Part 5 (2/2)
There is no law that a stone should fall to the earth. The law of gravity is that bodies attract each other directly as their ma.s.s, and inversely as the square of the distance. You do not break this law by holding a stone in your hand. Nay, you can feel it acting all the time you do so. You cannot break this law. You cannot break any law. Law is another word for the inevitable. Whom did the Greeks put above all the G.o.ds? It was [Greek: anachke], Necessity. Did, then, the Greeks see that behind all their personification of forces Law ruled? It may be so. They have the two ideas, G.o.d and Law. It is perhaps the old battle of free will and destination. And which is true? To the Greek Necessity was behind G.o.d, to the Theist G.o.d is behind Law. The laws are but His orders. He can break them and change them and modify them. And yet, it is so hard to see clearly how Theists can avoid the difficulty. If G.o.d's laws are perfect truths they cannot be alterable. Only the imperfect would be changed. Yet if G.o.d's laws are perfect, is not He, too, bound by them? And if He be bound, is not His free will, His omnipotence limited? Surely G.o.d cannot transgress His own laws of righteousness; is there not ”necessity” to Him too? But if this be so, then where is the need of any knowledge beyond the knowledge of law? If it be indeed eternal, as the Buddhists say, what need for more? In the science of nature we need not go beyond, we cannot. In the science of man, who is but part of nature, why should we do so? Is it not better, truer, more beautiful to believe in everlasting laws of righteousness that rule the world than to believe that a Personality has to be always arranging and interfering? Would we not in a state prefer perfect laws to a perfect king, who, however, was imperfect in this that his laws were imperfect and had to be checked in their working? Which is the more perfect conception? Surely that of law. If crime and ignorance, if mistake and waywardness brought always inevitably their due punishment and correction, where is a ruler needed? It is imperfection that requires changing.
CHAPTER IX.
G.o.d AND LAW.
Think what a difference, what an immense difference, it makes to a man which he believes, how utterly it alters all his att.i.tude to the Unknown, to the Infinite, whether he believes in G.o.d or in Law. For among all religions, all faiths, all theories of the unknown there are only these two ideas, Personality or Law, free will or inevitableness.
And how different they are.
In the face of eternity there are two att.i.tudes: that of the Theist, whether Christian or Jew, Hindu or spirit wors.h.i.+pper; and that of the Buddhist, the believer in Law. To the believer in G.o.d or in G.o.ds, what is the world and what is man? They are playthings in the hands of the Almighty. G.o.d is responsible to no one, He knows no right and wrong, no necessity beyond Himself, all He does must be right. He is All-powerful.
Man must crouch before Him in fear. If man suffer he must not cry out against G.o.d; he must say in due submissiveness, ”Thy will be done.” A man must even be thankful that matters are not worse. If in a s.h.i.+pwreck many are drowned and few, bereft of all but life, are hardly saved, what must they do? They must render thanks to G.o.d that He didn't drown them too. Not because they are aware of being punished for any sin, that does not come to man in calamity. You cannot imagine a common sin that engulphs men and women, children and babes, from all countries, of all professions, of many religions, in one common disaster. No! G.o.d can be bribed, not with presents perhaps now, but with reverence. It is the cringe that deprecates uncontrollable Power. It is the same feeling that makes the savage lay a fruit or a flower before the Spirit of the Hills lest he too be killed by the falling rocks.
For what do men imagine G.o.d to be? Do you think that each man holds one wonderful conception of G.o.d? Not so. The civilised man's idea of G.o.d is as the savage idea. Each man builds to himself his own G.o.d, out of his ideals, civilised or savage. Truly, if you ask a man to tell you his idea of G.o.d he will answer you vaguely out of his creeds or sacred books; but if you watch that man's actions towards G.o.d, you will soon discover that his G.o.d is but his ideal man glorified.
To a tender woman her G.o.d is but the extreme of the tenderness, the beauty, the compa.s.sion which she feels, and the narrowness which she has but does not realise. And cannot you see in your mind's eye the German Emperor's G.o.d clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a German pickelhaube and swearing German oaths? Man's G.o.d is but what he admires most in himself. He can be propitiated, he can be bribed. The savage does it with a bowl of milk or a honey cake, the mediaeval man did it with a chapel or a painted window. You say this idea has ceased. Have you ever prayed to G.o.d and said, ”Spare me this time and I will be good in future. I will do this. I will do that.” Or, more beautifully, ”Spare him that I love and let the punishment fall on me. Let me bear his sins.” Is not the very idea of atonement expressed by Christ's life? A price has to be paid to G.o.d. He must be bought off. Man's att.i.tude before G.o.d must be that of the child, submissive with downcast eyes, full of praise, never daring to blame. ”Tell me and I will obey, do not punish me or I perish.” Then there is the att.i.tude of the believer in eternal law. For him the world holds no caprice, no leaning to one side or another, no revenge, no mercy. Each act carries with it an inevitable result: reward if the act be good, punishment if it be bad. You can break a command of G.o.d. He may tell you to do a thing and you may refuse. You cannot break a law. It is the inevitable, the everlasting.
You cannot rebel against law. The sin is not rebellion, but ignorance.
The att.i.tude is not submission, but inquiry, the thirst for truth. Adam lost Eden because he sought for the knowledge of good and evil. But the law-believer says that only in wisdom, only in truth, is there any hope.
He stands before the eternal verities with clear eyes to see them, with a strong heart to bear what his ignorance may make him suffer. Out of his pain he will learn the sequences of life. He has gained much.
What has he lost? Are not mercy and fatherly care, forgiveness and love, beautiful things? Yet they, too, are of G.o.d. If you know not of Him, only of Law, have you not lost out of your life some of the greatest thoughts? How will you comfort your heart when it is sore if you have not G.o.d? Is prayer nothing?
Truly, said the man, these are beautiful things. If I could have them alone. But I cannot. I fear the other qualities more than I love these.
I would have neither. I would be a man and live under Law. It seems to me enough. If Law be absolute I see no room for G.o.d.
Over against him were the long ridges of the hills where the rain-clouds gathered from the south. He saw them come in great ma.s.ses surging up the valleys and hiding the contours of the hills. The lightning flashed across the peaks and the thunder echoed in long-drawn trumpet blasts.
”The savage,” he said, ”saw there only G.o.ds warring with one another.
Now with wiser eyes we see the reign of Law. We do not know all the laws; we cannot even yet tell how much rain will come, whether it will be famine or plenty. We cannot see the Law, but we never doubt the Law is there. With man it is the same. Births and deaths, suicides and murders, are they too not all under Law? Why should not man's soul be so too? Where is the need of G.o.d?”
As he came down the mountain side the rain was falling heavily, as it can only in the tropics. The dry hollows were already streams, the streams were foaming torrents. ”They act under Law,” he said. ”Their life is bounded all by Law.” And then of a sudden, watching the foaming water, he saw more clearly.
”True, the stream runs within its banks, but banks do not make the stream. Gravity, that drags down these waters, acts in certain sequence, but that sequence is not gravity. Gravity is a force. When we enumerate the law we do not define, or know, or understand the force, only the way it acts. Force is force, and law is law. They are not the same. They do not explain each other. What a dead thing would law be that had no force acting within it. Truly, I must see more clearly. Law does not deny force; nay, but it predicates it--is, in fact, an outcome of it. Law is a sequence along which force acts; neither can exist without the other.
All force is ruled by law. Yes, but what is force--what are any of the forces that exist: gravity, and electricity, and heat, and life? Forms of motion? May be; but whence the motion?
”Ah me!” said the man, ”then am I back again at the beginning. Have I learnt nothing? I thought law might suffice, but it will not. If law is inevitable, then are we but helpless atoms following the stream of necessity. Then is freewill dead. Yet there is freewill. There is force, there is life, whence come these forces? And if one say that force is G.o.d, what then?
”Perhaps there is this: there are two truths--there is G.o.d and there is Law. Both are true, as there is destiny and there is freewill. But how can that be? I see it is so, that it must be so. But how? Is it that there are facets of some great truth behind which we can never know?”
The man was weary. ”What have I gained? Only that I have a truth, which I cannot understand, which gives me no help, or but little? Have I gained anything to help me in life? I have gained this, perhaps, that if Law be not a full explanation, it is true, as far as it goes; if not a whole truth, yet it is a truth. Why go further? The scientist cares for nothing more when he has learned the laws of gravity. He is content to be ignorant of whence the force comes, because he can go no further. In the battle of life is not this enough? Can we not, too, be as the scientist, denying nothing, but searching only for that which we can know and which will be useful to us? If force be G.o.d, yet should His ways not be mysterious. Let us not shut our eyes and comfort ourselves in ignorance by saying, 'There is no Law; G.o.d is inscrutable, G.o.d knows no Law. He is inexpressible, changeable and uncertain.' But truly there is Law. Behind the G.o.ds, behind G.o.d, there _is_ [Greek: anachke], there is Necessity, there is an unfailing sequence of events, which is righteousness. Let us learn then what righteousness is. Let us learn what is true in order to do what is right.”
But after all it is all speculation. There is no evidence. It is a theory built on nothing. What is the value of it? Nothing at all. What is to be gained by all this? Only barren words, finely spun theories made of air. Where is the proof of G.o.d or of Law? There is none.
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