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CHAPTER II
EARLY BELIEFS
The boy of whom I am about to write was brought up until he was twelve entirely by women. He had masters, it is true, who taught him the usual things that are taught to boys, and he had playfellows, other boys; but the masters were with him but an hour or two each day for lessons, and of the boys he was always the eldest.
Those who have studied how it is that children form their ideas of the world, of what it is, of what has to be done in it, of how to do it, will recognise all that this means; for children obtain their ideas of everything, not from their lessons nor their books nor their teachers, but from their associates. A teacher may teach, but a boy does not believe. He believes not what he is told, but what he sees. He forms to himself rules of conduct modelled on the observed conduct of other people. Their ideas penetrate his, and he absorbs and adapts them to his own wants. In a school with other boys, or where a boy has as playfellows boys older than himself, this works out right. The knowledge and ideas of the great world filter gradually down. Young men gain it from older men, the young men pass it to the elder boys, and the bigger to the smaller, each adapting it as he takes. Thus is wisdom made digestible by the many processes it passes through, and the child can take it and find it agree with him.
But with a child brought up with adults and children younger than himself this is not so. From the latter he can learn nothing; he therefore adapts himself to the former. He listens to them, he watches them, unconsciously it is true, but with that terrible penetrative power children possess. He learns their ideas, and, tough as they may prove to him, he has to absorb them, and he has not the digestive juice, the experience that is required to assimilate them. They are unfit for his tender years, they do not yield the nourishment he requires. He suffers terribly. A man's ideas and knowledge are not fit for a boy.
And if a man's, how much less a woman's? A boy will become a man; what he has learnt of men is knowledge of the right kind, though of the wrong degree. But what he learns from women is almost entirely unsuitable in kind and in degree. The ideas, the knowledge, the codes of conduct, the outlook on life that suit a woman are entirely unfitted for a boy. Consider and you must see how true it is.
This boy, too, was often ill and unable to play, to go out at all sometimes for weeks in the winter. He seemed always ailing. Thus he had to spend much of his time alone, and when he was tired of reading or of wood carving, or colouring plates in a book, he thought. He had often so much time to think that he grew sick of thought. He hated it. He would have given very much to be able to get out and run about and play so as not to think, to be enabled to forget that he had a brain which would keep on passing phantoms before his inner eyes. There was nothing he hated so much, nothing he dreaded so deeply as having nothing to do but think. In later years he took this terror to his heart and made it into an exceedingly great pleasure, but to the child it was not so.
Therefore, when he was twelve and was sent at last to a large school, he was different to most boys at that age; for his view of the world, his knowledge of it, his judgment of it, were all obtained from women. He saw life much as they did, through the same glasses, though with different sight. His ideas of conduct were a woman's ideas, his religion was a woman's religion.
Are not a woman's ideas of conduct the same as a man's? Is not a woman's Christianity the same as a man's Christianity, if both be Christianity? And I reply, No! A thousand times no! There is all the world between them, all that world that is between woman and a man.
As to man's religion I will speak of it later. The woman's ideas of conduct and religion which this child had absorbed were these. He believed in the New Testament. I do not mean he disbelieved the Old Testament, but he did not think of it. Religion to him meant the teaching of Christ, that very simple teaching that is in the Gospel. Conduct to him meant the imitation of Christ and the observance of the Sermon on the Mount. He thought this was accepted by all the world – the Christian world at least – as true, that everyone, men as well as women, accepted this teaching not as a mere pious aspiration, not as an altruistic ideal, but as a real working theory. War was bad, all war. Soldiers apparently were not all bad – he had been told of Christian soldiers, though he had no idea how such a contradiction could occur – but at least they were a dreadful necessity. Wealth and the pursuit of wealth were bad, wicked even, though here again there were exceptions. Learning was apt to be a snare. The world was very wicked, consciously wicked, which accounted for the present state of affairs, and most people would certainly go to hell. The ideal life was that of a very poor curate in the East End of London, hard working and unhappy. These are some of the ideas he learnt, for this is the religion of all the religious women of England; of all those who are in their way the very salt of the nation. Their belief is the teaching of Christ, and that is what this boy learnt. This is what "conduct" and "religion" meant to him.
I must not be misunderstood. I do not intend to suggest that this boy was any better than other boys, that his life was less marked by the peccadilloes of childhood. He was probably much as other boys are as far as badness or goodness is concerned. His acts, I doubt not, did not very much differ from theirs. After all, neither boys nor men are very much guided either by any theoretical "Rule of Life," nor by any view of what is the true Religion. He acted according to his instincts, but having so acted the difference between him and other boys came in. Other boys' instincts led them to poach a trout out of a stream, and rejoice in their success if they were not caught. This boy's instinct also led him to poach a trout if he could, but he did not rejoice over it. Poaching was stealing, and that was a deadly sin. He was aware of that and was afraid.
Other boys' instincts made them fight on occasions and be proud of it, whether victor or vanquished, to boast of it publicly perhaps; anyhow, not to keep it a secret or be ashamed of it. This boy's instincts also led him several times into fights; but whether victor or not – it was usually not – he could not appear to be proud of it. The Sermon on the Mount told him he ought not to have fought that boy who struck him, but should have turned the other cheek, and he knew very well that it would be regarded as a sin. It must be kept secret and he must be ashamed of it, and so with many things. It never occurred to him then to doubt that the Sermon on the Mount did really contain the correct rule of life for him, and that any breach of it must be a deadly sin. Among other results this friction between the natural boy and the rule of conduct he was taught he ought to adopt, gave the boy a continual sensation of being wrong. He knew he was continually breaking the Sermon on the Mount and also other rules of the New Testament. He was perfectly sure he did not live at all like Christ, and he had a strong, but never then acknowledged certainty, that he didn't want to. All this, with the continual reproof of those around him, gave him an incessant feeling of being wicked. He could not live up to these rules, and he was a very wicked little boy bound for hell, so he thought of himself.
It is difficult to imagine anything worse for a boy than this. Tell a boy he is bad, lead him to believe he is bad, make much of his little sins, reprove him, mourn over him as one of wicked tendencies, and you will make him wicked. Perpetual struggle to attain an impossible and unnatural ideal is destructive to any moral fibre. For the boy soon begins to distrust himself, his own efforts, his own good intentions. He fails and fails, and he loses heart and begins to count on failure as certain. Then later he abandons effort as useless. What is the good of trying without any hope of success? It is useless and foolish. To save appearances he must pretend, and that is all. But at the time he went to school he had not quite come to that, for the stress of the world had not yet fallen upon him. He still believed in what he was taught was the ideal of life, and tried, in a childish, uncertain way, to act up to it.
CHAPTER III
IDEAL AND PRACTICE
Such was the boy who went to school, and such was the mental and moral equipment with which he started.
He found himself in a new world. He had stepped out of a woman's world into a man's, out of the New Testament into the Old, out of dreams into reality. For the ideas and beliefs, the knowledge and understanding, the code of morality and conduct, in a big school, are those of the world. This filters down from the world of men to the world of little boys, and the latter is the echo of the former. It is an echo of the great world sounded by childish hearts, but still a true echo. Then this boy began to learn new things, a new morality vastly different from the old. And this is what he learnt: that it is not wrong to fight, but right. Fighting is not evil but good, all kinds of fighting. The profession of a soldier is a great and worthy one, perhaps the highest. To fight men, to kill them and subdue them, is not bad but good – provided, of course, it is in a good cause. A war is not a regrettable necessity, but a very glorious opportunity. Both men and boys rejoice to know of battles greatly fought, of blood and wounds, of death and victory. It makes the heart bound to hear of such things. Everyone should wish to be able to do them – in a good cause. Is not the cause of our country always a good cause? When this boy arrived at school he learnt suddenly that a war was going on. It was a small frontier war such as we often have. He had not heard of it at home. Now he heard of it all day. Masters announced publicly any victory, holidays were given for them, out of school hours the boys talked of little else. The illustrated papers were full of sketches of the war, and the weekly papers of accounts of marches and battles. Boys who had relations, fathers, or uncles, or elder brothers, at the front rose into sudden fame. Big boys who were hoping to pass into Sandhurst or Woolwich were heroes; the school was full of the enthusiasm of the success of our armies. Parties were formed and generals were appointed; hillocks in the play green were defended and assaulted, and many grievous blows were given in these mimic fights. One boy nearly lost his eye. To the boy of which I am writing all this was new, it was new and delightful, and extraordinarily wicked.
This was not his only awakening, this was not the only subject on which he learnt new rules. Soldiers must fight, and so must boys, if necessary, in a good cause. To a soldier all causes are good when his country bids; to a boy all causes are good when his school code tells him. Turn the other cheek? Be called a funk and a coward, be derided and scorned by all the school, be told to be ashamed, and, worse than all, feel that he ought to be and was ashamed? Not so. Not so. A boy must fight, too, when his schoolboy honour bids. He even learnt more still than this. Battle was not always a disagreeable necessity, it was in itself often a pleasure. "To drink delight of battle with his peers" is no poet's rhetorical phrase; it is a truth. There is a sheer muscular physical pleasure in fighting, as all boys know. True blows hurt, but the blows that hurt most are not on the body, and there is, too, a moral strength, a moral pleasure, that comes from battles. It is not disgraceful to fight, it is not even disgraceful to be beaten, but it would often be very disgraceful not to fight, to turn the other cheek. All wars are not bad things. They are the storms of God stirring up the stagnant natures to new purity and life. The people that cannot fight shall die. He learnt this lesson, not as I have written it. He did not realise it, he did not put it into words as I have done. It sank into him unconsciously as the previous teaching had done – and sorely they disagreed with each other. He learnt other lessons, many of them, in the same way. He learnt that money is not an evil but a good. When he found his pocket-money short this soon dawned upon him, and the lesson did not end there. He found that wealth was almost worshipped, that it had very great power. He found everyone engaged in the race for wealth, everyone. His spiritual pastors and masters were no more exempt than anyone else. They encouraged the race. A boy's schooling was looked upon as his preparation for the battle of life in which he was to struggle for money and honours. Men who had attained them were held up to his admiration. Not the pale-faced curates of the East End, but the great statesman and soldier, the bishops, the lawyers, the writers, the successful merchants who had once been at the school, were emblazoned on the wall. No meek, struggling curate would find a niche there. The race was to the strong, not the weak. He was learning the law of the survival of the fittest, and he was further learning that the Sermon on the Mount is not a guide to be the fittest, in this world at any rate.
I must try again and guard against misconception. The school was a good school, the tone was good, the masters were all men of high character, of considerable learning. No school could have been better taught; but this was the teaching of the school, as it is and must be of all schools that are worth anything: a boy must be brought up on truths, not imaginings; he must learn laws, not aspirations; he must be prepared for the world as it is, not as a visionary might see it.
Therefore this boy learnt at school the great code of conduct which obtains in the world. Shortly, it is this: not to be quarrelsome, but to be ready always to fight for a good cause, be the fighting with sword or fist, with pen or tongue, by word or deed, and when fighting to hit hard and spare not. He learnt to desire and strive for wealth and honour, which are good things, not in immoderate excess, which injures other forms of happiness, but in due and proper amount. He learnt that he should speak the truth in most things, but not in all. There are worse things than some lies. There are some lies that are not a disgrace, but an honour. He learnt that learning was not a snare, but a very necessary and very admirable thing also, and of all learning that knowledge of the world, the wicked world, the flesh and the devil, was the most necessary. Such in broad lines were what he learnt from his schoolfellows, the code filtered down from above, the code of a public school. A very admirable code, but how different from what he had first learnt. There were worlds between them, the immensity that lies between fact and ideal.
And yet all this time, while this public school code was being driven into him by precept and example, by coercion and by blows, all this while, every morning at prayers and every Sunday thrice, he heard the other code taught in the school chapel. The masters taught it, and the boys were supposed to accept and believe it – during chapel hours. Once chapel was over, once Monday morning came, and the other code ruled. No one remembered the theoretic code of Christ. Boys who brought it forward in daily life were disliked. They were not bullied, no! but they were left alone. The tone of the school would never have allowed bullying for such a cause, but there was an instinctive repulsion to those boys who talked religion. The others inwardly accused them of cant. Boys who alleged religious reasons for refusing to fight, to poach, to smoke occasionally, to commit other little breaches of discipline, were suspected of bringing forth religion as a cloak to hide the fact that they were afraid to fight and poach and that smoking made them sick. That they were very often rightly suspected this boy had no doubt. It was his first introduction to cant, and it surprised him. Was, then, the attempt to realise the precepts of Christ in daily life either a folly or an hypocrisy? As far as he could see it was both.
It must not, of course, be imagined that he thus faced the problem and gave this answer. He no more faced the problem than any other boy does, than the great majority of men do. He simply grew up according to his surroundings, agreeing with them, accepting the rule he found accepted, developing as his environments made him. But although he did not mentally face and enumerate his difficulties, he was aware of them just the same. He was clearly conscious of a conflict between fact and theory, between teaching and example, between reality and dreams. He became year after year also more clearly aware of a repugnance rising within him to religion and to religious teaching. He shrank from it without realising why. He supposed it was just his natural sin. It was, of course, that he was proving its unreality as a guide to life. He began to shrink, too, from all religious topics, from religious services and religious books. They jarred on him. He found himself also losing his reverence for his religious teachers – for all his teachers, in fact – for they all professed religion. Their words had grated on him first, the difference between what they professed to believe and what he knew they did believe. Unaware of the reason till much later, almost unconsciously there grew up in him a contempt towards all his teachers and masters, a sense that they must be and were hypocrites and impostors. He found himself at eighteen far adrift from all guidance and counsel, shunning religion because he saw that the teachings of Christ were quite unadapted for the world he had to live in, scornful of and contemning his teachers for what seemed to him hypocrisy.
It was not a satisfactory state for a boy, and the less so because it was still almost unconscious. He felt all that I have said, the avoidance, the dislike, but he had not yet faced it to himself and said, "Why does Christianity jar upon me and seem unreal, what are its difficulties?" Nor, "What is it that causes my dislike and contempt of my teachers? They are better men in all ways than I am. They are good men. I shall never be as good. I honour them in their lives. I admit that. What is the difficulty?" He was adrift without compass or pilot, and he did not know it. Yet he was already far from the safe harbour of trust and belief. The storms and darkness of the sea of life were before him, and there was no star by which he could steer. He made no effort, raised as yet no alarm, for he knew not that his anchor had dragged, that he had lost hold, perhaps never to regain it.
CHAPTER IV
SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY – I
About this time he read the "Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man." This surprised him. It was not only that this was his first introduction to the science of biology, his first peep behind the curtain of modern forms into the coulisses of the world that interested him, but there was here contained a complete refutation, a disastrous overthrow, of all that system of the Creation which he had been taught.
If Darwin was right, and he seemed to be right – nay, even his once adversaries now admitted he was right, if not in his details yet in his broad outline – if he was right then was Genesis all wrong. There was never any garden of Eden, never any seven days' creation, never any making of woman out of a rib; the world was not six thousand years old, but millions. Man himself could count his pedigree back tens of thousands of years. It was a fable; and not only was it a fable, but this fable contained as a kernel not a truth – then it would be understood – but a falsehood. The theory of the whole story was that man had fallen, that he used to be perfect, that he walked with God, but that he fell. Such was the idea. And the continuation was that Christ was required to atone to God for man's disobedience, to lead man slowly back to the Paradise he had lost.
And now it was clear that the garden of Eden was all a fable, that man had never been perfect, that he had evolved slowly out of the beast. He had risen, not fallen, and stood now higher than ever before. The first part was false, and if so, must not the sequence be false also? As a whole the fable held together; destroy the foundation and the superstructure must come crashing into ruin. Oh! it was all false, the whole of it, Old and New Testament together, an old woman's tale. And then suddenly his eyes were opened. He saw many things. His instincts that he had not understood were now clear. Yes, of course, the supernatural part was all a fable, a mistake; nay, more, it taught the reverse of truth, and the moral part of it was all wrong too. The morality of the Old Testament was that of a savage, the morality of the New a remarkable ideal totally unfit for the world as it is now or ever has been. The man who followed it would commit a terrible error. It was therefore untrue also; more than merely untrue, it was dangerous, as a false teacher must be. For long he had instinctively seen that this was so, now he knew why. At the touch of science the whole fabric of religion fell into dust. Christianity was a fraud, and there was an end of it.
But still the church bells rang and the people went there. Priests preached this belief and people held to it. Darwin had written more than ten years before and his book had been accepted, but still religion had not fallen. Men and women, as far as he could see nearly all men and women, still professed themselves Christians. How was all this possible? How could it be that this disproved Jewish fable still held together? It was wonderful. There must be a reason. What is it?
Can it be possible, he thought, that there is an explanation, that religion can justify itself, that it may still have reason? There are people who call themselves scientific theologians. They write books and they preach, and they can be asked questions. What have they to say? So this boy collected some of his difficulties and tried to find out what scientific theology thought of them. Let me name briefly some of them: —
The Fall of Man.– Theology says he fell, science says he rose. What does Scientific Theology say?
The Character of God.– In the Old Testament God is represented frequently as bloodthirsty, as partial to the Jews, as unjust, as given to anger, as changeable. How is this?
Again, God is represented as the only Almighty, the only All-present, All-seeing, All-powerful; yet without a doubt the facts detailed show the Devil to be certainly All-present, and, as far as man here is concerned, has considerably more power and influence than God. God made the world, but the Devil possesses it. Why?
Prayer.– How can this be necessary? If God knows best what is good for us, why pray to Him? Can He be influenced? The Bible says yes. Then is not this a very extraordinary thing, that if God knows what is best for us, He should have to be asked to do it – that He won't do it unless asked?
About Christ. He was God, yet He died to atone to Himself for the sin of man. What is the meaning of all this? Why did God allow man to crucify Himself in order to atone to Himself for a former sin of man, and what is the meaning of all this? Has it any?
Most important of all, as to the example and teaching of Christ regarding conduct. What did it mean, and why did everyone profess it and no one believe it?
These, of course, were not all his difficulties. There were hundreds of them. There is not a verse in the Old or New Testament, not a dogma, not a belief of Christianity, that does not furnish ground for question. These I have mentioned are but some of the most prominent. They will serve as examples of what he sought to learn.
And these were the answers he received.
The History of the Creation is an allegory. It is not in conflict with science, but in accordance with it. There is no difficulty. The seven days of creation mean seven periods; we do not know how long these were. The chronology of Archbishop Usher was, of course, in error. It is a wonderful testimony to the inspiration of the Bible, the accuracy with which the account of Creation therein fits in with the facts we have recently learnt.
The story of Adam and Eve is an allegory of life. A child is born innocent and pure, and he falls. The knowledge therein referred to, the fruit, means useless questions into the secrets of God, such questions as you are now engaged in. Had you accepted Christianity as a child does you would never have fallen into the slough of infidelity in which you are now. You, like Eve, have been tempted by the Devil with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and have fallen. But the help of Christ, the knowledge that he died for you, can now save you. That is the answer.
You ask of the character of God in the Old Testament. You say that He is represented by His acts as revengeful, as unjust, as hasty, as very partial. Man cannot criticise the acts of God. He may seem to you so, but are you sure you can judge rightly? God cannot be all these. His injustice, His revengefulness, His partiality were merely effects produced in your mind. They do not exist. He is all-merciful, and all-seeing, and all-powerful. If the Devil seems to have more power in the world than God, it is simply because God allows him. If the Devil seems all-present it is because he has legions of demons to do his will. God is all-merciful, all-powerful, all-just; believe this and you will do well. The answers to your difficulties about prayer are also very simple. God is not influenced by prayer. He is merciful and will always do what He knows to be best for you, whether you pray or not; but He has ordained prayer for you, not because of its effect on Him, but because of its effect upon yourself. Prayer, humiliation, softens the heart of the suppliant. His cry to God will not change God, but will change him. This is the explanation. It is very simple, is it not?
The doctrine of the Trinity can be best understood from an analogy of man. Consider how a man can be a father, a husband, and a son all at once. There is no difficulty here. Where, then, is the difficulty with God? God as the Father of man, the righteous Judge who punishes man for his wickedness, He vindicated His law; but God the Son, the pitying nature of God, had compassion on man, and therefore gave Himself as a sacrifice for man; God the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, entered into man's heart and sanctified it. Cannot you thus understand the manifold nature of God?
The teaching of Christ? His example? You do not understand that? Was not His life the perfect life, His teaching the perfect teaching? You say that this teaching cannot be followed now in its entirety. Is it not the wickedness of man that prevents it? Did each man act up to this teaching, to this example, would it not be a perfect world? Let each man try his best and the world will improve. Such as I have written were the answers he found to his questions. I do not say that these are always the answers that are given. It may be there are others. It may be that in the years that have passed since then new explanations have been evolved.
Although I do not think that is so, as only a year ago I saw some of these very replies written in a well-known Review as the authoritative answer of scientific theology to these difficulties. However that may be, these are the answers the boy received, such were the guides given to lead him out of the darkness of scepticism into the light of faith.
