Читать книгу The Divine Need of the Rebel - James H. G. Chapple - Страница 3

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Lowell: “Is God dumb that He should speak no more.”

Shakespeare, in All’s Well:

“In Religion

What damned error but some sober brow

Will bless and approve it with a text.”

Max Muller: “He who knows only one religion knows none.”

The popular attitude towards the Bible and the views concerning it is a great impoverishment. Christendom is the poorer, and it also impoverishes the views of God—

“Would’st make a jail to coop the living God?”

In past years, as an orthodox Presbyterian clergyman, many doubts were raised, many questionings fought. Some subject may have been in the air and called for a sermon. Then came the searchings for a text or passage suitable from the Bible. A text from Shakespeare, Shelley, or Kant presented itself to the mind. But it would never have done to have stood in a pulpit on the Sabbath and deliver a discourse from texts of Scripture in the wider Bible of Literature—that would have been shocking and session trouble—then larger trouble from the Presbytery would have followed. Those people—

“Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains,

Drew dry the springs of the All-Knower’s thoughts,”

would have caused anxiety.

It is a pity we allow the words “Text,” “Scripture” and “Bible” to have undue religious meaning, for they should equally apply to all literature. The word Bible simply comes from the Greek word “biblios,” which, by the way, is plural, and means “books.” These things are not explained to congregations, and there is little intelligence abroad concerning them, hence the mental darkness and impoverishment. The result is Bibliolatry, and multitudes

“Bowing themselves in dust before a book

And thinking the great God is theirs alone.”

Much could be uttered on the slavery of a book and its fallacies, also on the slavery of a day and its absurdities. The religious column of a leading New Zealand daily paper before me shows a paragraph with the head lines: “The Sabbath-breaker as bad as the murderer.” There follows about six inches of matter to prove it! If it be so, then there are a number of apparently quite decent people in the street of my residence who are murderers in the degree of their guilt, for they can be seen mowing their lawns on the Sabbath.

It was when passing through a very dark experience as an orthodox minister that, at the extremity of a darkness that could be felt almost, the influences of the Universal Spirit caused me to take from the library shelves a volume of Arthur Clough’s poems. A passage from his “Dipsychus” came as a splendid revelation to me. In such a way as no passage from so-called Holy Writ had ever come. This is not a challenge to the many inspired passages of the Christian Bible. The contention is there is a wider Bible of Literature—a never ceasing revelation and inspiration. An inspiration all truth-born loving souls may share directly they know their moral grandeur and recognise their divinity.

Poor Shelley, an outcast from the Church, ejected from a college for writing a pamphlet on Atheism, was at the same time a channel of Divine inspiration in writing Queen Mab. The truth is, the channels of inspiration and revelation to-day are not in orthodox circles. Has there been a more severe critic of Christianity than Nietzsche? Then listen to a passage from his Ecce Homo:

“If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power.... One hears—one does not seek; one takes—one does not ask who gives; a thought suddenly flashes up like lightning, it comes with necessity, without faltering. I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one’s steps now involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, and so on.”

It is an extraordinary passage for a man like Nietzsche to write, and all doubters should read it. In the Introduction to Zarathustra the same wonderful passage is quoted. He is a bold, unthinking man who would deny inspiration to either Shelley or Nietzsche—in fact to anyone. Any man devoted to an ideal can truly say: “Thus saith the Lord,” or “The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying”:—

“Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone.

Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it;

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.”

It is a very rational question for any doubter to ask himself: Has God ceased to speak? Again: Is it not possible to have a wider and grander Bible? Again: Can there be no more prophets—no more revelations? What, then, of future artists, poets and musicians?

We cannot wilfully shut our eyes and sin against the light. We dare not thrust aside the scholarship of the world. We cannot trample on reason and insult intelligence. The fact is our Bible is but a part of a larger and grander Bible. What of Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning and Emerson? Can there be nothing of value except that which came from Palestine? No water of value but Jordan water?

The barbaric savageness of a “Personal Devil” and a “Burning Hell” makes it imperative to enlarge our literary coasts. The prayer of Jabez applies here. The wish of the Psalmist was also apt: “Set my feet in a large place!”

Katherine Lee Bates has written a strange haunting little poem “The Tattered Catechism.”

“This tattered catechism weaves a spell,

Invoking from the long ago a child

Who deemed her fledgling soul so sin defiled.

She practised with a candle-flame at hell,

Burning small fingers that would still rebel

And flinch from fire. Forsooth not all beguiled

By hymn and sermon, when her mother smiled,

That smile was fashioning an infidel.

‘If I’m in hell,’ the baby logic ran,

‘Mother will hear me cry and come for me.

If God says No—I don’t believe he can

Say No to mother.’ Then at that dear knee

She knelt demure, a little Puritan

Whose faith in love had wrecked theology!”

Very good—but that is a fine touch: “If I’m in hell, mother will hear me cry and come to me. If God says No—I don’t believe he can say No to mother!” Splendid! But it wrecks the Protestant position and the threadbare sentence of Chillingworth becomes absurd and meaningless:—“The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants.” Let us face the truth and say it has to go. An evolving morality demands it. The root of the matter lies in the query: Has morality a theological or a scientific basis? A large well-meaning section of the community thinks that ethics can only have a theological base, while the growing section of thinkers hold otherwise—that there is a scientific foundation for morality, and the moral world is comparable to the perfect order of Nature; that ethics should be thoroughly consistent and in harmony with the orderly cosmos. There are really two parts of the cosmic order—one is the natural and the other is the moral. To the truly religious man to-day the term “God” is but the name for the “Eternal Right” within. The law of right is the moral adamant upon which the whole moral universe is built.

The word “morality” involves all social relationship. The social ideal is or should be the goal of all our institutions. The unwritten creed of the future includes the abolition of poverty, the lifting up of the labouring classes to the full dignity of free men, and the giving of opportunity to complete, free, true and noble lives, and all this quite apart from superstition and theology. These things are replacing theology in the old terms and sense, and the world is becoming more ethical, for the very principles of justice are penetrating through every fibre of life. It belongs to all that is covered by the word “Good” or “God.” The word “God” is but the shortened word “Good,” even as the word “Evil” had a D put before it and became “Devil.”

Man is no longer imploring an outside personal extraneous Deity, but finds God immanent within himself. Arise, Man, from thy knees and act! Thou art not a suppliant, but a creator! We no longer implore Apollo, Jove or Jahveh to stop a pestilence, but learn from science. Religion now ceases to be a set of feelings, a creed, or a Book centre; it becomes a life and a set of social practices. When a person assents to this question—Does the rightness of a thing attract you? he has moved from theology to ethics—it is an upward step. From a scientific point the universe is infinitely truthful. The coming and going of the seasons prove it. The accuracy of eclipses and tides add to the truth and proof. So in the moral world there will yet be no room for unethical conduct. Here we see that the permanent basis of morality is not to be found in a book or any theology, but is to be discovered in truth immutable, for morality depends on fundamental scientific principles. Instead of saying as hitherto, that morality is a branch from the root of theology as revealed in a book, we now say morality itself is the root. Religion is not the guardian of morality, but morality is the guardian of religion.

The Churches to-day suffer from the growing pains of morality. Our evolving morality is shocked at the barbaric creeds and confessions of faith; morality is purifying religion! After all the theological losses and the weakening of Bibliolatry there still remains Love, Truth, Honour and Duty, and we are bound to them as iron is bound to the magnet and the tides to the moon.

The term “An infallible Bible,” like the term “In Christ,” and other mystical phrases and key-words, appear to be correct and right simply because they are familiar and appeal to sentiment. It is well to remember that such terms make no appeal and touch no sentiment to the members of the other great world religions. The term “Lord Jesus” has no meaning to the millions of Buddhists, but the term “Lord Buddha” or “living in Buddha,” would to them be pregnant with sense, and simply sublime. To be saved by “blood” is simply revolting to millions of the Easterns, and many passages of the Christian Bibles are no less than loathsome and disgusting and ever will be. The orthodox key-words in Christendom to-day and the spirit of Bibliolatry with the whole gamut of mystical phrases are going the way of obsolete things. There is no end of revival effort and theological thimble-rigging going on to try and save them. They cannot exist longer, and the world war has hastened their demise. For a time they may continue in that quarter known for mental apathy and moral sluggishness. The race and the planet swings on, and people are caring less than ever for your “infallible book” or the “infallible” interpretation thereof. The Bible and Tract Society circulated millions of Bibles amongst the soldiers of all nations fighting during the war. Those who read them would choose the war passages and go forth to slay the enemy who on the other side of the trenches would probably be reading the self-same passages and go forth to slay likewise. All combatants, too, praying to the “One God,” and going forth to kill in His Name! All soldiers—German, Austrian, French, Russian, American and British were prayed away by Christian pastors of varying sectarian tints, all appealing to the One Universal Spirit—all asking the same Mother-Father-God to bless “Our army,” “Our flag,” “Our nation!”

What insanity! They were all strengthened with Bible texts, and had the “inerrant Book” to support them! The world is tired of it. These petty theologies belong to the sunset of the world’s “yesterday,” and the dawn of the world’s “to-morrow” is to be in harmony with rational, scientific and ethical teaching. The Bibliolaters must learn that the Bible that caused multitudes of innocent people to be put to death for witchcraft on the authority of the text: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” is to find its place among the obsolete gods who burn millions of people in hell for ever. The same sun that looked down upon the waning altar fires of human sacrifices is now looking down upon the waning altar fires of theological influences arising from so-called infallible books. The old world beliefs are hoary yesterdays. These altars are cold, deserted and desolate. And let us be thankful—the world grows kinder and more merciful and more tolerant as such ideas pass out. It is a worry to the orthodox to know that our New Zealand children have improved in morals under the secular educational system without any Bible readings. There is a splendid unchurched goodness that is not one whit behind the goodness of the superstitionists and the Bibliolaters. In fact it is a finer morality, for it finds its motives entirely outside theological threats, rewards and sanctions. After all, it is a low standard of ethical sanction, prompted by heavenly rewards and hellish fears. It is a wicked thing to take hold of the plastic minds of children and maim the intellect and mutilate the understanding. The Chinese distort the feet of children, but this pedal abortion is of little consequence to the mental abortion of Bibliolaters. To impress fables as facts you must take the superstitious branding iron and deface with scars the sweet and beautiful rational mind of a child.

Let us teach the dear children truth at all costs—that the Bible is a natural and human production; that the laws of evolution apply to the growth of the Bible. Teach them to read and study the wider bibles of literature—the larger bibles of nature—to learn of John Burroughs and Richard Jeffries the secrets of Nature—the bible also of the human heart and the bibles of the moral law in the human heart. Teach them that theology rests not on a book, but in the human spirit. Be honest and tell them, in the words of Gerald Massey, that “Christology as taught in orthodox circles is mummified mythology.” Tell them, in the words of Plutarch, “It is better to deny God than calumniate Him.” Explain to them that the faith OF Jesus is a different thing from faith IN Jesus. His faith was in the Great All-Father. Above all things, tell them of their Divinity. That they too may be the channel of inspiration and revelation, if devoted to the truth and willing to sacrifice for the truth. By and by they, with Ernest Crosbie, may be able to write and say (Crosbie, too, was outside the orthodox fold):—

“It is not I that have written;

It is not I that have sung.

I am the chord that Another has smitten

The chime that Another has rung.

Do not blame me, for how can a man turn

And leave unrecorded behind

The truths which the great Magic Lantern

Flashed bright on the blank of his mind?

I give but the things I am given;

I know but the things that I see;

I draw, but my pencil is driven

By a force that is Master of me.”