The Churches and Modern Thought

Look on these pictures, one of 2000 B.C. and the other of A.D. 1850:—

Picture I.—Two thousand years before the Christian era “woman was more free and more honoured in Egypt than she is in any country of the world to-day. She was the mistress of the house.249… She inherited equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. She could go where she liked, or speak with whom she liked. She was ‘juridically the equal of man,’ says M. Paturet, ‘having the same rights and being treated in the same fashion’; and the same authority observes that it was not as mother, but as woman, as a being equal in dignity, that she was thus honoured. There was polygamy in theory, but the first wife was generally able to exact conditions in her marriage contract which effectually prevented it. The inscriptions show, says Maspéro, that she remained to the end of her life ‘the beloved of her husband and the mistress of the house.’”250

Picture II.—In enlightened Boston, about 1850 (under the English Common Law), woman could not hold any property, either inherited or earned. A woman, either married or unmarried, could hold no office of trust or power. She was not recognised as a citizen. The status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant. By the English Common Law her husband was her lord and master. He had the sole custody of her person, and of her children while minors. He could punish her “with a stick no thicker than his thumb,” and she could not complain against him. He was the owner of all her real estate and of her earnings. She had no personal rights, and could hardly call her soul her own. Her husband could steal her children, rob her of her clothing, neglect to support the family: she had no legal redress.251

Not until near the middle of the nineteenth century did that movement commence which has radically improved, and will continue to improve, the position of women. And who took the chief, and, in the initial stage, the only, part in this reform movement? Freethinkers. Who were silent when they were not active opponents? The clergy. “It was just those who most radically abandoned Christianity—Owen, Holyoake, and Mill—that were the most logical and ungrudging in their plea for woman. It was the Mary Wollstonecrafts, Harriet Martineaus, Frances Wrights, George Eliots, Helen Taylors, and Annie Besants that distinguished themselves by fearlessness and unselfishness… The clergy never discovered any injustice to woman; and only one in a thousand could see it when it was pointed out.... All honour to the memory of those clergymen who, like Kingsley and Farrar, protested against the injustice to the full extent of their idea of womanhood.... On the Continent there has been the same story of general clerical opposition and general heterodox support.”252 “Mr. Pinchwife,”253 too, has undoubtedly had a hand in the subjection of woman; but we are investigating the grounds for the contention that Christianity has laid on woman a burden of gratitude, and that, if Christianity were overthrown, women would sink into unknown depths of degradation. Do the above-stated facts bear out that contention?

The question arises: Why has Christianity stood in the way of woman’s cause? The answer is simple enough: Christianity, in adopting the Old Testament, adopted with it the Hebrew conception of woman. Her inferiority to man was established by her origin from his rib and the leading part she took in his fall. The Vicar of Crantock tabulates254 the reasons why a Christian woman should cover her head in church, as follows:—

(1) Man’s priority of creation. Adam was first formed, then Eve.

(2) The manner of creation. The man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.

(3) The purport of creation. The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.

(4) Results in creation. The man is the image of the Glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

(5) Woman’s priority in the Fall. Adam was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression.

(6) The marriage relation. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands.

(7) The headship of man and woman. The head of every man is Christ, but the head of the woman is man.

The Jews’ idea of a woman was sanctioned by no less an authority than Jehovah; nor did the Christ of the Gospels give one word of clear guidance on this or any other social problem, or enter one word of explicit protest against the injustice of the Judaic treatment of women. Again, the teaching of St. Paul was based on the Old Testament, and the teaching of the Fathers was based on the Old Testament and St. Paul. A few quotations from the sayings of some of these Fathers, whose contempt of marriage became one of the great errors of the Church, may prove instructive:—

Fornication is a lapse from one marriage into many.—Clement of Alexandria.

Digamists (widowers who re-marry) are saved in the name of Christ, but are by no means crowned by him.—Origen.

Second marriage is “a decent sort of adultery.”—Athenagoras.

It was no part of God’s primitive design that the race should be continued by sexual union. Marriage is the outcome of sin.—St. Gregory of Nyssa (a married bishop).

Blessed is the one who leads a celibate life, and soils not the divine image within him with the filth of concupiscence.

Fierce is the dragon, and cunning the asp;But woman has the malice of both.—St. Gregory of Nazianzum.

Why was woman created at all?—St. Augustine.

Thou art the devil’s gate, the betrayer of the tree, the first deserter of the divine law!

Marriage is not far removed from fornication.—Tertullian.

She is more fitted for bodily work.... Remember that God took a rib out of Adam’s body, not a part of his soul, to make her.

She was not made to the image of God, like man.—St. Ambrose.

Woman is the root of all evil.—St. Jerome.

At the Council of Auxerre, in 578, the bishops forbade women, on account of their “impurity,” to take the sacrament in their hands as men did.

If women only knew of these sayings, would they approve of the “appeal to the first six centuries”?

Bad as the position of woman was under the influence of the early Church teaching, it was, in many respects, still worse during the Middle Ages. “Life-long seclusion in the inner apartments of the house of a man she has not chosen, or internment in a nunnery—that is, either degraded or unnatural—is the choice (within limits) of the daughter of the wealthy. Life-long drudgery, with few and coarse pleasures, with a long vista of sticks and whips, and scold’s bridles, and ducking stools—with, perhaps, the brutal ‘ordeal’ on the slightest suspicion, or the ghastly death of the witch, is the prospect of the daughter of the poor.”255 Even the Reformation altered more than it improved the condition of woman. How could it be otherwise when the Reformers were nothing if not Bibliolaters?

Of the movement for the betterment of woman’s position that eventually took place, not by the aid, but in spite, of the Church, I have already spoken. All the evidence we possess regarding the history of Heathendom and Christendom conclusively shows that Christianity has done much to lower, and but little to elevate, the position of women. Should I have succeeded in arousing the interest of my gentle readers, or should they wish to verify my statements, I implore them to read well-known works of competent authorities on this subject. The astounding but apparently prevalent idea, that woman is only secured by Christianity from the brutal assaults of man, will appear in the next argument we are about to consider.

§ 3. The Overthrow of Christianity would Endanger Society and the Nation

I have elsewhere commented on the opinion prevalent in England (and in some other, but not all other, Christian countries) that, to quote Canon Henson, “the real elements of the Christian Faith are those that have made European nations the most powerful in the world,”256 and that the overthrow of Christianity would endanger the nation. Many go still farther, and prophesy absolute chaos. People who have been imbued with the Church’s teaching, and who have spent their lives in Christian surroundings, are naturally convinced that belief and morality are indissoluble partners—that Christianity is a power for good in this respect above all others. Therefore, when Professor Flint says, “It [the Christian Faith] could not be displaced without shaking society from top to bottom,”257 he expresses a very popular opinion among believers and semi-believers. Even among Agnostics there are many who, while recognising the fallacy so far as they themselves are concerned, still seem to consider that society would be insufficiently protected from criminals by its own instinct of self-preservation, and that, to maintain order among the masses, the hand of the law must, for the present, be strengthened by appeals to a supernatural sanction of conduct. Both Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold, for example, thought the world at large stood in peril of a moral collapse, while, as the latter puts it, “the old (theologically-derived) sanction of conduct is out of date, and the new is not yet born.” “Few things can happen more disastrous,” writes Herbert Spencer, “than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it” (see Preface, dated July, 1879, to The Data of Ethics). It is for reasons such as these that so many Agnostics still lend their moral support to the Churches; for men rightly uphold what they deem essential to the common weal, whether it be Christ-worship in England or ancestor-worship in Japan.

This deeply-rooted conviction regarding belief and conduct has been partially considered in the first section of this chapter, and, the subject being one of the greatest importance, I am also devoting to its consideration a portion of the concluding chapter of this book. I shall confine myself here to the warning given to us by the Church and the pious laity—that we must expect nothing less than chaos should the Resurrection, and along with it, of course, the whole fabric of Christianity, be ultimately disproved.

This view has been illustrated in Mr. Guy Thorne’s book, When it was Dark. The book may be seen on every bookstall, has had an extraordinary sale,258 and has been much appreciated by many pious-minded persons (especially by those of the High Church persuasion, the book being written by a partisan of that cult). The anti-Christian propagandist is here represented as knowing that Christ is God; but, for some unexplained and exceedingly mysterious reason, utilising a huge fortune and a powerful intellect in unscrupulous endeavours to spread disbelief. He is a deceiver of mankind, a genuine Satan in human shape. He leads the life of an ascetic, so the usual grounds given for disbelief are removed. With the assistance of another man (a real villain, this time, of the lowest type), one of the greatest savants of the day, a gigantic fraud is perpetrated, and the Resurrection thereby definitely disproved. Immediately an epidemic of crime breaks out among quondam Christians, which nothing can quell. The restraints of order are paralysed, and the criminal element is rampant. The violence and viciousness of men were, please to note, specially directed against the weaker sex, who had to keep at home and bar the door. Not only Agnostics, but any who happened to differ in their views from this champion of Christianity, come in for a share of Mr. Thorne’s invective. The wonder is how an author of his ability could be capable of penning such an effusion; and that it can be read and appreciated, as it undoubtedly has been by many excellent persons of his way of thinking, only shows how easily bias may cloud the intellect. It requires an effort, too, to understand how this book can appeal to one of the chief dignitaries of the Church; but there, conspicuously printed on the cover, we are treated to an extract from his sermon in praise of the book.

I submit that there is not a Rationalist in the world, however militant, who would descend to forgery to promote his cause. He would not hold the pious opinion that the end justifies the means. On the contrary, the curtain has but now fallen upon a scene where a Christian Church ranged herself on the side of forgers while freethinkers like Zola and Clémenceau fought the battle of truth.

According to Mr. Guy Thorne and the admirers of his book, the Christian races are innately far worse than Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics—far worse, indeed, than savages and animals—for they are only held in check from the commission of the vilest excesses by their belief in the Resurrection. Chaos and crime are rife in certain cities in Russia and Poland to-day. What is the cause? Unbelief? Is it not rather the result of the cruel laws and despicable methods of a Christian government, aided by Christian butchers, calling themselves soldiers, and by a Christian hooligan element such as it would be hard to find outside a Christian city? This chaos occurs, mind you, under a powerful Christian theocratic government; and the head of the Holy Synod, Pobiedonostseff, was, before his removal, one of the prime movers. The terrible atrocities of which the unfortunate Jews have been the victims were undoubtedly connived at by the authorities, and inhuman crimes have been perpetrated by Christians that would be impossible in humane Japan. The policy of keeping the masses steeped in the grossest superstitions of the orthodox Church is now bearing fruit, adding to the chaos and bloodshed and hindering the work of reform. It is belief, not unbelief, that has played a leading part in creating this chaos, and in stirring up man’s cruellest passions.

As to the safety of women (in the event of the Resurrection being discredited), where in civilised Christendom, may I ask, could a lady be left for days and nights alone in a tent or open house? She can be, in the Indian jungle or in the Australian bush. For such protection as may there be necessary (and the open house testifies how little it is required) she relies upon her heathen servants. Almost the only danger in India is from religious fanatics, and in Australia from Christian criminals. In what Christian country would it be safe to have paper windows and walls, as in Japan? My wife and I slept in strange, out-of-the-way native hotels in Japan in perfect security, though a would-be criminal had only to tear through a thin piece of paper! Belief in the Resurrection is rapidly decaying in France to-day. Are cases of assault on women any the more prevalent on that account? If belief in the Resurrection is so essential, how comes it that we have allied ourselves to a heathen nation, and made friends with another that is fast giving up this belief? How comes it that in our own Government two of the most responsible posts are now occupied by declared Agnostics?

§ 4. The Spread of Christianity a Proof of its Truth

“What, then,” asks the Rev. Prebendary W. A. Whitworth,259 “was the original gospel of power which overran the world with such astonishing success?” The spread of Christianity is thought by nearly all good Christians to have been marvellous. Was it? That is the question we have next to consider. In the first place, let us see what we are told on this point by recognised theologians. In his book, The Bible in the Church, we are reminded by the learned Dr. Westcott, the late Bishop of Durham, that the dispersion of the Jews exercised a great influence upon the spread of Christianity. “The pagans got the idea of monotheism, while the Jews themselves dropped the idea of a ‘kingdom’ and substituted a ‘faith.’” He also reminds us of the broad unity of the Roman Empire, and of the dispersion of the Jews being co-extensive with its limits, and concludes that “during the lifetime of St. Paul every condition was realised for proclaiming the Gospel to the world.” “Without such preparation,” he says, “the spread of Christianity would be historically inconceivable, and it is a remarkable example of Divine Providence.” Here, then, we have an admission of purely natural causes, and, although the believer may be able to look upon them with reverence, as Providential, he can hardly claim them to be at the same time a witness to the power of the Gospel. Also, we shall see that there were many other natural causes at work, and that among them were some which the pious would be the last to connect with a Divine Providence.

Historians find that the rapidity of the spread has been much exaggerated, and that it was not until the Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325 that the spread commenced to emerge from insignificance. Even then the adhesion to the new Faith was for a long period of a purely nominal character, the unwilling converts remaining, to all intents, pagans after they were baptised. The spread of Christianity was for a long time confined to cosmopolitan trading towns only, the villagers remaining pagans—hence the name. (Mutatis mutandis, it is the villagers who are now the last to be touched by the spread of “paganism.”) What were the “Providential” methods of conversion? The prevailing ignorance and superstition were taken advantage of by the propagators of the Gospel and frauds freely perpetrated, while “edicts of toleration removed the temporal disadvantages which had hitherto retarded the progress of Christianity.”260 After the Emperor Constantine had been converted, “the cities which signalised a forward zeal, by the voluntary destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal privileges, and rewarded with popular donations.”261 When these measures failed, Church and State had recourse to persecution, quite as cruel as, and on a scale that far exceeded, the persecution of the early Christians by the heathen. For instance, the Emperor Theodosius, at the suggestion of the ecclesiastics who governed his conscience, promulgated, in the space of fifteen years (A.D. 380–394), “at least fifteen severe edicts against the heretics, more especially against those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.”262 Buddhism, on the contrary, unlike Christianity and Mohammedanism, was promulgated without persecution or religious wars, and spread far more rapidly than Christianity. In his apologetic work, Anti-Theistic Theories, Dr. Flint refers to Buddhism thus: “The very marvellous system of thought called Buddhism, which originated in India about 500 years B.C., has spread over a greater area of the earth and gained more adherents than even Christianity, and by peaceful means—by the power of persuasion—not by the force of arms, not by persecution.”

Why did the Emperor Constantine embrace Christianity? Was it not mainly because he believed that it had a power to wipe away his own heinous crimes?263 Even his old age “was disgraced by the opposite, yet reconcilable, vices of rapaciousness and prodigality.”264 Although he acknowledged the Faith, he put off his baptism till he was on his death-bed, in order that he might continue to lead a wicked life as long as possible.265 As an instrument for spreading God’s word he is even worse than that royal adulterer and murderer whom we are asked to look upon as a prototype of Christ and His prime ancestor.

On all these matters of history the learned Bishop Westcott is silent, although, as examples of Divine Providence, they would appear sufficiently remarkable. Lest Gibbon’s testimony be deemed untrustworthy on account of his anti-Christian bias, the following extract from a prize essay in Christian apologetics may be noted. Not only does it bear out some of the historian’s statements concerning the causes of the spread of Christianity, but it discloses the significant fact that the clergy increased their power and influence by working upon the emotions of wealthy women, and that £.s.d. and its female contributors were then, as now, a sine qua non.266—“Nine years after the conversion of Constantine to the Christian faith he promulgated that great edict which, more than any other enactment, may be said to have lain at the foundation of clerical power during the ensuing centuries, and relieved the Christian Church from that restriction under which, in common with the Jews, they had so long laboured—the incapacity of profiting by the testamentary liberality of their wealthy proselytes. To convince us of the abundance in which the stream of wealth flowed into the newly opened channel, and of the influence obtained by the clergy, in those days as in the present, over the piety and pliability of the weaker sex, more especially at Rome, we possess not only the testimony of a Pagan historian,267 but the less suspicious evidence of an edict published by the Emperor Valentinian268 fifty years after that of Constantine, addressed to Damasus, Bishop of that city, and imposing a limit to the extravagant donations of females. The clergy, moreover, might look for an increase of worldly substance not only from the prosperity of their friends, but from the downfall of their enemies; for the Theodosian code contains a series of stringent enactments by the Emperor Honorius,269 in terms of which not only the deserted temples of Paganism, but even the meeting-houses and possessions of Donatists, Manichæan, and other heretical corporations, were made over to the Catholic Church.”270

There was yet another, and possibly the chief, cause for the ultimate spread of Christianity. In the chapter on comparative mythology I have described and commented upon the various rationalistic theories concerning the origins of Christian beliefs and ceremonies. As a matter of fact, Mithraism spread just as much, or more, until Christianity obtained the necessary political power to suppress it. Not only from these anti-Christian theories, but also from the admissions of apologists concerning them, it appears that Christianity gained ground, not so much because there was something new either in its dogma or in its promise, but rather because these were so closely paralleled in many pagan cults. Let us take, for example, the spread of Christianity in Egypt. “The Egyptians who embraced Christianity found that the moral system of the old cult and that of the new religion were so similar, and the promises of resurrection and immortality in each so alike, that they transferred their allegiance from Osiris to Jesus of Nazareth without difficulty. Moreover, Isis and the child Horus were straightway identified with Mary the Virgin and her Son.”271 “The knowledge of the ancient Egyptian religion which we now possess fully justifies the assertion that the rapid growth and progress of Christianity in Egypt were due mainly to the fact that the new religion, which was preached there by St. Mark and his immediate followers, in all its essentials so closely resembled that which was the outcome of Osiris, Isis, and Horus that popular opposition was entirely disarmed.”272 We have, then, here one of the main factors in the growth of Christianity. I cannot find that Bishop Westcott recognises this as a part of the preparation in which the hand of God can be traced; but advanced apologists very largely do so now, and hence the precious theory of progressive revelation.

We may now pass on to another very popular argument.

§ 5. The Noble Army of Martyrs

My allusions to religious persecutions may remind some of my readers of the experiences of the early Christians, and of the witness to the truth of Christianity furnished by the “noble army of martyrs”; and they may say: “Admitting that there be nothing extraordinary in the mere fact of Christianity’s spread, you must allow that its power over men’s minds is little, if at all, short of miraculous. Men could not have given their lives for a falsehood.” This argument will not bear the slightest scrutiny. “Steadfastness under persecution says much for the sincerity, and still more for the tenacity, of the believer, but very little for the objective truth of that which he believes.”273 Supposing the noble army were a historical fact, the argument based upon it would be adequately met by pointing to the last Ghazi who ran amok in the hope of a speedy delivery from a dirty and ugly spouse on earth, and of reaping the reward of a clean and lovely houri in heaven.