Читать книгу A Rebel's Vision Splendid - James H. G. Chapple - Страница 7

Table of Contents

People to-day are thinking alien thoughts from each other. Friend passes friend in the street and market-place, and neither knows nor guesses what the other’s opinion on different matters may be; but both anticipate a change of some sort, and it is not good for business or social status to express opinions. Besides, it is dangerous, especially so, to express opinions that do not hang plumb with prevailing notions. The mere fact that men and women fear to give forth their ideas is suggestive that something is out of joint with humanity, for it is man alone who has ideas and the power to express them. It is of little use having ideas if one is not allowed to express them. Freethought is of little value unless there be also free speech. There must be no coercion of ideas. Yet the tendency is that way. The time sends forth a clarion call for brave thinkers; better still, brave thinkers who will not fear to speak and write. Thinkers who know truth and love it, having no axe to grind. Above all, let us put little trust in political thinkers. The very word “politician” to-day has an evil sound. The word “statesman” still has a good sound. They differ in this—the politician has his eye on the next election and the statesman looks beyond the ballot-box to futurity.

There is a war of ideas about militarism. Does it protect our liberties or rob us of them? Do we need an army of defence or do we not? Is soldiering and warfare morally and physically good? Why should the killing of an individual be a crime while collective homicide is a virtue? Note the following:

Sir Nevil Macready, the Chief Commissioner of Police, has drawn attention to the marked increase in crime in Great Britain during the past few months. A noted mental specialist, Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, has not hesitated to assert that this is due to the slackened moral sense following the war. War, he said, caused a great national excitement acting on the nervous system. On a certain type of character it had the worst possible effect; indeed, in the case of very many persons war tended to draw out the worst rather than the best. There was no doubt that a man who had lived a life in which killing was the daily work was likely to be more impulsive afterwards than ever before. Sir Robert argued that as the faculties latest acquired are the first to be lost, the moral sense which was acquired comparatively late, soon gave way under the strain of great excitement, and this was at the bottom of the enormous increase in theft, and house-breaking, and in kleptomania among women.

There is a war of ideas over education. It is a strange comedy to see our militarists, imperialists and capitalists wanting Bible teaching in the public schools while the prophetic souls with The Vision Splendid don’t want it. There is food for reflection here. The message for all progressive people to-day is: Go get that child! Our attitude towards the child denotes the real point we have reached in our civilization. When Treherne asked: “Is it not strange a little child should be heir to the whole world?” he saw the point. Then let us live for our children and give to them The Vision Splendid. In the old days of Roman decadence the child was not wanted by many, and was accordingly exposed, abandoned; became a slave or chattel or died. Modern Britain has somewhat altered the method, she deliberately plans not to have the child. Every doctor and chemist could reveal some unpleasant facts here. In the war of ideas that idea will win that is closest to nature, and thereby closest to God. There must be a new attitude towards the child, for the promise and flower of the world to-day centres in the child, if we can only successfully say to the nationalist, militarist, capitalist and imperialist,—“Hands off!” The peace of the world, the brotherhood of the world and the unity of the great human family all centres in the child. The child is the most hopeful of all created things, and all the glorious future centres in the child. In a word, the millenium will come by the child—a little child shall lead them. But the educational system must be controlled by another spirit than the present, for in that:

The priest continues what the nurse began,

And thus the child imposes on the man.

The present child lover revolts at the conventionally unclean and immoral tricks to limit births—especially eugenic births. The three finest words in our language are Home, Love, and Child, and in those quarters of deliberate childlessness they sin against God by practising the great denial of life. The God of nature has made the sex instinct strong and the enjoyment of it beautiful in order that the earth may be a great birth place, made so by incessant renewals—the Divine soul rings true in this—let us idealise sex matters and forget the Victorian age with its nasty sentiment and bogus morality. There is the dawning of a new orientation on this subject, and the rise of the industrial class will sweeten the social atmosphere and usher in a more wholesome sex ethic. Science will eliminate the dysgenic and encourage better births of health, genius and sanity. Labour, hand in hand with science, will give us better houses, healthier work, better wages, and more gladsome conditions generally. Under Tory and Liberal influences the money now goes in war and destruction. When Labour really rules the money will be spent in peace and construction. Says Francis Brown:

The days of the nations bear no trace

Of all the sunshine so far untold;

The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place,

The age is weary with work and gold.

There is also a war of ideas over the modern newspapers. A few are even putting the awkward question—Is journalism an ethical way to earn a living? The greatest menace of the day is the menace of the newspapers, and the most dangerous newspaper of all is able to pay for sky-writing by aeroplane smoke-letters! Oh, the prostitute Press! Note the following:

“There is no such thing in America,” confessed one New York journalist, “as an independent press. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or the vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”—Holt: Commercialism and Journalism.

But a special chapter had better be reserved for the newspapers, as they are one of the greatest hindrances to The Vision Splendid. There are some exceptions, and therein lies our hope. For the most part they are the channels of the propaganda necessary for the vested interests, and have no better advice to offer to the workers who make the vested interests possible, than to “work faster,” and, if necessary, “eat less.” While they sit at the graceless table d’hote dinners and luncheons they leave the worker with this grace:

Heavenly Father, bless us and keep us all alive,

There’s ten of us for dinner, and not enough for five!

Strangest of all, in this war of ideas about The Vision Splendid, the place where we should expect the vision of a better world to be cherished most, we find the opposite; in that place it is cherished least—the orthodox Churches! Truly in America there has been a great and bitter controversy, and the cleavage has developed into Modernism versus Fundamentalism; the beginnings of this word battle and idea battle which promises to divide homes and friends are also to be seen in England. Fundamentalism is really the entrenched theological position of the Middle Ages, while Modernism is inspired by modern science and is the new revelation of God to man. Modernism does not destroy but really fulfils God’s law. But Fundamentalism, alas, is popular because men and women like to avoid the intolerable toil of thought, and the real trouble is that intelligent people number only about two in every hundred. Also—it has been pointed out in America—they vote! Carolina has joined Oklahoma in voting out all teaching of evolution in the public schools. To many of us the controversy has been closed since Huxley wiped the floor with Wilberforce at Oxford many decades ago. A debate about evolution in these days seems as silly and absurd as a debate about the earth’s movement. Intelligent clergymen surely know the position; but alas, alack, for the most part they are dumb dogs that will not bark, and so the Churches trade on the people’s lack of knowledge. No wonder the intelligentzia are leaving the Church; they feel the truth of Swinburne’s lines:

We have done with the kisses that sting,

With the thief’s mouth red from the feast,

With the blood on the hands of the king,

And the lie on the lips of the priest.

To-day brains are searching for truth and philosophy; certainly brains are not to be found in the Churches of tradition.

This is veracious: A clergyman from Cambridge, Mass., had occasion to preach to the inmates of an insane hospital. During his sermon he noticed that one of the patients paid the closest attention, his eyes riveted upon the preacher’s face, his body bent eagerly forward. Such interest was most flattering. After the service, the speaker noticed that the man spoke to the superintendent, so as soon as possible the preacher inquired, “Didn’t that man speak to you about my sermon?” “Yes.” “Would you mind telling me what he said?” The superintendent tried to sidestep, but the preacher insisted. “Well,” he said at last, “What the man said was, ‘Just think, he’s out and I’m in.’ ”

So the clergy keep on repeating the old words—have faith and not reason—forgetting that the human reason is part of the Divine reason. A wit repeated as a pleasantry that a parson with brain trouble went to a medical man, who was a specialist in mental troubles. He put the patient under chloroform and neatly removed the top of the skull, placing the clerical brains in a basin of water, when at that point another special and urgent case was announced by the maid. The doctor hurriedly placed the piece of skull on, bandaged the head, got the patient back to consciousness and sent him home in a taxi. But the replacing of the brains was overlooked, they were still in the basin. When Sunday was over, the doctor sent word to the Rev. Boreham that he had gone without his brains, to which he replied that he was an orthodox parson and did not need them, as he had got through his Sunday services splendidly without them!

There is a great call to-day for a truthful Church and an honest religion. The minister should be in harmony with the best thought of the day. A congregation should be able to listen and worship with minds open to all truth, whether it is in line with creeds or not. Science and reason have not to be squared with creeds, but creeds have to be squared with science and reason. If not, then so much the worse for the creeds. The Churches must grow mentally as well as spiritually. We approach a second Renaissance, and the Church to survive the shock of things will have a simple belief in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man—a Church broad enough to take in all. The older the writer gets the shorter becomes his creed. It has now, only four words—love God; love Man. Like Olive Schreiner, he could not step back into the valley of superstitions, having once stepped out. To attempt to do so would be as impossible as for a chick to step back into the broken shell it had struggled out from. But God has become more real than ever. God now is a life, an experience, not a mental affirmation, not a credal assent:

One thought I have, my ample creed,

So deep it is and broad,

And equal to my every need,

It is the thought of God.

God remains! And we are as indestructible as God, for God is immanent in all, and especially so in man made conscious. True religion is a stimulus to love, and love prompts to service. The truth comes down two thousand years: “The greatest among you is he that serveth.” Ye shall know the truth (of science and evolution) and the truth shall make you free (from superstitions). But this life is not all:

If this were all, when life is ended here,

Then all the love that you and I have sought

And garnered thro’ the swiftly passing years

Would be for naught.

Oblivion like a sodden sleep would come

To kill our souls and hold that love in thrall;

And we would be as if we had not been,—

If this were all!

The stumbling-block in the road of progress is bibliolatry. A sealed book is the cause of the conflict. To the traditionalists inspiration is closed two thousand years ago, and so to-day there are two bibles, the superstitious bible of the Fundamentalists and the enlightened bible of modern scholarship. The first throws the world back and is a foul dogmatism of ignorant men, the lovers of miracles and superstitions. To the enlightened mind, a God who resorted to miracles would be a kind of almighty juggler, who resorted to tricks in order to convince the vulgar. A God of inflexible law we can love and respect. For all the Biblical miracles and all other so-called miracles there is a rational explanation. A lady collecting for one of the charities, met a young curate and asked him for a donation. “Sorry, madam, but I haven’t a coin on me.” “Oh, sir,” said she, “the Lord told me to ask you, and I am sure he knows better than you do. Now, you just search your pockets, and I am sure you will find a coin.” To please the lady he began searching his pockets; as his hand came out of each pocket he would smile, and say: “None there you see!” But on putting his hand into the trousers pocket he found half-a-crown. His surprise was great, and on arriving at his house he began excitedly to tell the Bishop who was staying with him.

“My Lord,” said he, “when I left home I had absolutely no money on me, and yet I found a half-crown in my trousers pocket. It was a miracle, my Lord.”

“Miracle? Miracle be blowed,” said his Lordship. “Why, man, you’ve got my pants on.”

There is a great call for sincerity. The pulpit should be the most truthful spot in the world; and a great spirit is passing over the earth demanding that it be so. “In proportion,” said Channing, “as a man suppresses his convictions in order to save his orthodoxy from suspicion, or distorts language from its common use that he may stand well with his party, in that proportion he clouds and degrades his intellect as well as undermines the integrity of his character.” This is peculiarly to the point to-day in the subject of evolution. Is the fact of evolution to be accepted? The word “fact” is used, for evolution is no longer a “theory.” Is evolution valid or is it a dream? If valid, then the fall of man is a myth, and all the bogus theology built upon the fall has to go. But God remains, and so does religion.

There is no conflict between fundamental religion, but only fundamental theology. Religion is not a system of doctrine, but a way of life. Religion is not faith ABOUT Jesus, or faith IN Jesus, but the faith OF Jesus, and the faith OF Jesus was simple THEISM: he believed in the Fatherhood of God. He believed in the brotherhood of man. All great truths are simple, and so is religious truth. There is a war of ideas, and in religion this simple idea will win. Said Victor Hugo: “An invasion of armies can be resisted; not so an invasion of ideas.” The Church must be cleansed from non-essentials; the nightmares of superstition must go. The Church, too, must be socially awakened. It must not only know the evidences of evolution, but it must vision the social goal; in a simple phrase, it must be devoted to God’s kingdom on the earth. But fundamentalism remains indifferent to all this, and there is a cost to indifference; the Church will learn it too late in the crisis.

There is an old story of a man who began to shingle his house in a rain storm. When asked why he did not shingle it before it rained, he replied, that it did not need shingling until it rained! The truth is, there is another Reformation needed. Luther’s was an incomplete task. Luther even referred to Copernicus as, “that fool Copernicus!” What would Luther have said about Darwin? Could Luther have understood that creation by God’s evolutionary law is better than creation by supposed Divine fiat? The Luther of a higher morality has yet to appear, and when he comes, preaching an all round higher ethic, he will be called by the fundamentalists an Anti-Christ—immoralist.

Let me add that no one is so full of optimism, no one so full of idealism as the well informed intelligent Evolutionist. It is he who to-day, altogether outside the Church, lives the really religious life; deeper and better, too, than the theological life. He knows that creation never ceases, and is thereby enabled to vision the goal in the distance. He knows too that man is being created, is at present hardly out of the cradle; in fact in the larval stage. This is the man with real faith, and he peers through the mists: and is somewhat better than the truth loving poet, who said:

I cannot see the mountains,

For the valley is filled with mist,

The pines and the winds are silent,

And even the waves are whist.

.......

But the sun is above the mountains,

Above the mist and the sea,

And God is above the shadows

That hide His meanings from me.