I am sad. I have lived too long.
GRANDFATHER.
(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)
_Grandad:_ It"s all so plain, you must see it. I told you I had crossed to the farther bank. Here is what one finds there: Taking him as G.o.d, Jesus is ineffectual. Only as an obviously fallible human man does he become beautiful; only as a man is he dignified, worthy, great--or even plausible.
The instinct of the Jews did not mislead them. Jesus was too fine, too good, to have come from their tribal G.o.d; yet too humanly limited to have come from G.o.d, save as we all come from Him.
Since you insist that he be considered as G.o.d, I shall point out those things which make him small--as a G.o.d. I would rather consider him as a man and point out those things which make him great to me--things which I cannot read without wet eyes--but you will not consider him as man, so let him be a G.o.d, and let us see what we see. It is customary to speak of his "sacrifice." What was it? Our catechism says, "Christ"s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of G.o.d and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time."
As I write the words I wonder that the thing should ever have seemed to any one to be more than a wretched piece of G.o.d-jugglery, devoid of integrity. Are we to conceive G.o.d then as a being of carnal appet.i.tes, humiliated by being born into the family of an honest carpenter, instead of into the family of a King? This is the somewhat sn.o.bbish imputation.
Let us be done with G.o.ds playing at being human, or at being half G.o.d and half human. The time has come when, to prolong its usefulness, the Church must concede--nay, proclaim--the manhood of Jesus; must separate him from that atrocious scheme of human sacrifice, the logical extension of a primitive Hebrew mythology--and take him in the only way that he commands attention: As a man, one of the world"s great spiritual teachers.
Insisting upon his G.o.dship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter"s wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin.
Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in history--never one less meek than this carpenter"s son who ranks himself second only to G.o.d, with power to send into everlasting h.e.l.l those who disbelieve him! He went abroad in fine arrogance, railing at lawyers and the rich, rebuking, reproving, hurling angry epithets, attacking what we to-day call "the decent element." He called the people constantly "Fools,"
"Blind Leaders of the Blind," "faithless and perverse," "a generation of vipers," "sinful," "evil and adulterous," "wicked," "hypocrites," "whited sepulchres."
As the G.o.d he worshipped was a tribal G.o.d, so he at first believed himself to be a tribal saviour. He directed his disciples thus: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel"--(who emphatically rejected and slew him for his pretensions). To the woman of Canaan whose daughter was vexed with a devil, he said: "It is not meet to take the children"s bread to cast it to dogs." Imagine a G.o.d calling a woman a dog _because she was not of his own tribe!_
And the vital test of G.o.dhood he failed to meet: It is his own test, whereby he disproves his G.o.dship out of his own mouth. Compare these sayings of Jesus, each typical of him:
"Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Yet he said to his Twelve:
"And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, when you depart thence shake off the dust of your feet for a testimony against them."
Is that the consistency of a G.o.d or a man?
Again: "Blessed are the merciful," _but_ "Verily I say unto you it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." Is this the mercy which he tells us is blessed?
Again: "And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise." Another: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida ...
and thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to h.e.l.l." Is not this preaching the golden rule and practicing something else, as a man might?
Again: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren, what do ye more than others? Do not even the publicans so?" That, sir, is a sentiment that proves the claim of Jesus to be a teacher of morals. Here is one which, placed beside it, proves him to have been a man.
"_Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the son of man also confess before the angels of G.o.d_;
"_but whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my father, which is in heaven._"
Is it G.o.d speaking--or man? "_Do not even the publicans so?_"
Beside this very human contradiction, it is hardly worth while to hear him say "Resist not evil," yet make a scourge of cords to drive the money-changers from the temple in a fit of rage, human--but how unG.o.dlike!
Believe me, the man Jesus is better than the G.o.d Jesus; the man is worth while, for all his inconsistencies, partly due to his creed and partly to his emotional nature. Indeed, we have not yet risen to the splendour of his ideal--even the preachers will not preach it.
And the miracles? We need say nothing of those, I think. If a man disprove his G.o.dship out of his own mouth, we shall not be convinced by a coin in a fish"s mouth or by his raising Lazarus, four days dead. So long as he says, "I will confess him that confesseth me and deny him that denieth me," we should know him for one of us, though he rose from the dead before our eyes.
Then at the last you will say, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Well, sir, the fruits of Christianity are what one might expect. You will say it stands for the fatherhood of G.o.d and the brotherhood of man. That it has always done the reverse is Christianity"s fundamental defect, and its chief absurdity in this day when the popular unchurchly conception of G.o.d has come to be one of some dignity.
"That ye may know how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." There is the rock of separation upon which the Church builded; the rock upon which it will presently split. The G.o.d of the Jews set a difference between Israel and Egypt. So much for the fatherhood of G.o.d. The Son sets the same difference, dividing the sheep from the goats, according to the opinions they form of his claim to G.o.dship. So much for the brotherhood of man. Christianity merely caricatures both propositions. Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy ideal of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We must be sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, some in h.e.l.l, still seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in Glory Should Rejoice at the Sufferings of the d.a.m.ned." We shall be saints and sinners, sated and starving. A G.o.d who separates them in some future life will have children that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent authority. That is why one brother of us must work himself to death while another idles himself to death--because G.o.d has set a difference, and his Son after him, and the Church after that. The defect in social Christendom to-day, sir, is precisely this defect of the Christian faith--its separation, its failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of teaching. We have, in consequence, a society of thinly veneered predatoriness. And this, I believe, is why our society is quite as unstable today as the Church itself. They are both awakening to a new truth--which is _not_ separation.
The man who is proud of our Christian civilisation has ideals susceptible of immense elevation. Christianity has more souls in its h.e.l.l and fewer in its heaven than any other religion whatsoever. Naturally, Christian society is one of extremes and of gross injustice--of oppression and indifference to suffering. And so it will be until this materialism of separation is repudiated: until we turn seriously to the belief that men are truly brothers, not one of whom can be long happy while any other suffers.
Come, Grandad, let us give up this G.o.d of Moses. Doubtless he was good enough for the early Jews, but man has always had to make G.o.d in his own image, and you and I need a better one, for we both surpa.s.s this one in all spiritual values--in love, in truth, in justice, in common decency--as much as Jesus surpa.s.sed the unrepentant thief at his side. Remember that an honest, fearless search for truth has led to all the progress we can measure over the brutes. Why must it lose the soul?
BERNAL.
(From the Reverend Allan Delcher to Bernal Linford.)
My boy, I shall not believe you are sane until I have seen you face to face. I cannot believe you have fallen a victim to Universalism, which is like the vale of Siddim, full of slime-pits. I am an old man, and my mind goes haltingly, yet that is what I seem to glean from your rambling screed. Come when you are through, for I must see you once more.
"For G.o.d sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of G.o.d."
Lastly--doubt in infinite things is often wise, but doubt of G.o.d must be blasphemy, else he would not be G.o.d, the all-perfect.
I pray it may be your mind is still sick--and recall to you these words of one I will not now name to you: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
ALLAN DELCHER.
CHAPTER V
"IS THE HAND OF THE LORD WAXED SHORT?"
A dismayed old man, eagerly trying to feel incredulous, awaited the home-coming of his grandsons at the beginning of that vacation.
Was the hand of the Lord waxed short, that so utter a blasphemer--unless, indeed, he were possessed of a devil--could walk in the eye of Jehovah, and no breach be made upon him? Even was the world itself so lax in these days that one speaking thus could go free? If so, then how could G.o.d longer refrain from drowning the world again? The human baseness of the blaspheming one and the divine toleration that permitted it were alike incredible.
A score of times the old man nerved himself to laugh away his fears. It could not be. The young mind was still disordered.
On the night of the home-coming he greeted the youth quite as if all were serene within him, determined to be in no haste and to approach the thing lightly on the morrow--in the fond hope that a mere breath of authority might blow it away.
And when, the next morning, they both drifted to the study, the old man called up the smile that made his wrinkles sunny, and said in light tones, above the beating of an anxious heart:
"So it"s your theory, boy, that we must all be taken down with typhoid before we can be really wise in matters of faith?"
But the youth answered, quite earnestly:
"Yes, sir; I really believe nothing less than that would clear most minds--especially old ones. You see, the brain is a muscle and thought is its physical exercise. It learns certain thoughts--to go through certain exercises. These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and incapable of learning any new movements--also incapable of leaving off the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual"s mind can affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new suppleness."
He spoke with a certain restrained nervousness that was not rea.s.suring.