In regard to science much (as we have seen) has already been done; more is being done. How is it in regard to religion? What about mechanism there?
CHAPTER III
The religions of all nations are derived from each
nation's different reception of the poetic genius,
which is everywhere called the spirit of prophecy.
Blake.
The Christian has not escaped the dangers of the common lot. He too, despite his own contrary principles, has, from the beginning of the Christian Church, been tempted as we all are to trust to mechanism and even to sacrifice in its favour the powers of life. We ought not to be surprised; what else can reasonably be expected? A good machine, whether it be made of steel and brass, or of language, or of settled formulae and plans, or of any other product of life, is an admirable servant. It is convenient; it brings satisfaction to widespread and deeply-rooted needs of life itself. Moreover there is nothing mysterious (so it seems), or even problematic, about it. The plain man is not called upon to question or wonder or speculate in regard to anything behind it, any powers or vague connexions with powers, not understood. The good machine does what it has to do and there's an end of it. A man knows where he is when he has such a thing—or when it has him. There is even a sense of comfort and security in being ruled and cared for by it, as, for example, in the case of the machinery of a State.
In this difficult world there seems, indeed there is, need for something of the kind to supply a considerable part of our religious demand. We are social beings; we are, as we are beginning to see more plainly, brothers in a community; we must organize our religion as we organize everything else in which the community of persons has its common interest. And God, the Christian may say, and has said, would not leave us, has not left us, to uncertainty and to our questioning and wondering and speculative adventure. He has provided answers to our questions, facts in response to our wondering, an open view for our speculation. Or, to put it in another way, he has given us a 'plan' or 'scheme,' or an ecclesiastical apparatus, of salvation; he has revealed religious truth to us and marked out an established method of approaching him and securing our own safety in respect of his judgement and our destiny at his hands. Nothing of so great importance has been left, could have been left, in the hands of men, to find out or not find out—poor creatures that we are.
Now, there is truth behind this, both as to the part of God and as to the part of man in the matter. We are social, we are brethren, we must organize. God, so all Christians say and many philosophers, no more leaves us to ourselves than he leaves to itself any part of his worlds. But Christians formally declare in their Creed that he is no machine-maker; he is Lord and Giver of Life. They complain, too, against science on the ground that (as they have come to believe) it must of its constant character set material mechanism above life in the order of the world. They are pledged to oppose this; and when they complain against science for a fault and failure which is soon—so many biologists and philosophers declare—to be a fault and a failure of the past, they are faithful to their pledge. But they are men, with the faults and failures of men. Habit has its snares for them; the complication of needs that meets them in their effort to maintain themselves, body, mind and spirit, in the world, entangles them. The short cut, the provided means, everything and anything that seems to make matters easy or safe—in short, the logical or legalistic or institutional machine—is attractive. And for most men this machine in any of its protean forms, is perhaps only the more attractive the more valued is the treasure it seems to ensure or to protect. The faith once for all delivered—how precious that is! Salvation in this world and the next—can anything be of greater import for man? Let us make these things secure, whatever else we risk. Only fools or the reckless would embrace chances of adventure where so much is at stake.