I may quote the testimony of the late Sir Leslie Stephen here. Every one knows that he held no brief to defend orthodoxy —
“To proclaim unsectarian Christianity is, in circuitous language, to proclaim that Christianity is dead. The love of Christ, as representing the ideal perfection of human nature, may indeed be still a powerful motive, and powerful whatever the view which we take of Christ’s character. The advocates of the doctrine in its more intellectual form represent this passion as the true essence of Christianity. They assert with obvious sincerity of conviction that it is the leverage by which alone the world can be moved. But, as they would themselves admit, this conception would be preposterous if, with Strauss, we regarded Christ as a mere human being. Our regard for Him might differ in degree, but would not differ in kind, from our regard for Socrates or for Pascal. It would be impossible to consider it as an overmastering and all-powerful influence. The old dilemma would be inevitable; he that loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love Christ whom he hath not seen? A mind untouched by the agonies and wrongs which invest London hospitals and lanes with horror, could not be moved by the sufferings of a single individual, however holy, who died eighteen centuries ago.
“No; the essence of the belief is the belief in the Divinity of Christ. But accept that belief; think for a moment of all that implies, and you must admit that your Christianity becomes dogmatic in the highest degree. Our conceptions of the world and its meaning are more radically changed than our conceptions of the material universe, when the sun instead of the earth becomes its centre. Every view of history, every theory of our duty, must be radically transformed by contact with that Stupendous Mystery. Whether you accept or reject the special tenets of the Athanasian Creed is an infinitesimal trifle. You are bound to assume that every religion which does not take this dogma into account is without true vital force. Infidels, heathens, and Unitarians reject the single influence which alone can mould our lives in conformity with the everlasting laws of the universe. Of course, there are tricks of sleight of hand by which the conclusion is evaded. It would be too long and too trifling to attempt to expose them. Unsectarian Christianity consists in shirking the difficulty without meeting it, and trying hard to believe that the passion can survive without its essential basis. It proclaims the love of Christ as our motive, whilst it declines to make up its mind whether Christ was God or man; or endeavours to escape a categorical answer under a cloud of unsubstantial rhetoric. But the difference between man and God is infinite, and no effusion of superlatives will disguise the plain fact from honest minds. To be a Christian in any real sense you must start from a dogma of the most tremendous kind, and an undogmatic Creed is as senseless as a statue without shape or a picture without colour. Unsectarian means un-Christian.” – From Freethinking and Plainspeaking (pp. 122-4), by Leslie Stephen. (Longmans, London.)
The considerations which seemed to compel the clearheaded author of this extract to his own well-known intellectual position no longer apply. In England, at any rate, the Church is not bound down to any mechanical theory of the inspiration of the Bible, and accepts all the discoveries of Modern Physical Science without misgiving. Such books as the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Temple) gave us in his Bampton Lectures have long ago shown the futility of attempting to map out the exact terms of a reconciliation between the claims of science and religion, but they have shown that religion and science are not destructive and contradictory of each other.
“The same principles are found in each. The principle of evolution, for instance, is as evident in the gradual development of religion as in the age-long process by which the natural world was created; the order and beauty and regular succession manifest in Nature can be traced also in the spiritual universe. The revelation which was formerly held to be violation of law is seen to be a revelation of higher law. The great postulate of science, the uniformity of Nature, is not infringed.”
We know now that there are laws of the Universe which, if we knew more about them, would tell us how it was that a Virgin could conceive and bear a Son. It is not to us an inconceivable superstition that “The Son of Man” should have in His own person powers of which the rudimentary signs can be traced in all humanity, manifesting themselves from time to time. The day is long past when the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be set aside as a “cunningly devised fable.” No scientific man, who has not deliberately shut himself in an hermetically sealed materialism would say to-day that “Miracles” do not happen. It is a question of evidence.
And educated men know that there is a science of metaphysics, that there is a science of psychology, that literary criticism is scientific, that the age of a document can be decided, that cumulative evidence cannot be ignored, and that simply to put aside the claims of Christianity without examination is absurd.
But, as Sir Leslie Stephen shows, it is the Christianity of the Catholic creed that matters, and it is this Christianity of which the man in the street has need. It gives him a solution of those social and ethical problems which he must solve, which he can only neglect at the peril of natural degradation. For example, the position of women depends upon our belief or disbelief that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. To say that monogamy is the natural evolution of humanity, that chastity in the young unmarried man is a product of civilization, that a high conception of a man’s duty to posterity will keep him from harlotry, is simply to show ignorance of history, of human nature, and of the world as it is. A man who talks now-a-days about the respect of marriage being a Teutonic contribution to the evolution of civilized society, is behind the times. We know that respect for women, and marriage held in honour, are the creations of the Holy Catholic Church, which insists on the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the man in the street does not know these things. The discoveries in science, whether physical or psychical, do not reach him. Technical treatises are too strong meat for his intellectual digestion. The pulpit does not appeal to him. At every baptism in the Church of England the priest solemnly instructs the god-parents of the child, “Ye shall call upon him to hear sermons,” but for the most part the admonition is in vain. As a matter of fact, he picks up his religious notions from the newspaper press. And the newspaper press is not now controlled by men who have a distinct and definite belief in Christianity. It depends upon Finance, and financiers have other interests. The assertion of the Psalter, “Notus in Judæa” has been changed now-a-days into an interrogation, and we ask, “In Jewry is God known?” Let any man who has an intimate acquaintance with the newspaper world run over in his mind the names of the great newspaper proprietors, the editors of our journalistic press, the writers of leading articles, the rising young journalists; and when he has excepted a few Irishmen, who may happen to remain faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, to which they owe their education, how many men will he find who honestly believe the Nicene Creed, and are habitually present on the first day of the week at the Breaking of the Bread?
The tone of the daily paper is tolerant. There is no rude hostility displayed towards definite Christian doctrines, but the toleration is politely contemptuous. “All wise men are of the same religion, and what that religion is wise men do not say.”
It is true that in political matters the press has less power than it used to have. A magnate of finance cannot now seriously affect public opinion, though he may buy newspaper after newspaper, and sweep out the editorial staff to supply their places with men of his own choice. One wealthy wirepuller has other plutocrats to reckon with in questions of party politics, and a newspaper man who is dismissed by the proprietor of the Tariff Reformer may find another editorial chair placed at his disposal by the owner of The Standard of Free Trade.
The man in the street looks out for a newspaper which may strengthen his own party proclivities. He expects to find political questions discussed, but so far as religion is concerned he accepts without knowing it the current convention of the pressman, and imbibes a semi-sceptical atmosphere without misgiving or suspicion.
And yet, as Sir Leslie Stephen saw, every theory of duty depends upon Belief or Disbelief in the Divinity of Christ. We may talk of duty to Society, duty to the Race, duty to Posterity, duty to Civilization; but the plain man will recall the question of