Part 1 (2/2)
It is a ma.s.s of false and superst.i.tious beliefs long exploded. It is the opponent of progress and inquiry, the discoveries of science having been made in direct defiance of its teaching and its influence.
It is the champion of oppression and tyranny. It aims at keeping the poor in ignorance and dest.i.tution. It prostrates itself before the rich and seeks the patronage of the great.
It so insists on people being absorbed in {13} the thought of heaven that it practically precludes them from doing any good on earth.
It is a system of selfishness, inculcating the dogma that no one need care for anything except the salvation of his own soul.[11]
It is the foster-mother of all the evil and misery by which society is distressed. Dishonesty, cruelty, slavery, war, persecution, avarice, drunkenness, vice, would seem to be its natural fruits.
'How calm and sweet the victories of life,'
shrieked Sh.e.l.ley in one of his early poems.
'How terrorless the triumph of the grave ...
... but for thy aid Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, h.e.l.l with men, And heaven with slaves!
Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!'[12]
What shall we say to these accusations? Christians have been credulous and superst.i.tious, have argued and acted as if only in {14} the abnormal and exceptional could the Divine Presence be found, as if G.o.d were a hard Taskmaster and capricious Tyrant. They have resisted progress and inquiry, blindly refusing to see the light which was streaming upon them. They have unquestionably been guilty of miserable pride towards inferiors in wealth or in station, and guilty of miserable sycophancy towards the rich and the powerful. Christians have too frequently neglected the material well-being of the community, have suffered disgraceful outward conditions to remain without protest, have not striven to shed abroad happiness and brightness in squalid and wretched lives. Christians have been art and part in fostering such conditions as wrung from compa.s.sionate and indignant hearts the _Song of the s.h.i.+rt_ and the _Cry of the Children_. Christians have imagined that correctness of belief would make up for falseness of heart, and loudness of profession for depravity of {15} practice. Christians have supposed that in religion all that has to be striven for is the salvation of one's own soul, have even represented the joy of the redeemed as heightened by a contemplation of the torments of the lost.
Christians must bear the responsibility of much of the abounding vice which they have not earnestly tried to combat where it already exists, and which, in various forms, they have introduced into regions where it was unknown before. Lawlessness and degradation in the slums, fraud and dishonesty in trade, gross revelations in the fas.h.i.+onable world; bigotry, slander, scandals in the ecclesiastical world; plots, wars, treacheries, a.s.sa.s.sinations, in the political world: these things ought not so to be. The fiercest denunciations, the most withering satires, which unbelievers have employed, do not exceed in intensity of condemnation the judgment which Christian preachers and Christian writers have p.r.o.nounced.[13]
{16}
In all ages of the Church the most powerful weapon against Christianity has been the example of Christians. The Faith which they nominally hold has been judged by the lives which they actually lead.[14]
'Christianity,' said a bishop of the eighteenth century, 'would perhaps be the last religion a wise man would choose, if he were guided by the lives of those who profess it.'[15] But is this to admit that the hope of the world lies in renouncing Christianity? that in confining ourselves to the seen and the temporal, we shall best elevate mankind?
that the prospect of annihilation and the absence of wisdom, love, and Providence in the order of the universe const.i.tute the most glorious gospel which can be proclaimed? Nothing of the kind. It is only proved that many Christians are not acting according to their belief, that their practice does not square with their {17} profession. The belief and the profession are not proved to be wrong and bad. It would be unreasonable to argue that, because a man who has been vehemently sounding the praises of truthfulness is convicted of deliberate lying, therefore truthfulness is shown to be worthless. It is equally unreasonable to identify Christianity with everything to which it is most definitely opposed, to represent it as the enemy of everything which it was intended to maintain, and then to conclude that Christianity is discredited.[16] As we should argue from the detection of a liar, not that lying is right, but that he should return to the ways of truth, so we should argue from the lives of Christians who live in flagrant contradiction to the precepts of our Lord and His Apostles, not that the precepts should be rejected, but that they should be kept; not that Christianity should be abolished, but that it should be obeyed.
{18}
Christians have created prejudice, hatred, against Christianity, but it is not Christianity which they have been exhibiting. We repudiate the hideous travesty which they have made, the hideous travesty which is credulously or maliciously accepted by a.s.sailants as a correct representation. Christianity is not a religion of darkness and superst.i.tion: it calls to its disciples 'Be children of light: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.' Christianity does not sycophantishly court the rich and despise the poor: it tells the stories of the Rich Man and Lazarus, and of the Rich Fool, and it declares 'Ye cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon.' Christianity does not teach that the life which a man leads is of less consequence than the belief which he professes: it demands, 'Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?' Christianity is not selfish, is not a system which inculcates the saving of one's own soul as the first and last of duties: {19} 'He that loveth his life shall lose it. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye have love one to another.' It is surely reasonable to demand that Christianity shall be judged, not by its misrepresentations, but by what it is in itself, not as it has been perverted by bitter enemies, or by false disciples, but as it is proclaimed and manifested in its Author and Finisher.
IV
In the face of such tremendous indictments, what is the duty inc.u.mbent on us who profess and call ourselves Christians? Certainly not that we should abjure the name, but that we should remember what the name signifies. We ought to consider our ways, to give ourselves to self-examination. There must be something amiss when such hideous portraits can be painted with any expectation of their being taken as correct likenesses. It is right {20} that we should repel with indignation the ludicrous and intolerable caricatures which are presented as our belief, the unwarrantable consequences which are deduced from it. It is right that we should remove misapprehensions and refute calumnies; but, above all it is necessary that we should take heed to our own conduct and our own character. The scandals which we have so much reason to deplore owe their existence, not to Christianity, but to the absence of Christianity. And the very sneers which greet any departure from rect.i.tude or morality on the part of a professing Christian prove that such a departure is not a manifestation, but a renunciation of Christianity, that what is expected of Christians is the highest and the best that human nature can produce.
'If,' argues Mr. Blatchford, 'if to praise Christ in words and deny Him in deeds be Christianity, then London is a Christian city and England is a Christian nation. For it is {21} very evident that our common English ideals are anti-Christian, and that our commercial, foreign, and social affairs are run on anti-Christian lines.'[17] As Mr.
Blatchford's life is spent in deploring the baseness of 'our common English ideals,' and in exposing the iniquity of the methods in which 'our commercial, foreign, and social affairs' are conducted, the logical inference would seem to be that, as anti-Christian ideals and anti-Christian lines have so signally failed, it might be well to give Christian ideals and Christian lines a trial. 'In a really humane and civilised nation,' Mr. Blatchford maintains, 'there should be, and there need be, no such thing as Poverty, Ignorance, Crime, Idleness, War, Slavery, Hate, Envy, Pride, Greed, Gluttony, Vice. But,' he continues his curious argument, 'this is not a humane and civilised nation, and never will be while it accepts Christianity as its religion. These,' {22} so he adds as an irresistible conclusion, 'these are my reasons for opposing Christianity.'[18] Very good reasons, if Christianity taught such a creed and encouraged such a morality. But that any human being should give such a description of the purpose of Christian Faith indicates either that the describer is swayed by blindest prejudice or else that no genuine Christian has ever crossed his path.
'What if some do not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of G.o.d of none effect? G.o.d forbid: yea, let G.o.d be true, but every man a liar.' Truth continues to be truth, though people who talk much about it may be false. Goodness continues to be goodness, though people who sing its praises may be thoroughly depraved. Generosity does not cease to be generosity, though its beauty should be extolled by a miser.
Courage does not cease to be courage, though its heroism should be extolled by a coward. Temperance {23} is temperance, though we should be a.s.sured of the fact by the thick speech of a drunkard. The virtue is admirable, even when those who acknowledge how admirable it is do not practise it.
That Christianity towers so far above the attainments of its average disciples, nay, above the attainments of its saintliest, is itself a kind of evidence of its divine origin. 'When the King of the Tartars, who was become Christian,' says Montaigne, 'designed to come to Lyons to kiss the Pope's feet, and there to be an eyewitness of the sanct.i.ty he hoped to find in our manners, immediately our good S. Louis sought to divert him from his purpose: for fear lest our inordinate way of living should, on the contrary, put him out of conceit with so holy a belief. And yet it happened quite otherwise to this other, who going to Rome to the same end, and there seeing the dissolution of the Prelates and people of that time, settled {24} himself so much the more firmly in our religion, considering how great the force and dignity of it must necessarily be that could maintain its dignity and splendour amongst so much corruption and in so vicious hands.' G.o.d's truth abides whether men receive it or deny it. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, though every so-called Christian should become apostate. The woes of the world are to be cured by more Christianity, not by less; and on us, in whose hands have been placed its holy oracles, rests the responsibility of proving its inestimable advantage ourselves and of conferring it on all mankind.
Wherever Christianity has really flourished, untold blessings have been the result.[19] With all the sad deficiencies and sadder perversions by which its course has been chequered, no influence for good can be compared with it in elevating character, in diffusing peace and {25} goodwill, in fitting men to labour and to endure. The diffusion of the spirit of Christianity is a synonym for the diffusion of all that tends to the true well-being of the world. Only as genuine Christianity, the Christianity of Christ, prevails, will mankind be morally and spiritually lifted into a higher sphere. Put together the wisest and most enn.o.bling suggestions of those who regard Christianity as obsolete and you find that it is virtually Christianity which is delineated. It is in the prevalence of principles and practices which, however they may be designated, are in reality Christian, that the salvation of society and of individuals will be found. In the absence of such principles and practices will be found the secret of ruin, disorder, dissolution, and decay.
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