My Path to Atheism Part 2

Perhaps he has struck at the root of evil, and has put away sin itself out of a redeemed world? Alas! the wailing that goes up to heaven from a world oppressed with sin weeps out a sorrowfully emphatic, "no, this he has _not_ done." What has he then borne for us? Nothing, save the phantom wrath of a phantom tyrant; all that is real exists the same as before. We turn away, then, from the offered atonement with a feeling that would be impatience at such trifling, were it not all too sorrowful, and leave the Christians to impose on their imagined sacrifice, the imagined burden of the guilt of the accursed race.

Further, the Atonement is, from the nature of things, entirely impossible: we have seen how Christ fails to bear our sins in any intelligible sense, but can he, in any way, bear the "punishment" of sin? The idea that the punishment of sin can be transferred from one person to another is radically false, and arises from a wrong conception of the punishment consequent on sin, and from the ecclesiastical guilt, so to speak, thought to be incurred thereby. _The only true punishment of sin is the injury caused by it to our moral nature_: all the indirect punishments, we have seen, Christ has not taken away, and the true punishment can fall only on ourselves. For sin is nothing more than the transgression of law. All law, when broken, entails _of necessity_ an appropriate penalty, and recoils, as it were, on the transgressor. A natural law, when broken, avenges itself by consequent suffering, and so does a spiritual law: the injury wrought by the latter is not less real, although less obvious. Physical sin brings physical suffering; spiritual, moral, mental sin brings each its own appropriate punishment.

"Sin" has become such a cant term that we lose sight, in using it, of its real simple meaning, a breaking of law. Imagine any sane man coming and saying, "My dear friend; if you like to put your hand into the fire I will bear the punishment of being burnt, and you shall not suffer." It is quite as absurd to imagine that if I sin Jesus can bear my consequent suffering. If a man lies habitually, for instance, he grows thoroughly untrue: let him repent ever so vigorously, he must bear the consequences of his past deeds, and fight his way back slowly to truthfulness of word and thought: no atonement, nothing in heaven or earth save his own labour, will restore to him the forfeited jewel of instinctive candour.

Thus the "punishment" of untruthfulness is the loss of the power of being true, just as the punishment of putting the hand into the fire is the loss of the power of grasping. But in addition to this simple and most just and natural "retribution," theologians have invented certain arbitrary penalties as a punishment of sin, the wrath of G.o.d and h.e.l.l fire. These imaginary penalties are discharged by an equally imaginary atonement, the natural punishment remaining as before; so after all we only reject the two sets of inventions which balance each other, and find ourselves just in the same position as they are, having gained infinitely in simplicity and naturalness. The punishment of sin is not an arbitrary penalty, but an inevitable sequence: Jesus may bear, if his wors.h.i.+ppers will have it so, the theological fiction of the "guilt of sin," an idea derived from the ceremonial uncleanness of the Levitical law, but let him leave alone the solemn realities connected with the sacred and immutable laws of G.o.d.

Doubly unjust, useless, and impossible, it might be deemed a work of supererogation to argue yet further against the Atonement; but its hold on men's minds is too firm to allow us to lay down a single weapon which can be turned against it. So, in addition to these defects, I remark that, viewed as a propitiatory sacrifice to Almighty G.o.d, it is thoroughly inadequate. If G.o.d, being righteous, as we believe Him to be, regarded man with anger because of man's sinfulness, what is obviously the required propitiation? Surely the removal of the cause of anger, _i.e._, of sin itself, and the seeking by man of righteousness. The old Hebrew prophet saw this plainly, and his idea of atonement is the true one: "wherewith shall I come before the Lord," he is asked, with burnt-offerings or--choicer still--parental anguish over a first-born's corpse? "What doth the Lord require of thee," is the reproving answer, "but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?"

But what is the propitiatory element in the Christian Atonement?

let Canon Liddon answer: "the ignominy and pain _needed_ for the redemption." Ignominy, agony, blood, death, these are what Christians offer up as an acceptable sacrifice to the Spirit of Love. But what have all these in common with the demands of the Eternal Righteousness, and how can pain atone for sin? they have no relation to each other; there is no appropriateness in the offered exchange. These terrible offerings are in keeping with the barbarous ideas of uncivilized nations, and we understand the feelings which prompt the savage to immolate tortured victims on the altars of his gloomy G.o.ds; they are appropriate sacrifices to the foes of mankind, who are to be bought off from injuring us by our offering them an equivalent pain to that they desire to inflict, but they are offensive when given to Him who is the Friend and Lover of Humanity. An Atonement which offers suffering as a propitiation can have nothing in common with G.o.d's will for man, and must be utterly beside the mark, perfectly inadequate. If we must have Atonement, let it at least consist of something which will suit the Righteousness and Love of G.o.d, and be in keeping with his perfection; let it not borrow the language of ancient savagery, and breathe of blood and dying victims, and tortured human frames, racked with pain.

Lastly, I impeach the Atonement as injurious in several ways to human morality. It has been extolled as "meeting the needs of the awakened sinner" by soothing his fears of punishment with the gift of a subst.i.tute who has already suffered his sentence for him; but nothing can be more pernicious than to console a sinner with the promise that he shall escape the punishment he has justly deserved. The Atonement may meet the first superficial feelings of a man startled into the consciousness of his sinfulness, it may soothe the first vague fears and act as an opiate to the awakened conscience; but it does not fulfil the cravings of a heart deeply yearning after righteousness; it offers a legal justification to a soul which is longing for purity, it offers freedom from punishment to a soul longing for freedom from sin. The true penitent does not seek to be s.h.i.+elded from the consequences of his past errors: he accepts them meekly, bravely, humbly, learning through pain the lesson of future purity. An atonement which steps in between us and this fatherly discipline ordained by G.o.d, would be a curse and not a blessing; it would rob us of our education and deprive us of a priceless instruction. The force of temptation is fearfully added to by the idea that repentance lays the righteous penalty of transgression on another head; this doctrine gives a direct encouragement to sin, as even Paul perceived when he said, "shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Some one has remarked, I think, that though Paul e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es, "G.o.d forbid," his fears were well founded and have been widely realised.

To the Atonement we owe the morbid sentiment which believes in the holy death of a ruffianly murderer, because, goaded by ungovernable terror, he has s.n.a.t.c.hed at the offered safety and been "washed in the blood of the lamb." To it we owe the unwholesome glorying in the pious sentiments of such an one, who ought to go out of this life sadly and silently, without a sickening parade of feelings of love towards the G.o.d whose laws, as long as he could, he has broken and despised. But the Christian teachers will extol the "saving grace" which has made the felon die with words of joyful a.s.surance, meet only for the lips of one who crowns a saintly life with a peaceful death. The Atonement has weakened that stern condemnation of sin which is the safeguard of purity; it has softened down moral differences, and placed the penitent above the saint; it has dulled the feeling of responsibility in the soul; it has taken away the help, such as it is, of fear of punishment for sin; it has confused man's sense of justice, outraged his feeling of right, blunted his conscience, and misdirected his repentance. It has chilled his love to G.o.d by representing the universal father as a cruel tyrant and a remorseless and unjust judge. It has been the fruitful parent of all asceticism, for, since G.o.d was pacified by suffering once, he would, of course, be pleased with suffering at all times, and so men have logically ruined their bodies to save their souls, and crushed their feelings and lacerated their hearts to propitiate the awful form frowning behind the cross of Christ. To the Atonement we owe it that G.o.d is served by fear instead of by love, that monasticism holds its head above the sweet sanct.i.ties of love and home, that religion is crowned with thorns and not with roses, that the _miserere_ and not the _gloria_ is the strain from earth to heaven. The Atonement teaches men to crouch at the feet of G.o.d, instead of raising loving, joyful faces to meet his radiant smile; it shuts out his suns.h.i.+ne from us, and veils us in the night of an impenetrable dread. What is the sentiment with which Canon Liddon closes a sermon on the death of Christ? I quote it to show the slavish feeling engendered by this doctrine in a very n.o.ble human soul: "In ourselves, indeed, there is nothing that should stay His (G.o.d's) arm or invite his mercy. But may he have respect to the acts and the sufferings of his sinless son? Only while contemplating the inestimable merits of the Redeemer can we dare to hope that our heavenly Father will overlook the countless provocations which he receives at the hands of the redeemed." Is this a wholesome sentiment, either as regards our feelings towards G.o.d or our efforts towards holiness? Is it well to look to the purity of another as a makewight for our personal shortcomings?

All these injuries to morality done by the atonement are completed by the crowning one, that it offers to the sinner a veil of "imputed righteousness." Not only does it take from him his saving punishment, but it nullifies his strivings after holiness by offering him a righteousness which is not his own. It introduces into the solemn region of duty to G.o.d the legal fiction of a gift of holiness, which is imputed, not won. We are taught to believe that we can blind the eyes of G.o.d and satisfy him with a pretended purity. But that every one whose purity we seek to claim as ours, that fair blossom of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission we so misconstrue, launched his anathema at whited sepulchres, pure without and foul within. What would he have said of the whitewash of unimputed righteousness? Stern and sharp would have been his rebuke, methinks, to a device so untrue, and well-deserved would have been his thundered "woe" on a hypocrisy that would fain deceive G.o.d as well as man.

These considerations have carried so great a weight with the most enlightened and progressive minds among Christians themselves, that there has grown up a party in the Church whose repudiation of an atonement of agony and death is as complete as even we could wish.

They denounce with the utmost fervour the hideous notion of a "b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice," and are urgent in their representations of the dishonour done to G.o.d by ascribing to him "pleasure in the death of him that dieth," or satisfaction in the sight of pain. They point out that there is no virtue in blood to wash away sin, not even "in the blood of a G.o.d." Maurice eloquently pleads against the idea that the suffering of the "well-beloved Son" was in itself an acceptable sacrifice to the Almighty Father, and he sees the atoning element in the "holiness and graciousness of the Son." Writers of this school perceive that a moral and not a physical sacrifice can be the only acceptable offering to the Father of spirits, but the great objection lies against their theory also, that the Atonement is still vicarious. Christ still suffers _for_ man, in order to make men acceptable to G.o.d. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to say this of the school as a whole, since the opinions of Broad Church divines differ widely from each other, ranging from the orthodox to the Socinian standing-point. Yet, roughly speaking, we may say that while they have given up the error of thinking that the death of Christ reconciles G.o.d to-us, they yet believe that his death, in some mysterious manner, reconciles us to G.o.d. It is a matter of deep thankfulness that they give up the old cruel idea of propitiating G.o.d, and so prepare the way for a higher creed. Their more humane teaching reaches hearts which are as yet sealed against us, and they are the John Baptist of the Theistic Christ. We must still urge on them that an atonement at all is superfluous, that all the parade of reconciliation by means of a mediator is perfectly unnecessary as between G.o.d and his child, man; that the notion put forward that Christ realised the ideal of humanity and propitiated G.o.d by showing what a man _could_ be, is objectionable in that it represents G.o.d as needing to be taught what were the capacities of his creatures, and is further untrue, because the powers of G.o.d in man are not really the equivalent of the capabilities of a simple man. Broad Churchmen are still hampered by the difficulties surrounding a divine Christ, and are puzzled to find for him a place in their theology which is at once suitable for his dignity, and consistent with a reasonable belief. They feel obliged to acknowledge that some unusual benefit to the race must result from the incarnation and death of a G.o.d, and are swayed alternately by their reason, which places the crucifixion of Jesus in the roll of martyrs' deaths, and by their prejudices, which a.s.sign to it a position unique and unrivalled in the history of the race. There are, however, many signs that the deity of Jesus is, as an article of faith, tottering from its pedestal in the Broad Church school. The hold on it by such men as the Rev. J. S. Brooke is very slight, and his interpretation of the incarnation is regarded by orthodox divines with unmingled horror. Their _moral_ atonement, in turn, is as the dawn before the sunrise, and we may hope that it will soon develop into the real truth: namely, that the dealings of Jesus with the Father were a purely private matter between his own soul and G.o.d, and that his value to mankind consists in his being one of the teachers of the race, one "with a genius for religion," one of the schoolmasters appointed to lead humanity to G.o.d.

The theory of M'Leod Campbell stands alone, and is highly interesting and ingenious--it is the more valuable and hopeful as coming from Scotland, the home of the dreariest belief as to the relations existing between man and G.o.d. He rejects the penal character of the Atonement, and makes it consist, so to speak, in leading G.o.d and man to understand one another. He considers that Christ witnessed to men on behalf of G.o.d, and vindicated the father's heart by showing what he could be to the son who trusted in him. He witnessed to G.o.d on behalf of men--and this is the weakest point in the book, verging, as it does, on subst.i.tution--showing in humanity a perfect sympathy with G.o.d's feelings towards sin, and offering to G.o.d for man a perfect repentance for human transgression. I purposely say "verging," because Campbell does not _intend_ subst.i.tution; he represents this sorrow of Jesus as what he must inevitably feel at seeing his brother-men unconscious of their sin and danger, so no fiction is supposed as between G.o.d and Christ. But he considers that G.o.d, having seen the perfection of repentance in Jesus, accepts the repentance of man, imperfect as it is, because it is _in kind_ the same as that of Jesus, and is the germ of that feeling of which his is the perfect flower; in this sense, and only in this sense, is the repentance of man accepted "for Christ's sake." He considers that men must share in the mind of Christ as towards G.o.d and towards sin, in order to be benefited by the work of Christ, and that each man must thus actually take part in the work of atonement. The sufferings of Jesus he regards as necessary in order to test the reality of the life of sons.h.i.+p towards G.o.d, and brotherhood towards men, which he came to earth to exemplify. I trust I have done no injustice in this short summary to a very able and thoughtful book, which presents, perhaps, the only view of the Atonement compatible with the love and the justice of G.o.d; and this only, of course, if the idea of _any_ atonement can fairly be said to be consistent with justice. The merits of this view are practically that this work of Jesus is not an "atonement" in the theological sense at all. The defects of Campbell's book are inseparable from his creed, as he argues from a belief in the deity of Jesus, from an unconscious limitation of G.o.d's knowledge (as though G.o.d did not understand man till he was revealed to him by Jesus) and from a wrong conception of the punishment due to sin. I said, at starting, that the Atonement was the _raison d'etre_ of Christianity, and, in conclusion, I would challenge all thoughtful men and women to say whether good cause has or has not been shown for rejecting this pillar "of the faith." The Atonement has but to be studied in order to be rejected. The difficulty is to persuade people to _think_ about their creed, Yet the question of this doctrine must be faced and answered. "I have too much faith in the common sense and justice of Englishmen when once awakened to face any question fairly, to doubt what that answer will be."

ON THE MEDIATION AND SALVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY.

THE whole Christian scheme turns on the a.s.sumption of the inherent necessity of some one standing between the Creator and the creature, and s.h.i.+elding the all-weak from the power of the All-mighty. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living G.o.d;" such is the key-note of the strain which is chanted alike by Roman Catholicism, with its thousand intercessors, and by Protestantism, with its "one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus." "Speak _thou_ for me," cries man to his favourite mouthpiece, whoever it may be; "go thou near, but let me not see the face of G.o.d, lest I die." The heroes, the saints, the idols of humanity, have been the men who have dared to search into the Unseen, and to gaze straight up into the awful Face of G.o.d. They have dashed aside all that intervened between their souls and the Eternal Soul, and have found it, as one of them quaintly phrases it, "a profitable sweet necessity to fall on the naked arm of Jehovah." Then, because they dared to-trust Him who had called them into existence, and to stretch out beseeching hands to the Everlasting Father, they have been forced into a position they would have been the very first to protest against, and have been made into mediators for men less bold, for children less confiding. Those who dared not seek G.o.d for themselves have clung to the garments of the braver souls, who have thus become, involuntarily, veils between their brother-men and the Supreme. There is, perhaps, no better way of demonstrating the radical errors from which spring all the so-called "schemes of redemption" and "economies of Divine grace" than by starting from the Christian hypothesis.

We will admit, for argument's sake, the Deity of Jesus, in order that we may thus see the more distinctly that a mediator of any kind between G.o.d and man is utterly uncalled for. It is mediation, in itself, that is wrong in principle; we object to it as a whole, not to any special manifestation of it. Divine or human mediators, Jesus or his mother, saint, angel, or priest, we reject them each and all; our birthright as human beings is to be the offspring of the Universal Father, and we refuse to have any interloper pressing in between our hearts and His.

We will take mediation first in its highest form, and speak of it as if Jesus were really G.o.d as well as man. All Christians agree in a.s.serting that the coming of the Son into the world to save sinners was the result of the love of the Father for these sinners; _i.e._, "_G.o.d_ so loved the world that _He_ sent His Son." The motive-power of the redemption of the world is, then, according to Christians, the deep love of the Creator for the work of His hands. This it was that exiled the Son from the bosom of the Father, and caused the Eternal to be born into time.

But now a startling change occurs in the aspect of affairs. Jesus has "atoned for the sins of the world;" he "has made peace through the blood of his cross;" and having done so, he suddenly appears as the mediator for men. What does this pleading of the Son on behalf of sinners imply?

Only this--_a complete change in the Father's mind towards the world_.

After the yearning love of which we have heard, after this absolute sacrifice to win His children's hearts, He at last succeeds. He sees His children at His feet, repentant for the past, eager to make amends in the future; human hands appealing to Him, human eyes streaming with tears. He turns His back on the souls He has been labouring to win; He refuses to clasp around His penitents the arms outstretched to them so long, unless they are presented to Him by an accredited intercessor, and come armed with a formal recommendation. The inconsistency of such a procedure must be palpable to all minds; and in order to account for one absurdity, theologians have invented another; having created one difficulty, they are forced to make a second, in order to escape from the first. So they represent G.o.d as loving sinners, and desiring to forgive and welcome them. This feeling is the Mercy of G.o.d; but, in opposition to the dictates of Mercy, Justice starts up, and forbids any favour to the sinner unless its own claims are first satisfied to the utmost. A Christian writer has represented Mercy and Justice as standing before the Eternal: Mercy pleads for forgiveness and pity, Justice clamours for punishment. Two attributes of the G.o.dhead are personified and placed in opposition to each other, and require to be reconciled.

But when we remember that each personified quality is really but a portion, so to speak, of the Divine character, we find that G.o.d is divided against Himself. Thus, this theory introduces discord into the harmonious mind which inspires the perfect melodies of the universe. It sees warring elements in the Serenity of the Infinite One; it pictures successive waves of love and anger ruffling that ineffable Calm; it imagines clouds of changing motives sweeping across the sun of that unchanging Will. Such a theory as this must be rejected as soon as realised by the thoughtful mind. G.o.d is not a man, to be swayed first by one motive and then by another. His mercy and justice ever point unwaveringly in the same direction: perfect justice requires the same as perfect mercy. If G.o.d's justice could fail, the whole moral universe would be in confusion, and that would be the greatest cruelty that could be inflicted on intelligent beings. The weak pliability, miscalled mercy, which is supposed to be worked upon by a mediator, is a human infirmity which men have transferred to their idea of G.o.d.

A man who has announced his intention to punish may be persuaded out of his resolution. New arguments may be adduced for the condemned one's innocence, new reasons for clemency may be suggested; or the judge may have been over-strict, or have been swayed by prejudice. Here a mediator may indeed step in, and find good work to do; but, in the name of the Eternal Perfection, what has all this to do with the judgment of G.o.d?

Can His knowledge be imperfect, His mercy increased? Can His sentence be swayed by prejudice, or made harsh by over-severity?

But if His judgment is already perfect, any change implies imperfection, and all left for the mediator to do is to persuade G.o.d to make a change, _i.e._, to become imperfect; or, G.o.d having decided that sin shall be punished, the mediator steps in, and actually so works upon G.o.d's feelings that He revokes His decision, and--most cruel of mercies--lets it go unnoticed. Like an unwise parent, G.o.d is persuaded not to punish the erring child. But such is not the case. G.o.d is just, and because He is just He is most truly merciful: in that justice rests the certainty of the due punishment of sin, and, therefore of the purification of the sinner! and no mediator--thanks be to G.o.d for it!--shall ever cause to waver for one instant that Rock of Justice on which reposes the hope of Humanity.

But the theory we are considering has another fatal error in it: it ascribes imperfection to Almighty G.o.d. For G.o.d is represented as desiring to forgive sinners, and this desire must be either right or wrong. If it be right, it can at once be gratified; but if Justice opposes this forgiveness, then the desire to forgive is not wholly right. Theologians are thus placed in this dilemma: if G.o.d is perfect--as He is--any desire of His must likewise be flawlessly perfect, and its fulfilment must be the very best thing that could happen to His whole creation; on the other hand, if there is any barrier of right--and Justice _is_ right--interposed between G.o.d and His desire, then His Will is not the most perfect Good. Theologians must then choose between admitting that the desire of G.o.d to welcome sinners is just, or detracting from the Eternal Perfection.

It is obvious that we do not weaken our case by admitting, for the moment, the Deity of Jesus; for we are striking at the root-idea of mediation. That the mediator should be G.o.d is totally beside the question, and in no way strengthens our adversaries' hands. His Deity does nothing more than introduce a new element of confusion into the affair; for we become entangled in a maze of contradictions. G.o.d, who is One, even according to Christians, is at one and the same time estranged from sinners, pleading for sinners, and admitting the pleading. G.o.d pleads to Himself--but we are confounding the persons: one G.o.d pleads to another--but we are dividing the substance. Alas and alas for the creed which compels its votaries to deny their reason, and degrade their Maker! which babbles of a Nature it cannot comprehend, and forces its foolish contradictions on indignant souls! If Jesus be G.o.d, his mediation is at once impossible and unnecessary; if he be G.o.d, his will is the will of G.o.d; and if he wills to welcome sinners, it is G.o.d who wills to welcome them. If he, who is G.o.d, is content to pardon and embrace, what further do sinners require? Christians tell us that Jesus is one with G.o.d: it is well, we reply; for you say he is the Friend of sinners, and the Redeemer of the lost. If he be G.o.d, we both agree as to the friendliness of G.o.d to sinners. You need no mediator between you and Jesus; and, since he is G.o.d, you need no mediator with G.o.d. This reasoning is irrefragable, unless Christians are content to a.s.sign to their mediator some place which is less than divine; for they certainly derogate from his dignity when they imagine him as content to receive those whom Almighty G.o.d chases from before His face. And in making this difference between Jesus and the Father they make a fatal admission that he is distinct in feeling from G.o.d, and therefore cannot be the One G.o.d.

It is the proper perception of this fact which has introduced into the Roman Church the human mediators whose intercession is constantly implored. Jesus, being G.o.d, is too awful to be approached: his mother, his apostles, some saint or martyr, must come between. I have read a Roman Catholic paper about the mediation of Mary which would be accepted by the most orthodox Protestant were Mary replaced by Jesus, and Jesus by the Father. For Jesus is there painted, as the Father is painted by the orthodox, in stern majesty, hard, implacable, exacting the uttermost farthing; and Mary is represented as standing between him and the sinners for whom she pleads. It is only a further development of the idea which makes the man Jesus the Mediator between G.o.d and man. As the deification of Mary progresses, following in slow but certain steps the deification of Jesus, a mediator will be required through whom to approach _her_; and then Jesus, too, will fade out of the hearts of men, as the Father has faded out of the hearts of Christians, and this superst.i.tion of mediation will sink lower and lower, till it is rejected by all earnest hearts, and is loathed by human souls which are aching for the living G.o.d.

We see, then, that mediation implies an absurd and inexplicable change in the supposed att.i.tude of G.o.d towards man, and destroys all confidence in the justice of the Supreme Ruler. We should further take into consideration the strange feeling towards the Universal _Heart_ implied in man's endeavour to push some one in between himself and the Eternal Father. As we study Nature and try to discover from its workings something of the characteristics of the Worker therein, we find not only a ruling Intelligence--a _Supreme Reason_, before which we bow our heads in an adoration too deep for words--but we catch also beautiful glimpses of a ruling Love--a _Supreme Heart_, to which our hearts turn with a glad relief from the dark mysteries of pain and evil which press us in on every side. Simple belief in G.o.d at all, that is to say, in a Power which works in the Universe, is quite sufficient to disperse any of that feeling of fear which finds its fit expression in the longing for a mediator. For being placed here without our request, and even without our consent, we have surely, as a simple matter of justice, a right to demand that the Power which placed us here shall provide us with means by which we can secure our happiness. I speak, of course, as of a _conscious_ Power, because a blind Force is necessarily irresponsible; but those who believe in a G.o.d are bound to acknowledge that He is responsible for their well-being. If any one should suggest that to say thus is to criticise G.o.d's dealings and to speak with presumptuous irreverence, I retort that the irreverence lies with those who ascribe to the Supreme a course of action towards His creatures that they themselves would be ashamed to pursue towards their own children, and that they who fling at us the reproach of blasphemy because we will not bow the knee before their idol, would themselves lie open to the charge, were it not that their ignorance s.h.i.+elds them from the sterner censure.

All good in man--poor shallow streamlet though it be--flows down from the pure depths of the Fountain of Good, and any throb of Love on earth is a pulsation caused by the ceaseless beating of the Universal Father-Heart. Yet men fear to trust that Heart, lest it should cease beating; they fear to rest on G.o.d, lest He should play them false.

When will they catch even a glimpse of that great ocean of love which encircles the universe as the atmosphere the earth, which is infinite because G.o.d is infinite? If there is no spot in the universe of which it can be said, "G.o.d is not here," then is there also no spot where love does not rule; if there is no life existing without the support of the Life-Giver and the Life-Sustainer, then is there also no life which is not cradled in the arms of Love. Who then will dare to push himself in between man and a G.o.d like this? In the light of the Universal Reason and the Universal Heart mediation stands confessed as an impertinent absurdity. Away with any and all of those who interfere in the most sacred concerns of the soul, who press in between the Creator and His offspring; between the heart of man and the parent Heart of G.o.d. Whoever it may be, saint or martyr, or the king of saints and martyrs, Jesus of Nazareth, let him come down from a position which none can rightly hold.

To elevate the n.o.blest son of man into this place of mediator is to make him into an offence to his brethren, and to cause their love to turn into anger, and their reverence into indignation. If men persist in talking about the need of a mediator before they dare to approach G.o.d, we must remind them that, if there be a G.o.d at all, He _must_ be just, and that, therefore, they are perfectly safe In His hands; if they begin to babble about forgiveness "_for the sake of Jesus Christ?_ we must ask them what in the world they mean by the forgiveness of sin?" Surely they do not think that G.o.d is like man, quick to revenge affront and jealous of His dignity; even were it possible for man to injure, in any sense, the Majesty of G.o.d, do they conceive that G.o.d is an irascible and revengeful Potentate? Those who think thus of G.o.d can never--I a.s.sert boldly--have caught the smallest glimpse of _G.o.d_. They may have seen a "magnified man," but they have seen nothing more; they have never prostrated themselves before that Universal Spirit who dwells in this vast universe; they have never felt their own littleness in a place so great. How _can_ sin be forgiven? can a past act be undone, or the hands go back on the sun-dial of Time? All G.o.d's so-called chastis.e.m.e.nts are but the natural and inevitable results of broken laws--laws invariable in their action, neither to be escaped or defied. Obedience to law results in happiness, and the suffering consequent on the transgression of law is not inflicted by an angry G.o.d, but is the simple natural outcome of the broken law itself. Put your hand in the fire, and no mediator can save you from burning; cry earnestly to G.o.d to save you, and then cast yourself from a precipice, and will a mediator come between you and the doom you have provoked? We should do more wisely if we studied laws and tried to conform ourselves to them, instead of going blundering about with our eyes shut, trusting that some one will interpose to s.h.i.+eld us from the effects of our own folly and stupidity.

Happily for mankind, mediation is impossible in that beautiful realm of law in which we are placed; when men have quite made up their minds that their happiness depends entirely on their own exertions, there will at last be some chance for the advancement of Humanity, for then they will work for things instead of praying for them. It is of real practical importance that this Christian notion of mediation should be destroyed, because on it hang all the ideas about trusting to some one else to do our own work. This plan has not answered: we judge it by results, and it has failed. Surely we may hope that as men get to see that prayer has not succeeded in its efforts to "move the arm which moves the world, to bring salvation down," they may turn to the more difficult, but also the more hopeful task, of moving their own arms to work out their own salvation. For the past, it is past, and none can reverse it; none can stay the action of the eternal law which links sorrow with transgression, and joy and peace with obedience. When we slip back on our path upward, we may repent and call on G.o.d or man for forgiveness as we list, but only through toil and suffering can the lost way be recovered, and the rugged path must be trodden with bleeding feet; for there is none who can lift the sinner over the hindrances he has built up for himself, or carry him over the rocks with which he has strewed his road.

Does the sentimental weakness of our age shrink from this doctrine, and whimper out that it is cold and stern? Ay, it is cold with the cold of the bracing sea-breeze, stringing to action the nerves enfeebled by hot-houses and soft-living; ay, it is stern with the blessed sternness of changeless law, of law which never fails us, never varies a hair's breadth. But in that law is strength; man's arm is feeble, but let him submit to the laws of steam, and his arm becomes dowered with a giant's force; conform to a law, and the mighty power of that law is on your side; "humble yourself under the mighty hand of G.o.d," who is the Universal Law, "and He shall lift you up."

So much for mediation. We turn with a still deeper repugnance to study the Christian idea of "Salvation." Mediation at least leaves us G.o.d, however it degrades and blasphemes Him, but salvation takes us altogether out of His Hands. Not content with placing a mediator between themselves and G.o.d, Christians cry out that He is still too near them; they must push Him yet further back, they must have a Saviour too, through whom all His benefits shall filter.

"Saviour," is an expression often found in the Old Testament, where it bears a very definite and n.o.ble meaning. G.o.d is the Saviour of men from the power of sin, and although we may consider that G.o.d does _not_ save from sin in this direct manner, we are yet bound to acknowledge that there is nothing in this idea which is either dishonouring or repulsive.

But the word "Saviour" has been degraded by Christianity, and the salvation He brings is not a salvation from sin. "The Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ" is the Saviour of men, not because he delivers them from sin, but "because he saves them from h.e.l.l, and from the fiery wrath of G.o.d." Salvation is no longer the equivalent of righteousness, the ant.i.thesis of sin; in Christian life it means nothing more than the ant.i.thesis of d.a.m.nation. It is true that Christians may retort that Jesus "saves his people from their sins;" we gladly acknowledge the n.o.bleness and the beauty of many a Christian life, but nevertheless this is _not_ the primary idea attached by popular Christianity to the word "salvation." "Being saved" is to be delivered out of "those hands of the living G.o.d," into which, as they are taught by their Bible, it is so fearful a thing to fall. "Being saved" is the _immediate_ result of conversion, and is the opposite of "being lost." "Being saved" is being hidden "in the riven side of Jesus," and so preserved from the awful flames of the destroying wrath of G.o.d. Against all this we, believers in an Almighty Love, in a Universal Father, enter our solemn and deliberate protest, with a depth of abhorrence, with a pa.s.sion of indignation which is far too intense to find any adequate expression in words. There is no language strong enough to show our deeply-rooted repugnance to the idea that we can be safer anywhere or at any time than we are already here; we cannot repel with sufficient warmth the officious interference which offers to take us out of the hands of G.o.d. To push some one in between our souls and Him was bad enough; but to go further and to offer us salvation from our Maker, to try and threaten us away from the arms of His Love, to suggest that another's hands are more tender, another's heart more loving than the Supreme Heart,--these are blasphemies to which we will not listen in silence. It is true that to us these suggestions are only matters of laughter; dimly as we guess at the Deity, we know enough not to be afraid of Him, and these crude and childish conceptions about Him are among ourselves too contemptible to refute.

"Non ragione di lor, mai guardo e pa.s.so."

But we see how these ideas colour men's thoughts and lives, how they cripple their intellect and outrage their hearts, and we rise to trample down these superst.i.tions, not because they are in themselves worth refuting, but simply because they degrade our brother-men. We believe in no wisdom that improves on Nature's laws, and one of those laws, written on our hearts, is that sorrow shall tread on the heels of sin. We are conscious that men should learn to welcome this law, and not to shrink from it. To fly from the suffering following on broken law is the last thing we should do; we ought to have no grat.i.tude for a "Saviour" who should bear our punishment, and so cheat us out of our necessary lesson, turn us into spoiled children, and check our moral growth; such an offer as this, could it really be made, ought to be met with stern refusal.

We should trust the Supreme so utterly, and adore His wisdom with a humility so profound, that if we could change His laws we should not dare to interfere; nor ought we, even when our lot is saddest, to complain of it, or do anything more than labour to improve it in steadfast obedience to law. We should ask for no salvation; we should desire to fall--were it possible that we _could_ be out of them--into the hands of G.o.d.

Further, is it impossible to make Christians understand that were Jesus all they say he is, we should still reject him; that were G.o.d all they say He is, we would, in that case, throw back His salvation. For were this awful picture of a soul-destroying Jehovah, of a blood-craving Moloch, endowed with a cruelty beyond human imagination, a true description of the Supreme Being, then would we take the advice of Job's wife, we would "curse G.o.d and die?" we would hide in the burning depths of His h.e.l.l rather than dwell within sight of Him whose brightness would mock at the gloom of His creatures, and whose bliss would be a sneer at their despair. Were it thus indeed--

"O King of our salvation, Many would curse to thee, and I for one!

Fling Thee Thy bliss, and s.n.a.t.c.h at Thy d.a.m.nation, Scorn and abhor the rising of Thy sun.

"Is it not worth while to believe," blandly urges a Christian writer, "if it is true, as it is true, that they who deny will suffer everlasting torments?" No! we thunder back at him, _it is not worth while_; it is not worth while to believe a lie, or to acknowledge as true that which our hearts and intellects alike reject as false; it is not worth while to sell our souls for a heaven, or to defile our honesty to escape a h.e.l.l; it is not worth while to bow our knee to a Satan or bend our heads before a spectre. Better, far better, to "dwell with everlasting burnings" than to degrade our humanity by calling a lie, truth, and cruelty, love, and unreasonableness, justice; better to suffer in h.e.l.l, than to have our hearts so hard that we could enjoy while others suffer; could rejoice while others are tormented, could sing alleluias to the music of golden harps, while our lyrics are echoed by the anguished wailing of the lost. G.o.d Himself--were He such as Christians paint Him--could not blot out of our souls our love of truth, of righteousness, of justice. While we have these we are _ourselves_, and we can suffer and be happy; but we cannot afford to pay down these as the price of our admission to heaven. We should be miserable even as we paced the golden streets, and should sit in tears beside the river of the water of life. Yet _this_ is salvation; _this_ is what Christians offer us in the name of Jesus; _this_ is the glad tidings brought to us as the gospel of the Saviour, as the "good news of G.o.d;" and this we reject, wholly and utterly, laughing it to scorn from the depths of our glad hearts which the Truth has made free; this we denounce, with a stern and bitter determination, in the name of the Universal Father, in the name of the self-reliance of humanity, in the name of all that is holy, and just, and loving.

But happily many, even among Christians, are beginning to shrink from this idea of salvation from the G.o.d in whom they say they place all their hopes. They put aside the doctrine, they gloss it over, they prefer not to speak of it. Free thought is leavening Christianity, and is moulding the old faith against its will. Christianity now hides its own cruel side, and only where the bold opponents of its creeds have not yet spread, does it dare to show itself in its real colours; in Spain, in Mexico, we see Christianity unveiled; here, in England, liberty is too strong for it, and it is forced into a semblance of liberality. The old wine is being poured into new bottles; what will be the result? We may, however, rejoice that n.o.bler thoughts about G.o.d are beginning to prevail, and are driving out the old wicked notions about Him and His revenge. The Face of the Father is beginning, however dimly, to s.h.i.+ne out from His world, and before the Beauty of that Face all hard thoughts about Him are fading away. Nature is too fair to be slandered for ever, and when men perceive that G.o.d and Nature are One, all that is ghastly and horrible must die and drop into forgetfulness. The popular Christian ideas of mediation and salvation must soon pa.s.s away into the limbo of rejected creeds which is being filled so fast; they are already dead, and their pale ghosts shall soon flit no longer to vex and hara.s.s the souls of living men.

ON ETERNAL TORTURE.

SOME time ago a Clergyman was proving to me by arguments many and strong that h.e.l.l was right, necessary and just; that it brought glory to G.o.d and good to man; that the holiness of G.o.d required it as a preventive, and the justice of G.o.d exacted it as a penalty, of sin.

I listened quietly till all was over and silence fell on the reverend denunciator; he ceased, satisfied with his arguments, triumphant in the consciousness that they were crus.h.i.+ng and una.s.sailable. But my eyes were fixed on the fair scene without the library window, on the sacrament of earth, the visible sign of the invisible beauty, and the contrast between G.o.d's works and the Church's speech came strongly upon me. And all I found to say in answer came in a few words: "If I had not heard you mention the name of G.o.d, I should have thought you were speaking of the Devil." The words, dropped softly and meditatively, had a startling effect. Horror at the blasphemy, indignation at the unexpected result of laboured argument, struggled against a dawning feeling that there must be something wrong in a conception which laid itself open to such a blow; the short answer told more powerfully than half an hour's reasoning.

The various cla.s.ses of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked in very different styles by the champions of the great army of free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable superst.i.tions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cl.u.s.ter many hallowed memories and fond a.s.sociations; the wors.h.i.+p of centuries has shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the ideal of Humanity; the n.o.blest conceptions of morality, the highest flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of Thomas a Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after knowledge, after holiness, of the n.o.blest sons of men have been called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears, crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this, because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles, therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be a.s.sailed, must be overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of G.o.d, because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things, but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should be attacked without anger and without scorn.

There are other doctrines which, while degrading in regard to man's conception of G.o.d, and therefore deserving of reprobation, yet enshrine great moral truths and have become bound up with enn.o.bling lessons; such is the doctrine of the Atonement, which enshrines the idea of selfless love and of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. There are others again against which ridicule and indignation may rightly be brought to bear, which are concessions to human infirmity, and which belong to the childhood of the race; man may be laughed out of his sacraments and out of his devils, and indignantly reminded that he insults G.o.d and degrades himself by placing a priesthood or mediator between G.o.d and his own soul. But there is one dogma of Orthodox Christianity which stands alone in its atrocity, which is thoroughly and essentially bad, which is without one redeeming feature, which is as blasphemous towards G.o.d as it is injurious to man; on it therefore should be poured out unsparingly the bitterest scorn and the sharpest indignation. There is no good human emotion enlisted on the side of an Eternal h.e.l.l; it is not hallowed by human love or human longings, it does not enshrine human aspirations, nor is it the outcome of human hopes. In support of this no appeal can be made to any feeling of the n.o.bler side of our nature, nor does eternal fire stimulate our higher faculties: it acts only on the lower, baser, part of man; it excites fear, distrust of G.o.d, terror of his presence; it may scare from evil occasionally, but can never teach good; it sees G.o.d in the lightning-flash that slays, but not in the suns.h.i.+ne which invigorates; in the avalanche which buries a village in its fall, but not in the rich promise of the vineyard and the joyous beauty of the summer day. h.e.l.l has driven thousands half-mad with terror, it has driven monks to the solitary deserts, nuns to the sepulchre of the nunnery, but has it ever caused one soul of man to rejoice in the Father of all, and pant, "as the hart panteth after the water-springs, for the presence of G.o.d"?

It is only just to state, in attacking this as a Christian doctrine, that, though believed in by the vast majority of Christians, the most enlightened of that very indefinite body repudiate it with one voice.

It is well known how the great Broad-Church leader, Frederick Denison Maurice, endeavoured to harmonize, on this point, his Bible and his strong moral sense, and failed in so doing, as all must fail who would reconcile two contradictories. How he fought with that word "eternal,"

struggled to prove that whatever else it might mean it did _not_ mean everlasting in our modern sense of the word: that "eternal death" being the ant.i.thesis to "eternal life" must mean a state of ignorance of the Eternal One, even as its opposite was the knowledge of G.o.d: that therefore men could rise from eternal death, aye, did so rise every day in this life, and might so rise in the life to come. n.o.ble was his protest against this awful doctrine, fettered as he was by undue reverence for, and clinging to, the Bible. His appeal to the moral sense in man as the arbiter of all doctrine has borne good fruit, and his labours have opened a road to free thought greater than he expected or even hoped. Many other clergymen have followed in his steps. The word "eternal" has been wrangled over continually, but, however they arrive there, all Broad Churchmen unite in the conclusion that it does not, cannot, shall not, mean literally lasting for ever. This school of thought has laid much stress on the fondness of Orientals for imagery; they have pointed out that the Jewish word Gehenna is the same as Ge Hinnom, or valley of Hinnom, and have seen in the state of that valley the materials for "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched:" they show how by a natural transition the place into which were thrown the bodies of the worst criminals became the type of punishment in the next world, and the valley where children were sacrificed to Moloch gave its name to the infernal abode of devils. From that valley Jesus drew his awful picture, suggested by the pale lurid fires ever creeping there, mingling their ghastly flames with the decaying bodies of the dishonoured dead. In all this there is probably much truth, and many Broad Churchmen are content to accept this explanation, and so retain their belief in the supernatural character of the Bible, while satisfying their moral sense by rejecting its most immoral dogma.

Among the evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard to protest against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev.

Samuel Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion of his "world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on him. He seems to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some cases and of "everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will be literally destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is eternal by no means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into the fire should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable does not prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he explains as irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction.

This theory should have more to recommend it to all who believe in the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church explanation; it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture, and, indeed, a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible itself.

It is scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from orthodox Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there is such a phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes in an eternal h.e.l.l.

With these small exceptions the ma.s.s of Christians hold this dogma, but for the most part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of it even while duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in their creed which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People of this kind "do not like to talk about h.e.l.l, it is better to think of heaven." Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their belief boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the profession of it a condition of admittance into their body, while many High Church divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in it is needed by loyalty towards G.o.d and "charity to the souls of men." I wish I could believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize it, and only accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to them. But what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted from Father Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I take it as a specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children are asked: "How will your body be when the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of eighteen is described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire.

It is pressed down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into the skull; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A boy is boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones." Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture: one is in a red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this little child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the faces of all in h.e.l.l--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this man realized what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a priest.

Dr. Pusey, too, has a word to say about h.e.l.l: "Gather in mind all that is most loathsome, most revolting--the most treacherous, malicious, coa.r.s.e, brutal, inventive, fiendish cruelty, unsoftened by any remains of human feeling, such as thou couldst not endure for a single hour....

hear those yells of blaspheming, concentrated hate as they echo along the lurid vault of h.e.l.l."

Protestantism chimes in, and Spurgeon speaks of h.e.l.l: "Wilt thou think it is easy to lie down in h.e.l.l, with the breath of the Eternal fanning the flames? Wilt thou delight thyself to think that G.o.d will invent torments for thee, sinner?" "When the d.a.m.ned jingle the burning irons of their torment, they shall say, 'for ever;' when they howl, echo cries, 'for ever.'"