III
Perplexity in the Christian Religion
Those who are wondering in what form Christianity is destined to survive, or whether it will survive at all,[[1]] would be well advised to keep in mind two significant facts, discernible enough even when the view is limited to our own country, but obvious on a wider survey of what is going forward in foreign lands: first, that the lay mind has definitely passed beyond clerical control; second, that the most active religious minds, both among the clergy and the laity, but among the laity most of all, are learning to use their own eyes in the search for God, instead of looking for Him through the ill-matched lenses of Jew-Greek binoculars, and are gradually ceasing to think about Christ and his religion in terms of the recognized "isms"—Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Modernism, Trinitarianism, Unitarianism, or any other. They have passed beyond all that and are probing deeper ground. They are judging spiritual things by spiritual.
If these things are so, and somewhat exceptional opportunities of observing have convinced me that they are,[[2]] it would seem to follow that the form in which Christianity is destined to survive (if it survives at all) will not be the form of any of the "isms" aforesaid. In other words, even if the battle of the "isms," as this is now carried on by professional controversalists and mainly on clerical ground, were to issue in the final victory of one of them over the others—of which at present there is little prospect—this would decide nothing as to the fortunes of Christianity in the world at large. Thus, though we have no indication of what the surviving form of Christianity will be, we have a pretty clear indication of what it will not be. Beyond this it seems impossible to cast the horoscope of Christianity at the present time. Its fortunes have always been unpredictable; each new development a surprise to those who witnessed it. "As the lightning ... so shall be the coming of the Son of Man."
The application of this to what follows will be obvious as we proceed.
To Bishop Gore's denial that Christianity has failed, on the ground that "it has never been tried," Mr Graham Wallas makes the effective reply that a religion that has been adopted by the great States of the world for fifteen centuries and never been "tried" is a religion that has failed. In this Mr Wallas follows the proper method of judging Christianity by its own high standards, which certainly require that it should have been tried ere this. "What thou doest do quickly" was spoken to Judas Iscariot. Does it follow that "What thou doest do slowly, putting it off, if it so pleases, for fifteen centuries" was intended to be the motto of the Christian Church?
The command to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor" was doubtless spoken "to a particular young man on a particular occasion." But the parable of the Good Samaritan, with its pungent ending "go and do thou likewise," was also spoken to a particular lawyer on a particular occasion. And so with the teachings of Christ in general. All his universals were seen in particulars. If, then, we are to discharge everything that was spoken "to particular individuals on particular occasions" as inapplicable to modern conditions, or to the world at large, we shall find that there is not much left that we can apply to anything. What, indeed, remains? The "spirit" of it all? Yes: but a very different spirit from that which makes these convenient excisions. Many of the alleged excuses for the failure of Christianity have been pitched in this key. They are unconvincing.
Others fall back on the magic words "slow and gradual," words that have induced many persons to believe that the slower and more gradual a process is the more surely it is divine—as against an earlier thought which armed the gods with thunderbolts. The convenience of this excuse is that no depth of failure can be so extreme as not to be covered by it—just as, in the case cited above, no betrayal of Christ's principles can be so complete as not to be covered by the plea that the principles in question "were spoken to particular individuals on particular occasions." But though the one argument is as convenient as the other, it is no more satisfactory to an honest man.
How has it come to pass that respectable Christian apologists have fallen into such flagrant dishonesties?