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In the early part of this chapter I have alluded to the real causes for the apparent acquiescence of the majority in the claims of the Christian religion. Among these causes there is a somewhat complex one requiring, special notice, for it tends to confuse the main issue, more perhaps than any other. The Church is now appearing in an altogether novel role. Until quite recently her concern was only for the spiritual welfare of man, and she expected to gain her purpose by supernatural rather than by natural means. This plan, after many centuries of trial, has proved a terrible failure. It has not contributed either to man’s spiritual or material improvement. Now, in England, she is emulating the thorough-paced humanitarian in her devotion to the betterment of humanity by natural means. Never before has there been that interest in the material condition of the people which is now evinced by such institutions as the Church Temperance Society and Homes for Inebriates, the Church Army, the Church Lads Brigade, the Church Rescue Societies, Homes for Waifs and Strays, etc. The Church, too, is now concerning herself with the better housing of the poor, the improvement of our jail system, and other rational methods for raising the social condition of the people and creating an environment likely to improve the moral atmosphere. All such measures, in fact, as have long ago been advocated by rationalists and social reformers are now taken up vigorously by the Churches. “Better late than never,” you will say. Quite so; but that is not the point. Far be it from me to decry these excellent results of “modern thought”; still, the fact remains that the issue is thereby confused, and will continue to be thus confused for some time to come. People will only look at what the Churches, in Protestant countries at least, are now doing, and see in it another proof of Christianity’s power for good. They will not trouble their heads to consider why it should have taken nearly 2,000 years before the Christian Church recognised such an essential portion of her duties towards her poorer neighbours.28

Nor is it only this increase of zeal for “raising humanity out of the gutter” which has confused the issue. Numerous are the ways in which Christianity obtains a prestige sometimes partly deserved, sometimes wholly undeserved. Good works belong to the former class. The Churches of all denominations have always occupied the position of grand almoners, and, in that they have carried out that trust conscientiously, they have fully earned the confidence of the rich and the gratitude of the poor. But people are liable to forget that the huge donations given during their lifetime, and left in their wills by charitably disposed persons, are given usually from true humanitarian principles, and that kind hearts are to be found all over the world, quite apart from belief or unbelief. These gifts to the needy are not, let it be said to the credit of mankind, a mere soul-insurance, like the donations given, and often extorted, in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches, for “Masses,” “Indulgences,” etc. All this charitable work, for which the Church is the agent employed, is usually put down entirely to the credit of the Church and Christianity. It does not seem to be realised that the “Golden Rule” is far older than Christianity, and is practised in other than Christian countries; and that the Church, in being entrusted very largely with the dispensation of charity, obtains credit for a service for which she is after all well paid, and which any properly selected body of laymen would perform quite as well, and possibly with more discrimination.

If all the good and none of the bad works performed in Christendom are to be attributed to the working of the Christian faith, the same argument must hold good of the Hindu or Buddhist faith, when the people are Hindoos or Buddhists. The code of ethics attached to a religion does, of course, make a difference; but it neither proves that the belief is correct, nor that it is impossible to have the ethics without the belief. Confucianism is an agnostic ethical system which the educated classes of Japan have adopted for centuries, and its splendid results are just now much in evidence. Only a few days ago I received a letter from an agnostic supporter of Christianity who said: “Look at the good that Christianity does, look at its endless charitable organisations”; and he asked, “Could the Clarion people do anything of this kind?” It never occurred to him, and it never occurs to many of his way of thinking, that the “Clarion people” have very slender funds at present; and the charitable work that they do, though proportionately large, is not likely to come to his notice unless he takes the trouble to inquire. The vast majority of English people are professing Christians, and if any charitable work is to be done agnostics give their support to it, although the agents for it are Christians. However, I have not received a brief from the “Clarionettes.” My object is to show how the issue becomes confused, and, if my agnostic friend is correct in considering Christianity false and yet indispensable, the future is indeed full of alarms. What will happen, for instance, when the knowledge of this falsehood becomes common property? I am fully aware that my friend voices the opinion of many fairly thoughtful Englishmen; but this is because they are in the habit of hearing every useful advance in civilisation accredited to Christianity:—hospitals, though they existed long before Christianity, and only fell out of use after its introduction—the raised status of women, though it was on the introduction of Christianity that the status was lowered—abolition of slavery, though among the most strenuous advocates for the abolition were such well-known freethinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Stuart Mill, and Moncure Conway, while the whole of Tory England shouted its approval when General Lee drew his sword on behalf of the rights of “Old Virginia,” and while Gladstone, in his first Newark address, 1832, owned that slavery was justified by the Bible—efforts for superseding the horrors and clumsiness of war, though freethinkers to a man are supporters of the movement, while Bishops from the pulpit offer up prayers for peace and in the same breath expatiate on the ennobling effects of war upon the race, and while the head of a mighty theocratic-autocratic Christian Government calls the nations to a peace conference, and then takes the first opportunity to prosecute the most unnecessary and bloody war the world has ever known.

It is erroneous assertions such as these which tend, perhaps, more than anything else, to confuse the simple question before us—the truth of Christianity. They are therefore discussed at greater length in a separate chapter devoted to popular fallacies. Meanwhile, in the present chapter I hope I have succeeded in giving some insight into the true nature of the present situation.

1 As the Rev. John A. Hutton attempts to show in the Hibbert Journal, July, 1905.

2 In his address at the London Diocesan Conference in April, 1904.

3 When addressing a conference of clergy and church-workers at Blandford on September 7th, 1905.

4 In the course of one of those remarkable orations of his which always command the thoughtful attention of the House. The speech was reported in the newspapers of March 15th, 1904.

5 See Dr. Horton’s letter to the Daily News, August 23rd, 1905.

6 The Rev. Charles Voysey, in a sermon preached at the Theistic Church, Swallow Street, on February 5th, 1905.

7 See pp. 63–4.

8 Quoted from What it is to be a Christian, a pamphlet written by the Ven. J. M. Wilson, D.D.

9 Eighteen per cent. was the figure given by Bishop Ingram, speaking of “Londoners,” in his speech at the annual meeting of the Bishop of London’s Fund in 1904; but, according to the strict results of the census, the figure for London is twenty-two or twenty-three per cent. of the total population.

10 As Mr. Fielding remarks in his book, The Hearts of Men (pp. 217–8): “To one coming to Europe after years in the East and visiting churches, nothing is more striking than the enormous preponderance of women there. It is immaterial whether the church be in England or France, whether it be Anglican or Roman Catholic or Dissenter. The result is always the same—women outnumber the men as two to one, as three to one, sometimes as ten to one.”

11 As a matter of fact, no distinguished leader among modern biologists has come to any such conclusion. People are apt to forget that, while Lord Kelvin is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished living physicists, he is not himself a biologist.

12 See Nature, April 23rd, 1903; also Appendix to this work.

13 This assertion is severely criticised by Mr. Joseph McCabe in the Hibbert for July, 1905. Mr. McCabe holds that “Sir Oliver Lodge’s own conception of life may, with a far greater show of reason, be described as a modified survival of an older doctrine” (p. 746).

14 Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the distinguished naturalist and evolutionist, is another scientist with spiritist convictions, and his concern for supernatural religion led him to step outside his own domain and make that remarkable attack upon current scientific opinions in astronomical matters which met with such unanimous condemnation (see the Fortnightly Review for March and September, 1903).

15 In the Times, October, 1904.

16 At Exeter Hall, in March, 1905, Lady Blount developed her “flat-earth” theory, and accused Newton of want of logic.

17 A book, edited by the Rev. J. E. Hand (George Allen), which gives, perhaps, the best that can be said by able and fair-minded men, writing in the light of the latest knowledge and criticism, in favour of a reconciliation between religion and science. The book contains essays by various authors—Sir O. Lodge, Professors Thomson, Geddes, and Muirhead, the Rev. P. N. Waggett, the Rev. John Kelman, and others.

18 Dr. W. Barry, in his Ernest Renan, is content to attribute the change mainly to Renan’s study of Kant. But such a theory is inconsistent with Renan’s own statement in his Reminiscences, where he expressly declares that questions of history, not metaphysics, shook his faith.

19 Author of a vituperative libel on agnostics, called Atheism and Faith.

20 The psychical aspect of the belief of such persons is discussed in Chap. VI., § 5.

21 Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral on the first Sunday after Epiphany, 1905. See also Appendix.

22 The Secretary of the Rationalist Press Association has received several private letters from clergymen expressing their desire to leave the Church if they could find some employment. They usually have large families dependent upon them for support.

23 I omit all mention of the trading or domestic classes who often depend directly for their support on strict religionists. The way in which “their bread is buttered” is bound to enter considerably into their calculations, and also they have often even less leisure for the study of modern thought than a steady (temperate) working man.

24 A cheap edition has since been published by the R. P. A.

25 Anti-Nunquam, by Dr. Warschauer, with prefatory note by J. Estlin Carpenter, is considered by many Churchmen to be an admirable refutation of God and My Neighbour. I have seldom read anything less likely to convince. Sentence after sentence is open to the gravest exception.

26 See Appendix.

27 E.g., in the Nineteenth Century and After, see the article on “The Present Position of Religious Apologetics,” appearing in the issue for October, 1903; or on “Freethought in the Church of England” in the issues for September and December, 1904. The answers in the same journal are most unsatisfactory, and only serve to show how very little, apparently, can be said in reply.

28 Although the Church has ever been charitable, she has made no effort to cure poverty. She is, she must be, the ally of those to whom she chiefly owes her power and prestige. Jeremy Taylor is not the only eminent divine who has systematically courted the favour of the influential and rich.