In an antescript, Mr. Strachey writes: “If I am not careful, some votary of the New Psychology will get busy on my Diary and prove that I am suffering from an inferiority complex.” Not a chance of it! A lot of derogatory things about the Freudians may be said; yet though they are deluded, they are not imbecile; they are priority fanatics, but not blind. They know a superiority complex when they see it.
VIII
CLERGYMEN
Why I Am a Christian, by Dr. Frank Crane.
The Autobiography of a Mind, by W. J. Dawson.
An editor once said to Dr. Frank Crane, who spent the first twenty-five years of his adult life as a Methodist and Congregational minister and the next twenty-five as a journalist: “If you will write a book on Why I Am a Christian and tell the truth it ought to be mighty interesting.” Dr. Crane says he has told the truth. I say it is not interesting. Dr. Crane is a Christian because it is pragmatic, because it is usable. That is not a good or sufficient reason. One may be a Mahommedan or a Jew for the same reason. His species of Christianity is, he says, one hundred per cent practical. Mr. Ghandhi’s or Mr. Tagore’s species of Hinduism has a similar percentage. “I am a Christian simply because I like it and I find it conducive to my happiness and my general welfare.” That is a good reason for being a Jew.
Dr. Crane prides himself on his large-mindedness; he is beyond pride or prejudice. “If you should ask me whether I am a Trinitarian or a Unitarian, a Catholic or a Protestant, Fundamentalist or Methodist or Baptist, you might as well ask me whether I am a Guelph or a Ghibelline.” When a man is omnipotent and omniscient he is all these, and none. He is not only the trunk of the tree of which these are branches (some of them gnarled, others withered), but he is the roots as well. In one of his daily sermons he says he left the church in search of adventure. Fortunately for him he left it while the going was good.
“I am happier here and now when I follow the principles of Jesus. I am wretched here and now when I reject them or doubt them.” Does Dr. Crane think that any of his 25,000,000 readers believe that he practices the principles that Christ enunciated to His disciples on the mountain? If he does, such readers are incredibly credulous even for feeders on denutritionised mush. He took thought for the morrow when he shifted to a profession that pays him more in a week than he got in a year labouring in the Lord’s vineyard. I am not contending the right to shift was not his. I am pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of his boast.
His reasons for being a Christian have very little to do with Christ. Indeed, for him Christianity is a point of view, an attitude of mind. It needs no God and very little divinity. His idea of Christianity is so largely matter of fact and so little emotional that his confession—which he wants us to remember is not an argument—can not make much appeal.
Reading Why I Am a Christian is like listening to a lawyer who has a fluent, persuasive vocabulary and who knows how to obtain the best effects from his argument. He carries his auditors along and they want to agree with him, but when he stops his monologue, rationalism claims its rights and the case is decided against him.
It is evident that a church which has had some of the greatest minds of the world at its head, which has lasted through centuries and wars, is based on a foundation more solid than one which could be destroyed by the argument of one of its members. Dr. Crane is a member of the church, but he refuses to recognise the authority of an organised religion. The fear of eternal punishment or the hope of never-ending beatitude have no bearing, he maintains, on his decision, because he finds the former foolish, the latter boring. Dr. Crane thinks he is the first man to shudder at the thought of an eternity spent in heaven, in a state of semi-stupor, singing forever to the music of harps. The church itself encourages no such belief, but since the real meaning of paradise is unknown to man, a symbol has been adopted which no one tries to offer as dogma.
It is not because Christ is God that Dr. Crane believes in Him. It is because He has shown the author what sort of a person God is. It is malicious and pernicious for “a man with a million friends” to express such doubts as to the divinity of Christ. The world does not need a superman, the world needs God, and the figure of Christ is more important as a foundation for the church than any other doctrine of Jesus as a man could be. And there is no denying that the world needs a church.