Religion is not what the Churches would have us accept as such. It is not man-made dogma. So far as Christianity is concerned, the saying is true that “There never was but one Christian and He was crucified.” No more uplifting faith was ever taught than that of Christ; but it has never been spiritually realised or fully practised. Read Christ’s own words in the New Testament, and then ask where shall we find His commands obeyed? In some exceptional cases there have been saintly lives and saintly deeds resulting from the sincere and devout application of the Gospel—but in dealing with this question we have to think of mankind in general, not in an individual sense. This horrible war with its riot of blood and carnage is a damnatory answer to professing Christianity. Man has made of himself his own god—and in the God as revealed or explained in all the conflicting religious “formulas” he has ceased to believe. Faith of any kind must be supported by reason. And Science is the door to the highest heaven of faith. Every new discovery, every new aid to man’s well-being on the planet, is a fresh proof of God. It has taken twenty centuries and more for us to begin learning the wonders of electricity, though the miraculous force, with all its component and divergent radiations, was with us always. It may take us twenty times twenty million centuries to discover God—nevertheless He is with us, notwithstanding our intellectual blindness and lack of Spiritual perception. Science is our peep-hole, through which we may, even now, glimpse Him, but which in time to come will not only be our window, but our open door, through which we may approach Him, full-eyed, without fear. But, to arrive at this, we should remember that Science, like every other power bestowed upon us, must be used sanely; and through “Free-Will”; that is to say, we may bend its force to either good or evil. It is good when we use it for the advantage of humanity—it is evil when we make of it an agent to injure or destroy humanity. The scientist who employs his abilities to discover means whereby he may remedy disease, eliminate pain, and assist his fellow-men to the betterment of life, is that “good and faithful servant” who, when God comes, He finds watching—but the scientist, equally brilliant, who devotes himself to the invention of fiendish instruments of destruction and death, whereby he may make the wholesome earth a terror, the sea a snare, and the sky a scourge, is a warped intellectuality, moved by “insane impulse,” which, combined with creative activity, makes of him a devil rather than a human being. Let any thoughtful person try to realise himself engaged day and night on the work of evolving some instrument of death more cruel than any old-time torture, will he maintain that such persistent concentration on the means of killing can mould him into a worthier or nobler individual? But reverse the position and let him imagine himself absorbed in finding out remedies for pain and suffering, aids to happier and more useful living for mankind in general, will he not admit that however difficult his work may be of accomplishment, he knows within himself that he is striving for constructive good, not destructive evil, and that his science is an output of clear sanity which must bring, not only deep contentment to his mind, but also the consciousness that his energies are moving in harmony with the Divine Spirit of law and order.
This is the true and only religion—to bring one’s soul into unison with the infinite beauty and reason which prevail everywhere in Nature. And the Christian Faith, could it but be relieved from ecclesiastical dogma, is the truest symbol we have of our spiritual and immortal destiny, for it teaches the possible god-in-man which should be born through the purity of woman. Carry the symbol further, and we find the Crucifixion of Love through selfishness and hypocrisy—yet another step, and we are shown the Resurrection from the grave—“the Light of the World” released from the stone and seal of priestcraft, breaking free from the cerements of prejudice, and ascending to the Father of us all! Search as we may through all the religions of the world, we shall never find a grander, simpler “Symbol” of eternal truth than this—the faith preached by Christ. But it must be divested of its clerical encumbrances. Like a glorious ship that has lain too long in harbour, it must be cleansed of weed and barnacle and launched unhindered into the open sea. And those who man the ship must be free from self-interest, from “cranks” and meddlesome theories and formulas—briefly, they must be sane, with the great sanity of nature and nature’s immutable laws. Without this neither Religion nor Civilisation can endure. They can only be crazed attempts to build that “house upon sand,” of which we have been told that “the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; AND GREAT WAS THE FALL OF IT!”
HAS CHRISTIANITY FAILED?
Has Christianity failed? No! Men and women have “failed,” but not Christianity. The very question is to my mind terrible and blasphemous—one of the many terrible and blasphemous utterances common to the Press and current literature during recent years.
It is a shame to a professingly Christian nation that such a question should be asked at all. The greatest, purest religion in the world can have no weight with mere apes of humanity, who practise the most appalling hypocrisy in front of the sacred altars, and assume to believe in and to obey Christian precepts, while indulging to excess in their own private and particular selfish vices and passions, without restraint and without regret.
The nations have mocked at God and disobeyed His laws. It is the old story over again. “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Christ said, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
Christianity is based on two great laws—love to God and love to one’s neighbour; can any one say that modern civilisation fulfils these demands?
We have only to note the fearful corruption in Church and State, in every phase of politics and business, and the unspeakable vices which pollute so-called “society,” and poison our literature and art, to realise that the “cities of the plain” were no whit worse than our own, and merit no less than they a rain of fire.