God, the Invisible King

by H. G. Wells

“On the other hand,” he writes, “the knowledge that the goal of human life can be attained only by the development of a high degree of solidarity amongst men will restrain actual egotism. The mere fact that the enjoyment of life according to the precepts of Solomon (Ecelesiastes ix. 7-10)* is opposed to the goal of human life, will lessen luxury and the evil that comes from luxury. Conviction that science alone is able to redress the disharmonies of the human constitution will lead directly to the improvement of education and to the solidarity of mankind.

* Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine
with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let
thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no
ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all
the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee
under the sun, all the days of thy vanity for that is thy
portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest
under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it
with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor
knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

“In progress towards the goal, nature will have to be consulted continuously. Already, in the case of the ephemerids, nature has produced a complete cycle of normal life ending in natural death. In the problem of his own fate, man must not be content with the gifts of nature; he must direct them by his own efforts. Just as he has been able to modify the nature of animals and plants, man must attempt to modify his own constitution, so as to readjust its disharmonies. . . .

“To modify the human constitution, it will be necessary first, to frame the ideal, and thereafter to set to work with all the resources of science.

“If there can be formed an ideal able to unite men in a kind of religion of the future, this ideal must be founded on scientific principles. And if it be true, as has been asserted so often, that man can live by faith alone, the faith must be in the power of science.”

Now this, after all the flat repudiations that have preceded it of “religion” and “philosophy” as remedies for human ills, is nothing less than the fundamental proposition of the religious life translated into terms of materialistic science, the proposition that damnation is really over-individuation and that salvation is escape from self into the larger being of life. . . .

What can this “religion of the future” be but that devotion to the racial adventure under the captaincy of God which we have already found, like gold in the bottom of the vessel, when we have washed away the confusions and impurities of dogmatic religion? By an inquiry setting out from a purely religious starting-point we have already reached conclusions identical with this ultimate refuge of an extreme materialist.

This altar to the Future of his, we can claim as an altar to our God—an altar rather indistinctly inscribed.

2. SACRIFICE IMPLIES GOD

Almost all Agnostic and Atheistical writings that show any fineness and generosity of spirit, have this tendency to become as it were the statement of an anonymous God. Everything is said that a religious writer would say—except that God is not named. Religious metaphors abound. It is as if they accepted the living body of religion but denied the bones that held it together—as they might deny the bones of a friend. It is true, they would admit, the body moves in a way that implies bones in its every movement, but—WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THOSE BONES.