The difference between the Christian doctrine and those which preceded it is that the social doctrine said: "Live in opposition to your nature [understanding by this only the animal nature], make it subject to the external law of family, society, and state." Christianity says: "Live according to your nature [understanding by this the divine nature]; do not make it subject to anything—neither you (an animal self) nor that of others—and you will attain the very aim to which you are striving when you subject your external self."
The Christian doctrine brings a man to the elementary consciousness of self, only not of the animal self, but of the divine self, the divine spark, the self as the Son of God, as much God as the Father himself, though confined in an animal husk. The consciousness of being the Son of God, whose chief characteristic is love, satisfies the need for the extension of the sphere of love to which the man of the social conception of life had been brought. For the latter, the welfare of the personality demanded an ever-widening extension of the sphere of love; love was a necessity and was confined to certain objects—self, family, society. With the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and is confined to no object; it is the essential faculty of the human soul. Man loves not because it is his interest to love this or that, but because love is the essence of his soul, because he cannot but love.
The Christian doctrine shows man that the essence of his soul is love—that his happiness depends not on loving this or that object, but on loving the principle of the whole—God, whom he recognizes within himself as love, and therefore he loves all things and all men.
In this is the fundamental difference between the Christian doctrine and the doctrine of the Positivists, and all the theorizers about universal brotherhood on non-Christian principles.
Such are the two principal misunderstandings relating to the Christian religion, from which the greater number of false reasonings about it proceed. The first consists in the belief that Christ's teaching instructs men, like all previous religions, by rules, which they are bound to follow, and that these rules cannot be fulfilled. The second is the idea that the whole purport of Christianity is to teach men to live advantageously together, as one family, and that to attain this we need only follow the rule of love to humanity, dismissing all thought of love of God altogether.
The mistaken notion of scientific men that the essence of Christianity consists in the supernatural, and that its moral teaching is impracticable, constitutes another reason of the failure of men of the present day to understand Christianity.
CHAPTER V.
CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR LIFE AND OUR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE.
Men Think they can Accept Christianity without Altering their
Life—Pagan Conception of Life does not Correspond with Present Stage of
Development of Humanity, and Christian Conception Alone Can Accord with
it—Christian Conception of Life not yet Understood by Men, but the
Progress of Life itself will Lead them Inevitably to Adopt it—The
Requirements of a New Theory of Life Always Seem Incomprehensible,
Mystic, and Supernatural—So Seem the Requirements of the Christian
Theory of Life to the Majority of Men—The Absorption of the Christian
Conception of Life will Inevitably be Brought About as the Result of
Material and Spiritual Causes—The Fact of Men Knowing the Requirements
of the Higher View of Life, and yet Continuing to Preserve Inferior
Organizations of Life, Leads to Contradictions and Sufferings which
Embitter Existence and Must Result in its Transformation—The
Contradictions of our Life—The Economic Contradiction and the Suffering
Induced by it for Rich and Poor Alike—The Political Contradiction and
the Sufferings Induced by Obedience to the Laws of the State—The
International Contradiction and the Recognition of it by Contemporaries:
Komarovsky, Ferri, Booth, Passy, Lawson, Wilson, Bartlett, Defourney,
Moneta—The Striking Character of the Military Contradiction.
There are many reasons why Christ's teaching is not understood. One reason is that people suppose they have understood it when they have decided, as the Churchmen do, that it was revealed by supernatural means, or when they have studied, as the scientific men do, the external forms in which it has been manifested. Another reason is the mistaken notion that it is impracticable, and ought to be replaced by the doctrine of love for humanity. But the principal reason, which is the source of all the other mistaken ideas about it, is the notion that Christianity is a doctrine which can be accepted or rejected without any change of life.