§ 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in peril of a moral collapse, while, as the latter puts it, “the old (theologically-derived) sanction of conduct is out of date, and the new is not yet born.”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.
But the noble army is not altogether a historical fact. The truth is that martyr-making became an ecclesiastical industry. The historian Gibbon estimates that at most about two thousand Christians fell in the Diocletian persecution—which was the only general persecution—and this estimate is now commonly accepted. “Since,” says Gibbon, “it cannot be doubted that the Christians were more numerous, and their enemies more exasperated, in the time of Diocletian than they had ever been in any former persecution, this probable and moderate computation may teach us to estimate the number of primitive saints and martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the important purpose of introducing Christianity into the world.”274 Compare these figures with the numbers who have suffered death in modern times for the sake of introducing a non-Christian faith. The Bab Abbas Effendi suffered martyrdom for his zeal in 1850, and between that date and now the most conservative opinion on the Babi martyrdoms puts them at ten thousand. (N.B.—No hopes of wealth and honours, no imperial edicts, have assisted the really remarkable spread of Babism.) As a matter of fact, a considerable portion of the history of man is a history of his martyrdom. “Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past.”275 If religious ladies could spare the time (from the absorbing occupation of reading the very latest works of fiction or the lives of the “grandes amoureuses”) to read Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man, a book none the less interesting because it treats of historical facts, they would begin to realise that martyrs are not a Christian monopoly.
§ 6. The Universality of the Religious Instinct
THE HYPOTHESIS STATED
The fact that a large proportion of the human race, including some of the greatest276 in thought and action, continue, or appear to continue, to believe in God and immortality, is considered by many to furnish the best proof for the truth of the belief. The Church naturally encourages this opinion, and proceeds to strengthen it further by asserting that the religious instinct is, and always has been, universal. This assertion must now be examined, and, to avoid any misconceptions, it will be advisable in the first place to have some specimens of it before us.
Canon Liddon informs us that “man is ever feeling after God,” and that “the thought of God is always latent in the mind of man.” “Cicero’s statement that there is no nation so barbarous and wild as not to have believed in some divinity is still, notwithstanding certain apparent exceptions, true. A nation of pure Atheists has yet to be discovered.”277 Dr. Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, “Are there tribes of Atheists?” and he comes to the conclusion that “an impartial examination of the relevant facts shows that religion is virtually universal.”278 The Bishop of London is of opinion that “man is a praying animal. He always has prayed throughout his history. It is a human instinct. This instinct of prayer points to the existence of God.”279 Dr. Warschauer affirms that the spiritual faculty—a consciousness of “the existence of spiritual realities, of a world beyond the senses”—“constitutes a universal human endowment.”280 Bishop Diggle bids us remember that “human nature is ineradicably religious.”281
THE RATIONALIST’S CONTENTION
The Rationalist asks: What grounds have we for assuming that the existence of religious belief points to the existence of a religious instinct? Is not a man’s religion determined by the geographical accident of his birth? Has not his religion to be diligently instilled into him from the cradle? How, then, can it be said that man is by nature religious? How can it be said that the craving for a deity is instinctive? To this the Christian apologist may reply that, however much the precise form of the religious belief may be due to education, no belief of any kind could be engendered without a predisposition to accept it. Have we not seen, however, that primitive beliefs were the natural offspring of fear and wonder? Inability to account for phenomena, ignorance of the laws of nature, and those abnormal psychical experiences concerning which science has but now commenced to furnish natural explanations, all combined to turn primitive men into staunch supernaturalists. For the same reasons, children in years as well as children in knowledge have always been predisposed to belief in the supernatural. This predisposition (it can hardly be called an instinct) may be universal, but it does not lead necessarily to belief in a deity. For that there must be education. If it be an instinct, it is not a religious instinct, although a soil eminently suitable for the sowing of supernatural dogmas.
Admitting, for the sake of argument, that the origin of religious beliefs and the process by which ancestral beliefs have been assimilated can be left out of consideration—in other words, that the ethnologist’s theories of the evolution of the idea of God and the educational factor may be disregarded—the supposition that there is a universal religious instinct must be relinquished if, as the Rationalist contends, religious belief itself is not universal. Is such a contention warranted by acknowledged facts? Into this we shall now inquire.
THE APOLOGIST’S VIEWS CONCERNING SUPERSTITION AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT
At the outset of the inquiry we at once experience a difficulty. It is not at all clear what the apologist includes under the category of religious beliefs. If it be taken as an axiom that the grossest superstition, the mere belief in the supernatural, is the germ of a religious belief, and therefore that all ignorant or superstitious persons have the religious instinct, then the proposition will be true for practically the whole of mankind in the remote past, and for a very large proportion in the present. Whether it be primeval man who frequently believed only in magic, usually in devils, and rarely in divinities, or whether it be the twentieth-century lady of fashion who wears a white elephant amulet to bring her luck at “Bridge,” both are imbued with the religious instinct. The absurdity of the supposition is fully apparent if we only carry it far enough.
It is by no means easy to understand where the apologist draws the line. He may not say so, but his contention really does seem to point to the absurdity that almost any crude superstition springs from a divine spark. The neo-apologist, however, will do well to reflect that the establishment of any connection between superstition and religion only plays into the hands of the Rationalist, who maintains that there is certainly the closest connection between the two. I am compelled to enter into these details, for, among the facts which I am about to bring forward in contradiction of the assertion of universality, some relate to instances of pure superstitions which might nevertheless be construed into signs of the religious instinct. If the apologist does not go quite so far as this, my task will be rendered much easier. Perhaps, as Dr. Flint is recognised as one of the most eminent of the Christian apologists, the conclusions to which he comes will represent the unspoken opinion of others. He says that, “if savage tribes have some sort of superstitious belief, it would only be in accord with modern theories regarding the evolution of the idea of God.... The presence of false religion is as good evidence of the existence of religion as the presence of true religion.... Perhaps, if we may say that religion is man’s belief in a being or beings mightier than himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiment and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from such belief, we have a definition of the kind required, one excluding nothing which can be called religion, and including nothing which is only partially present in religion.”282 This definition would not, one may presume, include mere belief in magic, but might be taken to include a man’s belief in devils. As there are many who would not agree that devil-worship and the like can have any connection with god-worship, I shall follow the ethnologist in citing examples of the absence of god-worship as evidence of the absence of the religious instinct; but I shall also give examples in which there is no appearance of worship either of god or devil. These will chiefly be drawn from present-day beliefs and customs, because now, if ever, the contention of the religionist should hold good, and also because it has been incidentally examined with reference to ancient beliefs in a previous chapter.
BELIEFS OF SAVAGE MAN
Among the concluding remarks of Darwin’s Descent of Man we read: “The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete, of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is, however, impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand, a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in the reasoning powers of man, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity, and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence; but this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, possessing only a little more power than man; for the belief in them is far more general than the belief in a beneficent Deity.”283
Again, in Huxley’s essay on “The Evolution of Theology” we read: “In its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and disposition (usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage theology is wholly independent of ethics.”
Sir John Lubbock, now Lord Avebury, states the argument against the universality of religion in his Prehistoric Times. He asks: “How can a people who are unable to count their own fingers possibly raise their minds so far as to admit even the rudiments of religion?” And he sums up his observations on various tribes by saying: “Indeed, the first idea of God is almost always an evil spirit.”284
“The idea that the northern tribes [of America] venerated one supreme and all-powerful ‘great spirit,’ by whom man and the world were created, is based on erroneous interpretation; Wakanda of the Dakotas, and Manito of the Algonquins, in no wise coming under such a designation.”285 “These terms,” writes Mr. W. J. McGee, “cannot justly be rendered into Spirit, much less into Great Spirit.”286 “Their religion,” writes another well-known ethnologist, Mr. G. Mooney, “is zootheism, or animal-worship, with the survival of a still earlier stage, which included the worship of all tangible objects, combined with the beginnings of a higher system in which the elements and the great powers of nature are deified.”287 Zootheism, the religion that has survived, does not embrace a belief in a Mightier Being, nor does this deterioration in “religion” suit the theory of a progressive revelation. We may also note that the belief of the North American in witchcraft has led to terrible slaughter, human life being sacrificed on an enormous and frightful scale.
Andrew Lang (in the third chapter of his book, Magic and Religion) instances Australian tribes, and says: “Nobody dreams of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer [compare Bishop Ingram’s statement that man is a praying animal!] while magic is universally practised.” There is, as Mr. Lang observes, “no room for a God, nor for an idea of a future life, except the life of successive re-incarnations.” “I do not think,” writes288 Professor Baldwin Spencer, “that there is really any direct evidence of any Australian native belief in a ‘Supreme Being’ in our sense of the term.”
Similarly among the Fuegians (another of the lowest races of mankind) “almost every old man is a magician, who is supposed to have the power of life and death, and to be able to control the weather. But the members of the French scientific expedition to Cape Horn could detect nothing worthy of the name of religion among these savages.”289 Here, then, even if we adopt Dr. Flint’s broad definition, we surely have examples of the absence of the religious instinct. There is a fundamental distinction, and even opposition of principle, between magic and religion, as we shall see by a study of the opinions of those best qualified to offer them.
MAGIC AND RELIGION
“Wherever sympathetic magic occurs,” says Dr. Frazer, “in its pure unadulterated form, it assumes that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency”290 (the italics are mine). “The magician supplicates no higher power; he sues the favour of no fickle and wayward being; he abases himself before no awful deity.”291 “I have,” says Dr. Frazer,292 “come to agree with Sir A. C. Lyall and Mr. F. B. Jevons in recognising a fundamental distinction, and even opposition, of principle between magic and religion.” This opinion must be shared by every unbiassed mind, and it is curious, and not without importance, to observe, with Dr. Frazer, that the “fundamental conception” of sympathetic magic “is identical with that of modern science.”293 “Underlying the whole system is a faith—implicit, but real and firm—in the order and uniformity of nature.”294