nation at the time, and it has continued to be repudiated by its descendants with singular unanimity to the present day. After more than eighteen centuries, this Divine scheme of salvation has not obtained even the nominal adhesion of more than a third of the human race,(1) and if, in a census of Christendom, distinction could now be made of those who no longer seriously believe in it as Supernatural Religion, Christianity would take a much lower numerical position. Sakya Muni, a teacher only second in n.o.bility of character to Jesus, and who, like him, proclaimed a system of elevated morality, has even now almost twice the number of followers, although his missionaries never sought converts in the West. Considered as a scheme Divinely devised as the best, if not only, mode of redeeming the human race, and saving them from eternal d.a.m.nation, promulgated by G.o.d himself incarnate in human form, and completed by his own actual death upon the cross for the sins of the world, such results as these can only be regarded as practical
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failure, although they may not be disproportionate for a system of elevated morality.
We shall probably never be able to determine how far the great Teacher may through his own speculations or misunderstood spiritual utterances have suggested the supernatural doctrines subsequently attributed to him, and by which his whole history and system soon became transformed; but no one who attentively studies the subject can fail to be struck by the absence of such dogmas from the earlier records of his teaching. It is to the excited veneration of the followers of Jesus, however, that we owe most of the supernatural elements so characteristic of the age and people. We may look in vain even in the synoptic Gospels for the doctrines elaborated in the Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of Ephesus.
The great transformation of Christianity was effected by men who had never seen Jesus, and who were only acquainted with his teaching after it had become trans.m.u.ted by tradition. The fervid imagination of the East constructed Christian theology. It is not difficult to follow the development of the creeds of the Church, and it is certainly most instructive to observe the progressive boldness with which its dogmas were expanded by pious enthusiasm. The New Testament alone represents several stages of dogmatic evolution. Before his first followers had pa.s.sed away the process of transformation had commenced. The disciples, who had so often misunderstood the teaching of Jesus during his life, piously distorted it after his death. His simple lessons of meekness and humility were soon forgotten. With lamentable rapidity, the elaborate structure of ecclesiastical Christianity, following stereotyped lines of human superst.i.tion, and deeply coloured by Alexandrian
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philosophy, displaced the sublime morality of Jesus. Doctrinal controversy, which commenced amongst the very Apostles, has ever since divided the unity of the Christian body. The perverted ingenuity of successive generations of churchmen has filled the world with theological quibbles, which have naturally enough culminated of late in doctrines of Immaculate Conception, and Papal Infallibility.
It is sometimes affirmed, however, that those who proclaim such conclusions not only wantonly destroy the dearest hopes of humanity, but remove the only solid basis of morality; and it is alleged that, before existing belief is disturbed, the iconoclast is bound to provide a subst.i.tute for the shattered idol. To this we may reply that speech or silence does not alter the reality of things. The recognition of Truth cannot be made dependent on consequences, or be trammelled by considerations of spurious expediency. Its declaration in a serious and suitable manner to those who are capable of judging can never be premature. Its suppression cannot be effectual, and is only a humiliating compromise with conscious imposture. In so far as morality is concerned, belief in a system of future rewards and punishments, although of an intensely degraded character, may, to a certain extent, have promoted observance of the letter of the law in darker ages and even in our own, but it may, we think, be shown that education and civilization have done infinitely more to enforce its spirit. How far Christianity has promoted education and civilization, we shall not here venture adequately to discuss. We may emphatically a.s.sert, however, that whatever beneficial effect Christianity has produced has been due, not to its supernatural dogmas, but to its simple morality. Dogmatic Theology,
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on the contrary, has r.e.t.a.r.ded education and impeded science. Wherever it has been dominant civilization has stood still. Science has been judged and suppressed by the light of a text or a chapter of Genesis. Almost every great advance which has been made towards enlightenment has been achieved in spite of the protest or the anathema of the Church.
Submissive ignorance, absolute or comparative, has been tacitly fostered as the most desirable condition of the popular mind. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," has been the favourite text of Doctors of Divinity with a stock of incredible dogmas difficult of a.s.similation by the virile mind. Even now, the fiction of theological resistance is a constant waste of intellectual power. The early enunciation of so pure a system of morality, and one so intelligible to the simple as well as profound to the wise, was of great value to the world, but experience being once systematized and codified, if higher principles do not constrain us, society may safely be left to see morals sufficiently observed. It is true that, notwithstanding its fluctuating rules, morality has. .h.i.therto a.s.sumed the character of a Divine inst.i.tution, but its sway has not, in consequence, been more real than it must be as the simple result of human wisdom, and the outcome of social experience.
The choice of a n.o.ble life is no longer a theological question, and ecclesiastical patents of truth and uprightness have finally expired.
Morality, which has ever changed its complexion and modified its injunctions according to social requirements, will necessarily be enforced as part of human evolution, and is not dependent on religious terrorism or superst.i.tious persuasion. If we are disposed to say:
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_Cui bono?_ and only practise morality, or be ruled by right principles, to gain a heaven or escape a h.e.l.l, there is nothing lost, for such grudging and calculated morality is merely a spurious imitation which can as well be produced by social compulsion. But if we have ever been really penetrated by the pure spirit of morality, if we have in any degree attained that elevation of mind which instinctively turns to the true and n.o.ble and shrinks from the baser level of thought and action, we shall feel no need of the stimulus of a system of rewards and punishments in a future state which has for so long been represented as essential to Christianity.
As to the other reproach, let us ask what has actually been destroyed by such an inquiry pressed to its logical conclusion. Can Truth by any means be made less true? Can reality be melted into thin air? The Revelation not being a reality, that which has been destroyed is only an illusion, and that which is left is the Truth. Losing belief in it and its contents, we have lost absolutely nothing but that which the traveller loses when the mirage, which has displayed cool waters and green shades before him, melts swiftly away. There were no cool fountains really there to allay his thirst, no flowery meadows for his wearied limbs; his pleasure was delusion, and the wilderness is blank.
Rather the mirage with its pleasant illusion, is the human cry, than the desert with its barrenness. Not so, is the friendly warning; seek not vainly in the desert that which is not there, but turn rather to other horizons, and to surer hopes. Do not waste life clinging to ecclesiastical dogmas which represent no eternal verities, but search elsewhere for truth which may haply be found. What should we think of the man who persistently repulsed
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the persuasion that two and two make four from the ardent desire to believe that two and two make five? Whose fault is it that two and two do make four and not five? Whose folly is it that it should be more agreeable to think that two and two make five than to know that they only make four? This folly is theirs who represent the value of life as dependent on the reality of special illusions, which they have religiously adopted. To discover that a former belief is unfounded is to change nothing of the realities of existence. The sun will descend as it pa.s.ses the meridian whether we believe it to be noon or not. It is idle and foolish, if human, to repine because the truth is not precisely what we thought it, and at least we shall not change reality by childishly clinging to a dream.
The argument so often employed by theologians that Divine Revelation is necessary for man, and that certain views contained in that Revelation are required by our moral consciousness, is purely imaginary and derived from the Revelation which it seeks to maintain. The only thing absolutely necessary for man is Truth; and to that, and that alone, must our moral consciousness adapt itself. Reason and experience forbid the expectation that we can acquire any knowledge otherwise than through natural channels. We might as well expect to be supernaturally nourished as supernaturally informed. To complain that we do not know all that we desire to know is foolish and unreasonable. It is tantamount to complaining that the mind of man is not differently const.i.tuted. To attain the full alt.i.tude of the Knowable, whatever that may be, should be our earnest aim, and more than this is not for humanity. We may be certain that information which is beyond the ultimate
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reach of Reason is as unnecessary as it is inaccessible. Man may know all that man requires to know.
We gain more than we lose by awaking to find that our Theology is human invention and our eschatology an unhealthy dream. We are freed from the incubus of base Hebrew mythology, and from doctrines of Divine government which outrage morality and set cruelty and injustice in the place of holiness. If we have to abandon cherished anthropomorphic visions of future Blessedness, the details of which are either of unseizable dimness or of questionable joy, we are at least delivered from quibbling discussions of the meaning of [------], and our eternal hope is unclouded by the doubt whether mankind is to be tortured in h.e.l.l for ever and a day, or for a day without the ever. At the end of life there may be no definite vista of a Heaven glowing with the light of apocalyptic imagination, but neither will there be the unutterable horror of a Purgatory or a h.e.l.l lurid with flames for the helpless victims of an unjust but omnipotent Creator. To entertain such libellous representations at all as part of the contents of "Divine Revelation,"
it was necessary to a.s.sert that man was incompetent to judge of the ways of the G.o.d of Revelation, and must not suppose him endowed with the perfection of human conceptions of justice and mercy, but submit to call wrong right and right wrong at the foot of an almighty Despot. But now the reproach of such reasoning is shaken from our shoulders, and returns to the Jewish superst.i.tion from which it sprang.
As myths lose their might and their influence when discovered to be baseless, the power of supernatural Christianity will doubtless pa.s.s away, but the effect of the revolution must not be exaggerated, although it
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cannot here be fully discussed. If the pictures which have filled for so long the horizon of the Future must vanish, no hideous blank can rightly be maintained in their place. We should clearly distinguish between what we know and know not, but as carefully abstain from characterising that which we know not as if it were really known to us. That mysterious Unknown or Unknowable is no cruel darkness, but simply an impenetrable distance into which we are impotent to glance, but which excludes no legitimate speculation and forbids no reasonable hope.