Part 9 (1/2)
As yet those who may be counted as belonging definitely to the new religion are few and scattered and unconfessed, their realisations are still uncertain and incomplete. But that is no augury for the continuance of this state of affairs even for the next few decades.
There are many signs that the revival is coming very swiftly, it may be coming as swiftly as the morning comes after a tropical night. It may seem at present as though nothing very much were happening, except for the fact that the old familiar constellations of theology have become a little pallid and lost something of their mult.i.tude of points. But nothing fades of itself. The deep stillness of the late night is broken by a stirring, and the morning star of creedless faith, the last and brightest of the stars, the star that owes its light to the coming sun is in the sky.
There is a stirring and a movement. There is a stir, like the stir before a breeze. Men are beginning to speak of religion without the bl.u.s.ter of the Christian formulae; they have begun to speak of G.o.d without any reference to Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence. The Deists and Theists of an older generation, be it noted, never did that.
Their ”Supreme Being” repudiated nothing. He was merely the whittled stump of the Trinity. It is in the last few decades that the western mind has slipped loose from this absolutist conception of G.o.d that has dominated the intelligence of Christendom at least, for many centuries.
Almost unconsciously the new thought is taking a course that will lead it far away from the moorings of Omnipotence. It is like a s.h.i.+p that has slipped its anchors and drifts, still sleeping, under the pale and vanis.h.i.+ng stars, out to the open sea... .
2. CONVERGENT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
In quite a little while the whole world may be alive with this renascent faith.
For emanc.i.p.ation from the Trinitarian formularies and from a belief in an infinite G.o.d means not merely a great revivification of minds trained under the decadence of orthodox Christianity, minds which have hitherto been hopelessly embarra.s.sed by the choice between pseudo-Christian religion or denial, but also it opens the way towards the completest understanding and sympathy and partic.i.p.ation with the kindred movements for release and for an intensification of the religious life, that are going on outside the sphere of the Christian tradition and influence altogether. Allusion has already been made to the sympathetic devotional poetry of Rabindranath Tagore; he stands for a movement in Brahminism parallel with and a.s.similable to the wors.h.i.+p of the true G.o.d of mankind.
It is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is entirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an evil entanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is too easily a.s.sumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with renunciation, not merely of self but of being, with the escape from all effort of any sort into an exalted vacuity. This is indeed neither the spirit of China nor of Islam nor of the every-day life of any people in the world. It is not the spirit of the Sikh nor of these newer developments of Hindu thought.
It has never been the spirit of j.a.pan. To-day less than ever does Asia seem disposed to give up life and the effort of life. Just as readily as Europeans, do the Asiatics reach out their arms to that fuller life we can live, that greater intensity of existence, to which we can attain by escaping from ourselves. All mankind is seeking G.o.d. There is not a nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at this moment by the spirit of G.o.d in them towards the discovery of G.o.d. This is not an age of despair but an age of hope in Asia as in all the world besides.
Islam is undergoing a process of revision closely parallel to that which ransacks Christianity. Tradition and mediaeval doctrines are being thrust aside in a similar way. There is much probing into the spirit and intention of the Founder. The time is almost ripe for a heart-searching Dialogue of the Dead, ”How we settled our religions for ever and ever,”
between, let us say, Eusebius of Caesarea and one of Nizam-al-Mulk's tame theologians. They would be drawn together by the same tribulations; they would be in the closest sympathy against the temerity of the moderns; they would have a common courtliness. The Quran is but little read by Europeans; it is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that it does not contain; there is much confusion in people's minds between its text and the ancient Semitic traditions and usages retained by its followers; in places it may seem formless and barbaric; but what it has chiefly to tell of is the leaders.h.i.+p of one individualised militant G.o.d who claims the rule of the whole world, who favours neither rank nor race, who would lead men to righteousness. It is much more free from sacramentalism, from vestiges of the ancient blood sacrifice, and its a.s.sociated sacerdotalism, than Christianity. The religion that will presently sway mankind can be reached more easily from that starting-point than from the confused mysteries of Trinitarian theology.
Islam was never saddled with a creed. With the very name ”Islam”
(submission to G.o.d) there is no quarrel for those who hold the new faith... .
All the world over there is this stirring in the dry bones of the old beliefs. There is scarcely a religion that has not its Bahaism, its Modernists, its Brahmo Somaj, its ”religion without theology,” its attempts to escape from old forms and hampering a.s.sociations to that living and world-wide spiritual reality upon which the human mind almost instinctively insists... .
It is the same G.o.d we all seek; he becomes more and more plainly the same G.o.d.
So that all this religious stir, which seems so multifold and incidental and disconnected and confused and entirely ineffective to-day, may be and most probably will be, in quite a few years a great flood of religious unanimity pouring over and changing all human affairs, sweeping away the old priesthoods and tabernacles and symbols and shrines, the last crumb of the Orphic victim and the last rag of the Serapeum, and turning all men about into one direction, as the s.h.i.+ps and houseboats swing round together in some great river with the uprush of the tide... .
3. CAN THERE BE A TRUE CHURCH?
Among those who are beginning to realise the differences and ident.i.ties of the revived religion that has returned to them, certain questions of organisation and a.s.sembly are being discussed. Every new religious development is haunted by the precedents of the religion it replaces, and it was only to be expected that among those who have recovered their faith there should be a search for apostles and disciples, an attempt to determine sources and to form original congregations, especially among people with European traditions.
These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are imitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there is no claim to a revelation but simply that G.o.d has become visible. Men have thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology has cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers or a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem to insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church is particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. Save for a few doubtful interpolations there is no evidence that Christ tolerated either blood sacrifices or the mysteries of priesthood. All these antique grossnesses were superadded after his martyrdom. He preached not a cult but a gospel; he sent out not medicine men but apostles.
No doubt all who believe owe an apostolic service to G.o.d. They become naturally apostolic. As men perceive and realise G.o.d, each will be disposed in his own fas.h.i.+on to call his neighbour's attention to what he sees. The necessary elements of religion could be written on a post card; this book, small as it is, bulks large not by what it tells positively but because it deals with misconceptions. We may (little doubt have I that we do) need special propagandas and organisations to discuss errors and keep back the jungle of false ideas, to maintain free speech and restrain the enterprise of the persecutor, but we do not want a church to keep our faith for us. We want our faith spread, but for that there is no need for orthodoxies and controlling organisations of statement. It is for each man to follow his own impulse, and to speak to his like in his own fas.h.i.+on.
Whatever religious congregations men may form henceforth in the name of the true G.o.d must be for their own sakes and not to take charge of religion.
The history of Christianity, with its encrustation and suffocation in dogmas and usages, its dire persecutions of the faithful by the unfaithful, its desiccation and its unlovely decay, its invasion by robes and rites and all the tricks and vices of the Pharisees whom Christ detested and denounced, is full of warning against the dangers of a church. Organisation is an excellent thing for the material needs of men, for the draining of towns, the marshalling of traffic, the collecting of eggs, and the carrying of letters, the distribution of bread, the notification of measles, for hygiene and economics and suchlike affairs. The better we organise such things, the freer and better equipped we leave men's minds for n.o.bler purposes, for those adventures and experiments towards G.o.d's purpose which are the reality of life. But all organisations must be watched, for whatever is organised can be ”captured” and misused. Repentance, moreover, is the beginning and essential of the religious life, and organisations (acting through their secretaries and officials) never repent. G.o.d deals only with the individual for the individual's surrender. He takes no cognisance of committees.
Those who are most alive to the realities of living religion are most mistrustful of this congregating tendency. To gather together is to purchase a benefit at the price of a greater loss, to strengthen one's sense of brotherhood by excluding the majority of mankind. Before you know where you are you will have exchanged the spirit of G.o.d for ESPRIT DE CORPS. You will have reinvented the SYMBOL; you will have begun to keep anniversaries and establish sacramental ceremonies. The disposition to form cliques and exclude and conspire against unlike people is all too strong in humanity, to permit of its formal encouragement. Even such organisation as is implied by a creed is to be avoided, for all living faith coagulates as you phrase it. In this book I have not given so much as a definite name to the faith of the true G.o.d. Organisation for wors.h.i.+p and collective exaltation also, it may be urged, is of little manifest good. You cannot appoint beforehand a time and place for G.o.d to irradiate your soul.