CHAPTER XV. MORALITY INDEPENDENT OF THEOLOGY
"Religion, as dealing with the confessedly incomprehensible,
is not the basis for human union, in social, or industrial,
or political circles, but only that portion of old religion
which is now called moral."
—Professor Francis William Newman.
BISHOP ELLICOTT was the first prelate whom I heard admit (in a sermon to the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science) that men might be moral from other motives than those furnished by Christianity. Renan says that Justin Martyr "in his Apology, never attacks the principle of the empire. He wants the empire to examine the Christian doctrines." A Secularist would have attacked the principle, regarding freedom as of more consequence to progress than any doctrine without it. Those who seek to guide life by reason are not without a standard of appeal. "Secularism accepts no authority but that of nature, adopts no methods but those of science and philosophy, and respects in practice no rule but that of the conscience, illustrated by the common sense of mankind. It values the lessons of the past, and looks to tradition as presenting a storehouse of raw materials for thought, and in many cases results of high wisdom for our reverence; but it utterly disowns tradition as a ground of belief, whether miracles and supernaturalism be claimed or not claimed on its side. No sacred Scripture or ancient Church can be made a basis of belief, for the obvious reason that their claims always need to be proved, and cannot without absurdity be assumed. The association leaves to its individual members to yield whatever respects their own good sense judges to be due to the opinions of great men, living or dead, spoken or written; as also to the practice of ancient communities, national or ecclesiastical. But it disowns all appeal to such authorities as final tests of truth."*
* I owe the expression of this passage, whose
comprehensiveness and felicity of phrase exceed the reach of
my pen, to Professor Francis William Newman.
Morality can be inspired and confirmed by perception of the consequences of conduct. Theology regards free will as the foundation of responsibility. But free will saves no man from material consequences, and diverts attention from material causes of evil and good. Under the free will doctrine the wonder is that any morality is left in the world. It is a doctrine which gives scoundrels the same chance as a saint. When a man is assured that he can be saved when he believes, and that, having free will, he can believe when he pleases, he, as a rule, never does please until he has had his fill of vice, or is about to die,—either of disease or by the hangman. If by the hangman, he is told that, provided he repents before eight o'clock in the morning, he may find himself nestling in Abraham's bosom before nine. Free will is the doctrine of rascalism. It is time morality had other foundation than theology. The relations of life can be made as impressive as ideas of supernaturalism. But in this Christians not only lend no help, they disparage the attempt to control life by reason. When Secularism was first talked of, the President of the Congregational Union, the Rev. Dr. Harris, commended to the Union the words of Bishop Lavington of a century earlier (1750): "My brethren, I beg you will rise up with me against mere moral preaching."* A writer of distinction, R. H. Hutton, writing on "Secularism" in the Expositor so late as 1881, argues strenuously that moral government is impossible without supernatural convictions. The egotism of Christianity is as conspicuous as that of politics. No ethic is genuine unless it bears the hall-mark of the Church. Secularism does not deny the efficacy of other theories of life upon those who accept them, and only claims to be of use as commending morality on considerations purely human, to those who reject theories purely spiritual. Any one familiar with controversy knows that Christianity is advertised like a patent medicine which will cure all the maladies of mankind. Everybody who tries reasoned morality is encouraged to condemn it, and is denounced if he commends it.
* British Banner, October 27, 1852.
It is a maxim of Secularism that, wherever there is a rightful object at which men should aim, there is a Secular path to it.
Nearly all inferior natures are susceptible of moral and physical improvability, which improvability can be indefinitely advanced by supplying proper material conditions.
Since it is not capable of demonstration whether the inequalities of human condition will be compensated for in another life, it is the business of intelligence to rectify them in this world. The speculative worship of superior beings, who cannot need it, seems a lesser duty than the patient service of known inferior natures and the mitigation of harsh destiny, so that the ignorant may be enlightened and the low elevated.
Christians often promote projects beneficial to men; but are they not mainly incited thereto by the hope of inclining the hearts of those they aid to their cause? Is not their motive proselytism? Is it not a higher morality to do good for its own sake, careless whether those benefited become adherents or not?
Going to a distant town to mitigate some calamity there, will illustrate the principle of Secularism. One man will go on this errand from pure sympathy with the unfortunate; this is goodness. Another goes because the priest bids him; this is obedience. Another goes because the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew tells him that all such persons will pass to the right hand of the Father; this is calculation. Another goes because he believes God commands him; this is theological piety. Another goes because he is aware that the neglect of suffering will not answer; this is utilitarianism. But another goes on the errand of mercy because it is an immediate service to humanity, knowing that material deliverance is piety and better than spiritual consolation; this is Secularism.
One whose reputation for spirituality is in all the Churches says: "Properly speaking, all true work is religion, and whatsoever religion is not work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, the Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will. Admirable was that maxim of the old monks, Laborare est orare (Work is worship)".* In his article on Auguste Comte, Mr. J. S. Mill says he "uses religion in its modern sense as signifying that which binds the convictions, whether to deity or to duty,—deity in the theological sense, or duty in the moral sense." This is the only sense in which a Secularist would employ the term. Religious moralism is a term I might use, since it binds a man to humanity, which religion does not. "Without God," said Mazzini to the Italian workingmen forty years ago,—"without God you may compel, but not persuade. You may become tyrants in your turn; you cannot be educators or apostles." One night, when Mazzini was speaking in this way, in the hearing of Garibaldi, arguing that there was no ground of duty unless based on the idea of God, the General turned round and said: "I am an Atheist. Am I deficient in the sense of duty?" "Ah," replied Mazzini, "you imbibed it with your mother's milk." All around smiled at the quick-witted evasion.
* Carlyle, Past and Present.
In one sense Mazzini was as atheistic in mind as orthodox Christians. He disbelieved that truth, duty, or humanity could have any vitality unless derived from belief in God. Devout as few men are, in the Church or out of it, yet Mazzini believed alone in God. Dogmas of the Churches were to him as though they were not; yet there were times when he seemed to admit that other motives than the one which inspired him might operate for good in other minds. In a letter he once addressed to me there occurred this splendid passage:—
"We pursue the same end,—progressive improvement, association, transformation of the corrupted medium in which we are now living, the overthrow of all idolatries, shams, lies, and conventionalities. We both want man to be, not the poor, passive, cowardly, phantasmagoric unreality of the actual time, thinking in one way and acting in another; bending to power which he hates and despises; carrying empty popish or Thirty-nine Article formulas on his brow, and none within; but a fragment of the living truth, a real individual being linked to collective humanity,—the bold seeker of things to come; the gentle, mild, loving, yet firm, uncompromising, inexorable apostle of all that is just and heroic,—the Priest, the Poet, and the Prophet."
Mazzini saw in the conception of God the great "Indicator" of duty, and that the one figure, "the most deeply inspired of God, men have seen on the earth was Jesus." Mazzini's impassioned protest against unbelief was itself a form of unbelief. He believed only in one God, not in three. If Jesus was inspired of God, he was not God, or he would have been self-inspired. But, apart from this repellent heresy, if Theism and Christianism are essential to those who would serve humanity, all propaganda of freedom must be delayed until converts are made to this new faith.
The question will be put, Has independent morality ever been seen in action?
Voltaire, at the peril of his liberty and life, rescued a friendless family from the fire and the wheel the priests had prepared for them. Paine inspired the independence of America, and Lloyd Garrison gave liberty to the slaves whose bondage the clergy defended. The Christianity of three nations produced no three men in their day who did anything comparable to the achievement of these three sceptics, who wrought this splendid good, not only without Christianity, but in opposition to it. Save for Christian obstruction, they had accomplished still greater good without the peril they had to brave.
None of the earlier critics of Secularism, as has been said (and not many in the later years), realised that it was addressed, not to Christians, but to those who rejected Christianity, or who were indifferent to it, and were outside it. Christians cannot do anything to inspire them with ethical principles, since they do not believe in morality unless based on their supernatural tenets. They have to convert men to Theism, to miracles, prophecy, inspiration of the Scriptures, the Trinity, and other soul-wearying doctrines, before they can inculcate morality they can trust. We do not rush in where they fear to tread. Secularism moves where they do not tread at all.