The Churches and Modern Thought

P. 359, lines 7–10.—Some of our greatest divines … condemn obscurantism and the odium theologicum.

We have a striking example of this in Dean Farrar’s tractate, The Bible and the Child (James Clarke & Co., 1897). The passage runs as follows: “There are a certain number of persons who, when their minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply incapable of grasping new truths. They become obstructionists, and not infrequently bigoted obstructionists. As convinced as the Pope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediæval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have been thus petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the life-long inquiries of the ablest student, while they have not given a day’s serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called orthodox, are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably more able than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout ‘Infidel’ with sufficient loudness.”

P. 367, lines 21–2.—Did not slavery flourish side by side with the Christian Church?

Serfdom in England was fully extinguished only in 1600, and the Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies was passed only in 1833. For eighteen long centuries Christianity countenanced the atrocious inhumanities of the slave trade. The very irons used by the native chiefs for shackling the prisoners when handing them over to the Christian traders were made in Birmingham, and the greatest horrors of slavery have been exhibited only under the rule of the Christian slave-owner. We can form some idea of the inhumanity then displayed from the treatment of the coloured races by the white man in Africa to-day. Read, for instance, the accounts of the Congo atrocities, or of the German Colonial scandals. Read, again, some home-truths about our own Colonies in Labour and other Questions in South Africa, by Medicus (T. Fisher Unwin, 1903). The white man has indeed a burden to bear—the burden of his own iniquity. Regarding negro slavery, Dr. Westermarck clearly shows (in his work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas) that “this system of slavery, which, at least in the British Colonies and the slave States, surpassed in cruelty the slavery of any pagan country, ancient or modern, was not only recognised by Christian Governments, but was supported by the large bulk of the clergy, Catholic and Protestant alike.”

P. 368, lines 25–8.—The Christian Church has been more cruel and shed more human blood than any other Church or institution in the world. Let the Jew bear witness among the crowd of victims.

History is repeating itself to-day, and my previous allusions to the present situation in Russia are all too brief. I would ask my readers kindly to put to themselves the following crucial questions: To what party do the religious bigots and their partisans belong? Is it not to the reactionary party, the party that sets its face against reform? On what do the reactionaries chiefly rely for the retention of their hold upon the bulk of the people? Is it not on a peasantry wallowing in ignorance and steeped in superstition? What are the actual instruments employed for maintaining their power? Do they not consist of corrupt officials and cruel Cossacks? Who are responsible for shameless acts of persecution, and, indeed, very largely for all the bloodshed, strife, and anarchy? Is it not the orthodox Church and her supporters? Is it too much to say, with the Rev. J. Lawson-Forster, that “the Russian Church has become the tool of murderers”? (Mr. Lawson-Forster expressed himself in these words when presiding at the great public meeting held at the Brondesbury Synagogue to protest against the recent outrages in Russia.) To what party do the Freethinkers belong? Are they not all, everyone of them, adherents of the party desirous of reform and of religious toleration? With regard to religious persecution generally, Christians might study with advantage Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England, or Lecky’s History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, or C. T. Gorham’s Faith: Its Freaks and Follies (Rationalist Press Association), or the latest work on the subject, Religious Persecution, by E. S. P. Haynes (Duckworth; a revised edition has now been issued by the R. P. A. at 6d.). Few realise that the favourite method for overcoming the scruples of the heretic—torture—was used in England so late as 1640.

Pp. 371–2, lines 31 and 1–3.—History, viewed as a whole, is nothing but a succession of struggles for existence among rival nations.

If Major Murray had stopped short at offering us a somewhat highly coloured picture of the past and present conditions ruling among Christian nations, and at inculcating the necessity of our being in readiness to face the inevitable, few of us would be found to quarrel, in the main, with his conclusions. But when he tells us that “Peace never has been, and never will be [italics are mine], as long as the passions of mankind endure, more than a lull between the storms of war,” then the better-informed and peace-loving Rationalist will beg to differ with him. He feels that this gospel of universal hatred is being carried too far. Never is a very long time. Major Murray says: “No great nation will ever submit to arbitration any interest that it regards as absolutely vital.” Did not our British forefathers think, and with more reason, that “men of honour” could settle their disputes only by the duel? May we not trust that the decisions of learned and unbiassed judges will be equitable, and therefore that their acceptance will redound to the honour of the great nations concerned?

Natural selection, or, as we have elsewhere called it, natural murder, ceased to have full power over men on the day that man commenced to control his environment. Since then he has been constantly engaged in making nature do some work for him, in altering the environment in which he finds himself instead of letting it alter him. Now that he is equipped, better than ever before in his history, for this task, now that he has learnt more of the secrets of Nature—of her crude and cruel processes—is he going to acquiesce tamely, and make no use of his knowledge? Now the nature of the malady has been diagnosed, and now the proper remedies have been discovered, will he not set about the cure? Is the struggle for existence, with all its attendant horrors, to be perpetuated? Does the end—the survival of the fittest—justify the means—over-production and murder? Cannot the same and better results be attained by a process less crude, less cruel? Nature procures adaptation to existing environment by methods fraught with untold suffering for the sentient, and the obvious course is for man to reverse the process, bringing the environment into harmony with his existing constitution. Of a truth, nature is, as Major Murray reminds us, red in tooth and claw; but science is both able and willing to tame the shrew.

P. 374, lines 15–19.—The “Lord mighty in battle” is expected to take interest in bloodshed … to fight for his people.

A parody appearing in an evening paper on November 29th, 1901, conveys a wholesome lesson on this subject. “Lest we forget,” I quote it at length:—

PROCESSIONALLord God of Battles, whom we seekOn clouds and tempests throned afar,When tired of being tamely weak,We Maffick into deadly war;If it should chance to be a sin,At least enable us to win.Give to the Churches faith to prayFor what they know they shouldn’t ask,And such abounding grace that theyMay cheerfully perform the task;Wave flags and loyally discountThat fatal Sermon on the Mount.Give to the people strength to beConvinced all happens for the best,To see the thing they wish to see,And prudently ignore the rest;So priest and people shall combineTo gain their ends, and call them Thine.

P. 374, lines 23–4.—Its [Christianity’s] impotency to carry out this, one of its chief missions.

“In no field of its work,” exclaims Mr. Andrew Carnegie, “does the Christian Church throughout the whole world—with outstanding individual exceptions—so conspicuously fail as in its attitude to war. Its silence when outspoken speech might avert war, its silence during war’s sway, its failure during days of peace to proclaim the true Christian doctrines regarding the killing of men, give point to the recent arraignment of the Prime Minister, who declared that the Church to-day busied itself with questions [e.g., of vestments and candles] which did not weigh even as dust in the balance compared with the vital problems with which it was called upon to deal.” (See reports of the ceremony at which Mr. Carnegie was installed as Rector of St. Andrew’s University.)

P. 374, lines 24–5.—Religion being frequently the actual occasion of, the strife.

From the Crusades to the Crimea, religion has continually been either directly or indirectly the cause of war. Protestants, who may be ready to excuse the wars undertaken to drive the infidels from the “Holy Land,” will do well to remember that Pope Innocent III., besides proclaiming the fifth of these crusades, proclaimed also the infamous crusade against the Albigenses (who opposed the corruptions of the Church of Rome), when Simon de Montfort and the Pope’s legate, at the head of half a million of men, put to the sword friend and foe, men and women, saying, “God will find his own.” In the case of that mischievous and unnecessary blunder, the Crimean War, the great masses of the Russian people saw but a spirited defence of the Cross against the Crescent, wherein, from their point of view, the infidel was being supported by renegade Christians. It was an appeal to the religious emotions of the Russian peasants—an insincere appeal, as history has discovered—that lent to the last Russo-Turkish war a fictitious popularity.

P. 375, lines 6–7.—Every Rationalist, every Freethinker, is an honest advocate of peace.

Note these lines by an eminent divine and great dignitary of the Church, Archbishop Alexander, of Armagh:—

And when I know how noble natures form under the red rain of war, I deem it trueThat He who made the earthquakes and the storm perchance made battle too.

And these by the gentle Wordsworth, the poet of sweet simplicity:—

But Thy most dreaded instrumentIn working out a pure intentIs man—array’d for mutual slaughter;Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter!

And compare: “The very ideas and efforts which have led men to struggle against the Papal Church are exactly those which are exorcising the demon of militarism from the soul of France” (Contemporary Review for January, 1905, art. “France and Rome”). Or again the following, reported in the daily papers: “A petition to stop the war between Russia and Japan owes its inception to Signor Carlo Romissi, Deputy and editor of the Secolo of Milan. The petition has penetrated into every workshop, household, and school, and roused the people to a passionate desire for peace, not only between the belligerents in the Far East, but between all nations.” The Secolo is the most widely-read Freethought paper in Italy.

Though it may be a long time before our efforts are rewarded, is that any reason for not making a commencement in the right direction? Let me give an instance. The effort now being made to popularise the international language “Esperanto” is one such commencement. Could not the Church spare a little of her military ardour (exhibited in the arm-chair and pulpit) for supporting peaceful projects of this nature? This one, at any rate, among the many to be found on the Rationalist programme, is not contrary to her teaching; but I have not as yet heard of any ecclesiastical support to a scheme that will undoubtedly conduce to a better acquaintance between the peoples of different nationalities. It is Rationalist and liberal-minded philanthropists (Mr. W. T. Stead, e.g.) who are at present chiefly interested in the movement.

During the Boer War one was continually hearing declamations from the pulpit to the effect that war is a necessary evil. For instance, the late Bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Welldon, actually advocated war on the ground that it was a means of keeping a nation virile. Has the Boer War made us more virile? Whatever Imperial necessity there may have been for it, owing to blunders in the past and the existing condition of affairs, the certain effects of it, so far as we can see, have been the untimely destruction of some of the flower of our race, sorrow spread throughout the length and breadth of the land by many bereavements, the burden of a great debt, and the unemployed question rendered more acute than ever.

“The brotherhood of man is a long way off—it may never be reached; but as an ideal it is better worth having than that of half-a-dozen sullen empires, trading only within their own boundaries, and shut up behind high tariff walls over which they peer suspiciously, scanning one another’s exports and imports with jealous eyes, and making from time to time fawning alliances with one rival, while harbouring enmity with another, maintaining millions of men under arms and spending millions of pounds in armaments, and all the time waiting, waiting, waiting for an affrighted sun to rise upon the day of Armageddon.... But nobler things lie before us and a brighter dawn.” (See Mr. Birrell’s article, “Patriotism and Christianity,” in the Contemporary Review for February, 1905.)

1

In the June (1906) number of Review of Theology and Philosophy, edited by Professor Allan Menzies, D.D.

2

As the Rev. John A. Hutton attempts to show in the Hibbert Journal, July, 1905.

3

In his address at the London Diocesan Conference in April, 1904.

4

When addressing a conference of clergy and church-workers at Blandford on September 7th, 1905.

5

In the course of one of those remarkable orations of his which always command the thoughtful attention of the House. The speech was reported in the newspapers of March 15th, 1904.

6

See Dr. Horton’s letter to the Daily News, August 23rd, 1905.

7

The Rev. Charles Voysey, in a sermon preached at the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, on February 5th, 1905.

8

See pp. 63–4.

9

Quoted from What it is to be a Christian, a pamphlet written by the Ven. J. M. Wilson, D.D.

10

Eighteen per cent. was the figure given by Bishop Ingram, speaking of “Londoners,” in his speech at the annual meeting of the Bishop of London’s Fund in 1904; but, according to the strict results of the census, the figure for London is twenty-two or twenty-three per cent. of the total population.

11

As Mr. Fielding remarks in his book, The Hearts of Men (pp. 217–8): “To one coming to Europe after years in the East and visiting churches, nothing is more striking than the enormous preponderance of women there. It is immaterial whether the church be in England or France, whether it be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Dissenter. The result is always the same—women outnumber the men as two to one, as three to one, sometimes as ten to one.”

12

As a matter of fact, no distinguished leader among modern biologists has come to any such conclusion. People are apt to forget that, while Lord Kelvin is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished living physicists, he is not himself a biologist.

13

See Nature, April 23rd, 1903; also Appendix to this work.

14

This assertion is severely criticised by Mr. Joseph McCabe in the Hibbert for July, 1905. Mr. McCabe holds that “Sir Oliver Lodge’s own conception of life may, with a far greater show of reason, be described as a modified survival of an older doctrine” (p. 746).

15

Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the distinguished naturalist and evolutionist, is another scientist with spiritist convictions, and his concern for supernatural religion led him to step outside his own domain and make that remarkable attack upon current scientific opinions in astronomical matters which met with such unanimous condemnation (see the Fortnightly Review for March and September, 1903).

16

In the Times, October, 1904.

17

At Exeter Hall, in March, 1905, Lady Blount developed her “flat-earth” theory, and accused Newton of want of logic.

18

A book, edited by the Rev. J. E. Hand (George Allen), which gives, perhaps, the best that can be said by able and fair-minded men, writing in the light of the latest knowledge and criticism, in favour of a reconciliation between religion and science. The book contains essays by various authors—Sir O. Lodge, Professors Thomson, Geddes, and Muirhead, the Rev. P. N. Waggett, the Rev. John Kelman, and others.

19

Dr. W. Barry, in his Ernest Renan, is content to attribute the change mainly to Renan’s study of Kant. But such a theory is inconsistent with Renan’s own statement in his Reminiscences, where he expressly declares that questions of history, not metaphysics, shook his faith.

20

Author of a vituperative libel on agnostics, called Atheism and Faith.

21

The psychical aspect of the belief of such persons is discussed in Chap. VI., § 5.

22

Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral on the first Sunday after Epiphany, 1905. See also Appendix.

23

The Secretary of the Rationalist Press Association has received several private letters from clergymen expressing their desire to leave the Church if they could find some employment. They usually have large families dependent upon them for support.

24

I omit all mention of the trading or domestic classes who often depend directly for their support on strict religionists. The way in which “their bread is buttered” is bound to enter considerably into their calculations, and also they have often even less leisure for the study of modern thought than a steady (temperate) working man.

25

A cheap edition has since been published by the R. P. A.

26

Anti-Nunquam, by Dr. Warschauer, with prefatory note by J. Estlin Carpenter, is considered by many Churchmen to be an admirable refutation of God and My Neighbour. I have seldom read anything less likely to convince. Sentence after sentence is open to the gravest exception.

27

See Appendix.

28

E.g., in the Nineteenth Century and After, see the article on “The Present Position of Religious Apologetics,” appearing in the issue for October, 1903; or on “Freethought in the Church of England” in the issues for September and December, 1904. The answers in the same journal are most unsatisfactory, and only serve to show how very little, apparently, can be said in reply.

29

Although the Church has ever been charitable, she has made no effort to cure poverty. She is, she must be, the ally of those to whom she chiefly owes her power and prestige. Jeremy Taylor is not the only eminent divine who has systematically courted the favour of the influential and rich.

30

Essay on “Possibilities and Impossibilities,” appearing in the Agnostic Annual for 1892.

31

Paley’s Evidences—Preparatory Considerations.

32

In his book, The Service of Man.

33

In his notable oration upon the apparitions of Llanthony.

34

See p. 132 of An Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures, by the Right Rev. W. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon.

35

See p. 222 of Some Elements of Religion, Liddon.

36

See p. 51 of An Introduction to the Study of the Scriptures.

37

Extract from a sermon preached in St. Paul’s, Finsbury, on November 23rd, 1904.

38

This explanation has been given by the Rev. Samuel Cox, and it is quoted with approval by the Bishop of London on p. 63 of his little work, Old Testament Difficulties (S.P.C.K.).

39

See p. 41 of Old Testament Difficulties.

40

Article “Genesis.”

41

Miraculum means merely a wonderful thing. It is certainly a proper translation of σημεῖα (signs) and τέρατα (wonders), as used by New Testament writers.

42

By the author of Supernatural Religion. (Longmans, Green, and Co.; 1889.)

43

See Encyclopædia Biblica, article “Gospels,” paragraph 138 (e).

44

See article “Paul” in the Encyclopædia Biblica. Four of the Pauline Epistles are, however, pretty generally accepted. Five are hotly disputed; Professor Loofs, for example, rejects them.

45

See article “Epistolary Literature” in the Encyclopædia Biblica.

46

Swedenborgians (the New Jerusalem Church) are to be found scattered throughout almost every part of Christendom. In England, principally in Lancashire and Yorkshire, there are seventy-five societies with 6,063 registered members.

47

Eight persons in all testify to the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the Abbot’s meadow at Llanthony on September 15th, 1880.

48

Hodder & Stoughton, 1906.

49

See p. 31 of What is Christianity? (Williams & Norgate, 1904).

50

See, for instance, art. “Moses,” Encyclopædia Biblica.

51

Quoted from a sermon by the Bishop of London in Fulham parish, Christmas Day, 1904. Compare this with Dr. Kirkpatrick’s remark, p. 2 of his book, The Divine Library of the Old Testament: “It is true that the critical investigation of the Bible raises not a few questions of grave difficulty.”

52

“The adjective ‘higher’ (the sense of which is often misunderstood) has reference simply to the higher and more difficult class of problems, with which, as opposed to textual criticism, the ‘higher’ criticism has to deal” (see Preface to The Higher Criticism, being three papers by S. R. Driver, D.D., and A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D.).

53

See Appendix.

54

Exodus xxxi. 18 and xxxii. 16. Or, to be precise, these having been broken and their fragments considered of no value at the time, the duplicates carefully prepared and inscribed to the dictation of God Himself (Exodus xxxix.).

55

Believed to date from about 853 B.C. The inscription records the victories of King Mesha over the Israelites.

56

Erected in honour of Ptolemy Epiphanes, 106 B.C. Famous as having furnished the first key for the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

57

Encyclopædia Biblica, art. “Messiah,” p. 3058, par. 2.

58