Chapter 5
CHAPTER V. CONQUESTS OF INVESTIGATION The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to live. Goethe Theologians had so choked the human mind with a dense undergrowth of dogmas that it was like cutting through an African forest, such as Stanley encountered, to find the paths of truth. On that path, when found, many things unforeseen before became plain. The siren songs of orthodoxy were discovered to have strange discords of sense in them.
1. The guide of God seemed to be very human, not authentic, not consistent, containing things not readable nor explainable in the family, pagan fictions such as the Incarnation reluctantly believable as the device of a moral deity. Men of genius and of noble ethical sympathy do, however, deem it defensible. In any human book, the paternal exaction of such suffering as fell to Christ
would be regarded with alarm and repugnance. Wonder was felt that Scripture, purporting to contain the will of deity, should not be expressed so unmistakably that ignorance could not misunderstand it, nor perversity misconstrue it. The gods know how to write.
2. The origin of all things has excited and disappointed the curiosity of the greatest exploring minds of every age. That the secret of the universe is undisclosed is manifest from the different and differing conjectures concerning it. The origin of the universe remains unknowable.
What awe fills, or rather takes possession of the mind which comprehends this. Why existence exists is the cardinal wonder. 3. Pleasant and free from anxiety life would be, were it true that providence is a present help in the day of need. Alas, to the poor it is evident that providence does not interfere,
either to befriend the good in their distress or arrest the bad in the act of crime. 4. The power of prayer has been the hope of the helpless and the oppressed in every age. Every man wishes it was true that help could be had that way. Then every just man could protect himself at will against his adversaries. But experience shows that all entreaty is futile to induce providence
to change its universal habit of non-intervention. prayer beguiles the poor but provides no dinner mr spurgeon said at the tabernacle that prayer filled his meal-barrel when empty i asked that he should publish the recipe in the interests of the hungry but he made no reply 5. There is reason to think that original sin is not anything more than original ignorance. The belief in natural depravity discourages all efforts of progress. The primal imperfection of human nature is only effaceable by knowledge and persistent endeavor.
Even in things lawful to do, excess is sin, judged by human standards. There may be error without depravity. 6. Eternal perdition for conscientious belief, whether erroneous or not, is humanly incredible. The divisors of this doctrine must have been unaware that belief is an affair of ignorance, prejudice, custom, education or evidence. The liability of the human race to eternal punishment
is the foundation on which all Christianity, except Unitarianism, rests. This awful belief if acted upon with the sincerity that Christianity declares it should be, would terminate all enjoyment, and all enterprise would cease in the world. None would ever marry. No persons, with any humanity in their hearts, would take upon themselves the awful responsibility of increasing the number of the damned. The registrar of births would be the most fiendish clerk
conceivable. He would be, practically, the secretary of hell. The theory that all the world was lost through a curious and enterprising lady eating an apricot or an apple, and that three thousand or more years after, mankind had to be redeemed by the murder of an innocent Jew, is of a nature to make men afraid to believe in a deity accused of contriving so dreadful a scheme. Though this reasoning will seem to many an argument against the existence of God,
whereas it is merely against the attributes of deity as ascribed to him by Christianity. If God be not moral, in the human sense of the term, he may as well be not moral at all. It is only he, whose principles of justice men can understand, that men can trust. Professor T. H. Huxley, conspicuous for his clearness of view and dispassionateness of judgment, was of this opinion, and said,
The suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things, he is responsible for evil as well as for good, and it appears utterly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has in fact done himself. The poet concurs with the philosopher when he exclaims,
The loving worm within its clod were diviner than a loveless god amid his worlds. Browning Christianity indeed speaks of the love of God in sending his son to die for the security of others. But not less is the heart of the intelligent and humane believer torn with fear, as he thinks what must be the character of that god who could only be thus appeased.
The example of self-sacrifice is noble, but is it noble in anyone who deliberately creates the necessity for it? The better side of Christianity seems overshadowed by the worse. 7. Future life is uncertain, being unprovable and seemingly improbable,
judging from the dependence of life on material conditions. Christians themselves do not seem confident of another existence. If they were sure of it, who of them would linger here when those they love and honour have gone before? E'er we reach the middle of our days, the joy of every heart lies in some tomb. If the Christian actually believed that the future was real,
would he hang black plumes over the hearse and speak of death as darkness? No. The cemeteries would be hung with joyful lights. the grave would be the gate of paradise. Everyone would find justifiable excuse for leaving this for the happier world. All tenets which are contradicted by reason had better not be. Many preachers now disown in controversy these doctrines, but until they carry the professions
of the platform into the statute book, the rubric and the pulpit, such doctrines remain operative, and the churches remain answerable for them. Non-conformists do not protest against the state church on account of its doctrines herein enumerated. When the doctrines which conflict with reason and humanity are disowned by authority, ecclesiastical and legal, in all denominations, the duty of controverting them as impediments to progress will cease.
It may be said in reply to what is here set forth as tenets of Christian scripture, that the writer follows the letter and not the spirit of the word. Yes, that is what he does. He is well aware of the new practice of seeking refuge in the spirit of expanding the letter and taking a new range of view.
He, however, holds that to drop the letter is to drop the doctrine. To expand the letter is to change it. New range of view is the term under which desertion of the text is disguised. But new range means new thought, which in this insidious way is put forward to supersede the old. The frank way is to say so, and admit that the letter is obsolete, is gone, is disproved,
and that new views which are truer constitute the new letter of progress. The best thing to do with the dead hand is to bury it. To try to expand dissolution is but galvanizing the corpse and tying the dead to the living.
