IV
THE APOSTLE'S CREED
A gospel it is, in all literalness; an evangel; a message of glad tidings. It is not merely a truth, it is "the Truth" (p. 1). Let there be no mistake about it: Mr. Wells's ambition is to rank with St. Paul and Mahomet, as the apostle of a new world-religion. He does not in so many words lay claim to inspiration, but it is almost inevitably deducible from his premises. He is uttering the first clear and definite tidings of a God who is endowed with personality, character, will and purpose. To that Deity he has submitted himself in enthusiastic devotion. If the God does not seize the opportunity to speak through such a marvellously suitable, such an ideal, mouthpiece, then practical common-sense cannot be one of his attributes. Which of the other Gods who have announced themselves from time to time has found such a megaphone to reverberate his voice? St. Paul was a poor tent-maker, whose sermons were not even reported in the religious press, while his letters probably counted their public by scores, or at most by hundreds. Mr. Wells, from the outset of his mission, has the ear of two hemispheres.
What, then, does he tell us of his God? The first characteristic which differentiates him from all the other Gods with a big G—for of course we pay no heed to the departmental gods of polytheism—the first fact we must grasp and hold fast to, is that he lays no claim to infinity. "This new faith ... worships a finite God" (p. 5; Mr. Wells's italics). "He has begun and he never will end" (p. 18). "He is within time and not outside it" (p. 7). Nothing can be more definite than that. There was a time when God did not exist; and then somehow, somewhen, he came into being.
Perhaps to ask "When?" would be to trespass on the department of origins, from which we are explicitly warned off. It would be to trench upon "cosmogony." Yet we are not quite without guidance. "The renascent religion," we are told, "has always been here; it has always been visible to those that had eyes to see" (p. 1). "Always," in this context, can only mean during the whole course of human history. Therefore God must have come into being some time between the issue of the creative fiat and the appearance of man on the planet. This is a pretty wide margin, but it is something to go upon. He may have been contemporary with the amœba, or with the ichthyosaurus, or haply with the earliest quadrumana. At the very latest (if "always" is accurate) he must have made his appearance exactly at the same time as man; and if I were to give my opinion, I should say that was extremely probable. At all events, even if he preceded man by a few thousand or million years, we are compelled to assume that he came in preparation for the advent of the human species, determined to be on hand when wanted. For we do not gather that the lower animals stand in need of his services, or are capable of benefiting by them. One might be tempted to conceive him as guiding the course of evolution and hastening its laggard process; but (as we shall see) he scorns the rôle of Providence, and resolutely abstains from any intromission in organic or meteorological concerns. It would be pleasant to think that he had something to do with (for instance) the retreat of the ice-cap in the northern hemisphere; but we are not encouraged to indulge in any such speculation. It would appear that the activity of God is purely psychical and moral—that he has no interest in biology, except as it influences, and is influenced by, sociology. In short, from all that one can make out, this God is strictly correlative to Man; and that is a significant fact which we shall do well to bear in mind.
As we have already seen, the Infinite (or Veiled) Being is not God (p. 13); nor is God the Life Force, the "impulse thrusting through matter and clothing itself in continually changing material forms ... the Will to Be" (pp. 15-16). As we have also seen, Mr. Wells refuses to define the relation of his God, this "spirit," this "single spirit and single person," to either of these inscrutable entities. "God," he says, "comes to us neither out of the stars nor out of the pride of life, but as a still small voice within" (p. 18). It is by "faith" that we "find" him (p. 13); but Mr. Wells "doubts if faith can be complete and enduring if it is not secured by the definite knowledge of the true God" (p. 135). What, then, is "faith" in this context? It would be too much to say, with the legendary schoolboy, that it is "believing what you know isn't true." The implication seems rather to be that if you begin by believing on inadequate grounds, you will presently attain to belief on adequate grounds, or, in other words, knowledge. Thus, when you go to a spiritual séance in a sceptical frame of mind, the chill of your aura frightens the spirits away, and you obtain no manifestations; but if you go in a mood of faith, which practically means confident expectation, the phenomena follow, and you depart a convert. I use this illustration in no scoffing spirit. The presupposition is not irrational. It amounts, in effect, to saying that you must go some way to meet God before God can or will come to you. This seems a curious coyness; but as God is finite and conditioned, a bit of a character ("a strongly marked and knowable personality," p. 5), there is nothing contradictory in it. Even when we read that "the true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling for recruits along the street" (p. 40), we must not seize upon the letter of a similitude, and talk about inconsistency. You must go out to meet even the Salvation Army. It offers you salvation in vain if you obstinately bolt your door, and insist that an Englishman's house is his castle.
The finding of this God is very like what revivalists call "conversion" (p. 21). You are oppressed by "the futility of the individual life"; you fall into "a state of helpless self-disgust" (p. 21); you are, in short, in the condition described by Hamlet when he says: "It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." The condition may result, as in Hamlet's case, from an untoward conjunction of outward circumstances; or it may be of physiological (liverish) origin. The methods of treatment are many—some of them (such as the administration of alcohol in large doses) disastrously unwise. In some states of society and periods of history, religion is the popular specific; and there have been, and are, forms of religion to which alcohol would be preferable. Fortunately, one can say without a shadow of hesitancy that "the modern religion" lies under no such suspicion. As dispensed by Mr. Wells, it is entirely wholesome. If it is found to cheer, it will certainly not inebriate. Indeed, the doubt one feels as to its popular success lies in the very fact that it contains but an innocuous proportion of alcohol.
You find yourself, then, in the distressful case described by Hamlet and Mr. Wells. "Man delights you not, no, nor woman neither." You cannot muster up energy even to kill King Claudius. You go about gloomily soliloquizing on suicide and kindred topics. Then, "in some way the idea of God comes into the distressed mind" (p. 21). It develops through various stages, outlined by Mr. Wells in the passage cited. In the modern man, it would seem, one great difficulty lies in "a curious resistance to the suggestion that God is truly a person" (p. 22). It is here, no doubt, that faith comes in; at all events, you ultimately get over this stumbling-block. "Then suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. The cardinal experience is an undoubting immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself" (p. 23). You have come, in fact, to the gate of Damascus. You have found salvation.
Yes, salvation!—there is no other word for it. Mr. Wells does not hesitate to use both that word and its correlative, damnation. From what, then, are you saved? Why, from quite a number of things. You are saved "from the purposelessness of life" (p. 18). God's immortality has "taken the sting from death" (p. 22). You have escaped "from the painful accidents and chagrins of individuation" (p. 73). "Salvation is to lose oneself" (p. 73); it is "a complete turning away from self" (p. 84). "Damnation is really over-individuation, and salvation is escape from self into the larger being of life" (p. 76). In another place we are told that salvation is "escape from the individual distress at disharmony and the individual defeat by death, into the Kingdom of God, and damnation can be nothing more and nothing less than the failure or inability or disinclination to make that escape" (p. 148). On the next page we have another definition of damnation (borrowed, it would seem, from Mr. Clutton Brock), with which I hasten to express my cordial and enthusiastic agreement: "Satisfaction with existing things is damnation." I have always thought that hell was the headquarters of conservatism, and am delighted to find such influential backing for that pious opinion.
As for sin, it seems to be a falling away from the state of grace attained through conversion. You can and do sin while you are still unconverted; for we are told that "repentance is the beginning and essential of the religious life" (p. 165). Probably (though this is not clear) your unregenerate condition is in itself sinful, "individuation" being not very different from the Original Sin of the theologians. But it is sin after regeneration that really matters. "Salvation leaves us still disharmonious, and adds not one inch to our spiritual and moral nature" (p. 146). "It is the amazing and distressful discovery of every believer so soon as the first exaltation of belief is past, that one does not remain always in touch with God" (p. 149). One backslides. One reverts to one's unregenerate type. The old Adam makes disquieting resurgences in the swept and garnished mansion from which he seemed to have been for ever cast out. "This is the personal problem of Sin. Here prayer avails; here God can help us" (p. 150). And what is still more consoling, "though you sin seventy times seven times, God will still forgive the poor rest of you.... There is no sin, no state that, being regretted and repented of, can stand between God and man" (p. 156).