "Before all
things?"
before repentance? before turning away from our wickedness?
before doing
that which is lawful and right? And what is this "Faith"
which we must
keep whole and undefiled if we would save our souls alive?
A bewildering
jumble of triplets and units, mingled in inextricable
confusion.
But as he that "will be saved must thus think of the
Trinity,"
we will try and disentangle the thread of salvation. "The
Father is
God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God," says the
parson.
"They are not three Gods, but one God," shout out the people.
We are
compelled "to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and
Lord,"
reiterates the parson. "We are forbidden by the Catholic Religion
to say there
be three Gods or three Lords," obstinately persist the
people. Then,
after some rather intrusive particulars about the family
(and very
intricate) relations of the Father to the Son, and of both to
the Holy
Ghost, we are told that "so"--why so?--"there is one Father,
not three
Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Ghost, not three
Holy
Ghosts." In so far as we have been able to follow the meaning, or
rather the
no-meaning, of the preceding sentences, no one said anything
about three
Fathers, three Sons, or three Holy Ghosts. The definite
article _the_
had been used in each case with a singular noun. We
imagine the
clause must have been inserted because all ideas as to the
meaning; of
numerals must have been by this time so hopelessly lost by
the
congregation, that it became necessary to remark that "the Father"
meant one
Father, and not three. The list of necessaries for salvation
is not yet
complete, for "furthermore it is necessary to everlasting
salvation,
that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord
Jesus
Christ." So far, then, from its being true that the wicked man who
turns from
his sins shall save his soul alive, we find that our sinner
must also
believe the Gospel, must accept contradictory arithmetical
assertions,
must think of the Trinity in a way which makes thought a
ludicrous
impossibility, and must believe _rightly_ all the details
of the method
by which a Divine Being became a human being. If a sinner
chances to go
out of church after the first sentence, and from being
a drunkard
becomes temperate, from being a liar becomes truthful, from
being a
profligate becomes chaste, and foolishly imagines that he
is thereby
doing God's will, and thus saving his soul alive, he will
certainly,
according to the Athanasian Creed, wake up from his pleasant
delusion to
find himself in everlasting fire. As sceptics, we need offer
no-opinion as
to which is right, the creed or the text; we only suggest
that both
cannot be correct, and that it would be more satisfactory if
the Church,
in her wisdom, would make up her venerable mind which is
the proper
path, and then keep in it. After all this, we are in no way
surprised to
learn from a collect that being saved is dependent on quite
a new
support, namely, on the knowledge we have of God. How many more
things may be
necessary to salvation it is impossible to say at this
point, but
the office for Morning Prayer, at any rate, gives us no more.
It would be
rash to conclude, however, that we have fulfilled all, for
the Church
has some more scattered up and down her Prayer-Book; the end
of all which
double-dealing is, that we can never be sure that we have
really
fulfilled every condition; sad experience teaches us that
when the
Church says, "do so-and-so, and you shall be saved," she is,
meanwhile,
whispering under her breath, "provided you also do everything
else."
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
We fail also
to see the reasonableness of the constant cry, "for the
sake of Jesus
Christ," or "through Jesus Christ." We ask that we may
lead "a
godly, righteous, and sober life" _for His sake_; but this is
just what we
are told God wishes already, so why should He be asked to
grant it for
some one else's sake, as though He were unwilling that we
should be
righteous, and can only be coaxed into allowing us to be so by
a favourite
son? In the same way we are to come to God's "eternal joy,"
through
Jesus, which is, by the way, another of these endless conditions
of salvation.
We ask to be defended from our enemies "through the might
of Jesus
Christ," as though God Himself was not strong enough for the
task; and God
is urged to send down His healthful Spirit for the "honour
of our
advocate and Mediator," although that very advocate told His
disciples
that God would always give that spirit to those who asked
for it. To
the outside critic, these continual references to Jesus,
as though God
grudged all good gifts, appear very dishonouring to the
"Father
in Heaven."
Is it
considered necessary to press God vehemently to hurry himself?
"O God,
make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us." Will
not God, of his
own accord, do things at the best possible time? and
further, is
it possible for a Divine Being to make haste?
It will,
perhaps, be considered hypercritical to object to the
versicles:
"Give peace in our time, O Lord, because there is none other
that fighteth
for us but only thou, O God." What more do they want than
an almighty
reinforcement? "None other?" Well, we should have fancied
that God and
somebody else were really more than were needed. At any
rate it
sounds very insulting to say to God, "please give us peace,
since we
cannot count on any assistance except yours."
We have
nothing to say about the prayers for the Royal Family, except
that they do
not show any very attractive results, and that it must have
much edified
George IV. to hear himself spoken of as a "most religious
and gracious
king." Never surely was a family so much prayed for, but
_cui bono?_
If the "Bishops, Curates, and all congregations" truly
please God,
he is about, the only person that they succeed in pleasing,
for the
Bishops abuse the clergy, and the clergy abuse the Bishops,
and the
congregations abuse both. Of the last prayer, we must note
the exceeding
failure of the petition to grant the Church knowledge of
truth, and we
cannot help marvelling why, if they really desire to know
the truth,
they so invariably frown at and endeavour to crush out every
earnest
search after truth, every effort for clearer light. Of all
things that
can happen to the Church, the knowledge of the truth would
be the least
"expedient for" her, for she would fade away before the
sunshine of
truth as ghosts are said to fly at the cockcrow which
announces the
dawn.
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A criticism
on the office of Morning Prayer is scarcely complete
without a few
words upon the canticles appointed to be daily sung by
the faithful
to the glory of God. Any thing more ludicrously absurd than
these from
the lips of our congregations it would indeed be difficult to
imagine. The
_Venite_ (Ps. xcv.) is the first we are called upon to take
part in, and
the first shock comes when we find ourselves-chanting
"The
Lord is a great God and a _great king above all gods_." "Above
all
Gods!" what terrible heresy have we been unwittingly committing
ourselves to?
Is there not only one God--or, at least, it may be
three--but,
if three, they are co-equal, and no one is above the other;
who are these
"all gods" that "the Lord" is "king above?" We
remember
for a moment
that when this psalm was written the gods of the nations
around Israel
were believed to have a real existence, and that,
therefore, it
was no inconsistency in the mouth of the Hebrew to rejoice
that his
national god was ruler above the gods of other peoples. This
explanation
is reasonable, but then it does not explain why we, who
believe not
in this multiplicity of deities should pretend that we do.
Our
equanimity is not restored by the next phrase, "In his hand are all
the corners
of the earth;" but the earth is a globe, and has no corners.
A misty
remembrance floats through our mind of Irćneus stating that
there were
four gospels because there were four corners to the earth and
four winds
that blew; but since his time things have changed, and the
corners have
been smoothed off. Is it quite honest to say in God's
praise a
thing which we know to be untrue, and must we be unscientific
because we
are devotional? We then hear about our fathers being forty
years in the
wilderness, although we know that they were not there at
all, unless
the people--generally looked upon as amiable lunatics--are
correct, who
assert that the English nation is descended from the ten
lost tribes
of Israel. Why should we pretend to God that we are Jews,
when both He
and we know perfectly well that we are nothing of the kind?
We come to
the _Te Deum_, said to have been composed by S. Ambrose for
the baptism
of S. Augustine:--"To thee cherubin and seraphin continually
do cry."
Putting aside the manifest weariness both to God and to the
cryers of the
never-ceasing repetition of these words, and the degrading
idea of God implied
in the thought that it gives Him any pleasure to
be
perpetually assured of His holiness, as though it were a doubtful
matter--we
cannot help inquiring, "Who are these cherubin and seraphin?"
According to
the Bible, they are six-winged creatures, who cover their
faces with
two wings, and their feet with two more, and fly with the
remaining
pair: they may be seen in pictures of the ark, balancing
themselves on
their feet-covering wings, and preventing themselves
from falling
by steadying each other with another pair. "Lord God of
Sabaoth,"
or of "Hosts;" is this a reasonable name for one supposed to
be a
"God of peace?" The elder Jewish and the Christian ideas of God
here come
into direct collision: according to one, "the Lord is a man
of war" (Ex.
xv.), while the other represents him as "the Everlasting
Father, the
Prince of Peace" (Isai. ix.). The _Te Deum_ midway changes
the object of
its song, and addresses itself to the Son instead of to
the Father.
How far this is permissible is much disputed, for certain
it is that in
the early ages of Christianity prayer was addressed to the
Father
_only_, and that one of the Fathers* sharply rebukes those who
pray to the
Son, since they thereby deprive the Father of the honour due
to Him alone.
How this can be, when Father and Son are one, we do not
pretend to
explain. Then ensue those curious details regarding Christ
which we
shall touch upon in dealing later with the Apostles' Creed.
We find
ourselves, presently, asking to be kept "this day without sin;"
yet, we are
perfectly well aware, all the time, that God will do nothing
of the kind,
and that all Christians believe that they sin every day.
Why does the
Church teach her children to sing this in the morning, and
then prepare
a "confession" for the evening, unless she feels perfectly
sure that God
will pay no attention to her prayer? The wearisome
reiteration
in the _Benedicite_ is so thoroughly recognised that it is
very seldom
heard in the church, while the _Benedictus_ (Luke i.) is
open to the
same charge of unreality as is the _Venite_, that it is a
song for Jews
only.
* Origen.
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Many other
faults and absurdities might be pointed cut which disfigure
Morning
Prayer, even if the whole idea of prayer be left untouched.
The prayers
of the-Prayer-Book are dishonouring to God from their
childishness,
their unreality, their folly, their conflict with sound
knowledge.
Allowing that prayer may be reasonable, these prayers are
unreasonable;
allowing that prayer may be reverent, these prayers are
irreverent;
allowing that prayer may be sincere, these prayers are
insincere.
They are fragments of an earlier age transplanted into the
present, and
they are as ludicrous as would be men walking about in
our streets
to-day clad in the armour of the Middle Ages, the ages of
Darkness and
of Prayer.
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EVENING
PRAYER.
The Church,
in her wisdom, fearing that the quaint conceits and
impossibilities
which we have referred to, the--
"Jewels which adorn the spouse of the
eternal glorious King,"
should not be
sufficiently appreciated and admired by her children, if
presented to
their adoration once only on every day, has appointed for
the use of
the faithful an office of Evening Prayer, which, in its main
features, is
identical with that which is to be "said or sung" each
morning.
Sentences, address, confession, absolution, Lord's Prayer, and
versicles, are
all exactly reproduced, and Psalms and Lessons follow
in due
course, varying from day to day. To take the whole Psalter, and
analyse it,
would be a task too-long for our own patience, or for that
of our
readers, so we only pick out a few salient absurdities, and ask
why English
men and women should be found singing sentences which have
no beauty to
recommend them, and no meaning to dignify them. We will not
lay stress on
the quaintness of a congregation standing up and gravely
singing:
"Or ever your pots be made hot with thorns, so let indignation
vex him, even
as a thing that is raw" (Ps. lviii.); we will not ask what
the clergyman
means when he reads out to his congregation: "Though ye
have lien
among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove." (Ps.
lxviii.)
These are isolated passages, which a pen might erase, retaining
the major
part of the Psalter: we go further, and challenge it as a
whole,
asserting that it is ludicrously inappropriate as a song-book for
sensible
people, even although those people may be desirous of praying
to, or
praising God. Our strictures are here levelled, not at prayer as
prayer, but
simply at this particular form of prayer. In the first place
the Psalter
is written only for a single nation; it is full of local
allusions,
and of references of Israelitish history, which are only
reasonable in
the mouth of a Jew. With what amount of sense can an
English
congregation every 15th evening of the month sing such a Psalm
as the
lxxviii., recounting all the marvels of the plagues and of the
exodus, or on
the following day plead with God to help them, because
"the
heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they
defiled, and
made Jerusalem an heap of stones?" (Ps. lxxix.) Is there
any respect
to God in telling him that "we are become an open shame to
our enemies;
a very scorn and derision unto them that are round about
us" (v.
4), when, as a matter of simple fact, the speakers are become
nothing of
the kind? Can it be thought to be consistent with reverence
to God to
make these extraordinary assertions in praying to Him, and
then to base
upon them the most urgent pleas for His immediate aid? for
we find the
congregation proceeding: "Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory
of Thy Name; O deliver us and be merciful unto our sins
for Thy
Name's sake.... O let the vengeance of Thy servant's blood
which is shed
be openly shewed upon the heathen in our sight. O let the
sorrowful
sighing of the prisoners come before Thee; according to the
greatness of
Thy power, preserve Thou those that are appointed to die"
(w. 9, 10,
11). Now in all sober seriousness what does this mean? Is
this
addressed to God, or is it not? If it be, is it right and fit to
address to
him words that are absolutely untrue, and to cry urgently for
aid which is
not required, and which He cannot possibly give? If it be
not, is it
decent to solemnly sing or read phrases seemingly addressed
to God, but
really not intended to be noticed by him, phrases which use
His name as
though an appeal to Him were seriously made? It cannot be
healthy to
juggle thus with words, and to make emotional prayers which
are utterly
devoid of all meaning. Some devout persons talk very freely
about the
wickedness of blasphemy, but is not that kind of game with
God, in wailings
which are devoid of reality, appeals not intended to be
answered, a
far more real blasphemy in the mouth of any one who believes
in Him as a
hearer of prayer, than the so-called blasphemy of those who
distinctly
assert that to them the popular and traditional "God" is
a phantom,
and that they see no reason to believe in His existence?
Passing from
this graver aspect of the use of the Psalter as a
congregational
song-book, we notice how purely comic many of the psalms
would appear
to us had not the habit-fashion of our lives accustomed us
to repeat
them in a parrot-like manner, without attaching the smallest
meaning to
the words so glibly recited. "Every night wash I my bed and
water my
couch with my tears" (Ps. vi.), is sung innocently by laughing
maiden and
merry youth, the bright current of whose life is undimmed by
the shadow of
grief. "Bring unto the Lord, O ye mighty, bring young
rams unto the
Lord" (Ps. xxix.), is solemnly read out by the country
clergyman,
who would be beyond measure astonished if his direction were
complied
with. Then we find the congregation making the certainly untrue
assertion:
"Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe;
Philistia, be
thou glad of me" (Ps. lx.). At another time they cry out,
"O, clap
your hands together, all ye people" (Ps. xlvii.); they speak
of
processions which have no existence, "The singers go before, the
minstrels
follow after, in the midst are the damsels playing on the
timbrels"
(Ps. lxviii.). Another phase of this Psalter, which is
offensive
rather than comic, is the habit of swearing and cursing which
pervades it;
we find Christians, who are bidden to love their enemies,
and to bless
them that curse them, pouring out curses of the most
fearful
character, and displaying the most reckless hatred: "The
righteous
shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his
footsteps in
the blood of the ungodly" (Ps. lviii.). "Let them fall from
one
wickedness into another, and not come into Thy righteousness" (Ps.
lxix.). A
nice prayer, truly, for one man to pray for his brother man,
to a holy God
who is supposed to desire righteousness in man. Then there
is that
fearful imprecation in Psalm cix., too long to quote, where the
vindictive
and cruel anger not only curses the offender himself, but
passes on to
his children: "Let there be no man to pity him, nor to
have
compassion upon his fatherless children." Of course, people do not
really mean
any of these terrible things which they repeat day after
day; humanity
is too noble to wish to draw down such curses from heaven;
the people
have outgrown the bad spirit of that cruel age when the
Psalter was
written, and their hearts have grown more loving; but surely
it is not
well that men and women should stand on a lower level in their
prayers than
in their lives; surely the moments, which ought to be the
noblest,
should not be passed in using language which the speakers would
be ashamed of
in their daily lives; surely the worship of the Ideal
should not be
degraded below the practice of the Real, or the notion
of God be
less lofty than the life of man. By making their worship an
unreality, by
being less than true in their religious feelings, by
using words
they do not mean, and by pretending emotions they do not
experience,
people become trained into insincerity, and lose that rare
and beautiful
virtue of instinctive and thorough honesty. When the
prayer does
not echo the yearning of the heart, then the habit grows
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
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of not making
the word really the representative of the thought, of not
making the
feeling the measure of the expression. Much of the cant
of the day,
much of the social insincerity, much of the prevalent
unreality,
may be laid at the door of this crime of the Churches, of
making men
speak words which are meaningless to the speaker, and of
teaching them
to be untrue in the moments which should be the truest
and the
purest. At another time, we might impeach prayer as a whole; we
might argue
against it, either as opposed to the unchangeableness and
the wisdom of
God, if a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God be
believed in,
or as utterly futile, and proved worthless by experience.
But here we
only plead for sincerity in prayer, wherever prayer is
practised; we
only urge that at least the prayer shall be sincere, and
that the lips
shall obey the heart.
Exactly the
same objection applies to the "Canticles," which, in modern
lips, are
absolutely devoid of sense. What meaning has the "song of the
blessed
Virgin Mary" from an ordinary English congregation; why should
English
people talk about God promising His mercy "to our forefathers,
Abraham, and
his seed for ever," when Abraham is not their forefather
at all? Why
should they ask God to let them "depart in peace," when
they have not
the smallest desire to depart at all, and why should they
assert to Him
that they "have seen Thy salvation," when they have seen
nothing of
the kind? For the perpetually recurring _Gloria_, one cannot
help
wondering what it means; when was "the beginning," and is the
"it"
which was at
that period, the "glory" which is wished to the Father,
Son, and Holy
Ghost; further, what is the good of wishing glory to
Him--or to
Them--if He--or They--have always had, and always will
have it? When
we have heard a congregation reciting the Creed, we have
sometimes
wondered what meaning they attached to it. "The maker of
heaven and
earth." Do people ever try to carry the mind back to the time
before this
"making," and realise the period when nothing existed? Is it
possible to
imagine things coming into existence, "something" emerging
from where
before "nothing" was? And then Jesus, the only Son, conceived
by the Holy
Ghost, who proceeds from Himself, and son, therefore, not of
"the
Father," but of that spirit which only exists in and through "the
Father and
the Son." Again, how can a "spirit" conceive a material body?
If the whole
affair be miraculous, why try to compromise matters with
nature, by
making this kind of pseudo-father? Surely it would be simpler
to leave it a
complete miracle, and let the Virgin remain the solitary
parent.
Except for making the story match better with the elder Greek
mythology,
there is no need to introduce a godparent in the affair; a
child without
a father is no more remarkable than a mother who remains
a virgin.
This attempt at reasonableness only makes the whole more
outrageously unnatural,
and provokes criticism which would be better
avoided. A
God, who suffered, was crucified, dead, buried, who rose and
ascended, is
a complete enigma to us. Could He, the impassive, suffer?
could He, the
intangible, be crucified? could He, the immortal, die?
could He, the
omnipresent, be buried in one spot of earth, rise from it,
and ascend to
some place where he was not the moment before? What kind
of God is
this who is to "come again" to a place where He is not now?
If the answer
be, that all this refers to the manhood of Jesus, then we
inquire,
"Is Christ divided?" if He be one God with the Father, then all
He did was
done by the Father as much as by Himself; if He did it only
as man, then
God did not come from heaven to save men; then this is
not a divine
sacrifice at all; then, a simple man cannot have made an
atonement for
the sin of the world. And where is "the right hand" of
Almighty God?
Is Jesus sitting at the right hand of a pure spirit, who
has neither
body nor parts? and, since He is one with God, is He sitting
at his own
right hand? Such questions as these are called blasphemous;
but we fling
back the charge of blasphemy on those who try to compel us
to recite a
creed so absurd. We decline to repeat words which convey to
us no
meaning, and not ours the fault, if any inquiry into the meaning
produce
dilemmas so inconvenient to the orthodox. We are also required
to believe in
"the" Holy Catholic Church, but we know of no such body.
Catholic
means universal, and there is no universal Church: to believe
in that which
does not exist would, indeed, be faith without sight.
There is the
Orthodox Church, but that is anathematised by the Roman;
there is the
Roman Church, but that is the "scarlet whore of Babylon" in
the eyes of
the Protestant; there are the Protestant sects, but they
are many and
not one, a multiformity in disunity. We are asked to
acknowledge a
"Communion of Saints," and we see those who severally call
themselves
saints excommunicating each the other; in a "forgiveness of
sins," but
Nature tells us of no forgiveness, and we find suffering
invariably
following on the disregard of law; in a "resurrection of the
body,"
but we know that the body decays, that its gases and its juices
are
transmuted in the alembic of Nature into new modes of existence;
in a
"life everlasting," when the dark veil of ignorance envelopes the
"Beyond
the tomb." Only the thoughtless can repeat the creed; only the
ignorant
cannot see the impossibilities it professes to believe.
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The two
Collects, which are different in the evening prayer to those
used in the
morning office, call for no special remark, save that
they--in
common with all prayers--make no practical difference in human
life. The
devout Christian is no more defended from "all perils and
dangers of
this night," than is the most careless atheist; wisely, also,
does the
Christian, having prayed his prayer, walk carefully round his
house, and
examine the bolts and bars, mindful that these commonplace
defences are
more likely to be efficacious against burglars than the
protecting
arm of the Most High.
The remainder
of the service is the same as that used in the morning,
so calls for
no further remark. If only people would take the trouble
of _thinking_
about their religion; if only they could be led, or even
provoked,
into trying to realise that which they say they believe, then
the
foundations of the popular religion would rapidly be undermined, and
the banner of
Freethought would soon float proudly over the crumbling
ruins of that
which was once a Church.
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THE LITANY.
The Litany
has a fault which runs throughout the Prayer-Book, that "vain
repetition"
which, according to the Gospel, was denounced by Jesus of
Nazareth; the
refrain of "Good Lord, deliver us," and "We beseech
Thee to hear
us, good Lord," recurs with wearisome reiteration, and is
repeated
monotonously by the congregation, few of whom, probably, would
know from
what they were requesting deliverance, if the clergyman were
to stop and
ask so unexpected a question. Gods the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost are
severally besought to have mercy upon the miserable sinners
praying to
them, and then the Trinity as a whole is asked to do the
same. How far
this separation is consistent with the unity of the
Godhead, and
whether in praying to the Son we do, or do not, implicitly
pray to the
Father, and _vice versa_, those only can tell us who
understand
the "mystery of the Holy Trinity." This preamble over, the
remainder of
the Litany is addressed to "God the Son," who is the "Good
Lord"
invoked throughout, in spite of His reproof to the young man who
knelt to Him,
calling Him "Good Master;" "why callest thou Me good?"
Various
dogmas are alluded to in the succeeding verses in which few
educated
people now retain any belief. How many really care to be
delivered
"from the crafts and assaults of the devil," or believe in the
existence of
the devil at all? He is one of those phantoms that can only
be found in
the darkness, and which fade away when the sun arises.
How many
believe in the "everlasting damnation," of the same verse,
or really
consider themselves in the smallest danger of it? No one who
believed in
hell could pray to be delivered from it in careless accents,
for the
smallest chance of that awful doom would force a wail of terror
from the
lightest-hearted of the listeners. Is it consistent to ask
Christ to
deliver us from His wrath? if He loved men so much as to die
for them, it
seems as though a great change must have come over His mind
since He
ascended into heaven, if He really requires to be pressed so
urgently not
to "take vengeance," and to spare us and deliver us from
His wrath.
Which is right, the wrath or the love? for they are not
compatible;
and does God really like to see people crouching before Him
in this
fashion, praising His mercy while they tremble lest He should
"break
out" upon them? If we were inclined to be hypercritical we might
suggest that
the prayer to be delivered from "all uncharitableness"
gives a
melancholy proof of the inadequacy of prayer; the answer to it
may be read
weekly in the _Church Times_ and the _Rock_ more especially
in the
clerical contributions. The other petitions are also curiously
ineffectual:
"from all false doctrine, heresy, and schism," is so
manifestly
accepted at the Throne of Grace in these rationalising days.
Jesus is then
abjured to deliver His petitioners by the memory of His
days upon
earth, and we get the ancient idea of an incarnate God, so
common to all
eastern religions, and the curious picture of a God who
is born,
circumcised, baptised, fasts, is tempted, suffers, dies, is
buried,
rises, ascends. How God can do all this remains a mystery, but
these
suffering, and then conquering gods are familiar to all readers
of
mythologies; we learn further, that God the Holy Ghost can come to a
place where
He was not previously, although He is the infinite God, and
is therefore
omnipresent. Verily, it needs that our faith be great.
Being
delivered sufficiently, the congregation proceed to a number of
additional
petitions, the first of which is, unfortunately, as great
a failure as
the preceding ones, for it prays that the Church may be
guided
"in the right way;" and having regard to the multiplicity of
Churches,
each one of which goes doggedly in her own particular way, it
is manifest
that they can't all be right, as they are all different.
Then follow
prayers for the Royal Family and the Government, and a
general
request to "bless and keep all Thy people;" a request which is
systematically
disregarded. In these days of "bloated armaments" it
is at least
pleasant to dream in church of there being given "to all
nations, unity,
peace, and concord." The "pure affection" with which
God's Word is
received is also perfectly imaginary; those who do not
believe it
criticise and cavil; those who do believe it go to sleep
over it. The
last part of these verses seems designed simply to pray for
everybody all
round, and this being satisfactorily accomplished, we come
across
another trace of an ancient creed: "Lamb of God, that takest away
the sins of
the world;" this is a fragment of sun-worship, alluding to
the sun-god,
when, entering the sign of the Lamb, he bears away all the
coldness and
the darkness of the winter months, and gives life to the
world. The
remainder of the Litany is of the same painfully servile
character as
the earlier portions; God seems to be regarded as a fierce
tyrant,
longing to wreak His fury on mankind, and only withheld by
incessant
entreaties. All possible evils seem to be showering down on
the
congregation, and, if one closed one's eyes, one could imagine
a sad-faced,
care-worn, haggard group of Covenanters, or Huguenots,
instead of
the fashionable crowd that fills the pews; and when one hears
them ask that
they may be "hurt by no persecutions," one is inclined
to mutter
grimly: "You are all safe, mother Church, and you are the
persecutor,
not the persecuted." The service concludes with the same
unreal cant
about afflictions and infirmities, till one could wish
almost to
hear something of the style of observation made by an angry
nurse to a
tiresome child: "If you don't stop crying this minute, I will
give you
something to cry for." If men would only be as real inside the
church as
they are outside; if they would think and mean what they say,
this pitiful
burlesque would speedily be put an end to, and they would
no longer
offer up that sacrifice of lying lips, which are said to be
"an
abomination to the Lord."
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PRAYERS AND
THANKSGIVINGS UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.
These special
prayers are, perhaps, on the whole, the most childish of
all the
childish prayers in the Church-book before us. A prayer "for
rain;" a
prayer "for fair weather:" it is almost too late to argue
seriously
against prayers like these, except that uneducated people do
still believe
that God regulates the weather, day by day, and may be
influenced in
His arrangements by the prayer of some weather-critic
below. Yet it
is a literal fact that storm-signals fly before the
approaching
storm, and prepare people for its coming, so that when it
sweeps across
our seas the vessels are safely in port, which otherwise
would have
sunk beneath its fury; meteorology is progressing day by day,
and is
becoming more and more perfect, but this science--as all other
science--would
be impossible if God could be influenced by prayer; a
storm-signal
would be needless if prayer could stay the storm, and would
be unreliable
if a prayer could suddenly, in mid-ocean, check the course
of the
tempest. Science is only possible when it is admitted that "God
works by
laws," _i.e._, that His working at all need not be taken into
account. The
laws of weather are as unchangeable as all other natural
laws, for
laws are nothing more than the ascertained sequence of
events; not
until that sequence has been found by long observation to
be
invariable, does the sequence receive the title of "a law." As the
weather of
to-day is the result of the weather of countless yesterdays,
the only way
in which prayers for change can be effectual is that God
should change
the whole weather of the past, and so let fresh causes
bring about
fresh results; but this seems a rather large prayer, to
say the least
of it, and might, by the carnal mind, be considered as
somewhat
presumptuous. In the prayers "in the time of dearth and famine"
we find the
old barbarous notion that men's moral sins are punished by
physical
"visitations of God," and that God's blessing will give plenty
in the place
of death: if men work hard they will get more than if they
pray hard,
and even long ago in Eden God could not make his plants grow,
because
"there was not a man to till the ground;" at least, so says the
Bible. The
prayer "in the time of war," is strikingly beautiful, begging
the
All-Father to abate the pride, assuage the malice, and confound the
devices of
some of His children for the advantage of the others. The
"most
religious and gracious" Sovereign recommended to the care of
God has been
known to be such a king as George IV., but yet clergy
and people
went on day after day speaking of him thus to a God who
"searcheth
the hearts." A quaint old Prayer-Book remarks upon this
prayer for
the High Court of Parliament, that the "right disposing of
the hearts of
legislators proceeds from God," and that "both disbelief
and ignorance
must have made fearful progress where this principle
is not
recognised." In these latter days we fear that disbelief and
ignorance of
this kind _have_ made very considerable progress. The
Thanksgivings
run side by side with the prayers in subjects, and are
therefore
open to the same criticisms. None of these prayers or praises
can be
defended by reason or by argument; reason shows us their utter
folly, and
their complete uselessness. Is it wise to persist in forcing
into people's
lips words which have lost all their meaning, and which
the people,
if they trouble themselves to think about them at all, at
once
recognise as false? All danger in progress lies in the obstinate
maintenance
of things which have outlived their age; just as a stream
which flows
peacefully on, spreading plenty and fertility in its
course, and
growing naturally wider and fuller, will--if dammed up too
much--burst
at length through the dam, and rush forward as a torrent,
bearing
destruction and ruin in its course; so will gradual and gentle
reform in
ancient habits change all that needs changing, without abrupt
alterations,
letting the stream of thought grow wider and fuller; but
if all Reform
be delayed, if all change be forbidden, if the dam of
prejudice, of
custom, of habit, bar the stream too long, then thought
hurls it down
with the crash of revolution, and many a thing is lost
in the
swirling torrent which might have remained long, and might have
beautified
human life. Few things call more loudly for Reform than our
hitherto
loudly-boasted Reformation.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE COMMUNION
SERVICE.
NO doctrine,
perhaps, has done so much to cause disunion in the Church
as the
doctrine of Communion enshrined in the Lord's Supper. A feast of
love in idea,
it has been pre-eminently a feast of hate in reality,
and the
fiercest contests have been waged over this "last legacy of
the
Redeemer." Down to the time of the Reformation it was the central
service of
the Church universal, Eastern and Western alike: it was the
Liturgy,
distinguished from every-other office by this distinctive name.
Round this
rite revolved the whole of the other services, as week-days
around the
Lord's Day; on its due performance was lavished everything of
beauty and of
splendour that wealth could bring; sweetest incense, most
harmonious
music, richest vestments, rarely jewelled vessels, pomp of
procession,
stateliness of ceremony, all brought their glory and their
beauty to
render magnificent the reception of the present God. Among the
Reformed
Churches the festival was shorn of its grandeur; it became once
more the
simple "supper of the Lord," no memorial sacrifice, but only a
commemorative
rite; no coming of the Lord to men, but only a sign of
the union
through faith of the believer with the Saviour. At the present
time the old
contest rages, even within the bosom of the Reformed
Church of
England; one party still clings to the elder belief of a
real presence
of Christ in the elements themselves, or in indissoluble
connection
with them, and, therefore, celebrates the service with much
of the
ancient pomp; while the other furiously rejects this so-called
idolatry, and
makes the service as bare and as simple as possible.
Both parties
can claim parts of the Communion Office as upholding
their special
views, for the English service has passed through much of
tinkering
from High and Low, and retains the marks of the alterations
that have
been made by each.
To those
outside the Church this office has particular attraction, as
being, in a
special manner, a link between the past and the present, and
being full of
traces of the ancient religion of the world, that catholic
sun-worship
of which Christianity is a modernised revival. From the
Nicene Creed,
in which Jesus is described as "God of God, Light of
Light, very
God of very God, Begotten not made, Being of one substance
with the
Father, By whom all things were made"--from this point we
breathe the
full atmosphere of the elder world, and find ourselves
engaged in
the worship of that Light of Light, who, being the image of
the invisible
God, the first-born of every creature, has for ages and
ages been
adored as incarnate in Mithra, in Christna, in Osiris, in
Christ. We
give thanks for "the redemption of the world by the death and
passion of
'the Sun-Saviour, who suffered on the Cross for us,' who lay
in darkness
and in the shadow of death;" we praise Him who fills heaven
and earth
with His glory, and who rose as "the Paschal Lamb," and has
"taken
away the sin of the world," bearing away in the sign of the Lamb
the darkness
and dreariness of the winter; we remember the Holy Ghost,
the fresh
spring wind, who, "as it had been a mighty wind," came to
bring us
"out of darkness" into "the clear light" of the sun; then
we
see the
priest, with his face turned to the sun-rising, take the bread
and wine, the
symbols of the God, and bless them for the food of men,
these symbols
being changed into the very substance of the deity, for
are they not,
in very truth, of him alone? "How naturally does the
eternal work
of the sun, daily renewed, express itself in such lines as
'Into bread his heat is turned,
Into generous wine his light.'
And imagining
the sun as a person, the change to 'flesh' and 'blood'
becomes
inevitable; while the fact that the solar forces are actually
changed into
food, without forfeiting their solar character, finds
expression in
the doctrines of transubstantiation and the real
presence."
("Keys of the Creeds," page 91.) After this union with the
Deity, by
partaking of his very self, we praise once more the "Lamb of
God that
takest away the sins of the world," and is "most high in the
glory of God
the Father." The resemblance is made the nearer in the
churches
where much of ceremony is found (although noticeable in all,
since that resemblance
is stereotyped in the formulas themselves; but in
the more
elaborate performances the old rites are more clearly apparent)
in the
tonsured head of the priest, in the suns often embroidered on
vestment and
on altar-cloth, in the rays that surround the sacred
monogram on
the vessels, in the cross imprinted on the bread, and
marking each
utensil, in the lighted candles, in the grape-vine
chiselled on
the chalice--in all these, and in many another symbol, we
read the
whole story of the Sun-god, written in hieroglyphics as easily
decipherable
by the initiated as is the testimony of the rocks by the
geologian.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But passing
by this antiquarian side of the Office, we will examine it
as a service
suitable for the use of educated and thoughtful people at
the present
time. The Rubric which precedes the Office is one of those
unfortunate
rules which are obsolete as regards their practice, and yet
which--from
their preservation--appear to simple-minded parsons to be
intended to
be enforced, whereby the said parsons fall into the clutches
of the law,
and suffer grievously. "An open and notorious evil-liver"
must not be
permitted to come to the Lord's Table, and this expression
seems to be
explained in the Exhortation in the Office, wherein we read:
"if any
of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of His
word, an
adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous
crime, repent
you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table;
lest, after
the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into
you, as he
entered into Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and
bring you to
destruction both of: body and soul." In a late case,
the Sacrament
was refused to one who disbelieved in the devil and who
slandered
God's word, on those very grounds, and it would seem to be an
act of
Christian charity so to deny it; for surely to say that part of
God's word is
"contrary to religion and decency" must be to slander it,
if words have
any meaning, and people who do not believe in the devil
ought hardly
to be sharers in a rite after which the devil will
enter into
them with such melancholy consequences. It would seem more
consistent
either to alter the formulas or else to carry them out;
true, one
clergyman wrote that the responsibility lay with the unworthy
recipient who
"did nothing else but increase" his "damnation," but it
is scarcely a
pleasing notion that the clergyman should stand inviting
people to the
Lord's table and, coolly handing to one of those who
accept, the
body of Christ, say, "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ
preserve thy
body and soul unto everlasting life," when he means--in the
delicate
language used by the above-mentioned clergyman--"The Body of
our Lord
Jesus Christ damn thy body and soul unto everlasting death."
No one but a
clergyman could dream of so offensive a proceeding, and, to
those who
believe, one so terribly awful.
The Ten
Commandments which stand in the fore-front of the service are
very much out
of place as regards some of them, to say nothing of the
want of
truthfulness in the assertion, that "God spake these words," &c.
In the second
we are forbidden to make any graven image, or any likeness
of any thing,
a command which would destroy all art, and which no member
of the
congregation can have the smallest notion of obeying. The Jews,
who made the
cherubim over the ark, upon which God sat, are popularly
supposed not
to have disobeyed this command, because the cherubim were
not the
likeness of anything in heaven, earth, or water: they were,
like
unicorns, creatures undiscovered and undiscoverable. Yet in direct
opposition to
this command, Solomon made brazen oxen to support his sea
of brass (1
Kings vii. 25,29) and lions on the steps of his ivory throne
(Kings x.
19,20) and God himself, said to have ordered Moses to make a
brazen
Serpent. God is described, in this same commandment as a "jealous
God"--which
is decidedly immoral and unpleasant who visits "the sins of
the fathers
upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of
them that
hate me;" the justice of this is so obvious that no comment on
it is
necessary. The fourth Commandment is another which no one dreams
of attending
to; in the first place, we do not keep the seventh day at
all, and in
the second, our man-servant, our maid-servant and our cattle
do all manner
of work on the day we keep as the Sabbath. Further, who
in the
present day believes that "in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the
sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day;"
geology, astronomy
ethnology have taught us otherwise, and, among those
who repeat
the response to this commandment in a London church, not
one could
probably be found who believes it to be true. The fifth
Commandment
is equally out of place, for dutiful children do not live
any longer
than undutiful. The remainder touch simple moral duties,
enforced by
all creeds alike, and are noticeable for their omissions
and not for
their commissions: the insertion of the Buddhist Commandment
against
intoxication, for instance, would be an improvement, although
such a
commandment is naturally not to be found in the case of so gross
and sensual a
people as the ancient Jews. The alternative prayers for
the Queen,
which follow next, are only worth noting, because the first
enshrines the
doctrine of divine right, which is long since dead and
buried,
except in church; and the other says "that the hearts of Kings
are in thy
rule and governance," and suggests the thought that, if
this be so,
it is better to be out of that "rule and governance," the
effects on
the hearts of Kings not having been specially attractive.
The Nicene
Creed comes next, and is open to-the objections before made
against the
Apostles' Creed; the last clauses relating to the Holy
Ghost are
historically interesting, since the "and the Son" forms the
_Filioque_
which severed Eastern from Western Christendom;*
* A short but very graphic account of the
shameful
transaction by which the Filioque clause
was, so to speak,
smuggled into the Nicene Creed, is to be
found in the first
ten or twelve pages of the shilling
pamphlet written by
Edmond S. Fouldes, B.D., entitled
"The Church's Creed, or
the Crown's Creed".... clearly
provides, too, that the
Church of Rome once held that the Holy
Ghost only proceeded
from the Father, as the Dominus in it can
only refer to the
Father.
"Who
with the Father and the Son together" ought to be "worshipped and
glorified,"
would be more true to fact than "is," since the Holy Ghost
is sadly
ignored by modern Christendom, and has a very small share of
either
prayers or hymns: yet he is the husband of the virgin Mary, and
the Father of
Jesus Christ; he is, therefore, a very important, though
puzzling,
person in the Godhead, being the Father of him from whom
he himself
proceeds: this is a mystery, and can only be understood
by faith. The
texts that follow are remarkable for their ingenious
selection:
"Who goeth a warfare," &c. (Cor. ix. 7); "If we have
sown,"&c.
(I cor. ix. 9); "Do ye know," &c. (I Cor. ix. 13); "He that
soweth
little," &c, (2 Cor. ix. 6); "Let him that is taught," (Gal.
vi.
6). the
pervading selfishness of motive is also worth nothing: Give now
in order that
ye may get hereafter; "Never turn thy face from any
poor man,
_and then the face of the Lord shall not be turned away from
thee_;"
"He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord: _and
look, what he
layeth out, it shall be paid him again_;" "If thou hast
much, give
plenteously; if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to
give of that
little; _for so gathered thou thyself a good reward in the
day of
necessity_."* No free, glad giving here; no willing, joyful aid
to a poorer
brother, because he needs what I can give; no ready offer of
the cup of
cold water, simply because the thirsty is there and wants the
refreshment;
ever the hateful whisper comes: "thou shalt in no wise lose
thy
reward." These time-serving offerings are then presented to God by
being placed
"upon the Holy Table," and we then get another prayer for
Queen,
Christian Kings, authorities, Bishops, and people in general,
concluding
with thanks for the dead, not a cheerful subject to bless God
for, if there
chance to be present any mourner whose heart is sore with
the loss of a
beloved one. At this point the service is supposed to end,
when no
celebration of the Holy Communion is intended, and here we find
two
Exhortations, or notices of celebration, from the first of which
we have
already quoted:** in the second, we cannot help remarking the
undignified
position in which God is placed; it is a "grievous and
unkind
thing" not to come to a rich feast when invited thereto,
wherefore we
are to fear lest by withdrawing ourselves from this holy
Supper, we
"provoke God's indignation against" us. "Consider with
yourselves
how great injury ye do unto God:" what a very curious
expression.
Is God thus at the mercy of man? Surely, then, of all living
Beings the
lot of God must be the saddest, if his happiness and his
glory are in
the hands of each man and woman; the greater his knowledge
the greater
the misery, and as his knowledge is perfect, and the vast
majority of
human kind know and care nothing about him, his wretchedness
must be
complete.
* As if the clergy, with very few
exceptions, are not
sufficiently provided for by the tithes,
&c, without having
to go a-begging like either Buddhist or
Roman Catholic
monks, to both of whom P.P. and P.M. are
not inappropriately
applied (Professors of Poverty and Practisers
of
Mendicancy).
** It is, however, only just to say that
that portion of it
contained between "The Way and Means
thereto," and "Offences
at God's Hands," is one of the best
bits in the whole
Prayer-Book, and which far surpasses the
generality of
sermons one hears afterwards.
All things
being ready, the clergyman begins by another Exhortation, of
somewhat
threatening character: "So is the danger great if we receive
the same
unworthily. For then we are guilty of the Body and Blood of
Christ our
Saviour; we eat and drink our own damnation, not considering
the Lord's
Body; we kindle God's wrath against us; we provoke him to
plague us
with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death." (Surely we
cannot be
plagued with more than one kind of death at once, and we can't
die sundry
times, even after the Communion.) One almost wonders why
anyone
accepts this very threatening invitation, even though there are
advantages
promised to "meet partakers." The High Church party have
indeed the
right to talk much of the real presence, since ordinary bread
and wine have
none of these fearful penalties attached to the eating and
drinking, and
some curious change must have taken place in them before
all these
terrible consequences can ensue. What would happen if some
consecrated
bread and wine chanced to be left by mistake, and a stray
comer into
the vestry eat it unknowingly? One thinks of Anne Askew, who,
told that a
mouse eating a crumb fallen from the Host would infallibly
be damned,
replied, "Alack, poor mouse!" Then follows a Confession of
the most
cringing kind, fit only for the lips of some coward suppliant
crouching at
the feet of an Eastern monarch; it is marvellous that free
English men
and women can frame their lips into phrases of such utter
abasement,
even to a God; manliness in religion: is sorely-needed,
unless,
indeed, God be something smaller than man, and be pleased with
the
degradation painful to human eyes. The prayer of consecration is the
central point
of the ordinance; of old they prayed for the descent of
the Holy
Ghost on the elements, "for whatsoever the Holy-Ghost toucheth
is sanctified
and clean"--it is not explained how the Holy Ghost, being
omnipresent,
manages to avoid touching everything--and now the priest
asks that in
receiving the bread and wine we "may be partakers of"
Christ's Body
and Blood, and repeats the words, "This is my Body," "This
is my
Blood," laying his hand alternately-over the bread and the wine:
now if this
means anything, if it is not mere mockery, it means that
after the
consecration the bread and wine are other than they were
before; if it
does not mean this, the whole prayer is simply a farce, a
piece of
acting scarcely decent under the circumstances. But flesh
and blood!
Putting aside the extreme repulsiveness of the idea, the
coarseness of
the act, the utter unpleasantness of eating flesh and
drinking
blood, all of which has become non-disgusting by habit and
fashion, and
the distastefulness of which can scarcely be realised by
any
believer--putting aside all this, is there any change in the bread
and wine?
Examine it; analyse it; test it in any and every fashion;
still it
answers back to the questioner, "bread and wine." Are our
senses deceived?
Then try a hundred different persons; all cannot be
deceived
alike. Unless every result of experience is untrustworthy, we
have here to
do with bread and wine, and with nothing more. "But faith
is
needed." Ah yes! There is the secret: no flesh and blood without
faith; no
miracle without credulity. Miracle-working priests are only
successful
among credulously-disposed people; miracles can only be
received by
those who think it less likely that Nature should speak
falsely than
that man should deceive; those who believe in this change
through
consecration cannot be touched by argument; they have closed
their eyes
that they may not see, their ears that they may not hear;
no knowledge
can reach them, for they have shut the gateways whereby
it could
enter, they are literally dead in their superstition, buried
beneath the
stone of their faith. The reception of the Body and Blood of
Christ being
over, the people having knelt to eat and drink, as is only
right when
eating and drinking Christ (John vi. 57), the Lord's Prayer
is said for
the second time, a prayer and thanksgiving follows, confined
to "we
and all thy whole Church," for the spirit is the same as that of
the prayer of
Christ, "I pray not for the world, but for them whom thou
hast given
me" (John xvii. 9), and then the service winds up with the
_Gloria in
Excelsis_ and the Benediction. Such is the "bounden duty and
service"
offered by the Church to God, the service of which the central
act must be
either a farce or a falsehood, and therefore insulting to
the God to
whom it is offered. Regarded as a service to God, the whole
Communion
Office is objectionable in the highest degree; regarded as
an
antiquarian survival, it is very interesting and instructive; it is
surely time
that it should be put in its right place, and that its true
origin should
be recognised. The day is gone by for these barbarous,
though
poetic, ceremonials; the "flesh and blood," which was a bold
figure for
the heat and light of the sun, becomes coarse when joined in
thought to a
human being; ceremonies that fitted the childhood of the
world are out
of place in its manhood, as the play that is graceful
in the child
would be despicable in the man; these rites are the
baby-clothes
of the world, and cannot be stretched to fit the stalwart
limbs of its
maturer age, cannot add grace to its form, or dignity to
its graver
walk.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE BAPTISMAL
OFFICES.
For all
purposes of criticism the Offices for "Public Baptism of
Infants, to
be used in the Church," for "Private Baptism of Children in
houses,"
and "Baptism to such as are of riper years, and able to answer
for
themselves," may be treated as one and the same, the leading idea
of each
service being identical; this idea is put forward clearly and
distinctly in
the preface to the Office: "Dearly beloved, forasmuch
as all men
are conceived and born in sin; and that our Saviour Christ
saith, None
can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate
and born anew
of water and of the Holy Ghost; I beseech you to call upon
God the
Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous
mercy he will
grant to this Child that thing which by nature he cannot
have."
According to the doctrine of the Church, then, baptism is
absolutely
necessary to salvation: "_None can enter_... except he be...
born anew of
water;" thus peals out the doom of condemnation on the
whole human
race, save that fragment of it which is sprinkled from the
Christian
font; there is no evasion possible here; no exception made
in favour of
heathen peoples; no mercy allowed to those who have no
opportunity
of baptism; none can enter save through "the laver of
regeneration."
Can any words be too strong whereby to denounce a
doctrine so
shameful, an injustice so glaring? A child is born into the
world; it is
no fault of his that he is conceived in sin; it is no fault
of his that
he is born in sin; his consent was not asked before he was
ushered into
the world; no offer was made to him which he could reject
of this
terribly gift of a condemned life; flung is he, without his
knowledge,
without his will, into a world lying under the curse of God,
a child of
wrath, and heir of damnation. "By nature he _cannot_ have."
Then why
should God be wrath with him because he hath not? The whole
arrangement
is of God's own making. He fore-ordained the birth; he gave
the life; the
helpless, unconscious infant lies there, the work of his
own hands;
good or bad, he is responsible for it; heir of love or of
wrath, he has
made it what it is; as wholly is it his doing as the
unconscious vessel
is the doing of the potter; as reasonably may God
be angry with
the child as the potter swear at the clay he has clumsily
moulded: if
the vessel be bad, blame the potter; if the creature be
bad, blame
the Creator. The congregation pray that God "of his bounteous
mercy,"
"for thine infinite mercies," will save the child, "that he,
being
delivered from thy wrath," may be blessed. It is no question of
mercy we have
to do with here; it is a question of simple justice, and
nothing more;
if God, for his own "good pleasure," or in the pursuance
of the
designs of his infinite wisdom, has placed this unfortunate child
in so
terrible a position, he is bound by every tie of justice, by every
sacred claim
of right, to deliver the blameless victim, and to place him
where he
shall have a fair chance of well-being. "It is certain by
God's
Word," says the Rubric, "that children _which are baptized_, dying
before they
commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved." And those which
are not
baptized? The Holy Roman Church sends these into a cheerful
place called
Limbo, and the baby-souls wander about in chill twilight,
cursed with
immortality, shut out for ever from the joys of Paradise.
Many readers
will remember Lowell's pathetic poem on this subject, and
the ghastly
baptism; they will also know into what devious paths of
argumentative
indecency that Church has wandered in deciding upon the
fate of
unbaptized infants;--how, when mothers have died in childbirth,
the yet
unborn children have been baptized to save them from the
terrible doom
pronounced upon them by their Father in heaven, even
before they
saw the light;--how it has been said that in cases where
mother and
child cannot both be saved the mother should be sacrificed
that the
child may not die unbaptized. Into the details of these
arguments we
cannot enter; they are only fit for orthodox Christians,
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
in whose
pages they may read them who list. Truly, the Lord is a jealous
God, visiting
the sins of the fathers upon the children, since unborn
children are
condemned for the untimely death of their mother, and
unbaptized
infants for the carelessness of their parents or nurses. Of
course, the
majority of English clergymen believe nothing of this kind;
but then why
do they read a service which implies it? Why do they use
words in a
non-natural sense? Why do they put off their honesty when
they put on
their surplices?
And why will
the laity not give utterance to their thoughts on these and
all such
objectionable parts of the Service? In the Office for adults,
as regards
the necessity of the Sacrament, the words come in: "where it
may be
had;" but the phrase reads as though it had been written in the
margin by
some kindly soul, and had from thence crept into the text, for
it is in
direct opposition to the whole argument of the address wherein
it occurs and
to the rest of the office, as also to the other two
offices for
infants. The stress laid upon right baptism, i.e., baptism
with water,
accompanied by the "name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the
Holy Ghost," appears specially in the office to follow
the private
baptism of a child, should the child live; for the Rubric
directs that
if there be any doubt of the use of-the water and the
formula,
"which are essential parts of Baptism," the priest shall
perform the
baptismal ceremony, saying, "If thou art not already
baptized, I
baptize thee," &c. Surely such care and pains to ensure
correct
baptism speak with sufficient plainness as to the importance
attached by
the Church to this initiatory rite; this importance she
gives to it
in other places: none, unbaptized, must approach her altar
to take the
"bread of life:" none, unbaptized, must be buried by her
ministers,
"in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal
life."
The baptized are within the ark of the Church; the unbaptized
are
struggling in the waves of God's wrath outside; no hand can be
outstretched
to save them; they are strangers, aliens, to the covenant
of promise;
they are without hope. The whole office for infants reads
like a play:
the clergyman asks that the infant "may receive remission
of his
sins;" what sins? The people are admonished "that they defer not
the Baptism
of their children longer than the first or second Sunday
next after
their birth." What sins can a baby a week old have
committed?
from what sins can he need release? for what sins can he
ask
forgiveness? And yet, here is a whole congregation prostrate before
Almighty God,
praying that a tiny long-robed baby may be forgiven, may
be pardoned
his sins of--coming into the world when God sent him! The
ceremony
would be ludicrous were it not so pitiful. And supposing that
the infant
does need forgiveness, and has sins to be washed away, why
should a few
drops of water, sprinkled on the face--or bonnet--of the
baby, or even
the immersion of his body in the font, wash away the sins
of his soul?
The water is "sanctified;" we pray: "Sanctify this water to
the mystical
washing away of sin." As the hymn sweetly puts it:
"The water in this font
Is water, by gross mortals eyed;
But, seen by faith, 'tis blood
Out of a dear friend's side."
Blood once
more! how Christians cling to the revolting imagery of a
bygone and
barbarous age of gross conceptions. And, applied by faith,
it cleanses
the soul of the child from sin. Well, the whole thing is
consistent:
the invisible soul is washed from invisible sin by invisible
blood, and to
all outward appearance the child remains after baptism
exactly what
it was before--except it chance to get inflammation of
the lungs, as
we have known happen, from High Church free use of water,
which is,
perhaps, the promised baptism of fire. The promises of the
sponsors are
in full accordance with the rest of the services; promises
made by other
people, in the child's name, as to his future conduct,
over which
they have no control. The baby renounces the devil and all
his
belongings, believes the Apostles' Creed, and answers "that is my
desire,"
when asked if he will be baptized; all which "is very pretty
acting,"
but jars somewhat on the feeling of reality which ought surely
to
characterize a believer's intercourse with his God. The child being
baptized and
signed with the Cross, "is regenerate," according to the
declaration
of the priest. Some contend that the Church of England does
not teach
baptismal regeneration, but it is hard to see how any one can
read this
service, and then deny the teaching; it is clearer and fuller
than is the
teaching of her voice upon most subjects. The ceremony
of baptism
and the idea of regeneration are both derived from the
sun-worship
of which so many traces have already been pointed out: the
worshippers
of Mithra practised baptism, and it is common to the various
phases of the
solar faith. Regeneration, in some parts, especially in
India, was
obtained in a different fashion: a hole through a rock, or
a narrow
passage between two, was the sacred spot, and a worshipper,
squeezing
himself through such an opening, was regenerated, and was, by
this literal
representation of birth, born a second time, born into a
new life, and
the sins of the former life were no longer accounted to
him. Many
such holes are still preserved and revered in India, and there
can be little
doubt that the ancient Druidic remains bear traces of
being adapted
for this same ceremony, although a natural fissure appears
ever to have
been accounted the most sacred.*
* Even in this country, at Brimham Rocks,
near Ripon, in
Yorkshire, the dead form of the custom is,
or was, until
very lately, kept up by the guide sending
all visitors, who
chose to avail themselves of the
privilege, through such a
fissure.
One ought
scarcely to leave unnoted the preamble to the first prayer in
the baptismal
service: "Who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his
family in the
ark from perishing by water; and also didst safely lead
the children
of Israel thy people through the Red Sea, figuring thereby
thy holy
baptism; and by the baptism of thy well-beloved Son Jesus
Christ, in
the river Jordan, didst sanctify water to the mystical
washing of
sin." In the two first examples given the choice of the
Church
appears to be peculiarly unfortunate, as in each case water was
the element
to be escaped _from_, and it was a source of death, not
of life;
perhaps, though, there is a subtle meaning in the Red Sea,
it points to
the blood of Christ: but then, again, the Red Sea drowned
people, and
surely the anti-type is not so dangerous as that? It must
be a mystery.
It would be interesting to know how many of the educated
clergymen who
read this prayer believe in the story of the Noachian
deluge, and
of the miraculous passage of the Red Sea; and further,
how many of
them believe that God, by these fables, figured his holy
baptism. Will
the nineteenth century ever summon up energy enough to
shake off
these remnants of a dead superstition, and be honest enough to
stop using a
form of words which is no longer a vehicle of belief? When
the Prayer
Book was compiled these words had a meaning; to-day they have
none. Shall
not a second Reformation sweep away these dead beliefs,
even as the
first away for its own age the phrases which represented an
earlier and
coarser creed?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE ORDER OF
CONFIRMATION.
"These
signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they
cast out
devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up
serpents; and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;
they shall
lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." In those
remarkable
days the "order of Confirmation" might have been in
consonance
with its surroundings, a state of things which is very far
from being
its present position. Mr. Spurgeon, writing for the benefit
of street
preachers, lately pointed out very sensibly that as the Holy
Ghost no
longer gave the gift of tongues, they had "better stick to
their
grammars," and in these degenerate days honest effort is more
likely to
show results more satisfactory than those which ensue from the
laying on of
Bishops' hands. When the Apostles performed this ceremony,
which the
Bishop now performs after their example, definite proofs
of its
efficacy were said to have been seen; so much so, indeed, that
Simon, the
sorcerer, wished to invest some money in heavenly securities,
so that
"on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost." A
Simon would
manifestly never be found nowadays ready to pay a Bishop for
the power of
causing the effects of Confirmation. So far as the carnal
eye can see,
the white-robed, veiled young ladies, and the shame-faced
black-coated
boys, who throng the church on a Confirmation day, return
from the
altar very much the same as they went up to it: no one begins
to speak with
tongues; if they did, the beadle would probably interfere
and quench
the Spirit with the greatest promptitude. They are supposed
to have
received some special gifts: "the spirit of wisdom and
understanding;
the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit
of knowledge
and true godliness;" and in addition to these six spirits,
there is one
more: "the spirit of thy holy fear." No less than seven
spirits,
then, enter these lads and lasses. Wisdom and understanding
are easily
perceptible: are they wiser after Confirmation than they were
before? do
they understand more rapidly? do they know more? if there
be no
perceptible difference is the presence of the Holy Spirit of none
effect? if of
none effect can his presence be of any use, of the very
smallest
advantage? if of no use, why make all this parade about giving
a thing whose
gift makes the recipient no richer than he was before?
Besides, what
certainty can there be that the Holy Ghost is given
at all?
Allowing--what seems to an outsider a gross piece of
irreverence--that
the Holy Ghost is in the fingers of the Bishop to be
given away
when it suits the Bishop's convenience, or is in a sort of
reservoir, of
which the Bishop turns the tap and lets the stream of
grace
descend--allowing all this as possible, ought not some "sign to
follow them
that believe"? How can we be sure that the Bishop is not
an impostor,
going through a conjuror's gestures and mutterings, and no
magic results
accruing? If, in the ordinary course of daily-life, any
one came and
offered us some valuable things he said that he possessed,
and then went
through the form of giving them to us, saying: "Here
they are;
guard and preserve them for the rest of your life;" and the
outstretched
hand contained nothing at all, and we found ourselves with
nothing in
our grasp, should we be content with his assurance that we
had really
got them, although we might not be able to see them, and we
ought to have
sufficient faith to take his word for it? Should we not
utterly
refuse to believe that we had received anything unless we had
some proof of
having done so, and were in some way the better or the
worse for it?
The truth is that people's religion is, to them, a matter
of such small
importance that they do not trouble themselves about
proof--Faith
is enough to comfort them; the six week-days require their
brains, their
efforts, their thought: the Sunday is the Lord's day, and
he must see
toft: earth needs all their earnest attention, but heaven
must take
care of itself; the validity of an earthly title is important,
and the
confirmation of a right to inherit property in this world is
eagerly
welcomed, but the Confirmation to a heavenly inheritance is
a mere farce,
which it is the fashion to go through about the age of
fifteen, but
which is only a fashion, the confirmation of a faith in
nothing in
particular to an invisible heritage of nothing at all.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE FORM OF
THE SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY.
One of the
most curious blunders regarding orthodox Christianity is,
that it has
tended to the elevation of woman. As a matter of fact, the
Eastern ideas
about women are embodied in Christianity, and these ideas
are
essentially degraded and degrading. From the time when Paul bade
women obey
their husbands, Augustine's mother was beaten, unresisting,
by
Augustine's father, and Jerome fled from woman's charms, and monks
declaimed
against the daughters of Eve, down to the present day, when
Peter's
authority is used against woman suffrage, Christianity has
consistently
regarded woman as a creature to be subject to man, because,
being
deceived, she was first in transgression. The Church service for
matrimony is
redolent of this barbarous idea, relic of a time when men
seized wives
by force, or else purchased them, so that the wives became,
in literal
fact, the property of their husbands. We learn that matrimony
was
"instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto
us the
mystical union that is between Christ and his Church." It would
be
interesting to know how many of those joined by the Church believe
in the
Paradise story of man's innocency and fall. It seems that Christ
has adorned
the holy estate by his first miracle in Cana; but the
adornment is rather
of a dubious character, when we reflect that the
probable
effect of the miracle would be a scene somewhat too gay, from
the enormous
quantity of wine made by Christ for men who already had
"well
drunk." Christ's approval of marriage may well be considered
doubtful when
we remember that a virgin was chosen as his mother, that
he himself
remained unmarried, and that he distinctly places celibacy
higher than
marriage in Matt. xix. 11, 12, where he urges: "he that is
able to
receive it let him receive it." St. Paul also, though he allows
it to his
converts, advises virginity in preference: "I say to the
unmarried and
widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I;" "he
that giveth
her not in marriage doeth better" (see throughout 1 Cor.
vii.) The
reasons given for marriage are surely misplaced; last of all,
it is said
that marriage is "ordained for the mutual society, help,
and comfort
that the one ought to have of the other;" this, instead of
"thirdly,"
ought to be "first." "As a remedy against sin and to avoid
fornication,
that such persons as have not the gift of continency might
marry,"
is not a reason very honourable to the marriage estate, nor very
delicate to
read out before a mixed congregation to a young bride and
bridegroom;
so strongly objectionable is the heedless coarseness of
this preface
felt to be that in many churches it is entirely omitted,
although it
is retained--as are all remains of a coarser age--in the
Prayer-Book
as published by authority. The promise exchanged between the
contracting
parties is of far too sweeping a character, and is immoral,
because
promising what may be beyond the powers of the promisers to
perform;
"to love" "so long as ye both shall live," and "till
death us
do
part," is a pledge far too wide; love does not stay by promising, nor
is love a
feeling which can be made to order. A promise to live always
together
might be made, although that would be unwise in this changing
world, and
the endless processes in the Divorce Court are a satire on
this
so-called joined by God; "what God hath joined together" man does
continually
"put asunder," and it would be wiser to adapt the service to
the altered
circumstances of the times in which we live. The promise of
obedience and
service on the woman's part should also be eliminated, and
the contract
should be a simple promise of fidelity between two equal
friends. The
declaration of the man as he places the ring on the woman's
finger is as
archaic as the rest of this fossil service, and about as
true:
"With all my worldly goods I thee endow," says the man, when, as a
matter of
fact, he becomes possessed of all his wife's property and she
does not
become possessed of his. One of the concluding prayers is a
delightful
specimen of Prayer-Book science: "O God, who of thy mighty
power hast
made all things of nothing." What was the general aspect
of affairs
when there was "nothing?" how did something emerge where
"nothing"
was before? if God filled all space, was he "nothing?" is the
existence of
nothing a conceivable idea? "can people think of nothing
except when
they don't think at all?" who also (after other things set
in order)
didst appoint that out of man (created after thine own image
and
similitude) woman should take her beginning:" "out of man," that
is out of one
of man's ribs; has any one tried to picture the scene:
Almighty God,
who has no body nor parts, taking one of Adam's ribs, and
closing up
the flesh, and "out of the rib made he a woman." God, a pure
spirit,
holding a man's rib, not in his hands, for he has none, and
"making"
a woman out of it, fashioning the rib into skull, and arms,
and ribs, and
legs. Can a more ludicrous position be imagined; and Adam?
What became
of his internal economy? was he made originally with a rib
too much, to
provide against the emergency, or did he go, for the rest
of his life,
with a rib too little? And the Church of England endorses
this
ridiculous old-world fable. Man was created "after thine own image
and
similitude." What is the image of God? He is a spirit and has no
similitude.
If man is made in his image, God must be a celestial man,
and cannot
possibly be omnipresent. Besides, in Genesis i. 27, where it
is stated
that "God created man in his own image," it distinctly goes
on to
declare: "in the image of God created he him; _male and female_
created he
them. Thus the woman is made in God's image as much as the
man, and
God's image is "male and female." All students know that the
ancient ideas
of God give him this double nature, and that no trinity
is complete
without the addition of the female element; but the pious
compilers of
the Prayer-Book did not probably intend thus to transplant
the simple
old nature-worship into their marriage office. Once more we
hear of Adam
and Eve in the next prayer, and we cannot help thinking
that,
considering all the trouble Eve brought upon her husband by her
flirtation
with the serpent, she is made rather too prominent a figure
in the
marriage service. The ceremony winds up with a long exhortation,
made of
quotations from the Epistles, on the duties of husbands and
wives.
Husbands are to love their wives because Christ loved a church--a
reason that
does not seem specially _a propos_, as husbands are not
required to
die for their wives or to present to themselves glorious
wives, not
having spot or wrinkle or any such thing (!); nor would most
husbands
desire that their wives' conversation should be coupled with
fear."
Why should women be taught thus to abase themselves? They are
promised as a
reward that they shall be the daughters of Sarah; but
that is no
great privilege, nor are English wives likely to call their
husbands
"lord;" if they did not adorn themselves with plaited hair and
pretty
apparel, their husbands would be sure to grumble, and the only
defence that
can be made for this absurd exhortation is that nobody ever
listens to
it.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Among the
various reforms needed in the Marriage Laws one imperatively
necessary is
that all marriages should be made civil contracts--that
is, that the
contract which is made by citizens of the State, and which
affects the
interests of the State, should be entered into before a
secular State
official; if after that the parties desired a religious
ceremony,
they could go through any arrangements they pleased in their
own churches
and chapels, but the civil contract should be compulsory
and should be
the only one recognised by the law. Of course the Church
might
maintain its peculiar marriage as long as it chose, but it would
probably soon
pass out of fashion if it were not acknowledged as binding
by the State.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE ORDER FOR
THE VISITATION OF THE SICK.
Of all the
services in the Prayer-Book this is, perhaps-, the most
striking
relic of barbarism, the most completely at variance with sound
and
reasonable thought. The clergyman entering into a house of sickness,
and as he
enters the sick man's room and catches sight of him, kneeling
down and
exclaiming, as though horror-stricken: "Remember not, Lord, our
iniquities,
nor the iniquities of our forefathers; spare us, good Lord,
spare Thy
people whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy most precious blood,
and be not
angry with us for ever." This clergyman reminds one of
nothing so
much as of one of Job's friends, who appear to have been an
even more
painful infliction than Job's boils. The sickness, the patient
is told,
"is God's visitation," and "for what cause soever this sickness
is sent unto
you: whether it be to try your faith for the example of
others, . . .
or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in
you whatsoever
doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father; know you
certainly,
that if you truly repent you of your sins, and bear your
sickness
patiently, ... it shall turn to your profit, and help you
forward in
the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life." One might
question the
justice of Almighty God if the theory be correct that the
sickness may
be sent "to try your patience for the example of others;"
why should
one unfortunate victim be tormented simply that others
may have the
advantage of seeing how well he bears it? If we are to
endeavour to
conform ourselves to the image of God, then it would seem
that we
should be doing right if we racked our neighbours occasionally
to "try
their patience for the example of others." And is the idea
of God a reverent
one? What should we think of an earthly father who
tortured one
of his children in order to teach the others how to bear
pain? if we
should condemn the earthly father as wickedly cruel, why
should the
same action be righteous when done by the Father in heaven?
If we accept
the second reason given for the sickness, it is difficult
to see the
rationale of it. Why should illness of the body correct
illness of
the mind; does pain cure fretfulness, or fever increase
truthfulness?
Is not sickness likely rather to bring out and strengthen
mental faults
than to weaken them? And how far is it true that sickness
is, in any
sense, the visitation of God for moral delinquencies? Is
it not true,
on the contrary, that a man may lie, rob, cheat, slander,
tyrannise,
and yet, if he observe the laws of health, may remain in
robust
vigour, while an upright, sincere, honest and truthful man,
disregarding
those same laws, may be miserably feeble and suffer an
early death?
Is it, or is it not, a fact, that in the Middle Ages, when
people prayed
much and studied little, when the peasant went to the
shrine for a
cure instead of to the doctor, when sanitary science was
unknown, and
cleanliness was a virtue undreamed of,--is it, or is
it not, true,
that pestilence and black death then swept off their
thousands,
while these terrible scourges have been practically driven
away in
modern times by proper attention to sanitary measures, by
improved
drainage and greater cleanliness of living? How can that be a
visitation of
God for moral transgressions, which can be prevented by
man if he
attends to physical laws? Is man's power greater than God's,
and can he
thus play with the thunderbolts of the divine displeasure?
The clergyman
prays that "the sense of his weakness may add strength to
his
faith;" what fine irony is here, as body and mind grow weak faith
grows strong;
as a man is less able to think, he becomes more ready to
believe. It
is impossible to pass, without a word of censure, over the
passage in
the exhortation, taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which
says,
"for they (fathers of our flesh) verily for a few days chastened
us after
their own pleasure." Good earthly fathers do not chasten their
children for
their own amusement, while God does it "for our profit;"
on the
contrary, they do it for the improvement of their children,
while God
alone, if there be a hell, tortures his children for his
own pleasure
and for no gain to them. The succeeding portion of the
Exhortation,
that, "our way to eternal joy is to suffer here with
Christ,"
is full of that sad asceticism which has done so much to darken
the world
since the birth of Christ; men have been so engaged in looking
for the
"eternal joy" that they have let pass unnoted the misery here;
they have
been so busy planting flowers in heaven that they have let
weeds grow
here; yes, and they have rejoiced in the misery and in
the weeds,
because they were only strangers and pilgrims, and the
tribulation,
which was but temporal, increased the weight of the glory
that was
eternal. Thus has Christianity blighted the flowers of this
world, and
entwined the brows of its followers with wreaths of thorns.
The
concluding portion of the exhortation deals with the duty of
self-examination
and self-accusation, that you may "not be accused and
condemned in
that fearful judgment." Very wholesome teaching for a sick
man; sickness
always makes a person morbid, and the Church steps in to
encourage the
unwholesome feeling; sickness always makes a person
timid and
unnerved, and the Church steps in to talk about a "fearful
judgment,"
and bewilders and stuns the confused brain by the terrible
pictures
called up to the mind by the thought of the last day.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
But worse
follows; for after the sick person has said that he
steadfastly
believes the creed, the clergyman is bidden by the rubric
to
"examine whether he repent him truly of his sins, and be in
charity with
all the world." Imagine a sick person being worried by an
examination
of this kind, putting aside the gross impertinence of the
whole affair.
Further, "the minister should not omit earnestly to move
such persons
as are of ability to be liberal to the poor." When every
one remembers
the terrible scandals of by-gone days, when priests drew
into the net
of the Church the goods of the dying, using threat of hell
and promise
of heaven to win that which should have been left for the
widow and the
orphan, one marvels that such a rubric should be left
to recall the
rapaciousness and the greed of the Church, and to invite
priests to
grasp at the wealth slipping out of dying hands. And here the
sick person
is to "be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if
he feel his
conscience troubled with any weighty matter," and the priest
is bidden to
absolve him, for Christ having "left power to his Church to
absolve by
his authority committed to me," says the priest, "I absolve
thee."
Confession, delegated authority, priestly absolution, such is the
doctrine of
the Church of England: all the untold abominations of the
confessional
are involved in this rubric and sentence; for if the man
can absolve a
man at one time, he can do it at another. The precious
power should
surely not be left unused and wasted; whenever sin presses,
behold the
remedy, and thus we are launched and in full sail. But never
in England
shall the confessional again flourish; never again shall
English women
be corrupted by the foul questions of the priests; never
again shall
Englishmen have their mental vigour and virility destroyed
by such
degradation. Let the Church fall that countenances such an
accursed
thing, and leave English purity and English courage to grow and
flourish
unchecked.
The devil is
in great force in this service, as is only right in a so
generally
barbarous an office: "Let the enemy have no advantage of him;"
"defend
him from the danger of the enemy;" "renew in him whatsoever
hath been
decayed by the fraud and malice of the devil;" "the wiles of
Satan;"
"deliver him from fear of the enemy;" all this must convey to
the sick
person a cheerful idea of the devil lingering about his bed,
and trying to
get hold of him before it is too late to drag him down to
hell.
Is there any
meaning at all in the expression, "the Almighty Lord....
to whom all
things in heaven, in earth and _under the earth_ do bow and
obey."
Where is "under the earth "? The sun is under some part of the
earth to some
people at any given time; the stars are under, or above,
according to
the point of view from which they are looked at. Of course,
the
expression is only a survival from a time when the earth was flat
and the
bottomless pit was under it, only it seems a Pity to continued
to use
expressions which have all but lost their meaning and are now
thoroughly
ridiculous. People seem to think that any old things are good
enough for
God's service. The last two prayers are remarkable
chiefly for
their melancholy and 'craven tone towards God: "we humbly
recomment,"
"most humbly beseeching thee." Surely God is not supposed
to be an
Eastern despot, desiring this kind of cringing at his feet.
Yet the
"Prayer for persons troubled in mind or in conscience" is one
pitiful wail,
as though only by passionate entreaty could God be moved
to mercy, and
he were longing to strike, and with difficulty withheld
from avenging
himself. When will men learn to stand upright on their
feet, instead
of thus crouching on their knees? When will they learn
to strive to
live nobly, and then to fear no celestial anger, either in
life or in
death?
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE ORDER FOR
THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
It is a
little difficult to write a critical notice of a funeral office,
simply
because people's feelings are so much bound up in it that any
criticism
seems a cruelty, and any interference seems an impertinence.
Round the
open grave all controversy should be hushed, that no jarring
sounds may
mingle with the sobs of the mourners, and no quarrels wring
the torn
hearts of the survivors. Our criticism of this office, then,
will be brief
and grave.
The opening
verses strike us first as manifestly inappropriate:
"Whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die;" yet the dead is
then being
carried to his last home, and the words seem a mockery spoken
in face of a
corpse. In the Fourth Gospel they preface the raising of
Lazarus, and
of course are then very significant, but to-day no power
raises our
dead, no voice of Jesus says to the mourners, "Weep not." The
second verse
from Job is---as is well known--an utter mistranslation:
"without
my flesh" would be nearer the truth than "in my flesh," and
"worms"
and body are not mentioned in the original at all. It seems a
pity that in
such solemn moments known falsehoods should be used.
The whole
argument in the 15th ch of Corinthians is the reverse of
convincing.
Christ is not the first fruits them that slept A dead man
had been
raised by touching the bones of Ehsha (2 Kings xii). Elisha,
in his
lifetime had raised the dead son of the Shunamite (2 Kings iv.);
Elijah,
before him, had raised the son of the Widow of Zarephath
(2 Kings
xvii.); Christ had raised Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus,
and the son
of a widow. In no sense, then, if the Scriptures of the
Christians be
true can it be said that Christ has become the first
fruits, the
first begotten from the dead. "For since by man came death;"
but death did
not come by man; myriads of ages before man was in the
world animals
were born, lived and died, and they have left their
fossilised
remains to prove the falsity of the popular belief. We notice
also that
"flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." If this
be so, what
becomes of the "resurrection of the flesh," spoken of in
the Baptismal
and Visitation Offices? What has become of the "flesh and
bones"
which Christ had after his resurrection and with which, according
to the 4th
Article, he has gone into heaven? Cannot Christ "inherit the
kingdom of
God"? It is hard to see how, in any sense, the resurrection
of Christ can
be taken as a proof of the resurrection of man. Christ
was only dead
thirty-six or thirty-seven hours before he is said to have
risen again;
there was no time for bodily decay, no time for corruption
to destroy
his frame: how could the restoration to life of a man
whose body
was in perfect preservation prove the possibility of the
resurrection
of the bodies which have long since been resolved into
their
constituent elements, and have gone to form other bodies, and to
give shape to
other modes of existence? People talk in such superior
fashion of
the resurrection that-they never stoop to remember its
necessary
details, or to think where is to be found sufficient matter
wherewith to
clothe all the human souls on the resurrection morn.
The bodies of
the dead make the earth more productive; they nourish
vegetable
existence; transformed into grass they feed the sheep and the
cattle;
transformed into these they sustain human beings; transformed
into these
they form new bodies once more, and pass from birth to death,
and from
death to birth again, a perfect circle of life, transmuted by
Nature's
alchemy from form to form. No man has a freehold of his body;
he possesses
only a life-tenancy, and then it passes into other hands.
The
melancholy dirge which succeeds this chapter sounds like a wail of
despair: man
"hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He
cometh up and
is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow,
and never
continueth in one stay." Can any teaching be more utterly
unwholesome?
It is the confession of the most complete helplessness, the
recognition
of the futility of toil. And then the agonised pleading: "O
Lord God most
holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour
deliver us
not into the bitter pains of eternal death." But if he be
most
merciful, whence all this need of weeping and wailing? If he be
most
merciful, what danger can there be of the bitter pains of eternal
death? And
again the cry rises: "Shut not thy merciful ears to our
prayer; but
spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and
merciful
Saviour, thou most worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our
last hour,
for any pains of death, to fall from thee." It is nothing but
the wail of
humanity, face to face with the agony of death, feeling its
utter
helplessness before the great enemy, and clinging to any straw
which may
float within reach of the drowning grasp; it is the horror of
Life facing
Death, a horror that seems felt only by the fully living and
not by the
dying; it is the recoil of vigorous vitality from the silence
and
chilliness of the tomb.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
After this
comes a sudden change of tone, and the mourners are told of
God's
"great mercy" in taking the departed, and of the "burden of the
flesh,"
and they are bidden to give "hearty thanks" for the dead being
delivered
"out of the miseries of this sinful world." Can anything be
more unreal?
There is not one mourner there who desires to share in
the great
mercy, who wants to be freed from the burden of the flesh, or
desires
deliverance from the miseries of this world. Why should people
thus play a
farce beside the grave? Do they expect God to believe them,
or to be
deceived by such hypocrisy?
It is urged
by some that the Church cannot have a "sure and certain hope
of the
Resurrection to eternal life" as regards some of those whom she
buries with
this service; and it is manifest that, if the Bible be
true,
drunkards and others who are to be cast into the lake of fire, can
scarcely rise
to eternal life at the same time, and therefore the Church
has no right
to express a hope where God has pronounced condemnation.
The Rubric
only shuts out of the hope the uhbaptized, the
excommunicated,
and the suicide; all others have a right to burial at
her hands,
and to the hope of a joyful resurrection, in spite of the
Bible.
We may hope
that the day will soon come when people may die in England
and may be
buried in peace without this cry of pain and superstition
over their
graves. Wherever cemeteries are within reasonable distance
the
Rationalist may now be buried, lovingly and reverently, without
the echo of
that in which he disbelieved during life sounding over his
grave; but
throughout many small towns and country villages the Burial
Service of
the Church is practically obligatory, and is enforced by
clerical bigotry.
But the passing knell of the Establishment sounds
clearer and
clearer, and soon those who have rejected her services in
life shall be
free from her ministrations at the tomb.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
A COMMINATION
OR DENOUNCING OF GOD'S ANGER AND JUDGMENTS AGAINST
SINNERS.
THIS service
is too beautiful to be passed over without a word of
homage; the
spectacle of the Church raving and cursing is too edifying
to be
ungratefully ignored. "Brethren, in the primitive Church there was
a godly
discipline that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood
convicted of
notorious sin were put to open penance and punished in this
world, that
their souls might be saved.... Instead whereof (until the
said
discipline may be restored again, which is much to be wished), it
is thought
good," &c. That is, in other words: "In days gone by, we were
able to bite,
as well as to bark; now that our mouths are muzzled we
can only
snarl; but, until the old power comes back, which is much to
be wished,
let us, since we cannot bite, show our teeth and growl as
viciously as
we can, so that people may understand that it is only the
power that is
wanting, and not the will, and that, if we could, we would
torture and
burn as vigorously as we curse and damn." And promptly
the priest
begins with his curses, and all the people say Amen: what a
pretty
sight--a whole church full of Christians with one consent cursing
their
neighbours! Then comes an exhortation; as so many curses are
flying about
we must take care of our heads: "Let us, remembering the
dreadful
judgment hanging over our heads, and _always ready to fall upon
us_, return
to our Lord God." Always ready to fall; but is God, then,
always lying
in wait to catch us tripping, and crush us with his
judgments?
Does he punish gladly, and keep his blow suspended, to fall
at the first
chance our weakness gives him? If so, by no means let us
return to our
Lord God, but let us rather try to put a considerable
distance
between himself and us, and endeavour, like the prophet Jonah,
to flee from
the presence of the Lord. "It is a fearful thing to fall
into the
hands of the living God: he shall pour down rain upon the
sinners, fire
and brimstone, storm and tempest." And who made the
sinners? Who
called them into the world without their own consent? Who
made them
with an evil nature? Who moulded them as the potter the clay?
Who made it
impossible for them to go to Jesus unless he drew them,
and then did
not draw them? If God wants to pour fire and brimstone on
anybody, he
should pour it on himself, for he made the sinners, and is
responsible
for their existence and their sin. "It shall be too late to
knock when
the door shall be shut; too late to cry for mercy when it
is the time
of justice." How utterly repulsive is this picture of the
popular and
traditional God: how black the colours wherein is painted
this Moloch;
surely the artist must have been sketching a picture of the
devil, and by
mistake wrote under it the name of God when he should have
put the name
of Satan. If, however, we submit ourselves, and walk in his
ways, and
seek his glory, and serve him duly--that is, if we acknowledge
injustice to
be justness, and cruelty to be mercy, and evil to be
good--then we
shall escape "the extreme malediction which shall light
upon them
that shall be set on the left hand." On the whole, brave men
and women
will prefer to do rightly and justly here, caring much about
serving man,
and nothing about glorifying such a God, and leaving the
malediction
alone, very sure that no punishment can befal a man for
living nobly,
and that no fear need cloud the death-bed of him who has
made his life
a blessing to mankind.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Of course,
after all this preface, come cringing confessions of sin. The
51st Psalm
leads the way, the congregation having by this time become so
thoroughly
confused that they see no incongruity in saying that when
God has built
the walls of Jerusalem, he will be pleased with burnt
offerings and
oblations, and that "then shall they offer young bullocks
upon thy
altar." As a matter of fact, they have no intention of offering
young bullocks
at all--bullocks having become too useful to be wasted in
that fashion,
but they have so thoroughly left the realm of common sense
that they
have become unconscious of the absurdities which they repeat.
The gross
exaggeration of the concluding prayers must be patent to
everyone;
they are full of the hysteria which passes for piety. "We are
grieved and
wearied with the burden of our sins," although most of the
congregation
will forget all about the burden before they leave
the church:
we are "vile earth and miserable sinners;" we "meekly
acknowledge
our vileness." One longs to shake them all, and tell them
to stand up
like men and women, instead of cringing there like cowards,
whining about
their vileness. If they are vile, why don't they mend,
instead of
saying the same thing every year? They should be ashamed to
tell God of
their miserable condition year after year, when his grace
is sufficient
for them, and they might be perfect as their Father in
heaven.
The Church in
all this service reminds one of nothing so much as a
wicked old
crone, who whines to the parson and scolds all the children.
In days gone
by the old woman has been the terror of the village, and
her sturdy
arm has been shown on many a black eye and bruised face;
now she can
no longer strike, she can only curse; she can no longer
tyrannise,
she can only scowl; her palsied tongue still mutters the
curses which
her shrivelled arm can no longer translate into act, and in
her bleared
eye, in her wrinkled cheeks, in her shaking frame, we read
the record of
an evil youth, wherein she abused her strength, and we see
descending
upon her the gloom of a dishonoured age, and the night of a
fathomless
despair.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
FORMS OF
PRAYER TO BE USED AT SEA.
There is now
a special service used at the launching of her Imperial
Majesty's
war-vessels which has not yet found its way into the
Prayer-Book;
curious thoughts arise in the mind in contemplating that
fashion,
conjoined to the office to be "used in her Majesty's navy every
day."
How does God protect "the persons of us, thy servants, and the
fleet in which
we serve?" Does prayer make bad ships more seaworthy, or
supply the
place of stout iron and sound wood? If the ship is not safe
without
prayer, will prayer make it so?
If not, what
is the use of praying over it? Either the ship is seaworthy
or it is not;
if it is, it will sail safely without prayer; if it is
not, will
prayer carry the rotten ship through the storm? If prayer
be so
efficacious, would it not be cheaper to use less wood and more
prayer? Bad
materials roughly put together would serve, for a curate
would be
cheaper than a shipwright, and much prayer would enable us to
dispense with
much labour. In "storms at sea," a special prayer is to be
used; "O
most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the
winds blow,
and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage
thereof:"
"O send thy word of command to rebuke the raging winds and the
roaring
sea." Is not this the prayer of utter ignorance, the prayer of
an
unscientific age? For what does the prayer imply? Only the modest
request that
the state of the atmosphere round the whole globe may be
modified to
suit the convenience of a small ship! And not only that, but
also that the
whole course of weather may be changed during countless
yesterdays,
the weather of to-day being only an effect caused by them.
Such prayers
were offered up in former days by a people who knew nothing
of the
inviolability of natural order, and who imagined that the weather
might be
changed at their bidding as the clerk may push on the hands of
the church
clock. The sailors are very frank in their confession: "When
we have been
safe and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot
thee, our
God... But now we see how terrible thou art in all thy works
of wonder;
the great God to be feared above all." At any rate they
cannot be
accused of hypocrisy in their dealings with God! Nor is this
all. Short
prayers are provided for those who have no time for the long
ones; and if
the danger grows very pressing, everybody who can be spared
is to join in
a special confession of sins, taken from the Communion
Office. It
would surely be well to avoid a very pious crew, as they
might be
wasting the time in prayer which might save the ship by work.
One serious
thought presents itself for consideration in connection with
this supposed
power of God to smooth the turbulent billows. Many ships
go down year
after year; many thousands of lives sink in the pitiless
ocean; many a
bitter wail goes up from drowning crews; how wickedly
cruel to have
such power and to see the ship sink in the storm! how
icily stony
to have such power and to watch unmoved the agony of the
perishing!
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The prayers
against the enemy are beautiful effusions; some of the
children
praying the All-father to enable them to slay his other
children:
"Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us." What
a curious
request! Does the All-strong require to stir up his strength
before he can
crush a few men? "Judge between us and our enemies." But
suppose the
enemy is in the right, what then? Suppose English sailors
are on the
wrong side, as in the dispute between George III. and the
American
Colonies, such a prayer then becomes a prayer for defeat, not
an
encouraging thought with which to go into battle. The prayers are
also
offensive for their cowardice of tone: "Let not our sins now cry
against us
for vengeance; but hear us thy poor servants begging mercy,
and imploring
thy help." The praises after victory are as objectionable
as the
prayers before: "The Lord hath covered our heads and made us
to stand in
the day of battle." And what of the poor wounded, groaning
below in the
cockpit, whose heads the Lord hath not covered? "The Lord
hath
overthrown our enemies, and dashed in pieces those that rose up
against
us." How thoroughly savage and bloodthirsty the thanksgiving! Is
God supposed
to rejoice over the sufferings of the defeated? Is he to
be thanked
for slaying his creatures? And then the victory is to be
improved to
the "advancement of thy gospel;" the gospel of so-called
peace and
goodwill is to be advanced by cannon-ball and torpedo, by
sabre and
cutlass. Truly they must believe that Jesus came to send
a sword
through the earth. And yet this is the true spirit of
Christianity;
of the creed which has shed more human blood than any
other faith;
of the creed which won its way through Europe with the
crucifix in
one hand, and the battle-axe in the other; of the creed
that tortured
innumerable victims on the rack, and which lit the
funeral pyres
of the martyrs; of the creed whose cross has ever been
crimson-red,
not with the blood of one who died to save humanity, but
with the
blood of a humanity sacrificed to the glory of God.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE FORM AND
MANNER OF MAKING, ORDAINING, AND CONSECRATING OF BISHOPS,
PRIESTS, AND
DEACONS, ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF
ENGLAND AND
IRELAND.
If the Church
of England confined herself in her ministrations to
offices which
had some demonstrable effect, her occupation would be
gone. These
Ordination offices stand on a par with that of Confirmation.
In both, the
Holy Ghost is given by imposition of episcopal hands;
in both, no
appreciable results follow the gift. The preface to these
offices says:
"It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy
Scripture and
ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have
been these
orders of ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests,
and
Deacons." The "evidence" of this appears doubtful, seeing that
all
Presbyterians
acknowledge no such triple order, and regard bishops as
an invention
of the devil, and "the pride of prelacy" as "a rag of
the
scarlet" lady. The three offices before us may, to all intents and
purposes, be
treated as one, for they are the progressive steps of the
ladder which
reaches-from earth to heaven, from the poor deacon-curate
on 70_l_. a
year at the bottom, to the archbishop luxuriating on
15,000_l_. a
year at the top. There is much of solemn farce in the
opening: the
archdeacon presents the candidates for ordination to the
bishop, and
the reverend father in God, who has had them examined, who
knows all
about them, and has-probably dined with them the night before,
gravely
responds, "Take heed that the persons whom ye present unto us
be-apt and
meet, for their learning and godly conversation, to exercise
their
ministry duly, to the honour of God and the edifying of his
Church."
For the learning of some young clergymen, the less said about
it the
better, but those presented have at least scraped through the
bishop's
examination, and will not now be turned back. The question
is simply a
sham, and both candidates and bishop would be thoroughly
astonished if
the archdeacon replied that any one of them was deficient.
The Litany
follows after this, and then the Communion Office, with
special
Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. After the Oath of Supremacy, the
bishop
examines the candidates for the diaconate: "Do you trust that you
are inwardly
moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office?" is
asked of
each, and each answers: "I trust so." This ought to be a solemn
question: to
be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost is surely an important
thing; and
when one remembers how very little many of these young men,
fresh from
college, seem to think of the matter, and how one chooses the
Church
because it is "gentlemanly," and another because there is a fat
living in the
family, and another because he is too stupid for any other
profession,
we can scarcely help wondering at the workings of the Holy
Spirit in the
heart of man. They are also asked if they "unfeignedly
believe all
the Canonical Scriptures." If they really do believe them at
their
ordination much change must take place in after life, judging by
the amount of
scepticism among the clergy. Much of the fault lies in
pledging
young men of three-and-twenty to absolute belief in what they
have probably
studied but little; at college all their instruction is in
Christian
_Evidences_, not in attacks on Christianity; they really know
but little of
the anti-Christian arguments, and therefore are naturally
shaken when
they learn them further on. Then the deacon is to read
Homilies in
Church, and promises to do so, although he never fulfils the
promise, and
he vows to obey his "Ordinary and other chief ministers
of the
Church... following with a glad mind and will their godly
admonitions."
How well the deacons and priests keep this pledge may be
seen in the
daily struggles between them and their bishops, and in the
necessity of
passing a Public Worship Regulation Act for the easier
suppression
of rebellious priests. A year must intervene between the
diaconate and
the priesthood, and when this year has run, the youthful
aspirant to
the power of the keys presents himself once more before the
Father in
God, and the same farce of question and answer is repeated.
The service
runs as in that for deacons, save the special Epistle
and Gospel,
until after the Oath of Supremacy; and then comes a long
exhortation,
wherein what strikes us most is the complete contrast
between the
priest in theory and the priest in practice: "If it shall
happen the
same Church, or any member thereof, to take any hurt or
hindrance by
reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the
fault, and
also the horrible punishment that will ensue see that you
never cease
your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done
all that
lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such
as are or
shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the
faith and
knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age
in Christ,
that there be no place left among you, either for error in
religion, or
for viciousness in life." Now change the scene to six weeks
later, and
our young priest is playing croquet and flirting meekly with
his rector's
daughters, oblivious of the "horrible punishment" he
is incurring
from Hodge at the public-house getting drunk unrebuked.
"Consider
how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the
Scriptures...
and for this self-same cause how ye ought to forsake and
set aside (as
much as you may) all worldly cares and studies." Alas for
the special
vanities of country clergymen; this one botanizes, and that
one
zoologizes, and another one geologizes, and a fourth is devoted to
his garden,
and a fifth to his poultry, and a sixth to his farming,
not to speak
of those who adorn the bench of magistrates and sternly
sentence
wicked poachers, and sinful old women who pick up sticks, and
children who
steal flowers. It may be urged that no set of men could
possibly live
the life sketched in this exhortation: granted; but,
then, why
pretend that they are bound to live it, and threaten horrible
punishments
if they do not perform the impossible? Besides, the bishop
expresses his
hope that they have well considered the whole matter,
and have
"clearly determined, by God's grace... you will apply yourself
wholly to
this one thing, and draw all your cares and studies this way."
When the time
comes to put the questions to the candidates, this very
point forms
one of them: "Will you be diligent in prayers, and in
reading of
the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the
knowledge of
the same, laying aside the study of the world and the
flesh?"
And the candidates solemnly promise to do that which they must
know they
have no intention of doing. One might further urge, that the
perpetual
meddlesomeness enjoined in this Office on the priest would
make that
individual a perfect nuisance to his parishioners if he tried
to carry it
into practice, and that he would probably very often find
his
ministrations cut short with unpleasant emphasis. The consecration
follows in
due course: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and work
of a priest
in the Church of God... Whose sins thou dost forgive they
are forgiven;
and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." And
yet some
people pretend that the Church of England does not sanction an
absolving
priesthood! If these words have any meaning, they mean that
the young men
now ordained have the most awful power given into their
hands, that
they can, in very truth, lock and unlock heaven, for by
their
absolution the forgiven sinner may enter, while through their
retainment of
his sins he may be shut out. How tremendous then is the
authority
thus given into hands so young and so untried! And surely such
power is not
to be wasted? Surely it is the duty of these priests to
be
continually urging people to seek, and continually to be giving,
absolution.
Why should one sinner die unshriven, when such death may be
prevented by
the diligence of the priest? Life would be impossible were
all this
really believed; what priest could live in reasonable comfort
if this were
true and were realised? All earthly things would sink into
insignificance,
and life would become a desperate struggle to save
and absolve
the perishing; real belief would end its days in a lunatic
asylum.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The
Consecration of Archbishop or Bishop is somewhat more ceremonious,
but is one in
character with the preceding offices. The promise to
banish and
drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to
God's word is
one the fulfilment of which brings unfortunate bishops
nowadays into
much trouble in the flesh. For when a Colenso "comes down
like a wolf
on the fold," and a faithful Bishop of Oxford forbids him
to tear the
lambs of his flock, immediately people mutter "bigoted,"
"narrow-minded,"
"tyranny," with sundry other unpleasant adjectives and
nouns. Yet
can there be no doubt that he of Oxon was only obeying his
ordination vow.
In truth the present spirit of liberty is thoroughly
at issue with
the spirit of these offices, and the only effect of
maintaining
them is to create hypocrites and vow breakers. Nor is it
fair to-judge
too harshly those who break these foolish vows, for a man
may honestly
think that he can best serve his generation as clergyman,
and may have
a general belief in Christianity, and he may then argue
that he
cannot permit himself to be kept out of a wide sphere of
usefulness by
a few obsolete vows. The pity is that men, whose common
sense is too
strong to be bound by foolish promises taken in ignorance
in their
youth, do not join earnestly together to remove this
stumbling-block
from before the feet of the next generation, so that, if
they deem
their church valuable, they may preserve her by adapting her
to the
realities of the nineteenth instead of the sixteenth century,
and may make
her services something more than a farce, her ceremonies
something
better than a show.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE ARTICLES.
It is a
little difficult to make out how far the Thirty-nine Articles
of the Church
of England--"the forty stripes save one"--are binding or
non-binding
on her members. There is, of course, no question that they
accurately
sketch her doctrines, and that all her faithful children
should accept
and believe them with devout piety, but scarcely any dogma
can be
enforced by law against the laity, the whole spirit of the time
being
directly antagonistic to such enforcement. But there is no doubt
that these
Articles are both legally and morally binding on the clergy,
as they
voluntarily submit themselves to them, and declare their full
and free
belief in them when entering upon the enjoyment of any benefice
of the
Establishment. The Royal Declaration, prefixed to the Articles,
is sweeping
and decisive enough. "The Articles of the Church of England
do contain
the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's
word; which
we do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all our loving
subjects to
continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting
the least
difference from the said Articles." After this distinct
declaration
we are commanded "That no man hereafter shall either print,
or preach, to
draw the Article aside either way, but shall submit to it
in the plain
and full meaning thereof; and shall not put his own sense
or comment to
be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in
the literal
and grammatical sense." When any outsider has read this
declaration
it becomes to him one of the mysteries of the faith how it
is that
English gentlemen, honest, honourable men in everything else,
manage to
accept livings on condition of declaring their full concord
with these
Articles, and then deliberately twist them into non-natural
meanings, in
order that they may be Roman Catholic or Latitudinarian,
according to
the opinions of the readers. It may, certainly, be conceded
that the
"literal and grammatical sense" is very often nonsense, and
therefore
cannot be believed; perfectly true: but these honest men
have no right
to give the weight of their culture and their goodness
to bolster up
this falling Church, whose dogmas they can never accept,
except by
transfiguring their unreason into reason, and their folly into
wisdom. Many
who are ignorant, and careless, and uncultured are kept as
nominal
members of the Anglican Church because a glamour is thrown over
it by the
Broad Church clergy; but their position cannot be too strongly
reprobated,
_so long as they make no effort to alter that in which they
do not
believe, so long as they silently support superstitions which
without their
aid would, long ago, have crumbled into ruin._
Article I.
deals with "Faith in the Holy Trinity." Most creeds,
certainly all
Oriental creeds, cluster around a Trinity; the root of the
worship of
the Trinity is struck deep into the nature of man, for it is
the worship
of the life universal, localised in the giver of the life
individual,
under the symbol of the phallic emblem, the creator of each
new
existence. The Christian Trinity has, naturally, outgrown the primal
barbarism of
Nature-worship, although preserving the Trinity in unity:
"There
is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts,
or
passions... and in unity of this Godhead there be three persons, of
one
substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost"
So far have we travelled under the guidance of the Church, and
we have
before our mind's eye, one God, uncorporeate, passionless,
indivisible,
and yet divided into three "persons," thus implying three
individualities,
separate the one from the other. Let us remember that
the Father is
God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, but that
since there
is but one God, the Father is the Son, and the Son is the
Holy Ghost,
and since the Father is the same as the Son, and the Son
is the same
as the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Holy Ghost must
necessarily
be identical. Article II. teaches us that "the Son, which
is the word
of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the
very and
eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man's
nature in the
womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance;" the Son:
that is, the
Second Person in the undivided and indivisible Trinity:
"begotten
from everlasting of the Father;" but the Father is one with
the Son, for
both are God, and yet there is but one God, and therefore
Son and
Father are interchangeable terms; the Son then is begotten from
everlasting
of himself, for in the one true God no division is possible,
and
"such as the Father is such is the Son;" and further, the Son, being
the Son, and
at the same time identical with his own Father, takes man's
nature: then
the Father and the Holy Ghost must also take man's nature,
for
"such as the Son such is the Father, and such is the Holy Ghost:"
and God,
"without body," takes man's body, and "without parts" is
crucified,
and "without passions" suffers. But the Son dies "to
reconcile his
Father to us;" but he is his Father, and his Father is
himself. Can
the one living and true God die to reconcile himself to
himself, and
to offer himself up a sacrifice to himself to appease his
own wrath?
The bodiless is nailed on the cross: the impassible suffers:
the undying
dies: the one God on earth is offered to appease the one
God in
heaven, and there is but one living and true God. If this be so,
either the
God in heaven or the God on earth must have been a false God,
for there is
but one true God: and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who
must be kept
indivisible in thought, hang upon the cross, as a sacrifice
to the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and cry, being the one true God, to
"my God,
my God" who has forsaken himself. And all this "to reconcile
the Father to
us:" the Father who is "without passions," and who
therefore
cannot be angry or need reconcilement. "As Christ died for
us, and was
buried, so also it is to be believed that he went down into
hell."
_Down_ into hell; which way is down from a round globe? In the
ancient
conception of the universe the earth was flat, with heaven
above and
hell underneath, and Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, when the earth
opened her
mouth, "went down quick (alive) into hell:" did Jesus do
the same?
But, hanging on the cross, he said to the penitent thief:
"_To-day_
shalt thou be with me in Paradise:" is Paradise the same hell?
and is heaven
identical with both? Jesus ascended, went up, not down, to
heaven: if
this be so, might not some confusion arise on the way, for
a soul
starting downwards from Australia on its way to hell, might
be found
soaring upwards from England after a few hours' journey. Are
heaven and
hell both all round the world, and if so, why is one "up" and
the other
"down"? Rome was right and wise when she set her face sternly
against the
heliocentric theory; a revolving globe destroys all the old
notions of
the "heaven above," and of "the water under the earth," and
of hell
below; and it was a strong argument against the sphericity of
the earth
that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of the
globe could
not see the Lord descending through the air." The Fourth
Article
teaches us that Christ "took again his body, with flesh,
bones, and
all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature;
_wherewith_
he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth." Body, flesh,
bones, and
all things appertaining to man's nature; wishes, and
appetites,
and needs, heart and lungs, for instance; and he took these
beyond the
atmosphere? lungs to breathe where no air is? heart to
pulse where
no oxygen can purify the blood? flesh and bones among pure
spirits? the
form of man sitting on the throne of God? and this flesh,
bones,
&c, all one with the indivisible, from the God without body
and parts,
and Jesus the Son of Mary, the crucified man, sitting in his
flesh and
bones in heaven, not to be separated in thought from the one
living and
true God, without body, parts, or passions.* Such is the
"literal
and grammatical sense" of the first four Articles, and to
analyse the
Fifth, "of the Holy Ghost," would be simply to repeat all
that has been
said above, since "such is the Son, such is the Holy
Ghost." May
it not justly be said that belief in the Trinity in Unity
is the
negation of thought, and that faith is only possible where reason
ends?
* 1 Cor. xv. 50.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Article VI.
deals with "the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for
Salvation,"
and lays down the Canon that anything not capable of proof
from the Bible
must not be "required of any man that it should be
believed as
an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or
necessary to
salvation." The converse of this proposition, that dogmas
that can be
proved therefrom _are_ necessary to salvation, is said
not to be
binding on the Church, and some notable "depravers" of the
Scriptures
have successfully slipped through this Article. The list
of books
given as those "of whose authority was never any doubt in the
Church"
seems open to grave objections, as the authority of many of
the books now
accounted canonical has been distinctly challenged. "The
history of
Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible."
"Job
spake not therefore as it stands written in his book." "Isaiah hath
borrowed his
whole art and knowledge from David." Thus, among many other
staid
criticisms, wrote Luther. To go further back, is to find much
sharp
challenging. The Epistle to the Hebrews is of most doubtful
authenticity.
The 2nd Epistle of Peter and that of Jude are debatable.
The
Revelation of St. John the Divine was very slowly received, and the
two shorter
Epistles which bear his name are dubiously recognised. If
only the
books are to be received of which there "was never any doubt in
the
Church," the canonical list must be shorn of most of its ornaments.
When Article
VII. tells us that the ceremonial and civil precepts of the
Old Testament
are not binding upon us, it seems a pity that some test
is not given
whereby unlearned people may be able to distinguish between
the
"Commandments which are called moral" and the others. Is the command
to persecute
non-believers in Jehovah (Deut. xiii., xvii. 2--7) binding
to-day? Is
the command to put Witches to death (Lev. xx. 27) binding
to-day? John
Wesley said that belief in witchcraft was incumbent on all
those who
believed the Bible, and if witchcraft was possible then, why
not now? or
has God changed his mind as to the proper method of dealing
with such
persons? Are the commands enjoining and regulating Slavery
(Ex. xxi.
2--6, and 20, 21; Lev. xxv. 44--46; Deut. xv. 12--18) intended
for the
guidance of slave-holders to-day? What is there to make the
"Commandments
which are called moral"--by which we may presume are meant
the Ten
Commandments--more binding on "Christian men" than the other
parts of the
law? The Fourth Commandment is essentially a Jewish one,
and is not
obeyed among Christians. The Second Commandment is invariably
ignored, and
the Fifth promises a reward which is not given. The
Commandments
touching murder, adultery, stealing, lying are not peculiar
to the Mosaic
code. They are found in all moral legislation, and are
binding--not
because taught by Moses or by Buddha, but--because their
observance is
necessary to the existence of society. Of the three
Creeds of the
Church we have already spoken, so pass to Article IX., "of
Original or
Birth-sin." It seems that a fault and corruption of Nature
are naturally
"engendered of the offspring of Adam," and that this
fault
"in every person born into the world deserveth God's wrath and
damnation."
That seems scarcely fair, since the infant's consent is not
asked before
he is born into the world, and the fault of being born is,
therefore,
none of his. How, then, can the babe _deserve_ God's wrath
and damnation?
And seeing that the very next Article (X.) informs us
that our
condition is such that a man "cannot turn and prepare himself,
by his own
natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon
God," it
appears terribly unjust that either child or man should be
held accursed
because they do not do what God has made them incapable of
doing. It
would be as reasonable to torture a man for not flying without
wings, as for
God to punish man for being born of the race of Adam, and
for not
turning to God when the power so to do is withheld; for "we have
_no power to
do good works_.... without the grace of God by Christ," and
when that
grace is not given we lie helpless and strength-less, unable
to do right.
Nor can any deed of ours make us fit recipients of the
grace of God,
for (Article XIII.) "works done before the grace of Christ
and the
Inspiration of his Spirit _are not pleasant_ to God.... neither
do they make
men meet to receive grace.... yea, rather, for that they
are not done
as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, _we doubt
not but that
they have the nature of sin_." So that if a good and noble
heathen, who
has never heard of Christ, and whose good deeds cannot
therefore
"spring of faith in Jesus Christ," does some high-minded
action, or
shows some kindly charity, his good deeds are of "the nature
of sin,"
and in fact make him rather worse off than he was before: as
Melancthon
said, his virtues are only "splendid vices" because done
without faith
in a person of whom he has never heard. For (Art. XVIII.)
they
"are to be accursed that presume to say that every man shall be
saved by the
law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to
frame his
life according to that law, and the light of nature:" "we are
accounted
righteous before God (Art. XI.) _only_ for the merit of our
Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and _not for our own works and'
deservings_."
Thus we learn that God cares not for righteousness of
life, but
only for blind faith, and that he sends us out into a world
lying under
his curse, without any chance of salvation except by
attaining a
faith which he gives or withholds at his pleasure, and which
we can of
ourselves do nothing to deserve, much less to obtain. To crown
this
beautiful theory we learn,--Article XVII. "of Predestination
and
Election:"--predestination to life, it seems, "is the everlasting
purpose of
God whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid)
he hath
constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from
curse and
damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind,
and to bring
them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made
to
honour." But if this be true, man has no choice of any kind in the
matter; for
not only is grace to do right the gift of God, but man's
acceptance of
the gift is also compulsory. God has arranged, before he
made the
world how many and whom he will save. What, then, becomes of
man's boasted
free will? Before the creation God drew the plan of every
human life,
and as the potter moulds the ductile clay into the shape
he desires,
so God moulds his human pottery after his own will into
"vessels
made to salvation" or made to dishonour. To talk of man's
freedom is a
mockery. What freedom had Adam and Eve in Paradise? "They
might have
stood:" nay; for was not "the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the
world?" Before the sin was committed God had made the atonement
for it. If
Adam were free not to sin, then it would be possible that
he might not
have sinned, and then God would have offered a needless
sacrifice,
and would have a Saviour with no one to save, so that it
would have
been necessary to provide a sinner in order to utilise the
sacrifice.
All idea of justice is here hideously impossible; God has
predestinated
some human beings _out of mankind_. These "in due season"
he calls;
"through grace they obey the calling;" "they be justified
freely... and
at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting
felicity."
And the rest--those who are _not_ predestined; those who are
_not_ called;
those to whom _no_ grace is given; those who are _not_
justified
freely; those who have no God's mercy to aid them;--what
of them? Made
by God, the creatures of his hand, the vessels of his
moulding, the
clay of his shaping, are they cast into the lake of
brimstone,
into the fire that never shall be quenched, simply because
God in
"his sovereignty" put them--unconscious--under his curse and left
them there,
adding to the cruelty of creation the more savage cruelty
of
preservation? No! whether such deeds should be wrought by God or man,
they would be
wickedly wrong. Almighty power is no excuse for crime, and
the God of
the Articles of the Church of England is a gigantic criminal,
who uses his
Almightiness to make life that he may torment it, and to
create
sentient beings foredoomed to bitterest agony, to keenest woe.
Such
frightful misuse of power can only meet with strongest reprobation
from all
moral beings; unlimited power turned to evil purposes may
trample upon
and crush us into helplessness, but it can never force us
to worship,
nor compel us to adore.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
These first
eighteen Articles of the Church may be said to contain the
more salient
points of the Church's teaching, and it is needless to
point out the
utter impossibility of reasonable and gentle-hearted men
and women
believing in the "plan of, salvation" sketched out in them.
They are
instinct with the cruel theology of Calvin and of Zwingli,
and imply
(though they do not so plainly word) the view of the Lambeth
Articles of
1595, that "God from eternity hath predestinated certain men
unto life;
_certain he hath reprobated_." These Anglican Articles
must be taken
as teaching predestination to damnation as well as to
salvation,
since those not called to life must inevitably fall to
death. The
next section--so to speak--of the Articles deals with
Church
affairs, defining the authority of Churches and of Councils, and
explaining
the 'doctrine of the Sacraments. It is with these that
the High
Church party chiefly fall out, for the Twenty-first Article,
acknowledging
that General Councils may err and have erred, strikes at
the root of
the infallibility of the Church Universal, so dear to the
priestly
soul. The Articles on the Sacraments also tend somewhat to the
Low Church
view of them, and dwell more on the faith of the recipient
than on the
consecration of the priest. The Article (XXXIII.) levelled
against
"excommunicate persons," commanding that such an one shall
"be
taken of the whole multitude of the faithful, as an Heathen and
Publican,
until he be openly reconciled by penance," is duly believed
and
subscribed by clergymen, but has no real meaning to-day. If the
Thirty-fifth
Article were acted upon, some curiosities of English
literature
would enliven the Churches; for this Article bids the
clergy read
the Homilies: "we judge them to be read in Churches by the
Ministers,
diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of
the
people." It is really a pity that this direction is not carried out,
for some of
the barbarous doctrines of popular Christianity would then
be seen as
they are described by men who thoroughly believed in them,
instead of
being known only as they are presented to us to-day, with
some of their
deformity hidden under the robes woven for them by modern
civilisation,
wherein humanity has outgrown the old Christianity, and
men's reason
chastens their faith. The last three Articles touch on
civil
matters, acknowledging the Royal Supremacy and dealing with other
matters
pertaining to Caesar, but on the borderland between him and God.
Such are the
Articles of the Church; believed by few, unknown to
many, winked
at by all, because religion is practically a matter of
indifference
to most, and while custom and fashion enforce conformity
with the
Church, the brain troubles not itself to analyse the claim, or
to weigh the
conditions of allegiance. Men have become so sceptical as
to regard all
creeds with indifference, and the half-conceived unbelief
of the
clergy, sighing with mental reservations, and formally asserting
belief where
the thought and the lips are at variance, appears to have
eaten the
heart out of all religious honesty in England, and men lie to
God who would
revolt at lying to man. If belief in the Articles is now a
thing of the
past, then the Articles should also pass away; if Churchmen
have outgrown
these dogmas, why do they suffer them to deface their
Prayer-Book,
to barb "the shafts of the sceptic, and to give power to
the sneer of
the scoffer?"
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND CATECHISM
WISE men, in
modern times, are striving earnestly and zealously to, as
far as
possible, free religion from the cramping and deadening effect of
creeds and
formularies, in order that it may be able to expand with the
expanding
thought of the day. Creeds are like iron moulds, into which
thought is
poured; they may be suitable enough to the way in which they
are framed;
they may be fit enough to enshrine the phase of thought
which
designed them; but they are fatally unsuitable and unfit for
the days long
afterwards, and for the thought of the centuries which
succeed.
"No man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine
doth burst
the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will
be marred;
but new wine must be put into new bottles." The new wine
of nineteenth
century thought is being poured into the old bottles of
fourth
century creeds: and sixteenth century formulas, and the strong
new
wine-bursts the bottles, while the weak new wine that cannot:
burst them
ferments into vinegar in them, and often becomes harmful
and
poisonous. Let the new wine be poured into new bottles; let the
new thought
mould its own expression; and then the old bottles will be
preserved
unbroken as curious specimens of antiquity, instead of being
smashed to
pieces because they get in the way of the world. Nothing is
more to be
deprecated in a new and living movement than the formulating
into creeds
of the thoughts that inspire it, and the imposition of those
creeds on
those who join it. The very utmost that can be done to give
coherency to
a large movement is to put forward a declaration of a few
cardinal
doctrines that do not interfere with full liberty of divergent
thought.
Thus, Rationalists might take as the declaration of their
central
thought, that "reason is supreme," but they would be destroying
the future of
Rationalism if they formulated into a creed any of the
conclusions
to which their own reason has led them at the present time,
for by so
doing they would be stereotyping nineteenth century thought
for the
restraint of twentieth century thought, which will be larger,
fuller, more
instructed than their own. Freethinkers may declare as
their symbol
the Right to Think, and the Right to express thought, but
should never
claim the declaration by others of any special form of
Freethought,
before acknowledging them as Freethinkers. Bodies of
men who join
together in a society for a definite purpose may fairly
formulate a
creed to be assented to by those who join them, but they
must ever
remember that such creed will lose its force in the time to
come, and
that while it adds strength and point to their movement
now, it also
limits its useful duration, if it is to be maintained as
unalterable,
for as circumstances change different needs will arise,
and a fresh
expression of the means to meet those needs will become
necessary. A
wise society, in forming a creed, will leave in the hands
of its
members full power to revise it, to amend it, to alter it, so
that the
living thought within the society may ever have free scope. A
creed must be
the expression of _living thought_, and be moulded by
it, and not the
skeleton of dead thought, moulding the intellect of its
heirs. The
strength of a society lies in the diversity, and not in the
uniformity,
of the thought of its members, for progress can only be
made through
heretical thought, _i.e_., thought that is at variance
with
prevailing thought. All Truth is new at some time or other, and
the fullest
encouragement should therefore be given to free and fearless
expression,
since by such expression only is the promulgation of new
truths
possible. An age of advancement is always an age of heresy;
for
advancement comes from questioning, and questioning springs from
doubt, and
hence progress and heresy walk ever hand-in-hand, while an
age of faith
is also an age of stagnation.
Every
argument that can be brought against a stereotyped creed for
adults, tells
with tenfold force against a stereotyped catechism for
children. If
it is evil to try and mould the thought of those whose
maturity
ought to be able to protect them against pressure from without,
it is
certainly far more evil to mould the thought of those whose still
unset reason
is ductile in the trainer's hand. A catechism is a sort of
strait-waistcoat
put upon children, preventing all liberty of action;
and while the
child's brain ought to be cultured and developed, it ought
never to be
trained to run in one special groove of thought. Education
should teach
children _how_ to think, but should never tell them _what_
to think. It
should sharpen and polish the instruments of thought, but
should not
fix them into a machine made to cut out one special shape
of thought.
It should send the young out into the world keen-judging,
clear-eyed,
thoughtful, eager, inquiring, but should not send them out
with answers
cut-and-dried to every question, with opinions ready
made for
them, and dogmas nailed into their brains. Most churches have
provided
catechism-sawdust for the nourishment of the lambs of their
flock; Roman
Catholics, Church of Englanders, Presbyterians, they have
all their
juvenile moulds. The Church of England catechism is, perhaps,
the least
injurious of all, because the Church of England is the result
of a
compromise, and has the most offensive parts of its dogmas cut out
of the public
formularies. It wears some slight apron of fig-leaves in
deference to
the effect produced by the eating of the tree of knowledge.
But still,
the Church of England catechism is bad enough, training the
child to
believe the most impossible things before he is old enough
to test their
impossibility. To the age which believes in
Jack-and-the-bean-stalk,
and the adventures of Cinderella, all things
are possible;
whether it be Jonah in the whale's belly, or Tom Thumb in
the stomach
of the red cow, all is gladly swallowed with implicit faith;
the children
grow out of Tom Thumb, in the course of nature, but they
are not
allowed to grow out of Jonah.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
When the baby
is brought to the font to make divers promises, of the
making of
which he is profoundly unconscious--however noisily he may at
times convey
his utter disgust at the whole proceeding--the godfathers
and
godmothers are directed to see that the child is "brought to the
bishop to be
confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the creed, the
Lord's
Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and be
further
instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose."
It is
scarcely necessary to say that these words--being in the
Prayer-Book--are
not meant to be taken literally, and that the bishop
would be much
astonished if all the small children in the Sunday School
who can
glibly repeat the required lesson, were to be brought up to him
for
confirmation. As a matter of fact, the large majority of godfathers
and
godmothers do not trouble themselves about seeing their godchildren
brought to
confirmation at all, and the children are sent up when they
are about
fifteen, at which period most of them who are above the Sunday
School going
grade, are rapidly "crammed" with the Catechism, which they
as rapidly
forget when the day of confirmation is over.
The Christian
name of the child being given in answer to the first
question of
the Catechism, the second inquiry proceeds: "Who gave you
this
name?" The child is taught to answer--"My godfathers and godmothers
in my
baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of
God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." Thus, the first lesson
imprinted on
the child's memory is one of the most objectionable of the
dogmas of the
Church, that of baptismal regeneration. In baptism he
is
"made" something; then he becomes something which he was not before;
according to
the baptismal office, he is given in baptism "that thing
which by
nature he cannot have," and being under the wrath of God, he
is delivered
from that curse, and is received for God's "own child by
adoption;"
he is also "incorporated" into the "holy Church," and thus
becomes
"a member of Christ," being made a part of the body of which
Christ is the
head; this being done, he is, of course, an "inheritor of
the kingdom
of heaven" through the "adoption."
Thus the
child is taught that, by nature, he is bad and accursed by God;
that so bad
was he as an infant, that his parents were obliged to wash
away his sins
before God would love him. If he asks what harm he had
done that he
should need cleansing, he will be told that he inherits
Adam's sin;
if he asks why he should be accursed for being born, and
why, born
into God's world at God's will, he should not by nature be
God's child,
he will be told that God is angry with the world, and that
everyone has
a bad nature when they are born; thus he learns his first
lesson of the
unreality of religion; he is cursed for Adam's sin, which
he had no
share in, and forgiven for his parent's good deed, which he
did not help
in. The whole thing is to him a play acted in his infancy
in which he
was a puppet, in which God was angry with him for what
he had not
done, and pleased with him for what he did not say, and he
consequently
feels that he has neither part nor lot in the whole affair,
and that the
business is none of his; if he be timid and superstitious,
he will hand
over his religion to others, and trust to the priest to
finish for
him what Adam and his parents began, shifting on to them all
a
responsibility that he feels does not in reality belong to him.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The unreality
deepens in the next answer which is put into his
mouth--"What
did your godfathers and god-mothers then for you?" "They
did promise
and vow-three things in my name: First, that I should
renounce the
devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world,
and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I
should
believe all the articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly,
that I should
keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the
same all the
days of my life." Turning to the Baptismal Service again,
we find that
the godparents are asked, "Dost thou, _in the name of this
child_,
renounce," &c, and they answer severally, "I renounce them
all,"
"All
this I steadfastly believe;" and, asked if they will keep God's
holy will, they
still answer for the child, "I will." What binding force
can such
promises as these have upon the conscience of anyone when he
grows up? The
promises were made without his consent; why should he
keep them?
The belief was vowed before he had examined it; why should he
profess it?
No promise made in another's name can be binding on him who
has given no
authority for such use of his name, and the unconscious
baby,
innocent of all knowledge of what is being done, can never, in
justice, be
held liable for breaking a contract in the making of which
he had no
share. Bentham rightly and justly protests against "the
implied--the
necessarily implied--assumption, that it is in the power of
any
person--not only with the consent of the father or other guardian,
but without
any such consent--to fasten upon a child at its birth, and
long before
it is itself even capable of giving consent to anything,
with the
concurrence of two other persons, alike self-appointed, load it
with a set of
obligations--obligations of a most terrific and appalling
character--obligations
of the nature of oaths, of which just so much
and no more
is rendered visible as is sufficient to render them
terrific--obligations
to which neither in quantity nor in quality are
any limits
attempted to be, or capable of being, assigned."
This
obligation, laid upon the child in its unconsciousness, places
it in a far
worse position, should it hereafter reject the Christian
religion,
than if such an undertaking had not been entered into on
its behalf.
It becomes an "apostate," and is considered to have
disgracefully
broken its faith; it lies under legal disabilities which
it would not
otherwise incur, for heavy statutes are levelled against
those who,
after having "professed the Christian religion," write or
speak against
it. Thus in early infancy a chain is forged round the
child's neck
which fetters him throughout life, and the unconsciousness
of the baby
is taken advantage of to lay him under terrible penalties.
In English
law a minor is protected because of his youth; surely we
need an
ecclesiastical minority, before the expiration of which no
spiritual
contracts entered into should be enforceable. From the
religious
point of view, apostacy is far more fatal than simple
non-Christianity.
Keble writes:
"Vain thought, that shall not be at
all
I Refuse me, or obey,
Our ears have heard the Almighty's call,
We cannot be as they."
Is it fair
not to ask the child's assent before making his case worse
than that of
the heathen should he hereafter reject the faith which his
sponsors
promise he shall believe?
Besides, how
absurd is this promising for another; a child is taught not
to break
_his_ baptismal vow, when he has made no such vow at all; how
can the
god-parents ensure that the child shall renounce the devil and
believe in
Christianity, and obey God? It is foolish enough to make a
promise of
that kind for oneself when changing circumstances may force
us into
breaking it, but it is sheer madness to make such a promise on
behalf of
somebody else. The promise to "believe all the Articles of the
Christian
Faith," cannot take effect until the judgment has grown ripe
enough to
test, to accept, or to reject, and who then can say for his
brother,
"he shall believe." Belief is not a matter of will, it is a
matter of
evidence; if evidence enough supports an assertion, we must
believe it,
while if the evidence be insufficient we must doubt it.
Belief is
neither a virtue nor a vice; it is simply the consequence
of sufficient
evidence. Theological belief is demanded on insufficient
evidence;
such belief is called, theologically, "faith," but in
ordinary
matters it would be called "credulity." First amongst the
renouncings
comes "the devil and all his works." Says Bentham--"The
Devil, who or
what is he, and how is it that he is _renounced?_
The works of
the Devil, what are they, and how is it that they are
renounced?
Applied to the Devil, who or whatever he is--applied to
the Devil's
works, whatever they are--what sort of an operation is
_renouncement
or renunciation?_"
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
Pertinent
questions, surely, and none of them answerable. A Court of Law
lately sat
upon the Devil, and could not find him; "how is the Christian
to explain to
the child whom it is he has renounced in his infancy? And
in the first
place, the Devil himself--of whom so decided and familiar a
mention, as
of one whom everybody knows, is made--where lives he? Who is
he? What is
he? The child itself, did it ever see him? By any one, to
whom for the
purpose of the inquiry the child has access, was he ever
seen? The
child, has it ever happened to it to have any dealings with
him? Is it in
any such danger as that of having, at any time, to his
knowledge,
any sort of dealings with him? If not, then to what purpose
is this
_renouncement?_ and, once more, what is it that is meant by it?"
But supposing
there were a devil, and supposing he had works, how could
the child
renounce him? The devil is not in the child's possession that
he might give
him up as if he were an injurious toy. In days gone by the
phrase had a
definite meaning; people were supposed to be able to hold
commerce with
the devil, to commune with familiar spirits, and summon
imps to do
their bidding; to "renounce the devil and all his works" was
then a
promise to have nothing to do with witchcraft, sorcery, or magic;
to regard the
devil as an enemy, and to take no advantage by his help.
All these
beliefs have long since passed away into "The Old Curiosity
Shop" of
Ecclesiastical Rubbish, but children are still taught to repeat
the old
phrases, to rattle the dry bones which life has left so long.
The
"pomps of this wicked world" might be renounced by Christians if
they wanted
to do so, but they show a strange obliviousness of their
baptismal
vow. A reception at court is as good an instance of the
renunciation of
the vain pomp and glory of this wicked world as we could
wish to see,
and when we remember that the children who are taught the
Catechism in
their childhood are taught to aim at winning these pomps in
their youth
and maturity, we learn to appreciate the fact that spiritual
things can
only be spiritually discerned. Would it not be well if the
Church would
publish an "Explanation of the Catechism," so that the
children may
know what they have renounced?
"Dost thou
not think that thou art bound to believe, and to do as they
have promised
for thee?" "Yes, verily; and by God's help so I will. And
I heartily
thank our heavenly Father, that he hath called me to this
state of
salvation, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. And I pray unto
God to give
me his grace, that I may continue in the same unto my life's
end."
"Bound to believe... as they have promised for thee!" In the name
of common
sense, why? What a marvellous claim for any set of people to
put forward,
that they have the right to promise what other people
shall
believe. And the child is taught to answer to this preposterous
question,
"Yes, verily." The Church does wisely in training children to
answer thus
before they begin to think, as they would certainly never
admit so
palpably unjust a claim as that they were bound to believe or
to do
anything simply because some other persons said that they should.
The hearty
thanks due to God "that he hath called me to this state of
salvation,"
seem somewhat premature, as well as unnecessary. God, having
made the
child, is bound to put him in some "state" where existence
will not
involve a curse to him; the "salvation" is very doubtful, being
dependent on
a variety of things in addition to baptism. Besides, it
is doubtful whether
it is an advantage to be in a "state of salvation,"
unless you
get finally saved, some Christian authors appearing to think
that
damnation is the heavier if it is incurred after being put in the
state of
salvation, so that, on the whole, it would probably be less
dangerous to
be a heathen. The child is then required to "rehearse the
articles of
his belief," and is taught to recite "the Apostles' Creed,"
_i.e_., a
creed with which the apostles had nothing in the world to do.
The act of
belief ought surely to be an intelligent one, and anyone who
professes to
believe a thing ought to have some idea of what the thing
is. What idea
can a child have of conception by the Holy Ghost and being
born of the
Virgin Mary, in both which recondite mysteries he avows his
belief?
Having recited this, to him (as to everyone else) unintelligible
creed, he is
asked, "What dost thou chiefly learn in these articles of
thy
belief?" a most necessary question, since they can have conveyed no
idea at all to
his little mind. He answers: "First, I learn to believe
in God the
Father, who hath made me and all the world. Secondly, in God
the Son, who
hath redeemed me and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the Holy
Ghost, who
sanctifieth me and all the elect people of God." Curiously,
the last two
paragraphs have no parallels in the creed itself; there is
no word there
that the Son is God, nor that he redeemed the child, nor
that he
redeemed all mankind; neither is it said that the Holy Ghost is
God, nor that
he sanctifies anyone at all. How is the child to believe
that God the
Son redeemed _all mankind_, when he is taught that only by
baptism has
he himself been brought into "this state of salvation?" if
all are
redeemed, why should he specially thank God that he himself is
called and
saved? if all are redeemed, what is the meaning of the phrase
that
"all the elect people of God" are sanctified by the Holy Ghost?
Surely all
who are redeemed must also be sanctified, and should not the
two passages
touch only the same people? Either the Holy Ghost should
sanctify all
mankind, or Christ should redeem only the elect people of
God. A
redeemed, but unsanctified, person would cause confusion as to
his proper
place when he arrived in the realms above; St. Peter would
not know where
to send him to. Bentham caustically remarks: "Here, then,
in this word,
we have the name of a sort of _process_, which the child
is made to
say is going on within him; going on within him at all
times--going on
within him at the very instant he is giving this
account of
it. This process, then, what is it? Of what feelings is it
productive?
By what marks and symptoms is he to know whether it really
is or is not
going on within him, as he is forced to> say it is? How
does he feel,
now that the Holy Ghost is _sanctifying_ him? How is it
that he would
feel, if no such operation were going on within him? Too
often does it
happen to him in some shape or other, to commit _sin_; or
something
which he is told and required to believe is _sin_: an event
which cannot
fail to be frequently, not to say continually, taking
place, if
that be true, which in the Liturgy we are all made so
decidedly to
confess and assert,--viz., that we are all--all of us
without
exception--so many _'miserable sinners.'_ In the schoolroom,
doing what by
this Catechism he is forced to do, saying what he is
forced to
say, the child thus declares himself, notwithstanding, a
sanctified
person. From thence going to church, he confesses himself
to be no better
than '_a miserable sinner.'_ If he is not always this
miserable
sinner, then why is he always forced to say he is? If he is
always this
same miserable sinner, then this sanctification, be it what
it may, which
the Holy Ghost was at the pains of bestowing upon him,
what is he
the better for it?" Besides, how can the child be taught to
believe in
one God if he finds three different gods all doing different
things for
him? As clear a distinction as possible is here made between
the redeeming
work of God the Son and the sanctifying work of God the
Holy Ghost,
and if the child tries to realise in any fashion that which
he is taught
to say he believes, he must inevitably become a Tri-theist
and believe
in the creator, the redeemer, the sanctifier, as three
different
gods. The creed being settled, the child is reminded: "You
said that
your godfathers and godmothers did promise for you that you
should keep
God's commandments. Tell me how many there be? Ans. Ten.
Ques. Which
be they? Ans. The same which God spake in the twentieth
chapter of
Exodus, saying, I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out
of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none
other gods
but me." But God has not brought the child, nor the child's
ancestors,
out of the land of Egypt, nor out of the house of bondage:
therefore the
first commandment, which is made dependent on such
out-bringing,
is not spoken to the child. The argument runs: "Seeing
that I have
done so much for thee, thou shalt have no other God instead
of me."
The second commandment is rejected by general consent, and it is
almost
certain that the child will be taught that God has commanded that
no likeness
of anything shall be made in a room with pictures on the
walls.
Christians conveniently gloss over the fact that this commandment
forbids all
sculpture, all painting, all moulding, all engraving; they
plead that it
only means nothing that shall be made for purposes of
worship,
although the distinct words are: "_Thou shalt not make any
likeness of
anything._'" In order to thoroughly understand the state of
the child's
mind who has learned that "I the Lord thy God am a jealous
God, and
visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," when he comes
to read other
parts of the Bible it will be well to put side by side
with this
declaration, Ezekiel xviii. 19, 20: "Yet say ye, why? doth
not the son
bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that
which is
lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done
them, he
shall surely live. The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son
shall not
bear the iniquity of the father." The fourth commandment is
disregarded
on all sides; from the prince who has his fish on the Sunday
from the
fishmonger down to the costermonger who sells cockles in the
street, all
nominal Christians forget and disobey this command; they
keep their
servants at work, although they ought to "do no manner of
work,"
and drive in carriage, cab, and omnibus as though God had not
said that the
cattle also should be idle on the Sabbath day. Although
the New
Testament is, on this point, in direct conflict with the
Old,--Paul
commanding the Colossians not to trouble themselves about
Sabbaths, yet
Christians read and teach this commandment, while in
their lives
they carry out the injunction of Paul. To complete the
demoralising
effect of this fourth commandment on the child, he is
taught that
"in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and
all that in
them is," while, in his day-school he is instructed in
exactly the
opposite sense, and is told of the long and countless
ages of
evolution through which the world passed, and the marvellous
creatures
that inhabited it before the coming of man. The fifth
commandment
is also evil in its effect on the child's mind from that
same fault of
unreality which runs throughout the teaching of the
Established
Church. "Honour thy father and thy mother _that thy days may
be long in
the land._" He will know perfectly well that good children
die as well
as bad, and that, therefore, there is no truth in the
promise he
recites. The rest of the commandments enjoin simple moral
duties, and
would be useful if taught without the preceding ones; as it
is, the
unreality of the first five injures the force of the later ones,
and the good
and bad, being mixed up together, are not likely to be
carefully
distinguished and thus they lose all compelling moral power.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The
commandments recited, the child is asked--"What dost thou chiefly
learn by
these commandments?" and he answers that--"I learn two things:
my duty
towards God and my duty towards my neighbour." We would urge
here that
man's duty to man should be the point most pressed upon
the young.
Supposing that any "duty to God" were possible--a question
outside the
present subject--it is clear that the duty to man is the
nearest, the
most obvious, the easiest to understand, and therefore the
first to be
inculcated. Surely, it is only by discharge of the immediate
and the plain
duty that any discharge becomes possible of one less near
and less
plain. Besides, the duty to God taught in the Catechism is of
so wide and
engrossing a nature that to discharge it fully would take up
the whole
time and thoughts. For in answer to the question, "What is thy
duty towards
God?" the child says:--"My duty towards God is to believe
in him, to
fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my
mind, with
all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship him, to
give him
thanks, to put my whole trust in him, to call upon him, to
honour his
holy name and his word, and to serve him truly all the days
of my
life." First, "to believe in him;" but how can the child believe
in him until
evidence be offered of his existence? But to examine such
evidence is
beyond the still weak intellectual powers of the child, and
therefore
belief in God is beyond him, for belief based on authority is
utterly
valueless. Besides, it can never be a "duty" to believe; if the
evidence of a
fact be convincing, belief in that fact naturally follows,
and
non-belief would be very stupid; but the word "duty" is out of place
in connection
with belief. "To fear him:" that the child will naturally
do, after
learning that God was angry with him for being born, and that
another God,
Jesus Christ, was obliged to die to save him from the angry
God. "To
love him;" not so easy, under the circumstances, nor is love
compatible
with fear; "perfect love casteth out fear... he that feareth
is not made
perfect in love." "With all my heart, with all my mind, with
all my soul,
and with all my strength." Four different things the
child is to
love God with: What does each mean? How is heart to be
distinguished
from mind, soul, and strength? In human love, love of the
heart might,
perhaps, be distinguished from love of the mind, if by love
of the heart
alone a purely physical passion were intended; but this
cannot
explain any sort of love to God, to whom such love would be
clearly
impossible. Once more, we say that the Church of England should
publish an
explanation of the Catechism, so that we may know what we
ought to do
and believe for our soul's health. Bentham urges that to put
the
"whole trust" in God would prevent the child from putting "any
part
of his
trust" in second causes, and that disregard of these would not be
compatible
with personal safety and with the preservation of health and
life; and
that further, as all these services are "unprofitable" to God,
they might
"with more profit be directed to the service of those weak
creatures,
whose need of all the service that can be rendered to them
is at all
times so urgent and so abundant." The duty to God being thus
acknowledged,
there follows the duty to the neighbour, for which there
seems no room
when the love, trust, and service due to God have been
fully
rendered. "_Ques_. What is thy duty toward thy neighbour? _Ans_.
My duty
towards my neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all
men as I
would they should do unto me. To love, honour, and succour my
father and
mother. To honour and obey the king, and all that are put
in authority
under him. To submit myself to all my governors, teachers,
spiritual
pastors, and masters. To order myself lowly and reverently to
all my
betters. To hurt nobody by word or deed. To be true and just in
all my
dealings. To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep
my hands from
picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking,
lying, and
slandering. To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and
chastity. Not
to covet nor desire other men's goods; but to learn and
labour truly
to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state
of life unto
which it shall please God to call me." The first phase
reproduces
the morality which is as old as successful social life. "What
word will
serve as a rule for the whole life?" asked one of Confucius.
"Is not
reciprocity such a word?" answered the sage. "What thou dost
not desire
done to thyself, do not to others. When you are labouring
for others,
let it be with the same zeal as if for yourself." The second
phrase is
true and right; the next is often foolish and impossible. Who
could honour
such a king as George IV.? while to "obey" James II.
would have
been the destruction of England. Honour and obedience to
constituted
authorities is a duty only when those authorities discharge
the duties
that they are placed in power to execute; the moment they
fail in doing
this, to* honour and to obey them is to become partners in
their treason
to the nation. The doctrine of divine right was believed
in when the
Catechism was written, and then the voice of the king was
a divine one,
and to resist him was to resist God. The two following
phrases
breathe the same cringing spirit, as though the main duty
towards one's
neighbour were to submit to him. Reverence to any one
better than
one's-self is an instinct, but "my betters" is simply a
cant
expression for those higher in the social scale, and those have no
right to any
lowlier ordering than the simple respect and courtesy that
every man
should show towards every other. This kind of teaching saps a
child's
mental strength and self-respect, and is fatal to his manliness
of character
if it makes any impression upon him. The remainder of the
answer is
thoroughly good and wholesome, save the last few words about
"that
state of life unto which it shall please God to call me." A
child should
be taught that his "state of life" depends upon his own
exertions,
and not upon any "calling" of God, and that if the state be
unsatisfactory,
it is his duty to set diligently to work to mend it; not
to be content
with it when bad, not to throw on God the responsibility
of having
placed him there, but so to labour with all hearty diligence
as to make it
worthy of himself, honourable, respectable, and
comfortable.
At this point the child is informed: "Thou art not able to
do these
things of thyself, nor to walk in the commandments of God, and
to serve him,
without his special grace; which thou must learn at all
times to call
for by diligent prayer." But if the child cannot do these
things
without God's "special grace," then the responsibility of his not
doing them
must of necessity fall upon God; for the child cannot pray
unless God
gives him grace; and without prayer he can't get special
grace, and
without special grace he can't "do these things;" so that
clearly the
child is helpless until God sends him his grace, and
therefore the
whole responsibility lies upon God alone, and he can never
blame the
child for not doing that which he himself has prevented him
from
beginning. Diligent prayer for special grace being thus wanted,
the child is
taught to recite the Lord's Prayer, in which grace is not
mentioned at
all, and he is then asked--"What desirest thou of God in
this
prayer?" "I desire my Lord God, our Heavenly Father, who is the
giver of all
goodness, to send his grace to me and to all people; that
we may
worship him, serve him, and obey him, as we ought to do." We rub
our eyes; not
one word of all this is discoverable in the Lord's Prayer!
"Send
his grace to me and to all people"? not a syllable conveying any
such meaning:
"that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him "? not
the shadow of
such a request. Is it supposed to train a child in the
habit of
truthfulness to make him recite as a religious lesson what is
utterly and
thoroughly untrue? "And I pray unto God that he will send
us all things
that be needful both for our souls and bodies, and that he
will be
merciful unto to us, and forgive us our sins." "All things that
be needful
both for our souls and bodies" is, we presume, summed up
in "our
daily bread." Simple people would scarcely imagine that "daily
bread"
was all they wanted both for their souls and bodies; perhaps the
souls want
nothing, not being discoverable by any real needs which
they express.
"And that it will please him to save and defend us in all
dangers,
ghostly and bodily; and that he will keep us from all sin and
wickedness,
and from our ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death."
Here, again,
nothing in the prayer can be translated into these phrases;
there is
nothing about saving and defending from all dangers, ghostly
and bodily,
nor a syllable as to defence from our ghostly enemy, by whom
a child will
probably understand a ghost in a white sheet, and will
go to bed in
terror after saying the Catechism which thus recognises
ghosts--nor
from everlasting death. The prayer is of the simplest, but
the
translation of it of the hardest. "And this I trust he will do of
his mercy and
goodness, through our Lord Jesus Christ; And therefore I
say Amen, so
be it." Why should the child trust God's mercy and goodness
to protect
him? There would be no dangers, ghostly and bodily, no
ghostly
enemy, and no everlasting death, unless God had invented them
all, and the
person who places us in the midst of dangers is scarcely
the one to
whom to turn for deliverance from them. Mercy and goodness
would not
have surrounded us with such dangers; mercy and goodness would
not have
encompassed us with such foes; mercy and goodness would have
created
beings whose glad lives would have been one long hymn of praise
to the Creator,
and would have ever blessed him that he had called them
into
existence.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
The child is
now to be led further into the Christian mysteries, and
is to be
instructed in the doctrine of the sacraments, curious
double-natured
things of which we have to believe in what we don't see,
and see that
which we are not to believe in. "How many sacraments hath
Christ
ordained in his Church?" "Two only as generally necessary
to salvation,
that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord."
"Generally
necessary"; the word "generally" is explained by commentators
as
"universally," so that the phrase should run, "universally
necessary
to
salvation." The theory of the Church being that all are by nature the
children of
wrath, and that "_none_ are regenerate," except they be born
of water and
of the Holy Ghost, it follows that baptism is universally
necessary to
salvation; and since Jesus has said, "Except ye eat the
flesh of the
Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you"
(John vi.
53), it equally follows that the Lord's Supper is universally
necessary to
salvation. Seeing that the vast majority of mankind are not
baptized
Christians at all, and that of baptized Christians the majority
never eat the
Lord's supper, the heirs of salvation will be extremely
limited in
number, and will not be inconveniently crowded in the many
mansions
above. "What meanest thou by this word _sacrament?_ I mean an
outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us,
ordained by
Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and
as a pledge
to assure us thereof." If this be a true definition of a
sacrament, no
such thing as a sacrament can fairly be said to be in
existence.
What is the inward and spiritual grace given unto the baby in
baptism? If
it be given, it must be seen in its effects, or else it is
a gift of
nothing at all. A baby after baptism is exactly the same as
it was
before; cries as much, kicks as much, fidgets as much; clearly
it has
received no inward and spiritual sanctifying grace; it behaves as
well or as
badly as any unbaptized baby, and is neither worse nor better
than its
contemporaries. Manifestly the inward grace is wanting, and
therefore no
true sacrament is here, for a sacrament must have the grace
as well as
the sign, The same thing may be said of the Lord's Supper;
people do-not
seem any the better for it after its reception; a hungry
man is
satisfied after his supper, and so shows that he has really
received
something, but the spirit suffers as much from the hunger of
envy and the
thirst of bad temper after the Lord's Supper as it did
before. But
why should the grace be "inward," and why is the soul
thought of as
_inside_ the body, instead of all through and over it?
There are few
convenient hollows inside where it can dwell, but people
speak as
though man were an empty box, and the soul might live in it.
The sacrament
is "a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to
assure us
thereof." God's grace, then, can be conveyed in the vehicles
of water,
bread, and wine; it must surely, then, be something material,
else how can
material things transmit it? And God becomes dependent on
man to decide
for him on whom the grace shall be bestowed. Two infants
are born into
the world; one of them is brought to church and is
baptized; God
may give that child his grace: the other is left without
baptism; it
is a child of wrath, and God may not bless it. Thus is God
governed by
the neglect of a poor, and very likely drunken, nurse,
and the
recipients of his grace are chosen for him at the caprice or
carelessness
of men. Strange, too, that Christians who received God's
grace need
"a pledge to assure" them that they have really got it; how
curious that
the recipient should not know that so precious a gift has
been bestowed
upon him until he has also been given a little bit of
bread and a
tiny sip of wine. It is as though a queen's messenger put
into one's
hand a hundred Ł1000 notes, and then said solemnly: "Here is
a farthing as
a pledge to assure you that you have really received the
notes."
Would not the notes themselves be the best assurance that we had
received
them, and would not the grace of God consciously possessed
be its own
best proof that God had given it to us? "How many parts are
there in a
sacrament? Two; the outward visible sign, and the inward
spiritual
grace." This is simply a repetition of the previous question
and answer,
and is entirely unnecessary. "What is the outward visible
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
sign, or
form, in baptism? Water; _wherein_ the person is baptized _in
the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost_."
This answer
raises the interesting question as to whether English
Christians--save
the Baptists--are really baptized. They are not
baptized
"in," but only "with" water. The rubric directs that the
minister
"shall _dip it in_ the water discreetly and warily," and that
only where
"the child is weak it shall suffice to pour water upon it" It
appears
possible that the salvation of nearly all the English people
is in peril,
since their baptism is imperfect. The formula of baptism
reminds us of
a curious difference in the baptism of the apostles from
the baptism
in the triune name of God; although Jesus had, according to
Matthew,
solemnly commanded them to baptize with this formula, we
find, from
the Acts, that they utterly disregarded his injunction,
and baptized
"in the name of Jesus Christ," instead of in the name of
"Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost." (See Acts ii. 38, viii. 16, x 48, xix. 5,
etc.) The
obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is, that if the
Acts be
historical, Jesus never gave the command put into his mouth in
Matthew, but
that it was inserted later when such a formula became usual
in the
Church. "What is the inward and spiritual grace? A death unto
sin, and a
new birth unto righteousness; for being by nature born in
sin, and the
children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of
grace."
What? a baby die unto sin? how can it, when it is unconscious of
sin, and
therefore cannot sin? "A new birth unto righteousness?" but it
is only just
born, surely there can be no need that it should be born
over again so
soon? And if it be true that this is the inward grace
given, would
it not be well--as did many in the early Church--to put off
the ceremony
of baptism until the last moment, so that the dying man,
being
baptized, may die to all the sins he has committed during life,
and be born
again into spiritual babyhood, fit to go straight into
heaven? It
seems a needless cruelty to baptize infants, and so deprive
them of the
chance of getting rid of all their life sins in a lump later
on. This is
not the only objection to baptism. Bentham powerfully urges
what has
often been pressed:--
"Note
well the sort of story that is here told. The Almighty God,--maker
of all
things, visible and 'invisible,'--'of heaven and earth, and all
that therein
is.'--makes, amongst other things, a child: and no sooner
has he made
it, than he is 'wrath' with it for being made. He determines
accordingly
to consign it to a state of endless torture. Meantime
comes somebody,--and
pronouncing certain words, applies the child to a
quantity of
water, or a quantity of water to the child. Moved by these
words, the
all-wise Being changes his design; and, though he is not
so far
appeased as to give the child its pardon, vouchsafes to it a
_chance_,--no
one can say _what_ chance,--of ultimate escape. And this
is what the
child gets by being 'made'--and we see in what way made--'a
child of
grace.'"
"What is
required of persons to be baptised? Repentance, whereby they
forsake sin;
and Faith, whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of
God made to
them in that Sacrament. Why then are infants baptised when
by reason of
their tender age they cannot perform them? [Why, indeed!]
Because they
promise them both by their sureties, which promise, when
they come of
age, themselves are bound to perform." Surely it would be
better if
these things are "required" before baptism, to put off baptism
until
repentance and faith become possible, instead of going through it
like a play,
where people act their parts and represent somebody else.
For suppose
the child for whom repentance and faith are promised does
not, when he
comes to full age, either repent of his sins or believe
God's
promises, what becomes of the inward and spiritual grace? It
must either
have been given, or not have been given; if the former,
the
unrepentant and unbelieving person has got it on the faith of his
sureties'
promises for him; if the latter, God has not given the grace
promised in
Holy Baptism, and his promises are therefore unreliable in
all cases.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24-1DL
"Why was
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper ordained? For the continual
remembrance
of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits
which we
receive thereby." What very bad memories Christians must have!
God has come
down from heaven on purpose to die for them, and they
cannot
remember it without eating and drinking in memory of it. The
child is then
taught that the outward part in the Lord's Supper is bread
and wine, and
that the inward part is "The Body and Blood of Christ,
which are
verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the
Lord's
Supper," the body and blood nourishing the soul, as the bread
and wine do
the body. If the body and blood convey as infinitesimal an
amount of
nourishment to the soul as the small portions of bread and
wine do to
the body, the soul must suffer much from spiritual hunger.
But how do
they nourish the soul? The body and blood must be somehow in
the bread and
wine, and how is it managed that one part shall nourish
the soul
while the rest goes to the body? "verily and indeed taken and
received."
From the eager protestation one would imagine that there
must be some
doubt about it, and that there might be some question as to
whether the
invisible and intangible thing were really and truly taken.
It needs but
little insight to see how woefully confusing it must be to
an
intelligent child to teach him that bread and wine are only bread
and wine one
minute and the next are Christ's body and blood as well,
although none
of his senses can distinguish the smallest change in them.
Such
instruction will, if it has any effect on his mind, incline him to
take every
assertion on trust, without, and even contrary to, reason and
experiment;
it lays the basis of all superstition, by teaching belief in
what is not
susceptible of proof.
"What is
required of them who come to the Lord's supper? To examine
themselves,
whether they repent them truly of their former sins,
steadfastly
purposing to lead a new life; have a lively faith in God's
mercy through
Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death; and be
in charity
with all men." It is the custom in many churches now to have
weekly, and
in some to have daily, communion; can the communicants who
attend these
steadfastly purpose to lead a new life every time? and how
many
"former sins" are they as continually repenting of? Here we find
the
overstrained piety which throughout disfigures the Prayer-Book;
people are
moaning about their sins, and crying over their falls, and
resolving to
mend their ways, and vowing they will lead new lives, and
the next time
one sees them they are once more proclaiming themselves
to be as
miserable sinners as ever. How weary the Holy Ghost must get of
sanctifying
them!
Such is the
Catechism that "The curate of every parish shall diligently
upon Sundays
and Holy Days, after the second lesson at evening prayer,
openly in the
Church" teach to the children sent to him, and which
"all
fathers, mothers, masters, and dames shall cause their children,
servants, and
apprentices (which have not learned their Catechism) to
come to the
Church at the time appointed," in order to learn; such
is the
nourishment provided by the Church for her lambs: such is the
teaching she
offers to the rising generation. Thus, before they are able
to think, she
moulds the thinking-machine; thus, before they are able
to judge, she
biases the judgment; thus, from children puzzled and
bewildered,
she hopes to make men and women supple to her teaching, and
out of the
Catechism she winds round the children's brains, she forges
the chain of
creeds which fetters the intellect of the full-grown
members of
her communion.
London:
Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 28, Stonecutter
Street, E.C
February, 1885.
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