{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4004/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4004","id":"gutenberg_4004","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4004","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","Essays","Nobel Prizes in Literature","Prefaces"],"text":"Produced by Eve Sobol\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO ANDROCLES AND THE LION:\n\nON THE PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY\n\n\nBy Bernard Shaw\n\n\n1912\n\n\n\nCONTENTS:\n\n   Why not give Christianity a Trial?\n   Why Jesus more than Another?\n   Was Jesus a Coward?\n   Was Jesus a Martyr?\n   The Gospels without Prejudice\n   The Gospels now unintelligible to Novices\n   Worldliness of the Majority\n   Religion of the Minority. Salvationism\n   The Difference between Atonement and Punishment\n   Salvation at first a Class Privilege; and the Remedy\n   Retrospective Atonement; and the Expectation of the Redeemer\n   Completion of the Scheme by Luther and Calvin\n   John Barleycorn\n   Looking for the End of the World\n   The Honor of Divine Parentage\n\n   MATTHEW\n   The Annunciation: the Massacre: the Flight\n   John the Baptist\n   Jesus joins the Baptists\n   The Savage John and the Civilized Jesus\n   Jesus not a Proselytist\n   The Teachings of Jesus\n   The Miracles\n   Matthew imputes Bigotry to Jesus\n   The Great Change\n   Jerusalem and the Mystical Sacrifice\n   Not this Man but Barabbas\n   The Resurrection\n   Date of Matthew's Narrative\n   Class Type of Matthew's Jesus\n\n   MARK\n   The Women Disciples and the Ascension\n\n   LUKE\n   Luke the Literary Artist\n   The Charm of Luke's Narrative\n   The Touch of Parisian Romance\n   Waiting for the Messiah\n\n   JOHN\n   A New Story and a New Character\n   John the Immortal Eye Witness\n   The Peculiar Theology of Jesus\n   John agreed as to the Trial and Crucifixion\n   Credibility of the Gospels\n   Fashions of Belief Credibility and Truth\n   Christian Iconolatry and the Peril of the Iconoclast\n   The Alternative to Barabbas\n   The Reduction to Modern Practice of Christianity\n   Modern Communism\n   Redistribution\n   Shall He Who Makes, Own?\n   Labor Time\n   The Dream of Distribution According to Merit\n   Vital Distribution\n   Equal Distribution\n   The Captain and the Cabin Boy\n   The Political and Biological Objections to Inequality\n   Jesus as Economist\n   Jesus as Biologist\n   Money the Midwife of Scientific Communism\n   Judge Not\n   Limits to Free Will\n   Jesus on Marriage and the Family\n   Why Jesus did not Marry\n   Inconsistency of the Sex Instinct For Better for Worse\n   The Remedy\n   The Case for Marriage\n   Celibacy no Remedy\n   After the Crucifixion\n   The Vindictive Miracles and the Stoning of Stephen\n   Confusion of Christendom\n   Secret of Paul's Success\n   Paul's Qualities\n   Acts of the Apostles\n   The Controversies on Baptism and Transubstantiation\n   The Alternative Christs\n   Credulity no Criterion\n   Belief in Personal Immortality no Criterion\n   The Secular View Natural, not Rational, therefore Inevitable\n   \"The Higher Criticism\"\n   The Perils of Salvationism\n   The Importance of Hell in the Salvation Scheme\n   The Right to refuse Atonement\n   The Teaching of Christianity\n   Christianity and the Empire\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE ON THE PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY\n\n\n\n\nWHY NOT GIVE CHRISTIANITY A TRIAL?\n\nThe question seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute adherence\nto the old cry of \"Not this man, but Barabbas.\" Yet it is beginning to\nlook as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of his strong right hand,\nhis victories, his empires, his millions of money, and his moralities\nand churches and political constitutions. \"This man\" has not been a\nfailure yet; for nobody has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he\nhas had one quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name and taken his\ncross as a standard. There is a sort of compliment in that. There is\neven a sort of loyalty in it, like that of the brigand who breaks every\nlaw and yet claims to be a patriotic subject of the king who makes them.\nWe have always had a curious feeling that though we crucified Christ on\na stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it, and that\nif we were better men we might try his plan. There have been one or two\ngrotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of\nGod in Munster, which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious\nthan the one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part of Annas went\nhome and died of horror. But responsible people have never made such\nattempts. The moneyed, respectable, capable world has been steadily\nanti-Christian and Barabbasque since the crucifixion; and the specific\ndoctrine of Jesus has not in all that time been put into political or\ngeneral social practice. I am no more a Christian than Pilate was, or\nyou, gentle reader; and yet, like Pilate, I greatly prefer Jesus to\nAnnas and Caiaphas; and I am ready to admit that after contemplating the\nworld and human nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the\nworld's misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will\nif he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman. Pray\ndo not at this early point lose patience with me and shut the book. I\nassure you I am as sceptical and scientific and modern a thinker as you\nwill find anywhere. I grant you I know a great deal more about economics\nand politics than Jesus did, and can do things he could not do. I am\nby all Barabbasque standards a person of much better character and\nstanding, and greater practical sense. I have no sympathy with vagabonds\nand talkers who try to reform society by taking men away from their\nregular productive work and making vagabonds and talkers of them too;\nand if I had been Pilate I should have recognized as plainly as he the\nnecessity for suppressing attacks on the existing social order, however\ncorrupt that order might be, by people with no knowledge of government\nand no power to construct political machinery to carry out their views,\nacting on the very dangerous delusion that the end of the world was at\nhand. I make no defence of such Christians as Savonarola and John of\nLeyden: they were scuttling the ship before they had learned how to\nbuild a raft; and it became necessary to throw them overboard to save\nthe crew. I say this to set myself right with respectable society; but\nI must still insist that if Jesus could have worked out the practical\nproblems of a Communist constitution, an admitted obligation to deal\nwith crime without revenge or punishment, and a full assumption\nby humanity of divine responsibilities, he would have conferred an\nincalculable benefit on mankind, because these distinctive demands of\nhis are now turning out to be good sense and sound economics.\n\nI say distinctive, because his common humanity and his subjection to\ntime and space (that is, to the Syrian life of his period) involved his\nbelief in many things, true and false, that in no way distinguish\nhim from other Syrians of that time. But such common beliefs do not\nconstitute specific Christianity any more than wearing a beard, working\nin a carpenter's shop, or believing that the earth is flat and that\nthe stars could drop on it from heaven like hailstones. Christianity\ninterests practical statesmen now because of the doctrines that\ndistinguished Christ from the Jews and the Barabbasques generally,\nincluding ourselves.\n\n\n\n\nWHY JESUS MORE THAN ANOTHER?\n\nI do not imply, however, that these doctrines were peculiar to Christ.\nA doctrine peculiar to one man would be only a craze, unless its\ncomprehension depended on a development of human faculty so rare that\nonly one exceptionally gifted man possessed it. But even in this case it\nwould be useless, because incapable of spreading. Christianity is a step\nin moral evolution which is independent of any individual preacher. If\nJesus had never existed (and that he ever existed in any other sense\nthan that in which Shakespear's Hamlet existed has been vigorously\nquestioned) Tolstoy would have thought and taught and quarrelled with\nthe Greek Church all the same. Their creed has been fragmentarily\npractised to a considerable extent in spite of the fact that the laws\nof all countries treat it, in effect, as criminal. Many of its advocates\nhave been militant atheists. But for some reason the imagination of\nwhite mankind has picked out Jesus of Nazareth as THE Christ, and\nattributed all the Christian doctrines to him; and as it is the doctrine\nand not the man that matters, and, as, besides, one symbol is as good as\nanother provided everyone attaches the same meaning to it, I raise, for\nthe moment, no question as to how far the gospels are original, and how\nfar they consist of Greek and Chinese interpolations. The record that\nJesus said certain things is not invalidated by a demonstration that\nConfucius said them before him. Those who claim a literal divine\npaternity for him cannot be silenced by the discovery that the same\nclaim was made for Alexander and Augustus. And I am not just now\nconcerned with the credibility of the gospels as records of fact; for\nI am not acting as a detective, but turning our modern lights on to\ncertain ideas and doctrines in them which disentangle themselves from\nthe rest because they are flatly contrary to common practice, common\nsense, and common belief, and yet have, in the teeth of dogged\nincredulity and recalcitrance, produced an irresistible impression that\nChrist, though rejected by his posterity as an unpractical dreamer, and\nexecuted by his contemporaries as a dangerous anarchist and blasphemous\nmadman, was greater than his judges.\n\n\n\n\nWAS JESUS A COWARD?\n\nI know quite well that this impression of superiority is not produced\non everyone, even of those who profess extreme susceptibility to it.\nSetting aside the huge mass of inculcated Christ-worship which has no\nreal significance because it has no intelligence, there is, among people\nwho are really free to think for themselves on the subject, a great\ndeal of hearty dislike of Jesus and of contempt for his failure to save\nhimself and overcome his enemies by personal bravery and cunning as\nMahomet did. I have heard this feeling expressed far more impatiently by\npersons brought up in England as Christians than by Mahometans, who are,\nlike their prophet, very civil to Jesus, and allow him a place in their\nesteem and veneration at least as high as we accord to John the Baptist.\nBut this British bulldog contempt is founded on a complete misconception\nof his reasons for submitting voluntarily to an ordeal of torment and\ndeath. The modern Secularist is often so determined to regard Jesus as a\nman like himself and nothing more, that he slips unconsciously into the\nerror of assuming that Jesus shared that view. But it is quite clear\nfrom the New Testament writers (the chief authorities for believing that\nJesus ever existed) that Jesus at the time of his death believed\nhimself to be the Christ, a divine personage. It is therefore absurd to\ncriticize his conduct before Pilate as if he were Colonel Roosevelt or\nAdmiral von Tirpitz or even Mahomet. Whether you accept his belief in\nhis divinity as fully as Simon Peter did, or reject it as a delusion\nwhich led him to submit to torture and sacrifice his life without\nresistance in the conviction that he would presently rise again in\nglory, you are equally bound to admit that, far from behaving like a\ncoward or a sheep, he showed considerable physical fortitude in going\nthrough a cruel ordeal against which he could have defended himself as\neffectually as he cleared the moneychangers out of the temple. \"Gentle\nJesus, meek and mild\" is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant\nin the gospels. St. Matthew would as soon have thought of applying such\nadjectives to Judas Maccabeus as to Jesus; and even St. Luke, who makes\nJesus polite and gracious, does not make him meek. The picture of him\nas an English curate of the farcical comedy type, too meek to fight a\npoliceman, and everybody's butt, may be useful in the nursery to soften\nchildren; but that such a figure could ever have become a centre of the\nworld's attention is too absurd for discussion; grown men and women may\nspeak kindly of a harmless creature who utters amiable sentiments and is\na helpless nincompoop when he is called on to defend them; but they will\nnot follow him, nor do what he tells them, because they do not wish to\nshare his defeat and disgrace.\n\n\n\n\nWAS JESUS A MARTYR?\n\nIt is important therefore that we should clear our minds of the notion\nthat Jesus died, as some are in the habit of declaring, for his social\nand political opinions. There have been many martyrs to those opinions;\nbut he was not one of them, nor, as his words show, did he see any more\nsense in martyrdom than Galileo did. He was executed by the Jews for the\nblasphemy of claiming to be a God; and Pilate, to whom this was a mere\npiece of superstitious nonsense, let them execute him as the cheapest\nway of keeping them quiet, on the formal plea that he had committed\ntreason against Rome by saying that he was the King of the Jews. He was\nnot falsely accused, nor denied full opportunities of defending himself.\nThe proceedings were quite straightforward and regular; and Pilate,\nto whom the appeal lay, favored him and despised his judges, and was\nevidently willing enough to be conciliated. But instead of denying the\ncharge, Jesus repeated the offence. He knew what he was doing: he had\nalienated numbers of his own disciples and been stoned in the streets\nfor doing it before. He was not lying: he believed literally what he\nsaid. The horror of the High Priest was perfectly natural: he was a\nPrimate confronted with a heterodox street preacher uttering what seemed\nto him an appalling and impudent blasphemy. The fact that the blasphemy\nwas to Jesus a simple statement of fact, and that it has since been\naccepted as such by all western nations, does not invalidate the\nproceedings, nor give us the right to regard Annas and Caiaphas as worse\nmen than the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Head Master of Eton. If\nJesus had been indicted in a modern court, he would have been examined\nby two doctors; found to be obsessed by a delusion; declared incapable\nof pleading; and sent to an asylum: that is the whole difference. But\nplease note that when a man is charged before a modern tribunal (to take\na case that happened the other day) of having asserted and maintained\nthat he was an officer returned from the front to receive the Victoria\nCross at the hands of the King, although he was in fact a mechanic,\nnobody thinks of treating him as afflicted with a delusion. He is\npunished for false pretences, because his assertion is credible and\ntherefore misleading. Just so, the claim to divinity made by Jesus was\nto the High Priest, who looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, one\nthat might conceivably have been true, and might therefore have misled\nthe people in a very dangerous way. That was why he treated Jesus as an\nimposter and a blasphemer where we should have treated him as a madman.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOSPELS WITHOUT PREJUDICE.\n\nAll this will become clear if we read the gospels without prejudice.\nWhen I was young it was impossible to read them without fantastic\nconfusion of thought. The confusion was so utterly confounded that it\nwas called the proper spirit to read the Bible in. Jesus was a baby;\nand he was older than creation. He was a man who could be persecuted,\nstoned, scourged, and killed; and he was a god, immortal and\nall-powerful, able to raise the dead and call millions of angels to his\naid. It was a sin to doubt either view of him: that is, it was a sin to\nreason about him; and the end was that you did not reason about him, and\nread about him only when you were compelled. When you heard the gospel\nstories read in church, or learnt them from painters and poets, you came\nout with an impression of their contents that would have astonished a\nChinaman who had read the story without prepossession. Even sceptics who\nwere specially on their guard, put the Bible in the dock, and read\nthe gospels with the object of detecting discrepancies in the four\nnarratives to show that the writers were as subject to error as the\nwriters of yesterday's newspaper.\n\nAll this has changed greatly within two generations. Today the Bible is\nso little read that the language of the Authorized Version is rapidly\nbecoming obsolete; so that even in the United States, where the old\ntradition of the verbal infallibility of \"the book of books\"\nlingers more strongly than anywhere else except perhaps in Ulster,\nretranslations into modern English have been introduced perforce to\nsave its bare intelligibility. It is quite easy today to find cultivated\npersons who have never read the New Testament, and on whom therefore it\nis possible to try the experiment of asking them to read the gospels and\nstate what they have gathered as to the history and views and character\nof Christ.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GOSPELS NOW UNINTELLIGIBLE TO NOVICES.\n\nBut it will not do to read the gospels with a mind furnished only for\nthe reception of, say, a biography of Goethe. You will not make sense of\nthem, nor even be able without impatient weariness to persevere in the\ntask of going steadily through them, unless you know something of the\nhistory of the human imagination as applied to religion. Not long ago I\nasked a writer of distinguished intellectual competence whether he had\nmade a study of the gospels since his childhood. His reply was that he\nhad lately tried, but \"found it all such nonsense that I could not stick\nit.\" As I do not want to send anyone to the gospels with this result,\nI had better here give a brief exposition of how much of the history of\nreligion is needed to make the gospels and the conduct and ultimate fate\nof Jesus intelligible and interesting.\n\n\n\n\nWORLDLINESS OF THE MAJORITY.\n\nThe first common mistake to get rid of is that mankind consists of a\ngreat mass of religious people and a few eccentric atheists. It consists\nof a huge mass of worldly people, and a small percentage of persons\ndeeply interested in religion and concerned about their own souls\nand other peoples'; and this section consists mostly of those who\nare passionately affirming the established religion and those who are\npassionately attacking it, the genuine philosophers being very few. Thus\nyou never have a nation of millions of Wesleys and one Tom Paine.\nYou have a million Mr. Worldly Wisemans, one Wesley, with his small\ncongregation, and one Tom Paine, with his smaller congregation.\nThe passionately religious are a people apart; and if they were not\nhopelessly outnumbered by the worldly, they would turn the world upside\ndown, as St. Paul was reproached, quite justly, for wanting to do. Few\npeople can number among their personal acquaintances a single atheist or\na single Plymouth Brother. Unless a religious turn in ourselves has led\nus to seek the little Societies to which these rare birds belong, we\npass our lives among people who, whatever creeds they may repeat, and\nin whatever temples they may avouch their respectability and wear their\nSunday clothes, have robust consciences, and hunger and thirst, not for\nrighteousness, but for rich feeding and comfort and social position and\nattractive mates and ease and pleasure and respect and consideration:\nin short, for love and money. To these people one morality is as good\nas another provided they are used to it and can put up with its\nrestrictions without unhappiness; and in the maintenance of this\nmorality they will fight and punish and coerce without scruple. They\nmay not be the salt of the earth, these Philistines; but they are the\nsubstance of civilization; and they save society from ruin by criminals\nand conquerors as well as by Savonarolas and Knipperdollings. And as\nthey know, very sensibly, that a little religion is good for children\nand serves morality, keeping the poor in good humor or in awe by\npromising rewards in heaven or threatening torments in hell, they\nencourage the religious people up to a certain point: for instance, if\nSavonarola only tells the ladies of Florence that they ought to tear\noff their jewels and finery and sacrifice them to God, they offer him\na cardinal's hat, and praise him as a saint; but if he induces them to\nactually do it, they burn him as a public nuisance.\n\n\n\n\nRELIGION OF THE MINORITY. SALVATIONISM.\n\nThe religion of the tolerated religious minority has always been\nessentially the same religion: that is why its changes of name and form\nhave made so little difference. That is why, also, a nation so civilized\nas the English can convert negroes to their faith with great ease,\nbut cannot convert Mahometans or Jews. The negro finds in civilized\nSalvationism an unspeakably more comforting version of his crude creed;\nbut neither Saracen nor Jew sees any advantage in it over his own\nversion. The Crusader was surprised to find the Saracen quite as\nreligious and moral as himself, and rather more than less civilized.\nThe Latin Christian has nothing to offer the Greek Christian that\nGreek Christianity has not already provided. They are all, at root,\nSalvationists.\n\nLet us trace this religion of Salvation from its beginnings. So\nmany things that man does not himself contrive or desire are always\nhappening: death, plagues, tempests, blights, floods, sunrise and\nsunset, growths and harvests and decay, and Kant's two wonders of the\nstarry heavens above us and the moral law within us, that we conclude\nthat somebody must be doing it all, or that somebody is doing the good\nand somebody else doing the evil, or that armies of invisible persons,\nbenefit-cut and malevolent, are doing it; hence you postulate gods and\ndevils, angels and demons. You propitiate these powers with presents,\ncalled sacrifices, and flatteries, called praises. Then the Kantian\nmoral law within you makes you conceive your god as a judge; and\nstraightway you try to corrupt him, also with presents and flatteries.\nThis seems shocking to us; but our objection to it is quite a recent\ndevelopment: no longer ago than Shakespear's time it was thought quite\nnatural that litigants should give presents to human judges; and the\nbuying off of divine wrath by actual money payments to priests, or, in\nthe reformed churches which discountenance this, by subscriptions to\ncharities and church building and the like, is still in full swing. Its\npractical disadvantage is that though it makes matters very easy for\nthe rich, it cuts off the poor from all hope of divine favor. And this\nquickens the moral criticism of the poor to such an extent, that they\nsoon find the moral law within them revolting against the idea of buying\noff the deity with gold and gifts, though they are still quite ready\nto buy him off with the paper money of praise and professions of\nrepentance. Accordingly, you will find that though a religion may\nlast unchanged for many centuries in primitive communities where the\nconditions of life leave no room for poverty and riches, and the process\nof propitiating the supernatural powers is as well within the means\nof the least of the members as within those of the headman, yet when\ncommercial civilization arrives, and capitalism divides the people\ninto a few rich and a great many so poor that they can barely live, a\nmovement for religious reform will arise among the poor, and will be\nessentially a movement for cheap or entirely gratuitous salvation. To\nunderstand what the poor mean by propitiation, we must examine for a\nmoment what they mean by justice.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ATONEMENT AND PUNISHMENT\n\nThe primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly\nexpiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that\ntwo blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should\nbe paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine\nmajority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be\ninflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on\nother would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will show that this\nutilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the\nshedding of innocent blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty\nblood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of\nhis righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with\nthe rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it.\nIn doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own\nrevenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves;\nand cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.\nHowever much the Philistines have succeeded in confusing these things in\npractice, they are to the Salvationist sense distinct and even contrary.\nThe Baronet's cousin in Dickens's novel, who, perplexed by the failure\nof the police to discover the murderer of the baronet's solicitor, said\n\"Far better hang wrong fellow than no fellow,\" was not only expressing\na very common sentiment, but trembling on the brink of the rarer\nSalvationist opinion that it is much better to hang the wrong fellow:\nthat, in fact, the wrong fellow is the right fellow to hang.\n\nThe point is a cardinal one, because until we grasp it not only does\nhistorical Christianity remain unintelligible to us, but those who do\nnot care a rap about historical Christianity may be led into the mistake\nof supposing that if we discard revenge, and treat murderers exactly\nas God treated Cain: that is, exempt them from punishment by putting a\nbrand on them as unworthy to be sacrificed, and let them face the world\nas best they can with that brand on them, we should get rid both of\npunishment and sacrifice. It would not at all follow: on the contrary,\nthe feeling that there must be an expiation of the murder might quite\npossibly lead to our putting some innocent person--the more innocent the\nbetter--to a cruel death to balance the account with divine justice.\n\n\n\n\nSALVATION AT FIRST A CLASS PRIVILEGE; AND THE REMEDY\n\nThus, even when the poor decide that the method of purchasing salvation\nby offering rams and goats or bringing gold to the altar must be wrong\nbecause they cannot afford it, we still do not feel \"saved\" without a\nsacrifice and a victim. In vain do we try to substitute mystical rites\nthat cost nothing, such as circumcision, or, as a substitute for that,\nbaptism. Our sense of justice still demands an expiation, a sacrifice,\na sufferer for our sins. And this leaves the poor man still in his old\ndifficulty; for if it was impossible for him to procure rams and goats\nand shekels, how much more impossible is it for him to find a neighbor\nwho will voluntarily suffer for his sins: one who will say cheerfully\n\"You have committed a murder. Well, never mind: I am willing to be\nhanged for it in your stead?\"\n\nOur imagination must come to our rescue. Why not, instead of driving\nourselves to despair by insisting on a separate atonement by a separate\nredeemer for every sin, have one great atonement and one great redeemer\nto compound for the sins of the world once for all? Nothing easier,\nnothing cheaper. The yoke is easy, the burden light. All you have to do\nwhen the redeemer is once found (or invented by the imagination) is to\nbelieve in the efficacy of the transaction, and you are saved. The rams\nand goats cease to bleed; the altars which ask for expensive gifts and\ncontinually renewed sacrifices are torn down; and the Church of the\nsingle redeemer and the single atonement rises on the ruins of the old\ntemples, and becomes a single Church of the Christ.\n\n\n\n\nRETROSPECTIVE ATONEMENT, AND THE EXPECTATION OF THE REDEEMER\n\nBut this does not happen at once. Between the old costly religion of\nthe rich and the new gratuitous religion of the poor there comes\nan interregnum in which the redeemer, though conceived by the human\nimagination, is not yet found. He is awaited and expected under the\nnames of the Christ, the Messiah, Baldur the Beautiful, or what not; but\nhe has not yet come. Yet the sinners are not therefore in despair. It\nis true that they cannot say, as we say, \"The Christ has come, and has\nredeemed us;\" but they can say \"The Christ will come, and will redeem\nus,\" which, as the atonement is conceived as retrospective, is equally\nconsoling. There are periods when nations are seething with this\nexpectation and crying aloud with prophecy of the Redeemer through their\npoets. To feel that atmosphere we have only to take up the Bible and\nread Isaiah at one end of such a period and Luke and John at the other.\n\n\n\n\nCOMPLETION OF THE SCHEME BY LUTHER AND CALVIN\n\nWe now see our religion as a quaint but quite intelligible evolution\nfrom crude attempts to propitiate the destructive forces of Nature among\nsavages to a subtle theology with a costly ritual of sacrifice possible\nonly to the rich as a luxury, and finally to the religion of Luther and\nCalvin. And it must be said for the earlier forms that they involved\nvery real sacrifices. The sacrifice was not always vicarious, and is\nnot yet universally so. In India men pay with their own skins, torturing\nthemselves hideously to attain holiness. In the west, saints amazed the\nworld with their austerities and self-scourgings and confessions and\nvigils. But Luther delivered us from all that. His reformation was\na triumph of imagination and a triumph of cheapness. It brought you\ncomplete salvation and asked you for nothing but faith. Luther did not\nknow what he was doing in the scientific sociological way in which we\nknow it; but his instinct served him better than knowledge could have\ndone; for it was instinct rather than theological casuistry that made\nhim hold so resolutely to Justification by Faith as the trump card by\nwhich he should beat the Pope, or, as he would have put it, the sign in\nwhich he should conquer. He may be said to have abolished the charge for\nadmission to heaven. Paul had advocated this; but Luther and Calvin did\nit.\n\n\n\n\nJOHN BARLEYCORN\n\nThere is yet another page in the history of religion which must be\nconned and digested before the career of Jesus can be fully understood.\npeople who can read long books will find it in Frazer's Golden Bough.\nSimpler folk will find it in the peasant's song of John Barleycorn, now\nmade accessible to our drawingroom amateurs in the admirable collections\nof Somersetshire Folk Songs by Mr. Cecil Sharp. From Frazer's magnum\nopus you will learn how the same primitive logic which makes the\nEnglishman believe today that by eating a beefsteak he can acquire the\nstrength and courage of the bull, and to hold that belief in the face\nof the most ignominious defeats by vegetarian wrestlers and racers\nand bicyclists, led the first men who conceived God as capable of\nincarnation to believe that they could acquire a spark of his divinity\nby eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And from the song of John\nBarleycorn you may learn how the miracle of the seed, the growth,\nand the harvest, still the most wonderful of all the miracles and as\ninexplicable as ever, taught the primitive husbandman, and, as we must\nnow affirm, taught him quite rightly, that God is in the seed, and that\nGod is immortal. And thus it became the test of Godhead that nothing\nthat you could do to it could kill it, and that when you buried it, it\nwould rise again in renewed life and beauty and give mankind eternal\nlife on condition that it was eaten and drunk, and again slain and\nburied, to rise again for ever and ever. You may, and indeed must, use\nJohn Barleycorn \"right barbarouslee,\" cutting him \"off at knee\" with\nyour scythes, scourging him with your flails, burying him in the earth;\nand he will not resist you nor reproach you, but will rise again in\ngolden beauty amidst a great burst of sunshine and bird music, and\nsave you and renew your life. And from the interweaving of these two\ntraditions with the craving for the Redeemer, you at last get the\nconviction that when the Redeemer comes he will be immortal; he will\ngive us his body to eat and his blood to drink; and he will prove his\ndivinity by suffering a barbarous death without resistance or reproach,\nand rise from the dead and return to the earth in glory as the giver of\nlife eternal.\n\n\n\n\nLOOKING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD\n\nYet another persistent belief has beset the imagination of the religious\never since religion spread among the poor, or, rather, ever since\ncommercial civilization produced a hopelessly poor class cut off from\nenjoyment in this world. That belief is that the end of this world is at\nhand, and that it will presently pass away and be replaced by a kingdom\nof happiness, justice, and bliss in which the rich and the oppressors\nand the unjust shall have no share. We are all familiar with this\nexpectation: many of us cherish some pious relative who sees in every\ngreat calamity a sign of the approaching end. Warning pamphlets are in\nconstant circulation: advertisements are put in the papers and paid for\nby those who are convinced, and who are horrified at the indifference of\nthe irreligious to the approaching doom. And revivalist preachers, now\nas in the days of John the Baptist, seldom fail to warn their flocks to\nwatch and pray, as the great day will steal upon them like a thief in\nthe night, and cannot be long deferred in a world so wicked. This belief\nalso associates itself with Barleycorn's second coming; so that the two\nevents become identified at last.\n\nThere is the other and more artificial side of this belief, on which it\nis an inculcated dread. The ruler who appeals to the prospect of heaven\nto console the poor and keep them from insurrection also curbs the\nvicious by threatening them with hell. In the Koran we find Mahomet\ndriven more and more to this expedient of government; and experience\nconfirms his evident belief that it is impossible to govern without it\nin certain phases of civilization. We shall see later on that it gives\na powerful attraction to the belief in a Redeemer, since it adds to\nremorse of conscience, which hardened men bear very lightly, a definite\ndread of hideous and eternal torture.\n\n\n\n\nTHE HONOR OF DIVINE PARENTAGE\n\nOne more tradition must be noted. The consummation of praise for a king\nis to declare that he is the son of no earthly father, but of a god. His\nmother goes into the temple of Apollo, and Apollo comes to her in the\nshape of a serpent, or the like. The Roman emperors, following the\nexample of Augustus, claimed the title of God. Illogically, such divine\nkings insist a good deal on their royal human ancestors. Alexander,\nclaiming to be the son of Apollo, is equally determined to be the son of\nPhilip. As the gospels stand, St. Matthew and St. Luke give genealogies\n(the two are different) establishing the descent of Jesus through Joseph\nfrom the royal house of David, and yet declare that not Joseph but the\nHoly Ghost was the father of Jesus. It is therefore now held that the\nstory of the Holy Ghost is a later interpolation borrowed from the Greek\nand Roman imperial tradition. But experience shows that simultaneous\nfaith in the descent from David and the conception by the Holy Ghost is\npossible. Such double beliefs are entertained by the human mind\nwithout uneasiness or consciousness of the contradiction involved. Many\ninstances might be given: a familiar one to my generation being that of\nthe Tichborne claimant, whose attempt to pass himself off as a baronet\nwas supported by an association of laborers on the ground that the\nTichborne family, in resisting it, were trying to do a laborer out of\nhis rights. It is quite possible that Matthew and Luke may have been\nunconscious of the contradiction: indeed the interpolation theory does\nnot remove the difficulty, as the interpolators themselves must have\nbeen unconscious of it. A better ground for suspecting interpolation is\nthat St. Paul knew nothing of the divine birth, and taught that Jesus\ncame into the world at his birth as the son of Joseph, but rose from\nthe dead after three days as the son of God. Here again, few notice\nthe discrepancy: the three views are accepted simultaneously without\nintellectual discomfort. We can provisionally entertain half a dozen\ncontradictory versions of an event if we feel either that it does not\ngreatly matter, or that there is a category attainable in which the\ncontradictions are reconciled.\n\nBut that is not the present point. All that need be noted here is that\nthe legend of divine birth was sure to be attached sooner or later\nto very eminent persons in Roman imperial times, and that modern\ntheologians, far from discrediting it, have very logically affirmed the\nmiraculous conception not only of Jesus but of his mother.\n\nWith no more scholarly equipment than a knowledge of these habits of\nthe human imagination, anyone may now read the four gospels without\nbewilderment, and without the contemptuous incredulity which spoils\nthe temper of many modern atheists, or the senseless credulity which\nsometimes makes pious people force us to shove them aside in emergencies\nas impracticable lunatics when they ask us to meet violence and\ninjustice with dumb submission in the belief that the strange demeanor\nof Jesus before Pilate was meant as an example of normal human conduct.\nLet us admit that without the proper clues the gospels are, to a modern\neducated person, nonsensical and incredible, whilst the apostles are\nunreadable. But with the clues, they are fairly plain sailing. Jesus\nbecomes an intelligible and consistent person. His reasons for going\n\"like a lamb to the slaughter\" instead of saving himself as Mahomet\ndid, become quite clear. The narrative becomes as credible as any other\nhistorical narrative of its period.\n\n\n\n\nMATTHEW.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ANNUNCIATION: THE MASSACRE: THE FLIGHT\n\nLet us begin with the gospel of Matthew, bearing in mind that it does\nnot profess to be the evidence of an eyewitness. It is a chronicle,\nfounded, like other chronicles, on such evidence and records as the\nchronicler could get hold of. The only one of the evangelists who\nprofesses to give first-hand evidence as an eyewitness naturally takes\ncare to say so; and the fact that Matthew makes no such pretension, and\nwrites throughout as a chronicler, makes it clear that he is telling the\nstory of Jesus as Holinshed told the story of Macbeth, except that, for\na reason to be given later on, he must have collected his material and\ncompleted his book within the lifetime of persons contemporary with\nJesus. Allowance must also be made for the fact that the gospel is\nwritten in the Greek language, whilst the first-hand traditions and the\nactual utterances of Jesus must have been in Aramaic, the dialect of\nPalestine. These distinctions were important, as you will find if you\nread Holinshed or Froissart and then read Benvenuto Cellini. You do not\nblame Holinshed or Froissart for believing and repeating the things they\nhad read or been told, though you cannot always believe these things\nyourself. But when Cellini tells you that he saw this or did that, and\nyou find it impossible to believe him, you lose patience with him, and\nare disposed to doubt everything in his autobiography. Do not forget,\nthen, that Matthew is Holinshed and not Benvenuto. The very first pages\nof his narrative will put your attitude to the test.\n\nMatthew tells us that the mother of Jesus was betrothed to a man of\nroyal pedigree named Joseph, who was rich enough to live in a house in\nBethlehem to which kings could bring gifts of gold without provoking any\ncomment. An angel announces to Joseph that Jesus is the son of the Holy\nGhost, and that he must not accuse her of infidelity because of her\nbearing a son of which he is not the father; but this episode disappears\nfrom the subsequent narrative: there is no record of its having been\ntold to Jesus, nor any indication of his having any knowledge of it.\nThe narrative, in fact, proceeds in all respects as if the annunciation\nformed no part of it.\n\nHerod the Tetrarch, believing that a child has been born who will\ndestroy him, orders all the male children to be slaughtered; and Jesus\nescapes by the flight of his parents into Egypt, whence they return to\nNazareth when the danger is over. Here it is necessary to anticipate a\nlittle by saying that none of the other evangelists accept this story,\nas none of them except John, who throws over Matthew altogether, shares\nhis craze for treating history and biography as mere records of the\nfulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies. This craze no doubt led him to\nseek for some legend bearing out Hosea's \"Out of Egypt have I called my\nson,\" and Jeremiah's Rachel weeping for her children: in fact, he says\nso. Nothing that interests us nowadays turns on the credibility of the\nmassacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. We may forget them,\nand proceed to the important part of the narrative, which skips at once\nto the manhood of Jesus.\n\n\n\n\nJOHN THE BAPTIST\n\nAt this moment, a Salvationist prophet named John is stirring the\npeople very strongly. John has declared that the rite of circumcision\nis insufficient as a dedication of the individual to God, and has\nsubstituted the rite of baptism. To us, who are accustomed to baptism\nas a matter of course, and to whom circumcision is a rather ridiculous\nforeign practice of no consequence, the sensational effect of such a\nheresy as this on the Jews is not apparent: it seems to us as natural\nthat John should have baptized people as that the rector of our\nvillage should do so. But, as St. Paul found to his cost later on, the\ndiscarding of circumcision for baptism was to the Jews as startling a\nheresy as the discarding of transubstantiation in the Mass was to the\nCatholics of the XVI century.\n\n\n\n\nJESUS JOINS THE BAPTISTS\n\nJesus entered as a man of thirty (Luke says) into the religious life of\nhis time by going to John the Baptist and demanding baptism from him,\nmuch as certain well-to-do young gentlemen forty years ago \"joined the\nSocialists.\" As far as established Jewry was concerned, he burnt his\nboats by this action, and cut himself off from the routine of wealth,\nrespectability, and orthodoxy. He then began preaching John's gospel,\nwhich, apart from the heresy of baptism, the value of which lay in its\nbringing the Gentiles (that is, the uncircumcized) within the pale of\nsalvation, was a call to the people to repent of their sins, as the\nkingdom of heaven was at hand. Luke adds that he also preached the\ncommunism of charity; told the surveyors of taxes not to over-assess the\ntaxpayers; and advised soldiers to be content with their wages and not\nto be violent or lay false accusations. There is no record of John going\nbeyond this.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SAVAGE JOHN AND THE CIVILIZED JESUS\n\nJesus went beyond it very rapidly, according to Matthew. Though, like\nJohn, he became an itinerant preacher, he departed widely from John's\nmanner of life. John went into the wilderness, not into the synagogues;\nand his baptismal font was the river Jordan. He was an ascetic, clothed\nin skins and living on locusts and wild honey, practising a savage\nausterity. He courted martyrdom, and met it at the hands of Herod. Jesus\nsaw no merit either in asceticism or martyrdom. In contrast to John\nhe was essentially a highly-civilized, cultivated person. According\nto Luke, he pointed out the contrast himself, chaffing the Jews for\ncomplaining that John must be possessed by the devil because he was a\nteetotaller and vegetarian, whilst, because Jesus was neither one nor\nthe other, they reviled him as a gluttonous man and a winebibber,\nthe friend of the officials and their mistresses. He told straitlaced\ndisciples that they would have trouble enough from other people without\nmaking any for themselves, and that they should avoid martyrdom and\nenjoy themselves whilst they had the chance. \"When they persecute you in\nthis city,\" he says, \"flee into the next.\" He preaches in the synagogues\nand in the open air indifferently, just as they come. He repeatedly\nsays, \"I desire mercy and not sacrifice,\" meaning evidently to clear\nhimself of the inveterate superstition that suffering is gratifying to\nGod. \"Be not, as the Pharisees, of a sad countenance,\" he says. He is\nconvivial, feasting with Roman officials and sinners. He is careless of\nhis person, and is remonstrated with for not washing his hands before\nsitting down to table. The followers of John the Baptist, who fast, and\nwho expect to find the Christians greater ascetics than themselves, are\ndisappointed at finding that Jesus and his twelve friends do not fast;\nand Jesus tells them that they should rejoice in him instead of being\nmelancholy. He is jocular and tells them they will all have as much\nfasting as they want soon enough, whether they like it or not. He is\nnot afraid of disease, and dines with a leper. A woman, apparently to\nprotect him against infection, pours a costly unguent on his head, and\nis rebuked because what it cost might have been given to the poor.\nHe poohpoohs that lowspirited view, and says, as he said when he was\nreproached for not fasting, that the poor are always there to be helped,\nbut that he is not there to be anointed always, implying that you should\nnever lose a chance of being happy when there is so much misery in the\nworld. He breaks the Sabbath; is impatient of conventionality when it is\nuncomfortable or obstructive; and outrages the feelings of the Jews\nby breaches of it. He is apt to accuse people who feel that way\nof hypocrisy. Like the late Samuel Butler, he regards disease as\na department of sin, and on curing a lame man, says \"Thy sins are\nforgiven\" instead of \"Arise and walk,\" subsequently maintaining, when\nthe Scribes reproach him for assuming power to forgive sin as well as\nto cure disease, that the two come to the same thing. He has no modest\naffectations, and claims to be greater than Solomon or Jonah. When\nreproached, as Bunyan was, for resorting to the art of fiction when\nteaching in parables, he justifies himself on the ground that art is\nthe only way in which the people can be taught. He is, in short, what we\nshould call an artist and a Bohemian in his manner of life.\n\n\n\n\nJESUS NOT A PROSLETYST\n\nA point of considerable practical importance today is that he expressly\nrepudiates the idea that forms of religion, once rooted, can be weeded\nout and replanted with the flowers of a foreign faith. \"If you try to\nroot up the tares you will root up the wheat as well.\" Our proselytizing\nmissionary enterprises are thus flatly contrary to his advice; and their\nresults appear to bear him out in his view that if you convert a man\nbrought up in another creed, you inevitably demoralize him. He acts on\nthis view himself, and does not convert his disciples from Judaism\nto Christianity. To this day a Christian would be in religion a Jew\ninitiated by baptism instead of circumcision, and accepting Jesus as the\nMessiah, and his teachings as of higher authority than those of Moses,\nbut for the action of the Jewish priests, who, to save Jewry from being\nsubmerged in the rising flood of Christianity after the capture of\nJerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, set up what was\npractically a new religious order, with new Scriptures and elaborate\nnew observances, and to their list of the accursed added one Jeschu, a\nbastard magician, whose comic rogueries brought him to a bad end like\nPunch or Til Eulenspiegel: an invention which cost them dear when the\nChristians got the upper hand of them politically. The Jew as Jesus,\nhimself a Jew, knew him, never dreamt of such things, and could follow\nJesus without ceasing to be a Jew.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TEACHINGS OF JESUS.\n\nSo much for his personal life and temperament. His public career as a\npopular preacher carries him equally far beyond John the Baptist. He\nlays no stress on baptism or vows, and preaches conduct incessantly.\nHe advocates communism, the widening of the private family with its\ncramping ties into the great family of mankind under the fatherhood of\nGod, the abandonment of revenge and punishment, the counteracting of\nevil by good instead of by a hostile evil, and an organic conception of\nsociety in which you are not an independent individual but a member of\nsociety, your neighbor being another member, and each of you members one\nof another, as two fingers on a hand, the obvious conclusion being that\nunless you love your neighbor as yourself and he reciprocates you will\nboth be the worse for it. He conveys all this with extraordinary charm,\nand entertains his hearers with fables (parables) to illustrate them.\nHe has no synagogue or regular congregation, but travels from place to\nplace with twelve men whom he has called from their work as he passed,\nand who have abandoned it to follow him.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MIRACLES\n\nHe has certain abnormal powers by which he can perform miracles. He\nis ashamed of these powers, but, being extremely compassionate, cannot\nrefuse to exercise them when afflicted people beg him to cure them, when\nmultitudes of people are hungry, and when his disciples are terrified by\nstorms on the lakes. He asks for no reward, but begs the people not\nto mention these powers of his. There are two obvious reasons for his\ndislike of being known as a worker of miracles. One is the natural\nobjection of all men who possess such powers, but have far more\nimportant business in the world than to exhibit them, to be regarded\nprimarily as charlatans, besides being pestered to give exhibitions to\nsatisfy curiosity. The other is that his view of the effect of miracles\nupon his mission is exactly that taken later on by Rousseau. He\nperceives that they will discredit him and divert attention from his\ndoctrine by raising an entirely irrelevant issue between his disciples\nand his opponents.\n\nPossibly my readers may not have studied Rousseau's Letters Written From\nThe Mountain, which may be regarded as the classic work on miracles as\ncredentials of divine mission. Rousseau shows, as Jesus foresaw, that\nthe miracles are the main obstacle to the acceptance of Christianity,\nbecause their incredibility (if they were not incredible they would not\nbe miracles) makes people sceptical as to the whole narrative, credible\nenough in the main, in which they occur, and suspicious of the doctrine\nwith which they are thus associated. \"Get rid of the miracles,\" said\nRousseau, \"and the whole world will fall at the feet of Jesus Christ.\"\nHe points out that miracles offered as evidence of divinity, and failing\nto convince, make divinity ridiculous. He says, in effect, there is\nnothing in making a lame man walk: thousands of lame men have been cured\nand have walked without any miracle. Bring me a man with only one leg\nand make another grow instantaneously on him before my eyes; and I will\nbe really impressed; but mere cures of ailments that have often been\ncured before are quite useless as evidence of anything else than desire\nto help and power to cure.\n\nJesus, according to Matthew, agreed so entirely with Rousseau, and felt\nthe danger so strongly, that when people who were not ill or in trouble\ncame to him and asked him to exercise his powers as a sign of\nhis mission, he was irritated beyond measure, and refused with an\nindignation which they, not seeing Rousseau's point, must have thought\nvery unreasonable. To be called \"an evil and adulterous generation\"\nmerely for asking a miracle worker to give an exhibition of his powers,\nis rather a startling experience. Mahomet, by the way, also lost his\ntemper when people asked him to perform miracles. But Mahomet expressly\ndisclaimed any unusual powers; whereas it is clear from Matthew's story\nthat Jesus (unfortunately for himself, as he thought) had some powers of\nhealing. It is also obvious that the exercise of such powers would give\nrise to wild tales of magical feats which would expose their hero to\ncondemnation as an impostor among people whose good opinion was of great\nconsequence to the movement started by his mission.\n\nBut the deepest annoyance arising from the miracles would be the\nirrelevance of the issue raised by them. Jesus's teaching has nothing\nto do with miracles. If his mission had been simply to demonstrate a new\nmethod of restoring lost eyesight, the miracle of curing the blind would\nhave been entirely relevant. But to say \"You should love your enemies;\nand to convince you of this I will now proceed to cure this gentleman\nof cataract\" would have been, to a man of Jesus's intelligence, the\nproposition of an idiot. If it could be proved today that not one of the\nmiracles of Jesus actually occurred, that proof would not invalidate a\nsingle one of his didactic utterances; and conversely, if it could be\nproved that not only did the miracles actually occur, but that he had\nwrought a thousand other miracles a thousand times more wonderful, not\na jot of weight would be added to his doctrine. And yet the intellectual\nenergy of sceptics and divines has been wasted for generations in\narguing about the miracles on the assumption that Christianity is at\nstake in the controversy as to whether the stories of Matthew are false\nor true. According to Matthew himself, Jesus must have known this\nonly too well; for wherever he went he was assailed with a clamor for\nmiracles, though his doctrine created bewilderment.\n\nSo much for the miracles! Matthew tells us further, that Jesus declared\nthat his doctrines would be attacked by Church and State, and that the\ncommon multitude were the salt of the earth and the light of the world.\nHis disciples, in their relations with the political and ecclesiastical\norganizations, would be as sheep among wolves.\n\n\n\n\nMATTHEW IMPUTES DIGNITY TO JESUS.\n\nMatthew, like most biographers, strives to identify the opinions and\nprejudices of his hero with his own. Although he describes Jesus as\ntolerant even to carelessness, he draws the line at the Gentile, and\nrepresents Jesus as a bigoted Jew who regards his mission as addressed\nexclusively to \"the lost sheep of the house of Israel.\" When a woman of\nCanaan begged Jesus to cure her daughter, he first refused to speak\nto her, and then told her brutally that \"It is not meet to take the\nchildren's bread and cast it to the dogs.\" But when the woman said,\n\"Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their\nmaster's table,\" she melted the Jew out of him and made Christ a\nChristian. To the woman whom he had just called a dog he said, \"O woman,\ngreat is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.\" This is somehow\none of the most touching stories in the gospel; perhaps because the\nwoman rebukes the prophet by a touch of his own finest quality. It is\ncertainly out of character; but as the sins of good men are always out\nof character, it is not safe to reject the story as invented in the\ninterest of Matthew's determination that Jesus shall have nothing to do\nwith the Gentiles. At all events, there the story is; and it is by no\nmeans the only instance in which Matthew reports Jesus, in spite of the\ncharm of his preaching, as extremely uncivil in private intercourse.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREAT CHANGE.\n\nSo far the history is that of a man sane and interesting apart from his\nspecial gifts as orator, healer, and prophet. But a startling change\noccurs. One day, after the disciples have discouraged him for a long\ntime by their misunderstandings of his mission, and their speculations\nas to whether he is one of the old prophets come again, and if so,\nwhich, his disciple Peter suddenly solves the problem by exclaiming,\n\"Thou are the Christ, the son of the living God.\" At this Jesus is\nextraordinarily pleased and excited. He declares that Peter has had\na revelation straight from God. He makes a pun on Peter's name, and\ndeclares him the founder of his Church. And he accepts his destiny as a\ngod by announcing that he will be killed when he goes to Jerusalem;\nfor if he is really the Christ, it is a necessary part of his legendary\ndestiny that he shall be slain. Peter, not understanding this, rebukes\nhim for what seems mere craven melancholy; and Jesus turns fiercely on\nhim and cries, \"Get thee behind me, Satan.\"\n\nJesus now becomes obsessed with a conviction of his divinity, and talks\nabout it continually to his disciples, though he forbids them to mention\nit to others. They begin to dispute among themselves as to the position\nthey shall occupy in heaven when his kingdom is established. He rebukes\nthem strenuously for this, and repeats his teaching that greatness\nmeans service and not domination; but he himself, always instinctively\nsomewhat haughty, now becomes arrogant, dictatorial, and even abusive,\nnever replying to his critics without an insulting epithet, and even\ncursing a fig-tree which disappoints him when he goes to it for fruit.\nHe assumes all the traditions of the folk-lore gods, and announces that,\nlike John Barleycorn, he will be barbarously slain and buried, but\nwill rise from the earth and return to life. He attaches to himself the\nimmemorial tribal ceremony of eating the god, by blessing bread and wine\nand handing them to his disciples with the words \"This is my body: this\nis my blood.\" He forgets his own teaching and threatens eternal fire\nand eternal punishment. He announces, in addition to his Barleycorn\nresurrection, that he will come to the world a second time in glory\nand establish his kingdom on earth. He fears that this may lead to the\nappearance of impostors claiming to be himself, and declares explicitly\nand repeatedly that no matter what wonders these impostors may perform,\nhis own coming will be unmistakable, as the stars will fall from heaven,\nand trumpets be blown by angels. Further he declares that this will take\nplace during the lifetime of persons then present.\n\n\n\n\nJERUSALEM AND THE MYSTICAL SACRIFICE.\n\nIn this new frame of mind he at last enters Jerusalem amid great popular\ncuriosity; drives the moneychangers and sacrifice sellers out of the\ntemple in a riot; refuses to interest himself in the beauties and\nwonders of the temple building on the ground that presently not a stone\nof it shall be left on another; reviles the high priests and elders\nin intolerable terms; and is arrested by night in a garden to avoid a\npopular disturbance. He makes no resistance, being persuaded that it is\npart of his destiny as a god to be murdered and to rise again. One of\nhis followers shows fight, and cuts off the ear of one of his captors.\nJesus rebukes him, but does not attempt to heal the wound, though he\ndeclares that if he wished to resist he could easily summon twelve\nmillion angels to his aid. He is taken before the high priest and by him\nhanded over to the Roman governor, who is puzzled by his silent refusal\nto defend himself in any way, or to contradict his accusers or their\nwitnesses, Pilate having naturally no idea that the prisoner conceives\nhimself as going through an inevitable process of torment, death, and\nburial as a prelude to resurrection. Before the high priest he has also\nbeen silent except that when the priest asks him is he the Christ, the\nSon of God, he replies that they shall all see the Son of Man sitting\nat the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven. He\nmaintains this attitude with frightful fortitude whilst they scourge\nhim, mock him, torment him, and finally crucify him between two thieves.\nHis prolonged agony of thirst and pain on the cross at last breaks his\nspirit, and he dies with a cry of \"My God: why hast Thou forsaken me?\"\n\n\n\n\nNOT THIS MAN BUT BARRABAS\n\nMeanwhile he has been definitely rejected by the people as well as by\nthe priests. Pilate, pitying him, and unable to make out exactly what he\nhas done (the blasphemy that has horrified the high priest does not move\nthe Roman) tries to get him off by reminding the people that they have,\nby custom, the right to have a prisoner released at that time, and\nsuggests that he should release Jesus. But they insist on his releasing\na prisoner named Barabbas instead, and on having Jesus crucified.\nMatthew gives no clue to the popularity of Barabbas, describing him\nsimply as \"a notable prisoner.\" The later gospels make it clear, very\nsignificantly, that his offence was sedition and insurrection; that he\nwas an advocate of physical force; and that he had killed his man. The\nchoice of Barabbas thus appears as a popular choice of the militant\nadvocate of physical force as against the unresisting advocate of mercy.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RESURRECTION.\n\nMatthew then tells how after three days an angel opened the family vault\nof one Joseph, a rich man of Arimathea, who had buried Jesus in it,\nwhereupon Jesus rose and returned from Jerusalem to Galilee and resumed\nhis preaching with his disciples, assuring them that he would now be\nwith them to the end of the world. At that point the narrative abruptly\nstops. The story has no ending.\n\n\n\n\nDATE OF MATTHEW'S NARRATIVE.\n\nOne effect of the promise of Jesus to come again in glory during the\nlifetime of some of his hearers is to date the gospel without the aid\nof any scholarship. It must have been written during the lifetime of\nJesus's contemporaries: that is, whilst it was still possible for the\npromise of his Second Coming to be fulfilled. The death of the last\nperson who had been alive when Jesus said \"There be some of them that\nstand here that shall in no wise taste death till they see the Son\nof Man coming in his kingdom\" destroyed the last possibility of the\npromised Second Coming, and bore out the incredulity of Pilate and the\nJews. And as Matthew writes as one believing in that Second Coming,\nand in fact left his story unfinished to be ended by it, he must have\nproduced his gospel within a lifetime of the crucifixion. Also, he must\nhave believed that reading books would be one of the pleasures of the\nkingdom of heaven on earth.\n\n\n\n\nCLASS TYPE OF MATTHEW'S JESUS\n\nOne more circumstance must be noted as gathered from Matthew. Though he\nbegins his story in such a way as to suggest that Jesus belonged to the\nprivileged classes, he mentions later on that when Jesus attempted to\npreach in his own country, and had no success there, the people said,\n\"Is not this the carpenter's son?\" But Jesus's manner throughout is that\nof an aristocrat, or at the very least the son of a rich bourgeois, and\nby no means a lowly-minded one at that. We must be careful therefore\nto conceive Joseph, not as a modern proletarian carpenter working for\nweekly wages, but as a master craftsman of royal descent. John the\nBaptist may have been a Keir Hardie; but the Jesus of Matthew is of the\nRuskin-Morris class.\n\nThis haughty characterization is so marked that if we had no other\ndocuments concerning Jesus than the gospel of Matthew, we should not\nfeel as we do about him. We should have been much less loth to say,\n\"There is a man here who was sane until Peter hailed him as the Christ,\nand who then became a monomaniac.\" We should have pointed out that\nhis delusion is a very common delusion among the insane, and that such\ninsanity is quite consistent with the retention of the argumentative\ncunning and penetration which Jesus displayed in Jerusalem after his\ndelusion had taken complete hold of him. We should feel horrified at the\nscourging and mocking and crucifixion just as we should if Ruskin had\nbeen treated in that way when he also went mad, instead of being cared\nfor as an invalid. And we should have had no clear perception of any\nspecial significance in his way of calling the Son of God the Son of\nMan. We should have noticed that he was a Communist; that he regarded\nmuch of what we call law and order as machinery for robbing the poor\nunder legal forms; that he thought domestic ties a snare for the soul;\nthat he agreed with the proverb \"The nearer the Church, the farther from\nGod;\" that he saw very plainly that the masters of the community should\nbe its servants and not its oppressors and parasites; and that though he\ndid not tell us not to fight our enemies, he did tell us to love them,\nand warned us that they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword.\nAll this shows a great power of seeing through vulgar illusions, and\na capacity for a higher morality than has yet been established in any\ncivilized community; but it does not place Jesus above Confucius or\nPlato, not to mention more modern philosophers and moralists.\n\n\n\n\n\nMARK.\n\nTHE WOMEN DISCIPLES AND THE ASCENSION.\n\nLet us see whether we can get anything more out of Mark, whose gospel,\nby the way, is supposed to be older than Matthew's. Mark is brief; and\nit does not take long to discover that he adds nothing to Matthew except\nthe ending of the story by Christ's ascension into heaven, and the\nnews that many women had come with Jesus to Jerusalem, including Mary\nMagdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. On the other hand Mark\nsays nothing about the birth of Jesus, and does not touch his career\nuntil his adult baptism by John. He apparently regards Jesus as a native\nof Nazareth, as John does, and not of Bethlehem, as Matthew and Luke do,\nBethlehem being the city of David, from whom Jesus is said by Matthew\nand Luke to be descended. He describes John's doctrine as \"Baptism of\nrepentance unto remission of sins\": that is, a form of Salvationism.\nHe tells us that Jesus went into the synagogues and taught, not as the\nScribes but as one having authority: that is, we infer, he preaches his\nown doctrine as an original moralist is instead of repeating what\nthe books say. He describes the miracle of Jesus reaching the boat by\nwalking across the sea, but says nothing about Peter trying to do the\nsame. Mark sees what he relates more vividly than Matthew, and gives\ntouches of detail that bring the event more clearly before the reader.\nHe says, for instance, that when Jesus walked on the waves to the boat,\nhe was passing it by when the disciples called out to him. He seems\nto feel that Jesus's treatment of the woman of Canaan requires some\napology, and therefore says that she was a Greek of Syrophenician\nrace, which probably excused any incivility to her in Mark's eyes. He\nrepresents the father of the boy whom Jesus cured of epilepsy after the\ntransfiguration as a sceptic who says \"Lord, I believe: help thou mine\nunbelief.\" He tells the story of the widow's mite, omitted by Matthew.\nHe explains that Barabbas was \"lying bound with them that made\ninsurrection, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.\" Joseph\nof Arimathea, who buried Jesus in his own tomb, and who is described by\nMatthew as a disciple, is described by Mark as \"one who also himself\nwas looking for the kingdom of God,\" which suggests that he was an\nindependent seeker. Mark earns our gratitude by making no mention of the\nold prophecies, and thereby not only saves time, but avoids the absurd\nimplication that Christ was merely going through a predetermined ritual,\nlike the works of a clock, instead of living. Finally Mark reports\nChrist as saying, after his resurrection, that those who believe in\nhim will be saved and those who do not, damned; but it is impossible\nto discover whether he means anything by a state of damnation beyond a\nstate of error. The paleographers regard this passage as tacked on by a\nlater scribe. On the whole Mark leaves the modern reader where Matthew\nleft him.\n\n\n\n\n\nLUKE.\n\n\n\n\nLUKE THE LITERARY ARTIST.\n\nWhen we come to Luke, we come to a later storyteller, and one with a\nstronger natural gift for his art. Before you have read twenty lines\nof Luke's gospel you are aware that you have passed from the chronicler\nwriting for the sake of recording important facts, to the artist,\ntelling the story for the sake of telling it. At the very outset he\nachieves the most charming idyll in the Bible: the story of Mary crowded\nout of the inn into the stable and laying her newly-born son in the\nmanger, and of the shepherds abiding in the field keeping watch over\ntheir flocks by night, and how the angel of the Lord came upon them, and\nthe glory of the Lord shone around them, and suddenly there was with the\nangel a multitude of the heavenly host. These shepherds go to the stable\nand take the place of the kings in Matthew's chronicle. So completely\nhas this story conquered and fascinated our imagination that most of us\nsuppose all the gospels to contain it; but it is Luke's story and his\nalone: none of the others have the smallest hint of it.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CHARM OF LUKE'S NARRATIVE.\n\nLuke gives the charm of sentimental romance to every incident. The\nAnnunciation, as described by Matthew, is made to Joseph, and is simply\na warning to him not to divorce his wife for misconduct. In Luke's\ngospel it is made to Mary herself, at much greater length, with a sense\nof the ecstasy of the bride of the Holy Ghost. Jesus is refined and\nsoftened almost out of recognition: the stern peremptory disciple of\nJohn the Baptist, who never addresses a Pharisee or a Scribe without\nan insulting epithet, becomes a considerate, gentle, sociable, almost\nurbane person; and the Chauvinist Jew becomes a pro-Gentile who\nis thrown out of the synagogue in his own town for reminding the\ncongregation that the prophets had sometimes preferred Gentiles to Jews.\nIn fact they try to throw him down from a sort of Tarpeian rock which\nthey use for executions; but he makes his way through them and escapes:\nthe only suggestion of a feat of arms on his part in the gospels.\nThere is not a word of the Syrophenician woman. At the end he is calmly\nsuperior to his sufferings; delivers an address on his way to execution\nwith unruffled composure; does not despair on the cross; and dies with\nperfect dignity, commending his spirit to God, after praying for the\nforgiveness of his persecutors on the ground that \"They know not what\nthey do.\" According to Matthew, it is part of the bitterness of his\ndeath that even the thieves who are crucified with him revile him.\nAccording to Luke, only one of them does this; and he is rebuked by the\nother, who begs Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom.\nTo which Jesus replies, \"This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,\"\nimplying that he will spend the three days of his death there. In short,\nevery device is used to get rid of the ruthless horror of the Matthew\nchronicle, and to relieve the strain of the Passion by touching\nepisodes, and by representing Christ as superior to human suffering. It\nis Luke's Jesus who has won our hearts.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TOUCH OF PARISIAN ROMANCE.\n\nLuke's romantic shrinking from unpleasantness, and his sentimentality,\nare illustrated by his version of the woman with the ointment. Matthew\nand Mark describe it as taking place in the house of Simon the Leper,\nwhere it is objected to as a waste of money. In Luke's version the leper\nbecomes a rich Pharisee; the woman becomes a Dame aux Camellias; and\nnothing is said about money and the poor. The woman washes the feet of\nJesus with her tears and dries them with her hair; and he is reproached\nfor suffering a sinful woman to touch him. It is almost an adaptation\nof the unromantic Matthew to the Parisian stage. There is a distinct\nattempt to increase the feminine interest all through. The slight lead\ngiven by Mark is taken up and developed. More is said about Jesus's\nmother and her feelings. Christ's following of women, just mentioned by\nMark to account for their presence at his tomb, is introduced earlier;\nand some of the women are named; so that we are introduced to Joanna the\nwife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna. There is the quaint little\ndomestic episode between Mary and Martha. There is the parable of the\nProdigal Son, appealing to the indulgence romance has always shown to\nCharles Surface and Des Grieux. Women follow Jesus to the cross; and he\nmakes them a speech beginning \"Daughters of Jerusalem.\" Slight as these\nchanges may seem, they make a great change in the atmosphere. The Christ\nof Matthew could never have become what is vulgarly called a woman's\nhero (though the truth is that the popular demand for sentiment, as far\nas it is not simply human, is more manly than womanly); but the Christ\nof Luke has made possible those pictures which now hang in many ladies'\nchambers, in which Jesus is represented exactly as he is represented\nin the Lourdes cinematograph, by a handsome actor. The only touch of\nrealism which Luke does not instinctively suppress for the sake of\nproducing this kind of amenity is the reproach addressed to Jesus for\nsitting down to table without washing his hands; and that is retained\nbecause an interesting discourse hangs on it.\n\n\n\n\nWAITING FOR THE MESSIAH.\n\nAnother new feature in Luke's story is that it begins in a world in\nwhich everyone is expecting the advent of the Christ. In Matthew and\nMark, Jesus comes into a normal Philistine world like our own of today.\nNot until the Baptist foretells that one greater than himself shall come\nafter him does the old Jewish hope of a Messiah begin to stir again; and\nas Jesus begins as a disciple of John, and is baptized by him, nobody\nconnects him with that hope until Peter has the sudden inspiration which\nproduces so startling an effect on Jesus. But in Luke's gospel men's\nminds, and especially women's minds, are full of eager expectation of a\nChrist not only before the birth of Jesus, but before the birth of John\nthe Baptist, the event with which Luke begins his story. Whilst Jesus\nand John are still in their mothers' wombs, John leaps at the approach\nof Jesus when the two mothers visit one another. At the circumcision of\nJesus pious men and women hail the infant as the Christ.\n\nThe Baptist himself is not convinced; for at quite a late period in\nhis former disciple's career he sends two young men to ask Jesus is he\nreally the Christ. This is noteworthy because Jesus immediately gives\nthem a deliberate exhibition of miracles, and bids them tell John what\nthey have seen, and ask him what he thinks now: This is in complete\ncontradiction to what I have called the Rousseau view of miracles as\ninferred from Matthew. Luke shows all a romancer's thoughtlessness about\nmiracles; he regards them as \"signs\": that is, as proofs of the divinity\nof the person performing them, and not merely of thaumaturgic powers. He\nrevels in miracles just as he revels in parables: they make such capital\nstories. He cannot allow the calling of Peter, James, and John from\ntheir boats to pass without a comic miraculous overdraft of fishes, with\nthe net sinking the boats and provoking Peter to exclaim, \"Depart from\nme; for I am a sinful man, O Lord,\" which should probably be translated,\n\"I want no more of your miracles: natural fishing is good enough for my\nboats.\"\n\nThere are some other novelties in Luke's version. Pilate sends Jesus\nto Herod, who happens to be in Jerusalem just then, because Herod\nhad expressed some curiosity about him; but nothing comes of it:\nthe prisoner will not speak to him. When Jesus is ill received in a\nSamaritan village James and John propose to call down fire from heaven\nand destroy it; and Jesus replies that he is come not to destroy lives\nbut to save them. The bias of Jesus against lawyers is emphasized, and\nalso his resolution not to admit that he is more bound to his relatives\nthan to strangers. He snubs a woman who blesses his mother. As this is\ncontrary to the traditions of sentimental romance, Luke would presumably\nhave avoided it had he not become persuaded that the brotherhood of\nMan and the Fatherhood of God are superior even to sentimental\nconsiderations. The story of the lawyer asking what are the two chief\ncommandments is changed by making Jesus put the question to the lawyer\ninstead of answering it.\n\nAs to doctrine, Luke is only clear when his feelings are touched. His\nlogic is weak; for some of the sayings of Jesus are pieced together\nwrongly, as anyone who has read them in the right order and context\nin Matthew will discover at once. He does not make anything new out of\nChrist's mission, and, like the other evangelists, thinks that the whole\npoint of it is that Jesus was the long expected Christ, and that he will\npresently come back to earth and establish his kingdom, having duly died\nand risen again after three days. Yet Luke not only records the teaching\nas to communism and the discarding of hate, which have, of course,\nnothing to do with the Second Coming, but quotes one very remarkable\nsaying which is not compatible with it, which is, that people must not\ngo about asking where the kingdom of heaven is, and saying \"Lo, here!\"\nand \"Lo, there!\" because the kingdom of heaven is within them. But Luke\nhas no sense that this belongs to a quite different order of thought to\nhis Christianity, and retains undisturbed his view of the kingdom as a\nlocality as definite as Jerusalem or Madagascar.\n\n\n\n\n\nJOHN.\n\n\n\n\nA NEW STORY AND A NEW CHARACTER.\n\nThe gospel of John is a surprise after the others. Matthew, Mark and\nLuke describe the same events in the same order (the variations in Luke\nare negligible), and their gospels are therefore called the synoptic\ngospels. They tell substantially the same story of a wandering preacher\nwho at the end of his life came to Jerusalem. John describes a preacher\nwho spent practically his whole adult life in the capital, with\noccasional visits to the provinces. His circumstantial account of the\ncalling of Peter and the sons of Zebedee is quite different from\nthe others; and he says nothing about their being fishermen. He says\nexpressly that Jesus, though baptized by John, did not himself practise\nbaptism, and that his disciples did. Christ's agonized appeal against\nhis doom in the garden of Gethsemane becomes a coldblooded suggestion\nmade in the temple at a much earlier period. Jesus argues much more;\ncomplains a good deal of the unreasonableness and dislike with which\nhe is met; is by no means silent before Caiaphas and Pilate; lays much\ngreater stress on his resurrection and on the eating of his body\n(losing all his disciples except the twelve in consequence); says many\napparently contradictory and nonsensical things to which no ordinary\nreader can now find any clue; and gives the impression of an educated,\nnot to say sophisticated mystic, different both in character and\nschooling from the simple and downright preacher of Matthew and Mark,\nand the urbane easy-minded charmer of Luke. Indeed, the Jews say of him\n\"How knoweth this man letters, having never learnt?\"\n\n\n\n\nJOHN THE IMMORTAL EYEWITNESS.\n\nJohn, moreover, claims to be not only a chronicler but a witness.\nHe declares that he is \"the disciple whom Jesus loved,\" and that he\nactually leaned on the bosom of Jesus at the last supper and asked in\na whisper which of them it was that should betray him. Jesus whispered\nthat he would give a sop to the traitor, and thereupon handed one to\nJudas, who ate it and immediately became possessed by the devil. This\nis more natural than the other accounts, in which Jesus openly indicates\nJudas without eliciting any protest or exciting any comment. It also\nimplies that Jesus deliberately bewitched Judas in order to bring about\nhis own betrayal. Later on John claims that Jesus said to Peter \"If I\nwill that John tarry til I come, what is that to thee?\"; and John,\nwith a rather obvious mock modesty, adds that he must not claim to\nbe immortal, as the disciples concluded; for Christ did not use that\nexpression, but merely remarked \"If I will that he tarry till I come.\"\nNo other evangelist claims personal intimacy with Christ, or even\npretends to be his contemporary (there is no ground for identifying\nMatthew the publican with Matthew the Evangelist); and John is the only\nevangelist whose account of Christ's career and character is hopelessly\nirreconcilable with Matthew's. He is almost as bad as Matthew, by the\nway, in his repeated explanations of Christ's actions as having no\nother purpose than to fulfil the old prophecies. The impression is more\nunpleasant, because, as John, unlike Matthew, is educated, subtle, and\nobsessed with artificial intellectual mystifications, the discovery\nthat he is stupid or superficial in so simple a matter strikes one\nwith distrust and dislike, in spite of his great literary charm, a good\nexample of which is his transfiguration of the harsh episode of the\nSyrophenician woman into the pleasant story of the woman of Samaria.\nThis perhaps is why his claim to be John the disciple, or to be a\ncontemporary of Christ or even of any survivor of Christ's generation,\nhas been disputed, and finally, it seems, disallowed. But I repeat,\nI take no note here of the disputes of experts as to the date of the\ngospels, not because I am not acquainted with them, but because, as the\nearliest codices are Greek manuscripts of the fourth century A.D., and\nthe Syrian ones are translations from the Greek, the paleographic expert\nhas no difficulty in arriving at whatever conclusion happens to suit\nhis beliefs or disbeliefs; and he never succeeds in convincing the other\nexperts except when they believe or disbelieve exactly as he does.\nHence I conclude that the dates of the original narratives cannot be\nascertained, and that we must make the best of the evangelists' own\naccounts of themselves. There is, as we have seen, a very marked\ndifference between them, leaving no doubt that we are dealing with four\nauthors of well-marked diversity; but they all end in an attitude of\nexpectancy of the Second Coming which they agree in declaring Jesus to\nhave positively and unequivocally promised within the lifetime of his\ncontemporaries. Any believer compiling a gospel after the last of\nthese contemporaries had passed away, would either reject and omit the\ntradition of that promise on the ground that since it was not fulfilled,\nand could never now be fulfilled, it could not have been made, or else\nhave had to confess to the Jews, who were the keenest critics of\nthe Christians, that Jesus was either an impostor or the victim of\na delusion. Now all the evangelists except Matthew expressly declare\nthemselves to be believers; and Matthew's narrative is obviously not\nthat of a sceptic. I therefore assume as a matter of common sense that,\ninterpolations apart, the gospels are derived from narratives written in\nthe first century A.D. I include John, because though it may be claimed\nthat he hedged his position by claiming that Christ, who specially loved\nhim, endowed him with a miraculous life until the Second Coming, the\nconclusion being that John is alive at this moment, I cannot believe\nthat a literary forger could hope to save the situation by so outrageous\na pretension. Also, John's narrative is in many passages nearer to the\nrealities of public life than the simple chronicle of Matthew or the\nsentimental romance of Luke. This may be because John was obviously more\na man of the world than the others, and knew, as mere chroniclers and\nromancers never know, what actually happens away from books and desks.\nBut it may also be because he saw and heard what happened instead of\ncollecting traditions about it. The paleographers and daters of first\nquotations may say what they please: John's claim to give evidence as an\neyewitness whilst the others are only compiling history is supported by\na certain verisimilitude which appeals to me as one who has preached\na new doctrine and argued about it, as well as written stories. This\nverisimilitude may be dramatic art backed by knowledge of public life;\nbut even at that we must not forget that the best dramatic art is the\noperation of a divinatory instinct for truth. Be that as it may, John\nwas certainly not the man to believe in the Second Coming and yet give\na date for it after that date had passed. There is really no escape\nfrom the conclusion that the originals of all the gospels date from the\nperiod within which there was still a possibility of the Second Coming\noccurring at the promised time.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PECULIAR THEOLOGY OF JESUS.\n\nIn spite of the suspicions roused by John's idiosyncrasies, his\nnarrative is of enormous importance to those who go to the gospels for\na credible modern religion. For it is John who adds to the other records\nsuch sayings as that \"I and my father are one\"; that \"God is a spirit\";\nthat the aim of Jesus is not only that the people should have life, but\nthat they should have it \"more abundantly\" (a distinction much needed by\npeople who think a man is either alive or dead, and never consider the\nimportant question how much alive he is); and that men should bear in\nmind what they were told in the 82nd Psalm: that they are gods, and\nare responsible for the doing of the mercy and justice of God. The Jews\nstoned him for saying these things, and, when he remonstrated with them\nfor stupidly stoning one who had done nothing to them but good works,\nreplied \"For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy, because\nthat thou, being a man, makest thyself God.\" He insists (referring to\nthe 82nd psalm) that if it is part of their own religion that they are\ngods on the assurance of God himself, it cannot be blasphemy for him,\nwhom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, to say \"I am the son\nof God.\" But they will not have this at any price; and he has to escape\nfrom their fury. Here the point is obscured by the distinction made by\nJesus between himself and other men. He says, in effect, \"If you are\ngods, then, a fortiori, I am a god.\" John makes him say this, just as he\nmakes him say \"I am the light of the world.\" But Matthew makes him say\nto the people \"Ye are the light of the world.\" John has no grip of the\nsignificance of these scraps which he has picked up: he is far more\ninterested in a notion of his own that men can escape death and do even\nmore extraordinary things than Christ himself: in fact, he actually\nrepresents Jesus as promising this explicitly, and is finally led into\nthe audacious hint that he, John, is himself immortal in the flesh.\nStill, he does not miss the significant sayings altogether. However\ninconsistent they may be with the doctrine he is consciously driving\nat, they appeal to some sub-intellectual instinct in him that makes him\nstick them in, like a child sticking tinsel stars on the robe of a toy\nangel.\n\nJohn does not mention the ascension; and the end of his narrative leaves\nChrist restored to life, and appearing from time to time among his\ndisciples. It is on one of these occasions that John describes the\nmiraculous draught of fishes which Luke places at the other end of\nChrist's career, at the call of the sons of Zebedee.\n\n\n\n\nJOHN AGREED AS TO THE TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION.\n\nAlthough John, following his practice of showing Jesus's skill as a\ndebater, makes him play a less passive part at his trial, he still gives\nsubstantially the same account of it as all the rest. And the question\nthat would occur to any modern reader never occurs to him, any more than\nit occurred to Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That question is, Why on earth\ndid not Jesus defend himself, and make the people rescue him from the\nHigh Priest? He was so popular that they were unable to prevent him\ndriving the money-changers out of the temple, or to arrest him for it.\nWhen they did arrest him afterwards, they had to do it at night in\na garden. He could have argued with them as he had often done in the\ntemple, and justified himself both to the Jewish law and to Caesar. And\nhe had physical force at his command to back up his arguments: all that\nwas needed was a speech to rally his followers; and he was not gagged.\nThe reply of the evangelists would have been that all these inquiries\nare idle, because if Jesus had wished to escape, he could have saved\nhimself all that trouble by doing what John describes him as doing: that\nis, casting his captors to the earth by an exertion of his miraculous\npower. If you asked John why he let them get up again and torment and\nexecute him, John would have replied that it was part of the destiny of\nGod to be slain and buried and to rise again, and that to have avoided\nthis destiny would have been to repudiate his Godhead. And that is the\nonly apparent explanation. Whether you believe with the evangelists\nthat Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern\nSecularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually,\nthe fact remains that according to all the narratives he did not do so.\nHe had to die like a god, not to save himself \"like one of the princes.\"\n*\n\n    * Jesus himself had refered to that psalm (LXXII) in which\n      men who have judged unjustly and accepted the persons of the\n      wicked (including by anticipation practically all the white\n      inhabitants of the British Isles and the North American\n      continent, to mention no other places) are condemned in the\n      words, \"I have said, ye are gods; and all of ye are children\n      of the Most High; but ye shall die like men, and fall like\n      one of the princes.\"\n\nThe consensus on this point is important, because it proves the absolute\nsincerity of Jesus's declaration that he was a god. No impostor would\nhave accepted such dreadful consequences without an effort to save\nhimself. No impostor would have been nerved to endure them by the\nconviction that he would rise from the grave and live again after three\ndays. If we accept the story at all, we must believe this, and believe\nalso that his promise to return in glory and establish his kingdom on\nearth within the lifetime of men then living, was one which he believed\nthat he could, and indeed must fulfil. Two evangelists declare that in\nhis last agony he despaired, and reproached God for forsaking him. The\nother two represent him as dying in unshaken conviction and charity with\nthe simple remark that the ordeal was finished. But all four testify\nthat his faith was not deceived, and that he actually rose again after\nthree days. And I think it unreasonable to doubt that all four wrote\ntheir narratives in full faith that the other promise would be fulfilled\ntoo, and that they themselves might live to witness the Second Coming.\n\n\n\n\nCREDIBILITY OF THE GOSPELS.\n\nIt will be noted by the older among my readers, who are sure to be\nobsessed more or less by elderly wrangles as to whether the gospels are\ncredible as matter-of-fact narratives, that I have hardly raised this\nquestion, and have accepted the credible and incredible with equal\ncomplacency. I have done this because credibility is a subjective\ncondition, as the evolution of religious belief clearly shows. Belief is\nnot dependent on evidence and reason. There is as much evidence that\nthe miracles occurred as that the battle of Waterloo occurred, or that a\nlarge body of Russian troops passed through England in 1914 to take part\nin the war on the western front. The reasons for believing in the murder\nof Pompey are the same as the reasons for believing in the raising\nof Lazarus. Both have been believed and doubted by men of equal\nintelligence. Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain,\nsurround us on every hand; life itself is the miracle of miracles.\nMiracles in the sense of events that violate the normal course of our\nexperience are vouched for every day: the flourishing Church of Christ\nScientist is founded on a multitude of such miracles. Nobody believes\nall the miracles: everybody believes some of them. I cannot tell why\nmen who will not believe that Jesus ever existed yet believe firmly that\nShakespear was Bacon. I cannot tell why people who believe that angels\nappeared and fought on our side at the battle of Mons, and who believe\nthat miracles occur quite frequently at Lourdes, nevertheless boggle\nat the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and\nreject it as a trick of priestcraft. I cannot tell why people who will\nnot believe Matthew's story of three kings bringing costly gifts to the\ncradle of Jesus, believe Luke's story of the shepherds and the stable.\nI cannot tell why people, brought up to believe the Bible in the old\nliteral way as an infallible record and revelation, and rejecting that\nview later on, begin by rejecting the Old Testament, and give up the\nbelief in a brimstone hell before they give up (if they ever do) the\nbelief in a heaven of harps, crowns, and thrones. I cannot tell\nwhy people who will not believe in baptism on any terms believe in\nvaccination with the cruel fanaticism of inquisitors. I am convinced\nthat if a dozen sceptics were to draw up in parallel columns a list\nof the events narrated in the gospels which they consider credible\nand incredible respectively, their lists would be different in several\nparticulars. Belief is literally a matter of taste.\n\n\n\n\nFASHIONS OF BELIEF.\n\nNow matters of taste are mostly also matters of fashion. We are\nconscious of a difference between medieval fashions in belief and modern\nfashions. For instance, though we are more credulous than men were in\nthe Middle Ages, and entertain such crowds of fortunetellers, magicians,\nmiracle workers, agents of communication with the dead, discoverers of\nthe elixir of life, transmuters of metals, and healers of all sorts, as\nthe Middle Ages never dreamed of as possible, yet we will not take\nour miracles in the form that convinced the Middle Ages. Arithmetical\nnumbers appealed to the Middle Ages just as they do to us, because they\nare difficult to deal with, and because the greatest masters of numbers,\nthe Newtons and Leibnitzes, rank among the greatest men. But there are\nfashions in numbers too. The Middle Ages took a fancy to some familiar\nnumber like seven; and because it was an odd number, and the world was\nmade in seven days, and there are seven stars in Charles's Wain, and for\na dozen other reasons, they were ready to believe anything that had a\nseven or a seven times seven in it. Seven deadly sins, seven swords\nof sorrow in the heart of the Virgin, seven champions of Christendom,\nseemed obvious and reasonable things to believe in simply because they\nwere seven. To us, on the contrary, the number seven is the stamp of\nsuperstition. We will believe in nothing less than millions. A medieval\ndoctor gained his patient's confidence by telling him that his vitals\nwere being devoured by seven worms. Such a diagnosis would ruin a modern\nphysician. The modern physician tells his patient that he is ill because\nevery drop of his blood is swarming with a million microbes; and the\npatient believes him abjectly and instantly. Had a bishop told William\nthe Conqueror that the sun was seventy-seven miles distant from the\nearth, William would have believed him not only out of respect for the\nChurch, but because he would have felt that seventy-seven miles was\nthe proper distance. The Kaiser, knowing just as little about it as\nthe Conqueror, would send that bishop to an asylum. Yet he (I presume)\nunhesitatingly accepts the estimate of ninety-two and nine-tenths\nmillions of miles, or whatever the latest big figure may be.\n\n\n\n\nCREDIBILITY AND TRUTH.\n\nAnd here I must remind you that our credulity is not to be measured by\nthe truth of the things we believe. When men believed that the earth was\nflat, they were not credulous: they were using their common sense, and,\nif asked to prove that the earth was flat, would have said simply, \"Look\nat it.\" Those who refuse to believe that it is round are exercising\na wholesome scepticism. The modern man who believes that the earth\nis round is grossly credulous. Flat Earth men drive him to fury by\nconfuting him with the greatest ease when he tries to argue about it.\nConfront him with a theory that the earth is cylindrical, or annular,\nor hour-glass shaped, and he is lost. The thing he believes may be\ntrue, but that is not why he believes it: he believes it because in\nsome mysterious way it appeals to his imagination. If you ask him why\nhe believes that the sun is ninety-odd million miles off, either he will\nhave to confess that he doesn't know, or he will say that Newton proved\nit. But he has not read the treatise in which Newton proved it, and\ndoes not even know that it was written in Latin. If you press an Ulster\nProtestant as to why he regards Newton as an infallible authority, and\nSt. Thomas Aquinas or the Pope as superstitious liars whom, after his\ndeath, he will have the pleasure of watching from his place in heaven\nwhilst they roast in eternal flame, or if you ask me why I take into\nserious consideration Colonel Sir Almroth Wright's estimates of the\nnumber of streptococci contained in a given volume of serum whilst I can\nonly laugh at the earlier estimates of the number of angels that can be\naccommodated on the point of a needle, no reasonable reply is possible\nexcept that somehow sevens and angels are out of fashion, and billions\nand streptococci are all the rage. I simply cannot tell you why Bacon,\nMontaigne, and Cervantes had a quite different fashion of credulity and\nincredulity from the Venerable Bede and Piers Plowman and the divine\ndoctors of the Aquinas-Aristotle school, who were certainly no stupider,\nand had the same facts before them. Still less can I explain why, if we\nassume that these leaders of thought had all reasoned out their beliefs,\ntheir authority seemed conclusive to one generation and blasphemous to\nanother, neither generation having followed the reasoning or gone into\nthe facts of the matter for itself at all.\n\nIt is therefore idle to begin disputing with the reader as to what he\nshould believe in the gospels and what he should disbelieve. He will\nbelieve what he can, and disbelieve what he must. If he draws any lines\nat all, they will be quite arbitrary ones. St. John tells us that when\nJesus explicitly claimed divine honors by the sacrament of his body and\nblood, so many of his disciples left him that their number was reduced\nto twelve. Many modern readers will not hold out so long: they will give\nin at the first miracle. Others will discriminate. They will accept the\nhealing miracles, and reject the feeding of the multitude. To some the\nwalking on the water will be a legendary exaggeration of a swim, ending\nin an ordinary rescue of Peter; and the raising of Lazarus will be only\na similar glorification of a commonplace feat of artificial respiration,\nwhilst others will scoff at it as a planned imposture in which Lazarus\nacted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly\nfabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant\nthem to be accepted, there will be many shades of belief and disbelief,\nof sympathy and derision. It is not a question of being a Christian or\nnot. A Mahometan Arab will accept literally and without question parts\nof the narrative which an English Archbishop has to reject or explain\naway; and many Theosophists and lovers of the wisdom of India, who never\nenter a Christian Church except as sightseers, will revel in parts of\nJohn's gospel which mean nothing to a pious matter-of-fact Bradford\nmanufacturer. Every reader takes from the Bible what he can get. In\nsubmitting a precis of the gospel narratives I have not implied any\nestimate either of their credibility or of their truth. I have simply\ninformed him or reminded him, as the case may be, of what those\nnarratives tell us about their hero.\n\n\n\n\nCHRISTIAN ICONOLATRY AND THE PERILS OF THE ICONOCLAST.\n\nI must now abandon this attitude, and make a serious draft on the\nreader's attention by facing the question whether, if and when the\nmedieval and Methodist will-to-believe the Salvationist and miraculous\nside of the gospel narratives fails us, as it plainly has failed the\nleaders of modern thought, there will be anything left of the mission\nof Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the\nwaste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our\nlibraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the\nposition of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that \"the more he threw\naway, the more he had. \"We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or\niconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship\nwhich is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and\nunalterable stories about him. The test of the prevalence of this is\nthat if you speak or write of Jesus as a real live person, or even as a\nstill active God, such worshippers are more horrified than Don Juan was\nwhen the statue stepped from its pedestal and came to supper with\nhim. You may deny the divinity of Jesus; you may doubt whether he\never existed; you may reject Christianity for Judaism, Mahometanism,\nShintoism, or Fire Worship; and the iconolaters, placidly contemptuous,\nwill only classify you as a freethinker or a heathen. But if you venture\nto wonder how Christ would have looked if he had shaved and had his hair\ncut, or what size in shoes he took, or whether he swore when he stood on\na nail in the carpenter's shop, or could not button his robe when he was\nin a hurry, or whether he laughed over the repartees by which he baffled\nthe priests when they tried to trap him into sedition and blasphemy,\nor even if you tell any part of his story in the vivid terms of modern\ncolloquial slang, you will produce an extraordinary dismay and horror\namong the iconolaters. You will have made the picture come out of its\nframe, the statue descend from its pedestal, the story become real, with\nall the incalculable consequences that may flow from this terrifying\nmiracle. It is at such moments that you realize that the iconolaters\nhave never for a moment conceived Christ as a real person who meant\nwhat he said, as a fact, as a force like electricity, only needing the\ninvention of suitable political machinery to be applied to the affairs\nof mankind with revolutionary effect.\n\nThus it is not disbelief that is dangerous in our society: it is belief.\nThe moment it strikes you (as it may any day) that Christ is not the\nlifeless harmless image he has hitherto been to you, but a rallying\ncentre for revolutionary influences which all established States and\nChurches fight, you must look to yourselves; for you have brought the\nimage to life; and the mob may not be able to bear that horror.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ALTERNATIVE TO BARRABAS.\n\nBut mobs must be faced if civilization is to be saved. It did not need\nthe present war to show that neither the iconographic Christ nor the\nChrist of St. Paul has succeeded in effecting the salvation of human\nsociety. Whilst I write, the Turks are said to be massacring the\nArmenian Christians on an unprecedented scale; but Europe is not in a\nposition to remonstrate; for her Christians are slaying one another by\nevery device which civilization has put within their reach as busily as\nthey are slaying the Turks. Barabbas is triumphant everywhere; and the\nfinal use he makes of his triumph is to lead us all to suicide with\nheroic gestures and resounding lies. Now those who, like myself, see the\nBarabbasque social organization as a failure, and are convinced that the\nLife Force (or whatever you choose to call it) cannot be finally beaten\nby any failure, and will even supersede humanity by evolving a higher\nspecies if we cannot master the problems raised by the multiplication\nof our own numbers, have always known that Jesus had a real message,\nand have felt the fascination of his character and doctrine. Not that\nwe should nowadays dream of claiming any supernatural authority for him,\nmuch less the technical authority which attaches to an educated\nmodern philosopher and jurist. But when, having entirely got rid of\nSalvationist Christianity, and even contracted a prejudice against\nJesus on the score of his involuntary connection with it, we engage on a\npurely scientific study of economics, criminology, and biology, and\nfind that our practical conclusions are virtually those of Jesus, we\nare distinctly pleased and encouraged to find that we were doing him an\ninjustice, and that the nimbus that surrounds his head in the pictures\nmay be interpreted some day as a light of science rather than a\ndeclarations of sentiment or a label of idolatry.\n\nThe doctrines in which Jesus is thus confirmed are, roughly, the\nfollowing:\n\n1. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the son of God; and God\nis the son of man. God is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in\ntruth, and not an elderly gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are\nmembers one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor\nwithout injuring or helping yourself. God is your father: you are here\nto do God's work; and you and your father are one.\n\n2. Get rid of property by throwing it into the common stock. Dissociate\nyour work entirely from money payments. If you let a child starve you\nare letting God starve. Get rid of all anxiety about tomorrow's dinner\nand clothes, because you cannot serve two masters: God and Mammon.\n\nS. Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge. Love your neighbor as\nyourself, he being a part of yourself. And love your enemies: they are\nyour neighbors.\n\n4. Get rid of your family entanglements. Every mother you meet is as\nmuch your mother as the woman who bore you. Every man you meet is as\nmuch your brother as the man she bore after you. Don't waste your time\nat family funerals grieving for your relatives: attend to life, not to\ndeath: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and\nbetter. In the kingdom of heaven, which, as aforesaid, is within you,\nthere is no marriage nor giving in marriage, because you cannot devote\nyour life to two divinities: God and the person you are married to.\n\nNow these are very interesting propositions; and they become more\ninteresting every day, as experience and science drive us more and more\nto consider them favorably. In considering them, we shall waste our time\nunless we give them a reasonable construction. We must assume that the\nman who saw his way through such a mass of popular passion and illusion\nas stands between us and a sense of the value of such teaching was quite\naware of all the objections that occur to an average stockbroker in\nthe first five minutes. It is true that the world is governed to a\nconsiderable extent by the considerations that occur to stockbrokers in\nthe first five minutes; but as the result is that the world is so badly\ngoverned that those who know the truth can hardly bear to live in it,\nan objection from an average stockbroker constitutes in itself a prima\nfacie case for any social reform.\n\n\n\n\nTHE REDUCTION TO MODERN PRACTICE OF CHRISTIANITY.\n\nAll the same, we must reduce the ethical counsels and proposals of Jesus\nto modern practice if they are to be of any use to us. If we ask our\nstockbroker to act simply as Jesus advised his disciples to act, he will\nreply, very justly, \"You are advising me to become a tramp.\" If we urge\na rich man to sell all that he has and give it to the poor, he will\ninform us that such an operation is impossible. If he sells his shares\nand his lands, their purchaser will continue all those activities which\noppress the poor. If all the rich men take the advice simultaneously the\nshares will fall to zero and the lands be unsaleable. If one man sells\nout and throws the money into the slums, the only result will be to add\nhimself and his dependents to the list of the poor, and to do no good\nto the poor beyond giving a chance few of them a drunken spree. We must\ntherefore bear in mind that whereas, in the time of Jesus, and in the\nages which grew darker and darker after his death until the darkness,\nafter a brief false dawn in the Reformation and the Renascence,\nculminated in the commercial night of the nineteenth century, it was\nbelieved that you could not make men good by Act of Parliament, we now\nknow that you cannot make them good in any other way, and that a man who\nis better than his fellows is a nuisance. The rich man must sell up not\nonly himself but his whole class; and that can be done only through the\nChancellor of the Exchequer. The disciple cannot have his bread without\nmoney until there is bread for everybody without money; and that\nrequires an elaborate municipal organization of the food supply, rate\nsupported. Being members one of another means One Man One Vote, and One\nWoman One Vote, and universal suffrage and equal incomes and all sorts\nof modern political measures. Even in Syria in the time of Jesus\nhis teachings could not possibly have been realized by a series of\nindependent explosions of personal righteousness on the part of the\nseparate units of the population. Jerusalem could not have done what\neven a village community cannot do, and what Robinson Crusoe himself\ncould not have done if his conscience, and the stern compulsion of\nNature, had not imposed a common rule on the half dozen Robinson Crusoes\nwho struggled within him for not wholly compatible satisfactions. And\nwhat cannot be done in Jerusalem or Juan Fernandez cannot be done in\nLondon, New York, Paris, and Berlin. In short, Christianity, good or\nbad, right or wrong, must perforce be left out of the question in human\naffairs until it is made practically applicable to them by complicated\npolitical devices; and to pretend that a field preacher under the\ngovernorship of Pontius Pilate, or even Pontius Pilate himself in\ncouncil with all the wisdom of Rome, could have worked out applications\nof Christianity or any other system of morals for the twentieth century,\nis to shelve the subject much more effectually than Nero and all its\nother persecutors ever succeeded in doing. Personal righteousness, and\nthe view that you cannot make people moral by Act of Parliament, is, in\nfact, the favorite defensive resort of the people who, consciously or\nsubconsciously, are quite determined not to have their property meddled\nwith by Jesus or any other reformer.\n\n\n\n\nMODERN COMMUNISM.\n\nNow let us see what modern experience and modern sociology has to say\nto the teaching of Jesus as summarized here. First, get rid of your\nproperty by throwing it into the common stock. One can hear the\nPharisees of Jerusalem and Chorazin and Bethsaida saying, \"My good\nfellow, if you were to divide up the wealth of Judea equally today,\nbefore the end of the year you would have rich and poor, poverty and\naffluence, just as you have today; for there will always be the idle\nand the industrious, the thrifty and the wasteful, the drunken and the\nsober; and, as you yourself have very justly observed, the poor we shall\nhave always with us.\" And we can hear the reply, \"Woe unto you, liars\nand hypocrites; for ye have this very day divided up the wealth of\nthe country yourselves, as must be done every day (for man liveth not\notherwise than from hand to mouth, nor can fish and eggs endure for\never); and ye have divided it unjustly; also ye have said that my\nreproach to you for having the poor always with you was a law unto you\nthat this evil should persist and stink in the nostrils of God to all\neternity; wherefore I think that Lazarus will yet see you beside Dives\nin hell.\" Modern Capitalism has made short work of the primitive pleas\nfor inequality. The Pharisees themselves have organized communism in\ncapital. Joint stock is the order of the day. An attempt to return\nto individual properties as the basis of our production would smash\ncivilization more completely than ten revolutions. You cannot get the\nfields tilled today until the farmer becomes a co-operator. Take\nthe shareholder to his railway, and ask him to point out to you the\nparticular length of rail, the particular seat in the railway carriage,\nthe particular lever in the engine that is his very own and nobody\nelse's; and he will shun you as a madman, very wisely. And if, like\nAnanias and Sapphira, you try to hold back your little shop or what not\nfrom the common stock, represented by the Trust, or Combine, or Kartel,\nthe Trust will presently freeze you out and rope you in and finally\nstrike you dead industrially as thoroughly as St. Peter himself. There\nis no longer any practical question open as to Communism in production:\nthe struggle today is over the distribution of the product: that is,\nover the daily dividing-up which is the first necessity of organized\nsociety.\n\n\n\n\nREDISTRIBUTION.\n\nNow it needs no Christ to convince anybody today that our system of\ndistribution is wildly and monstrously wrong. We have million-dollar\nbabies side by side with paupers worn out by a long life of unremitted\ndrudgery. One person in every five dies in a workhouse, a public\nhospital, or a madhouse. In cities like London the proportion is very\nnearly one in two. Naturally so outrageous a distribution has to be\neffected by violence pure and simple. If you demur, you are sold up. If\nyou resist the selling up you are bludgeoned and imprisoned, the process\nbeing euphemistically called the maintenance of law and order. Iniquity\ncan go no further. By this time nobody who knows the figures of the\ndistribution defends them. The most bigoted British Conservative\nhesitates to say that his king should be much poorer than Mr.\nRockefeller, or to proclaim the moral superiority of prostitution to\nneedlework on the ground that it pays better. The need for a drastic\nredistribution of income in all civilized countries is now as obvious\nand as generally admitted as the need for sanitation.\n\n\n\n\nSHALL HE WHO MAKES, OWN.\n\nIt is when we come to the question of the proportions in which we are to\nredistribute that controversy begins. We are bewildered by an absurdly\nunpractical notion that in some way a man's income should be given to\nhim, not to enable him to live, but as a sort of Sunday School Prize for\ngood behavior. And this folly is complicated by a less ridiculous but\nquite as unpractical belief that it is possible to assign to each person\nthe exact portion of the national income that he or she has produced.\nTo a child it seems that the blacksmith has made a horse-shoe, and\nthat therefore the horse-shoe is his. But the blacksmith knows that the\nhorse-shoe does not belong solely to him, but to his landlord, to the\nrate collector and taxgatherer, to the men from whom he bought the iron\nand anvil and the coals, leaving only a scrap of its value for himself;\nand this scrap he has to exchange with the butcher and baker and the\nclothier for the things that he really appropriates as living tissue or\nits wrappings, paying for all of them more than their cost; for these\nfellow traders of his have also their landlords and moneylenders to\nsatisfy. If, then, such simple and direct village examples of apparent\nindividual production turn out on a moment's examination to be the\nproducts of an elaborate social organization, what is to be said of such\nproducts as dreadnoughts, factory-made pins and needles, and steel pens?\nIf God takes the dreadnought in one hand and a steel pen in the other,\nand asks Job who made them, and to whom they should belong by maker's\nright, Job must scratch his puzzled head with a potsherd and be dumb,\nunless indeed it strikes him that God is the ultimate maker, and that\nall we have a right to do with the product is to feed his lambs.\n\n\n\n\nLABOR TIME.\n\nSo maker's right as an alternative to taking the advice of Jesus would\nnot work. In practice nothing was possible in that direction but to pay\na worker by labor time so much an hour or day or week or year. But how\nmuch? When that question came up, the only answer was \"as little as\nhe can be starved into accepting,\" with the ridiculous results already\nmentioned, and the additional anomaly that the largest share went to\nthe people who did not work at all, and the least to those who worked\nhardest. In England nine-tenths of the wealth goes into the pockets of\none-tenth of the population.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DREAM OF DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO MERIT.\n\nAgainst this comes the protest of the Sunday School theorists \"Why not\ndistribute according to merit?\" Here one imagines Jesus, whose smile has\nbeen broadening down the ages as attempt after attempt to escape from\nhis teaching has led to deeper and deeper disaster, laughing outright.\nWas ever so idiotic a project mooted as the estimation of virtue in\nmoney? The London School of Economics is, we must suppose, to set\nexamination papers with such questions as, \"Taking the money value of\nthe virtues of Jesus as 100, and of Judas Iscariot as zero, give the\ncorrect figures for, respectively, Pontius Pilate, the proprietor of the\nGadarene swine, the widow who put her mite in the poor-box, Mr. Horatio\nBottomley, Shakespear, Mr. Jack Johnson, Sir Isaac Newton, Palestrina,\nOffenbach, Sir Thomas Lipton, Mr. Paul Cinquevalli, your family doctor,\nFlorence Nightingale, Mrs. Siddons, your charwoman, the Archbishop of\nCanterbury, and the common hangman.\" Or \"The late Mr. Barney Barnato\nreceived as his lawful income three thousand times as much money as\nan English agricultural laborer of good general character. Name the\nprincipal virtues in which Mr. Barnato exceeded the laborer three\nthousandfold; and give in figures the loss sustained by civilization\nwhen Mr. Barnato was driven to despair and suicide by the reduction\nof his multiple to one thousand.\" The Sunday School idea, with its\nprinciple \"to each the income he deserves\" is really too silly for\ndiscussion. Hamlet disposed of it three hundred years ago. \"Use every\nman after his deserts, and who shall scape whipping?\" Jesus remains\nunshaken as the practical man; and we stand exposed as the fools, the\nblunderers, the unpractical visionaries. The moment you try to reduce\nthe Sunday School idea to figures you find that it brings you back to\nthe hopeless plan of paying for a man's time; and your examination paper\nwill read \"The time of Jesus was worth nothing (he complained that the\nfoxes had holes and the birds of the air nests whilst he had not a place\nto lay his head). Dr. Crippen's time was worth, say, three hundred and\nfifty pounds a year. Criticize this arrangement; and, if you dispute its\njustice, state in pounds, dollars, francs and marks, what their relative\ntime wages ought to have been.\" Your answer may be that the question is\nin extremely bad taste and that you decline to answer it. But you cannot\nobject to being asked how many minutes of a bookmaker's time is worth\ntwo hours of an astronomer's?\n\n\n\n\nVITAL DISTRIBUTION.\n\nIn the end you are forced to ask the question you should have asked at\nthe beginning. What do you give a man an income for? Obviously to keep\nhim alive. Since it is evident that the first condition on which he can\nbe kept alive without enslaving somebody else is that he shall produce\nan equivalent for what it costs to keep him alive, we may quite\nrationally compel him to abstain from idling by whatever means we employ\nto compel him to abstain from murder, arson, forgery, or any other\ncrime. The one supremely foolish thing to do with him is to do nothing;\nthat is, to be as idle, lazy, and heartless in dealing with him as he is\nin dealing with us. Even if we provided work for him instead of basing,\nas we do, our whole industrial system on successive competitive waves\nof overwork with their ensuing troughs of unemployment, we should still\nsternly deny him the alternative of not doing it; for the result must be\nthat he will become poor and make his children poor if he has any; and\npoor people are cancers in the commonwealth, costing far more than if\nthey were handsomely pensioned off as incurables. Jesus had more sense\nthan to propose anything of the sort. He said to his disciples, in\neffect, \"Do your work for love; and let the other people lodge and\nfeed and clothe you for love.\" Or, as we should put it nowadays, \"for\nnothing.\" All human experience and all natural uncommercialized human\naspiration point to this as the right path. The Greeks said, \"First\nsecure an independent income; and then practise virtue.\" We all strive\ntowards an independent income. We all know as well as Jesus did that\nif we have to take thought for the morrow as to whether there shall be\nanything to eat or drink it will be impossible for us to think of nobler\nthings, or live a higher life than that of a mole, whose life is from\nbeginning to end a frenzied pursuit of food. Until the community is\norganized in such a way that the fear of bodily want is forgotten as\ncompletely as the fear of wolves already is in civilized capitals, we\nshall never have a decent social life. Indeed the whole attraction of\nour present arrangements lies in the fact that they do relieve a\nhandful of us from this fear; but as the relief is effected stupidly and\nwickedly by making the favored handful parasitic on the rest, they are\nsmitten with the degeneracy which seems to be the inevitable biological\npenalty of complete parasitism, and corrupt culture and statecraft\ninstead of contributing to them, their excessive leisure being as\nmischievous as the excessive toil of the laborers. Anyhow, the moral\nis clear. The two main problems of organized society, how to secure the\nsubsistence of all its members, and how to prevent the theft of that\nsubsistence by idlers, should be entirely dissociated; and the practical\nfailure of one of them to automatically achieve the other recognized\nand acted on. We may not all have Jesus's psychological power of seeing,\nwithout any enlightenment from more modern economic phenomena, that they\nmust fail; but we have the hard fact before us that they do fail. The\nonly people who cling to the lazy delusion that it is possible to find\na just distribution that will work automatically are those who postulate\nsome revolutionary change like land nationalization, which by itself\nwould obviously only force into greater urgency the problem of how to\ndistribute the product of the land among all the individuals in the\ncommunity.\n\n\n\n\nEQUAL DISTRIBUTION.\n\nWhen that problem is at last faced, the question of the proportion in\nwhich the national income shall be distributed can have only one answer.\nAll our shares must be equal. It has always been so; it always will\nbe so. It is true that the incomes of robbers vary considerably from\nindividual to individual; and the variation is reflected in the incomes\nof their parasites. The commercialization of certain exceptional talents\nhas also produced exceptional incomes, direct and derivative. Persons\nwho live on rent of land and capital are economically, though not\nlegally, in the category of robbers, and have grotesquely different\nincomes. But in the huge mass of mankind variation Of income from\nindividual to individual is unknown, because it is ridiculously\nimpracticable. As a device for persuading a carpenter that a judge is a\ncreature of superior nature to himself, to be deferred and submitted to\neven to the death, we may give a carpenter a hundred pounds a year and a\njudge five thousand; but the wage for one carpenter is the wage for\nall the carpenters: the salary for one judge is the salary for all the\njudges.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CAPTAIN AND THE CABIN BOY.\n\nNothing, therefore, is really in question, or ever has been, but the\ndifferences between class incomes. Already there is economic equality\nbetween captains, and economic equality between cabin boys. What is at\nissue still is whether there shall be economic equality between captains\nand cabin boys. What would Jesus have said? Presumably he would have\nsaid that if your only object is to produce a captain and a cabin boy\nfor the purpose of transferring you from Liverpool to New York, or to\nmanoeuvre a fleet and carry powder from the magazine to the gun, then\nyou need give no more than a shilling to the cabin boy for every pound\nyou give to the more expensively trained captain. But if in addition to\nthis you desire to allow the two human souls which are inseparable from\nthe captain and the cabin boy, and which alone differentiate them from\nthe donkey-engine, to develop all their possibilities, then you may find\nthe cabin boy costing rather more than the captain, because cabin boy's\nwork does not do so much for the soul as captain's work. Consequently\nyou will have to give him at least as much as the captain unless you\ndefinitely wish him to be a lower creature, in which case the sooner\nyou are hanged as an abortionist the better. That is the fundamental\nargument.\n\n\n\n\nTHE POLITICAL AND BIOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS TO INEQUALITY.\n\nBut there are other reasons for objecting to class stratification of\nincome which have heaped themselves up since the time of Jesus.\nIn politics it defeats every form of government except that of a\nnecessarily corrupt oligarchy. Democracy in the most democratic modern\nrepublics: Prance and the United States for example, is an imposture and\na delusion. It reduces justice and law to a farce: law becomes merely an\ninstrument for keeping the poor in subjection; and accused workmen\nare tried, not by a jury of their peers, but by conspiracies of their\nexploiters. The press is the press of the rich and the curse of the\npoor: it becomes dangerous to teach men to read. The priest becomes\nthe mere complement of the policeman in the machinery by which the\ncountryhouse oppresses the village. Worst of all, marriage becomes a\nclass affair: the infinite variety of choice which nature offers to the\nyoung in search of a mate is narrowed to a handful of persons of similar\nincome; and beauty and health become the dreams of artists and the\nadvertisements of quacks instead of the normal conditions of life.\nSociety is not only divided but actually destroyed in all directions by\ninequality of income between classes: such stability as it has is due to\nthe huge blocks of people between whom there is equality of income.\n\n\n\n\nJESUS AS ECONOMIST.\n\nIt seems therefore that we must begin by holding the right to an income\nas sacred and equal, just as we now begin by holding the right to life\nas sacred and equal. Indeed the one right is only a restatement of the\nother. To hang me for cutting a dock laborer's throat after making much\nof me for leaving him to starve when I do not happen to have a ship\nfor him to unload is idiotic; for as he does far less mischief with his\nthroat cut than when he is starving, a rational society would esteem\nthe cutthroat more highly than the capitalist. The thing has become\nso obvious, and the evil so unendurable, that if our attempt at\ncivilization is not to perish like all the previous ones, we shall have\nto organize our society in such a way as to be able to say to every\nperson in the land, \"Take no thought, saying What shall we eat? or What\nshall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?\" We shall then no\nlonger have a race of men whose hearts are in their pockets and safes\nand at their bankers. As Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will\nyour heart be also. That was why he recommended that money should\ncease to be a treasure, and that we should take steps to make ourselves\nutterly reckless of it, setting our minds free for higher uses. In other\nwords, that we should all be gentlemen and take care of our country\nbecause our country takes care of us, instead of the commercialized cads\nwe are, doing everything and anything for money, and selling our souls\nand bodies by the pound and the inch after wasting half the day haggling\nover the price. Decidedly, whether you think Jesus was God or not, you\nmust admit that he was a first-rate political economist.\n\n\n\n\nJESUS AS BIOLOGIST.\n\nHe was also, as we now see, a first-rate biologist. It took a century\nand a half of evolutionary preachers, from Buffon and Goethe to Butler\nand Bergson, to convince us that we and our father are one; that as the\nkingdom of heaven is within us we need not go about looking for it and\ncrying Lo here! and Lo there!; that God is not a picture of a pompous\nperson in white robes in the family Bible, but a spirit; that it is\nthrough this spirit that we evolve towards greater abundance of life;\nthat we are the lamps in which the light of the world burns: that, in\ncohort, we are gods though we die like men. All that is today sound\nbiology and psychology; and the efforts of Natural Selectionists like\nWeismann to reduce evolution to mere automatism have not touched the\ndoctrine of Jesus, though they have made short work of the theologians\nwho conceived God as a magnate keeping men and angels as Lord Rothschild\nkeeps buffaloes and emus at Tring.\n\n\n\n\nMONEY THE MIDWIFE OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNISM.\n\nIt may be asked here by some simple-minded reader why we should not\nresort to crude Communism as the disciples were told to do. This would\nbe quite practicable in a village where production was limited to the\nsupply of the primitive wants which nature imposes on all human beings\nalike. We know that people need bread and boots without waiting for them\nto come and ask for these things and offer to pay for them. But when\ncivilization advances to the point at which articles are produced that\nno man absolutely needs and that only some men fancy or can use, it is\nnecessary that individuals should be able to have things made to their\norder and at their own cost. It is safe to provide bread for everybody\nbecause everybody wants and eats bread; but it would be absurd to\nprovide microscopes and trombones, pet snakes and polo mallets, alembics\nand test tubes for everybody, as nine-tenths of them would be wasted;\nand the nine-tenths of the population who do not use such things\nwould object to their being provided at all. We have in the invaluable\ninstrument called money a means of enabling every individual to order\nand pay for the particular things he desires over and above the things\nhe must consume in order to remain alive, plus the things the State\ninsists on his having and using whether he wants to or not; for example,\nclothes, sanitary arrangements, armies and navies. In large communities,\nwhere even the most eccentric demands for manufactured articles average\nthemselves out until they can be foreseen within a negligible margin\nof error, direct communism (Take what you want without payment, as\nthe people do in Morris's News From Nowhere) will, after a little\nexperience, be found not only practicable but highly economical to an\nextent that now seems impossible. The sportsmen, the musicians, the\nphysicists, the biologists will get their apparatus for the asking as\neasily as their bread, or, as at present, their paving, street lighting,\nand bridges; and the deaf man will not object to contribute to communal\nflutes when the musician has to contribute to communal ear trumpets.\nThere are cases (for example, radium) in which the demand may be limited\nto the merest handful of laboratory workers, and in which nevertheless\nthe whole community must pay because the price is beyond the means of\nany individual worker. But even when the utmost allowance is made for\nextensions of communism that now seem fabulous, there will still remain\nfor a long time to come regions of supply and demand in which men will\nneed and use money or individual credit, and for which, therefore, they\nmust have individual incomes. Foreign travel is an obvious instance. We\nare so far from even national communism still, that we shall probably\nhave considerable developments of local communism before it becomes\npossible for a Manchester man to go up to London for a day without\ntaking any money with him. The modern practical form of the communism of\nJesus is therefore, for the present, equal distribution of the surplus\nof the national income that is not absorbed by simple communism.\n\n\n\n\nJUDGE NOT.\n\nIn dealing with crime and the family, modern thought and experience have\nthrown no fresh light on the views of Jesus. When Swift had occasion to\nillustrate the corruption of our civilization by making a catalogue of\nthe types of scoundrels it produces, he always gave judges a conspicuous\nplace alongside of them they judged. And he seems to have done this not\nas a restatement of the doctrine of Jesus, but as the outcome of his own\nobservation and judgment. One of Mr. Gilbert Chesterton's stories\nhas for its hero a judge who, whilst trying a criminal case, is so\noverwhelmed by the absurdity of his position and the wickedness of the\nthings it forces him to do, that he throws off the ermine there and\nthen, and goes out into the world to live the life of an honest man\ninstead of that of a cruel idol. There has also been a propaganda of a\nsoulless stupidity called Determinism, representing man as a dead\nobject driven hither and thither by his environment, antecedents,\ncircumstances, and so forth, which nevertheless does remind us that\nthere are limits to the number of cubits an individual can add to his\nstature morally or physically, and that it is silly as well as cruel to\ntorment a man five feet high for not being able to pluck fruit that is\nwithin the reach of men of average height. I have known a case of an\nunfortunate child being beaten for not being able to tell the time after\nreceiving an elaborate explanation of the figures on a clock dial, the\nfact being that she was short-sighted and could not see them. This is a\ntypical illustration of the absurdities and cruelties into which we are\nled by the counter-stupidity to Determinism: the doctrine of Free Will.\nThe notion that people can be good if they like, and that you should\ngive them a powerful additional motive for goodness by tormenting\nthem when they do evil, would soon reduce itself to absurdity if its\napplication were not kept within the limits which nature sets to the\nself-control of most of us. Nobody supposes that a man with no ear for\nmusic or no mathematical faculty could be compelled on pain of death,\nhowever cruelly inflicted, to hum all the themes of Beethoven's\nsymphonies or to complete Newton's work on fluxions.\n\n\n\n\nLIMITS TO FREE WILL.\n\nConsequently such of our laws as are not merely the intimidations by\nwhich tyrannies are maintained under pretext of law, can be obeyed\nthrough the exercise of a quite common degree of reasoning power and\nself-control. Most men and women can endure the ordinary annoyances\nand disappointments of life without committing murderous assaults. They\nconclude therefore that any person can refrain from such assaults if he\nor she chooses to, and proceed to reinforce self-control by threats of\nsevere punishment. But in this they are mistaken. There are people, some\nof them possessing considerable powers of mind and body, who can no more\nrestrain the fury into which a trifling mishap throws them than a dog\ncan restrain himself from snapping if he is suddenly and painfully\npinched. People fling knives and lighted paraffin lamps at one another\nin a dispute over a dinner-table. Men who have suffered several long\nsentences of penal servitude for murderous assaults will, the very day\nafter they are released, seize their wives and cast them under drays\nat an irritating word. We have not only people who cannot resist an\nopportunity of stealing for the sake of satisfying their wants, but even\npeople who have a specific mania for stealing, and do it when they are\nin no need of the things they steal. Burglary fascinates some men as\nsailoring fascinates some boys. Among respectable people how many are\nthere who can be restrained by the warnings of their doctors and the\nlessons of experience from eating and drinking more than is good for\nthem? It is true that between self-controlled people and ungovernable\npeople there is a narrow margin of moral malingerers who can be made to\nbehave themselves by the fear of consequences; but it is not worth while\nmaintaining an abominable system of malicious, deliberate, costly and\ndegrading ill-treatment of criminals for the sake of these marginal\ncases. For practical dealing with crime, Determinism or Predestination\nis quite a good working rule. People without self-control enough for\nsocial purposes may be killed, or may be kept in asylums with a view\nto studying their condition and ascertaining whether it is curable.\nTo torture them and give ourselves virtuous airs at their expense is\nridiculous and barbarous; and the desire to do it is vindictive\nand cruel. And though vindictiveness and cruelty are at least human\nqualities when they are frankly proclaimed and indulged, they are\nloathsome when they assume the robes of Justice. Which, I take it, is\nwhy Shakespear's Isabella gave such a dressing-down to Judge Angelo, and\nwhy Swift reserved the hottest corner of his hell for judges. Also, of\ncourse, why Jesus said \"Judge not that ye be not judged\" and \"If any\nman hear my words and believe not, I judge him not\" because \"he hath one\nthat judgeth him\": namely, the Father who is one with him.\n\nWhen we are robbed we generally appeal to the criminal law, not\nconsidering that if the criminal law were effective we should not have\nbeen robbed. That convicts us of vengeance.\n\nI need not elaborate the argument further. I have dealt with it\nsufficiently elsewhere. I have only to point out that we have been\njudging and punishing ever since Jesus told us not to; and I defy anyone\nto make out a convincing case for believing that the world has been\nany better than it would have been if there had never been a judge,\na prison, or a gallows in it all that time. We have simply added the\nmisery of punishment to the misery of crime, and the cruelty of the\njudge to the cruelty of the criminal. We have taken the bad man, and\nmade him worse by torture and degradation, incidentally making ourselves\nworse in the process. It does not seem very sensible, does it? It would\nhave been far easier to kill him as kindly as possible, or to label\nhim and leave him to his conscience, or to treat him as an invalid or\na lunatic is now treated (it is only of late years, by the way, that\nmadmen have been delivered from the whip, the chain, and the cage; and\nthis, I presume, is the form in which the teaching of Jesus could have\nbeen put into practice.)\n\n\n\n\nJESUS ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY.\n\nWhen we come to marriage and the family, we find Jesus making the same\nobjection to that individual appropriation of human beings which is the\nessence of matrimony as to the individual appropriation of wealth. A\nmarried man, he said, will try to please his wife, and a married woman\nto please her husband, instead of doing the work of God. This is another\nversion of \"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.\"\nEighteen hundred years later we find a very different person from Jesus,\nTalleyrand to wit, saying the same thing. A married man with a family,\nsaid Talleyrand, will do anything for money. Now this, though not a\nscientifically precise statement, is true enough to be a moral objection\nto marriage. As long as a man has a right to risk his life or his\nlivelihood for his ideas he needs only courage and conviction to make\nhis integrity unassailable. But he forfeits that right when he marries.\nIt took a revolution to rescue Wagner from his Court appointment at\nDresden; and his wife never forgave him for being glad and feeling free\nwhen he lost it and threw her back into poverty. Millet might have gone\non painting potboiling nudes to the end of his life if his wife had not\nbeen of a heroic turn herself. Women, for the sake of their children and\nparents, submit to slaveries and prostitutions that no unattached woman\nwould endure.\n\nThis was the beginning and the end of the objection of Jesus to marriage\nand family ties, and the explanation of his conception of heaven as a\nplace where there should be neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Now\nthere is no reason to suppose that when he said this he did not mean it.\nHe did not, as St. Paul did afterwards in his name, propose celibacy as\na rule of life; for he was not a fool, nor, when he denounced marriage,\nhad he yet come to believe, as St. Paul did, that the end of the world\nwas at hand and there was therefore no more need to replenish the earth.\nHe must have meant that the race should be continued without dividing\nwith women and men the allegiance the individual owes to God within him.\nThis raises the practical problem of how we are to secure the spiritual\nfreedom and integrity of the priest and the nun without their barrenness\nand uncompleted experience. Luther the priest did not solve the\nproblem by marrying a nun: he only testified in the most convincing\nand practical way to the fact that celibacy was a worse failure than\nmarriage.\n\n\n\n\nWHY JESUS DID NOT MARRY.\n\nTo all appearance the problem oppresses only a few exceptional people.\nThoroughly conventional women married to thoroughly conventional men\nshould not be conscious of any restriction: the chain not only leaves\nthem free to do whatever they want to do, but greatly facilitates their\ndoing it. To them an attack on marriage is not a blow struck in defence\nof their freedom but at their rights and privileges. One would expect\nthat they would not only demur vehemently to the teachings of Jesus in\nthis matter, but object strongly to his not having been a married man\nhimself. Even those who regard him as a god descended from his throne in\nheaven to take on humanity for a time might reasonably declare that the\nassumption of humanity must have been incomplete at its most vital\npoint if he were a celibate. But the facts are flatly contrary. The mere\nthought of Jesus as a married man is felt to be blasphemous by the\nmost conventional believers; and even those of us to whom Jesus is no\nsupernatural personage, but a prophet only as Mahomet was a prophet,\nfeel that there was something more dignified in the bachelordom of Jesus\nthan in the spectacle of Mahomet lying distracted on the floor of his\nharem whilst his wives stormed and squabbled and henpecked round him. We\nare not surprised that when Jesus called the sons of Zebedee to follow\nhim, he did not call their father, and that the disciples, like Jesus\nhimself, were all men without family entanglements. It is evident from\nhis impatience when people excused themselves from following him because\nof their family funerals, or when they assumed that his first duty was\nto his mother, that he had found family ties and domestic affections\nin his way at every turn, and had become persuaded at last that no man\ncould follow his inner light until he was free from their compulsion.\nThe absence of any protest against this tempts us to declare on this\nquestion of marriage there are no conventional people; and that everyone\nof us is at heart a good Christian sexually.\n\n\n\n\nINCONSISTENCY OF THE SEX INSTINCT.\n\nBut the question is not so simple as that. Sex is an exceedingly subtle\nand complicated instinct; and the mass of mankind neither know nor\ncare much about freedom of conscience, which is what Jesus was thinking\nabout, and are concerned almost to obsession with sex, as to which\nJesus said nothing. In our sexual natures we are torn by an irresistible\nattraction and an overwhelming repugnance and disgust. We have two\ntyrannous physical passions: concupiscence and chastity. We become mad\nin pursuit of sex: we become equally mad in the persecution of that\npursuit. Unless we gratify our desire the race is lost: unless we\nrestrain it we destroy ourselves. We are thus led to devise marriage\ninstitutions which will at the same time secure opportunities for the\ngratification of sex and raise up innumerable obstacles to it; which\nwill sanctify it and brand it as infamous; which will identify it with\nvirtue and with sin simultaneously. Obviously it is useless to look for\nany consistency in such institutions; and it is only by continual reform\nand readjustment, and by a considerable elasticity in their enforcement,\nthat a tolerable result can be arrived at. I need not repeat here\nthe long and elaborate examination of them that I prefixed to my play\nentitled Getting Married. Here I am concerned only with the views of\nJesus on the question; and it is necessary, in order to understand the\nattitude of the world towards them, that we should not attribute the\ngeneral approval of the decision of Jesus to remain unmarried as an\nendorsement of his views. We are simply in a state of confusion on the\nsubject; but it is part of the confusion that we should conclude that\nJesus was a celibate, and shrink even from the idea that his birth was\na natural one, yet cling with ferocity to the sacredness of the\ninstitution which provides a refuge from celibacy.\n\n\n\n\nFOR BETTER OR WORSE.\n\nJesus, however, did not express a complicated view of marriage. His\nobjection to it was quite simple, as we have seen. He perceived that\nnobody could live the higher life unless money and sexual love were\nobtainable without sacrificing it; and he saw that the effect of\nmarriage as it existed among the Jews (and as it still exists among\nourselves) was to make the couples sacrifice every higher consideration\nuntil they had fed and pleased one another. The worst of it is that\nthis dangerous preposterousness in marriage, instead of improving as\nthe general conduct of married couples improves, becomes much worse. The\nselfish man to whom his wife is nothing but a slave, the selfish woman\nto whom her husband is nothing but a scapegoat and a breadwinner, are\nnot held back from spiritual or any other adventures by fear of their\neffect on the welfare of their mates. Their wives do not make recreants\nand cowards of them: their husbands do not chain them to the cradle and\nthe cooking range when their feet should be beautiful on the mountains.\nIt is precisely as people become more kindly, more conscientious, more\nready to shoulder the heavier part of the burden (which means that the\nstrong shall give way to the weak and the slow hold back the swift),\nthat marriage becomes an intolerable obstacle to individual evolution.\nAnd that is why the revolt against marriage of which Jesus was an\nexponent always recurs when civilization raises the standard of marital\nduty and affection, and at the same time produces a greater need for\nindividual freedom in pursuit of a higher evolution. This, fortunately,\nis only one side of marriage; and the question arises, can it not be\neliminated? The reply is reassuring: of course it can. There is no\nmortal reason in the nature of things why a married couple should be\neconomically dependent on one another. The Communism advocated by Jesus,\nwhich we have seen to be entirely practicable, and indeed inevitable\nif our civilization is to be saved from collapse, gets rid of that\ndifficulty completely. And with the economic dependence will go the\nforce of the outrageous claims that derive their real sanction from the\neconomic pressure behind them. When a man allows his wife to turn him\nfrom the best work he is capable of doing, and to sell his soul at the\nhighest commercial prices obtainable; when he allows her to entangle him\nin a social routine that is wearisome and debilitating to him, or tie\nhim to her apron strings when he needs that occasional solitude which\nis one of the most sacred of human rights, he does so because he has no\nright to impose eccentric standards of expenditure and unsocial habits\non her, and because these conditions have produced by their pressure so\ngeneral a custom of chaining wedded couples to one another that married\npeople are coarsely derided when their partners break the chain. And\nwhen a woman is condemned by her parents to wait in genteel idleness and\nuselessness for a husband when all her healthy social instincts call her\nto acquire a profession and work, it is again her economic dependence on\nthem that makes their tyranny effective.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CASE FOR MARRIAGE.\n\nThus, though it would be too much to say that everything that is\nobnoxious in marriage and family life will be cured by Communism, yet\nit can be said that it will cure what Jesus objected to in these\ninstitutions. He made no comprehensive study of them: he only expressed\nhis own grievance with an overwhelming sense that it is a grievance so\ndeep that all the considerations on the other side are as dust in the\nbalance. Obviously there are such considerations, and very weighty ones\ntoo. When Talleyrand said that a married man with a family is capable\nof anything, he meant anything evil; but an optimist may declare, with\nequal half truth, that a married man is capable of anything good; that\nmarriage turns vagabonds into steady citizens; and that men and women\nwill, for love of their mates and children, practise virtues that\nunattached individuals are incapable of. It is true that too much of\nthis domestic virtue is self-denial, which is not a virtue at all;\nbut then the following of the inner light at all costs is largely\nself-indulgence, which is just as suicidal, just as weak, just as\ncowardly as self-denial. Ibsen, who takes us into the matter far more\nresolutely than Jesus, is unable to find any golden rule: both Brand\nand Peer Gynt come to a bad end; and though Brand does not do as much\nmischief as Peer, the mischief he does do is of extraordinary intensity.\n\n\n\n\nCELIBACY NO REMEDY.\n\nWe must, I think, regard the protest of Jesus against marriage and\nfamily ties as the claim of a particular kind of individual to be free\nfrom them because they hamper his own work intolerably. When he said\nthat if we are to follow him in the sense of taking up his work we must\ngive up our family ties, he was simply stating a fact; and to this day\nthe Roman Catholic priest, the Buddhist lama, and the fakirs of all\nthe eastern denominations accept the saying. It is also accepted by the\nphysically enterprising, the explorers, the restlessly energetic of all\nkinds, in short, by the adventurous. The greatest sacrifice in marriage\nis the sacrifice of the adventurous attitude towards life: the being\nsettled. Those who are born tired may crave for settlement; but to\nfresher and stronger spirits it is a form of suicide. Now to say of\nany institution that it is incompatible with both the contemplative and\nadventurous life is to disgrace it so vitally that all the moralizings\nof all the Deans and Chapters cannot reconcile our souls to its slavery.\nThe unmarried Jesus and the unmarried Beethoven, the unmarried Joan of\nArc, Clare, Teresa, Florence Nightingale seem as they should be; and\nthe saying that there is always something ridiculous about a married\nphilosopher becomes inevitable. And yet the celibate is still\nmore ridiculous than the married man: the priest, in accepting the\nalternative of celibacy, disables himself; and the best priests are\nthose who have been men of this world before they became men of the\nworld to come. But as the taking of vows does not annul an existing\nmarriage, and a married man cannot become a priest, we are again\nconfronted with the absurdity that the best priest is a reformed rake.\nThus does marriage, itself intolerable, thrust us upon intolerable\nalternatives. The practical solution is to make the individual\neconomically independent of marriage and the family, and to make\nmarriage as easily dissoluble as any other partnership: in other words,\nto accept the conclusions to which experience is slowly driving both our\nsociologists and our legislators. This will not instantly cure all the\nevils of marriage, nor root up at one stroke its detestable tradition\nof property in human bodies. But it will leave Nature free to effect a\ncure; and in free soil the root may wither and perish.\n\nThis disposes of all the opinions and teachings of Jesus which are\nstill matters of controversy. They are all in line with the best modern\nthought. He told us what we have to do; and we have had to find the way\nto do it. Most of us are still, as most were in his own time, extremely\nrecalcitrant, and are being forced along that way by painful pressure of\ncircumstances, protesting at every step that nothing will induce us to\ngo; that it is a ridiculous way, a disgraceful way, a socialistic way,\nan atheistic way, an immoral way, and that the vanguard ought to be\nashamed of themselves and must be made to turn back at once. But they\nfind that they have to follow the vanguard all the same if their lives\nare to be worth living.\n\n\n\n\nAFTER THE CRUCIFIXION.\n\nLet us now return to the New Testament narrative; for what happened\nafter the disappearance of Jesus is instructive. Unfortunately, the\ncrucifixion was a complete political success. I remember that when\nI described it in these terms once before, I greatly shocked a most\nrespectable newspaper in my native town, the Dublin Daily Express,\nbecause my journalistic phrase showed that I was treating it as an\nordinary event like Home Rule or the Insurance Act: that is (though this\ndid not occur to the editor), as a real event which had really happened,\ninstead of a portion of the Church service. I can only repeat, assuming\nas I am that it was a real event and did actually happen, that it was\nas complete a success as any in history. Christianity as a specific\ndoctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly. He was hardly cold\nin his grave, or high in his heaven (as you please), before the apostles\ndragged the tradition of him down to the level of the thing it has\nremained ever since. And that thing the intelligent heathen may study,\nif they would be instructed in it by modern books, in Samuel Butler's\nnovel, The Way of All Flesh.\n\n\n\n\nTHE VINDICTIVE MIRACLES AND THE STONING OF STEPHEN.\n\nTake, for example, the miracles. Of Jesus alone of all the Christian\nmiracle workers there is no record, except in certain gospels that all\nmen reject, of a malicious or destructive miracle. A barren fig-tree\nwas the only victim of his anger. Every one of his miracles on sentient\nsubjects was an act of kindness. John declares that he healed the wound\nof the man whose ear was cut off (by Peter, John says) at the arrest\nin the garden. One of the first things the apostles did with their\nmiraculous power was to strike dead a wretched man and his wife who had\ndefrauded them by holding back some money from the common stock. They\nstruck people blind or dead without remorse, judging because they had\nbeen judged. They healed the sick and raised the dead apparently in a\nspirit of pure display and advertisement. Their doctrine did not contain\na ray of that light which reveals Jesus as one of the redeemers of men\nfrom folly and error. They cancelled him, and went back straight to John\nthe Baptist and his formula of securing remission of sins by repentance\nand the rite of baptism (being born again of water and the spirit).\nPeter's first harangue softens us by the human touch of its exordium,\nwhich was a quaint assurance to his hearers that they must believe him\nto be sober because it was too early in the day to get drunk; but of\nJesus he had nothing to say except that he was the Christ foretold\nby the prophets as coming from the seed of David, and that they must\nbelieve this and be baptized. To this the other apostles added incessant\ndenunciations of the Jews for having crucified him, and threats of the\ndestruction that would overtake them if they did not repent: that is, if\nthey did not join the sect which the apostles were now forming. A quite\nintolerable young speaker named Stephen delivered an oration to the\ncouncil, in which he first inflicted on them a tedious sketch of the\nhistory of Israel, with which they were presumably as well acquainted\nas he, and then reviled them in the most insulting terms as \"stiffnecked\nand uncircumcized.\" Finally, after boring and annoying them to the\nutmost bearable extremity, he looked up and declared that he saw the\nheavens open, and Christ standing on the right hand of God. This was too\nmuch: they threw him out of the city and stoned him to death. It was\na severe way of suppressing a tactless and conceited bore; but it was\npardonable and human in comparison to the slaughter of poor Ananias and\nSapphira.\n\n\n\n\nPAUL.\n\nSuddenly a man of genius, Paul, violently anti-Christian, enters on\nthe scene, holding the clothes of the men who are stoning Stephen. He\npersecutes the Christians with great vigor, a sport which he combines\nwith the business of a tentmaker. This temperamental hatred of Jesus,\nwhom he has never seen, is a pathological symptom of that particular\nsort of conscience and nervous constitution which brings its victims\nunder the tyranny of two delirious terrors: the terror of sin and the\nterror of death, which may be called also the terror of sex and the\nterror of life. Now Jesus, with his healthy conscience on his higher\nplane, was free from these terrors. He consorted freely with sinners,\nand was never concerned for a moment, as far as we know, about whether\nhis conduct was sinful or not; so that he has forced us to accept him as\nthe man without sin. Even if we reckon his last days as the days of\nhis delusion, he none the less gave a fairly convincing exhibition of\nsuperiority to the fear of death. This must have both fascinated and\nhorrified Paul, or Saul, as he was first called. The horror accounts for\nhis fierce persecution of the Christians. The fascination accounts for\nthe strangest of his fancies: the fancy for attaching the name of Jesus\nChrist to the great idea which flashed upon him on the road to Damascus,\nthe idea that he could not only make a religion of his two terrors, but\nthat the movement started by Jesus offered him the nucleus for his new\nChurch. It was a monstrous idea; and the shocks of it, as he afterwards\ndeclared, struck him blind for days. He heard Jesus calling to him from\nthe clouds, \"Why persecute me?\" His natural hatred of the teacher for\nwhom Sin and Death had no terrors turned into a wild personal worship\nof him which has the ghastliness of a beautiful thing seen in a false\nlight.\n\nThe chronicler of the Acts of the Apostles sees nothing of the\nsignificance of this. The great danger of conversion in all ages has\nbeen that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower\nmind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding\nit, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level\nby degrading it. Years ago I said that the conversion of a savage\nto Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery. The\nconversion of Paul was no conversion at all: it was Paul who converted\nthe religion that had raised one man above sin and death into a religion\nthat delivered millions of men so completely into their dominion that\ntheir own common nature became a horror to them, and the religious life\nbecame a denial of life. Paul had no intention of surrendering either\nhis Judaism or his Roman citizenship to the new moral world (as Robert\nOwen called it) of Communism and Jesuism. Just as in the XIX century\nKarl Marx, not content to take political economy as he found it,\ninsisted on rebuilding it from the bottom upwards in his own way, and\nthereby gave a new lease of life to the errors it was just outgrowing,\nso Paul reconstructed the old Salvationism from which Jesus had vainly\ntried to redeem him, and produced a fantastic theology which is still\nthe most amazing thing of the kind known to us. Being intellectually\nan inveterate Roman Rationalist, always discarding the irrational real\nthing for the unreal but ratiocinable postulate, he began by discarding\nMan as he is, and substituted a postulate which he called Adam. And when\nhe was asked, as he surely must have been in a world not wholly mad,\nwhat had become of the natural man, he replied \"Adam IS the natural\nman.\" This was confusing to simpletons, because according to tradition\nAdam was certainly the name of the natural man as created in the garden\nof Eden. It was as if a preacher of our own time had described as\ntypically British Frankenstein's monster, and called him Smith, and\nsomebody, on demanding what about the man in the street, had been told\n\"Smith is the man in the street.\" The thing happens often enough; for\nindeed the world is full of these Adams and Smiths and men in the street\nand average sensual men and economic men and womanly women and what\nnot, all of them imaginary Atlases carrying imaginary worlds on their\nunsubstantial shoulders.\n\nThe Eden story provided Adam with a sin: the \"original sin\" for which\nwe are all damned. Baldly stated, this seems ridiculous; nevertheless\nit corresponds to something actually existent not only in Paul's\nconsciousness but in our own. The original sin was not the eating of the\nforbidden fruit, but the consciousness of sin which the fruit produced.\nThe moment Adam and Eve tasted the apple they found themselves ashamed\nof their sexual relation, which until then had seemed quite innocent\nto them; and there is no getting over the hard fact that this shame, or\nstate of sin, has persisted to this day, and is one of the strongest\nof our instincts. Thus Paul's postulate of Adam as the natural man was\npragmatically true: it worked. But the weakness of Pragmatism is that\nmost theories will work if you put your back into making them work,\nprovided they have some point of contact with human nature. Hedonism\nwill pass the pragmatic test as well as Stoicism. Up to a certain point\nevery social principle that is not absolutely idiotic works: Autocracy\nworks in Russia and Democracy in America; Atheism works in France,\nPolytheism in India, Monotheism throughout Islam, and Pragmatism, or\nNo-ism, in England. Paul's fantastic conception of the damned Adam,\nrepresented by Bunyan as a pilgrim with a great burden of sins on his\nback, corresponded to the fundamental condition of evolution, which\nis, that life, including human life, is continually evolving, and must\ntherefore be continually ashamed of itself and its present and past.\nBunyan's pilgrim wants to get rid of his bundle of sins; but he also\nwants to reach \"yonder shining light;\" and when at last his bundle falls\noff him into the sepulchre of Christ, his pilgrimage is still unfinished\nand his hardest trials still ahead of him. His conscience remains\nuneasy; \"original sin\" still torments him; and his adventure with Giant\nDespair, who throws him into the dungeon of Doubting Castle, from which\nhe escapes by the use of a skeleton key, is more terrible than any he\nmet whilst the bundle was still on his back. Thus Bunyan's allegory of\nhuman nature breaks through the Pauline theology at a hundred points.\nHis theological allegory, The Holy War, with its troops of Election\nDoubters, and its cavalry of \"those that rode Reformadoes,\" is, as a\nwhole, absurd, impossible, and, except in passages where the artistic\nold Adam momentarily got the better of the Salvationist theologian,\nhardly readable.\n\nPaul's theory of original sin was to some extent idiosyncratic. He\ntells us definitely that he finds himself quite well able to avoid the\nsinfulness of sex by practising celibacy; but he recognizes, rather\ncontemptuously, that in this respect he is not as other men are, and\nsays that they had better marry than burn, thus admitting that though\nmarriage may lead to placing the desire to please wife or husband before\nthe desire to please God, yet preoccupation with unsatisfied desire may\nbe even more ungodly than preoccupation with domestic affection. This\nview of the case inevitably led him to insist that a wife should be\nrather a slave than a partner, her real function being, not to engage a\nman's love and loyalty, but on the contrary to release them for God by\nrelieving the man of all preoccupation with sex just as in her capacity\nof a housekeeper and cook she relieves his preoccupation with hunger\nby the simple expedient of satisfying his appetite. This slavery also\njustifies itself pragmatically by working effectively; but it has made\nPaul the eternal enemy of Woman. Incidentally it has led to many foolish\nsurmises about Paul's personal character and circumstance, by people so\nenslaved by sex that a celibate appears to them a sort of monster. They\nforget that not only whole priesthoods, official and unofficial, from\nPaul to Carlyle and Ruskin, have defied the tyranny of sex, but immense\nnumbers of ordinary citizens of both sexes have, either voluntarily\nor under pressure of circumstances easily surmountable, saved their\nenergies for less primitive activities.\n\nHowbeit, Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for\nthe figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the\nnatural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable\nonly by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had\nJesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on\nits legs again in the name of Jesus.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONFUSION OF CHRISTENDOM.\n\nNow it is evident that two religions having such contrary effects on\nmankind should not be confused as they are under a common name. There is\nnot one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of\nJesus. When Saul watched the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, he\nwas not acting upon beliefs which Paul renounced. There is no record of\nChrist's having ever said to any man: \"Go and sin as much as you like:\nyou can put it all on me.\" He said \"Sin no more,\" and insisted that he\nwas putting up the standard of conduct, not debasing it, and that\nthe righteousness of the Christian must exceed that of the Scribe and\nPharisee. The notion that he was shedding his blood in order that every\npetty cheat and adulterator and libertine might wallow in it and come\nout whiter than snow, cannot be imputed to him on his own authority. \"I\ncome as an infallible patent medicine for bad consciences\" is not one\nof the sayings in the gospels. If Jesus could have been consulted on\nBunyan's allegory as to that business of the burden of sin dropping from\nthe pilgrim's back when he caught sight of the cross, we must infer from\nhis teaching that he would have told Bunyan in forcible terms that he\nhad never made a greater mistake in his life, and that the business of a\nChrist was to make self-satisfied sinners feel the burden of their sins\nand stop committing them instead of assuring them that they could not\nhelp it, as it was all Adam's fault, but that it did not matter as long\nas they were credulous and friendly about himself. Even when he believed\nhimself to be a god, he did not regard himself as a scapegoat. He was\nto take away the sins of the world by good government, by justice and\nmercy, by setting the welfare of little children above the pride of\nprinces, by casting all the quackeries and idolatries which now usurp\nand malversate the power of God into what our local authorities quaintly\ncall the dust destructor, and by riding on the clouds of heaven in glory\ninstead of in a thousand-guinea motor car. That was delirious, if you\nlike; but it was the delirium of a free soul, not of a shamebound one\nlike Paul's. There has really never been a more monstrous imposition\nperpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon\nthe soul of Jesus.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SECRET OF PAUL'S SUCCESS.\n\nPaul must soon have found that his followers had gained peace of mind\nand victory over death and sin at the cost of all moral responsibility;\nfor he did his best to reintroduce it by making good conduct the test\nof sincere belief, and insisting that sincere belief was necessary to\nsalvation. But as his system was rooted in the plain fact that as what\nhe called sin includes sex and is therefore an ineradicable part of\nhuman nature (why else should Christ have had to atone for the sin of\nall future generations?) it was impossible for him to declare that sin,\neven in its wickedest extremity, could forfeit the sinner's salvation if\nhe repented and believed. And to this day Pauline Christianity is, and\nowes its enormous vogue to being, a premium on sin. Its consequences\nhave had to be held in check by the worldlywise majority through a\nviolently anti-Christian system of criminal law and stern morality. But\nof course the main restraint is human nature, which has good impulses as\nwell as bad ones, and refrains from theft and murder and cruelty, even\nwhen it is taught that it can commit them all at the expense of Christ\nand go happily to heaven afterwards, simply because it does not always\nwant to murder or rob or torture.\n\nIt is now easy to understand why the Christianity of Jesus failed\ncompletely to establish itself politically and socially, and was easily\nsuppressed by the police and the Church, whilst Paulinism overran the\nwhole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire,\nand was adopted by it as its official faith, the old avenging gods\nfalling helplessly before the new Redeemer. It still retains, as we may\nsee in Africa, its power of bringing to simple people a message of hope\nand consolation that no other religion offers. But this enchantment is\nproduced by its spurious association with the personal charm of Jesus,\nand exists only for untrained minds. In the hands of a logical Frenchman\nlike Calvin, pushing it to its utmost conclusions, and devising\n\"institutes\" for hardheaded adult Scots and literal Swiss, it becomes\nthe most infernal of fatalisms; and the lives of civilized children are\nblighted by its logic whilst negro piccaninnies are rejoicing in its\nlegends.\n\n\n\n\nPAUL'S QUALITIES\n\nPaul, however, did not get his great reputation by mere imposition and\nreaction. It is only in comparison with Jesus (to whom many prefer him)\nthat he appears common and conceited. Though in The Acts he is only\na vulgar revivalist, he comes out in his own epistles as a genuine\npoet,--though by flashes only. He is no more a Christian than Jesus was\na Baptist; he is a disciple of Jesus only as Jesus was a disciple of\nJohn. He does nothing that Jesus would have done, and says nothing that\nJesus would have said, though much, like the famous ode to charity, that\nhe would have admired. He is more Jewish than the Jews, more Roman\nthan the Romans, proud both ways, full of startling confessions and\nself-revelations that would not surprise us if they were slipped into\nthe pages of Nietzsche, tormented by an intellectual conscience that\ndemanded an argued case even at the cost of sophistry, with all sorts\nof fine qualities and occasional illuminations, but always hopelessly in\nthe toils of Sin, Death, and Logic, which had no power over Jesus. As we\nhave seen, it was by introducing this bondage and terror of his into the\nChristian doctrine that he adapted it to the Church and State systems\nwhich Jesus transcended, and made it practicable by destroying the\nspecifically Jesuist side of it. He would have been quite in his place\nin any modern Protestant State; and he, not Jesus, is the true head and\nfounder of our Reformed Church, as Peter is of the Roman Church. The\nfollowers of Paul and Peter made Christendom, whilst the Nazarenes were\nwiped out.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.\n\nHere we may return to the narrative called The Acts of the Apostles,\nwhich we left at the point where the stoning of Stephen was followed\nby the introduction of Paul. The author of The Acts, though a good\nstory-teller, like Luke, was (herein also like Luke) much weaker in\npower of thought than in imaginative literary art. Hence we find Luke\ncredited with the authorship of The Acts by people who like stories and\nhave no aptitude for theology, whilst the book itself is denounced\nas spurious by Pauline theologians because Paul, and indeed all the\napostles, are represented in it as very commonplace revivalists,\ninteresting us by their adventures more than by any qualities of mind\nor character. Indeed, but for the epistles, we should have a very poor\nopinion of the apostles. Paul in particular is described as setting a\nfashion which has remained in continual use to this day. Whenever he\naddresses an audience, he dwells with great zest on his misdeeds before\nhis pseudo conversion, with the effect of throwing into stronger\nrelief his present state of blessedness; and he tells the story of that\nconversion over and over again, ending with exhortations to the hearers\nto come and be saved, and threats of the wrath that will overtake them\nif they refuse. At any revival meeting today the same thing may be\nheard, followed by the same conversions. This is natural enough; but\nit is totally unlike the preaching of Jesus, who never talked about his\npersonal history, and never \"worked up\" an audience to hysteria. It\naims at a purely nervous effect; it brings no enlightenment; the most\nignorant man has only to become intoxicated with his own vanity, and\nmistake his self-satisfaction for the Holy Ghost, to become qualified as\nan apostle; and it has absolutely nothing to do with the characteristic\ndoctrines of Jesus. The Holy Ghost may be at work all round producing\nwonders of art and science, and strengthening men to endure all sorts\nof martyrdoms for the enlargement of knowledge, and the enrichment and\nintensification of life (\"that ye may have life more abundantly\"); but\nthe apostles, as described in The Acts, take no part in the struggle\nexcept as persecutors and revilers. To this day, when their successors\nget the upper hand, as in Geneva (Knox's \"perfect city of Christ\") and\nin Scotland and Ulster, every spiritual activity but moneymaking and\nchurchgoing is stamped out; heretics are ruthlessly persecuted; and such\npleasures as money can purchase are suppressed so that its possessors\nare compelled to go on making money because there is nothing else to do.\nAnd the compensation for all this privation is partly an insane conceit\nof being the elect of God, with a reserved seat in heaven, and partly,\nsince even the most infatuated idiot cannot spend his life admiring\nhimself, the less innocent excitement of punishing other people for not\nadmiring him, and the nosing out of the sins of the people who, being\nintelligent enough to be incapable of mere dull self-righteousness, and\nhighly susceptible to the beauty and interest of the real workings\nof the Holy Ghost, try to live more rational and abundant lives. The\nabominable amusement of terrifying children with threats of hell is\nanother of these diversions, and perhaps the vilest and most mischievous\nof them. The net result is that the imitators of the apostles,\nwhether they are called Holy Willies or Stigginses in derision, or, in\nadmiration, Puritans or saints, are, outside their own congregations,\nand to a considerable extent inside them, heartily detested. Now nobody\ndetests Jesus, though many who have been tormented in their childhood in\nhis name include him in their general loathing of everything\nconnected with the word religion; whilst others, who know him only by\nmisrepresentation as a sentimental pacifist and an ascetic, include him\nin their general dislike of that type of character. In the same way a\nstudent who has had to \"get up\" Shakespear as a college subject may hate\nShakespear; and people who dislike the theatre may include Moliere in\nthat dislike without ever having read a line of his or witnessed one of\nhis plays; but nobody with any knowledge of Shakespear or Moliere could\npossibly detest them, or read without pity and horror a description\nof their being insulted, tortured, and killed. And the same is true\nof Jesus. But it requires the most strenuous effort of conscience to\nrefrain from crying \"Serve him right\" when we read of the stoning of\nStephen; and nobody has ever cared twopence about the martyrdom of\nPeter: many better men have died worse deaths: for example, honest Hugh\nLatimer, who was burned by us, was worth fifty Stephens and a dozen\nPeters. One feels at last that when Jesus called Peter from his boat,\nhe spoiled an honest fisherman, and made nothing better out of the wreck\nthan a salvation monger.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CONTROVERSIES ON BAPTISM AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION.\n\nMeanwhile the inevitable effect of dropping the peculiar doctrines of\nJesus and going back to John the Baptist, was to make it much easier to\nconvert Gentiles than Jews; and it was by following the line of least\nresistance that Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles. The Jews had\ntheir own rite of initiation: the rite of circumcision; and they were\nfiercely jealous for it, because it marked them as the chosen people\nof God, and set them apart from the Gentiles, who were simply the\nuncircumcized. When Paul, finding that baptism made way faster among the\nGentiles than among the Jews, as it enabled them to plead that they too\nwere sanctified by a rite of later and higher authority than the Mosaic\nrite, he was compelled to admit that circumcision did not matter;\nand this, to the Jews, was an intolerable blasphemy. To Gentiles like\nourselves, a good deal of the Epistle to the Romans is now tedious to\nunreadableness because it consists of a hopeless attempt by Paul to\nevade the conclusion that if a man were baptized it did not matter a\nrap whether he was circumcized or not. Paul claims circumcision as an\nexcellent thing in its way for a Jew; but if it has no efficacy towards\nsalvation, and if salvation is the one thing needful--and Paul was\ncommitted to both propositions--his pleas in mitigation only made the\nJews more determined to stone him.\n\nThus from the very beginning of apostolic Christianity, it was hampered\nby a dispute as to whether salvation was to be attained by a surgical\noperation or by a sprinkling of water: mere rites on which Jesus would\nnot have wasted twenty words. Later on, when the new sect conquered the\nGentile west, where the dispute had no practical application, the other\nceremony--that of eating the god--produced a still more disastrous\ndispute, in which a difference of belief, not as to the obligation to\nperform the ceremony, but as to whether it was a symbolic or a real\ningestion of divine substance, produced persecution, slaughter, hatred,\nand everything that Jesus loathed, on a monstrous scale.\n\nBut long before that, the superstitions which had fastened on the new\nfaith made trouble. The parthenogenetic birth of Christ, simple\nenough at first as a popular miracle, was not left so simple by the\ntheologians. They began to ask of what substance Christ was made in the\nwomb of the virgin. When the Trinity was added to the faith the question\narose, was the virgin the mother of God or only the mother of Jesus?\nArian schisms and Nestorian schisms arose on these questions; and the\nleaders of the resultant agitations rancorously deposed one another\nand excommunicated one another according to their luck in enlisting the\nemperors on their side. In the IV century they began to burn one\nanother for differences of opinion in such matters. In the VIII century\nCharlemagne made Christianity compulsory by killing those who refused\nto embrace it; and though this made an end of the voluntary character of\nconversion, Charlemagne may claim to be the first Christian who put men\nto death for any point of doctrine that really mattered. From his time\nonward the history of Christian controversy reeks with blood and\nfire, torture and warfare. The Crusades, the persecutions in Albi and\nelsewhere, the Inquisition, the \"wars of religion\" which followed the\nReformation, all presented themselves as Christian phenomena; but who\ncan doubt that they would have been repudiated with horror by Jesus?\nOur own notion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew's was an outrage\non Christianity, whilst the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus, and even of\nFrederick the Great, were a defence of it, is as absurd as the opposite\nnotion that Frederick was Antichrist and Torquemada and Ignatius Loyola\nmen after the very heart of Jesus. Neither they nor their exploits had\nanything to do with him. It is probable that Archbishop Laud and John\nWesley died equally persuaded that he in whose name they had made\nthemselves famous on earth would receive them in Heaven with open arms.\nPoor Fox the Quaker would have had ten times their chance; and yet Fox\nmade rather a miserable business of life.\n\nNevertheless all these perversions of the doctrine of Jesus derived\ntheir moral force from his credit, and so had to keep his gospel alive.\nWhen the Protestants translated the Bible into the vernacular and let\nit loose among the people, they did an extremely dangerous thing, as\nthe mischief which followed proves; but they incidentally let loose\nthe sayings of Jesus in open competition with the sayings of Paul\nand Koheleth and David and Solomon and the authors of Job and the\nPentateuch; and, as we have seen, Jesus seems to be the winning name.\nThe glaring contradiction between his teaching and the practice of all\nthe States and all the Churches is no longer hidden. And it may be that\nthough nineteen centuries have passed since Jesus was born (the date of\nhis birth is now quaintly given as 7 B.C., though some contend for 100\nB.C.), and though his Church has not yet been founded nor his political\nsystem tried, the bankruptcy of all the other systems when audited\nby our vital statistics, which give us a final test for all political\nsystems, is driving us hard into accepting him, not as a scapegoat, but\nas one who was much less of a fool in practical matters than we have\nhitherto all thought him.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ALTERNATIVE CHRISTS.\n\nLet us now clear up the situation a little. The New Testament tells two\nstories for two different sorts of readers. One is the old story of the\nachievement of our salvation by the sacrifice and atonement of a divine\npersonage who was barbarously slain and rose again on the third day:\nthe story as it was accepted by the apostles. And in this story the\npolitical, economic, and moral views of the Christ have no importance:\nthe atonement is everything; and we are saved by our faith in it, and\nnot by works or opinions (other than that particular opinion) bearing on\npractical affairs.\n\nThe other is the story of a prophet who, after expressing several\nvery interesting opinions as to practical conduct, both personal and\npolitical, which are now of pressing importance, and instructing his\ndisciples to carry them out in their daily life, lost his head; believed\nhimself to be a crude legendary form of god; and under that delusion\ncourted and suffered a cruel execution in the belief that he would rise\nfrom the dead and come in glory to reign over a regenerated world.\nIn this form, the political, economic and moral opinions of Jesus,\nas guides to conduct, are interesting and important: the rest is mere\npsychopathy and superstition. The accounts of the resurrection, the\nparthenogenetic birth, and the more incredible miracles are rejected\nas inventions; and such episodes as the conversation with the devil\nare classed with similar conversations recorded of St. Dunstan, Luther,\nBunyan, Swedenborg, and Blake.\n\n\n\n\nCREDULITY NO CRITERION.\n\nThis arbitrary acceptance and rejection of parts of the gospel is not\npeculiar to the Secularist view. We have seen Luke and John reject\nMatthew's story of the massacre of the innocents and the flight into\nEgypt without ceremony. The notion that Matthew's manuscript is a\nliteral and infallible record of facts, not subject to the errors that\nbeset all earthly chroniclers, would have made John stare, being as it\nis a comparatively modern fancy of intellectually untrained people who\nkeep the Bible on the same shelf, with Napoleon's Book of Fate, Old\nMoore's Almanack, and handbooks of therapeutic herbalism. You may be a\nfanatical Salvationist and reject more miracle stories than Huxley did;\nand you may utterly repudiate Jesus as the Savior and yet cite him as\na historical witness to the possession by men of the most marvellous\nthaumaturgical powers. \"Christ Scientist\" and Jesus the Mahatma are\npreached by people whom Peter would have struck dead as worse infidels\nthan Simon Magus; and the Atonement; is preached by Baptist and\nCongregationalist ministers whose views of the miracles are those of\nIngersoll and Bradlaugh. Luther, who made a clean sweep of all the\nsaints with their million miracles, and reduced the Blessed Virgin\nherself to the status of an idol, concentrated Salvationism to a point\nat which the most execrable murderer who believes in it when the rope\nis round his neck, flies straight to the arms of Jesus, whilst Tom Paine\nand Shelley fall into the bottomless pit to burn there to all eternity.\nAnd sceptical physicists like Sir William Crookes demonstrate by\nlaboratory experiments that \"mediums\" like Douglas Home can make\nthe pointer of a spring-balance go round without touching the weight\nsuspended from it.\n\n\n\n\nBELIEF IN PERSONAL IMMORTALITY NO CRITERION.\n\nNor is belief in individual immortality any criterion. Theosophists,\nrejecting vicarious atonement so sternly that they insist that the\nsmallest of our sins brings its Karma, also insist on individual\nimmortality and metempsychosis in order to provide an unlimited field\nfor Karma to be worked out by the unredeemed sinner. The belief in the\nprolongation of individual life beyond the grave is far more real\nand vivid among table-rapping Spiritualists than among conventional\nChristians. The notion that those who reject the Christian (or any\nother) scheme of salvation by atonement must reject also belief in\npersonal immortality and in miracles is as baseless as the notion that\nif a man is an atheist he will steal your watch.\n\nI could multiply these instances to weariness. The main difference\nthat set Gladstone and Huxley by the ears is not one between belief in\nsupernatural persons or miraculous events and the sternest view of\nsuch belief as a breach of intellectual integrity: it is the difference\nbetween belief in the efficacy of the crucifixion as an infallible cure\nfor guilt, and a congenital incapacity for believing this, or (the same\nthing) desiring to believe it.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SECULAR VIEW NATURAL, NOT RATIONAL, THEREFORE INEVITABLE.\n\nIt must therefore be taken as a flat fundamental modern fact, whether we\nlike it or not, that whilst many of us cannot believe that Jesus got his\ncurious grip of our souls by mere sentimentality, neither can we believe\nthat he was John Barleycorn. The more our reason and study lead us to\nbelieve that Jesus was talking the most penetrating good sense when he\npreached Communism; when he declared that the reality behind the popular\nbelief in God was a creative spirit in ourselves, called by him the\nHeavenly Father and by us Evolution, Elan Vital, Life Force and other\nnames; when he protested against the claims of marriage and the family\nto appropriate that high part of our energy that was meant for the\nservice of his Father, the more impossible it becomes for us to believe\nthat he was talking equally good sense when he so suddenly announced\nthat he was himself a visible concrete God; that his flesh and blood\nwere miraculous food for us; that he must be tortured and slain in the\ntraditional manner and would rise from the dead after three days; and\nthat at his second coming the stars would fall from heaven and he become\nking of an earthly paradise. But it is easy and reasonable to believe\nthat an overwrought preacher at last went mad as Swift and Ruskin and\nNietzsche went mad. Every asylum has in it a patient suffering from the\ndelusion that he is a god, yet otherwise sane enough. These patients do\nnot nowadays declare that they will be barbarously slain and will rise\nfrom the dead, because they have lost that tradition of the destiny\nof godhead; but they claim everything appertaining to divinity that is\nwithin their knowledge.\n\nThus the gospels as memoirs and suggestive statements of sociological\nand biological doctrine, highly relevant to modern civilization, though\nending in the history of a psycopathic delusion, are quite credible,\nintelligible, and interesting to modern thinkers. In any other light\nthey are neither credible, intelligible, nor interesting except to\npeople upon whom the delusion imposes.\n\n\n\n\n\"THE HIGHER CRITICISM.\"\n\nHistorical research and paleographic criticism will no doubt continue\ntheir demonstrations that the New Testament, like the Old, seldom tells\na single story or expounds a single doctrine, and gives us often an\naccretion and conglomeration of widely discrete and even unrelated\ntraditions and doctrines. But these disintegrations, though technically\ninteresting to scholars, and gratifying or exasperating, as the case\nmay be, to people who are merely defending or attacking the paper\nfortifications of the infallibility of the Bible, have hardly anything\nto do with the purpose of these pages. I have mentioned the fact that\nmost of the authorities are now agreed (for the moment) that the date\nof the birth of Jesus may be placed at about 7 B.C.; but they do not\ntherefore date their letters 1923, nor, I presume, do they expect me to\ndo so. What I am engaged in is a criticism (in the Kantian sense) of an\nestablished body of belief which has become an actual part of the mental\nfabric of my readers; and I should be the most exasperating of triflers\nand pedants if I were to digress into a criticism of some other belief\nor no-belief which my readers might conceivably profess if they were\nerudite Scriptural paleographers and historians, in which case, by the\nway, they would have to change their views so frequently that the gospel\nthey received in their childhood would dominate them after all by its\nsuperior persistency. The chaos of mere facts in which the Sermon on the\nMount and the Ode to Charity suggest nothing but disputes as to whether\nthey are interpolations or not, in which Jesus becomes nothing but\na name suspected of belonging to ten different prophets or executed\npersons, in which Paul is only the man who could not possibly have\nwritten the epistles attributed to him, in which Chinese sages,\nGreek philosophers, Latin authors, and writers of ancient anonymous\ninscriptions are thrown at our heads as the sources of this or that\nscrap of the Bible, is neither a religion nor a criticism of religion:\none does not offer the fact that a good deal of the medieval building\nin Peterborough Cathedral was found to be flagrant jerry-building as\na criticism of the Dean's sermons. For good or evil, we have made\na synthesis out of the literature we call the Bible; and though the\ndiscovery that there is a good deal of jerry-building in the Bible\nis interesting in its way, because everything about the Bible is\ninteresting, it does not alter the synthesis very materially even for\nthe paleographers, and does not alter it at all for those who know\nno more about modern paleography than Archbishop Ussher did. I have\ntherefore indicated little more of the discoveries than Archbishop\nUssher might have guessed for himself if he had read the Bible without\nprepossessions.\n\nFor the rest, I have taken the synthesis as it really lives and works in\nmen. After all, a synthesis is what you want: it is the case you have to\njudge brought to an apprehensible issue for you. Even if you have\nlittle more respect for synthetic biography than for synthetic rubber,\nsynthetic milk, and the still unachieved synthetic protoplasm which\nis to enable us to make different sorts of men as a pastry cook makes\ndifferent sorts of tarts, the practical issue still lies as plainly\nbefore you as before the most credulous votaries of what pontificates as\nthe Higher Criticism.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PERILS OF SALVATIONISM.\n\nThe secular view of Jesus is powerfully reinforced by the increase in\nour day of the number of people who have had the means of educating and\ntraining themselves to the point at which they are not afraid to look\nfacts in the face, even such terrifying facts as sin and death. The\nresult is greater sternness in modern thought. The conviction is\nspreading that to encourage a man to believe that though his sins be\nas scarlet he can be made whiter than snow by an easy exercise of\nself-conceit, is to encourage him to be a rascal. It did not work so\nbadly when you could also conscientiously assure him that if he let\nhimself be caught napping in the matter of faith by death, a red-hot\nhell would roast him alive to all eternity. In those days a sudden\ndeath--the most enviable of all deaths--was regarded as the most\nfrightful calamity. It was classed with plague, pestilence, and famine,\nbattle and murder, in our prayers. But belief in that hell is fast\nvanishing. All the leaders of thought have lost it; and even for the\nrank and file it has fled to those parts of Ireland and Scotland which\nare still in the XVII century. Even there, it is tacitly reserved for\nthe other fellow.\n\n\n\n\nTHE IMPORTANCE OF HELL IN THE SALVATION SCHEME.\n\nThe seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the\nAtonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no\nself-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no\nhell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting\nthe obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside\nthe secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude\nto the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it\nstill stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable.\nThe drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on\nsuch slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale\nas to be capable of them. The \"saved\" thief experiences an ecstatic\nhappiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to\nsteal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals\nhe has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief.\nNothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort\nof restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter\nthe fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he\nhas conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man\nby developing that divine spark within him which Jesus insisted on as\nthe everyday reality of what the atheist denies.\n\nNow though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the\nhappier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view\nof the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is\nno more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a\nsober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality\nof happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got\nas much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but\na nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of\nWesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale.\nAt all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our\nhope lies now.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RIGHT TO REFUSE ATONEMENT.\n\nConsequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe\nin the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a\nright to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable\nnatural right to say \"No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral\nresponsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat\nwith my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew\nthey would cost me nothing.\" Then, too, there is the attitude of Ibsen:\nthat iron moralist to whom the whole scheme of salvation was only an\nignoble attempt to cheat God; to get into heaven without paying the\nprice. To be let off, to beg for and accept eternal life as a present\ninstead of earning it, would be mean enough even if we accepted the\ncontempt of the Power on whose pity we were trading; but to bargain for\na crown of glory as well! that was too much for Ibsen: it provoked him\nto exclaim, \"Your God is an old man whom you cheat,\" and to lash the\ndeadened conscience of the XIX century back to life with a whip of\nscorpions.\n\n\n\n\nTHE TEACHING OF CHRISTIANITY.\n\nAnd there I must leave the matter to such choice as your nature allows\nyou. The honest teacher who has to make known to a novice the facts\nabout Christianity cannot in any essential regard, I think, put the\nfacts otherwise than as I have put them. If children are to be delivered\nfrom the proselytizing atheist on the one hand, and the proselytizing\nnun in the convent school on the other, with all the other proselytizers\nthat lie between them, they must not be burdened with idle controversies\nas to whether there was ever such a person as Jesus or not. When Hume\nsaid that Joshua's campaigns were impossible, Whately did not wrangle\nabout it: he proved, on the same lines, that the campaigns of Napoleon\nwere impossible. Only fictitious characters will stand Hume's sort of\nexamination: nothing will ever make Edward the Confessor and St.\nLouis as real to us as Don Quixote and Mr. Pickwick. We must cut the\ncontroversy short by declaring that there is the same evidence for the\nexistence of Jesus as for that of any other person of his time; and\nthe fact that you may not believe everything Matthew tells you no more\ndisproves the existence of Jesus than the fact that you do not believe\neverything Macaulay tells you disproves the existence of William III.\nThe gospel narratives in the main give you a biography which is quite\ncredible and accountable on purely secular grounds when you have trimmed\noff everything that Hume or Grimm or Rousseau or Huxley or any modern\nbishop could reject as fanciful. Without going further than this, you\ncan become a follower of Jesus just as you can become a follower of\nConfucius or Lao Tse, and may therefore call yourself a Jesuist, or even\na Christian, if you hold, as the strictest Secularist quite legitimately\nmay, that all prophets are inspired, and all men with a mission,\nChrists.\n\nThe teacher of Christianity has then to make known to the child, first\nthe song of John Barleycorn, with the fields and seasons as witness to\nits eternal truth. Then, as the child's mind matures, it can learn, as\nhistorical and psychological phenomena, the tradition of the scapegoat,\nthe Redeemer, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and\nhow, in a world saturated with this tradition, Jesus has been largely\naccepted as the long expected and often prophesied Redeemer, the\nMessiah, the Christ. It is open to the child also to accept him. If the\nchild is built like Gladstone, he will accept Jesus as his Savior,\nand Peter and John the Baptist as the Savior's revealer and forerunner\nrespectively. If he is built like Huxley, he will take the secular view,\nin spite of all that a pious family can do to prevent him. The important\nthing now is that the Gladstones and Huxleys should no longer waste\ntheir time irrelevantly and ridiculously wrangling about the Gadarene\nswine, and that they should make up their minds as to the soundness of\nthe secular doctrines of Jesus; for it is about these that they may come\nto blows in our own time.\n\n\n\n\nCHRISTIANITY AND THE EMPIRE.\n\nFinally, let us ask why it is that the old superstitions have so\nsuddenly lost countenance that although, to the utter disgrace of the\nnation's leaders and rulers, the laws by which persecutors can destroy\nor gag all freedom of thought and speech in these matters are still\nunrepealed and ready to the hand of our bigots and fanatics (quite\nrecently a respectable shopkeeper was convicted of \"blasphemy\" for\nsaying that if a modern girl accounted for an illicit pregnancy by\nsaying she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, we should know what to\nthink: a remark which would never have occurred to him had he been\nproperly taught how the story was grafted on the gospel), yet somehow\nthey are used only against poor men, and that only in a half-hearted\nway. When we consider that from the time when the first scholar ventured\nto whisper as a professional secret that the Pentateuch could\nnot possibly have been written by Moses to the time within my own\nrecollection when Bishop Colenso, for saying the same thing openly, was\ninhibited from preaching and actually excommunicated, eight centuries\nelapsed (the point at issue, though technically interesting to\npaleographers and historians, having no more bearing on human welfare\nthan the controversy as to whether uncial or cursive is the older form\nof writing); yet now, within fifty years of Colenso's heresy, there\nis not a Churchman of any authority living, or an educated layman, who\ncould without ridicule declare that Moses wrote the Pentateuch as Pascal\nwrote his Thoughts or D'Aubigny his History of the Reformation, or that\nSt. Jerome wrote the passage about the three witnesses in the Vulgate,\nor that there are less than three different accounts of the creation\njumbled together in the book of Genesis. Now the maddest Progressive\nwill hardly contend that our growth in wisdom and liberality has been\ngreater in the last half century than in the sixteen half centuries\npreceding: indeed it would be easier to sustain the thesis that the last\nfifty years have witnessed a distinct reaction from Victorian Liberalism\nto Collectivism which has perceptibly strengthened the State Churches.\nYet the fact remains that whereas Byron's Cain, published a century\nago, is a leading case on the point that there is no copyright in a\nblasphemous book, the Salvation Army might now include it among its\npublications without shocking anyone.\n\nI suggest that the causes which have produced this sudden clearing of\nthe air include the transformation of many modern States, notably\nthe old self-contained French Republic and the tight little Island of\nBritain, into empires which overflow the frontiers of all the Churches.\nIn India, for example, there are less than four million Christians out\nof a population of three hundred and sixteen and a half millions. The\nKing of England is the defender of the faith; but what faith is now\nTHE faith? The inhabitants of this island would, within the memory of\npersons still living, have claimed that their faith is surely the faith\nof God, and that all others are heathen. But we islanders are only\nforty-five millions; and if we count ourselves all as Christians, there\nare still seventy-seven and a quarter million Mahometans in the Empire.\nAdd to these the Hindoos and Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, whom I was\ntaught in my childhood, by way of religious instruction, to regard as\ngross idolators consigned to eternal perdition, but whose faith I can\nnow be punished for disparaging by a provocative word, and you have a\ntotal of over three hundred and forty-two and a quarter million heretics\nto swamp our forty-five million Britons, of whom, by the way, only six\nthousand call themselves distinctively \"disciples of Christ,\" the rest\nbeing members of the Church of England and other denominations whose\ndiscipleship is less emphatically affirmed. In short, the Englishman of\ntoday, instead of being, like the forefathers whose ideas he clings to,\na subject of a State practically wholly Christian, is now crowded, and\nindeed considerably overcrowded, into a corner of an Empire in which\nthe Christians are a mere eleven per cent of the population; so that the\nNonconformist who allows his umbrella stand to be sold up rather than\npay rates towards the support of a Church of England school, finds\nhimself paying taxes not only to endow the Church of Rome in Malta, but\nto send Christians to prison for the blasphemy of offering Bibles for\nsale in the streets of Khartoum. Turn to France, a country ten times\nmore insular in its pre-occupation with its own language, its own\nhistory, its own character, than we, who have always been explorers\nand colonizers and grumblers. This once self-centred nation is forty\nmillions strong. The total population of the French Republic is about\none hundred and fourteen millions. The French are not in our hopeless\nChristian minority of eleven per cent; but they are in a minority of\nthirty-five per cent, which is fairly conclusive. And, being a more\nlogical people than we, they have officially abandoned Christianity and\ndeclared that the French State has no specific religion.\n\nNeither has the British State, though it does not say so. No doubt there\nare many innocent people in England who take Charlemagne's view, and\nwould, as a matter of course, offer our eighty-nine per cent of \"pagans,\nI regret to say\" the alternative of death or Christianity but for a\nvague impression that these lost ones are all being converted gradually\nby the missionaries. But no statesman can entertain such ludicrously\nparochial delusions. No English king or French president can possibly\ngovern on the assumption that the theology of Peter and Paul, Luther and\nCalvin, has any objective validity, or that the Christ is more than the\nBuddha, or Jehovah more than Krishna, or Jesus more or less human than\nMahomet or Zoroaster or Confucius. He is actually compelled, in so far\nas he makes laws against blasphemy at all, to treat all the religions,\nincluding Christianity, as blasphemous, when paraded before people who\nare not accustomed to them and do not want them. And even that is a\nconcession to a mischievous intolerance which an empire should use its\ncontrol of education to eradicate.\n\nOn the other hand, Governments cannot really divest themselves of\nreligion, or even of dogma. When Jesus said that people should not only\nlive but live more abundantly, he was dogmatizing; and many Pessimist\nsages, including Shakespear, whose hero begged his friend to refrain\nfrom suicide in the words \"Absent thee from felicity awhile,\" would say\ndogmatizing very perniciously. Indeed many preachers and saints declare,\nsome of them in the name of Jesus himself, that this world is a vale\nof tears, and that our lives had better be passed in sorrow and even\nin torment, as a preparation for a better life to come. Make these sad\npeople comfortable; and they baffle you by putting on hair shirts. None\nthe less, governments must proceed on dogmatic assumptions, whether they\ncall them dogmas or not; and they must clearly be assumptions common\nenough to stamp those who reject them as eccentrics or lunatics. And\nthe greater and more heterogeneous the population the commoner\nthe assumptions must be. A Trappist monastery can be conducted on\nassumptions which would in twenty-fours hours provoke the village at its\ngates to insurrection. That is because the monastery selects its people;\nand if a Trappist does not like it he can leave it. But a subject of the\nBritish Empire or the French Republic is not selected; and if he does\nnot like it he must lump it; for emigration is practicable only\nwithin narrow limits, and seldom provides an effective remedy, all\ncivilizations being now much alike. To anyone capable of comprehending\ngovernment at all it must be evident without argument that the set of\nfundamental assumptions drawn up in the thirty-nine articles or in the\nWestminster Confession are wildly impossible as political constitutions\nfor modern empires. A personal profession of them by any person disposed\nto take such professions seriously would practically disqualify him\nfor high imperial office. A Calvinist Viceroy of India and a Particular\nBaptist Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would wreck the empire.\nThe Stuarts wrecked even the tight little island which was the nucleus\nof the empire by their Scottish logic and theological dogma; and it may\nbe sustained very plausibly that the alleged aptitude of the English\nfor self-government, which is contradicted by every chapter of their\nhistory, is really only an incurable inaptitude for theology, and indeed\nfor co-ordinated thought in any direction, which makes them equally\nimpatient of systematic despotism and systematic good government: their\nhistory being that of a badly governed and accidentally free people\n(comparatively). Thus our success in colonizing, as far as it has\nnot been produced by exterminating the natives, has been due to our\nindifference to the salvation of our subjects. Ireland is the exception\nwhich proves the rule; for Ireland, the standing instance of the\ninability of the English to colonize without extermination of natives,\nis also the one country under British rule in which the conquerors\nand colonizers proceeded on the assumption that their business was to\nestablish Protestantism as well as to make money and thereby secure at\nleast the lives of the unfortunate inhabitants out of whose labor\nit could be made. At this moment Ulster is refusing to accept\nfellowcitizenship with the other Irish provinces because the south\nbelieves in St. Peter and Bossuet, and the north in St. Paul and Calvin.\nImagine the effect of trying to govern India or Egypt from Belfast or\nfrom the Vatican!\n\nThe position is perhaps graver for France than for England, because\nthe sixty-five per cent of French subjects who are neither French nor\nChristian nor Modernist includes some thirty millions of negroes who\nare susceptible, and indeed highly susceptible, of conversion to those\nsalvationist forms of pseudo-Christianity which have produced all the\npersecutions and religious wars of the last fifteen hundred years. When\nthe late explorer Sir Henry Stanley told me of the emotional grip which\nChristianity had over the Baganda tribes, and read me their letters,\nwhich were exactly like medieval letters in their literal faith and\neverpresent piety, I said \"Can these men handle a rifle?\" To which\nStanley replied with some scorn \"Of course they can, as well as any\nwhite man.\" Now at this moment (1915) a vast European war is being\nwaged, in which the French are using Senegalese soldiers. I ask the\nFrench Government, which, like our own Government, is deliberately\nleaving the religious instruction of these negroes in the hands of\nmissions of Petrine Catholics and Pauline Calvinists, whether they\nhave considered the possibility of a new series of crusades, by ardent\nAfrican Salvationists, to rescue Paris from the grip of the modern\nscientific \"infidel,\" and to raise the cry of \"Back to the Apostles:\nback to Charlemagne!\"\n\nWe are more fortunate in that an overwhelming majority of our subjects\nare Hindoos, Mahometans and Buddhists: that is, they have, as a\nprophylactic against salvationist Christianity, highly civilized\nreligions of their own. Mahometanism, which Napoleon at the end of his\ncareer classed as perhaps the best popular religion for modern political\nuse, might in some respects have arisen as a reformed Christianity\nif Mahomet had had to deal with a population of seventeenth-century\nChristians instead of Arabs who worshipped stones. As it is, men do not\nreject Mahomet for Calvin; and to offer a Hindoo so crude a theology as\nours in exchange for his own, or our Jewish canonical literature as an\nimprovement on Hindoo scripture, is to offer old lamps for older ones in\na market where the oldest lamps, like old furniture in England, are the\nmost highly valued.\n\nYet, I repeat, government is impossible without a religion: that is,\nwithout a body of common assumptions. The open mind never acts: when\nwe have done our utmost to arrive at a reasonable conclusion, we still,\nwhen we can reason and investigate no more, must close our minds for the\nmoment with a snap, and act dogmatically on our conclusions. The man\nwho waits to make an entirely reasonable will dies intestate. A man so\nreasonable as to have an open mind about theft and murder, or about\nthe need for food and reproduction, might just as well be a fool and a\nscoundrel for any use he could be as a legislator or a State official.\nThe modern pseudo-democratic statesman, who says that he is only in\npower to carry out the will of the people, and moves only as the cat\njumps, is clearly a political and intellectual brigand. The rule of the\nnegative man who has no convictions means in practice the rule of the\npositive mob. Freedom of conscience as Cromwell used the phrase is an\nexcellent thing; nevertheless if any man had proposed to give effect to\nfreedom of conscience as to cannibalism in England, Cromwell would have\nlaid him by the heels almost as promptly as he would have laid a Roman\nCatholic, though in Fiji at the same moment he would have supported\nheartily the freedom of conscience of a vegetarian who disparaged the\nsacred diet of Long Pig.\n\nHere then come in the importance of the repudiation by Jesus of\nproselytism. His rule \"Don't pull up the tares: sow the wheat: if you\ntry to pull up the tares you will pull up the wheat with it\" is the\nonly possible rule for a statesman governing a modern empire, or a voter\nsupporting such a statesman. There is nothing in the teaching of Jesus\nthat cannot be assented to by a Brahman, a Mahometan, a Buddhist or a\nJew, without any question of their conversion to Christianity. In some\nways it is easier to reconcile a Mahometan to Jesus than a British\nparson, because the idea of a professional priest is unfamiliar and even\nmonstrous to a Mahometan (the tourist who persists in asking who is the\ndean of St. Sophia puzzles beyond words the sacristan who lends him a\nhuge pair of slippers); and Jesus never suggested that his disciples\nshould separate themselves from the laity: he picked them up by the\nwayside, where any man or woman might follow him. For priests he had not\na civil word; and they showed their sense of his hostility by getting\nhim killed as soon as possible. He was, in short, a thoroughgoing\nanti-Clerical. And though, as we have seen, it is only by political\nmeans that his doctrine can be put into practice, he not only never\nsuggested a sectarian theocracy as a form of Government, and would\ncertainly have prophesied the downfall of the late President Kruger if\nhe had survived to his time, but, when challenged, he refused to teach\nhis disciples not to pay tribute to Caesar, admitting that Caesar, who\npresumably had the kingdom of heaven within him as much as any disciple,\nhad his place in the scheme of things. Indeed the apostles made this\nan excuse for carrying subservience to the State to a pitch of idolatry\nthat ended in the theory of the divine right of kings, and provoked\nmen to cut kings' heads off to restore some sense of proportion in the\nmatter. Jesus certainly did not consider the overthrow of the Roman\nempire or the substitution of a new ecclesiastical organization for the\nJewish Church or for the priesthood of the Roman gods as part of his\nprogram. He said that God was better than Mammon; but he never said\nthat Tweedledum was better than Tweedledee; and that is why it is now\npossible for British citizens and statesmen to follow Jesus, though they\ncannot possibly follow either Tweedledum or Tweedledee without bringing\nthe empire down with a crash on their heads. And at that I must leave\nit.\n\nLONDON, December 1915.","title":"On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the Lion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":37166}