economic, and industrial conditions of our times, must necessarily appear incomplete to minds which can only reproduce the simplicity by an effort of the imagination. Jesus, they maintain, was a Jew who spoke to Jews, and who had to deal with simple fishermen and agriculturists, with Eastern merchants and narrow-minded scribes. He never met great financiers to whose chariots of gold whole populations are chained, or great masters of industry who profitably run a thousand mills where human flesh and bone are ground in the production of wealth. He knew naught, they feel, of the history of philosophy, or the psychology of religion, or the researches of physiology and chemistry. His language, coming to us as it does through the medium of interpreters of a bygone age, and through the simple symbols of less sophisticated minds, has poetic beauty, but lacks our modern comprehensiveness.
There is a feeling that it is unreasonable to believe that God spoke once or twice, thousands of years ago, and that He cannot or will not speak now. Revelation cannot have been final; it must surely be progressive, gradual, fitted to the needs and the receptivity of souls. The written word is not the only word. The living
word must be spoken now, and will be spoken with greater effectiveness in the future. Hence the expectation that a new world-teacher will appear, that a master will be born who will gather up the truth and the inspiration of the creeds of the past and present them, together with a new message, suited to the hunger of to-day. Theosophists have lately made the idea of the coming of such a teacher the central hope of social regeneration.
They assume that when the teacher comes all the world will listen and obey. It seems to me that teacher after teacher has uttered the truth—Hermes, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Orpheus, Jesus—and that the trouble is not lack of teachers but lack of disciples. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, the world has a model wherewith to mould the old order of hate and selfishness into a new rule of love and brotherhood. The model has never been used; no serious and far-reaching attempt has as yet been made to give Christianity a politico-social trial. Why should a new world-teacher be more successful? What guarantee is there that his voice would not be drowned in the general clamour of the truth-mongers of the marketplace? And the tendency of the modern religious
consciousness is to seek reality personally, to develop the latent faculties by which experience can be won, and to delve fearlessly into the hidden depth of the soul in search of truth.
The great religions of the past have given the bread of life to countless souls. They have all provided ways and means for our ethical evolution. Religious eclecticism is natural to the cultured mind, which can no longer be held back by any threats of excommunication. The essence of religion, and the way of salvation, have been found along widely divergent paths and under many names. One thing is certain amidst innumerable uncertainties: the secret of finding God can only be unravelled when we find our own souls.
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Problems of the Peace
By WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON