Last essays on church and religion

Front matter

m m

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

V

The present volume closes the series of my attempts to

deal directly with questions concerning religion and the Church. Indirectly such questions must often, in all serious literary work, present themselves ; but in this volume I make them my direct object for the last time. Assuredly it was not for my own pleasure that I entered upon them at first, and it is with anything but reluctance that I now part from them. Neither can I be ignorant what offence my handling of them has given to many whose good-will I value, and with what relief they will learn that the handling is now to cease. Personal considerations, however, ought not in a matter like this to bear sway ; and they have not, in fact, determined me to bring to an end the work which I had been pursuing. But the thing which I proposed to myself to do has, so far as my powers enabled me to do it, been done. What I wished to say has been said. And in returning to devote to literature, more strictly so-called, what remains to me of life and strength and leisure, I am returning, after all, to a field where work of the most important kind has now to be done, though indirectly, for religion. /I am persuaded that the^ransformation of religion, ^ which is essential for its perpetuance, can be accomplished vi PREFACE.

only by carrying the qualities of flexibility, perceptiveness, and judgment, which are the best fruits of letters, to whole classes of the community which now know next to nothing of them, and by procuring the application of those quahties to matters where they are never applied nowj

A survey of the forms and tendencies which religion exhibits at the present day in England has been made lately by a man ' of genius, energy, and sympathy,— Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone seems disposed to fix as the test of value, for those several forms, their greater or lesser adaptedness to the mind of masses of our people. It may be admitted that religion ought to be capable of reaching the mind of masses of men. It may be admitted that a religion not plain and simple, a religion of abstractions and intellectual refinements, cannot influence masses of men. ' But it is an error to imagine that the mind of our masses, or even the mind of our religious world, is something which may remain just as it now is, and that religion will have to adapt itself to that mind just as it now is. At least as much change is required, and will have to take place, in that mind as in religion. Gross of perception and materialising that mind is, at present, still disposed to be. Yet at the same time it is undeniable that the old anthropomorphic and miraculous religion, suited in many respects to such a mind, no longer reaches and rules it as it once did. A check and disturbance to religion thence arises. But let us impute the disturbance to the right cause. It is not to be imputed merely to the inadequacy of the old materialising religion, and to be remedied by giving to this religion a form still materialising, but more acceptable. It is to be imputed, in at least an equal degree,

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to the grossness of perception and materialising habits of the popular mind, which unfit it for any religion not lending itself, like the old popular religion, to those habits ; while yet, from other causes, that old religion cannot maintain its sway. And it is to be remedied by a gradual transformation of the popular mind, by slowly curing it of its grossness of perception and of its materialising habits, not by keeping religion materialistic that it may correspond to them.

The conditions of the religious question are, in truth, profoundly misapprehended in this country. In England and in America religion has retained so much hold upon the affections of the community, that the partisans of popular religion are easily led to entertain illusions ; to fancy that the difficulties of their case are much less than they are, that they can make terms which they cannot make, and save things which they cannot save. A good medicine for such illusions would be the perusal of the criticisms which Literature and Dogma has encountered on the Continent. Here in England that book passes, in general, for a book revolutionary and anti-religious. In foreign critics of the liberal school it provokes a feeling of mingled astonishment and impatience ; impatience, that religion should be set on new grounds when they had hoped that religion, the old ground having in the judgment of all rational persons given way, was going to ruin as fast as could fairly be expected ; astonishment, that any man of liberal tendencies should not agree with them. "^

Particularly striking, in this respect, were the remarks upon Literature and Dogma of M. Challemel-Lacour, in France, and of Professor de Gubernatis, in Italy ._/ Professor de Gubernatis is perhaps the most accomplished man in viii PREFACE.

Italy ; he is certainly one of the most intelligent. M. Challemel-Lacour is, or was, one of the best, gravest, most deeply interesting and instructive, of French writers. His admirable series of articles on Wilhelm von Humboldt, which I read a good many years ago in the Revue des Deux Mondes, still live as fresh in my memory as if I had read them yesterday. M. Challemel-Lacour has become an ardent politician. It is well known how politics, in France, govern men's treatment of the religious question. Some little temper and heat are excusable, undoubtedly, when religion raises in a man's mind simply the image of the clerical party and of his sworn political foes. Perhaps a man's view of religion, however, must necessarily in this case be somewhat warped. Professor de Gubernatis is not a politician; he is an independent friend of progress, of high studies, and of intelligence. His remarks on Literature and Dogma, therefore, and on the attempt made in that book to give a new life to religion by giving a new sense to words of the Bible, have even a greater significance than M. Challemel-Lacour's. For Italy and for Italians, says Professor de Gubernatis, such an attempt has and can have no interest whatever. ' In Italy the Bible is just this : — for priests, a sacred text ; for infidels, a book full of obscurities and contradictions ; for the learned, an historical document to be used with great caution ; for lovers of hterature, a collection of very fine specimens of Oriental poetic eloquence. But it never has been, and never will be, a fruitful inspirer of men's daily life.' ' And how wonderful,' Professor de Gubernatis adds, ' that anyone should wish to make it so, and should raise intellectual and literary discussions having this for their

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object ! ' ' It is strange that the human genius should take pleasure in combating in such narrow lists, with such treacherous ground under one's feet, with such a cloudy sky over one's head ; — and all this in the name of freedom of discussion ! ' ' What would the author of Literature and Dogma say,' concludes Professor de Gubematis, ' if Plato had based his republic upon a text of Hesiod ; — se Platone avesse fondata la sua Repubblica sopra un testo d'Esiodo ? ' That is to say, the Bible has no more solidity and value, as a basis for human life, than the Theogony.

Here we have, undoubtedly, the genuine opinion of Continental liberalism concerning the religion of the Bible and its future. It is stated with unusual frankness and clearness, but it is the genuine opinion. It is not an opinion which at present prevails at all widely either in this country or in America. But when we consider the immense change which, in other matters where tradition and convention were the obstacles to change, has befallen the thought of this country since the Continent was opened at the end of the great war, we cannot doubt that in religion, too, the mere barriers of tradition and convention will finally give way, that a common European level of thought will establish itself, and will spread to America also. Of course there will be backwaters, more or less strong, of superstition and obscurantism; but I speak of the probable development of opinion in those classes which are to be called progressive and liberal. Such classes are undoubtedly the multiplying and prevailing body both here and in America. And I say that, if we judge the future from the past, these classes, in any matter where it is tradition and convention that at present isolates them from the common liberal

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opinion of Europe, will, with time, be drawn almost inevitably into that opinion.

The partisans of traditional religion in this country do not know, I think, how decisively the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion on the Continent has pronounced against the Christian religion. They do not know how surely the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion in this country tends to follow, so far as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of the Continent. They dream of patching up things unmendable, of retaining what can never be retained, of stopping change at a point where it can never be stopped. The undoubted tendency of liberal opinion is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition, as unsound and untenable. On the Continent such opinion has rejected it already. One cannot blame the rejection. ' Things are what they are,' and the religion of tradition, Catholic or Protestant, is >-Tlnsound and untenable. /A greater force of tradition in favour of religion is all which now prevents the liberal opinion in this country from following Continental opinion.^ That force is not of a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, hold out long. But a very grave question is behind.

Rejecting, henceforth, all concern with the obsolete religion of tradition, the liberalism of the Continent rejects also, and on the like grounds, all concern with the Bible and Christianity. To claim for the Bible the direction, in any way, of modern life, is, we hear, as if Plato had sought to found his ideal republic ' upon a text of Hesiod.' The real question is whether this conclusion, too, of modern liberalism is to be admitted, like the conclusion that traditionary

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religion is unsound and obsolete. And it does not find many gainsayers. Obscurantists are glad to see the question placed on this footing : that the cause of traditionary religion, and the cause of Christianity in general, must stand or fall together. For they see but very little way into the future ; and in the immediate present this way of putting the question tells, as they clearly perceive, in their favour. In the immediate present many will be tempted to cling to the traditionary religion with their eyes shut, rather than accept the extinction of Christianity. Other fri ends of reli gion are busy with fantastic projects, which can never come to anything, but which prevent their seeing the real character of the situation. So the thesis of modern liberals on the Continent, that Christianity in general stands on the same footing as traditionary religion and must share its fate, meets with little direct discussion or opposition. And liberal opinion everywhere will at last grow accustomed to finding that thesis put forward as certain, will become familiarised .with it, will suppose that no one disputes it. (jThis in itself will tend to withhold men from any serious re turn upon their own minds in the matter.") Meanwhile the day will most certainly arrive, when the great body of liberal opinion in this country will adhere to the first half of the doctrine of Continental liberals ;^will admit that traditionary rehgion is utterly untenable. And the danger is, that from the habits of their minds, and from seeing the thing treated as certain, and from hearing nothing urged against it, our liberals may admit as indisputable the second half of the doctrine too : that Christianity, also, is untenable.

XAnd therefore is it so all-important to insist on what I call th e natural truth of Christianity,) and to bring this out xii PREFACE.

all we can. Liberal opinion tends, as we have seen, to treat traditional religion and Christianity as identical ; if one is unsound, so is the other. Especially, however, does liberal opinion show this tendency among the Latin nations, on whom Protestantism did not lay hold ; and it shows it most among those Latin nations of whom Protestantism laid hold least, such as Italy and Spain. For Protestantism was undoubtedly, whatever may have been its faults and miscarriages, an assertion of the natural truth of Christianity for the mind and conscience of men. The question is, whether Christianity has this nat ural t ruth or not. It is a question of fact, in the end the victory belongs to facts, and he who contradicts them finds that he runs his head against a wall. Our traditional religion turns out not to have, in fact, natural truth, the only truth which can stand. The miracles of our traditional religion, like other miracles, did not happen ; its metaphysical proofs of God are mere words. Has or has not Christianity, in fact, the same want of natural truth as our traditional religion? It is a question of immense importance. Of questions about religion, it may be said to be at the present time, for a serious man, the only important one.

Now, whoever seeks to show the natural truth of a thing which professes to be for general use, ought to try to be as simple as possible. [He ought not to allow himself to have ^ny recourse either to intellectual refinements or to sentimental rhetoric, j And therefore it is well to start, in bringing out the truth of Christianity, with a plain proposition such as everybody, one would think, must admit : the proposition that conduct is a very important matter. I have called conduct three-fourths of life. M. Challemel-Lacour

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quarrels greatly with the proposition. Certainly people in general do not behave as if they were convinced that conduct is three-fourths of life. Butler well says that even religious people are always for placing the stress of their religion anywhere other than on virtue ; — virtue being simply the good direction of conduct. We know, too, that the Italians at the Renascence changed the very meaning of the word virtue altogether, and made their virtu mean a love of e the fine arts and of intellectual culture . And we see the fruits of the new definition in the Italy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will not, then, there being all this opposition, offer to settle the exact proportion of life which conduct may be said to be. But that conduct is, at any rate, a very considerable part of life, will generally be admitted.

It will generally be admitted, too, that all experience as to conduct brings us at last to the fact of two selves, or instincts, or forces, — name them how we will, and however we may suppose them to have arisen,— contending for the mastery in man : one, a movement of first impulse and more involuntary, leading us to gratify any inclination that may solicit us, and called generally a movement of man's ordinary or passing self, of sense, appetite, desire ; the other, a movement of reflexion and more voluntary, leading us to submit inclination to some rule, and called generally a movement of man's higher or enduring self, of reason, spirit, will. The thing is described in different words by different nations and men relating their experience of it, but as to the thing itself they all, or all the most serious and important among them, agree. This, I think, will be admitted. Nor will it be denied that they all come to the conclusion that xiv PREFACE.

for a man to obey the higher self, or reason, or whatever it is to be called, is happiness and life for him ; to obey the lower is death and misery. It will be allowed, again, that whatever men's minds are to fasten and rest upon, whatever is to hold their attention and to rule their practice, naturally embodies itself for them in certain examples, precepts, and sayings, to which they perpetually recur. Without a frame or body of this kind, a set of thoughts cannot abide with men and sustain them. ' If ye abide in me,' says Jesus, ' ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ; ' ■ — not if you keep skipping about all over the world for various renderings of it. 'It behoves us to know,' says Epictetus, ' that a principle can hardly establish itself with a man, unless he every day utters the same things, hears the same things, and applies them withal to his life.' And naturally the body of examples and precepts, which men should use for this purpose, ought to be those which most impressively represent the principle, or the set of thoughts, commending itself to their minds for respect and attention. And the more the precepts are used, the more will men's sentiments cluster around them, and the more dear and solemn will they be.

Now to apply this to Christianity. It is evident that to what they called righteousness, — a name which covers all that we mean by conduct , — the Jewish nation attached pre-eminent, unique importance. This impassioned testimony of theirs to the weight of a thing admittedly of very considerable importance, has its own value of a special kind. But it is well known how imperfectly and amiss the Jewish nation conceived righteousness. And finally, when their misconceived righteousness failed them in actual life more

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and more, they took refuge in imaginings about the future, and filled themselves with hopes of a kingdom of God, a resurrection, a judgment, an eternal life, bringing in and establishing for ever this misconceived righteousness of theirs. As God's agent in this work of restoring the kingdom to Israel they promised to themselves an Anointed and Chosen One, Christ the son of God.^

Jesus Christ found, when he came among his countrymen, all these phrases and ideas ruling their minds. Conduct or righteousness, a matter admittedly of very considerable importance, and which the Jews thought of paramount importance, they had come entirely to misconceive, and had created an immense poetry of hopes and imaginings in favour of their misconception. What did Jesus do ? CFrom his countrymen's errors about righteousness he reverted to the solid, authentic, universal fact of experience about It J the fact of the higher and lower self in man, inheritors the one of them of happiness, the other of misery. He possessed himself of it, he made it the centre of his teaching. He made it so in the well-known formula, his secret : ' He that will save his life shall lose it ; he that dx)' kwe his life shall save it.' And by his admirable figure of the two lives of man, the real life and the seeming life, he connected this profound fact of experience with that attractive poetry of hoges and imaginings which possessed the minds of his countrymen. J Eternal life ? Yes, the life in the higher and undying self of man. Judgment? Yes, the trying, in conscience, of the claims and instigations of the two lives, and the decision between them. Resurrection ? Yes, the rising from bondage and transience with the lower life to victory

' John, XX, 31.

ft xvi PREFACE.

and permanence with thejiigher. The kingdom of God ? Yes, the reign amongst mankind of th e higher l ife. The Christ the son of God ? Yes, the bringer-in and founder of this reign of the higher life, this true kingdom of God.

But we can go farther. Observers say, with much appearance of truth, that all our passions may be run up into two elementary instincts : the reproductive instinct and the instinct of self-preservation. It is evident to what these instincts will in themselves carry the man who follows the lower self of sense, and appetite, and first impulse. It is evident, also, that they are directly controlled by two forces which Christianity, — following that law of the higher life which St. Paul names indifferently the law of God, the lajv of our mind, the line of thought of the spirit^ — has set up as its two grand virtues : kindness and pureness, charity and chastity. If any virtues could stand for the whole of Christianity, these might. Let us have them from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it ; a new commandment give I unto you that ye love one another.^ There is charity. ' Blest are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' There is purity.

We go here simply on experience, having to establish the natural truth of Christianity. That the 'new commandment ' of charity is enjoined by the Bible, gives it therefore, we shall suppose, no force at all, unless it turns out to be enjoined also by experience. And it is enjoined by experience if experience shows that it is necessary to human happiness, — that men cannot get on without it. Now really if there is a lesson which in our day has come to force itself upon everybody, in all quarters and by all channels, it is the

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lesson of the solidarity, as it is called by modern philosophers, of men. If there was ever a notion tempting to common human nature, it was the notion that the rule of 'every man for himself was the rule of happiness. But at last it turns 6ut as a matter of experience, and so plainly that it is coming to be even generally admitted, — it turns out that the only real happiness is in a kind of impersonal higher life, where the happiness of others counts with a man as essential to his own. He that loves his life does really turn out to lose it, and the new commandment proves its own truth by experience.

And the other great Christian virtue, pureness ? Here the case is somewhat different. One hears doubts raised, nowadays, as to the natural truth of this virtue. While science has adopted, as a truth confirmed by experience, the Christian idea of charity, long supposed to conflict with experience, and has decked it out with the grand title of human solidarity, one may hear many doubts thrown, in the name of science and reason, on the truth and validity of the Christian idea of pureness. As a mere commandment this virtue cannot have the authority which it once had, for the notion of commandments in this sense is giving way. And on its natural truth, when the thing comes to be tested by experience, doubts are thrown. Well, experience must decide. It is a question of fact. ' There is no honest woman who is not sick of her trade,' says La Rochefoucauld. ' I pass for having enjoyed life,' said Ninon in old age, ' but if anyone had told me beforehand what my life was going to be I would have hanged myself.' Who is right ? On which side is natural truth ? It will be admitted that there can hardly be a more vital question for human society. And those xviii PREFACE.

who doubt on which side is natural truth, and who raise the question, will have to learn by experience. But finely touched souls have a presentiment of a thing's natural truth even though it be questioned, and long before the palpable proof by experience convinces all the world. They have it quite independently of their attitude towards traditional religion. ' May the idea oi pureness, extending itself to the very morsel which I take into my mouth, grow ever clearer in me and clearer ! ' ' So prayed Goethe. And all such well-inspired souls will perceive the profound natural truth of the idea of pureness, and will be sure, therefore, that the more boldly it is challenged, the more sharply and signally will experience mark its truth. (So that of the two great Christian virtues, charity and chastity, kindness and pureness, the one has at this moment the most signal testimony from experience to its intrinsic truth and weight, and the other is expecting it.)

All this may enable us to understand how admirably fitted are Jesus Christ and his precepts to serve as mankind's standing reminder as to conduct, — to serve as men's religion. Jesus Christ and his precepts are found to hit the moral experience of mankind, to hit it in the critical points, to hit it lastingly ; and, when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it, then to come out stronger than ever. And we know how Jesus Christ and his precepts won their way from the very first, and soon became the religion of all that part of the world which most counted, and are now the religion of all that part of the world which most counts. This they certainly in great part owed, even from the first,

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to that instinctive sense of their natural fitness for such a service, of their natural truth and weight, which amidst all misapprehensions of them they inspired.

Moreover, we must always keep in sight one specially important element in the power exercised by Jesus Christ and his precepts. And that is, the impression left by Jesus of what we call sweet reason in the highest degree; of consummate justness in what he said, perfect balance, unerring felicity. For this impression has been a great element of progress. It made half the charm of the religion 01 Jesus in the first instance, and it makes it still. But it also serves in an admirable way against the misapprehensions with which men received, as we have said, and could not but receive, the natural truth he gave them, and which they made up along with that truth into their religion. (For it is felt that anything exaggerated, distorted, false, cannot be from Jesus ; that it must be human perversion of him.) There is always an appeal open, and a return possible, to the acknowledged sweet reason of Jesus, to his ' grace and truth.' And thus Christians, instead of sticking for ever because of their religion to errors which they themselves have put into their religion, find in their religion itself a ground for breaking with them. For example : medieval charity and medieval chastity are manifestly misgrowths, however natural, — misgrowths unworkable and dangerous, — of the ideas of kindness and pureness. Then they cannot have come from Jesus ; they cannot be what Jesus meant. Such is the inevitable inference; and Christianity here y touches a spring for self-correction and self-readjustment which is of the highest value. '_ And, finally, the figure and sayings of Jesus, embodying

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and representing men's moral experience to them, serving them as a perpetual reminder of it, by a fixed form of words and observances holding their attention to it, and thus attaching them, have attracted to themselves, by the very force of time, and use, and association, a mass of additional attachment, and a host of sentiments the most tender and profound.

This, then, is what we mean by saying that Christianity has natural truth. By this truth things must stand, not by people's wishes and asseverations about them. Omnium Dens est, cujus, velimus aut nolimus, omnes sumus, says TertuUian. ' The God of all of us is the God that we all belong to whether we will or no.' LThe Eternal that makes for righteousness is such ». God ; and he is the God of Christianity.]] Jesus explains what this God would have of us ; and the strength of Jesus is that he explains it right. The natural experimental truth of his explanations is their one claim upon us ; but this is claim enough. Does the thing, being admittedly most important, turn out to be as he says ? If it does, then we ' belong to him whether we will or no.'

A recent German writer, wishing to exalt Schopenhauer at the expense of Jesus, says that both Jesus and Schopenhauer taught the true doctrine of self renouncement, but that Schopenhauer faced the pessimism which is that doctrine's natural accompaniment, whereas Jesus sought to escape from it by the dream of a paradise to come. This critic credits Jesus, as usual, with the very misconceptions against which he strove. It was the effort of Jesus to place the bliss, the eternal life of popular religion, not where popular religion placed it, in a fantastic paradise to come,

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but itithe joy of self-renouncement. This was the ' eternal life ' of Jesus ; this was his 'joy;' — the joy which he desired that his disciples, too, might have full and complete, might have 'fulfilled in themselves.' His depth, his truth, his rightness, come out in this very point : that he saw that self renouncement is joy, and that human life, in which it takes place, is therefore a blessing and a benefit. And just exactly here is his superiority to Schopenhauer. Jesus hits the plain natural truth that human life is a blessing and a benefit, while Schopenhauer misses it.- ' It is evident, even a priori, that the world is doomed to evil, and that it is the domain of irrationality. In abstinence from the further propagation of mankind is salvation. This would gradually bring about the extinction of our species, and, with our extinction, that of the universe, since the universe requires for its existence the co-operation of human thought.' The fault of this sort of thing is, that it is plainly, somehow or other, a paradox, and that human thought (I say it with due deference to the many persons for whom Schopenhauer is just now in fashion) instinctively feels it to be absurd. The fact is with Jesus. ' The Eternal is king, the earth may be glad thereof.' Human life is a blessing and a benefit, and constantly improvable, because in self-renouncement is a fount of joy, 'springing up unto everlasting life.' Not only, ' It is more right to give than to receive,' more rational, more necessary ; but, ' It is more blessed to give than to receive.' 'Va&fact, I say, the real fact, is what it imports us to reach. A writer of remarkable knowledge, judgment, and impartiality, M. Maurice Vernes, of the Revue Scientifique, objects to the contrast of an earlier intuition of Israel, Righteousness tendeth to life, the righteous is an everlasting foundaxxii PREFACE.