THE INEFFECTIVE MESSAGE

The week had gone while he walked in the crowds, feeling his remoteness; but he knew at last that he was not of the brotherhood of the zealots; that the very sense of humour by which he saw the fallacies of one zealot prevented him from becoming another.  He lacked the zealot’s conviction of his unique importance, yet one must be such a zealot to give a message effectively.  He began to see that the world could not be lost; that whatever might be vital in his own message would, soon or late, be delivered by another.  The time mattered not.  Could he not be as reposeful, as patient, as God?

In spite of which, the impulse to speak his little word would recur; and it came upon him stoutly one day on his way up town.  As the elevated train slowly rounded a curve he looked into the open window of a room where a gloomy huddle of yellow-faced, sunken-cheeked, brown-bearded men bent their heads over busy sewing-machines.  Nearest the window, full before it, was one that touched him ­a young man with some hardy spirit of hope still enduring in his starved face, some stubborn refusal to recognise the odds against him.  And fixed to his machine, where his eyes might now and then raise to it from his work, was a spray of lilac ­his little spirit flaunting itself gaily even from the cross.  The pathos of it was somehow intensified by the grinding of the wheels that carried him by it.

The train creaked its way around the curve ­but the face dreaming happily over the lilac spray in that hopeless room stayed in his mind, coercing him.

As he entered the house, Nancy met him.

“Do go and be host to those men.  It’s our day for the Ministers’ Meeting,” she continued, as he looked puzzled, “and just as they sat down Allan was called out to one of his people who is sick.  Now run like a good boy and ’tend to them.”

So it came that, while the impulse was still strong upon him, he went in among the dozen amiable, feeding gentlemen who were not indisposed to listen to whomsoever might talk ­if he did not bore ­which is how it befell that they had presently cause to remark him.

Not at first, for he mumbled hesitatingly, without authority of manner or point to his words, but the phrase, “the fundamental defect of the Christian religion” caused even the Unitarian to gasp over his glass of mineral water.  His green eyes glittered pleasantly upon Bernal from his dark face with its scraggly beard.

“That’s it, Mr. Linford ­tell us that ­we need to know that ­do we not, gentlemen?”

“Speak for yourself, Whittaker,” snapped the aggressive little Baptist, “but doubtless Mr. Linford has something to say.”

Bernal remained unperturbed by this.  Very earnestly he continued:  “Christianity is defective, judged even by poor human standards; untrue by the plain facts of human consciousness.”

“Ah!  Now we shall learn!” Father Riley turned his most gracious smile upon the speaker.

“Your churches are losing their hold upon men because your religion is one of separation, here and hereafter ­while the one great tendency of the age is toward brotherhood ­oneness.  Primitive man had individual pride ­family pride, city pride, state pride, national pride followed ­but we are coming now to the only permissible pride, a world pride ­in which the race feels its oneness.  We are nearly there; even now the spirit that denies this actual brotherhood is confined to the churches.  The people outside more generally than you dream know that God does not discriminate among religions ­that he has a scheme of a dignity so true that it can no more permit the loss of one black devil-worshipper than that of the most magnificent of archbishops.”

He stopped, looking inquiringly ­almost wistfully, at them.

Various polite exclamations assured him of their interest.

“Continue, by all means,” urged Whittaker.  “I feel that you will have even Father Riley edified in a moment.”

“The most cynical chap ­even for a Unitarian,” purled that good man.

Bernal resumed.

“Your God is a tribal God who performed his wonders to show that he had set a difference between Israel and Egypt.  Your Saviour continues to set the same difference:  Israel being those who believed his claim to Godship; Egypt those who find his evidence insufficient.  But we humans daily practise better than this preaching of retaliation.  The Church is losing power because your creeds are fixed while man, never ceasing to grow, has inevitably gone beyond them ­even beyond the teachings of your Saviour who threatened to separate father from son and mother from daughter ­who would distinguish sheep from goats by the mere intellectual test of the opinion they formed of his miracles.  The world to-day insists on moral tests ­which Christianity has never done.”

“Ah ­now we are getting at it,” remarked the Methodist, whose twinkling eyes curiously belied his grimly solemn face.  “Who was it that wished to know the belief of the average unbeliever?”

“The average unbeliever,” answered Bernal promptly, “no longer feels the need of a Saviour ­he knows that he must save himself.  He no longer believes in the God who failed always, from Eden to Calvary, failed even to save his chosen tribe by that last device of begetting a son of a human mother who should be sacrificed to him.  He no longer believes that he must have a mediator between himself and that God.”

“Really, most refreshing,” chortled Father Riley.  “More, more!” and he rapped for silence.

“The man of to-day must have a God who never fails.  Disguise it as you will, your Christian God was never loved.  No God can be loved who threatens destruction for not loving him.  We cannot love one whom we are not free not to love.”

“Where shall we find this God ­outside of Holy Writ,” demanded Floud, who had once or twice restrained himself with difficulty, in spite of his amusement.

“The true God comes to life in your own consciousness, if you will clear it of the blasphemous preconceptions imposed by Christianity,” answered Bernal so seriously that no one had the heart to interrupt him.  “Of course we can never personify God save as a higher power of self.  Moses did no more; Jesus did no more.  And if we could stop with this ­be content with saying ’God is better than the best man’ ­we should have a formula permitting endless growth, even as He permits it to us.  God has been more generous to us than the Church has been to Him.  While it has limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable malignity.

“You see the world has demonstrated facts that disprove the Godship of your God and your Saviour.  We have come, indeed, into a sense of such certain brotherhood that we know your hell is a falsity.  We know ­a knowledge of even the rudiments of psychology proves ­that there will be a hell for all as long as one of us is there.  Our human nature is such that one soul in hell would put every other soul there.  Daily this becomes more apparent.  We grow constantly more sensitive to the pain of others.  This is the distinctive feature of modern growth ­our increasing tendency to find the sufferings of others intolerable to ourselves.  A disaster now is felt around the world ­we burn or starve or freeze or drown with our remote brothers ­and we do what we can to relieve them because we suffer with them.  It seems to me the existence of the S.P.C.A. proves that hell is either for all of us or for none of us ­because of our oneness.  If the suffering of a stray cat becomes our suffering, do you imagine that the minority of the race which Christianity saves could be happy knowing that the great majority lay in torment?

“Suppose but two were left in hell ­Judas Iscariot and Herbert Spencer ­the first great sinner after Jesus and the last of any consequence.  One betrayed his master and the other did likewise, only with far greater subtlety and wickedness ­teaching thousands to disbelieve his claims to godhood ­to regard Christianity as a crude compound of Greek mythology and Jewish tradition ­a thing built of myth and fable.  Even if these two were damned and all the rest were saved ­can you not see that a knowledge of their suffering would embitter heaven itself to another hell?  Father Riley was good enough to tell us last week of the state of unbaptised infants after death.  Will you please consider coldly the infinite, good God setting a difference for all eternity between two babies, because over the hairless pate of one a priest had sprinkled water and spoken words?  Can you not see that this is untrue because it is absurd to our God-given senses of humour and justice?  Do you not see that such a God, in the act of separating those children, taking into heaven the one that had had its little head wetted by a good man, and sending the reprobate into what Father Riley terms, ’in a wide sense, a state of damnation’ ­”

Father Riley smiled upon him with winning sweetness.

“ ­do you not see that such a God would be shamed off his throne and out of heaven by the pitying laugh that would go up ­even from sinners?

“You insist that the truth touching faith and morals is in your Bible, despite its historical inaccuracies.  But do you not see that you are losing influence with the world because this is not so ­because a higher standard of ethics than yours prevails out in the world ­a demand for a veritable fatherhood of God and a veritable brotherhood of man ­to replace the caricatures of those doctrines that Christianity submits.”

“Our young friend seems to think exceeding well of human nature,” chirped Father Riley.

“Yes,” rejoined Bernal.  “Isn’t it droll that this poor, fallen human nature, despised and reviled, ‘conceived in sin and born in iniquity,’ should at last call the Christian God and Saviour to account, weigh them by its own standard, find them wanting, and replace them with a greater God born of itself?  Is not that an eloquent proof of the living God that abides in us?”

“Has it ever occurred to you, young man, that human nature has its selfish moments?” asked the high-church rector ­between sips of claret and water.

“Has it ever occurred to you that human nature has any but selfish moments?” replied Bernal.  “If so, your impression was incorrect.”

“Really, Mr. Linford, have you not just been telling us how glorious is this nature of man ­”

“I know ­I will explain to you,” he went on, moving Father Riley to another indulgent smile by his willingness to instruct the gray-bearded Congregationalist who had interrupted.

“When I saw that there must be a hell for all so long as there is a hell for one ­even for Spencer ­I suddenly saw there was nothing in any man to merit the place ­unless it were the ignorance of immaturity.  For I saw that man by the very first law of his being can never have any but a selfish motive.  Here again practical psychology sustains me.  You cannot so much as raise your hand without an intention to promote your happiness ­nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the needy ­you are still equally doing that which promotes your happiness.  That it is more blessed to give than to receive is a terse statement of a law scientifically demonstrable.  You all know how far more exquisite is the pleasure that comes from giving than that which comes from receiving.  Is not one who prefers to give then simply selfish with a greater wisdom, a finer skill for the result desired ­his own pleasure?  The man we call good is not less selfish than the man we call bad ­only wiser in the ways that bring his happiness ­riper in that divine sensitiveness to the feelings of his brother.  Selfish happiness is equally a law with all, though it send one of us to thieving and another to the cross.

“Ignorance of this primary truth has kept the world in spiritual darkness ­it has nurtured belief in sin ­in a devil, in a God that permits evil.  For when you tell me that my assertion is a mere quibble ­that it matters not whether we call a man unselfish or wisely selfish ­you fail to see that, when we understand this truth, there is no longer any sin.  ‘Sin’ is then seen to be but a mistaken notion of what brings happiness.  Last night’s burglar and your bishop differ not morally but intellectually ­one knowing surer ways of achieving his own happiness, being more sensitive to that oneness of the race which thrills us all in varying degrees.  When you know this ­that the difference is not moral but intellectual, self-righteousness disappears and with it a belief in moral difference ­the last obstacle to the realisation of our oneness.  It is in the church that this fiction of moral difference has taken its final stand.

“And not only shall we have no full realisation of the brotherhood of man until this inevitable, equal selfishness is understood, but we shall have no rational conception of virtue.  There will be no sound morality until it is taught for its present advantage to the individual, and not for what it may bring him in a future world.  Not until then will it be taught effectively that the well-being of one is inextricably bound up with the well-being of all; that while man is always selfish, his selfish happiness is still contingent on the happiness of his brother.”

The moment of coffee had come.  The Unitarian lighted a black cigar and avidly demanded more reasons why the Christian religion was immoral.

“Still for the reason that it separates,” continued Bernal, “separates not only hereafter but here.  We have kings and serfs, saints and sinners, soldiers to kill one another ­God is still a God of Battle.  There is no Christian army that may not consistently invoke your God’s aid to destroy any other Christian army ­none whose spiritual guides do not pray to God for help in the work of killing other Christians.  So long as you have separation hereafter, you will have these absurd divisions here.  So long as you preach a Saviour who condemns to everlasting punishment for disbelief, so long you will have men pointing to high authority for all their schemes of revenge and oppression here.

“Not until you preach a God big enough to save all can you arouse men to the truth that all must be saved.  Not until you have a God big enough to love all can you have a church big enough to hold all.

“An Indian in a western town must have mastered this truth.  He had watched a fight between drunken men in which one shot the other.  He said to me, ’When I see how bad some of my brothers are, I know how good the Great Spirit must be to love them all!’”

“Was ­was he a member of any church?” inquired the amiable Presbyterian, with a facetious gleam in his eyes.

“I didn’t ask him ­of course we know he wasn’t a Presbyterian.”

Hereupon Father Riley and the wicked Unitarian both laughed joyously.  Then the Congregationalist, gazing dreamily through the smoke of his cigarette, remarked, “You have omitted any reference to the great fact of Christianity ­the sacrifice of the Son of Man.”

“Very well, I will tell you about it,” answered the young man quite earnestly, whereat the Unitarian fairly glowed with wicked anticipations.

“Let us face that so-called sacrifice honestly.  Jesus died to save those who could accept his claim to god-ship ­believing that he would go to sit at the right hand of God to judge the world.  But look ­an engineer out here the other day died a horrible death to save the lives of a scant fifty people ­their mere physical lives ­died out of that simple sense of oneness which makes us selfishly fear for the suffering of others ­died without any hope of superior exaltation hereafter.  Death of this sort is common.  I would not belittle him you call the Saviour ­as a man he is most beautiful and moving to me ­but that shall not blind me to the fact that the sacrificial element in his death is surpassed daily by common, dull humans.”

A veiled uneasiness was evident on the part of his listeners, but the speaker gave no heed.

“This spectacle of sacrifice, of devotion to others, is needed as an uplift,” he went on earnestly, “but why dwell upon one remote ­obscured by claims of a God-jugglery which belittle it if they be true ­when all about you are countless plain, unpretentious men and women dying deaths and ­what is still greater, ­living lives of cool, relentless devotion out of sheer human love.

“Preach this divineness of human nature and you will once more have a living church.  Preach that our oneness is so real that the best man is forever shackled to the worst.  Preach that sin is but ignorant selfishness, less admirable than virtue only as ignorance is less admirable than knowledge.

“In these two plain laws ­the individual’s entire and unvarying selfishness and his ever-increasing sensitiveness to the sufferings of others ­there is the promise not of a heaven and a hell, but of a heaven for all ­which is what the world is more and more emphatically demanding ­which it will eventually produce even here ­for we have as little sensed the possibilities of man’s life here as we have divined the attributes of God himself.

“Once you drove away from your church the big men, the thinkers, the fearless ­the souls God must love most truly were it possible to conceive him setting a difference among his creatures.  Now you drive away even the merely intelligent rabble.  The average man knows your defect ­knows that one who believes Christ rose from the dead is not by that fact the moral superior of one who believes he did not; knows, indeed, of God, that he cannot be a fussy, vain, blustering creature who is forever failing and forever visiting the punishment for his failures upon his puppets.

“This is why you are no longer considered a factor in civilisation, save as a sort of police-guard upon the very ignorant.  And you are losing this prestige.  Even the credulous day-labourer has come to weigh you and find you wanting ­is thrilling with his own God-assurance and stepping forth to save himself as best he can.

“But, if you would again draw man, heat him, weld him, hold him ­preach Man to him, show him his own goodness instead of loading him with that vicious untruth of his conception in iniquity.  Preach to him the limitless devotion of his common dull brothers to one another through their sense of oneness.  Show him the common beautiful, wonderful, selfish self-giving of humanity, not for an hour or for a day, but for long hard life-times.  Preach the exquisite adjustment of that human nature which must always seek its own happiness, yet is slowly finding that that happiness depends on the happiness of all.  The lives of daily crucifixion without hope of reward are abundant all about you ­you all know them.  And if once you exploit these actual sublimities of human nature ­of the man in the street ­no tale of devotion in Holy Writ will ever again move you as these do.  And when you have preached this long enough, then will take place in human society, naturally, spontaneously, that great thing which big men have dreamed of doing with their artificial devices of socialism and anarchism.  For when you have demonstrated the race’s eternal oneness man will be as little tempted to oppress, starve, enslave, murder or separate his brothers as he is now tempted to mutilate his own body.  Then only will he love his neighbor as himself ­still with a selfish love.

“Preach Man to man as a discovery in Godhood.  You will not revive the ancient glories of your Church, but you will build a new church to a God for whom you will not need to quibble or evade or apologise.  Then you will make religion the one force, and you will rally to it those great minds whose alienation has been both your reproach and your embarrassment.  You will enlist not only the scientist but the poet ­and all between.  You will have a God to whom all confess instinctively.”