VII. THE PROLEGOMENA OF CHRISTIANITY
THE cardinal fault of Christianity, which has persisted from generation to generation for centuries, is perhaps this: that Christianity has for long been no genuine, vigorous conviction of all those who bear its name, but only a general notion of somewhat the same meaning as “humanity” or “civilization.” Thus year after year many thousands are received into its formal constituency without ever in their lives receiving a correct idea of its demands, or a firm trust in its promises, or, least of all, any definite resolution and will to hold themselves in duty bound by these demands and promises. The “Christian” nations distinguish themselves from the non-Christian in much the same way as the ancient “Greeks” distinguished themselves from the “Barbarians”; and the Christian faith has grown to be a special confession within the borders of Christendom; while quite other convictions, never shared by Christ and his first confessors, and conceptions of the world which claim an equal right in a “Christian” state, venture to stand opposed to Christianity.
We may leave it undecided whether this is a fate that overtakes every religion which ripens into a “world-religion,” but may nevertheless doubt whether the formation of such a world-religion by means of a great attenuation of all religious demands ever lay in the original meaning and task of Christianity; even if one may grant that, even in this form it has been a magnificent tool of civilization and, in fact, is still such.
Yet it is certain that this course of evolution was dimly felt, even by the first generation of Christians, as an unavoidable though deplorable fate, and that the formal victory of the Christian religion over the heathen cults in the Roman Empire, and the consequent transformation into a Roman state religion, brought into it an element that Christ himself, before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judæa, had disavowed in the most distinct manner. All which has since been called “the Church,” or “the relations between the Church and the State,” and which has taken up so great a space in the thoughts of the nations, has, as an organization, no support in the original records of Christianity; indeed, it often almost seems as though the attainment of a definite goal of human development and the consequent end of the present age of the world were dimly surmised by the early Christians to be nearer than proved possible, in the sequel. The Kingdom of God is wholly founded upon the freedom of the human will, and it depends on that with what speed and intensity Christianity will or can come to realization in an individual, or in a nation, or in an epoch.
It is a serious article of belief with the Protestant group of churches, that not merely in a general way, but for every single individual during his earthly life, Christianity is to be realized through a “church”; this “church” stands for the continuous visible embodiment of Christianity, and accordingly it receives the individual into its constituency as a mere unit in the totality, in order that it may furnish him a safe passage through the judgment that shall finally take place on all the deeds of men. And this does not prevent many men, in all the Christian communions, from believing that membership in these communions is the chief matter; and they busy themselves about the fundamental conditions of such a membership only for a couple of hours on Sundays.
This accounts for the title of this chapter. For we are going to ask, not what belongs dogmatically to the Christian doctrine, but what kind of preliminary dispositions are required in the human intellect and will before we can accept and understand the teachings of Christianity. In this sense they are “prolegomena.” If some reader, after going through this chapter, should say that the very substance of Christianity itself lies therein, I shall not disturb him in his conception; for his conception would at any rate do him less harm than the other view, which would declare these preliminaries to be too difficult, or not necessary, for entrance into the church of Christ.
These first steps are quite easily outlined in a few words: first, to regard God as an actual existence and not as a mere philosophical idea of the schools,—and then, in consequence, to fear him alone and to serve him alone—to have no other idols beside him, neither men, nor possessions, nor glory; secondly, to love the men among whom one is placed “as oneself,” as Christ says, in practical words we can understand—not often more than oneself apparently, and as a matter of fact, in most cases less; thirdly, not to devote one’s life to pleasure even of the so-called “noblest” sorts, nor, on the other hand, to suffering, to mere asceticism,—but to surrender oneself to the doing of the will of God, in the firm confidence that this must be practicable, though not through one’s own moral power, yet through the divine help and grace; and, fourthly, if any one should at first doubt whether all this is possible for man, to believe that, so far as concerns himself, the matter lies only in his will, the only thing he can, but must, contribute thereto.
These are the “prolegomena” of Christianity which every one must consider, before he resolves, upon reaching his years of discretion, to make a real entrance into the Christian life, instead of going forward upon the broader way, easier at the first, but sure to be unsatisfactory in the end.
If he does not consider these things, or if he relies upon his own strength in the conduct of life because he trusts in the possibility of an ethical uplifting tendency already present in human nature and does not think he needs any transcendental support, then he is either like the man in the Gospel who built a house upon the sand which stood only as long as the weather was fair, or like that other who began to build a tower which afterward he could not finish.
Or if he finds these demands too high-pitched, then, even under the best conditions, there springs up in him that consumptive, anæmic, half-hearted Christianity which is forever evading the urgings of conscience and is consequently always dissatisfied—that hypocritical and unlovely Christianity which we all know only too well.
It is not necessary to say much in “explanation” of these demands. The requirements of the Christian religion are not usually lacking in clearness; it is the human will that is lacking in the resoluteness to accept them. It much prefers to have them explained away.
Belief in God is naturally the first and the most necessary preliminary stipulation of Christianity, without which it does not exist, or is but an empty dissembling name for an entirely different way of thinking. This is also the case when the word “God” is accepted as a designation for the totality of all things, or the Absolute Being, or, as with most adherents of “deism,” as an expression for a something that exercises no influence upon worldly things, but somehow exists only as the law that in the beginning created the universe, but is now forever unchangeable; where it itself came from and why it no longer continues vital and active, no one can tell.
To be sure, we can not explain a “living” God, as we have often already said. All explanations or so-called proofs of God are defective, both the positive and the negative. It is not worth the trouble to linger over them. God is something that can not be explained, but he is not something that can not be experienced. But he is to be experienced only by those who “keep his laws,” and one may be practically quite sure that those people who will not do this are atheists at bottom, in spite of all their asseverations; just as there are men, on the other hand, whom God probably still regards as his followers, though we have ourselves long given up regarding them as such.
The experience of God expresses itself thus: first, in spiritual tranquillity, satisfaction, quieting of the thirst for truth (as Christ calls it), a sort of strengthening of the spirit and of the inner life such as is vainly to be attained in any other way, whether through philosophy, or through a refusal to think at all about such things; second, in inward serenity which, gained in any other way, is not so long-enduring; and finally, in a general deeper intensity of life, the effective cause of physical and spiritual health and so of the manifold blessing which springs from this belief in God, both for individuals and for nations.
It is this blessing that is showing itself when all one’s circumstances, apparently of their own motion, so shape themselves that what is truly excellent (the furthering of the inner, the protection of the outer life) always prevails, and danger is averted; on the other hand, no travelling in byways, no wrong actions, are attended with good results. The latter is the usual punishment of evil men, whereby they are hardened and kept from turning to a better life. It is also the ever-visible means of distinguishing between the divine blessing and that outwardly similar worldly “good fortune” in which even the shrewdest of men often put an inconceivable and quite groundless confidence, until, some time or other, it leaves them in the midst of dire difficulties; for the most part at the very moment when they believed they had definitely secured it and had attained to the proud summit of their desires. Men are never faithful to the mere “children of fortune,” but only to their fortune; while they can not, if they wanted to, oppose those endowed with the divine blessing.
On this point the Old Testament contains many positive assurances and many actual examples, and it may in general be said that for the presentation of the Laws of God the New Testament alone would not suffice; nor is that its purpose, for it always implies a knowledge of the Old Testament.
“The man who keepeth my laws shall thereby live,” is the sum of these promises. For these laws are the principle of life itself, and to ignore them is to come within the jurisdiction of death. That may be put to the test, and ought to be put to the test, if it is done with a sincere desire to know what to believe, and if it is not continually repeated after one has once gained a sufficiently clear knowledge. But for those who will not do even that there is nothing left save to make for themselves other gods “to go before them.”
These gods are, as a rule, human beings or the products of their mind in some form,—once again to-day, as in the period of the so-called Renaissance, preëminently in the form of art. Great crudeness of morals and the absence indeed of all ethical conceptions may go hand in hand with the finest and highest culture in this special direction, thus showing that art can not be the highest goal men can strive for and attain. We ought not to have had to experience this for the second time, though it is often to be feared that we are now doing so.
We should never make idols for ourselves of even the dearest and best men, not to speak of those who are highly gifted or hold a high place in the world’s esteem. Not only the New Testament, but even the Old, lays down in a very practical way the proper and easily recognized limit; for they prescribe that we are to love God “above all,” and men “as ourselves,” no more and no less. Even the simplest person can easily compute this; and if in certain exuberant, “heavenly” moments of life it seems too little, yet, taking one’s whole life into account, it is really more than any of us perform, and at any rate is much more salutary for our neighbor.
The opposite quality to “reliance upon men” is (what at first seems unlikely) sympathetic compassion; when reliance departs, compassion enters to heal. This is something quite different from what is ordinarily called “love to men,” and is much more. It is something, too, that does not naturally lie within us; we have to learn it, usually late in life and through troublous paths. But when a man has it, then it is henceforth sure that he is “fit for the Kingdom of God.”
If it is not men and their works, then it is possessions, ambition, or the continuous search for enjoyment that stands most in the way of that sincere union of the human soul with the divine spirit which necessarily forms the foundation of all Christianity;—above all, it is the “deceitfulness of riches,” as the Gospel well calls it, the very common delusion that possession and happiness are identical, a delusion from which the man first awakes when he holds in his hands that for which he was striving and for which he had often sacrificed body and soul; and now for the first he discovers that, looked at closely, it was not, even on the best interpretation, worth all this exertion.
In the Gospel are found these words of Jesus: Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth; ye can not serve God and Mammon; whosoever he be of you that renounces not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple. If I were an adherent of the atheistic Socialism of our day, I would constantly hold up these sayings of their Lord and Master before the sincere followers of Christianity, who are by far the most dangerous opponents of Socialism; for if they should obey these sayings, without any further effort the solution of the social question would follow. But there are many passages of the Bible which are almost divested of their value because of a kind of disqualifying law of customary usage; or they are at least not spoken of in religious circles, because they have little that is “edifying” for many of those present.
If we must admit that such passages designate the goal or ideal toward which we should strive, rather than that to which every one can at once attain, we should, nevertheless, keep our eyes continually upon it and have the earnest will to make our way thither; else all the other messages of the Gospel profit us nothing and are for us as if they were not there.
To speak practically, then, one must never fix his heart upon possessions, nor regard them as the most important thing to be lived and striven for, nor make them the measure of his valuation of men and circumstances, nor be unready or disinclined to diminish them at any time for the sake of God or the common good, and if necessary even to give them up altogether. They who can do this when it is required of them are the only men who are free and worthy of God’s kingdom. At different times in life they will often be put to this test, and if this has never yet happened, it is no good sign for their inner life or for their standing in God’s grace. Often it goes no farther than the testing of their will, and when the will has surrendered, God does not require of them the actual deed, or he lets the trial so shape itself that in the end it is the more easily endurable. Sometimes, however, as with Job, it comes to a real loss of all one’s goods; and not always is there finally a double compensation therefor, but there always is a complete consolation for what one has done, provided one will seek for it and not merely helplessly and weakly bewail. In order always to have the mastery of oneself and to put this to the proof, it may often be a good thing, even before one resolves upon Christianity, to make the test of Polycrates, who cast a much-treasured ring into the sea. Try it once, this surrender of your dearest possession; though, to be sure, the test will in most cases come to you unbidden, if it is your lot to become a free man by God’s grace instead of a slave to Mammon. But no matter how it comes to you, if you have shown yourself able to make this surrender, you will be set free from the strongest fetter with which the spirit of the world keeps man bound; the rest of your possessions will henceforth become more a matter of indifference to you. Of course, in this question of possessions, the concern is rather with the spirit and the will than with the mere deed. One can also “possess as though he possessed not” (though the possibility of deception here is very great), and if one no longer spends anything for mere enjoyment or luxury, but applies everything to useful ends, not counting among such ends the mere senseless heaping up of possessions for heirs and successors down to the remotest ages, then one may believe his actions respond to the real meaning of the words of Christ. We at least will not cast the first stone at those who so comport themselves.
One good help in this, besides the firm resolve to forego all luxury, is, as already explained in a former chapter, systematic giving; another is, to reckon and calculate as little as possible, and to busy oneself as little with money as is compatible with a necessary order in one’s business and private affairs. For money has an evil charm about it like that of philosophical heresy; neither will easily let a man go again when once he has become much involved in them.
Glory is for many just as strong a fetter as mammonism—not only the excessive eagerness for the ordinary human and civic honors (exposed though they always are to the judgment of contemporaries or, in the greater instances, of posterity) but also the anxiety for respectability. As to the former, Paul, one of the most abused of men, has left us a very good statement in 1 Cor. iv. 3 ff.; and that any one loses the regard of his citizens quite without blame is really much rarer than is commonly supposed. On the other hand, God often enough makes one’s former enemies to be those who become the most satisfied with him, and the prophetic words of Isaiah come splendidly to take the place of the earlier underestimation: “And the sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.” But one must be able to endure things if he is to adopt Christianity; those too-sensitive Christians who crave the esteem of even those they do not themselves esteem only show that the world and its praise are still far from being enough a matter of indifference to them.
The real positions of honor are, after riches, the most dangerous thing there is for faith; on this point the Gospel leaves not the least doubt. Whoever runs into this danger quite of his own free will, even perhaps with eager zeal, quite commonly perishes therein, so far as concerns his better and only worthful life. But whoever, by his calling or by his lot, is compelled to accept such positions and yet would like to become or remain a Christian, has every cause to be watchful, and to be thankful for occasional humiliations, an article in which, happily, the world seldom lets him be lacking.
For the greater number of men in the ordinary situations of life the hardest part in the prolegomena of Christianity is perhaps the conquering of one’s desire for pleasure. The humbler classes often escape this desire with still less success than do the wealthy and the aristocratic, who may have learned, through experience, to place a better estimate upon the worth or worthlessness of the pleasures of the material life. One often finds in the lower classes a much more unrestrained passion for pleasure, which, joined with the atheistic mood they purposely cultivate, sometimes degenerates into a true savagery and makes them like animals, and animals not of the noblest sort, either.
But unfortunately the upper strata of society often enough lead the way by their own bad example. They often complain of the love of pleasure and the frivolity of the serving classes; but things would go better if the servants did not perceive in their masters the same propensities that restlessly agitate them.
Pleasure set up as a rule of life, sensuousness (taken in the widest sense) established as the controlling power in the life of a man—this is the infallible death of all faith in transcendent things. These two powers, pleasure and faith, do not long exist side by side in a man, but the one or the other must leave the field. Happy he in whom it is the power of the sensual element that retreats before that of the spiritual, vigorously striving for the mastery. For every victory over the love of pleasure (what is not otherwise always the case on the so-called path of virtue) brings at once its own reward in an increased vigor of the ideal life, and often in a broad spiritual progress in the wider sense. We can truthfully say that the most of the great advances in the inner life are ushered in by some renunciation which brings its own compensation.
That to the love of pleasure all sorts of attractive names are given and that it in truth assumes now finer, now coarser, forms, should not lead us astray. It is, nevertheless, under all circumstances, that trait in us which most resembles animal nature and forthwith reveals its ignoble character in the fact that it is always united with egotism and the exploitation of others for our own selfish inclinations. The partial naïveté of the ancient world is wanting in humanity now, for their eyes have been opened to its meaning; and a universal failure to conquer the love of pleasure through higher interests would, in these days, be an unprecedented and quite impossible relapse of humanity into an earlier age.
With the pursuit of pleasure dies the inclination for riches and honor, which are partly only means in that pursuit and not ends in themselves; and instead there springs up joy in work, the best salvation from all evil, that otherwise always surrounds and tempts a man in one way or another. For when the pursuit of pleasure disappears as a rule of life, then a man must work, or the world is too dreary. On the other hand, with the pursuit of pleasure as his innermost spring of action, a man will always look upon work as only a means, and a disagreeable one, to the attainment of pleasure.
That one may, nevertheless, find an artless enjoyment in the beauty of nature, in the serene succession of the days and the years, in one’s family and in true friendship, in uplifting art and science, in the life and welfare of his nation, even in the inoffensive animal and plant worlds, and, above all, in all the great and good activities that are going on in the whole realm of humanity—all this is to be taken entirely for granted. Indeed, a keen sensitiveness to such things is a sure mark of an unspoiled temperament, and especially of years of youth purely spent, a youth that has not, by poisonous pleasures, prematurely deadened its feeling for the true and harmless joys of life.
Furthermore, an excessive repression of the life of the body is certainly not advantageous for spiritual progress—still less is it a divine command, but it is rather, whenever it appears, merely a human device with no decisive value. On this point a thoughtful commentator of the oldest biblical records says, very truly, that men always have a tendency to heighten the commands of God, which are themselves properly meted and adapted to men’s capabilities; and that, in the Old Testament narrative of the first trial of obedience, God did not say that Adam and Eve should not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only that they should not eat of its fruit; it was Eve herself who added the further prohibition, “neither shall ye touch it,” and by so doing placed the Tempter in the desired position of making an alleged divine command manifestly untrue on its face, because the mere touch of the tree did not cause death. (Genesis ii. 17, and iii. 3, 4.)
Thus it is, indeed, with many exaggerated and unnecessary commands which parents lay upon their children or churches upon their adherents, the non-fulfilment of which they then with equal facility overlook.
An exact and literal obedience to all the real divine commands, which are all practicable, and a thorough scorn and disregard for all the “commandments of men”—this is the only way by which our Christian confessions could now bring themselves new life.
Even the inclination to undergo suffering and renunciation is somewhat dangerous, and the more so because it is often joined with a secret desire for praise, in which case one devil is but supplanted by another, perhaps still more powerful. A man should not throw away his life, not even by a lingering neglect of his powers; only, he should not overvalue his body’s well-being nor put it too much in the foreground.
Christ himself is in this respect an inimitable example of a simple moderation which, at times, allowed itself to enjoy an almost luxurious homage, as in the case of the box of precious ointment, which evidently made Judas, the apostle of literal asceticism, to lose faith in him. Even the most advanced Christian should live quite like a natural man, not like a hermit or a pillar-saint, and should seek the worth and purpose of life neither in pleasure nor in suffering and renunciation, but only in the carrying out of the will and commission of God. A wise saying of Blumhardt’s, often quoted, declares that one must be twice converted, once from the natural to the spiritual life, and then back again from the spiritual to the natural so far as is justified; but that this is, perhaps, accomplished in some cases at a single stroke, without a preliminary exaggeration of the spiritual nature. Many linger too long in this double mutation, and during this period afford no very agreeable spectacle.
Finally, one’s own power can never set the upward-striving man free from all those enemies of his real happiness which keep him, in a very genuine sense, from entering into true Christianity. The “old Adam” is still to-day, as at the time when the expression was first used, “too strong for the young Melanchthon,” and all good resolutions give as good as no help, so long as the man will not lay hold on the aid sent us by God himself to that end. But even he can not help unless the man completely surrenders his will. This is the man’s share in the work of his liberation from the fetters of the natural, selfish life; everything else is done to him.
Dante, in particular, explains this very clearly in the twenty-first canto of the Purgatorio, where the joyous trembling of the mountain of purification, when a soul finally rises into its higher region, is portrayed in the following verses:
“It trembles when any spirit feels itself
So purified that it may rise, or move
For rising; and such loud acclaim ensues.
Purification by the will alone
Is proved, that, free to change society,
Seizes the soul rejoicing in her will.
Desire of bliss is present from the first;
But strong propension hinders, to that wish
By the just ordinance of heaven opposed—
Propension now as eager to fulfil
The allotted torment as erewhile to sin.
And I, who in this punishment had lain
Five hundred years and more, but now have felt
Free wish for happier clime.”
Every one acquainted with his inner life will confirm that for a long time at first a partial will toward the good fought in him with inclinations of which he very well knew that they would bring him just suffering. So long as the soul is, nevertheless, unable to conquer this desire, it will remain in essentially its former state. But if it holds on to the impulse to freedom notwithstanding, by God’s grace there will come a memorable day on which it will at last feel in itself the fully determined will to move forward, and then forthwith it is free, and afterward does not understand how it could have delayed so long.
Yet it would not be right to wait inactive till the will is thus fully determined. Christianity, like many another thing, is learned only through trial, not through study. On the contrary, idly talking about it is most foreign to its spirit, and so-called learned explanations easily make it but darker and more dubious; that is a “science” which, like every other, one may leave entirely in the hands of those who are called thereto, and which very often contributes nothing of moment to their spiritual advancement. Christianity is surely completely understood only through that spirit which the Gospel calls the Holy Spirit. What that is, we do not know; we can only know that it is a very real phenomenon which becomes manifest in its effects upon our life, and which can gradually make us more and more indifferent toward everything that the world considers as the greatest possessions and the most indispensable pleasures. To this freedom we are called, and it has been made possible through Christianity—what before might well seem very doubtful. But we are not done when we have found Christianity “interesting”—often because of its extravagances rather than because of its real sobriety in the conception of man and his natural powers; we must above all things make a beginning, and then progress therein comes quite of itself.
Therefore, O soul, thou who, from the mazy gardens of the common life of the world that no longer wholly satisfy, hast arrived at happiness by this simplest and best of all roads, but nevertheless still standest, somewhat trembling, before the actual entry into the forecourts of Christianity itself (perhaps because thou seest there a company that does not fully awaken thy confidence), take thy resolution notwithstanding, and dare! It will not be long before thou seest at least enough to have made thy daring seem worth while. It is but rarely that any one turns back again from this road, and never yet, for thousands of years, has any one who has travelled it quite to the end, lifted up complaints of a wasted life, or even of an existence too hard to be borne.
But how many there are to-day who complain, on the other roads to happiness!
No one who is willing to confess the truth can deny that in every human soul, even in one already resolutely set toward faith in transcendental things, serious doubts can now and then arise as to the reality of all its conceptions and hopes. They who most vehemently condemn such temporary doubts in others are not the ones who are the best confirmed in the faith, for by such zeal they are often only seeking forcibly to suppress their own doubts. But in such moments, thus much remains sure, that there is no certainty anywhere to be found as to the great questions of the present and future life, better than that which Christianity affords, and that there is no adequate satisfaction to be found in trying to content oneself with only the results of “natural science,” many of which are still very uncertain; while one simply banishes from his thoughts all further questions, as to the interrelation of all things in a higher sense, and as to the moral laws of the universe,—questions on which the life and welfare of humanity most of all depend. That will never succeed for long; after every such period of a bare realism which limits itself to a smaller aim, in all men not wholly superficial, not wholly submerged in the world of sense, there arises with irresistible power the impulse to investigate anew whether and how far the high pretension of Christianity to be the real, the unique truth, and the only truth that brings happiness, is a just pretension.
This impulse you also will more or less experience; otherwise you would not have taken in your hand this book, which had its origin in that same impulse. In no case thrust the impulse back from the threshold; for it springs from the better part of your nature.
Accept, rather, one more bit of counsel: First consider more closely the “prolegomena” of Christianity—those preliminary truths which it considers to be self-evident; its dogmas take account of only afterward, when you have already been able to resolve to live up to these preliminary truths with all the power you have. The reverse way is, to be sure, the more usual one, and it is the one to which we are wont to be directed in our schools and churches. But if this more usual course is taken, now and then there lies “a lion in the way” which does not appear upon the path proposed in this chapter.
The power of resolve, of course, you will always be obliged to have, for only “he who overcometh shall inherit all things;” for the irresolute, as well as for those completely without faith, even in the most favorable case only the decay of their personal life stands in near and certain prospect.
VIII. THE STEPS OF LIFE