Science and Morals and Other Essays

by Sir Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

It will be admitted by all conversant with the facts that religion could hardly have been at a lower ebb than it was when what is known as the Evangelical Movement came to trouble the placid, if stagnant and turbid, pool of the Established Church. Of course it did not transform the Church entirely. Read Miss Austen's novels: the most perfect pictures of life ever written. There are, I suppose, some half-dozen clergymen, pleasant and unpleasant, depicted in them, and we may be sure that they fairly well represent the typical average country parson of the period. Whatever they may otherwise be, they all agree in one point, namely in the complete absence of any such thing as a trace of spirituality. But in the early nineteenth-century Evangelicanism—specially that terrible variety Calvinism—was the dominant factor where religion really prevailed as a living influence; and it is to its influence, I firmly believe, that we may attribute the genuine detestation of religion which was so marked a feature of a part of the Victorian and most of the succeeding time. I am not, of course, forgetting the Oxford Movement, but, important as that was and is, in its earlier years it was almost entirely confined to clerical circles, exercising comparatively little influence on the laity and practically none at all on that great middle class which had been so much affected by the Wesleys, Whitefield, Scott, Newton, and the other pundits of Evangelicanism. Take the characteristic novel of the movement, if novel it should be called, Newman's Loss and Gain: I do not remember a single male character in it who is not in Holy Orders or on the way thereto. Hence, so far as religious influences are concerned, it is to the Evangelical Movement that we have to look. Now, though in my opinion it was the parent of many evils, there is no doubt that there was in it real fervour; intense devotion; a genuine desire to know and do God's will; a burning love for our Lord; coupled with all which were the most distorted and distorting ideas of what was and what was not sin ever conceived by any brain. Of this creed I can speak from personal knowledge, for I was brought up in it and know it from bitter experience.

The exponents of these views were never tired of instilling into their pupils the need for conversion, which was supposed to be a sudden operation. I have heard persons name the exact moment by the clock and the day on which theirs took place, and it was often effected by a single text. I have seen the Bible of an eminent leader in this line which contains a number of texts painted round with colours, each of which was associated with the conversion of some particular individual. The process was supposed to be effected by the "acceptance of Christ," and though it was said to be free to all, it was clear to some at least of those who quite earnestly and really desired it, that, however ardent their desires, they could not secure their realisation. One was supposed to know in some mysterious manner that one was converted; the operation was permanent in its character; it could not be repeated; once thoroughly effected the converted person neither wished to sin nor really did sin. If anyone supposed to have been converted did relapse into evil ways, then he never had really been converted, but only seemed to have been. I have heard this circular form of argument urged most strongly by those who were (by constitution apparently) absolutely unable to see the illogical position which they were taking up. A further, and the most awful, part of the teaching was that however much one desired to be converted, and however earnestly one prayed for it, if one died without it damnation was certain. Lastly there was the encouraging thought that everything done prior to conversion was equally without merit; in fact, one might almost say, equally evil. These things were dinned into the heads of the young, in season and out of season; is it any wonder that so many of them grew up to hate religion? I remember myself the positive terror with which I went out even to minor entertainments, because I knew that in all probability close interrogation would be made as to my spiritual condition.

Let me be reminiscent and recall one case. I was a boy at school and spending my Easter vacation away from home and with friends. It was my lot to have to dine one night with an old friend of my father's, a person of some distinction, who having, I believe, been a viveur in his youth, had in later years embraced the most ferocious type of Evangelicanism. When the ladies had retired I was left alone with this formidable person, whom I eyed much as a rabbit eyes a snake into whose cage he has been introduced. Nor were my fears groundless, for no sooner was the room empty than he peremptorily demanded of me whether I was saved. On hearing my trembling but perfectly truthful reply that I really did not know, he struck the table with his fist (I can see the whole thing quite plainly to-day, though it is five-and-forty years ago), exclaiming, "Then you are a fool, and if you were to die to-night you most certainly would be damned." I ask those who were brought up in a more kindly and more rational scheme of Christianity whether it is any wonder that those whose youth was spent in these gloomy shades should welcome the thought that there was no such being as a God?

Associated with this gloomy creed a new series of sins was invented, as if there were not enough already in the world. It was sinful to dance, even under the most domestic and proper circumstances. It was a sin to play cards, even when there was no money on the game. It was a sin to go to the theatre, even to behold the most inspiring and instructive plays. It was even held by some, as we shall see, that the writing of stories or works of imagination was sinful. I once heard a professor of this creed express the doubt whether Shakespeare had not, on the whole, done much more harm than good, and state that he himself would not allow the works of Dickens to occupy a place in a hospital library, from which, as a matter of fact—for on this point the discussion had arisen—they had been excluded by the then chaplain of the institution, a man of like views. In fact, the idea of God which was presented to the youth of that period and brought up under such influences was—I do not say wilfully—that of a kind of super-policeman: a hard-hearted policeman, with an exaggerated code of misdoings, forever waiting round a corner to pounce on evil-doers, and, one was obliged to think, apparently almost pleased at the opportunity of catching them. It need not be said that no disrespect is intended in this. It is a simple and truthful statement of the kind of impression made upon one person by the teachings of that age and school. Is it any wonder that persons brought up in such a creed should experience a feeling of relief on learning that there was no God, no sin, no punishment? Add to this the terrors of the exaggerated Sabbatarianism of the period. What was the Sunday programme? Two lengthy sessions of Family Prayers; two attendances—each lasting at least an hour and a quarter—on services in church; one, sometimes two, hours of Sunday School; no books but those of a religious character; no amusements of any kind even for the very young, unless the putting together of a dissected map of Palestine could be called an amusement; what a method of rendering Sunday attractive to the young!

Is it any wonder that those brought up on such a plan abandoned, with a sigh of relief, all religious exercises when at last they were able to do so? I notice that Mr. Belfort Bax, in his Reminiscences of a Mid and Late Victorian, alludes to this matter, saying that, "The most cruel of all the results of mid-Victorian religion was, perhaps, the rigid enforcement of the most drastic Sabbatarianism. The horror of the tedium of Sunday infected more or less the whole of the latter portion of the week." Experto crede! He says further, dealing with the 'fifties, that "the intellectual possibilities of the English people were then stunted and cramped by the influence of the dogmatic Calvinistic theology which was the basis of its traditional sentiment;"—it is exactly the point which I am trying to make.

We may now examine two instances of the kind of teaching with which I am dealing and its results. The first is that of the poet Cowper, and anyone who takes the trouble to read his life as written by Southey will find the whole piteous tale fully drawn out. Southey hated the Catholic Church, of which, by the way, he knew absolutely nothing, but he had sufficient sense to reject the teachings of Calvinism. Cowper was at times insane and at other times of anything but a well-balanced mind, and he was just the kind of man who never ought to have been brought under the influences to which he was subjected. His principal adviser was the Rev. John Newton, a well-known Calvinistic clergyman of the Church of England. He must have been a man of compelling character, for he it was who brought the Rev. Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford, out of Socinianism, which, though a minister of the Church of England, he professed, into the Calvinistic view of things, as Scott himself tells us in his book The Force of Truth; and it must not be forgotten that it was to the writings of this same Scott that Newman tells us (in his Apologia) that he owed his very soul. Newton, like many of his fellows, had no sort of doubt as to his right to act as a director of souls, nor of his profound knowledge of how they should be dealt with. Yet it is to be remembered that, whilst the Catholic priest is obliged to undergo a long and careful training before he is permitted to take up this perilous task, Newton and those of his kind undertook it without any training whatever. Cowper, as everybody knows, was carefully and kindly tended by Mrs. Unwin, a woman a good deal older than himself, against whose character no word of reproach was ever uttered, the widow of an old friend of the poet. Newton wanted to drive Mrs. Unwin out of his house, but here at least Cowper rebelled and showed his very just annoyance, Newton actually urged Cowper to abandon the task of translating Homer, a labour undertaken to distract his poor sick mind from thinking of itself, because such work, not being of a religious character, partook of the nature of sin. It is no wonder that such a rule of life had not infrequently the most distressing consequences. Newton himself admits that his preaching had the reputation of driving people into lunacy. In a letter asking that steps may be taken to remove one poor victim to an asylum he says: "I hope the poor girl is not without some concern for her soul; and, indeed, I believe a concern of this kind was the beginning of her disorder. I believe," he continues, "my name is up about the county for preaching people mad ... whatever may be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen, in different degrees, disordered in their heads, and most of them I believe truly gracious people."

Let us turn to the other example which I propose to select, that given by Mr. Gosse in his truly remarkable work Father and Son, one of the most faithful pictures of life ever written. The first instance shall be an extract from the diary of the mother, obviously a woman of great power and gifts if she had been given an opportunity of displaying them. "When I was a very little child," she writes, "I used to amuse myself and my brothers with inventing stories such as I had read. Having, as I suppose, naturally a restless mind and busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately my brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore" (a Calvinistic governess), "finding it out, lectured me severely, and told me it was wicked. From that time forth I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin. But the desire to do so was too deeply rooted in my affections to be resisted in my own strength," (she was at this time nine years of age), "and unfortunately I knew neither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where to gain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with a violence; everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. The simplicity of truth was not sufficient for me; I must needs embroider imagination upon it, and the folly, vanity and wickedness which disgraced my heart, are more than I am able to express. Even now (at the age of twenty-nine), though watched, prayed and striven against, this is still the sin which most easily besets me. It has hindered my prayers and prevented my improvement, and therefore has humbled me very much." It is narrated of the well-known Father Healy that a young lady having consulted him as to the sin of vanity, she feeling convinced, when she looked in her glass, that she was a very pretty girl, was answered by him, "My child, that is not a sin; it is a mistake!" It wanted some wise adviser to make the same remark to this poor tortured and deluded woman.

Illness under this code was always a punishment sent from heaven, as, indeed, it may be; but, "if anyone was ill it showed that 'the Lord's hand was extended in chastisement,' and much prayer was poured forth in order that it might be explained to the sufferer, or to his relations, in what he or they had sinned. People would, for instance, go on living over a cesspool, working themselves up into an agony to discover how they had incurred the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away." One last instance, the most remarkable of all, and we may leave this book. It need hardly be said that a father of the kind depicted in this book would have a holy horror of the Catholic Church, and he had. He "welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy." He "celebrated the announcement in the newspapers of a considerable emigration from the Papal dominions, by rejoicing at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot's domain, from her sin and her plagues," and he even carried his hatred so far as to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him was nothing less than an act of idolatry.

On a certain Christmas Day, the servants, greatly daring, disobeyed the order of their master and actually had the audacity to make a small plum-pudding for themselves. Actuated by pity, no doubt, and by a feeling of kindness towards a small boy deprived of all the joys of the season, they pressed a slice of this pudding upon the son, who succumbed—very naturally—to the temptation. Shortly after, however, being afflicted by a stomach-ache, remorse came upon him and he rushed to his father, exclaiming: "Oh! papa, papa, I have eaten of flesh offered to idols!" When the father learned what had happened, he sternly said, "Where is the accursed thing?" Having heard that it was on the kitchen table, "he took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran till we reached the dust-heap, where he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the mass. The suddenness, the velocity of this extraordinary act, made an impression on my memory which nothing will ever efface." Such is a plain unvarnished account of the kind of way in which numbers of people were brought up in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century. Can it be wondered that those who had such a childhood should grow up with an absolute horror of the Person in Whose name such things—absurdities when not positive crimes—were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these wholly false ideas of God and of sin have had more to do with the spread of materialism than many will perhaps be disposed to admit. Educated people, especially those trained in scientific methods, demand a certain common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If they are brought up to believe that a grievous sin is committed when they invent an innocent story; when they go to a theatre or to a dance, or play a game of cards; if they have never known the demands of real Christianity as put forward by the Catholic Church, is it likely that they will cleave to a faith which apparently engenders such absurdities as the Christmas pudding episode? It is, indeed, as Father Wasmann says, a thousand pities that the reasonableness, the logic, the dignity of the Catholic religion should remain for ever hidden from the eyes and minds of many who so often are as they are, because they were brought up as they were. In all these things we find the key to another problem. In another essay in this volume I have called attention to the glad intelligence, as it seems to a certain school of writers, that we are freed from the "bugbear of sin," as one of them puts it; able to enjoy ourselves without any thoughts of that kind.

Now I cannot but believe that such writers are thinking of the bugbear of artificial sins invented by the professors of a gloomy creed of religion. It is not to be supposed that any serious writer—and those to whom I allude are eminently such—would speak or write with pleasure and satisfaction of escaping from the bugbear of sins against morality or against one's neighbour; from the bugbear of dishonesty or theft; of taking away a person's character; of running away with his wife. I am convinced that it is the invented crimes of card-playing, theatre-going, and the like to which they are alluding: it could not surely be otherwise; and that makes it all the more unfortunate that before misusing a technical term like the word "sin," and thus perhaps misleading some young and ardent mind, such writers could not follow Father Wasmann's advice and study some simple manual of Catholic ethics, from which they would learn the real doctrine of Christianity and would discover how very different a thing it is and how very much more reasonable than the distorted caricature which we have been studying.