{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_1046/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_1046","id":"gutenberg_1046","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1046","summary":null,"tags":["Bestsellers, American, 1895-1923","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","God (Christianity)"],"text":"GOD THE INVISIBLE KING\n\nby H. G. Wells\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n1. THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION\n\n2. HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT\n\n3. THE LIKENESS OF GOD\n\n4. THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS\n\n5. THE INVISIBLE KING\n\n6. MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION\n\n7. THE IDEA OF A CHURCH\n\nTHE ENVOY\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThis book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious\nbelief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is\nnot, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound\nbelief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its\nstatements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the\nexpression of a faith different from and perhaps in several particulars\nopposed to his own. The writer will be found to be sympathetic with\nall sincere religious feeling. Nevertheless it is well to prepare the\nprospective reader for statements that may jar harshly against deeply\nrooted mental habits. It is well to warn him at the outset that the\ndeparture from accepted beliefs is here no vague scepticism, but a quite\nsharply defined objection to dogmas very widely revered. Let the writer\nstate the most probable occasion of trouble forthwith. An issue upon\nwhich this book will be found particularly uncompromising is the dogma\nof the Trinity. The writer is of opinion that the Council of Nicaea,\nwhich forcibly crystallised the controversies of two centuries and\nformulated the creed upon which all the existing Christian churches are\nbased, was one of the most disastrous and one of the least venerable of\nall religious gatherings, and he holds that the Alexandrine speculations\nwhich were then conclusively imposed upon Christianity merit only\ndisrespectful attention at the present time. There you have a chief\npossibility of offence. He is quite unable to pretend any awe for what\nhe considers the spiritual monstrosities established by that undignified\ngathering. He makes no attempt to be obscure or propitiatory in this\nconnection. He criticises the creeds explicitly and frankly, because he\nbelieves it is particularly necessary to clear them out of the way of\nthose who are seeking religious consolation at this present time of\nexceptional religious need. He does little to conceal his indignation at\nthe role played by these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing\nthe religious life of mankind. After this warning such readers from\namong the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible\nto storms of theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is an\nineffable mystery and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, read on\nat their own risk. This is a religious book written by a believer,\nbut so far as their beliefs and religion go it may seem to them more\nsceptical and more antagonistic than blank atheism. That the writer\ncannot tell. He is not simply denying their God. He is declaring that\nthere is a living God, different altogether from that Triune God and\nnearer to the heart of man. The spirit of this book is like that of a\nmissionary who would only too gladly overthrow and smash some Polynesian\ndivinity of shark\u2019s teeth and painted wood and mother-of-pearl. To the\nwriter such elaborations as \u201cbegotten of the Father before all worlds\u201d\n are no better than intellectual shark\u2019s teeth and oyster shells. His\npurpose, like the purpose of that missionary, is not primarily to shock\nand insult; but he is zealous to liberate, and he is impatient with a\nreverence that stands between man and God. He gives this fair warning\nand proceeds with his matter.\n\nHis matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is only incidentally and\nbecause it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinal Christianity.\n\nIn a previous book, \u201cFirst and Last Things\u201d (Constable and Co.), he has\nstated his convictions upon certain general ideas of life and thought\nas clearly as he could. All of philosophy, all of metaphysics that\nis, seems to him to be a discussion of the relations of class and\nindividual. The antagonism of the Nominalist and the Realist, the\nopposition of the One and the Many, the contrast of the Ideal and the\nActual, all these oppositions express a certain structural and essential\nduality in the activity of the human mind. From an imperfect recognition\nof that duality ensue great masses of misconception. That was the\nsubstance of \u201cFirst and Last Things.\u201d In this present book there is no\nfurther attack on philosophical or metaphysical questions. Here we\nwork at a less fundamental level and deal with religious feeling and\nreligious ideas. But just as the writer was inclined to attribute a\nwhole world of disputation and inexactitudes to confused thinking about\nthe exact value of classes and terms, so here he is disposed to think\nthat interminable controversies and conflicts arise out of a confusion\nof intention due to a double meaning of the word \u201cGod\u201d; that the word\n\u201cGod\u201d conveys not one idea or set of ideas, but several essentially\ndifferent ideas, incompatible one with another, and falling mainly into\none or other of two divergent groups; and that people slip carelessly\nfrom one to the other of these groups of ideas and so get into\nultimately inextricable confusions.\n\nThe writer believes that the centuries of fluid religious thought that\npreceded the violent ultimate crystallisation of Nicaea, was essentially\na struggle--obscured, of course, by many complexities--to reconcile and\nget into a relationship these two separate main series of God-ideas.\n\nPutting the leading idea of this book very roughly, these two\nantagonistic typical conceptions of God may be best contrasted by\nspeaking of one of them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of the\nother as God-as-Christ or the Redeemer. One is the great Outward God;\nthe other is the Inmost God. The first idea was perhaps developed most\nhighly and completely in the God of Spinoza. It is a conception of God\ntending to pantheism, to an idea of a comprehensive God as ruling\nwith justice rather than affection, to a conception of aloofness and\nawestriking worshipfulness. The second idea, which is opposed to this\nidea of an absolute God, is the God of the human heart. The writer would\nsuggest that the great outline of the theological struggles of that\nphase of civilisation and world unity which produced Christianity, was a\npersistent but unsuccessful attempt to get these two different ideas\nof God into one focus. It was an attempt to make the God of Nature\naccessible and the God of the Heart invincible, to bring the former into\na conception of love and to vest the latter with the beauty of stars and\nflowers and the dignity of inexorable justice. There could be no finer\nmetaphor for such a correlation than Fatherhood and Sonship. But the\ntrouble is that it seems impossible to most people to continue to\nregard the relations of the Father to the Son as being simply a mystical\nmetaphor. Presently some materialistic bias swings them in a moment of\nintellectual carelessness back to the idea of sexual filiation.\n\nAnd it may further be suggested that the extreme aloofness and\ninhumanity, which is logically necessary in the idea of a Creator God,\nof an Infinite God, was the reason, so to speak, for the invention of a\nHoly Spirit, as something proceeding from him, as something bridging the\ngreat gulf, a Comforter, a mediator descending into the sphere of the\nhuman understanding. That, and the suggestive influence of the Egyptian\nTrinity that was then being worshipped at the Serapeum, and which had\nsaturated the thought of Alexandria with the conception of a trinity in\nunity, are probably the realities that account for the Third Person of\nthe Christian Trinity. At any rate the present writer believes that the\ndiscussions that shaped the Christian theology we know were dominated\nby such natural and fundamental thoughts. These discussions were,\nof course, complicated from the outset; and particularly were they\ncomplicated by the identification of the man Jesus with the theological\nChrist, by materialistic expectations of his second coming, by\nmaterialistic inventions about his \u201cmiraculous\u201d begetting, and by the\nmorbid speculations about virginity and the like that arose out of\nsuch grossness. They were still further complicated by the idea of the\ntextual inspiration of the scriptures, which presently swamped thought\nin textual interpretation. That swamping came very early in the\ndevelopment of Christianity. The writer of St. John\u2019s gospel appears\nstill to be thinking with a considerable freedom, but Origen is already\nhopelessly in the net of the texts. The writer of St. John\u2019s gospel\nwas a free man, but Origen was a superstitious man. He was emasculated\nmentally as well as bodily through his bibliolatry. He quotes; his\npredecessor thinks.\n\nBut the writer throws out these guesses at the probable intentions of\nearly Christian thought in passing. His business here is the definition\nof a position. The writer\u2019s position here in this book is, firstly,\ncomplete Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator, and secondly,\nentire faith in the matter of God the Redeemer. That, so to speak, is\nthe key of his book. He cannot bring the two ideas under the same term\nGod. He uses the word God therefore for the God in our hearts only,\nand he uses the term the Veiled Being for the ultimate mysteries of the\nuniverse, and he declares that we do not know and perhaps cannot know in\nany comprehensible terms the relation of the Veiled Being to that living\nreality in our lives who is, in his terminology, the true God. Speaking\nfrom the point of view of practical religion, he is restricting and\ndefining the word God, as meaning only the personal God of mankind, he\nis restricting it so as to exclude all cosmogony and ideas of providence\nfrom our religious thought and leave nothing but the essentials of the\nreligious life.\n\nMany people, whom one would class as rather liberal Christians of an\nArian or Arminian complexion, may find the larger part of this book\nacceptable to them if they will read \u201cthe Christ God\u201d where the writer\nhas written \u201cGod.\u201d They will then differ from him upon little more than\nthe question whether there is an essential identity in aim and quality\nbetween the Christ God and the Veiled Being, who answer to their\nCreator God. This the orthodox post Nicaean Christians assert, and many\npre-Nicaeans and many heretics (as the Cathars) contradicted with its\nexact contrary. The Cathars, Paulicians, Albigenses and so on held, with\nthe Manichaeans, that the God of Nature, God the Father, was evil. The\nChrist God was his antagonist. This was the idea of the poet Shelley.\nAnd passing beyond Christian theology altogether a clue can still be\nfound to many problems in comparative theology in this distinction\nbetween the Being of Nature (cf. Kant\u2019s \u201cstarry vault above\u201d) and the\nGod of the heart (Kant\u2019s \u201cmoral law within\u201d). The idea of an antagonism\nseems to have been cardinal in the thought of the Essenes and the\nOrphic cult and in the Persian dualism. So, too, Buddhism seems to\nbe \u201cantagonistic.\u201d On the other hand, the Moslem teaching and modern\nJudaism seem absolutely to combine and identify the two; God the creator\nis altogether and without distinction also God the King of Mankind.\nChristianity stands somewhere between such complete identification and\ncomplete antagonism. It admits a difference in attitude between Father\nand Son in its distinction between the Old Dispensation (of the Old\nTestament) and the New. Every possible change is rung in the great\nreligions of the world between identification, complete separation,\nequality, and disproportion of these Beings; but it will be found that\nthese two ideas are, so to speak, the basal elements of all theology in\nthe world. The writer is chary of assertion or denial in these\nmatters. He believes that they are speculations not at all necessary to\nsalvation. He believes that men may differ profoundly in their opinions\nupon these points and still be in perfect agreement upon the essentials\nof religion. The reality of religion he believes deals wholly and\nexclusively with the God of the Heart. He declares as his own opinion,\nand as the opinion which seems most expressive of modern thought, that\nthere is no reason to suppose the Veiled Being either benevolent or\nmalignant towards men. But if the reader believes that God is Almighty\nand in every way Infinite the practical outcome is not very different.\nFor the purposes of human relationship it is impossible to deny that\nGod PRESENTS HIMSELF AS FINITE, as struggling and taking a part against\nevil.\n\nThe writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merely\nextraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim in this\nbook is to give a statement of religion which is no longer entangled in\nsuch speculations and disputes.\n\n\nLet him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, and that\nis to remark that except for one incidental passage (in Chapter IV.,\n1), nowhere does he discuss the question of personal immortality. [It\nis discussed in \u201cFirst and Last Things,\u201d Book IV, 4.] He omits this\nquestion because he does not consider that it has any more bearing upon\nthe essentials of religion, than have the theories we may hold about the\nrelation of God and the moral law to the starry universe. The latter is\na question for the theologian, the former for the psychologist. Whether\nwe are mortal or immortal, whether the God in our hearts is the Son of\nor a rebel against the Universe, the reality of religion, the fact of\nsalvation, is still our self-identification with God, irrespective of\nconsequences, and the achievement of his kingdom, in our hearts and\nin the world. Whether we live forever or die tomorrow does not affect\nrighteousness. Many people seem to find the prospect of a final personal\ndeath unendurable. This impresses me as egotism. I have no such appetite\nfor a separate immortality. God is my immortality; what, of me, is\nidentified with God, is God; what is not is of no more permanent value\nthan the snows of yester-year.\n\nH. G. W.\n\nDunmow, May, 1917.\n\n\n\n\nGOD THE INVISIBLE KING\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIRST\n\nTHE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION\n\n\n1. MODERN RELIGION HAS NO FOUNDER\n\n\nPerhaps all religions, unless the flaming onset of Mohammedanism be an\nexception, have dawned imperceptibly upon the world. A little while ago\nand the thing was not; and then suddenly it has been found in existence,\nand already in a state of diffusion. People have begun to hear of the\nnew belief first here and then there. It is interesting, for example,\nto trace how Christianity drifted into the consciousness of the Roman\nworld. But when a religion has been interrogated it has always had\nhitherto a tale of beginnings, the name and story of a founder. The\nrenascent religion that is now taking shape, it seems, had no founder;\nit points to no origins. It is the Truth, its believers declare; it has\nalways been here; it has always been visible to those who had eyes to\nsee. It is perhaps plainer than it was and to more people--that is all.\n\nIt is as if it still did not realise its own difference. Many of those\nwho hold it still think of it as if it were a kind of Christianity.\nSome, catching at a phrase of Huxley\u2019s, speak of it as Christianity\nwithout Theology. They do not know the creed they are carrying. It has,\nas a matter of fact, a very fine and subtle theology, flatly opposed\nto any belief that could, except by great stretching of charity and\nthe imagination, be called Christianity. One might find, perhaps, a\nparallelism with the system ascribed to some Gnostics, but that is far\nmore probably an accidental rather than a sympathetic coincidence. Of\nthat the reader shall presently have an opportunity of judging.\n\nThis indefiniteness of statement and relationship is probably only the\nopening phase of the new faith. Christianity also began with an extreme\nneglect of definition. It was not at first anything more than a sect\nof Judaism. It was only after three centuries, amidst the uproar\nand emotions of the council of Nicaea, when the more enthusiastic\nTrinitarians stuffed their fingers in their ears in affected horror at\nthe arguments of old Arius, that the cardinal mystery of the Trinity\nwas established as the essential fact of Christianity. Throughout those\nthree centuries, the centuries of its greatest achievements and noblest\nmartyrdoms, Christianity had not defined its God. And even to-day it has\nto be noted that a large majority of those who possess and repeat\nthe Christian creeds have come into the practice so insensibly from\nunthinking childhood, that only in the slightest way do they realise the\nnature of the statements to which they subscribe. They will speak\nand think of both Christ and God in ways flatly incompatible with the\ndoctrine of the Triune deity upon which, theoretically, the entire\nfabric of all the churches rests. They will show themselves as frankly\nArians as though that damnable heresy had not been washed out of the\nworld forever after centuries of persecution in torrents of blood. But\nwhatever the present state of Christendom in these matters may be,\nthere can be no doubt of the enormous pains taken in the past to give\nChristian beliefs the exactest, least ambiguous statement possible.\nChristianity knew itself clearly for what it was in its maturity,\nwhatever the indecisions of its childhood or the confusions of its\ndecay. The renascent religion that one finds now, a thing active and\nsufficient in many minds, has still scarcely come to self-consciousness.\nBut it is so coming, and this present book is very largely an attempt\nto state the shape it is assuming and to compare it with the beliefs\nand imperatives and usages of the various Christian, pseudo-Christian,\nphilosophical, and agnostic cults amidst which it has appeared.\n\nThe writer\u2019s sympathies and convictions are entirely with this that he\nspeaks of as renascent or modern religion; he is neither atheist\nnor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian. He will make no pretence,\ntherefore, to impartiality and detachment. He will do his best to be as\nfair as possible and as candid as possible, but the reader must reckon\nwith this bias. He has found this faith growing up in himself; he has\nfound it, or something very difficult to distinguish from it, growing\nindependently in the minds of men and women he has met. They have been\npeople of very various origins; English, Americans, Bengalis, Russians,\nFrench, people brought up in a \u201cCatholic atmosphere,\u201d Positivists,\nBaptists, Sikhs, Mohammedans. Their diversity of source is as remarkable\nas their convergence of tendency. A miscellany of minds thinking upon\nparallel lines has come out to the same light. The new teaching is also\ntraceable in many professedly Christian religious books and it is to be\nheard from Christian pulpits. The phase of definition is manifestly at\nhand.\n\n\n\n2. MODERN RELIGION HAS A FINITE GOD\n\n\nPerhaps the most fundamental difference between this new faith and any\nrecognised form of Christianity is that, knowingly or unknowingly, it\nworships A FINITE GOD. Directly the believer is fairly confronted with\nthe plain questions of the case, the vague identifications that are\nstill carelessly made with one or all of the persons of the Trinity\ndissolve away. He will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor\nall-powerful, nor omnipresent; that he is neither the maker of heaven\nnor earth, and that he has little to identify him with that hereditary\nGod of the Jews who became the \u201cFather\u201d in the Christian system. On the\nother hand he will assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is\na spirit, a person, a strongly marked and knowable personality, loving,\ninspiring, and lovable, who exists or strives to exist in every human\nsoul. He will be much less certain in his denials that his God has a\nclose resemblance to the Pauline (as distinguished from the Trinitarian)\n\u201cChrist.\u201d . . .\n\nThe modern religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of\nuniversalism; he will assert that whensoever men have called upon any\nGod and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense\nof God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the\nreligious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the\nTrue God is a generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of\nthat bickering monopolist who \u201cwill have none other gods but Me\u201d; and\nwhen a human heart cries out--to what name it matters not--for a larger\nspirit and a stronger help than the visible things of life can give,\nstraightway the nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man answers to\nthe call. The True God has no scorn nor hate for those who have accepted\nthe many-handed symbols of the Hindu or the lacquered idols of China.\nWhere there is faith, where there is need, there is the True God ready\nto clasp the hands that stretch out seeking for him into the darkness\nbehind the ivory and gold.\n\nThe fact that God is FINITE is one upon which those who think clearly\namong the new believers are very insistent. He is, above everything\nelse, a personality, and to be a personality is to have characteristics,\nto be limited by characteristics; he is a Being, not us but dealing\nwith us and through us, he has an aim and that means he has a past and\nfuture; he is within time and not outside it. And they point out that\nthis is really what everyone who prays sincerely to God or gets help\nfrom God, feels and believes. Our practice with God is better than our\ntheory. None of us really pray to that fantastic, unqualified danse a\ntrois, the Trinity, which the wranglings and disputes of the worthies\nof Alexandria and Syria declared to be God. We pray to one single\nunderstanding person. But so far the tactics of those Trinitarians at\nNicaea, who stuck their fingers in their ears, have prevailed in this\nworld; this was no matter for discussion, they declared, it was a Holy\nMystery full of magical terror, and few religious people have thought\nit worth while to revive these terrors by a definite contradiction. The\ntruly religious have been content to lapse quietly into the comparative\nsanity of an unformulated Arianism, they have left it to the scoffing\nAtheist to mock at the patent absurdities of the official creed. But one\nmagnificent protest against this theological fantasy must have been\nthe work of a sincerely religious man, the cold superb humour of that\nburlesque creed, ascribed, at first no doubt facetiously and then quite\nseriously, to Saint Athanasius the Great, which, by an irony far beyond\nits original intention, has become at last the accepted creed of the\nchurch.\n\nThe long truce in the criticism of Trinitarian theology is drawing to\nits end. It is when men most urgently need God that they become least\npatient with foolish presentations and dogmas. The new believers are\nvery definitely set upon a thorough analysis of the nature and growth\nof the Christian creeds and ideas. There has grown up a practice of\nassuming that, when God is spoken of, the Hebrew-Christian God of Nicaea\nis meant. But that God trails with him a thousand misconceptions and\nbad associations; his alleged infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange\npreferences, his vindictive Old Testament past. These things do not even\nmake a caricature of the True God; they compose an altogether different\nand antagonistic figure.\n\nIt is a very childish and unphilosophical set of impulses that has led\nthe theologians of nearly every faith to claim infinite qualities for\ntheir deity. One has to remember the poorness of the mental and moral\nquality of the churchmen of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries who\nsaddled Christendom with its characteristic dogmas, and the extreme\npoverty and confusion of the circle of ideas within which they thought.\nMany of these makers of Christianity, like Saint Ambrose of Milan (who\nhad even to be baptised after his election to his bishopric), had been\npitchforked into the church from civil life; they lived in a time\nof pitiless factions and personal feuds; they had to conduct their\ndisputations amidst the struggles of would-be emperors; court eunuchs\nand favourites swayed their counsels, and popular rioting clinched their\ndecisions. There was less freedom of discussion then in the Christian\nworld than there is at present (1916) in Belgium, and the whole audience\nof educated opinion by which a theory could be judged did not equal,\neither in numbers or accuracy of information, the present population of\nConstantinople. To these conditions we owe the claim that the Christian\nGod is a magic god, very great medicine in battle, \u201cin hoc signo\nvinces,\u201d and the argument so natural to the minds of those days and so\nabsurd to ours, that since he had ALL power, all knowledge, and existed\nfor ever and ever, it was no use whatever to set up any other god\nagainst him. . . .\n\nBy the fifth century Christianity had adopted as its fundamental belief,\nwithout which everyone was to be \u201cdamned everlastingly,\u201d a conception\nof God and of Christ\u2019s relation to God, of which even by the Christian\naccount of his teaching, Jesus was either totally unaware or so\nnegligent and careless of the future comfort of his disciples as\nscarcely to make mention. The doctrine of the Trinity, so far as the\nrelationship of the Third Person goes, hangs almost entirely upon one\nambiguous and disputed utterance in St. John\u2019s gospel (XV. 26). Most of\nthe teachings of Christian orthodoxy resolve themselves to the attentive\nstudent into assertions of the nature of contradiction and repartee.\nSomeone floats an opinion in some matter that has been hitherto vague,\nin regard, for example, to the sonship of Christ or to the method of\nhis birth. The new opinion arouses the hostility and alarm of minds\nunaccustomed to so definite a statement, and in the zeal of their recoil\nthey fly to a contrary proposition. The Christians would neither admit\nthat they worshipped more gods than one because of the Greeks, nor\ndeny the divinity of Christ because of the Jews. They dreaded to be\npolytheistic; equally did they dread the least apparent detraction from\nthe power and importance of their Saviour. They were forced into the\ntheory of the Trinity by the necessity of those contrary assertions,\nand they had to make it a mystery protected by curses to save it from a\nreductio ad absurdam. The entire history of the growth of the Christian\ndoctrine in those disordered early centuries is a history of theology\nby committee; a history of furious wrangling, of hasty compromises, and\nstill more hasty attempts to clinch matters by anathema. When the muddle\nwas at its very worst, the church was confronted by enormous political\nopportunities. In order that it should seize these one chief thing\nappeared imperative: doctrinal uniformity. The emperor himself, albeit\nunbaptised and very ignorant of Greek, came and seated himself in the\nmidst of Christian thought upon a golden throne. At the end of it all\nEusebius, that supreme Trimmer, was prepared to damn everlastingly all\nthose who doubted that consubstantiality he himself had doubted at the\nbeginning of the conference. It is quite clear that Constantine did not\ncare who was damned or for what period, so long as the Christians ceased\nto wrangle among themselves. The practical unanimity of Nicaea was\nsecured by threats, and then, turning upon the victors, he sought by\nthreats to restore Arius to communion. The imperial aim was a common\nfaith to unite the empire. The crushing out of the Arians and of the\nPaulicians and suchlike heretics, and more particularly the systematic\ndestruction by the orthodox of all heretical writings, had about it none\nof that quality of honest conviction which comes to those who have a\nreal knowledge of God; it was a bawling down of dissensions that, left\nto work themselves out, would have spoilt good business; it was the fist\nof Nicolas of Myra over again, except that after the days of Ambrose the\nsword of the executioner and the fires of the book-burner were added to\nthe weapon of the human voice. Priscillian was the first human sacrifice\nformally offered up under these improved conditions to the greater glory\nof the reinforced Trinity. Thereafter the blood of the heretics was the\ncement of Christian unity.\n\nIt is with these things in mind that those who profess the new faith are\nbecoming so markedly anxious to distinguish God from the Trinitarian\u2019s\ndeity. At present if anyone who has left the Christian communion\ndeclares himself a believer in God, priest and parson swell with\nself-complacency. There is no reason why they should do so. That many of\nus have gone from them and found God is no concern of theirs. It is\nnot that we who went out into the wilderness which we thought to be\na desert, away from their creeds and dogmas, have turned back and are\nreturning. It is that we have gone on still further, and are beyond that\ndesolation. Never more shall we return to those who gather under the\ncross. By faith we disbelieved and denied. By faith we said of that\nstuffed scarecrow of divinity, that incoherent accumulation of antique\ntheological notions, the Nicene deity, \u201cThis is certainly no God.\u201d And\nby faith we have found God. . . .\n\n\n\n3. THE INFINITE BEING IS NOT GOD\n\n\nThere has always been a demand upon the theological teacher that he\nshould supply a cosmogony. It has always been an effective propagandist\nthing to say: \u201cOUR God made the whole universe. Don\u2019t you think that\nit would be wise to abandon YOUR deity, who did not, as you admit, do\nanything of the sort?\u201d\n\nThe attentive reader of the lives of the Saints will find that this\nstyle of argument did in the past bring many tribes and nations into\nthe Christian fold. It was second only to the claim of magic advantages,\ndemonstrated by a free use of miracles. Only one great religious system,\nthe Buddhist, seems to have resisted the temptation to secure for\nits divinity the honour and title of Creator. Modern religion is like\nBuddhism in that respect. It offers no theory whatever about the origin\nof the universe. It does not reach behind the appearances of space\nand time. It sees only a featureless presumption in that playing with\nsuperlatives which has entertained so many minds from Plotinus to the\nHegelians with the delusion that such negative terms as the Absolute or\nthe Unconditioned, can assert anything at all. At the back of all known\nthings there is an impenetrable curtain; the ultimate of existence is\na Veiled Being, which seems to know nothing of life or death or good or\nill. Of that Being, whether it is simple or complex or divine, we\nknow nothing; to us it is no more than the limit of understanding,\nthe unknown beyond. It may be of practically limitless intricacy and\npossibility. The new religion does not pretend that the God of its life\nis that Being, or that he has any relation of control or association\nwith that Being. It does not even assert that God knows all or much more\nthan we do about that ultimate Being.\n\nFor us life is a matter of our personalities in space and time. Human\nanalysis probing with philosophy and science towards the Veiled Being\nreveals nothing of God, reveals space and time only as necessary forms\nof consciousness, glimpses a dance of atoms, of whirls in the\nether. Some day in the endless future there may be a knowledge, an\nunderstanding of relationship, a power and courage that will pierce into\nthose black wrappings. To that it may be our God, the Captain of Mankind\nwill take us.\n\nThat now is a mere speculation. The veil of the unknown is set with\nthe stars; its outer texture is ether and atom and crystal. The Veiled\nBeing, enigmatical and incomprehensible, broods over the mirror upon\nwhich the busy shapes of life are moving. It is as if it waited in a\ngreat stillness. Our lives do not deal with it, and cannot deal with it.\nIt may be that they may never be able to deal with it.\n\n\n\n4. THE LIFE FORCE IS NOT GOD\n\n\nSo it is that comprehensive setting of the universe presents itself to\nthe modern mind. It is altogether outside good and evil and love and\nhate. It is outside God, who is love and goodness. And coming out\nof this veiled being, proceeding out of it in a manner altogether\ninconceivable, is another lesser being, an impulse thrusting through\nmatter and clothing itself in continually changing material forms,\nthe maker of our world, Life, the Will to Be. It comes out of that\ninscrutable being as a wave comes rolling to us from beyond the horizon.\nIt is as it were a great wave rushing through matter and possessed by\na spirit. It is a breeding, fighting thing; it pants through the jungle\ntrack as the tiger and lifts itself towards heaven as the tree; it is\nthe rabbit bolting for its life and the dove calling to her mate; it\ncrawls, it flies, it dives, it lusts and devours, it pursues and eats\nitself in order to live still more eagerly and hastily; it is every\nliving thing, of it are our passions and desires and fears. And it\nis aware of itself not as a whole, but dispersedly as individual\nself-consciousness, starting out dispersedly from every one of the\nsentient creatures it has called into being. They look out for their\nlittle moments, red-eyed and fierce, full of greed, full of the passions\nof acquisition and assimilation and reproduction, submitting only to\nbrief fellowships of defence or aggression. They are beings of strain\nand conflict and competition. They are living substance still mingled\npainfully with the dust. The forms in which this being clothes itself\nbear thorns and fangs and claws, are soaked with poison and bright with\nthreats or allurements, prey slyly or openly on one another, hold their\nown for a little while, breed savagely and resentfully, and pass. . . .\n\nThis second Being men have called the Life Force, the Will to Live, the\nStruggle for Existence. They have figured it too as Mother Nature. We\nmay speculate whether it is not what the wiser among the Gnostics meant\nby the Demiurge, but since the Christians destroyed all the Gnostic\nbooks that must remain a mere curious guess. We may speculate whether\nthis heat and haste and wrath of life about us is the Dark God of the\nManichees, the evil spirit of the sun worshippers. But in contemporary\nthought there is no conviction apparent that this Demiurge is either\ngood or evil; it is conceived of as both good and evil. If it gives all\nthe pain and conflict of life, it gives also the joy of the sunshine,\nthe delight and hope of youth, the pleasures. If it has elaborated a\nhundred thousand sorts of parasite, it has also moulded the beautiful\nlimbs of man and woman; it has shaped the slug and the flower. And\nin it, as part of it, taking its rewards, responding to its goads,\nstruggling against the final abandonment to death, do we all live,\nas the beasts live, glad, angry, sorry, revengeful, hopeful, weary,\ndisgusted, forgetful, lustful, happy, excited, bored, in pain, mood\nafter mood but always fearing death, with no certainty and no coherence\nwithin us, until we find God. And God comes to us neither out of the\nstars nor out of the pride of life, but as a still small voice within.\n\n\n\n5. GOD IS WITHIN\n\n\nGod comes we know not whence, into the conflict of life. He works in men\nand through men. He is a spirit, a single spirit and a single person; he\nhas begun and he will never end. He is the immortal part and leader of\nmankind. He has motives, he has characteristics, he has an aim. He is\nby our poor scales of measurement boundless love, boundless courage,\nboundless generosity. He is thought and a steadfast will. He is our\nfriend and brother and the light of the world. That briefly is the\nbelief of the modern mind with regard to God. There is no very novel\nidea about this God, unless it be the idea that he had a beginning. This\nis the God that men have sought and found in all ages, as God or as\nthe Messiah or the Saviour. The finding of him is salvation from the\npurposelessness of life. The new religion has but disentangled the idea\nof him from the absolutes and infinities and mysteries of the Christian\ntheologians; from mythological virgin births and the cosmogonies and\nintellectual pretentiousness of a vanished age.\n\nModern religion appeals to no revelation, no authoritative teaching,\nno mystery. The statement it makes is, it declares, a mere statement\nof what we may all perceive and experience. We all live in the storm of\nlife, we all find our understandings limited by the Veiled Being; if\nwe seek salvation and search within for God, presently we find him. All\nthis is in the nature of things. If every one who perceives and states\nit were to be instantly killed and blotted out, presently other people\nwould find their way to the same conclusions; and so on again and again.\nTo this all true religion, casting aside its hulls of misconception,\nmust ultimately come. To it indeed much religion is already coming.\nChristian thought struggles towards it, with the millstones of Syrian\ntheology and an outrageous mythology of incarnation and resurrection\nabout its neck. When at last our present bench of bishops join the\nearly fathers of the church in heaven there will be, I fear, a note of\nreproach in their greeting of the ingenious person who saddled them with\nOMNIPOTENS. Still more disastrous for them has been the virgin birth,\nwith the terrible fascination of its detail for unpoetic minds. How rich\nis the literature of authoritative Christianity with decisions upon the\ncontinuing virginity of Mary and the virginity of Joseph--ideas that\nfirst arose in Arabia as a Moslem gloss upon Christianity--and how\nlittle have these peepings and pryings to do with the needs of the heart\nand the finding of God!\n\nWithin the last few years there have been a score or so of such volumes\nas that recently compiled by Dr. Foakes Jackson, entitled \u201cThe Faith and\nthe War,\u201d a volume in which the curious reader may contemplate deans and\ncanons, divines and church dignitaries, men intelligent and enquiring\nand religiously disposed, all lying like overladen camels, panting\nunder this load of obsolete theological responsibility, groaning great\narticles, outside the needle\u2019s eye that leads to God.\n\n\n\n6. THE COMING OF GOD\n\n\nModern religion bases its knowledge of God and its account of God\nentirely upon experience. It has encountered God. It does not argue\nabout God; it relates. It relates without any of those wrappings of awe\nand reverence that fold so necessarily about imposture, it relates as\none tells of a friend and his assistance, of a happy adventure, of a\nbeautiful thing found and picked up by the wayside.\n\nSo far as its psychological phases go the new account of personal\nsalvation tallies very closely with the account of \u201cconversion\u201d as it\nis given by other religions. It has little to tell that is not already\nfamiliar to the reader of William James\u2019s \u201cVarieties of Religious\nExperience.\u201d It describes an initial state of distress with the\naimlessness and cruelties of life, and particularly with the futility of\nthe individual life, a state of helpless self-disgust, of inability to\nform any satisfactory plan of living. This is the common prelude known\nto many sorts of Christian as \u201cconviction of sin\u201d; it is, at any rate, a\nconviction of hopeless confusion. . . . Then in some way the idea of\nGod comes into the distressed mind, at first simply as an idea, without\nsubstance or belief. It is read about or it is remembered; it is\nexpounded by some teacher or some happy convert. In the case of all\nthose of the new faith with whose personal experience I have any\nintimacy, the idea of God has remained for some time simply as an idea\nfloating about in a mind still dissatisfied. God is not believed in,\nbut it is realised that if there were such a being he would supply the\nneeded consolation and direction, his continuing purpose would knit\ntogether the scattered effort of life, his immortality would take\nthe sting from death. Under this realisation the idea is pursued and\nelaborated. For a time there is a curious resistance to the suggestion\nthat God is truly a person; he is spoken of preferably by such phrases\nas the Purpose in Things, as the Racial Consciousness, as the Collective\nMind.\n\nI believe that this resistance in so many contemporary minds to the idea\nof God as a person is due very largely to the enormous prejudice against\ndivine personality created by the absurdities of the Christian teaching\nand the habitual monopoly of the Christian idea. The picture of Christ\nas the Good Shepherd thrusts itself before minds unaccustomed to the\nidea that they are lambs. The cross in the twilight bars the way. It is\na novelty and an enormous relief to such people to realise that one may\nthink of God without being committed to think of either the Father, the\nSon, or the Holy Ghost, or of all of them at once. That freedom had not\nseemed possible to them. They had been hypnotised and obsessed by the\nidea that the Christian God is the only thinkable God. They had heard so\nmuch about that God and so little of any other. With that release their\nminds become, as it were, nascent and ready for the coming of God.\n\nThen suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. This\ncardinal experience is an undoubting, immediate sense of God. It is the\nattainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself.\nIt is as if one was touched at every point by a being akin to oneself,\nsympathetic, beyond measure wiser, steadfast and pure in aim. It is\ncompleter and more intimate, but it is like standing side by side with\nand touching someone that we love very dearly and trust completely. It\nis as if this being bridged a thousand misunderstandings and brought us\ninto fellowship with a great multitude of other people. . . .\n\n\u201cCloser he is than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.\u201d\n\nThe moment may come while we are alone in the darkness, under the stars,\nor while we walk by ourselves or in a crowd, or while we sit and muse.\nIt may come upon the sinking ship or in the tumult of the battle. There\nis no saying when it may not come to us. . . . But after it has come\nour lives are changed, God is with us and there is no more doubt of\nGod. Thereafter one goes about the world like one who was lonely and has\nfound a lover, like one who was perplexed and has found a solution.\nOne is assured that there is a Power that fights with us against the\nconfusion and evil within us and without. There comes into the heart an\nessential and enduring happiness and courage.\n\nThere is but one God, there is but one true religious experience, but\nunder a multitude of names, under veils and darknesses, God has in this\nmanner come into countless lives. There is scarcely a faith, however\nmean and preposterous, that has not been a way to holiness. God who is\nhimself finite, who himself struggles in his great effort from strength\nto strength, has no spite against error. Far beyond halfway he hastens\nto meet the purblind. But God is against the darkness in their eyes. The\nfaith which is returning to men girds at veils and shadows, and would\nsee God plainly. It has little respect for mysteries. It rends the veil\nof the temple in rags and tatters. It has no superstitious fear of\nthis huge friendliness, of this great brother and leader of our little\nbeings. To find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all\nour days we have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with\nhim.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SECOND\n\nHERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT\n\n\n1. HERESIES ARE MISCONCEPTIONS OF GOD\n\n\nReligion is not a plant that has grown from one seed; it is like a lake\nthat has been fed by countless springs. It is a great pool of living\nwater, mingled from many sources and tainted with much impurity. It is\nsynthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from original complexities;\nthe sediment subsides.\n\nA life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without\nmentality; no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance\nof the instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss, or\nnirvana. It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is discord\nevoking the will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At every need\nconsciousness breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments, needs, are the\nrents and tatters in the smooth dark veil of being through which the\nlight of consciousness shines--the light of consciousness and will of\nwhich God is the sun.\n\nSo that every need of human life, every disappointment and\ndissatisfaction and call for help and effort, is a means whereby men may\nand do come to the realisation of God.\n\nThere is no cardinal need, there is no sort of experience in human life\nfrom which there does not come or has not come a contribution to men\u2019s\nreligious ideas. At every challenge men have to put forth effort, feel\ndoubt of adequacy, be thwarted, perceive the chill shadow of their\nmortality. At every challenge comes the possibility of help from\nwithout, the idea of eluding frustration, the aspiration towards\nimmortality. It is possible to classify the appeals men make for God\nunder the headings of their chief system of effort, their efforts to\nunderstand, their fear and their struggles for safety and happiness, the\ncraving of their restlessness for peace, their angers against\ndisorder and their desire for the avenger; their sexual passions and\nperplexities. . . .\n\nEach of these great systems of needs and efforts brings its own sort\nof sediment into religion. Each, that is to say, has its own kind\nof heresy, its distinctive misapprehension of God. It is only in the\nsynthesis and mutual correction of many divergent ideas that the idea of\nGod grows clear. The effort to understand completely, for example,\nleads to the endless Heresies of Theory. Men trip over the inherent\ninfirmities of the human mind. But in these days one does not argue\ngreatly about dogma. Almost every conceivable error about unity, about\npersonality, about time and quantity and genus and species, about\nbegetting and beginning and limitation and similarity and every kink\nin the difficult mind of man, has been thrust forward in some form of\ndogma. Beside the errors of thought are the errors of emotion. Fear and\nfeebleness go straight to the Heresies that God is Magic or that God\nis Providence; restless egotism at leisure and unchallenged by urgent\nelementary realities breeds the Heresies of Mysticism, anger and hate\ncall for God\u2019s Judgments, and the stormy emotions of sex gave mankind\nthe Phallic God. Those who find themselves possessed by the new spirit\nin religion, realise very speedily the necessity of clearing the mind\nof all these exaggerations, transferences, and overflows of feeling. The\nsearch for divine truth is like gold washing; nothing is of any value\nuntil most has been swept away.\n\n\n\n2. HERESIES OF SPECULATION\n\n\nOne sort of heresies stands apart from the rest. It is infinitely the\nmost various sort. It includes all those heresies which result from\nwrong-headed mental elaboration, as distinguished from those which are\nthe result of hasty and imperfect apprehension, the heresies of the\nclever rather than the heresies of the obtuse. The former are of endless\nvariety and complexity; the latter are in comparison natural, simple\nconfusions. The former are the errors of the study, the latter the\nsuperstitions that spring by the wayside, or are brought down to us in\nour social structure out of a barbaric past.\n\nTo the heresies of thought and speculation belong the elaborate\ndoctrine of the Trinity, dogmas about God\u2019s absolute qualities, such odd\ndeductions as the accepted Christian teachings about the virginity of\nMary and Joseph, and the like. All these things are parts of orthodox\nChristianity. Yet none of them did Christ, even by the Christian\naccount, expound or recommend. He treated them as negligible. It was\nleft for the Alexandrians, for Alexander, for little, red-haired,\nbusy, wire-pulling Athanasius to find out exactly what their Master was\ndriving at, three centuries after their Master was dead. . . .\n\nMen still sit at little desks remote from God or life, and rack their\ninadequate brains to meet fancied difficulties and state unnecessary\nperfections. They seek God by logic, ignoring the marginal error\nthat creeps into every syllogism. Their conceit blinds them to the\nlimitations upon their thinking. They weave spider-like webs of muddle\nand disputation across the path by which men come to God. It would not\nmatter very much if it were not that simpler souls are caught in these\nwebs. Every great religious system in the world is choked by such webs;\neach system has its own. Of all the blood-stained tangled heresies which\nmake up doctrinal Christianity and imprison the mind of the western\nworld to-day, not one seems to have been known to the nominal founder\nof Christianity. Jesus Christ never certainly claimed to be the Messiah;\nnever spoke clearly of the Trinity; was vague upon the scheme of\nsalvation and the significance of his martyrdom. We are asked to suppose\nthat he left his apostles without instructions, that were necessary to\ntheir eternal happiness, that he could give them the Lord\u2019s Prayer but\nleave them to guess at the all-important Creed,* and that the Church\nstaggered along blindly, putting its foot in and out of damnation,\nuntil the \u201cexperts\u201d of Nicaea, that \u201cgarland of priests,\u201d marshalled by\nConstantine\u2019s officials, came to its rescue. . . . From the conversion\nof Paul onward, the heresies of the intellect multiplied about Christ\u2019s\nmemory and hid him from the sight of men. We are no longer clear about\nthe doctrine he taught nor about the things he said and did. . . .\n\n     * Even the \u201cApostles\u2019 Creed\u201d is not traceable earlier than\n     the fourth century.  It is manifestly an old, patched\n     formulary. Rutinius explains that it was not written down\n     for a long time, but transmitted orally, kept secret, and\n     used as a sort of password among the elect.\n\nWe are all so weary of this theology of the Christians, we are all at\nheart so sceptical about their Triune God, that it is needless here to\nspend any time or space upon the twenty thousand different formulae in\nwhich the orthodox have attempted to believe in something of the sort.\nThere are several useful encyclopaedias of sects and heresies, compact,\nbut still bulky, to which the curious may go. There are ten thousand\ndifferent expositions of orthodoxy. No one who really seeks God thinks\nof the Trinity, either the Trinity of the Trinitarian or the Trinity of\nthe Sabellian or the Trinity of the Arian, any more than one thinks of\nthose theories made stone, those gods with three heads and seven hands,\nwho sit on lotus leaves and flourish lingams and what not, in the\ntemples of India. Let us leave, therefore, these morbid elaborations of\nthe human intelligence to drift to limbo, and come rather to the natural\nheresies that spring from fundamental weaknesses of the human character,\nand which are common to all religions. Against these it is necessary to\nkeep constant watch. They return very insidiously.\n\n\n\n3. GOD IS NOT MAGIC\n\n\nOne of the most universal of these natural misconceptions of God is to\nconsider him as something magic serving the ends of men.\n\nIt is not easy for us to grasp at first the full meaning of giving our\nsouls to God. The missionary and teacher of any creed is all too apt to\nhawk God for what he will fetch; he is greedy for the poor triumph of\nacquiescence; and so it comes about that many people who have been led\nto believe themselves religious, are in reality still keeping back their\nown souls and trying to use God for their own purposes. God is nothing\nmore for them as yet than a magnificent Fetish. They did not really want\nhim, but they have heard that he is potent stuff; their unripe souls\nthink to make use of him. They call upon his name, they do certain\nthings that are supposed to be peculiarly influential with him, such\nas saying prayers and repeating gross praises of him, or reading in\na blind, industrious way that strange miscellany of Jewish and early\nChristian literature, the Bible, and suchlike mental mortification,\nor making the Sabbath dull and uncomfortable. In return for these\nfetishistic propitiations God is supposed to interfere with the normal\ncourse of causation in their favour. He becomes a celestial log-roller.\nHe remedies unfavourable accidents, cures petty ailments, contrives\nunexpected gifts of medicine, money, or the like, he averts\nbankruptcies, arranges profitable transactions, and does a thousand\nsuch services for his little clique of faithful people. The pious are\nrepresented as being constantly delighted by these little surprises,\nthese bouquets and chocolate boxes from the divinity. Or contrawise\nhe contrives spiteful turns for those who fail in their religious\nattentions. He murders Sabbath-breaking children, or disorganises the\ncareful business schemes of the ungodly. He is represented as going\nSabbath-breakering on Sunday morning as a Staffordshire worker\ngoes ratting. Ordinary everyday Christianity is saturated with this\nfetishistic conception of God. It may be disowned in THE HIBBERT\nJOURNAL, but it is unblushingly advocated in the parish magazine. It is\nan idea taken over by Christianity with the rest of the qualities of\nthe Hebrew God. It is natural enough in minds so self-centred that their\nrecognition of weakness and need brings with it no real self-surrender,\nbut it is entirely inconsistent with the modern conception of the true\nGod.\n\nThere has dropped upon the table as I write a modest periodical called\nTHE NORTHERN BRITISH ISRAEL REVIEW, illustrated with portraits of\nvarious clergymen of the Church of England, and of ladies and gentlemen\nwho belong to the little school of thought which this magazine\nrepresents; it is, I should judge, a sub-sect entirely within the\nEstablished Church of England, that is to say within the Anglican\ncommunion of the Trinitarian Christians. It contains among other papers\na very entertaining summary by a gentleman entitled--I cite the unusual\ntitle-page of the periodical--\u201cLandseer Mackenzie, Esq.,\u201d of the views\nof Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Obadiah upon the Kaiser William. They are\ndistinctly hostile views. Mr. Landseer Mackenzie discourses not only\nupon these anticipatory condemnations but also upon the relations of the\nweather to this war. He is convinced quite simply and honestly that God\nhas been persistently rigging the weather against the Germans. He points\nout that the absence of mist on the North Sea was of great help to the\nBritish in the autumn of 1914, and declares that it was the wet state of\nthe country that really held up the Germans in Flanders in the winter\nof 1914-15. He ignores the part played by the weather in delaying the\nrelief of Kut-el-Amara, and he has not thought of the difficult question\nwhy the Deity, having once decided upon intervention, did not, instead\nof this comparatively trivial meteorological assistance, adopt the\nmore effective course of, for example, exploding or spoiling the German\nstores of ammunition by some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting\ntheir gunfire by a sudden local modification of the laws of refraction\nor gravitation.\n\nSince these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only\nconclude that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible in\nthe established church, and that I am charging orthodox Christianity\nhere with nothing that has ever been officially repudiated. I find\nindeed the essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer Mackenzie repeated in\nendless official Christian utterances on the part of German and British\nand Russian divines. The Bishop of Chelmsford, for example, has recently\nascribed our difficulties in the war to our impatience with long\nsermons--among other similar causes. Such Christians are manifestly\nconvinced that God can be invoked by ritual--for example by special\ndays of national prayer or an increased observance of Sunday--or made\nmalignant by neglect or levity. It is almost fundamental in their\nidea of him. The ordinary Mohammedan seems as confident of this magic\npettiness of God, and the belief of China in the magic propitiations and\nresentments of \u201cHeaven\u201d is at least equally strong.\n\nBut the true God as those of the new religion know him is no such God\nof luck and intervention. He is not to serve men\u2019s ends or the ends of\nnations or associations of men; he is careless of our ceremonies\nand invocations. He does not lose his temper with our follies and\nweaknesses. It is for us to serve Him. He captains us, he does not\ncoddle us. He has his own ends for which he needs us. . . .\n\n\n\n4. GOD IS NOT PROVIDENCE\n\n\nClosely related to this heresy that God is magic, is the heresy that\ncalls him Providence, that declares the apparent adequacy of cause and\neffect to be a sham, and that all the time, incalculably, he is pulling\nabout the order of events for our personal advantages.\n\nThe idea of Providence was very gaily travested by Daudet in \u201cTartarin\nin the Alps.\u201d You will remember how Tartarin\u2019s friend assured him that\nall Switzerland was one great Trust, intent upon attracting tourists and\nfar too wise and kind to permit them to venture into real danger,\nthat all the precipices were netted invisibly, and all the loose rocks\nguarded against falling, that avalanches were prearranged spectacles and\nthe crevasses at their worst slippery ways down into kindly catchment\nbags. If the mountaineer tried to get into real danger he was turned\nback by specious excuses. Inspired by this persuasion Tartarin behaved\nwith incredible daring. . . . That is exactly the Providence theory of\nthe whole world. There can be no doubt that it does enable many a timid\nsoul to get through life with a certain recklessness. And provided there\nis no slip into a crevasse, the Providence theory works well. It would\nwork altogether well if there were no crevasses.\n\nTartarin was reckless because of his faith in Providence, and escaped.\nBut what would have happened to him if he had fallen into a crevasse?\n\nThere exists a very touching and remarkable book by Sir Francis\nYounghusband called \u201cWithin.\u201d [Williams and Norgate, 1912.] It is the\nconfession of a man who lived with a complete confidence in Providence\nuntil he was already well advanced in years. He went through battles and\ncampaigns, he filled positions of great honour and responsibility, he\nsaw much of the life of men, without altogether losing his faith. The\nloss of a child, an Indian famine, could shake it but not overthrow it.\nThen coming back one day from some races in France, he was knocked down\nby an automobile and hurt very cruelly. He suffered terribly in body and\nmind. His sufferings caused much suffering to others. He did his utmost\nto see the hand of a loving Providence in his and their disaster and\nthe torment it inflicted, and being a man of sterling honesty and a fine\nessential simplicity of mind, he confessed at last that he could not do\nso. His confidence in the benevolent intervention of God was altogether\ndestroyed. His book tells of this shattering, and how labouriously\nhe reconstructed his religion upon less confident lines. It is a book\ntypical of an age and of a very English sort of mind, a book well worth\nreading.\n\nThat he came to a full sense of the true God cannot be asserted, but how\nnear he came to God, let one quotation witness.\n\n\n\u201cThe existence of an outside Providence,\u201d he writes, \u201cwho created us,\nwho watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful Father,\nwe have found impossible longer to believe in. But of the existence of a\nHoly Spirit radiating upward through all animate beings, and finding its\nfullest expression, in man in love, and in the flowers in beauty, we\ncan be as certain as of anything in the world. This fiery spiritual\nimpulsion at the centre and the source of things, ever burning in us,\nis the supremely important factor in our existence. It does not always\nattain to light. In many directions it fails; the conditions are too\nhard and it is utterly blocked. In others it only partially succeeds.\nBut in a few it bursts forth into radiant light. There are few who\nin some heavenly moment of their lives have not been conscious of its\npresence. We may not be able to give it outward expression, but we know\nthat it is there.\u201d . . .\n\n\nGod does not guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess restraining\nand correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would fly into the air,\nthere is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly for you or keep an\nill-tended engine going; if you would cross a glacier, no God nor angel\nguides your steps amidst the slippery places. He will not even mind your\ninnocent children for you if you leave them before an unguarded fire.\nCherish no delusions; for yourself and others you challenge danger and\nchance on your own strength; no talisman, no God, can help you or those\nyou care for. Nothing of such things will God do; it is an idle dream.\nBut God will be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane or the\ndark ice-cave God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed,\nit is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will die\nwith you as he has died already countless myriads of brave deaths. He\nwill come so close to you that at the last you will not know whether it\nis you or he who dies, and the present death will be swallowed up in his\nvictory.\n\n\n5. THE HERESY OF QUIETISM\n\n\nGod comes to us within and takes us for his own. He releases us from\nourselves; he incorporates us with his own undying experience and\nadventure; he receives us and gives himself. He is a stimulant; he\nmakes us live immortally and more abundantly. I have compared him to the\nsensation of a dear, strong friend who comes and stands quietly beside\none, shoulder to shoulder.\n\nThe finding of God is the beginning of service. It is not an escape from\nlife and action; it is the release of life and action from the prison of\nthe mortal self. Not to realise that, is the heresy of Quietism, of many\nmystics. Commonly such people are people of some wealth, able to command\nservices for all their everyday needs. They make religion a method of\nindolence. They turn their backs on the toil and stresses of existence\nand give themselves up to a delicious reverie in which they flirt with\nthe divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how\ningeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed\nthe true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a\nspiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose.\nThe true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags,\ncalling for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must\naccept his discipline and fight his battle. The peace of God comes not\nby thinking about it but by forgetting oneself in him.\n\n\n\n6. GOD DOES NOT PUNISH\n\n\nMan is a social animal, and there is in him a great faculty for moral\nindignation. Many of the early Gods were mainly Gods of Fear. They were\nmore often \u201cwrath\u201d than not. Such was the temperament of the Semitic\ndeity who, as the Hebrew Jehovah, proliferated, perhaps under the\ninfluence of the Alexandrian Serapeum, into the Christian Trinity and\nwho became also the Moslem God.* The natural hatred of unregenerate men\nagainst everything that is unlike themselves, against strange people\nand cheerful people, against unfamiliar usages and things they do\nnot understand, embodied itself in this conception of a malignant and\npartisan Deity, perpetually \u201cupset\u201d by the little things people did,\nand contriving murder and vengeance. Now this God would be drowning\neverybody in the world, now he would be burning Sodom and Gomorrah,\nnow he would be inciting his congenial Israelites to the most terrific\npogroms. This divine \u201cfrightfulness\u201d is of course the natural\nhuman dislike and distrust for queer practices or for too sunny a\ncarelessness, a dislike reinforced by the latent fierceness of the ape\nin us, liberating the latent fierceness of the ape in us, giving it\nan excuse and pressing permission upon it, handing the thing hated and\nfeared over to its secular arm. . . .\n\n     * It is not so generally understood as it should be among\n     English and American readers that a very large proportion of\n     early Christians before the creeds established and\n     regularised the doctrine of the Trinity, denied absolutely\n     that Jehovah was God; they regarded Christ as a rebel\n     against Jehovah and a rescuer of humanity from him, just as\n     Prometheus was a rebel against Jove. These beliefs survived\n     for a thousand years throughout Christendom: they were held\n     by a great multitude of persecuted sects, from the\n     Albigenses and Cathars to the eastern Paulicians.  The\n     catholic church found it necessary to prohibit the\n     circulation of the Old Testament among laymen very largely\n     on account of the polemics of the Cathars against the Hebrew\n     God.  But in this book, be it noted, the word Christian,\n     when it is not otherwise defined, is used to indicate only\n     the Trinitarians who accept the official creeds.\n\nIt is a human paradox that the desire for seemliness, the instinct\nfor restraints and fair disciplines, and the impulse to cherish sweet\nfamiliar things, that these things of the True God should so readily\nliberate cruelty and tyranny. It is like a woman going with a light to\ntend and protect her sleeping child, and setting the house on fire. None\nthe less, right down to to-day, the heresy of God the Revengeful, God\nthe Persecutor and Avenger, haunts religion. It is only in quite recent\nyears that the growing gentleness of everyday life has begun to make men\na little ashamed of a Deity less tolerant and gentle than themselves.\nThe recent literature of the Anglicans abounds in the evidence of this\ntrouble.\n\nBishop Colenso of Natal was prosecuted and condemned in 1863 for denying\nthe irascibility of his God and teaching \u201cthe Kaffirs of Natal\u201d the\ndangerous heresy that God is all mercy. \u201cWe cannot allow it to be said,\u201d\n the Dean of Cape Town insisted, \u201cthat God was not angry and was not\nappeased by punishment.\u201d He was angry \u201con account of Sin, which is a\ngreat evil and a great insult to His Majesty.\u201d The case of the Rev.\nCharles Voysey, which occurred in 1870, was a second assertion of the\nChurch\u2019s insistence upon the fierceness of her God. This case is not to\nbe found in the ordinary church histories nor is it even mentioned in\nthe latest edition of the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA; nevertheless it\nappears to have been a very illuminating case. It is doubtful if the\nchurch would prosecute or condemn either Bishop Colenso or Mr. Voysey\nto-day.\n\n\n\n7. GOD AND THE NURSERY-MAID\n\n\nClosely related to the Heresy of God the Avenger, is that kind of\nminiature God the Avenger, to whom the nursery-maid and the overtaxed\nparent are so apt to appeal. You stab your children with such a God and\nhe poisons all their lives. For many of us the word \u201cGod\u201d first came\ninto our lives to denote a wanton, irrational restraint, as Bogey,\nas the All-Seeing and quite ungenerous Eye. God Bogey is a great\nconvenience to the nursery-maid who wants to leave Fear to mind her\ncharges and enforce her disciplines, while she goes off upon her own\naims. But indeed, the teaching of God Bogey is an outrage upon the soul\nof a child scarcely less dreadful than an indecent assault. The reason\nrebels and is crushed under this horrible and pursuing suggestion. Many\nminds never rise again from their injury. They remain for the rest of\nlife spiritually crippled and debased, haunted by a fear, stained with a\npersuasion of relentless cruelty in the ultimate cause of all things.\n\nI, who write, was so set against God, thus rendered. He and his Hell\nwere the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I still believed\nin him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic\nmonster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting\nto condemn and to \u201cstrike me dead\u201d; his flames as ready as a grill-room\nfire. He was over me and about my feebleness and silliness and\nforgetfulness as the sky and sea would be about a child drowning in\nmid-Atlantic. When I was still only a child of thirteen, by the grace of\nthe true God in me, I flung this Lie out of my mind, and for many years,\nuntil I came to see that God himself had done this thing for me, the\nname of God meant nothing to me but the hideous scar in my heart where a\nfearful demon had been.\n\nI see about me to-day many dreadful moral and mental cripples with this\nbogey God of the nursery-maid, with his black, insane revenges, still\nliving like a horrible parasite in their hearts in the place where God\nshould be. They are afraid, afraid, afraid; they dare not be kindly to\nformal sinners, they dare not abandon a hundred foolish observances;\nthey dare not look at the causes of things. They are afraid of sunshine,\nof nakedness, of health, of adventure, of science, lest that old\nwatching spider take offence. The voice of the true God whispers in\ntheir hearts, echoes in speech and writing, but they avert themselves,\nfear-driven. For the true God has no lash of fear. And how the\nfoul-minded bigot, with his ill-shaven face, his greasy skin, his thick,\ngesticulating hands, his bellowings and threatenings, loves to reap this\nharvest of fear the ignorant cunning of the nursery girl has sown\nfor him! How he loves the importance of denunciation, and, himself\na malignant cripple, to rally the company of these crippled souls to\npersecute and destroy the happy children of God! . . .\n\nChristian priestcraft turns a dreadful face to children. There is a real\nwickedness of the priest that is different from other wickedness, and\nthat affects a reasonable mind just as cruelty and strange perversions\nof instinct affect it. Let a former Archbishop of Canterbury speak\nfor me. This that follows is the account given by Archbishop Tait in a\ndebate in the Upper House of Convocation (July 3rd, 1877) of one of the\npublications of a certain SOCIETY OF THE HOLY CROSS:\n\n\n\u201cI take this book, as its contents show, to be meant for the instruction\nof very young children. I find, in one of the pages of it, the statement\nthat between the ages of six and six and a half years would be the\nproper time for the inculcation of the teaching which is to be found in\nthe book. Now, six to six and a half is certainly a very tender age, and\nto these children I find these statements addressed in the book:\n\n\u201c\u2018It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must\nacknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.\u2019\n\n\u201cI hope and trust the person, the three clergymen, or however many there\nwere, did not exactly realise what they were writing; that they did not\nmean to say that a child was not to confess its sins to God direct; that\nit was not to confess its sins, at the age of six, to its mother, or to\nits father, but was only to have recourse to the priest. But the\nwords, to say the least of them, are rash. Then comes the very obvious\nquestion:\n\n\u201c\u2018Do you know why? It is because God, when he was on earth, gave to\nhis priests, and to them alone, the Divine Power of forgiving men their\nsins. It was to priests alone that Jesus said: \u201cReceive ye the Holy\nGhost.\u201d . . . Those who will not confess will not be cured. Sin is a\nterrible sickness, and casts souls into hell.\u2019\n\n\u201cThat is addressed to a child six years of age.\n\n\u201c\u2018I have known,\u2019 the book continues, \u2018poor children who concealed their\nsins in confession for years; they were very unhappy, were tormented\nwith remorse, and if they had died in that state they would certainly\nhave gone to the everlasting fires of hell.\u2019\u201d . . .\n\n\nNow here is something against nature, something that I have seen time\nafter time in the faces and bearing of priests and heard in their\npreaching. It is a distinct lust. Much nobility and devotion there are\namong priests, saintly lives and kindly lives, lives of real worship,\nlives no man may better; this that I write is not of all, perhaps not\nof many priests. But there has been in all ages that have known\nsacerdotalism this terrible type of the priest; priestcraft and priestly\npower release an aggressive and narrow disposition to a recklessness of\nsuffering and a hatred of liberty that surely exceeds the badness of any\nother sort of men.\n\n\n\n8. THE CHILDREN\u2019S GOD\n\n\nChildren do not naturally love God. They have no great capacity for\nan idea so subtle and mature as the idea of God. While they are still\nchildren in a home and cared for, life is too kind and easy for them to\nfeel any great need of God. All things are still something God-like. . . .\n\nThe true God, our modern minds insist upon believing, can have no\nappetite for unnatural praise and adoration. He does not clamour for\nthe attention of children. He is not like one of those senile uncles who\ndream of glory in the nursery, who love to hear it said, \u201cThe children\nadore him.\u201d If children are loved and trained to truth, justice, and\nmutual forbearance, they will be ready for the true God as their needs\nbring them within his scope. They should be left to their innocence, and\nto their trust in the innocence of the world, as long as they can be.\nThey should be told only of God as a Great Friend whom some day they\nwill need more and understand and know better. That is as much as most\nchildren need. The phrases of religion put too early into their mouths\nmay become a cant, something worse than blasphemy.\n\nYet children are sometimes very near to God. Creative passion stirs in\ntheir play. At times they display a divine simplicity. But it does not\nfollow that therefore they should be afflicted with theological\nformulae or inducted into ceremonies and rites that they may dislike\nor misinterpret. If by any accident, by the death of a friend or a\ndistressing story, the thought of death afflicts a child, then he may\nbegin to hear of God, who takes those that serve him out of their slain\nbodies into his shining immortality. Or if by some menial treachery,\nthrough some prowling priest, the whisper of Old Bogey reaches our\nchildren, then we may set their minds at ease by the assurance of his\nlimitless charity. . . .\n\nWith adolescence comes the desire for God and to know more of God, and\nthat is the most suitable time for religious talk and teaching.\n\n\n\n9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL\n\n\nIn the last two or three hundred years there has been a very\nconsiderable disentanglement of the idea of God from the complex of\nsexual thought and feeling. But in the early days of religion the two\nthings were inseparably bound together; the fury of the Hebrew prophets,\nfor example, is continually proclaiming the extraordinary \u201cwrath\u201d of\ntheir God at this or that little dirtiness or irregularity or breach of\nthe sexual tabus. The ceremony of circumcision is clearly indicative\nof the original nature of the Semitic deity who developed into the\nTrinitarian God. So far as Christianity dropped this rite, so far\nChristianity disavowed the old associations. But to this day the\nrepresentative Christian churches still make marriage into a mystical\nsacrament, and, with some exceptions, the Roman communion exacts\nthe sacrifice of celibacy from its priesthood, regardless of the\nmischievousness and maliciousness that so often ensue. Nearly every\nChristian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as it can\ncontrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat illegitimate\nchildren as unfortunate children, but as children with a mystical and\nan incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may resent this\nstatement because it does not tally with their own attitudes, but let\nthem consult their orthodox authorities.\n\nOne must distinguish clearly here between what is held to be sacred or\nsinful in itself and what is held to be one\u2019s duty or a nation\u2019s duty\nbecause it is in itself the wisest, cleanest, clearest, best thing to\ndo. By the latter tests and reasonable arguments most or all of our\ninstitutions regulating the relations of the sexes may be justifiable.\nBut my case is not whether they can be justified by these tests but\nthat it is not by these tests that they are judged even to-day, by the\nprofessors of the chief religions of the world. It is the temper and not\nthe conclusions of the religious bodies that I would criticise. These\nsexual questions are guarded by a holy irascibility, and the most\nviolent efforts are made--with a sense of complete righteousness--to\nprohibit their discussion. That fury about sexual things is only to be\nexplained on the hypothesis that the Christian God remains a sex God in\nthe minds of great numbers of his exponents. His disentanglement from\nthat plexus is incomplete. Sexual things are still to the orthodox\nChristian, sacred things.\n\nNow the God whom those of the new faith are finding is only mediately\nconcerned with the relations of men and women. He is no more sexual\nessentially than he is essentially dietetic or hygienic. The God of\nLeviticus was all these things. He is represented as prescribing the\nmost petty and intimate of observances--many of which are now habitually\ndisregarded by the Christians who profess him. . . . It is part of the\nevolution of the idea of God that we have now so largely disentangled\nour conception of him from the dietary and regimen and meticulous sexual\nrules that were once inseparably bound up with his majesty. Christ\nhimself was one of the chief forces in this disentanglement, there is\nthe clearest evidence in several instances of his disregard of the\nrule and his insistence that his disciples should seek for the spirit\nunderlying and often masked by the rule. His Church, being made of baser\nmatter, has followed him as reluctantly as possible and no further\nthan it was obliged. But it has followed him far enough to admit his\nprinciple that in all these matters there is no need for superstitious\nfear, that the interpretation of the divine purpose is left to the\nunembarrassed intelligence of men. The church has followed him far\nenough to make the harsh threatenings of priests and ecclesiastics\nagainst what they are pleased to consider impurity or sexual impiety,\na profound inconsistency. One seems to hear their distant protests when\none reads of Christ and the Magdalen, or of Christ eating with publicans\nand sinners. The clergy of our own days play the part of the\nNew Testament Pharisees with the utmost exactness and complete\nunconsciousness. One cannot imagine a modern ecclesiastic conversing\nwith a Magdalen in terms of ordinary civility, unless she was in a very\nhigh social position indeed, or blending with disreputable characters\nwithout a dramatic sense of condescension and much explanatory by-play.\nThose who profess modern religion do but follow in these matters a\ncourse entirely compatible with what has survived of the authentic\nteachings of Christ, when they declare that God is not sexual, and that\nreligious passion and insult and persecution upon the score of sexual\nthings are a barbaric inheritance.\n\nBut lest anyone should fling off here with some hasty assumption that\nthose who profess the religion of the true God are sexually anarchistic,\nlet stress be laid at once upon the opening sentence of the preceding\nparagraph, and let me a little anticipate a section which follows.\nWe would free men and women from exact and superstitious rules and\nobservances, not to make them less the instruments of God but more\nwholly his. The claim of modern religion is that one should give oneself\nunreservedly to God, that there is no other salvation. The believer owes\nall his being and every moment of his life to God, to keep mind and body\nas clean, fine, wholesome, active and completely at God\u2019s service as\nhe can. There is no scope for indulgence or dissipation in such\na consecrated life. It is a matter between the individual and his\nconscience or his doctor or his social understanding what exactly he may\ndo or not do, what he may eat or drink or so forth, upon any occasion.\nNothing can exonerate him from doing his utmost to determine and perform\nthe right act. Nothing can excuse his failure to do so. But what is here\nbeing insisted upon is that none of these things has immediately to do\nwith God or religious emotion, except only the general will to do right\nin God\u2019s service. The detailed interpretation of that \u201cright\u201d is for the\ndispassionate consideration of the human intelligence.\n\nAll this is set down here as distinctly as possible. Because of\nthe emotional reservoirs of sex, sexual dogmas are among the most\nobstinately recurrent of all heresies, and sexual excitement is always\ntending to leak back into religious feeling. Amongst the sex-tormented\npriesthood of the Roman communion in particular, ignorant of the\nextreme practices of the Essenes and of the Orphic cult and suchlike\npredecessors of Christianity, there seems to be an extraordinary belief\nthat chastity was not invented until Christianity came, and that the\nreligious life is largely the propitiation of God by feats of sexual\nabstinence. But a superstitious abstinence that scars and embitters\nthe mind, distorts the imagination, makes the body gross and keeps it\nunclean, is just as offensive to God as any positive depravity.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE THIRD\n\nTHE LIKENESS OF GOD\n\n\n1. GOD IS COURAGE\n\nNow having set down what those who profess the new religion regard as\nthe chief misconceptions of God, having put these systems of ideas aside\nfrom our explanations, the path is cleared for the statement of what God\nis. Since language springs entirely from material, spatial things, there\nis always an element of metaphor in theological statement. So that I\nhave not called this chapter the Nature of God, but the Likeness of God.\n\nAnd firstly, GOD IS COURAGE.\n\n\n\n2. GOD IS A PERSON\n\n\nAnd next GOD IS A PERSON.\n\nUpon this point those who are beginning to profess modern religion are\nvery insistent. It is, they declare, the central article, the axis, of\ntheir religion. God is a person who can be known as one knows a friend,\nwho can be served and who receives service, who partakes of our nature;\nwho is, like us, a being in conflict with the unknown and the limitless\nand the forces of death; who values much that we value and is against\nmuch that we are pitted against. He is our king to whom we must be\nloyal; he is our captain, and to know him is to have a direction in our\nlives. He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by us. He\nhopes and attempts. . . . God is no abstraction nor trick of words, no\nInfinite. He is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace.\n\nNow this is where those who have left the old creeds and come asking\nabout the new realisations find their chief difficulty. They say, Show\nus this person; let us hear him. (If they listen to the silences within,\npresently they will hear him.) But when one argues, one finds oneself\nsuddenly in the net of those ancient controversies between species\nand individual, between the one and the many, which arise out of the\nnecessarily imperfect methods of the human mind. Upon these matters\nthere has been much pregnant writing during the last half century. Such\nideas as this writer has to offer are to be found in a previous little\nbook of his, \u201cFirst and Last Things,\u201d in which, writing as one without\nauthority or specialisation in logic and philosophy, as an ordinary man\nvividly interested, for others in a like case, he was at some pains to\nelucidate the imperfections of this instrument of ours, this mind, by\nwhich we must seek and explain and reach up to God. Suffice it here to\nsay that theological discussion may very easily become like the vision\nof a man with cataract, a mere projection of inherent imperfections. If\nwe do not use our phraseology with a certain courage, and take that\nof those who are trying to convey their ideas to us with a certain\npoliteness and charity, there is no end possible to any discussion in\nso subtle and intimate a matter as theology but assertions, denials, and\nwranglings. And about this word \u201cperson\u201d it is necessary to be as clear\nand explicit as possible, though perfect clearness, a definition of\nmathematical sharpness, is by the very nature of the case impossible.\n\nNow when we speak of a person or an individual we think typically of a\nman, and we forget that he was once an embryo and will presently decay;\nwe forget that he came of two people and may beget many, that he has\nforgotten much and will forget more, that he can be confused, divided\nagainst himself, delirious, drunken, drugged, or asleep. On the\ncontrary we are, in our hasty way of thinking of him, apt to suppose him\ncontinuous, definite, acting consistently and never forgetting. But only\nabstract and theoretical persons are like that. We couple with him the\nidea of a body. Indeed, in the common use of the word \u201cperson\u201d there is\nmore thought of body than of mind. We speak of a lover possessing the\nperson of his mistress. We speak of offences against the person as\nopposed to insults, libels, or offences against property. And the\ngods of primitive men and the earlier civilisations were quite of that\nquality of person. They were thought of as living in very splendid\nbodies and as acting consistently. If they were invisible in the\nordinary world it was because they were aloof or because their \u201cpersons\u201d\n were too splendid for weak human eyes. Moses was permitted a mitigated\nview of the person of the Hebrew God on Mount Horeb; and Semele, who\ninsisted upon seeing Zeus in the glories that were sacred to Juno,\nwas utterly consumed. The early Islamic conception of God, like the\nconception of most honest, simple Christians to-day, was clearly, in\nspite of the theologians, of a very exalted anthropomorphic personality\naway somewhere in Heaven. The personal appearance of the Christian God\nis described in The Revelation, and however much that description may be\nexplained away by commentators as symbolical, it is certainly taken by\nmost straightforward believers as a statement of concrete reality.\nNow if we are going to insist upon this primary meaning of person and\nindividual, then certainly God as he is now conceived is not a person\nand not an individual. The true God will never promenade an Eden or a\nHeaven, nor sit upon a throne.\n\nBut current Christianity, modern developments of Islam, much Indian\ntheological thought--that, for instance, which has found such delicate\nand attractive expression in the devotional poetry of Rabindranath\nTagore--has long since abandoned this anthropomorphic insistence upon\na body. From the earliest ages man\u2019s mind has found little or no\ndifficulty in the idea of something essential to the personality, a soul\nor a spirit or both, existing apart from the body and continuing after\nthe destruction of the body, and being still a person and an individual.\nFrom this it is a small step to the thought of a person existing\nindependently of any existing or pre-existing body. That is the idea\nof theological Christianity, as distinguished from the Christianity\nof simple faith. The Triune Persons--omnipresent, omniscient, and\nomnipotent--exist for all time, superior to and independent of matter.\nThey are supremely disembodied. One became incarnate--as a wind eddy\nmight take up a whirl of dust. . . . Those who profess modern\nreligion conceive that this is an excessive abstraction of the idea\nof spirituality, a disembodiment of the idea of personality beyond the\nlimits of the conceivable; nevertheless they accept the conception that\na person, a spiritual individual, may be without an ordinary mortal\nbody. . . . They declare that God is without any specific body, that he\nis immaterial, that he can affect the material universe--and that means\nthat he can only reach our sight, our hearing, our touch--through the\nbodies of those who believe in him and serve him.\n\nHis nature is of the nature of thought and will. Not only has he, in his\nessence, nothing to do with matter, but nothing to do with space. He is\nnot of matter nor of space. He comes into them. Since the period when\nall the great theologies that prevail to-day were developed, there have\nbeen great changes in the ideas of men towards the dimensions of time\nand space. We owe to Kant the release from the rule of these ideas as\nessential ideas. Our modern psychology is alive to the possibility of\nBeing that has no extension in space at all, even as our speculative\ngeometry can entertain the possibility of dimensions--fourth, fifth, Nth\ndimensions--outside the three-dimensional universe of our experience.\nAnd God being non-spatial is not thereby banished to an infinite\nremoteness, but brought nearer to us; he is everywhere immediately at\nhand, even as a fourth dimension would be everywhere immediately at\nhand. He is a Being of the minds and in the minds of men. He is in\nimmediate contact with all who apprehend him. . . .\n\nBut modern religion declares that though he does not exist in matter or\nspace, he exists in time just as a current of thought may do; that\nhe changes and becomes more even as a man\u2019s purpose gathers itself\ntogether; that somewhere in the dawning of mankind he had a beginning,\nan awakening, and that as mankind grows he grows. With our eyes he looks\nout upon the universe he invades; with our hands, he lays hands upon\nit. All our truth, all our intentions and achievements, he gathers to\nhimself. He is the undying human memory, the increasing human will.\n\nBut this, you may object, is no more than saying that God is the\ncollective mind and purpose of the human race. You may declare that this\nis no God, but merely the sum of mankind. But those who believe in the\nnew ideas very steadfastly deny that. God is, they say, not an aggregate\nbut a synthesis. He is not merely the best of all of us, but a Being in\nhimself, composed of that but more than that, as a temple is more than a\ngathering of stones, or a regiment is more than an accumulation of men.\nThey point out that a man is made up of a great multitude of cells, each\nequivalent to a unicellular organism. Not one of those cells is he, nor\nis he simply just the addition of all of them. He is more than all of\nthem. You can take away these and these and these, and he still remains.\nAnd he can detach part of himself and treat it as if it were not\nhimself, just as a man may beat his breast or, as Cranmer the martyr\ndid, thrust his hand into the flames. A man is none the less himself\nbecause his hair is cut or his appendix removed or his leg amputated.\n\nAnd take another image. . . . Who bears affection for this or that\nspadeful of mud in my garden? Who cares a throb of the heart for all the\ntons of chalk in Kent or all the lumps of limestone in Yorkshire? But\nmen love England, which is made up of such things.\n\nAnd so we think of God as a synthetic reality, though he has neither\nbody nor material parts. And so too we may obey him and listen to\nhim, though we think but lightly of the men whose hands or voices he\nsometimes uses. And we may think of him as having moods and aspects--as\na man has--and a consistency we call his character.\n\nThese are theorisings about God. These are statements to convey this\nmodern idea of God. This, we say, is the nature of the person whose will\nand thoughts we serve. No one, however, who understands the religious\nlife seeks conversion by argument. First one must feel the need of God,\nthen one must form or receive an acceptable idea of God. That much is no\nmore than turning one\u2019s face to the east to see the coming of the sun.\nOne may still doubt if that direction is the east or whether the sun\nwill rise. The real coming of God is not that. It is a change, an\nirradiation of the mind. Everything is there as it was before, only now\nit is aflame. Suddenly the light fills one\u2019s eyes, and one knows that\nGod has risen and that doubt has fled for ever.\n\n\n3. GOD IS YOUTH\n\n\nThe third thing to be told of the true God is that GOD IS YOUTH.\n\nGod, we hold, began and is always beginning. He looks forever into the\nfuture.\n\nMost of the old religions derive from a patriarchal phase. God is in\nthose systems the Ancient of Days. I know of no Christian attempt to\nrepresent or symbolise God the Father which is not a bearded, aged man.\nWhite hair, beard, bearing, wrinkles, a hundred such symptoms of senile\ndecay are there. These marks of senility do not astonish our modern\nminds in the picture of God, only because tradition and usage have\nblinded our eyes to the absurdity of a time-worn immortal. Jove too and\nWotan are figures far past the prime of their vigour. These are gods\nafter the ancient habit of the human mind, that turned perpetually\nbackward for causes and reasons and saw all things to come as no more\nthan the working out of Fate,--\n\n     \u201cOf Man\u2019s first disobedience and the fruit\n     Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste\n     Brought death into the world and all our woe.\u201d\n\nBut the God of this new age, we repeat, looks not to our past but our\nfuture, and if a figure may represent him it must be the figure of\na beautiful youth, already brave and wise, but hardly come to his\nstrength. He should stand lightly on his feet in the morning time, eager\nto go forward, as though he had but newly arisen to a day that was\nstill but a promise; he should bear a sword, that clean, discriminating\nweapon, his eyes should be as bright as swords; his lips should fall\napart with eagerness for the great adventure before him, and he should\nbe in very fresh and golden harness, reflecting the rising sun. Death\nshould still hang like mists and cloud banks and shadows in the valleys\nof the wide landscape about him. There should be dew upon the threads of\ngossamer and little leaves and blades of the turf at his feet. . . .\n\n\n\n4. WHEN WE SAY GOD IS LOVE\n\n\nOne of the sayings about God that have grown at the same time most trite\nand most sacred, is that God is Love. This is a saying that deserves\ncareful examination. Love is a word very loosely used; there are people\nwho will say they love new potatoes; there are a multitude of loves\nof different colours and values. There is the love of a mother for her\nchild, there is the love of brothers, there is the love of youth and\nmaiden, and the love of husband and wife, there is illicit love and the\nlove one bears one\u2019s home or one\u2019s country, there are dog-lovers and the\nloves of the Olympians, and love which is a passion of jealousy. Love\nis frequently a mere blend of appetite and preference; it may be\nalmost pure greed; it may have scarcely any devotion nor be a whit\nself-forgetful nor generous. It is possible so to phrase things that the\nfurtive craving of a man for another man\u2019s wife may be made out to be\na light from God. Yet about all the better sorts of love, the sorts of\nlove that people will call \u201ctrue love,\u201d there is something of that same\nexaltation out of the narrow self that is the essential quality of the\nknowledge of God.\n\nOnly while the exaltation of the love passion comes and goes, the\nexaltation of religious passion comes to remain. Lovers are the windows\nby which we may look out of the prison of self, but God is the open door\nby which we freely go. And God never dies, nor disappoints, nor betrays.\n\nThe love of a woman and a man has usually, and particularly in its\nearlier phases of excitement, far too much desire, far too much\npossessiveness and exclusiveness, far too much distrust or forced trust,\nand far too great a kindred with jealousy to be like the love of God.\nThe former is a dramatic relationship that drifts to a climax, and then\nagain seeks presently a climax, and that may be satiated or fatigued.\nBut the latter is far more like the love of comrades, or like the\nlove of a man and a woman who have loved and been through much trouble\ntogether, who have hurt one another and forgiven, and come to a complete\nand generous fellowship. There is a strange and beautiful love that men\ntell of that will spring up on battlefields between sorely wounded men,\nand often they are men who have fought together, so that they will do\nalmost incredibly brave and tender things for one another, though but\nrecently they have been trying to kill each other. There is often a pure\nexaltation of feeling between those who stand side by side manfully in\nany great stress. These are the forms of love that perhaps come nearest\nto what we mean when we speak of the love of God.\n\nThat is man\u2019s love of God, but there is also something else; there is\nthe love God bears for man in the individual believer. Now this is not\nan indulgent, instinctive, and sacrificing love like the love of a woman\nfor her baby. It is the love of the captain for his men; God must love\nhis followers as a great captain loves his men, who are so foolish, so\nhelpless in themselves, so confiding, and yet whose faith alone makes\nhim possible. It is an austere love. The spirit of God will not hesitate\nto send us to torment and bodily death. . . .\n\nAnd God waits for us, for all of us who have the quality to reach\nhim. He has need of us as we of him. He desires us and desires to make\nhimself known to us. When at last the individual breaks through the\nlimiting darknesses to him, the irradiation of that moment, the smile\nand soul clasp, is in God as well as in man. He has won us from his\nenemy. We come staggering through into the golden light of his kingdom,\nto fight for his kingdom henceforth, until at last we are altogether\ntaken up into his being.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FOURTH\n\nTHE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS\n\n\n\n1. THE SCIENTIFIC ATHEIST\n\n\nIt is a curious thing that while most organised religions seem to drape\nabout and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the\nhonest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is\nconstantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be\ninteresting here to call a witness or so to the extreme instability of\nabsolute negation.\n\nHere, for example, is a deliverance from Professor Metchnikoff, who was\na very typical antagonist of all religion. He died only the other day.\nHe was a very great physiologist indeed; he was a man almost of the rank\nand quality of Pasteur or Charles Darwin. A decade or more ago he wrote\na book called \u201cThe Nature of Man,\u201d in which he set out very plainly a\nnumber of illuminating facts about life. They are facts so illuminating\nthat presently, in our discussion of sin, they will be referred to\nagain. But it is not Professor Metchnikoff\u2019s intention to provide\nmaterial for a religious discussion. He sets out his facts in order to\noverthrow theology as he conceives it. The remarkable thing about his\nbook, the thing upon which I would now lay stress, is that he betrays no\ninkling of the fact that he has no longer the right to conceive theology\nas he conceives it. The development of his science has destroyed that\nright.\n\nHe does not realise how profoundly modern biology has affected our ideas\nof individuality and species, and how the import of theology is modified\nthrough these changes. When he comes from his own world of modern\nbiology to religion and philosophy he goes back in time. He attacks\nreligion as he understood it when first he fell out with it fifty years\nor more ago.\n\nLet us state as compactly as possible the nature of these changes that\nbiological science has wrought almost imperceptibly in the general\nscheme and method of our thinking.\n\nThe influence of biology upon thought in general consists essentially\nin diminishing the importance of the individual and developing the\nrealisation of the species, as if it were a kind of super-individual, a\nmodifying and immortal super-individual, maintaining itself against the\nouter universe by the birth and death of its constituent individuals.\nNatural History, which began by putting individuals into species as if\nthe latter were mere classificatory divisions, has come to see that\nthe species has its adventures, its history and drama, far exceeding\nin interest and importance the individual adventure. \u201cThe Origin of\nSpecies\u201d was for countless minds the discovery of a new romance in life.\n\nThe contrast of the individual life and this specific life may be\nstated plainly and compactly as follows. A little while ago we current\nindividuals, we who are alive now, were each of us distributed between\ntwo parents, then between four grandparents, and so on backward, we are\ntemporarily assembled, as it were, out of an ancestral diffusion; we\nstand our trial, and presently our individuality is dispersed and\nmixed again with other individualities in an uncertain multitude of\ndescendants. But the species is not like this; it goes on steadily from\nnewness to newness, remaining still a unity. The drama of the individual\nlife is a mere episode, beneficial or abandoned, in this continuing\nadventure of the species. And Metchnikoff finds most of the trouble of\nlife and the distresses of life in the fact that the species is still\nvery painfully adjusting itself to the fluctuating conditions under\nwhich it lives. The conflict of life is a continual pursuit of\nadjustment, and the \u201cills of life,\u201d of the individual life that is,\nare due to its \u201cdisharmonies.\u201d Man, acutely aware of himself as an\nindividual adventure and unawakened to himself as a species, finds life\njangling and distressful, finds death frustration. He fails and falls as\na person in what may be the success and triumph of his kind. He does\nnot apprehend the struggle or the nature of victory, but only his own\ngravitation to death and personal extinction.\n\nNow Professor Metchnikoff is anti-religious, and he is anti-religious\nbecause to him as to so many Europeans religion is confused with\npriest-craft and dogmas, is associated with disagreeable early\nimpressions of irrational repression and misguidance. How completely he\nmisconceives the quality of religion, how completely he sees it as an\nindividual\u2019s affair, his own words may witness:\n\n\n\u201cReligion is still occupied with the problem of death. The solutions\nwhich as yet it has offered cannot be regarded as satisfactory. A future\nlife has no single argument to support it, and the non-existence of life\nafter death is in consonance with the whole range of human knowledge. On\nthe other hand, resignation as preached by Buddha will fail to satisfy\nhumanity, which has a longing for life, and is overcome by the thought\nof the inevitability of death.\u201d\n\n\nNow here it is clear that by death he means the individual death, and by\na future life the prolongation of individuality. But Buddhism does\nnot in truth appear ever to have been concerned with that, and modern\nreligious developments are certainly not under that preoccupation with\nthe narrower self. Buddhism indeed so far from \u201cpreaching resignation\u201d\n to death, seeks as its greater good a death so complete as to be\nabsolute release from the individual\u2019s burthen of KARMA. Buddhism seeks\nan ESCAPE FROM INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY. The deeper one pursues religious\nthought the more nearly it approximates to a search for escape from the\nself-centred life and over-individuation, and the more it diverges from\nProfessor Metchnikoff\u2019s assertion of its aims. Salvation is indeed to\nlose one\u2019s self. But Professor Metchnikoff having roundly denied\nthat this is so, is then left free to take the very essentials of the\nreligious life as they are here conceived and present them as if\nthey were the antithesis of the religious life. His book, when it is\nanalysed, resolves itself into just that research for an escape from the\npainful accidents and chagrins of individuation, which is the ultimate\nof religion.\n\nAt times, indeed, he seems almost wilfully blind to the true solution\nround and about which his writing goes. He suggests as his most hopeful\nsatisfaction for the cravings of the human heart, such a scientific\nprolongation of life that the instinct for self-preservation will be at\nlast extinct. If that is not the very \u201cresignation\u201d he imputes to the\nBuddhist I do not know what it is. He believes that an individual which\nhas lived fully and completely may at last welcome death with the same\ninstinctive readiness as, in the days of its strength, it shows for the\nembraces of its mate. We are to be glutted by living to six score and\nten. We are to rise from the table at last as gladly as we sat down. We\nshall go to death as unresistingly as tired children go to bed. Men\nare to have a life far beyond the range of what is now considered their\nprime, and their last period (won by scientific self-control) will be a\nperiod of ripe wisdom (from seventy to eighty to a hundred and twenty or\nthereabouts) and public service!\n\n(But why, one asks, public service? Why not book-collecting or the\nsimple pleasure of reminiscence so dear to aged egotists? Metchnikoff\nnever faces that question. And again, what of the man who is challenged\nto die for right at the age of thirty? What does the prolongation\nof life do for him? And where are the consolations for accidental\nmisfortune, for the tormenting disease or the lost limb?)\n\nBut in his peroration Professor Metchnikoff lapses into pure\nreligiosity. The prolongation of life gives place to sheer\nself-sacrifice as the fundamental \u201cremedy.\u201d And indeed what other remedy\nhas ever been conceived for the general evil of life?\n\n\n\u201cOn the other hand,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe knowledge that the goal of human\nlife can be attained only by the development of a high degree of\nsolidarity amongst men will restrain actual egotism. The mere fact that\nthe enjoyment of life according to the precepts of Solomon (Ecelesiastes\nix. 7-10)* is opposed to the goal of human life, will lessen luxury and\nthe evil that comes from luxury. Conviction that science alone is able\nto redress the disharmonies of the human constitution will lead directly\nto the improvement of education and to the solidarity of mankind.\n\n     * Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine\n     with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.  Let\n     thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no\n     ointment.  Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all\n     the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee\n     under the sun, all the days of thy vanity for that is thy\n     portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest\n     under the sun.  Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it\n     with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor\n     knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.\n\n\u201cIn progress towards the goal, nature will have to be consulted\ncontinuously. Already, in the case of the ephemerids, nature has\nproduced a complete cycle of normal life ending in natural death. In\nthe problem of his own fate, man must not be content with the gifts of\nnature; he must direct them by his own efforts. Just as he has been able\nto modify the nature of animals and plants, man must attempt to modify\nhis own constitution, so as to readjust its disharmonies. . . .\n\n\u201cTo modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame\nthe ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of\nscience.\n\n\u201cIf there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion\nof the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And\nif it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith\nalone, the faith must be in the power of science.\u201d\n\n\nNow this, after all the flat repudiations that have preceded it of\n\u201creligion\u201d and \u201cphilosophy\u201d as remedies for human ills, is nothing less\nthan the fundamental proposition of the religious life translated into\nterms of materialistic science, the proposition that damnation is really\nover-individuation and that salvation is escape from self into the\nlarger being of life. . . .\n\nWhat can this \u201creligion of the future\u201d be but that devotion to the\nracial adventure under the captaincy of God which we have already found,\nlike gold in the bottom of the vessel, when we have washed away the\nconfusions and impurities of dogmatic religion? By an inquiry setting\nout from a purely religious starting-point we have already reached\nconclusions identical with this ultimate refuge of an extreme\nmaterialist.\n\nThis altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our God--an\naltar rather indistinctly inscribed.\n\n\n\n2. SACRIFICE IMPLIES GOD\n\n\nAlmost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness\nand generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were the\nstatement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a religious\nwriter would say--except that God is not named. Religious metaphors\nabound. It is as if they accepted the living body of religion but denied\nthe bones that held it together--as they might deny the bones of a\nfriend. It is true, they would admit, the body moves in a way that\nimplies bones in its every movement, but--WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE\nBONES.\n\nThe disputes in theory--I do not say the difference in reality--between\nthe modern believer and the atheist or agnostic--becomes at times almost\nas impalpable as that subtle discussion dear to students of physics,\nwhether the scientific \u201cether\u201d is real or a formula. Every material\nphenomenon is consonant with and helps to define this ether, which\npermeates and sustains and is all things, which nevertheless is\nperceptible to no sense, which is reached only by an intellectual\nprocess. Most minds are disposed to treat this ether as a reality. But\nthe acutely critical mind insists that what is only so attainable by\ninference is not real; it is no more than \u201ca formula that satisfies all\nphenomena.\u201d\n\nBut if it comes to that, am I anything more than the formula that\nsatisfies all my forms of consciousness?\n\nIntellectually there is hardly anything more than a certain will to\nbelieve, to divide the religious man who knows God to be utterly real,\nfrom the man who says that God is merely a formula to satisfy moral and\nspiritual phenomena. The former has encountered him, the other has as\nyet felt only unassigned impulses. One says God\u2019s will is so; the other\nthat Right is so. One says God moves me to do this or that; the other\nthe Good Will in me which I share with you and all well-disposed men,\nmoves me to do this or that. But the former makes an exterior reference\nand escapes a risk of self-righteousness.\n\nI have recently been reading a book by Mr. Joseph McCabe called \u201cThe\nTyranny of Shams,\u201d in which he displays very typically this curious\ntendency to a sort of religion with God \u201cblacked out.\u201d His is an\nextremely interesting case. He is a writer who was formerly a Roman\nCatholic priest, and in his reaction from Catholicism he displays a\nresolution even sterner than Professor Metchnikoff\u2019s, to deny that\nanything religious or divine can exist, that there can be any aim\nin life except happiness, or any guide but \u201cscience.\u201d But--and here\nimmediately he turns east again--he is careful not to say \u201cindividual\nhappiness.\u201d And he says \u201cPleasure is, as Epicureans insisted, only\na part of a large ideal of happiness.\u201d So he lets the happiness of\ndevotion and sacrifice creep in. So he opens indefinite possibilities of\ngetting away from any merely materialistic rule of life. And he writes:\n\n\n\u201cIn every civilised nation the mass of the people are inert and\nindifferent. Some even make a pretence of justifying their inertness.\nWhy, they ask, should we stir at all? Is there such a thing as a duty to\nimprove the earth? What is the meaning or purpose of life? Or has it a\npurpose?\n\n\u201cOne generally finds that this kind of reasoning is merely a piece of\ncontroversial athletics or a thin excuse for idleness. People tell you\nthat the conflict of science and religion--it would be better to say,\nthe conflict of modern culture and ancient traditions--has robbed life\nof its plain significance. The men who, like Tolstoi, seriously urge\nthis point fail to appreciate the modern outlook on life. Certainly\nmodern culture--science, history, philosophy, and art--finds no purpose\nin life: that is to say, no purpose eternally fixed and to be discovered\nby man. A great chemist said a few years ago that he could imagine \u2018a\nseries of lucky accidents\u2019--the chance blowing by the wind of certain\nchemicals into pools on the primitive earth--accounting for the first\nappearance of life; and one might not unjustly sum up the influences\nwhich have lifted those early germs to the level of conscious beings as\na similar series of lucky accidents.\n\n\u201cBut it is sheer affectation to say that this demoralises us. If there\nis no purpose impressed on the universe, or prefixed to the development\nof humanity, it follows only that humanity may choose its own purpose\nand set up its own goal; and the most elementary sense of order will\nteach us that this choice must be social, not merely individual. In\nwhatever measure ill-controlled individuals may yield to personal\nimpulses or attractions, the aim of the race must be a collective aim. I\ndo not mean an austere demand of self-sacrifice from the individual,\nbut an adjustment--as genial and generous as possible--of individual\nvariations for common good. Otherwise life becomes discordant and\nfutile, and the pain and waste react on each individual. So we raise\nagain, in the twentieth century, the old question of \u2018the greatest\ngood,\u2019 which men discussed in the Stoa Poikile and the suburban groves\nof Athens, in the cool atria of patrician mansions on the Palatine and\nthe Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and the schools which Omar\nKhayyam frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of the Middle Ages and\nthe opulent chambers of Cosimo dei Medici.\u201d\n\n\nAnd again:\n\n\n\u201cThe old dream of a co-operative effort to improve life, to bring\nhappiness to as many minds of mortals as we can reach, shines above\nall the mists of the day. Through the ruins of creeds and philosophies,\nwhich have for ages disdained it, we are retracing our steps toward that\nheight--just as the Athenians did two thousand years ago. It rests on\nno metaphysic, no sacred legend, no disputable tradition--nothing that\nscepticism can corrode or advancing knowledge undermine. Its foundations\nare the fundamental and unchanging impulses of our nature.\u201d\n\n\nAnd again:\n\n\n\u201cThe revolt which burns in so much of the abler literature of our time\nis an unselfish revolt, or non-selfish revolt: it is an outcome of\nthat larger spirit which conceives the self to be a part of the general\nsocial organism, and it is therefore neither egoistic nor altruistic.\nIt finds a sanction in the new intelligence, and an inspiration in the\nfiner sentiments of our generation, but the glow which chiefly illumines\nit is the glow of the great vision of a happier earth. It speaks of\nthe claims of truth and justice, and assails untruth and injustice,\nfor these are elemental principles of social life; but it appeals\nmore confidently to the warmer sympathy which is linking the scattered\nchildren of the race, and it urges all to co-operate in the restriction\nof suffering and the creation of happiness. The advance guard of the\nrace, the men and women in whom mental alertness is associated with fine\nfeeling, cry that they have reached Pisgah\u2019s slope and in increasing\nnumbers men and women are pressing on to see if it be really the\nPromised Land.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cPisgah--the Promised Land!\u201d Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as if he\nwere half-way to \u201cOh! Beulah Land!\u201d and the tambourine.\n\nThat \u201clarger spirit,\u201d we maintain, is God; those \u201cimpulses\u201d are the\npower of God, and Mr. McCabe serves a Master he denies. He has but to\nrealise fully that God is not necessarily the Triune God of the Catholic\nChurch, and banish his intense suspicion that he may yet be lured\nback to that altar he abandoned, he has but to look up from that\npreoccupation, and immediately he will begin to realise the presence of\nDivinity.\n\n\n\n3. GOD IS AN EXTERNAL REALITY\n\n\nIt may be argued that if atheists and agnostics when they set themselves\nto express the good will that is in them, do shape out God, that\nif their conception of right living falls in so completely with the\nconception of God\u2019s service as to be broadly identical, then indeed God,\nlike the ether of scientific speculation, is no more than a theory, no\nmore than an imaginative externalisation of man\u2019s inherent good will.\nWhy trouble about God then? Is not the declaration of a good disposition\na sufficient evidence of salvation? What is the difference between such\nbenevolent unbelievers as Professor Metchnikoff or Mr. McCabe and those\nwho have found God?\n\nThe difference is this, that the benevolent atheist stands alone upon\nhis own good will, without a reference, without a standard, trusting\nto his own impulse to goodness, relying upon his own moral strength. A\ncertain immodesty, a certain self-righteousness, hangs like a precipice\nabove him; incalculable temptations open like gulfs beneath his feet. He\nhas not really given himself or got away from himself. He has no one to\nwhom he can give himself. He is still a masterless man. His exaltation\nis self-centred, is priggishness, his fall is unrestrained by any\nexterior obligation. His devotion is only the good will in himself, a\ndisposition; it is a mood that may change. At any moment it may change.\nHe may have pledged himself to his own pride and honour, but who will\nhold him to his bargain? He has no source of strength beyond his own\namiable sentiments, his conscience speaks with an unsupported voice, and\nno one watches while he sleeps. He cannot pray; he can but ejaculate. He\nhas no real and living link with other men of good will.\n\nAnd those whose acquiescence in the idea of God is merely intellectual\nare in no better case than those who deny God altogether. They may have\nall the forms of truth and not divinity. The religion of the atheist\nwith a God-shaped blank at its heart and the persuasion of the\nunconverted theologian, are both like lamps unlit. The lit lamp has no\ndifference in form from the lamp unlit. But the lit lamp is alive and\nthe lamp unlit is asleep or dead.\n\nThe difference between the unconverted and the unbeliever and the\nservant of the true God is this; it is that the latter has experienced\na complete turning away from self. This only difference is all the\ndifference in the world. It is the realisation that this goodness that\nI thought was within me and of myself and upon which I rather prided\nmyself, is without me and above myself, and infinitely greater and\nstronger than I. It is the immortal and I am mortal. It is invincible\nand steadfast in its purpose, and I am weak and insecure. It is no\nlonger that I, out of my inherent and remarkable goodness, out of\nthe excellence of my quality and the benevolence of my heart, give a\nconsiderable amount of time and attention to the happiness and welfare\nof others--because I choose to do so. On the contrary I have come under\na divine imperative, I am obeying an irresistible call, I am a humble\nand willing servant of the righteousness of God. That altruism which\nProfessor Metchnikoff and Mr. McCabe would have us regard as the goal\nand refuge of a broad and free intelligence, is really the first simple\ncommandment in the religious life.\n\n\n\n4. ANOTHER RELIGIOUS MATERIALIST\n\n\nNow here is a passage from a book, \u201cEvolution and the War,\u201d by Professor\nMetchnikoff\u2019s translator, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, which comes even closer\nto our conception of God as an immortal being arising out of man, and\nexternal to the individual man. He has been discussing that well-known\npassage of Kant\u2019s: \u201cTwo things fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder and\nawe the more often and deeper I dwell on them--the starry vault above\nme, and the moral law within me.\u201d\n\nFrom that discussion, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell presently comes to this most\ndefinite and interesting statement:\n\n\n\u201cWriting as a hard-shell Darwinian evolutionist, a lover of the scalpel\nand microscope, and of patient, empirical observation, as one who\ndislikes all forms of supernaturalism, and who does not shrink from the\nimplications even of the phrase that thought is a secretion of the brain\nas bile is a secretion of the liver, I assert as a biological fact that\nthe moral law is as real and as external to man as the starry vault. It\nhas no secure seat in any single man or in any single nation. It is the\nwork of the blood and tears of long generations of men. It is not\nin man, inborn or innate, but is enshrined in his traditions, in his\ncustoms, in his literature and his religion. Its creation and sustenance\nare the crowning glory of man, and his consciousness of it puts him in\na high place above the animal world. Men live and die; nations rise and\nfall, but the struggle of individual lives and of individual nations\nmust be measured not by their immediate needs, but as they tend to the\ndebasement or perfection of man\u2019s great achievement.\u201d\n\n\nThis is the same reality. This is the same Link and Captain that this\nbook asserts. It seems to me a secondary matter whether we call Him\n\u201cMan\u2019s Great Achievement\u201d or \u201cThe Son of Man\u201d or the \u201cGod of Mankind\u201d or\n\u201cGod.\u201d So far as the practical and moral ends of life are concerned, it\ndoes not matter how we explain or refuse to explain His presence in our\nlives.\n\nThere is but one possible gap left between the position of Dr. Chalmers\nMitchell and the position of this book. In this book it is asserted that\nGOD RESPONDS, that he GIVES courage and the power of self-suppression to\nour weakness.\n\n\n\n5. A NOTE ON A LECTURE BY PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY\n\n\nLet me now quote and discuss a very beautiful passage from a lecture\nupon Stoicism by Professor Gilbert Murray, which also displays the same\ncharacteristic of an involuntary shaping out of God in the forms of\ndenial. It is a passage remarkable for its conscientious and resolute\nAgnosticism. And it is remarkable too for its blindness to the\npossibility of separating quite completely the idea of the Infinite\nBeing from the idea of God. It is another striking instance of that\nobsession of modern minds by merely Christian theology of which I have\nalready complained. Professor Murray has quoted Mr. Bevan\u2019s phrase for\nGod, \u201cthe Friend behind phenomena,\u201d and he does not seem to realise that\nthat phrase carries with it no obligation whatever to believe that this\nFriend is in control of the phenomena. He assumes that he is supposed to\nbe in control as if it were a matter of course:\n\n\n\u201cWe do seem to find,\u201d Professor Murray writes, \u201cnot only in all\nreligions, but in practically all philosophies, some belief that man is\nnot quite alone in the universe, but is met in his endeavours towards\nthe good by some external help or sympathy. We find it everywhere in the\nunsophisticated man. We find it in the unguarded self-revelations of the\nmost severe and conscientious Atheists. Now, the Stoics, like many other\nschools of thought, drew an argument from this consensus of all mankind.\nIt was not an absolute proof of the existence of the Gods or Providence,\nbut it was a strong indication. The existence of a common instinctive\nbelief in the mind of man gives at least a presumption that there must\nbe a good cause for that belief.\n\n\u201cThis is a reasonable position. There must be some such cause. But it\ndoes not follow that the only valid cause is the truth of the content of\nthe belief. I cannot help suspecting that this is precisely one of those\npoints on which Stoicism, in company with almost all philosophy up to\nthe present time, has gone astray through not sufficiently realising its\ndependence on the human mind as a natural biological product. For it is\nvery important in this matter to realise that the so-called belief is\nnot really an intellectual judgment so much as a craving of the whole\nnature.\n\n\u201cIt is only of very late years that psychologists have begun to realise\nthe enormous dominion of those forces in man of which he is normally\nunconscious. We cannot escape as easily as these brave men dreamed from\nthe grip of the blind powers beneath the threshold. Indeed, as I see\nphilosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the\nFriend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a\nmoment and by an effort, refrain from making the same assumption, it\nseems to me that perhaps here too we are under the spell of a very old\nineradicable instinct. We are gregarious animals; our ancestors have\nbeen such for countless ages. We cannot help looking out on the world as\ngregarious animals do; we see it in terms of humanity and of fellowship.\nStudents of animals under domestication have shown us how the habits\nof a gregarious creature, taken away from his kind, are shaped in\na thousand details by reference to the lost pack which is no longer\nthere--the pack which a dog tries to smell his way back to all the time\nhe is out walking, the pack he calls to for help when danger threatens.\nIt is a strange and touching thing, this eternal hunger of the\ngregarious animal for the herd of friends who are not there. And it may\nbe, it may very possibly be, that, in the matter of this Friend behind\nphenomena our own yearning and our own almost ineradicable instinctive\nconviction, since they are certainly not founded on either reason or\nobservation, are in origin the groping of a lonely-souled gregarious\nanimal to find its herd or its herd-leader in the great spaces between\nthe stars.\n\n\u201cAt any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of.\u201d\n\n\nThere the passage and the lecture end.\n\nI would urge that here again is an inadvertent witness to the reality of\nGod.\n\nProfessor Murray writes of gregarious animals as though there existed\nsolitary animals that are not gregarious, pure individualists,\n\u201catheists\u201d so to speak, and as though this appeal to a life beyond one\u2019s\nown was not the universal disposition of living things. His classical\ntraining disposes him to a realistic exaggeration of individual\ndifference. But nearly every animal, and certainly every mentally\nconsiderable animal, begins under parental care, in a nest or a litter,\nmates to breed, and is associated for much of its life. Even the great\ncarnivores do not go alone except when they are old and have done with\nthe most of life. Every pack, every herd, begins at some point in a\ncouple, it is the equivalent of the tiger\u2019s litter if that were to\nremain undispersed. And it is within the memory of men still living\nthat in many districts the African lion has with a change of game and\nconditions lapsed from a \u201csolitary\u201d to a gregarious, that is to say a\nprolonged family habit of life.\n\nMan too, if in his ape-like phase he resembled the other higher apes,\nis an animal becoming more gregarious and not less. He has passed\nwithin the historical period from a tribal gregariousness to a nearly\ncosmopolitan tolerance. And he has his tribe about him. He is not, as\nProfessor Murray seems to suggest, a solitary LOST gregarious beast. Why\nshould his desire for God be regarded as the overflow of an unsatisfied\ngregarious instinct, when he has home, town, society, companionship,\ntrade union, state, INCREASINGLY at hand to glut it? Why should\ngregariousness drive a man to God rather than to the third-class\ncarriage and the public-house? Why should gregariousness drive men out\nof crowded Egyptian cities into the cells of the Thebaid? Schopenhauer\nin a memorable passage (about the hedgehogs who assembled for warmth) is\nflatly opposed to Professor Murray, and seems far more plausible when\nhe declares that the nature of man is insufficiently gregarious. The\nparallel with the dog is not a valid one.\n\nDoes not the truth lie rather in the supposition that it is not the\nFriend that is the instinctive delusion but the isolation? Is not the\nreal deception, our belief that we are completely individualised, and\nis it not possible that this that Professor Murray calls \u201cinstinct\u201d\n is really not a vestige but a new thing arising out of our increasing\nunderstanding, an intellectual penetration to that greater being of the\nspecies, that vine, of which we are the branches? Why should not the\nsoul of the species, many faceted indeed, be nevertheless a soul like\nour own?\n\nHere, as in the case of Professor Metchnikoff, and in many other cases\nof atheism, it seems to me that nothing but an inadequate understanding\nof individuation bars the way to at least the intellectual recognition\nof the true God.\n\n\n\n6. RELIGION AS ETHICS\n\n\nAnd while I am dealing with rationalists, let me note certain recent\ninteresting utterances of Sir Harry Johnston\u2019s. You will note that while\nin this book we use the word \u201cGod\u201d to indicate the God of the Heart,\nSir Harry uses \u201cGod\u201d for that idea of God-of-the-Universe, which we have\nspoken of as the Infinite Being. This use of the word \u201cGod\u201d is of late\ntheological origin; the original identity of the words \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cgod\u201d\n and all the stories of the gods are against him. But Sir Harry takes up\nGod only to define him away into incomprehensible necessity. Thus:\n\n\n\u201cWe know absolutely nothing concerning the Force we call God; and,\nassuming such an intelligent ruling force to be in existence, permeating\nthis universe of millions of stars and (no doubt) tens of millions of\nplanets, we do not know under what conditions and limitations It works.\nWe are quite entitled to assume that the end of such an influence is\nintended to be order out of chaos, happiness and perfection out\nof incompleteness and misery; and we are entitled to identify the\nreactionary forces of brute Nature with the anthropomorphic Devil of\nprimitive religions, the power of darkness resisting the power of light.\nBut in these conjectures we must surely come to the conclusion that\nthe theoretical potency we call \u2018God\u2019 makes endless experiments, and\nscrap-heaps the failures. Think of the Dinosaurs and the expenditure of\ncreative energy that went to their differentiation and their well-nigh\nincredible physical development. . . .\n\n\u201cTo such a Divine Force as we postulate, the whole development and\nperfecting of life on this planet, the whole production of man, may\nseem little more than to any one of us would be the chipping out, the\ncutting, the carving, and the polishing of a gem; and we should feel as\nlittle remorse or pity for the scattered dust and fragments as must the\nCreative Force of the immeasurably vast universe feel for the DISJECTA\nMEMBRA of perfected life on this planet. . . .\u201d\n\n\nBut thence he goes on to a curiously imperfect treatment of the God\nof man as if he consisted in nothing more than some vague sort of\nhumanitarianism. Sir Harry\u2019s ideas are much less thoroughly thought out\nthan those of any other of these sceptical writers I have quoted. On\nthat account they are perhaps more typical. He speaks as though Christ\nwere simply an eminent but ill-reported and abominably served teacher of\nethics--and yet of the only right ideal and ethics. He speaks as though\nreligions were nothing more than ethical movements, and as though\nChristianity were merely someone remarking with a bright impulsiveness\nthat everything was simply horrid, and so, \u201cLet us instal loving\nkindness as a cardinal axiom.\u201d He ignores altogether the fundamental\nessential of religion, which is THE DEVELOPMENT AND SYNTHESIS OF THE\nDIVERGENT AND CONFLICTING MOTIVES OF THE UNCONVERTED LIFE, AND THE\nIDENTIFICATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE WITH THE IMMORTAL PURPOSE OF GOD.\nHe presents a conception of religion relieved of its \u201cnonsense\u201d as the\ncheerful self-determination of a number of bright little individuals\n(much stirred but by no means overcome by Cosmic Pity) to the Service\nof Man. As he seems to present it, it is as outward a thing, it goes as\nlittle into the intimacy of their lives, as though they had after proper\nconsideration agreed to send a subscription to a Red Cross Ambulance or\ntake part in a public demonstration against the Armenian Massacres, or\ndo any other rather nice-spirited exterior thing. This is what he says:\n\n\n\u201cI hope that the religion of the future will devote itself wholly to the\nService of Man. It can do so without departing from the Christian\nideal and Christian ethics. It need only drop all that is silly and\ndisputable, and \u2018mattering not neither here nor there,\u2019 of Christian\ntheology--a theology virtually absent from the direct teaching of\nChrist--and all of Judaistic literature or prescriptions not made\nimmortal in their application by unassailable truth and by the\nconfirmation of science. An excellent remedy for the nonsense which\nstill clings about religion may be found in two books: Cotter Monson\u2019s\n\u2018Service of Man,\u2019 which was published as long ago as 1887, and has since\nbeen re-issued by the Rationalist Press Association in its well-known\nsixpenny series, and J. Allanson Picton\u2019s \u2018Man and the Bible.\u2019\nSimilarly, those who wish to acquire a sane view of the relations\nbetween man and God would do well to read Winwood Reade\u2019s \u2018Martyrdom of\nMan.\u2019\u201d\n\n\nSir Harry in fact clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a\nwell-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength\nin his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the \u201cService of Man\u201d\n is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the\nundisciplined prison of the mortal life.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE FIFTH\n\nTHE INVISIBLE KING\n\n\n1. MODERN RELIGION A POLITICAL RELIGION\n\n\nThe conception of a young and energetic God, an Invisible Prince growing\nin strength and wisdom, who calls men and women to his service and who\ngives salvation from self and mortality only through self-abandonment to\nhis service, necessarily involves a demand for a complete revision and\nfresh orientation of the life of the convert.\n\nGod faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions\nand cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle\nto a great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. It is plain\nthat he can admit no divided control of the world he claims. He concedes\nnothing to Caesar. In our philosophy there are no human things that\nare God\u2019s and others that are Caesar\u2019s. Those of the new thought cannot\nrender unto God the things that are God\u2019s, and to Caesar the things that\nare Caesar\u2019s. Whatever claim Caesar may make to rule men\u2019s lives and\ndirect their destinies outside the will of God, is a usurpation. No king\nnor Caesar has any right to tax or to service or to tolerance, except\nhe claim as one who holds for and under God. And he must make good his\nclaim. The steps of the altar of the God of Youth are no safe place for\nthe sacrilegious figure of a king. Who claims \u201cdivine right\u201d plays with\nthe lightning.\n\nThe new conceptions do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or\ndemocracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain\nthe way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and\nservice of the will of God, which dwells in the hearts of men, and the\nperformance of that will, not only in the private life of the believer\nbut in the acts and order of the state and nation of which he is a part.\nI give myself to God not only because I am so and so but because I am\nmankind. I become in a measure responsible for every evil in the world\nof men. I become a knight in God\u2019s service. I become my brother\u2019s\nkeeper. I become a responsible minister of my King. I take sides against\ninjustice, disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors,\nprinces, landlords, and owners, who set themselves up against God\u2019s rule\nand worship. Kings, owners, and all who claim rule and decisions in the\nworld\u2019s affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants\nof the believer or become the objects of his steadfast antagonism.\n\n\n\n2. THE WILL OF GOD\n\n\nIt is here that those who explain this modern religiosity will seem most\narbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of God, as men will relate of\na close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims\nof his kingship. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the\nexistence of God but their realisation of him, so with regard to these\nqualities and dispositions they have little argument but profound\nconviction. What they say is this; that if you do not feel God then\nthere is no persuading you of him; we cannot win over the incredulous.\nAnd what they say of his qualities is this; that if you feel God then\nyou will know, you will realise more and more clearly, that thus and\nthus and no other is his method and intention.\n\nIt comes as no great shock to those who have grasped the full\nimplications of the statement that God is Finite, to hear it asserted\nthat the first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of\nknowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to\npower. For that he must use human eyes and hands and brains.\n\nAnd as God gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning\nto apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But\nit is possible to define the broad outlines of the attainment he seeks.\nIt is the conquest of death.\n\nIt is the conquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the\nindividual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an\nundying purpose, and then the defeat of that death that seems to\nthreaten our species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun. God\nfights against death in every form, against the great death of the\nrace, against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness,\nmisconception, and perversion. He it is and no other who can deliver us\n\u201cfrom the body of this death.\u201d This is the battle that grows plainer;\nthis is the purpose to which he calls us out of the animal\u2019s round of\neating, drinking, lusting, quarrelling and laughing and weeping, fearing\nand failing, and presently of wearying and dying, which is the\nwhole life that living without God can give us. And from these great\npropositions there follow many very definite maxims and rules of life\nfor those who serve God. These we will immediately consider.\n\n\n\n3. THE CRUCIFIX\n\n\nBut first let me write a few words here about those who hold a kind\nof intermediate faith between the worship of the God of Youth and the\nvaguer sort of Christianity. There are a number of people closely in\ntouch with those who have found the new religion who, biased probably\nby a dread of too complete a break with Christianity, have adopted a\ntheogony which is very reminiscent of Gnosticism and of the Paulician,\nCatharist, and kindred sects to which allusion has already been made.\nHe, who is called in this book God, they would call God-the-Son or\nChrist, or the Logos; and what is here called the Darkness or the Veiled\nBeing, they would call God-the-Father. And what we speak of here as\nLife, they would call, with a certain disregard of the poor brutes that\nperish, Man. And they would assert, what we of the new belief, pleading\nour profound ignorance, would neither assert nor deny, that that\nDarkness, out of which came Life and God, since it produced them must be\nultimately sympathetic and of like nature with them. And that ultimately\nMan, being redeemed and led by Christ and saved from death by him, would\nbe reconciled with God the Father.* And this great adventurer out of the\nhearts of man that we here call God, they would present as the same with\nthat teacher from Galilee who was crucified at Jerusalem.\n\n     * This probably was the conception of Spinoza.  Christ for\n     him is the wisdom of God manifested in all things, and\n     chiefly in the mind of man.  Through him we reach the\n     blessedness of an intuitive knowledge of God.  Salvation is\n     an escape from the \u201cinadequate\u201d ideas of the mortal human\n     personality to the \u201cadequate\u201d and timeless ideas of God.\n\nNow we of the modern way would offer the following criticisms upon this\napparent compromise between our faith and the current religion. Firstly,\nwe do not presume to theorise about the nature of the veiled being nor\nabout that being\u2019s relations to God and to Life. We do not recognise any\nconsistent sympathetic possibilities between these outer beings and our\nGod. Our God is, we feel, like Prometheus, a rebel. He is unfilial. And\nthe accepted figure of Jesus, instinct with meek submission, is not in\nthe tone of our worship. It is not by suffering that God conquers death,\nbut by fighting. Incidentally our God dies a million deaths, but the\nthing that matters is not the deaths but the immortality. It may be he\ncannot escape in this person or that person being nailed to a cross\nor chained to be torn by vultures on a rock. These may be necessary\nsufferings, like hunger and thirst in a campaign; they do not in\nthemselves bring victory. They may be necessary, but they are not\nglorious. The symbol of the crucifixion, the drooping, pain-drenched\nfigure of Christ, the sorrowful cry to his Father, \u201cMy God, my God, why\nhast thou forsaken me?\u201d these things jar with our spirit. We little men\nmay well fail and repent, but it is our faith that our God does not fail\nus nor himself. We cannot accept the Christian\u2019s crucifix, or pray to\na pitiful God. We cannot accept the Resurrection as though it were an\nafter-thought to a bitterly felt death. Our crucifix, if you must have\na crucifix, would show God with a hand or a foot already torn away from\nits nail, and with eyes not downcast but resolute against the sky; a\nface without pain, pain lost and forgotten in the surpassing glory of\nthe struggle and the inflexible will to live and prevail. . . .\n\nBut we do not care how long the thorns are drawn, nor how terrible the\nwounds, so long as he does not droop. God is courage. God is courage\nbeyond any conceivable suffering.\n\nBut when all this has been said, it is well to add that it concerns the\nfigure of Christ only in so far as that professes to be the figure of\nGod, and the crucifix only so far as that stands for divine action. The\nfigure of Christ crucified, so soon as we think of it as being no\nmore than the tragic memorial of Jesus, of the man who proclaimed the\nloving-kindness of God and the supremacy of God\u2019s kingdom over\nthe individual life, and who, in the extreme agony of his pain and\nexhaustion, cried out that he was deserted, becomes something altogether\ndistinct from a theological symbol. Immediately that we cease to\nworship, we can begin to love and pity. Here was a being of extreme\ngentleness and delicacy and of great courage, of the utmost tolerance\nand the subtlest sympathy, a saint of non-resistance. . . .\n\nWe of the new faith repudiate the teaching of non-resistance. We are\nthe militant followers of and participators in a militant God. We can\nappreciate and admire the greatness of Christ, this gentle being upon\nwhose nobility the theologians trade. But submission is the remotest\nquality of all from our God, and a moribund figure is the completest\ninversion of his likeness as we know him. A Christianity which shows,\nfor its daily symbol, Christ risen and trampling victoriously upon a\nbroken cross, would be far more in the spirit of our worship.*\n\n     * It is curious, after writing the above, to find in a\n     letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that\n     pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby,\n     almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed.\n     \u201cIf I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do,\u201d he says,\n     \u201cI would gladly look on it, but the fallen Head and the\n     closed Eye exclude from my thought the idea of glorified\n     humanity.  The Christ to whom we are led is One who \u2018hath\n     been crucified,\u2019 who hath passed the trial victoriously and\n     borne the fruits to heaven.  I dare not then rest on this\n     side of the glory.\u201d\n\nI find, too, a still more remarkable expression of the modern spirit\nin a tract, \u201cThe Call of the Kingdom,\u201d by that very able and subtle,\nAnglican theologian, the Rev. W. Temple, who declares that under the\nvitalising stresses of the war we are winning \u201cfaith in Christ as an\nheroic leader. We have thought of Him so much as meek and gentle that\nthere is no ground in our picture of Him, for the vision which His\ndisciple had of Him: \u2018His head and His hair were white, as white wool,\nwhite as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire: and His feet like\nunto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His\nvoice was as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand\nseven stars; and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and\nHis countenance was as the sun shineth in its strength.\u2019\u201d\n\nThese are both exceptional utterances, interesting as showing how\nclearly parallel are the tendencies within and without Christianity.\n\n\n\n4. THE PRIMARY DUTIES\n\n\nNow it follows very directly from the conception of God as a finite\nintelligence of boundless courage and limitless possibilities of growth\nand victory, who has pitted himself against death, who stands close to\nour inmost beings ready to receive us and use us, to rescue us from the\nchagrins of egotism and take us into his immortal adventure, that we\nwho have realised him and given ourselves joyfully to him, must needs be\nequally ready and willing to give our energies to the task we share\nwith him, to do our utmost to increase knowledge, to increase order and\nclearness, to fight against indolence, waste, disorder, cruelty, vice,\nand every form of his and our enemy, death, first and chiefest in\nourselves but also in all mankind, and to bring about the establishment\nof his real and visible kingdom throughout the world.\n\nAnd that idea of God as the Invisible King of the whole world means not\nmerely that God is to be made and declared the head of the world, but\nthat the kingdom of God is to be present throughout the whole fabric\nof the world, that the Kingdom of God is to be in the teaching at the\nvillage school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market\ntown, in the mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman\u2019s\nhouse. It means that ultimately no effigy of intrusive king or emperor\nis to disfigure our coins and stamps any more; God himself and no\ndelegate is to be represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters\nand our receipts, a perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder. There is no\nact altogether without significance, no power so humble that it may not\nbe used for or against God, no life but can orient itself to him. To\nrealise God in one\u2019s heart is to be filled with the desire to serve him,\nand the way of his service is neither to pull up one\u2019s life by the\nroots nor to continue it in all its essentials unchanged, but to turn it\nabout, to turn everything that there is in it round into his way.\n\nThe outward duty of those who serve God must vary greatly with the\nabilities they possess and the positions in which they find themselves,\nbut for all there are certain fundamental duties; a constant attempt\nto be utterly truthful with oneself, a constant sedulousness to\nkeep oneself fit and bright for God\u2019s service, and to increase one\u2019s\nknowledge and powers, and a hidden persistent watchfulness of one\u2019s\nbaser motives, a watch against fear and indolence, against vanity,\nagainst greed and lust, against envy, malice, and uncharitableness. To\nhave found God truly does in itself make God\u2019s service one\u2019s essential\nmotive, but these evils lurk in the shadows, in the lassitudes and\nunwary moments. No one escapes them altogether, there is no need for\ntragic moods on account of imperfections. We can no more serve God\nwithout blunders and set-backs than we can win battles without losing\nmen. But the less of such loss the better. The servant of God must keep\nhis mind as wide and sound and his motives as clean as he can, just as\nan operating surgeon must keep his nerves and muscles as fit and his\nhands as clean as he can. Neither may righteously evade exercise and\nregular washing--of mind as of hands. An incessant watchfulness of\none\u2019s self and one\u2019s thoughts and the soundness of one\u2019s thoughts;\ncleanliness, clearness, a wariness against indolence and prejudice,\ncareful truth, habitual frankness, fitness and steadfast work; these are\nthe daily fundamental duties that every one who truly comes to God will,\nas a matter of course, set before himself.\n\n\n\n5. THE INCREASING KINGDOM\n\n\nNow of the more intimate and personal life of the believer it will be\nmore convenient to write a little later. Let us for the present pursue\nthe idea of this world-kingdom of God, to whose establishment he calls\nus. This kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all\nmankind upon certain divine ends. These, we conceive, are first,\nthe maintenance of the racial life; secondly, the exploration of the\nexternal being of nature as it is and as it has been, that is to\nsay history and science; thirdly, that exploration of inherent human\npossibility which is art; fourthly, that clarification of thought and\nknowledge which is philosophy; and finally, the progressive enlargement\nand development of the racial life under these lights, so that God may\nwork through a continually better body of humanity and through better\nand better equipped minds, that he and our race may increase for ever,\nworking unendingly upon the development of the powers of life and the\nmastery of the blind forces of matter throughout the deeps of space. He\nsets out with us, we are persuaded, to conquer ourselves and our world\nand the stars. And beyond the stars our eyes can as yet see nothing, our\nimaginations reach and fail. Beyond the limits of our understanding is\nthe veiled Being of Fate, whose face is hidden from us. . . .\n\nIt may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality\nthat the face of that Unknown will not be altogether hidden. . . .\n\nBut the business of such ordinary lives as ours is the setting up of\nthis earthly kingdom of God. That is the form into which our lives must\nfall and our consciences adapt themselves.\n\nBelief in God as the Invisible King brings with it almost necessarily a\nconception of this coming kingdom of God on earth. Each believer as he\ngrasps this natural and immediate consequence of the faith that has come\ninto his life will form at the same time a Utopian conception of this\nworld changed in the direction of God\u2019s purpose. The vision will follow\nthe realisation of God\u2019s true nature and purpose as a necessary\nsecond step. And he will begin to develop the latent citizen of this\nworld-state in himself. He will fall in with the idea of the world-wide\nsanities of this new order being drawn over the warring outlines of the\npresent, and of men falling out of relationship with the old order and\ninto relationship with the new. Many men and women are already working\nto-day at tasks that belong essentially to God\u2019s kingdom, tasks that\nwould be of the same essential nature if the world were now a theocracy;\nfor example, they are doing or sustaining scientific research or\neducation or creative art; they are making roads to bring men together,\nthey are doctors working for the world\u2019s health, they are building\nhomes, they are constructing machinery to save and increase the powers\nof men. . . .\n\nSuch men and women need only to change their orientation as men will\nchange about at a work-table when the light that was coming in a little\nwhile ago from the southern windows, begins presently to come in chiefly\nfrom the west, to become open and confessed servants of God. This work\nthat they were doing for ambition, or the love of men or the love of\nknowledge or what seemed the inherent impulse to the work itself, or for\nmoney or honour or country or king, they will realise they are doing for\nGod and by the power of God. Self-transformation into a citizen of God\u2019s\nkingdom and a new realisation of all earthly politics as no more than\nthe struggle to define and achieve the kingdom of God in the earth,\nfollow on, without any need for a fresh spiritual impulse, from the\nmoment when God and the believer meet and clasp one another.\n\nThis transfiguration of the world into a theocracy may seem a merely\nfantastic idea to anyone who comes to it freshly without such general\ntheological preparation as the preceding pages have made. But to anyone\nwho has been at the pains to clear his mind even a little from the\nobsession of existing but transitory things, it ceases to be a mere\nsuggestion and becomes more and more manifestly the real future of\nmankind. From the phase of \u201cso things should be,\u201d the mind will pass\nvery rapidly to the realisation that \u201cso things will be.\u201d Towards this\nthe directive wills among men have been drifting more and more steadily\nand perceptibly and with fewer eddyings and retardations, for many\ncenturies. The purpose of mankind will not be always thus confused and\nfragmentary. This dissemination of will-power is a phase. The age of the\nwarring tribes and kingdoms and empires that began a hundred centuries\nor so ago, draws to its close. The kingdom of God on earth is not a\nmetaphor, not a mere spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain\nproject; it is the thing before us, it is the close and inevitable\ndestiny of mankind.\n\nIn a few score years the faith of the true God will be spreading about\nthe world. The few halting confessions of God that one hears here and\nthere to-day, like that little twittering of birds which comes before\nthe dawn, will have swollen to a choral unanimity. In but a few\ncenturies the whole world will be openly, confessedly, preparing for\nthe kingdom. In but a few centuries God will have led us out of the dark\nforest of these present wars and confusions into the open brotherhood of\nhis rule.\n\n\n\n6. WHAT IS MY PLACE IN THE KINGDOM?\n\n\nThis conception of the general life of mankind as a transformation at\nthousands of points of the confused, egotistical, proprietary, partisan,\nnationalist, life-wasting chaos of human life to-day into the coherent\ndevelopment of the world kingdom of God, provides the form into which\neveryone who comes to the knowledge of God will naturally seek to fit\nhis every thought and activity. The material greeds, the avarice,\nfear, rivalries, and ignoble ambitions of a disordered world will be\nchallenged and examined under one general question: \u201cWhat am I in the\nkingdom of God?\u201d\n\nIt has already been suggested that there is a great and growing number\nof occupations that belong already to God\u2019s kingdom, research, teaching,\ncreative art, creative administration, cultivation, construction,\nmaintenance, and the honest satisfaction of honest practical human\nneeds. For such people conversion to the intimacy of God means at most\na change in the spirit of their work, a refreshed energy, a clearer\nunderstanding, a new zeal, a completer disregard of gains and praises\nand promotion. Pay, honours, and the like cease to be the inducement of\neffort. Service, and service alone, is the criterion that the quickened\nconscience will recognise.\n\nMost of such people will find themselves in positions in which service\nis mingled with activities of a baser sort, in which service is a little\nwarped and deflected by old traditions and usage, by mercenary and\ncommercial considerations, by some inherent or special degradation of\npurpose. The spirit of God will not let the believer rest until his life\nis readjusted and as far as possible freed from the waste of these base\ndiversions. For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by\ngreat inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of his professorship\nor research fellowship, which exact an appearance of \u201cpractical\u201d\n results. Or he may be obliged to lecture or conduct classes. He may\nbe able to give but half his possible gift to the work of his real\naptitude, and that at a sacrifice of money and reputation among\nshort-sighted but influential contemporaries. Well, if he is by nature\nan investigator he will know that the research is what God needs of him.\nHe cannot continue it at all if he leaves his position, and so he must\nneeds waste something of his gift to save the rest. But should a poorer\nor a humbler post offer him better opportunity, there lies his work for\nGod. There one has a very common and simple type of the problems that\nwill arise in the lives of men when they are lit by sudden realisation\nof the immediacy of God.\n\nAkin to that case is the perplexity of any successful physician between\nthe increase of knowledge and the public welfare on the one hand, and\nthe lucrative possibilities of his practice among wealthy people on the\nother. He belongs to a profession that is crippled by a mediaeval code,\na profession which was blind to the common interest of the Public Health\nand regarded its members merely as skilled practitioners employed to\n\u201ccure\u201d individual ailments. Very slowly and tortuously do the methods of\nthe profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of\ndevoted men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as\na whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the \u201cleech,\u201d with its\ncrocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and\nilluminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing\nand economic life of the community.\n\nAnd again quite parallel with these personal problems is the trouble of\nthe artist between the market and vulgar fame on the one hand and his\ndivine impulse on the other.\n\nThe presence of God will be a continual light and help in every decision\nthat must be made by men and women in these more or less vitiated, but\nstill fundamentally useful and righteous, positions.\n\nThe trouble becomes more marked and more difficult in the case of a man\nwho is a manufacturer or a trader, the financier of business enterprise\nor the proprietor of great estates. The world is in need of manufactures\nand that goods should be distributed; land must be administered and\nnew economic possibilities developed. The drift of things is in the\ndirection of state ownership and control, but in a great number of\ncases the state is not ripe for such undertakings, it commands neither\nsufficient integrity nor sufficient ability, and the proprietor of\nfactory, store, credit or land, must continue in possession, holding as\na trustee for God and, so far as lies in his power, preparing for his\nsupersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits\nof no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort\nto the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts\namong scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It\nunhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and\ngive to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike dedicated to\nGod.\n\nThe plain duty that will be understood by the proprietor of land and of\nevery sort of general need and service, so soon as he becomes aware of\nGod, is so to administer his possessions as to achieve the maximum of\npossible efficiency, the most generous output, and the least private\nprofit. He may set aside a salary for his maintenance; the rest he must\ndeal with like a zealous public official. And if he perceives that the\naffair could be better administered by other hands than his own, then it\nis his business to get it into those hands with the smallest delay and\nthe least profit to himself. . . .\n\nThe rights and wrongs of human equity are very different from right and\nwrong in the sight of God. In the sight of God no landlord has a\nRIGHT to his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not\njustified in drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free\nto spend the profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of\nsavings nor of abstinence. He recognises no right to the \u201crewards of\nabstinence,\u201d no right to any rewards. Those profits and comforts and\nconsolations are the inducements that dangle before the eyes of the\nspiritually blind. Wealth is an embarrassment to the religious, for God\ncalls them to account for it. The servant of God has no business with\nwealth or power except to use them immediately in the service of God.\nFinding these things in his hands he is bound to administer them in the\nservice of God.\n\nThe tendency of modern religion goes far beyond the alleged communism\nof the early Christians, and far beyond the tithes of the scribes and\nPharisees. God takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and\nacres, he takes skill and influence and expectations. For all the rest\nof your life you are nothing but God\u2019s agent. If you are not prepared\nfor so complete a surrender, then you are infinitely remote from God.\nYou must go your way. Here you are merely a curious interloper. Perhaps\nyou have been desiring God as an experience, or coveting him as\na possession. You have not begun to understand. This that we are\ndiscussing in this book is as yet nothing for you.\n\n\n\n7. ADJUSTING LIFE\n\n\nThis picturing of a human world more to the mind of God than this\npresent world and the discovery and realisation of one\u2019s own place and\nwork in and for that kingdom of God, is the natural next phase in the\ndevelopment of the believer. He will set about revising and adjusting\nhis scheme of life, his ways of living, his habits and his relationships\nin the light of his new convictions.\n\nMost men and women who come to God will have already a certain\nrighteousness in their lives; these things happen like a thunderclap\nonly in strange exceptional cases, and the same movements of the mind\nthat have brought them to God will already have brought their lives into\na certain rightness of direction and conduct. Yet occasionally there\nwill be someone to whom the self-examination that follows conversion\nwill reveal an entirely wrong and evil way of living. It may be that the\nlight has come to some rich idler doing nothing but follow a pleasurable\nroutine. Or to someone following some highly profitable and amusing,\nbut socially useless or socially mischievous occupation. One may be an\nadvocate at the disposal of any man\u2019s purpose, or an actor or actress\nready to fall in with any theatrical enterprise. Or a woman may\nfind herself a prostitute or a pet wife, a mere kept instrument of\nindulgence. These are lives of prey, these are lives of futility; the\nlight of God will not tolerate such lives. Here religion can bring\nnothing but a severance from the old way of life altogether, a break and\na struggle towards use and service and dignity.\n\nBut even here it does not follow that because a life has been wrong\nthe new life that begins must be far as the poles asunder from the old.\nEvery sort of experience that has ever come to a human being is in the\nself that he brings to God, and there is no reason why a knowledge\nof evil ways should not determine the path of duty. No one can better\ndevise protections against vices than those who have practised them;\nnone know temptations better than those who have fallen. If a man has\nfollowed an evil trade, it becomes him to use his knowledge of the\ntricks of that trade to help end it. He knows the charities it may claim\nand the remedies it needs. . . .\n\nA very interesting case to discuss in relation to this question of\nadjustment is that of the barrister. A practising barrister under\ncontemporary conditions does indeed give most typically the opportunity\nfor examining the relation of an ordinary self-respecting worldly life,\nto life under the dispensation of God discovered. A barrister is\nusually a man of some energy and ambition, his honour is moulded by\nthe traditions of an ancient and antiquated profession, instinctively\nself-preserving and yet with a real desire for consistency and respect.\nAs a profession it has been greedy and defensively conservative, but it\nhas never been shameless nor has it ever broken faith with its own large\nand selfish, but quite definite, propositions. It has never for instance\nhad the shamelessness of such a traditionless and undisciplined class\nas the early factory organisers. It has never had the dull incoherent\nwickedness of the sort of men who exploit drunkenness and the turf. It\noffends within limits. Barristers can be, and are, disbarred. But it is\nnow a profession extraordinarily out of date; its code of honour derives\nfrom a time of cruder and lower conceptions of human relationship. It\napprehends the State as a mere \u201cring\u201d kept about private disputations;\nit has not begun to move towards the modern conception of the collective\nenterprise as the determining criterion of human conduct. It sees its\nbusiness as a mere play upon the rules of a game between man and man, or\nbetween men and men. They haggle, they dispute, they inflict and suffer\nwrongs, they evade dues, and are liable or entitled to penalties and\ncompensations. The primary business of the law is held to be decision in\nthese wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic elaboration, the\nbusiness of the barrister is the business of a professional wrangler; he\nis a bravo in wig and gown who fights the duels of ordinary men because\nthey are incapable, very largely on account of the complexities of legal\nprocedure, of fighting for themselves. His business is never to explore\nany fundamental right in the matter. His business is to say all that can\nbe said for his client, and to conceal or minimise whatever can be said\nagainst his client. The successful promoted advocate, who in Britain\nand the United States of America is the judge, and whose habits and\ninterests all incline him to disregard the realities of the case in\nfavour of the points in the forensic game, then adjudicates upon the\ncontest. . . .\n\nNow this condition of things is clearly incompatible with the modern\nconception of the world as becoming a divine kingdom. When the world is\nopenly and confessedly the kingdom of God, the law court will exist only\nto adjust the differing views of men as to the manner of their service\nto God; the only right of action one man will have against another will\nbe that he has been prevented or hampered or distressed by the other in\nserving God. The idea of the law court will have changed entirely from a\nplace of dispute, exaction and vengeance, to a place of adjustment. The\nindividual or some state organisation will plead ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON\nGOOD either against some state official or state regulation, or against\nthe actions or inaction of another individual. This is the only sort of\nlegal proceedings compatible with the broad beliefs of the new faith.\n. . . Every religion that becomes ascendant, in so far as it is not\notherworldly, must necessarily set its stamp upon the methods and\nadministration of the law. That this was not the case with Christianity\nis one of the many contributory aspects that lead one to the conviction\nthat it was not Christianity that took possession of the Roman empire,\nbut an imperial adventurer who took possession of an all too complaisant\nChristianity.\n\nReverting now from these generalisations to the problem of the religious\nfrom which they arose, it will have become evident that the essential\nwork of anyone who is conversant with the existing practice and\nliterature of the law and whose natural abilities are forensic, will lie\nin the direction of reconstructing the theory and practice of the law\nin harmony with modern conceptions, of making that theory and practice\nclear and plain to ordinary men, of reforming the abuses of the\nprofession by working for the separation of bar and judiciary, for the\namalgamation of the solicitors and the barristers, and the like needed\nreforms. These are matters that will probably only be properly set right\nby a quickening of conscience among lawyers themselves. Of no class of\nmen is the help and service so necessary to the practical establishment\nof God\u2019s kingdom, as of men learned and experienced in the law. And\nthere is no reason why for the present an advocate should not continue\nto plead in the courts, provided he does his utmost only to handle cases\nin which he believes he can serve the right. Few righteous cases are\nill-served by a frank disposition on the part of lawyer and client\nto put everything before the court. Thereby of course there arises a\ndifficult case of conscience. What if a lawyer, believing his client to\nbe in the right, discovers him to be in the wrong? He cannot throw up\nthe case unless he has been scandalously deceived, because so he would\nbetray the confidence his client has put in him to \u201csee him through.\u201d He\nhas a right to \u201cgive himself away,\u201d but not to \u201cgive away\u201d his client\nin this fashion. If he has a chance of a private consultation I think he\nought to do his best to make his client admit the truth of the case and\ngive in, but failing this he has no right to be virtuous on behalf of\nanother. No man may play God to another; he may remonstrate, but that\nis the limit of his right. He must respect a confidence, even if it is\npurely implicit and involuntary. I admit that here the barrister is in a\ncleft stick, and that he must see the business through according to the\nconfidence his client has put in him--and afterwards be as sorry as he\nmay be if an injustice ensues. And also I would suggest a lawyer\nmay with a fairly good conscience defend a guilty man as if he were\ninnocent, to save him from unjustly heavy penalties. . . .\n\nThis comparatively full discussion of the barrister\u2019s problem has been\nembarked upon because it does bring in, in a very typical fashion,\njust those uncertainties and imperfections that abound in real life.\nReligious conviction gives us a general direction, but it stands aside\nfrom many of these entangled struggles in the jungle of conscience.\nPractice is often easier than a rule. In practice a lawyer will know\nfar more accurately than a hypothetical case can indicate, how far he is\nbound to see his client through, and how far he may play the keeper of\nhis client\u2019s conscience. And nearly every day there happens instances\nwhere the most subtle casuistry will fail and the finger of conscience\npoint unhesitatingly. One may have worried long in the preparation and\npreliminaries of the issue, one may bring the case at last into the\nfinal court of conscience in an apparently hopeless tangle. Then\nsuddenly comes decision.\n\nThe procedure of that silent, lit, and empty court in which a man states\nhis case to God, is very simple and perfect. The excuses and the special\npleading shrivel and vanish. In a little while the case lies bare and\nplain.\n\n\n\n8. THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE\n\n\nThe question of oaths of allegiance, acts of acquiescence in existing\ngovernments, and the like, is one that arises at once with the\nacceptance of God as the supreme and real King of the Earth. At the\nworst Caesar is a usurper, a satrap claiming to be sovereign; at the\nbest he is provisional. Modern casuistry makes no great trouble for the\nbelieving public official. The chief business of any believer is to do\nthe work for which he is best fitted, and since all state affairs are\nto become the affairs of God\u2019s kingdom it is of primary importance that\nthey should come into the hands of God\u2019s servants. It is scarcely less\nnecessary to a believing man with administrative gifts that he should be\nin the public administration, than that he should breathe and eat. And\nwhatever oath or the like to usurper church or usurper king has been\nset up to bar access to service, is an oath imposed under duress. If it\ncannot be avoided it must be taken rather than that a man should become\nunserviceable. All such oaths are unfair and foolish things. They\nexclude no scoundrels; they are appeals to superstition. Whenever an\nopportunity occurs for the abolition of an oath, the servant of God will\nseize it, but where the oath is unavoidable he will take it.\n\nThe service of God is not to achieve a delicate consistency of\nstatement; it is to do as much as one can of God\u2019s work.\n\n\n\n9. THE PRIEST AND THE CREED\n\n\nIt may be doubted if this line of reasoning regarding the official and\nhis oath can be extended to excuse the priest or pledged minister of\nreligion who finds that faith in the true God has ousted his formal\nbeliefs.\n\nThis has been a frequent and subtle moral problem in the intellectual\nlife of the last hundred years. It has been increasingly difficult for\nany class of reading, talking, and discussing people such as are the\nbulk of the priesthoods of the Christian churches to escape hearing and\nreading the accumulated criticism of the Trinitarian theology and of the\npopularly accepted story of man\u2019s fall and salvation. Some have no doubt\ndefeated this universal and insidious critical attack entirely, and\nhonestly established themselves in a right-down acceptance of the\narticles and disciplines to which they have subscribed and of the\ncreeds they profess and repeat. Some have recanted and abandoned their\npositions in the priesthood. But a great number have neither resisted\nthe bacillus of criticism nor left the churches to which they are\nattached. They have adopted compromises, they have qualified their\ncreeds with modifying footnotes of essential repudiation; they\nhave decided that plain statements are metaphors and have undercut,\ntransposed, and inverted the most vital points of the vulgarly accepted\nbeliefs. One may find within the Anglican communion, Arians, Unitarians,\nAtheists, disbelievers in immortality, attenuators of miracles; there\nis scarcely a doubt or a cavil that has not found a lodgment within the\nample charity of the English Establishment. I have been interested to\nhear one distinguished Canon deplore that \u201cthey\u201d did not identify the\nLogos with the third instead of the second Person of the Trinity, and\nanother distinguished Catholic apologist declare his indifference to\nthe \u201chistorical Jesus.\u201d Within most of the Christian communions one may\nbelieve anything or nothing, provided only that one does not call too\npublic an attention to one\u2019s eccentricity. The late Rev. Charles Voysey,\nfor example, preached plainly in his church at Healaugh against the\ndivinity of Christ, unhindered. It was only when he published his\nsermons under the provocative title of \u201cThe Sling and the Stone,\u201d and\ncaused an outcry beyond the limits of his congregation, that he was\nindicted and deprived.\n\nNow the reasons why these men do not leave the ministry or priesthood in\nwhich they find themselves are often very plausible. It is probable that\nin very few cases is the retention of stipend or incumbency a conscious\ndishonesty. At the worst it is mitigated by thought for wife or child.\nIt has only been during very exceptional phases of religious development\nand controversy that beliefs have been really sharp. A creed, like a\ncoin, it may be argued, loses little in practical value because it is\nworn, or bears the image of a vanished king. The religious life is a\nreality that has clothed itself in many garments, and the concern of\nthe priest or minister is with the religious life and not with the poor\nsymbols that may indeed pretend to express, but do as a matter of fact\nno more than indicate, its direction. It is quite possible to maintain\nthat the church and not the creed is the real and valuable instrument of\nreligion, that the religious life is sustained not by its propositions\nbut by its routines. Anyone who seeks the intimate discussion of\nspiritual things with professional divines, will find this is the\nsubstance of the case for the ecclesiastical sceptic. His church, he\nwill admit, mumbles its statement of truth, but where else is truth?\nWhat better formulae are to be found for ineffable things? And\nmeanwhile--he does good.\n\nThat may be a valid defence before a man finds God. But we who profess\nthe worship and fellowship of the living God deny that religion is a\nmatter of ineffable things. The way of God is plain and simple and easy\nto understand.\n\nTherewith the whole position of the conforming sceptic is changed. If\na professional religious has any justification at all for his\nprofessionalism it is surely that he proclaims the nearness and\ngreatness of God. And these creeds and articles and orthodoxies are not\nproclamations but curtains, they are a darkening and confusion of what\nshould be crystal clear. What compensatory good can a priest pretend\nto do when his primary business is the truth and his method a lie? The\noaths and incidental conformities of men who wish to serve God in the\nstate are on a different footing altogether from the falsehood and\nmischief of one who knows the true God and yet recites to a trustful\ncongregation, foists upon a trustful congregation, a misleading and\nill-phrased Levantine creed.\n\nSuch is the line of thought which will impose the renunciation of his\ntemporalities and a complete cessation of services upon every ordained\npriest and minister as his first act of faith. Once that he has truly\nrealised God, it becomes impossible for him ever to repeat his creed\nagain. His course seems plain and clear. It becomes him to stand up\nbefore the flock he has led in error, and to proclaim the being and\nnature of the one true God. He must be explicit to the utmost of his\npowers. Then he may await his expulsion. It may be doubted whether it is\nsufficient for him to go away silently, making false excuses or none at\nall for his retreat. He has to atone for the implicit acquiescences of\nhis conforming years.\n\n\n\n10. THE UNIVERSALISM OF GOD\n\n\nAre any sorts of people shut off as if by inherent necessity from God?\n\nThis is, so to speak, one of the standing questions of theology; it\nreappears with slight changes of form at every period of religious\ninterest, it is for example the chief issue between the Arminian and the\nCalvinist. From its very opening proposition modern religion sweeps past\nand far ahead of the old Arminian teachings of Wesleyans and Methodists,\nin its insistence upon the entirely finite nature of God. Arminians seem\nmerely to have insisted that God has conditioned himself, and by his\nown free act left men free to accept or reject salvation. To the realist\ntype of mind--here as always I use \u201crealist\u201d in its proper sense as\nthe opposite of nominalist--to the old-fashioned, over-exact and\nover-accentuating type of mind, such ways of thinking seem vague\nand unsatisfying. Just as it distresses the more downright kind of\nintelligence with a feeling of disloyalty to admit that God is not\nAlmighty, so it troubles the same sort of intelligence to hear that\nthere is no clear line to be drawn between the saved and the lost.\nRealists like an exclusive flavour in their faith. Moreover, it is a\nnatural weakness of humanity to be forced into extreme positions by\nargument. It is probable, as I have already suggested, that the absolute\nattributes of God were forced upon Christianity under the stresses\nof propaganda, and it is probable that the theory of a super-human\nobstinancy beyond salvation arose out of the irritations natural to\ntheological debate. It is but a step from the realisation that there are\npeople absolutely unable or absolutely unwilling to see God as we see\nhim, to the conviction that they are therefore shut off from God by an\ninvincible soul blindness.\n\nIt is very easy to believe that other people are essentially damned.\n\nBeyond the little world of our sympathies and comprehension there are\nthose who seem inaccessible to God by any means within our experience.\nThey are people answering to the \u201chard-hearted,\u201d to the \u201cstiff-necked\ngeneration\u201d of the Hebrew prophets. They betray and even confess\nto standards that seem hopelessly base to us. They show themselves\nincapable of any disinterested enthusiasm for beauty or truth or\ngoodness. They are altogether remote from intelligent sacrifice. To\nevery test they betray vileness of texture; they are mean, cold, wicked.\nThere are people who seem to cheat with a private self-approval, who are\never ready to do harsh and cruel things, whose use for social feeling\nis the malignant boycott, and for prosperity, monopolisation and\nhumiliating display; who seize upon religion and turn it into\npersecution, and upon beauty to torment it on the altars of some joyless\nvice. We cannot do with such souls; we have no use for them, and it is\nvery easy indeed to step from that persuasion to the belief that God has\nno use for them.\n\nAnd besides these base people there are the stupid people and the people\nwith minds so poor in texture that they cannot even grasp the few broad\nand simple ideas that seem necessary to the salvation we experience, who\nlapse helplessly into fetishistic and fearful conceptions of God,\nand are apparently quite incapable of distinguishing between what is\npractically and what is spiritually good.\n\nIt is an easy thing to conclude that the only way to God is our way to\nGod, that he is the privilege of a finer and better sort to which we\nof course belong; that he is no more the God of the card-sharper or the\npickpocket or the \u201csmart\u201d woman or the loan-monger or the village\noaf than he is of the swine in the sty. But are we justified in\nthus limiting God to the measure of our moral and intellectual\nunderstandings? Because some people seem to me steadfastly and\nconsistently base or hopelessly and incurably dull and confused, does\nit follow that there are not phases, albeit I have never chanced to see\nthem, of exaltation in the one case and illumination in the other? And\nmay I not be a little restricting my perception of Good? While I have\nbeen ready enough to pronounce this or that person as being, so far as\nI was concerned, thoroughly damnable or utterly dull, I find a curious\nreluctance to admit the general proposition which is necessary for\nthese instances. It is possible that the difference between Arminian and\nCalvinist is a difference of essential intellectual temperament rather\nthan of theoretical conviction. I am temperamentally Arminian as I am\ntemperamentally Nominalist. I feel that it must be in the nature of God\nto attempt all souls. There must be accessibilities I can only suspect,\nand accessibilities of which I know nothing.\n\nYet here is a consideration pointing rather the other way. If you think,\nas you must think, that you yourself can be lost to God and damned, then\nI cannot see how you can avoid thinking that other people can be damned.\nBut that is not to believe that there are people damned at the outset by\ntheir moral and intellectual insufficiency; that is not to make out that\nthere is a class of essential and incurable spiritual defectives. The\nreligious life preceded clear religious understanding and extends far\nbeyond its range.\n\nIn my own case I perceive that in spite of the value I attach to true\nbelief, the reality of religion is not an intellectual thing. The\nessential religious fact is in another than the mental sphere. I am\npassionately anxious to have the idea of God clear in my own mind, and\nto make my beliefs plain and clear to other people, and particularly\nto other people who may seem to be feeling with me; I do perceive that\nerror is evil if only because a faith based on confused conceptions\nand partial understandings may suffer irreparable injury through the\ncollapse of its substratum of ideas. I doubt if faith can be complete\nand enduring if it is not secured by the definite knowledge of the true\nGod. Yet I have also to admit that I find the form of my own religious\nemotion paralleled by people with whom I have no intellectual sympathy\nand no agreement in phrase or formula at all.\n\nThere is for example this practical identity of religious feeling and\nthis discrepancy of interpretation between such an inquirer as myself\nand a convert of the Salvation Army. Here, clothing itself in phrases\nand images of barbaric sacrifice, of slaughtered lambs and fountains of\nprecious blood, a most repulsive and incomprehensible idiom to me, and\nexpressing itself by shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and\nrhythmic pacings that stun and dismay my nerves, I find, the same object\nsought, release from self, and the same end, the end of identification\nwith the immortal, successfully if perhaps rather insecurely achieved.\nI see God indubitably present in these excitements, and I see\npersonalities I could easily have misjudged as too base or too dense for\nspiritual understandings, lit by the manifest reflection of divinity.\nOne may be led into the absurdest underestimates of religious\npossibilities if one estimates people only coldly and in the light of\neveryday life. There is a sub-intellectual religious life which, very\nconceivably, when its utmost range can be examined, excludes nothing\nhuman from religious cooperation, which will use any words to its tune,\nwhich takes its phrasing ready-made from the world about it, as it takes\nthe street for its temple, and yet which may be at its inner point in\nthe directest contact with God. Religion may suffer from aphasia and\nstill be religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet\nintend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older\nthan doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may\nstill chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the\ntambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum,\nmay still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call\nbeyond the immediate material compulsion of life, when the creeds of\nChristianity are as dead as the lore of the Druids.\n\nThe emancipation of mankind from obsolete theories and formularies may\nbe accompanied by great tides of moral and emotional release among types\nand strata that by the standards of a trained and explicit intellectual,\nmay seem spiritually hopeless. It is not necessary to imagine the whole\nworld critical and lucid in order to imagine the whole world unified in\nreligious sentiment, comprehending the same phrases and coming together\nregardless of class and race and quality, in the worship and service\nof the true God. The coming kingship of God if it is to be more than\nhieratic tyranny must have this universality of appeal. As the head\ngrows clear the body will turn in the right direction. To the mass of\nmen modern religion says, \u201cThis is the God it has always been in your\nnature to apprehend.\u201d\n\n\n\n11. GOD AND THE LOVE AND STATUS OF WOMEN\n\n\nNow that we are discussing the general question of individual conduct,\nit will be convenient to take up again and restate in that relationship,\npropositions already made very plainly in the second and third chapters.\nHere there are several excellent reasons for a certain amount of\ndeliberate repetition. . . .\n\nAll the mystical relations of chastity, virginity, and the like with\nreligion, those questions of physical status that play so large a part\nin most contemporary religions, have disappeared from modern faith. Let\nus be as clear as possible upon this. God is concerned by the health and\nfitness and vigour of his servants; we owe him our best and utmost; but\nhe has no special concern and no special preferences or commandments\nregarding sexual things.\n\nChrist, it is manifest, was of the modern faith in these matters, he\nwelcomed the Magdalen, neither would he condemn the woman taken in\nadultery. Manifestly corruption and disease were not to stand between\nhim and those who sought God in him. But the Christianity of the creeds,\nin this as in so many respects, does not rise to the level of its\nfounder, and it is as necessary to repeat to-day as though the name\nof Christ had not been ascendant for nineteen centuries, that sex is\na secondary thing to religion, and sexual status of no account in\nthe presence of God. It follows quite logically that God does not\ndiscriminate between man and woman in any essential things. We leave our\nindividuality behind us when we come into the presence of God. Sex is\nnot disavowed but forgotten. Just as one\u2019s last meal is forgotten--which\nalso is a difference between the religious moment of modern faith and\ncertain Christian sacraments. You are a believer and God is at hand\nto you; heed not your state; reach out to him and he is there. In the\nmoment of religion you are human; it matters not what else you are,\nmale or female, clean or unclean, Hebrew or Gentile, bond or free. It\nis AFTER the moment of religion that we become concerned about our state\nand the manner in which we use ourselves.\n\nWe have to follow our reason as our sole guide in our individual\ntreatment of all such things as food and health and sex. God is the\nking of the whole world, he is the owner of our souls and bodies and all\nthings. He is not particularly concerned about any aspect, because he is\nconcerned about every aspect. We have to make the best use of ourselves\nfor his kingdom; that is our rule of life. That rule means neither\npainful nor frantic abstinences nor any forced way of living. Purity,\ncleanliness, health, none of these things are for themselves, they are\nfor use; none are magic, all are means. The sword must be sharp and\nclean. That does not mean that we are perpetually to sharpen and clean\nit--which would weaken and waste the blade. The sword must neither be\ndrawn constantly nor always rusting in its sheath. Those who have had\nthe wits and soul to come to God, will have the wits and soul to find\nout and know what is waste, what is vanity, what is the happiness that\nbegets strength of body and spirit, what is error, where vice begins,\nand to avoid and repent and recoil from all those things that degrade.\nThese are matters not of the rule of life but of the application\nof life. They must neither be neglected nor made disproportionally\nimportant.\n\nTo the believer, relationship with God is the supreme relationship. It\nis difficult to imagine how the association of lovers and friends can\nbe very fine and close and good unless the two who love are each also\nlinked to God, so that through their moods and fluctuations and\nthe changes of years they can be held steadfast by his undying\nsteadfastness. But it has been felt by many deep-feeling people that\nthere is so much kindred between the love and trust of husband and wife\nand the feeling we have for God, that it is reasonable to consider the\nformer also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated\nman and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness\nand to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and\ntransitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very\npresence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that\nthey are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more who would\nfain be so, and some who are. And from this comes the earnest desire to\nmake marriage sacramental and the attempt to impose upon all the world\nthe outward appearance, the restrictions, the pretence at least of such\na sacramental union.\n\nThere may be such a quasi-sacramental union in many cases, but only\nafter years can one be sure of it; it is not to be brought about by\nvows and promises but by an essential kindred and cleaving of body and\nspirit; and it concerns only the two who can dare to say they have it,\nand God. And the divine thing in marriage, the thing that is most like\nthe love of God, is, even then, not the relationship of the man and\nwoman as man and woman but the comradeship and trust and mutual help\nand pity that joins them. No doubt that from the mutual necessities of\nbodily love and the common adventure, the necessary honesties and helps\nof a joint life, there springs the stoutest, nearest, most enduring and\nbest of human companionship; perhaps only upon that root can the best of\nmortal comradeship be got; but it does not follow that the mere ordinary\ncoming together and pairing off of men and women is in itself divine or\nsacramental or anything of the sort. Being in love is a condition that\nmay have its moments of sublime exaltation, but it is for the most part\nan experience far down the scale below divine experience; it is often\nlove only in so far as it shares the name with better things; it is\ngreed, it is admiration, it is desire, it is the itch for excitement,\nit is the instinct for competition, it is lust, it is curiosity, it is\nadventure, it is jealousy, it is hate. On a hundred scores \u2018lovers\u2019\nmeet and part. Thereby some few find true love and the spirit of God in\nthemselves or others.\n\nLovers may love God in one another; I do not deny it. That is no reason\nwhy the imitation and outward form of this great happiness should be\nmade an obligation upon all men and women who are attracted by one\nanother, nor why it should be woven into the essentials of religion.\nFor women much more than for men is this confusion dangerous, lest a\npersonal love should shape and dominate their lives instead of God. \u201cHe\nfor God only; she for God in him,\u201d phrases the idea of Milton and of\nancient Islam; it is the formula of sexual infatuation, a formula quite\neasily inverted, as the end of Goethe\u2019s Faust (\u201cThe woman soul leadeth\nus upward and on\u201d) may witness. The whole drift of modern religious\nfeeling is against this exaggeration of sexual feeling, these moods of\nsexual slavishness, in spiritual things. Between the healthy love\nof ordinary mortal lovers in love and the love of God, there is\nan essential contrast and opposition in this, that preference,\nexclusiveness, and jealousy seem to be in the very nature of the former\nand are absolutely incompatible with the latter. The former is the\nintensest realisation of which our individualities are capable; the\nlatter is the way of escape from the limitations of individuality. It\nmay be true that a few men and more women do achieve the completest\nunselfishness and self-abandonment in earthly love. So the poets and\nromancers tell us. If so, it is that by an imaginative perversion they\nhave given to some attractive person a worship that should be reserved\nfor God and a devotion that is normally evoked only by little children\nin their mother\u2019s heart. It is not the way between most of the men and\nwomen one meets in this world.\n\nBut between God and the believer there is no other way, there is nothing\nelse, but self-surrender and the ending of self.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SIXTH\n\nMODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION\n\n\n\n1. THE BIOLOGICAL EQUIVALENT OF SIN\n\n\nIf the reader who is unfamiliar with scientific things will obtain and\nread Metchnikoff\u2019s \u201cNature of Man,\u201d he will find there an interesting\nsummary of the biological facts that bear upon and destroy the delusion\nthat there is such a thing as individual perfection, that there is even\nideal perfection for humanity. With an abundance of convincing\ninstances Professor Metchnikoff demonstrates that life is a system of\n\u201cdisharmonies,\u201d capable of no perfect way, that there is no \u201cperfect\u201d\n dieting, no \u201cperfect\u201d sexual life, no \u201cperfect\u201d happiness, no \u201cperfect\u201d\n conduct. He releases one from the arbitrary but all too easy assumption\nthat there is even an ideal \u201cperfection\u201d in organic life. He sweeps out\nof the mind with all the confidence and conviction of a physiological\nspecialist, any idea that there is a perfect man or a conceivable\nperfect man. It is in the nature of every man to fall short at every\npoint from perfection. From the biological point of view we are as\nindividuals a series of involuntary \u201ctries\u201d on the part of an imperfect\nspecies towards an unknown end.\n\nOur spiritual nature follows our bodily as a glove follows a hand.\nWe are disharmonious beings and salvation no more makes an end to the\ndefects of our souls than it makes an end to the decay of our teeth or\nto those vestigial structures of our body that endanger our physical\nwelfare. Salvation leaves us still disharmonious, and adds not an inch\nto our spiritual and moral stature.\n\n\n\n2. WHAT IS DAMNATION?\n\n\nLet us now take up the question of what is Sin? and what we mean by the\nterm \u201cdamnation,\u201d in the light of this view of human reality. Most of\nthe great world religions are as clear as Professor Metchnikoff that\nlife in the world is a tangle of disharmonies, and in most cases they\nsupply a more or less myth-like explanation, they declare that evil is\none side of the conflict between Ahriman and Ormazd, or that it is the\npunishment of an act of disobedience, of the fall of man and world alike\nfrom a state of harmony. Their case, like his, is that THIS world is\ndamned.\n\nWe do not find the belief that superposed upon the miseries of this\nworld there are the still bitterer miseries of punishments after death,\nso nearly universal. The endless punishments of hell appear to be\nan exploit of theory; they have a superadded appearance even in the\nChristian system; the same common tendency to superlatives and absolutes\nthat makes men ashamed to admit that God is finite, makes them seek to\nenhance the merits of their Saviour by the device of everlasting fire.\nConquest over the sorrow of life and the fear of death do not seem to\nthem sufficient for Christ\u2019s glory.\n\nNow the turning round of the modern mind from a conception of the\nuniverse as something derived deductively from the past to a conception\nof it as something gathering itself adventurously towards the future,\ninvolves a release from the supposed necessity to tell a story and\nexplain why. Instead comes the inquiry, \u201cTo what end?\u201d We can say\nwithout mental discomfort, these disharmonies are here, this damnation\nis here--inexplicably. We can, without any distressful inquiry into\nultimate origins, bring our minds to the conception of a spontaneous and\ndeveloping God arising out of those stresses in our hearts and in the\nuniverse, and arising to overcome them. Salvation for the individual\nis escape from the individual distress at disharmony and the individual\ndefeat by death, into the Kingdom of God. And damnation can be nothing\nmore and nothing less than the failure or inability or disinclination to\nmake that escape.\n\nSomething of that idea of damnation as a lack of the will for salvation\nhas crept at a number of points into contemporary religious thought. It\nwas the fine fancy of Swedenborg that the damned go to their own hells\nof their own accord. It underlies a queer poem, \u201cSimpson,\u201d by that\ninteresting essayist upon modern Christianity, Mr. Clutton Brock, which\nI have recently read. Simpson dies and goes to hell--it is rather like\nthe Cromwell Road--and approves of it very highly, and then and then\nonly is he completely damned. Not to realise that one can be damned is\ncertainly to be damned; such is Mr. Brock\u2019s idea. It is his definition\nof damnation. Satisfaction with existing things is damnation. It is\nsurrender to limitation; it is acquiescence in \u201cdisharmony\u201d; it is\nmaking peace with that enemy against whom God fights for ever.\n\n(But whether there are indeed Simpsons who acquiesce always and for ever\nremains for me, as I have already confessed in the previous chapter,\na quite open question. My Arminian temperament turns me from the\nCalvinistic conclusion of Mr. Brock\u2019s satire.)\n\n\n\n3. SIN IS NOT DAMNATION\n\n\nNow the question of sin will hardly concern those damned and lost by\nnature, if such there be. Sin is not the same thing as damnation, as\nwe have just defined damnation. Damnation is a state, but sin is an\nincident. One is an essential and the other an incidental separation\nfrom God. It is possible to sin without being damned; and to be\ndamned is to be in a state when sin scarcely matters, like ink upon a\nblackamoor. You cannot have questions of more or less among absolute\nthings.\n\nIt is the amazing and distressful discovery of every believer so soon as\nthe first exaltation of belief is past, that one does not remain always\nin touch with God. At first it seems incredible that one should ever\nhave any motive again that is not also God\u2019s motive. Then one\nfinds oneself caught unawares by a base impulse. We discover\nthat discontinuousness of our apparently homogeneous selves, the\nunincorporated and warring elements that seemed at first altogether\nabsent from the synthesis of conversion. We are tripped up by\nforgetfulness, by distraction, by old habits, by tricks of appearance.\nThere come dull patches of existence; those mysterious obliterations of\none\u2019s finer sense that are due at times to the little minor poisons one\neats or drinks, to phases of fatigue, ill-health and bodily disorder, or\none is betrayed by some unanticipated storm of emotion, brewed deep in\nthe animal being and released by any trifling accident, such as personal\njealousy or lust, or one is relaxed by contentment into vanity.\nAll these rebel forces of our ill-coordinated selves, all these\n\u201cdisharmonies,\u201d of the inner being, snatch us away from our devotion to\nGod\u2019s service, carry us off to follies, offences, unkindness, waste, and\nleave us compromised, involved, and regretful, perplexed by a hundred\ndifficulties we have put in our own way back to God.\n\nThis is the personal problem of Sin. Here prayer avails; here God can\nhelp us. From God comes the strength to repent and make such reparation\nas we can, to begin the battle again further back and lower down. From\nGod comes the power to anticipate the struggle with one\u2019s rebel self,\nand to resist and prevail over it.\n\n\n\n4. THE SINS OF THE INSANE\n\n\nAn extreme case is very serviceable in such a discussion as this.\n\nIt happens that the author carries on a correspondence with several\nlunatics in asylums. There is a considerable freedom of notepaper\nin these institutions; the outgoing letters are no doubt censored or\nselected in some way, but a proportion at any rate are allowed to go out\nto their addresses. As a journalist who signs his articles and as the\nauthor of various books of fiction, as a frequent NAME, that is, to any\none much forced back upon reading, the writer is particularly accessible\nto this type of correspondent. The letters come, some manifesting\na hopeless disorder that permits of no reply, but some being the\nexpression of minds overlaid not at all offensively by a web of fantasy,\nand some (and these are the more touching ones and the ones that most\nconcern us now) as sanely conceived and expressed as any letters could\nbe. They are written by people living lives very like the lives of us\nwho are called \u201csane,\u201d except that they lift to a higher excitement and\nfall to a lower depression, and that these extremer phases of mania or\nmelancholia slip the leash of mental consistency altogether and take\nabnormal forms. They tap deep founts of impulse, such as we of the safer\nways of mediocrity do but glimpse under the influence of drugs, or in\ndreams and rare moments of controllable extravagance. Then the insane\nbecome \u201cglorious,\u201d or they become murderous, or they become suicidal.\nAll these letter-writers in confinement have convinced their\nfellow-creatures by some extravagance that they are a danger to\nthemselves or others.\n\nThe letters that come from such types written during their sane\nintervals, are entirely sane. Some, who are probably unaware--I think\nthey should know--of the offences or possibilities that justify their\nincarceration, write with a certain resentment at their position; others\nare entirely acquiescent, but one or two complain of the neglect of\nfriends and relations. But all are as manifestly capable of religion and\nof the religious life as any other intelligent persons during the\nlucid interludes that make up nine-tenths perhaps of their lives. . . .\nSuppose now one of these cases, and suppose that the infirmity takes\nthe form of some cruel, disgusting, or destructive disposition that may\nbecome at times overwhelming, and you have our universal trouble with\nsinful tendency, as it were magnified for examination. It is clear that\nthe mania which defines his position must be the primary if not the\ncardinal business in the life of a lunatic, but his problem with that\nis different not in kind but merely in degree from the problem of\nlusts, vanities, and weaknesses in what we call normal lives. It is an\nunconquered tract, a great rebel province in his being, which refuses to\nserve God and tries to prevent him serving God, and succeeds at times in\nwresting his capital out of his control. But his relationship to that\nis the same relationship as ours to the backward and insubordinate\nparishes, criminal slums, and disorderly houses in our own private\ntexture.\n\nIt is clear that the believer who is a lunatic is, as it were, only the\nbetter part of himself. He serves God with this unconquered disposition\nin him, like a man who, whatever else he is and does, is obliged to be\nthe keeper of an untrustworthy and wicked animal. His beast gets loose.\nHis only resort is to warn those about him when he feels that jangling\nor excitement of the nerves which precedes its escapes, to limit its\nrange, to place weapons beyond its reach. And there are plenty of human\nbeings very much in his case, whose beasts have never got loose or have\ngot caught back before their essential insanity was apparent. And there\nare those uncertifiable lunatics we call men and women of \u201cimpulse\u201d\n and \u201cstrong passions.\u201d If perhaps they have more self-control than the\nreally mad, yet it happens oftener with them that the whole intelligent\nbeing falls under the dominion of evil. The passion scarcely less than\nthe obsession may darken the whole moral sky. Repentance and atonement;\nnothing less will avail them after the storm has passed, and the\nsedulous preparation of defences and palliatives against the return of\nthe storm.\n\nThis discussion of the lunatic\u2019s case gives us indeed, usefully coarse\nand large, the lines for the treatment of every human weakness by the\nservants of God. A \u201cweakness,\u201d just like the lunatic\u2019s mania, becomes a\nparticular charge under God, a special duty for the person it affects.\nHe has to minimise it, to isolate it, to keep it out of mischief. If he\ncan he must adopt preventive measures. . . .\n\nThese passions and weaknesses that get control of us hamper our\nusefulness to God, they are an incessant anxiety and distress to us,\nthey wound our self-respect and make us incomprehensible to many who\nwould trust us, they discredit the faith we profess. If they break\nthrough and break through again it is natural and proper that men and\nwomen should cease to believe in our faith, cease to work with us or to\nmeet us frankly. . . . Our sins do everything evil to us and through us\nexcept separate us from God.\n\nYet let there be no mistake about one thing. Here prayer is a power.\nHere God can indeed work miracles. A man with the light of God in his\nheart can defeat vicious habits, rise again combative and undaunted\nafter a hundred falls, escape from the grip of lusts and revenges, make\nhead against despair, thrust back the very onset of madness. He is still\nthe same man he was before he came to God, still with his libidinous,\nvindictive, boastful, or indolent vein; but now his will to prevail\nover those qualities can refer to an exterior standard and an external\ninterest, he can draw upon a strength, almost boundless, beyond his own.\n\n\n\n5. BELIEVE, AND YOU ARE SAVED\n\n\nBut be a sin great or small, it cannot damn a man once he has found God.\nYou may kill and hang for it, you may rob or rape; the moment you truly\nrepent and set yourself to such atonement and reparation as is possible\nthere remains no barrier between you and God. Directly you cease to hide\nor deny or escape, and turn manfully towards the consequences and the\nsetting of things right, you take hold again of the hand of God. Though\nyou sin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest\nof you. Nothing but utter blindness of the spirit can shut a man off\nfrom God.\n\nThere is nothing one can suffer, no situation so unfortunate, that it\ncan shut off one who has the thought of God, from God. If you but lift\nup your head for a moment out of a stormy chaos of madness and cry to\nhim, God is there, God will not fail you. A convicted criminal, frankly\npenitent, and neither obdurate nor abject, whatever the evil of his\nyesterdays, may still die well and bravely on the gallows to the glory\nof God. He may step straight from that death into the immortal being of\nGod.\n\nThis persuasion is the very essence of the religion of the true God.\nThere is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented of, can\nstand between God and man.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER THE SEVENTH\n\nTHE IDEA OF A CHURCH\n\n\n\n1. THE WORLD DAWN\n\n\nAs yet those who may be counted as belonging definitely to the new\nreligion are few and scattered and unconfessed, their realisations\nare still uncertain and incomplete. But that is no augury for the\ncontinuance of this state of affairs even for the next few decades.\nThere are many signs that the revival is coming very swiftly, it may be\ncoming as swiftly as the morning comes after a tropical night. It may\nseem at present as though nothing very much were happening, except for\nthe fact that the old familiar constellations of theology have become\na little pallid and lost something of their multitude of points. But\nnothing fades of itself. The deep stillness of the late night is broken\nby a stirring, and the morning star of creedless faith, the last and\nbrightest of the stars, the star that owes its light to the coming sun\nis in the sky.\n\nThere is a stirring and a movement. There is a stir, like the stir\nbefore a breeze. Men are beginning to speak of religion without the\nbluster of the Christian formulae; they have begun to speak of God\nwithout any reference to Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence. The\nDeists and Theists of an older generation, be it noted, never did that.\nTheir \u201cSupreme Being\u201d repudiated nothing. He was merely the whittled\nstump of the Trinity. It is in the last few decades that the western\nmind has slipped loose from this absolutist conception of God that has\ndominated the intelligence of Christendom at least, for many centuries.\nAlmost unconsciously the new thought is taking a course that will lead\nit far away from the moorings of Omnipotence. It is like a ship that\nhas slipped its anchors and drifts, still sleeping, under the pale and\nvanishing stars, out to the open sea. . . .\n\n\n\n2. CONVERGENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS\n\n\nIn quite a little while the whole world may be alive with this renascent\nfaith.\n\nFor emancipation from the Trinitarian formularies and from a belief in\nan infinite God means not merely a great revivification of minds trained\nunder the decadence of orthodox Christianity, minds which have hitherto\nbeen hopelessly embarrassed by the choice between pseudo-Christian\nreligion or denial, but also it opens the way towards the completest\nunderstanding and sympathy and participation with the kindred movements\nfor release and for an intensification of the religious life, that are\ngoing on outside the sphere of the Christian tradition and influence\naltogether. Allusion has already been made to the sympathetic devotional\npoetry of Rabindranath Tagore; he stands for a movement in Brahminism\nparallel with and assimilable to the worship of the true God of mankind.\n\nIt is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is\nentirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an evil\nentanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is too easily\nassumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with renunciation, not\nmerely of self but of being, with the escape from all effort of any sort\ninto an exalted vacuity. This is indeed neither the spirit of China nor\nof Islam nor of the every-day life of any people in the world. It is not\nthe spirit of the Sikh nor of these newer developments of Hindu thought.\nIt has never been the spirit of Japan. To-day less than ever does Asia\nseem disposed to give up life and the effort of life. Just as readily as\nEuropeans, do the Asiatics reach out their arms to that fuller life we\ncan live, that greater intensity of existence, to which we can attain\nby escaping from ourselves. All mankind is seeking God. There is not\na nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at this\nmoment by the spirit of God in them towards the discovery of God. This\nis not an age of despair but an age of hope in Asia as in all the world\nbesides.\n\nIslam is undergoing a process of revision closely parallel to that\nwhich ransacks Christianity. Tradition and mediaeval doctrines are being\nthrust aside in a similar way. There is much probing into the spirit and\nintention of the Founder. The time is almost ripe for a heart-searching\nDialogue of the Dead, \u201cHow we settled our religions for ever and ever,\u201d\n between, let us say, Eusebius of Caesarea and one of Nizam-al-Mulk\u2019s\ntame theologians. They would be drawn together by the same tribulations;\nthey would be in the closest sympathy against the temerity of the\nmoderns; they would have a common courtliness. The Quran is but little\nread by Europeans; it is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that\nit does not contain; there is much confusion in people\u2019s minds between\nits text and the ancient Semitic traditions and usages retained by its\nfollowers; in places it may seem formless and barbaric; but what it has\nchiefly to tell of is the leadership of one individualised militant God\nwho claims the rule of the whole world, who favours neither rank nor\nrace, who would lead men to righteousness. It is much more free from\nsacramentalism, from vestiges of the ancient blood sacrifice, and its\nassociated sacerdotalism, than Christianity. The religion that\nwill presently sway mankind can be reached more easily from that\nstarting-point than from the confused mysteries of Trinitarian theology.\nIslam was never saddled with a creed. With the very name \u201cIslam\u201d\n (submission to God) there is no quarrel for those who hold the new\nfaith. . . .\n\nAll the world over there is this stirring in the dry bones of the old\nbeliefs. There is scarcely a religion that has not its Bahaism, its\nModernists, its Brahmo Somaj, its \u201creligion without theology,\u201d its\nattempts to escape from old forms and hampering associations to that\nliving and world-wide spiritual reality upon which the human mind almost\ninstinctively insists. . . .\n\nIt is the same God we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the\nsame God.\n\nSo that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental\nand disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may\nbe and most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood\nof religious unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs,\nsweeping away the old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and\nshrines, the last crumb of the Orphic victim and the last rag of the\nSerapeum, and turning all men about into one direction, as the ships and\nhouseboats swing round together in some great river with the uprush of\nthe tide. . . .\n\n\n\n3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH?\n\n\nAmong those who are beginning to realise the differences and identities\nof the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions\nof organisation and assembly are being discussed. Every new religious\ndevelopment is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces,\nand it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their\nfaith there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to\ndetermine sources and to form original congregations, especially among\npeople with European traditions.\n\nThese dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are\nimitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there\nis no claim to a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men\nhave thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology\nhas cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers\nor a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem\nto insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church\nis particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its\nsacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful\ninterpolations there is no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood\nsacrifices or the mysteries of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses\nwere superadded after his martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a\ngospel; he sent out not medicine men but apostles.\n\nNo doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to God. They become\nnaturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise God, each will be\ndisposed in his own fashion to call his neighbour\u2019s attention to what\nhe sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a\npost card; this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells\npositively but because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little\ndoubt have I that we do) need special propagandas and organisations to\ndiscuss errors and keep back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free\nspeech and restrain the enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want\na church to keep our faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for\nthat there is no need for orthodoxies and controlling organisations of\nstatement. It is for each man to follow his own impulse, and to speak to\nhis like in his own fashion.\n\nWhatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name\nof the true God must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of\nreligion.\n\nThe history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation\nin dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the\nunfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by\nrobes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom\nChrist detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of\na church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs\nof men, for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the\ncollecting of eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution\nof bread, the notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and\nsuchlike affairs. The better we organise such things, the freer and\nbetter equipped we leave men\u2019s minds for nobler purposes, for those\nadventures and experiments towards God\u2019s purpose which are the reality\nof life. But all organisations must be watched, for whatever is\norganised can be \u201ccaptured\u201d and misused. Repentance, moreover, is the\nbeginning and essential of the religious life, and organisations (acting\nthrough their secretaries and officials) never repent. God deals\nonly with the individual for the individual\u2019s surrender. He takes no\ncognisance of committees.\n\nThose who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most\nmistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to\npurchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one\u2019s\nsense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you\nknow where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of God for ESPRIT\nDE CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to\nkeep anniversaries and establish sacramental ceremonies. The disposition\nto form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all\ntoo strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such\norganisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living\nfaith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so\nmuch as a definite name to the faith of the true God. Organisation for\nworship and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little\nmanifest good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for God to\nirradiate your soul.\n\nAll these are very valid objections to the church-forming disposition.\n\n\n\n4. ORGANISATIONS UNDER GOD\n\n\nYet still this leaves many dissatisfied. They want to shout out about\nGod. They want to share this great thing with all mankind.\n\nWhy should they not shout and share?\n\nLet them express all that they desire to express in their own fashion\nby themselves or grouped with their friends as they will. Let them shout\nchorally if they are so disposed. Let them work in a gang if so they\ncan work the better. But let them guard themselves against the idea\nthat they can have God particularly or exclusively with them in any such\nundertaking. Or that so they can express God rather than themselves.\n\nThat I think states the attitude of the modern spirit towards the idea\nof a church. Mankind passes for ever out of the idolatry of altars,\naway from the obscene rites of circumcision and symbolical cannibalism,\nbeyond the sway of the ceremonial priest. But if the modern spirit holds\nthat religion cannot be organised or any intermediary thrust between God\nand man, that does not preclude infinite possibilities of organisation\nand collective action UNDER God and within the compass of religion.\nThere is no reason why religious men should not band themselves the\nbetter to attain specific ends. To borrow a term from British politics,\nthere is no objection to AD HOC organisations. The objection lies not\nagainst subsidiary organisations for service but against organisations\nthat may claim to be comprehensive.\n\nFor example there is no reason why one should not--and in many cases\nthere are good reasons why one should--organise or join associations\nfor the criticism of religious ideas, an employment that may pass very\nreadily into propaganda.\n\nMany people feel the need of prayer to resist the evil in themselves and\nto keep them in mind of divine emotion. And many want not merely prayer\nbut formal prayer and the support of others, praying in unison. The\nwriter does not understand this desire or need for collective prayer\nvery well, but there are people who appear to do so and there is no\nreason why they should not assemble for that purpose. And there is\nno doubt that divine poetry, divine maxims, religious thought\nfinely expressed, may be heard, rehearsed, collected, published, and\ndistributed by associations. The desire for expression implies a sort\nof assembly, a hearer at least as well as a speaker. And expression has\nmany forms. People with a strong artistic impulse will necessarily want\nto express themselves by art when religion touches them, and many arts,\narchitecture and the drama for example, are collective undertakings. I\ndo not see why there should not be, under God, associations for building\ncathedrals and suchlike great still places urgent with beauty, into\nwhich men and women may go to rest from the clamour of the day\u2019s\nconfusions; I do not see why men should not make great shrines and\npictures expressing their sense of divine things, and why they should\nnot combine in such enterprises rather than work to fill heterogeneous\nand chaotic art galleries. A wave of religious revival and religious\nclarification, such as I foresee, will most certainly bring with it a\ngreat revival of art, religious art, music, songs, and writings of\nall sorts, drama, the making of shrines, praying places, temples and\nretreats, the creation of pictures and sculptures. It is not necessary\nto have priestcraft and an organised church for such ends. Such\nenrichments of feeling and thought are part of the service of God.\n\nAnd again, under God, there may be associations and fraternities\nfor research in pure science; associations for the teaching and\nsimplification of languages; associations for promoting and watching\neducation; associations for the discussion of political problems and\nthe determination of right policies. In all these ways men may multiply\ntheir use by union. Only when associations seek to control things\nof belief, to dictate formulae, restrict religious activities or the\nfreedom of religious thought and teaching, when they tend to subdivide\nthose who believe and to set up jealousies or exclusions, do they become\nantagonistic to the spirit of modern religion.\n\n\n\n5. THE STATE IS GOD\u2019S INSTRUMENT\n\n\nBecause religion cannot be organised, because God is everywhere and\nimmediately accessible to every human being, it does not follow\nthat religion cannot organise every other human affair. It is indeed\nessential to the idea that God is the Invisible King of this round\nworld and all mankind, that we should see in every government, great\nand small, from the council of the world-state that is presently coming,\ndown to the village assembly, the instrument of God\u2019s practical control.\nReligion which is free, speaking freely through whom it will, subject to\na perpetual unlimited criticism, will be the life and driving power of\nthe whole organised world. So that if you prefer not to say that there\nwill be no church, if you choose rather to declare that the world-state\nis God\u2019s church, you may have it so if you will. Provided that you\nleave conscience and speech and writing and teaching about divine things\nabsolutely free, and that you try to set no nets about God.\n\nThe world is God\u2019s and he takes it. But he himself remains freedom, and\nwe find our freedom in him.\n\n\n\nTHE ENVOY\n\n\nSo I end this compact statement of the renascent religion which I\nbelieve to be crystallising out of the intellectual, social, and\nspiritual confusions of this time. It is an account rendered. It is a\nstatement and record; not a theory. There is nothing in all this that\nhas been invented or constructed by the writer; I have been but scribe\nto the spirit of my generation; I have at most assembled and put\ntogether things and thoughts that I have come upon, have transferred the\nstatements of \u201cscience\u201d into religious terminology, rejected obsolescent\ndefinitions, and re-coordinated propositions that had drifted into\nopposition. Thus, I see, ideas are developing, and thus have I written\nthem down. It is a secondary matter that I am convinced that this trend\nof intelligent opinion is a discovery of truth. The reader is told of my\nown belief merely to avoid an affectation of impartiality and aloofness.\n\nThe theogony here set forth is ancient; one can trace it appearing and\ndisappearing and recurring in the mutilated records of many different\nschools of speculation; the conception of God as finite is one that has\nbeen discussed very illuminatingly in recent years in the work of one I\nam happy to write of as my friend and master, that very great American,\nthe late William James. It was an idea that became increasingly\nimportant to him towards the end of his life. And it is the most\nreleasing idea in the system.\n\nOnly in the most general terms can I trace the other origins of these\npresent views. I do not think modern religion owes much to what is\ncalled Deism or Theism. The rather abstract and futile Deism of the\neighteenth century, of \u201cvotre Etre supreme\u201d who bored the friends of\nRobespierre, was a sterile thing, it has little relation to these modern\ndevelopments, it conceived of God as an infinite Being of no particular\ncharacter whereas God is a finite being of a very especial character. On\nthe other hand men and women who have set themselves, with unavoidable\ntheological preconceptions, it is true, to speculate upon the actual\nteachings and quality of Christ, have produced interpretations that\nhave interwoven insensibly with thoughts more apparently new. There is a\ncurious modernity about very many of Christ\u2019s recorded sayings. Revived\nreligion has also, no doubt, been the receiver of many religious\nbankruptcies, of Positivism for example, which failed through its bleak\nabstraction and an unspiritual texture. Religion, thus restated, must,\nI think, presently incorporate great sections of thought that are still\nattached to formal Christianity. The time is at hand when many of the\norganised Christian churches will be forced to define their positions,\neither in terms that will identify them with this renascence, or that\nwill lead to the release of their more liberal adherents. Its probable\nobligations to Eastern thought are less readily estimated by a European\nwriter.\n\nModern religion has no revelation and no founder; it is the privilege\nand possession of no coterie of disciples or exponents; it is appearing\nsimultaneously round and about the world exactly as a crystallising\nsubstance appears here and there in a super-saturated solution. It is\na process of truth, guided by the divinity in men. It needs no other\nguidance, and no protection. It needs nothing but freedom, free speech,\nand honest statement. Out of the most mixed and impure solutions a\ngrowing crystal is infallibly able to select its substance. The diamond\narises bright, definite, and pure out of a dark matrix of structureless\nconfusion.\n\nThis metaphor of crystallisation is perhaps the best symbol of the\nadvent and growth of the new understanding. It has no church, no\nauthorities, no teachers, no orthodoxy. It does not even thrust and\nstruggle among the other things; simply it grows clear. There will be\nno putting an end to it. It arrives inevitably, and it will continue\nto separate itself out from confusing ideas. It becomes, as it were the\nKoh-i-noor; it is a Mountain of Light, growing and increasing. It is an\nall-pervading lucidity, a brightness and clearness. It has no head to\nsmite, no body you can destroy; it overleaps all barriers; it breaks\nout in despite of every enclosure. It will compel all things to orient\nthemselves to it.\n\nIt comes as the dawn comes, through whatever clouds and mists may be\nhere or whatever smoke and curtains may be there. It comes as the day\ncomes to the ships that put to sea.\n\nIt is the Kingdom of God at hand.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg\u2019s God The Invisible King, by Herbert George Wells","title":"God, the Invisible King","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":39813}