Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep,
For God still “giveth his belovèd sleep,”
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.[41]
Can we state it as our honest opinion that the consolations of belief enter into the every-day life of the average man, influencing thereby his happiness? We cannot. Only on rare occasions, in times of bereavement, or in time of his own approaching death, will he turn to his belief for consolation. Does he obtain then the consolation he looks for? Again the answer must be in the negative. Here and there we come across examples of a happy resignation such as we should expect to find; but usually it is far otherwise. No one nurses his grief longer than the average Christian; no one is more unwilling to die—he is really more anxious to live than Hindoo, Parsee, Mohammedan, or Buddhist believer, or Japanese Agnostic. Whether it be that Agnosticism engenders a spirit of resignation, it is difficult to say; but the fact remains that no one accepts the ills of life more cheerfully, no one meets his death more bravely, than the average Agnostic. How often one hears of the deaths of unbelievers quite as beautiful in their serene calm as those of devout believers. To give examples recently before the public, we have the heart-stirring accounts of the last moments of two well-known Agnostics, the late Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of An Agnostic’s Apology, and the late George Jacob Holyoake, the founder of Secularism. These may be exceptional cases; but such are exceptional, also, among believers. According as a man is possessed of self-control, or is naturally fearless or resigned, so will his conduct or feelings be affected. We are speaking, mind you, of averages; and I maintain that bereavements and death are met by the average Agnostic with as much resignation as by the average Christian who has religious consolation to fall back upon.
The fear of death supplies the chief motive for religion. Even the emotion called forth by the death of a friend is not solely the feeling of the loss. It is partly because death has been brought very near to us. Now, as the consolation afforded by religion in our last hours is continually held up to us by the priest as a reward for belief, one would expect to find that occasions where this consolation was unnecessary would be few and far between. It is, however, quite the reverse. Eliminating the cases of sudden death, how seldom are these consolations of utility? Inquire, if you doubt, from any medical man what are his experiences among the dying; how many are not even aware that they are dying; how many are too much taken up with their physical sufferings, and too anxious to be relieved from them, to think of anything else; how many die in a space of time so brief, reckoning from the moment when they are first made aware of their dying condition, that the case is practically one of sudden death; how many are unconscious from the time when their life is first in danger; how many have the knowledge of their approaching death carefully concealed from them by kind-hearted doctors and relations, albeit both the patient and his attendants say they believe in a supremely happy existence after death? Far more often than not the religious consolation so frequently and solemnly held up to us by the priest as an inducement to believe is never enjoyed. Does it not furnish a damaging commentary on one of the strongest arguments for belief—the argument from religious consolation?
Taking these facts into consideration, we find ourselves able to approach the question of disturbing belief with a somewhat lighter heart. Still, we have to remember that these hopes and fears, sedulously implanted by the Church, have taken deep root. Could we be sure of impressing believers with our own convictions concerning the consolations of religion, all would be well; but we cannot be sure. Here lies the crux. The idea that they are deriving, and will derive, consolation when the dread moment is at hand has become far too fixed for painless extraction. You may only succeed in partially divesting them of their belief, making them thoroughly miserable to no purpose; or, if you do succeed, it may only be after you have put them to considerable mental distress. What is to be done, then? It is a hard question. Feeling this, we give the matter up in despair, and remain silent. And so the truth which we might have spread, each one of us in his own circle, remains unspoken.
Worse still, the untruth is perpetuated by permitting our children to be brought up in the false beliefs of our believing friends. This, at least, should make us pause and reflect. Are we justified in keeping silence? Are we justified in making no effort to save the future generation from mental distress, or from what is far worse, a demoralising indifference? The dilemma is great, but that is no reason for shirking it. It must be faced, and the pros and cons carefully weighed. Is there, haply, no middle course that we may steer? We should not unnecessarily cause distress to the aged who have, all their days, cherished this belief, who have arrived at a time of life when ideas are not easily changed, and who feel that that life is now drawing to a close, and that they now more than ever require the consolation they have built their hopes upon. We should spare their feelings all we can; but we must, so it seems to me, put both them and ourselves to such distress as may arise from telling them plainly, when absolutely necessary, that we do not believe in the truth of Christianity, and do not think it right to bring up our children to what we consider is a false belief. We have seen that religious tolerance is the growing spirit of the age, that some of our greatest divines extol[42] the virtues of the Agnostic, and condemn[43] obscurantism and the odium theologicum. Shall we then, after all, in these days, cause so very much distress by our confessions of unbelief? As a rule, I think we shall not.
(f) CAN WE ALTER PEOPLE’S BELIEFS?
Another objection to “speaking out” is that we can never alter people’s beliefs. Many well-known Agnostics still hold this opinion. In his essay, “The Religion of All Sensible Men,” Sir Leslie Stephen expresses this opinion in the following words: “I do not wish to underrate modern progress; but surely there is something grotesque in the hypothesis that the average shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is too clever to believe in the creeds of his forefathers. I fancy that no one has yet ascertained that the brain of to-day is more capacious than the brains of the contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul.... Can you pierce his [the intelligent citizen’s] armour of stolid indifference by arguments about the principle of evolution and the survival of the fittest?... The improbability that ancient creeds should simply survive must, therefore, depend upon other conditions than the increase of the average intelligence.... I would not conceal my own views, but neither would I feel anxious to thrust them upon others; and for the very simple reason that conversion appears to me to be an absurdity. You cannot change a man’s thoughts about things as you can change the books in his library.”[44] With all due respect to the late Sir Leslie Stephen, I contend that there is one gigantic fallacy underlying this argument. He forgets, or appears to forget, that beliefs are built upon premises, the errors in which one may be able to demonstrate absolutely without having to enter into learned dissertations on the principle of evolution. He declares that he does not wish to underrate, but he certainly does underrate, modern progress. Surely the average shopkeeper or artisan of the present day is capable of understanding that practically nothing is left of the foundations upon which his forefathers built their beliefs; that they have crumbled away under the influence of a knowledge that was not in the possession of the contemporaries of Cæsar or St. Paul? “The laws of thought,” as Herbert Spencer says, “are everywhere the same, and the ideas of a rational being are, under the conditions in which they occur, rational.”[45] It is ignorance, coupled with superstition, that is at the root of all the different beliefs of mankind. Superstition may remain, though even this may be questioned, considering that people brought up from their childhood as Agnostics are wholly devoid of any superstitious or so-called religious instinct. Ignorance can in any case be dispelled, and if this does not actually destroy supernatural beliefs, it will at least modify them. Even the working man will not remain satisfied with a theology which maintains the necessity for a foundation of facts, and yet is unable to prove them. Therefore, confident of the utility, let us unravel all that is clearly false in belief, and disseminate the result of our investigations among our fellows. In this way, men who are in all essentials seeking the same goal may be led to pursue, if not the same path, yet at least convergent paths. The common sophisms that it is useless to inquire too deeply into beliefs, since you will never arrive at the absolute truth, and that you will never get two men to think alike, account for much of the prevalent indifference. Absolute truth may always remain beyond the ken of man; but that is no reason why he should not go on trying to get as near it as possible, and the first step is the elimination of untruth.