VI - THE PARADOXES OF
CHRISTIANITY
The real trouble with this world of ours is not
that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The
commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life
is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little
more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its
inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance
of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon
up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was
that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him
on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the
left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still
find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin
eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he
would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would
deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most
felt he was right, he would be wrong.
It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an
inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret
treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself
called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like
an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A
blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a
point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet
and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the
last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it could easily be inferred that
every inch of it was thus curved. It would seem rational that as a man has a
brain on both sides, he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men
are still organizing expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are so
fond of flat country. Scientific men are also still organizing expeditions to
find a man's heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the
wrong side of him.
Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested
by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our
mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce
the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain. But if he guessed that
the man's heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more
than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to
propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that
when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical
truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say
so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret
irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple
truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has
two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious
deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to
point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in
Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the
truth.
I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the
effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course,
anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense
in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a
complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in
Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it
true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can
be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of
Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape
of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is
exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy
of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the
creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It
was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was
true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which
so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When
once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are
proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If
it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A
stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock
are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.
But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it
very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of
truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely
convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is
partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and
he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory
when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he
finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds
pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum
them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the
moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look
wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely,
"Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . .
and pianos . . . and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that
the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very
multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply
impossible.
There is, therefore, about all complete conviction
a kind of huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time to
get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly enough, from an
indifference about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one
reason why many people never get there. In the case of this defence of the
Christian conviction I confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one
thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But if I
am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear, it will, I think, be
wiser to continue the current arguments of the last chapter, which was
concerned to urge the first of these mystical coincidences, or rather
ratifications. All I had hitherto heard of Christian theology had alienated me
from it. I was a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age
of sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen
without having asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a
cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical interest in the
Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps
I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over some of His modern
critics. I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time—all of it,
at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; and I read
nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note of philosophy. The
penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition
of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of
Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and
Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They
sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite
right when they said that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind.
They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question whether
reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had
got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at
all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the
dreadful thought broke across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a
Christian." I was in a desperate way.
This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing
doubts deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take only
one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the
faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impression grew gradually but
graphically upon my mind—the impression that Christianity must be a most
extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most
flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices
which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for
all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it
was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it
was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its
angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to notice and
condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come
across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random of
this self-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them;
there are fifty more.
Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the
eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and
still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a
social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly
all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a
thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow
up St. Paul's Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They did prove to
me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too
pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a
great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it
prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the
bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a
fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great
agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be
free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, "the
garment of make-believe woven by pious hands," hid from us the fact that
Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had
hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a
fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity
could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask
on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so
comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he
was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way
or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled
on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts
which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed—
"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the
world has grown gray with Thy breath."
But when I read the same poet's accounts of
paganism (as in "Atalanta"), I gathered that the world was, if
possible, more gray before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards. The
poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch dark. And
yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man who denounced Christianity
for pessimism was himself a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong.
And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be
the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own
account, had neither one nor the other.
It must be understood that I did not conclude
hastily that the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced
that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made
out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer
thing if it did. A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another;
but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only of the odd
shape of the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the
rationalistic mind.
Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that
a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something
timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called "Christian,"
especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. The great sceptics
of the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way,
Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem
tenable that there was something weak and over patient about Christian
counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never
fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an
attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had
read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read
something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my
brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for
fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was
the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got
thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was
told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible
thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to
the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and
non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also
with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old
Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight
and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only
characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were
characteristic Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this
Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be
the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight,
and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born
this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity
grew a queerer shape every instant.
I take a third case; the strangest of all, because
it involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real objection to the
Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place,
full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be
said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it
has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in
my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical
Societies— I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of
all humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it
was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the
strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical
common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be
writing "Thou shalt not steal." It might decipher the darkest
hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would
be "Little boys should tell the truth." I believed this doctrine of
the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it
still—with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for
suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly
escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing
thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from
Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed
altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I
asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers
gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But
if I mildly pointed out that one of men's universal customs was to have an
altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had
always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their
daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had
left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special
boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one
people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to
Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there
seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the
two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that
all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were
only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics
of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of
Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not
in two thousand.
This began to be alarming. It looked not so much
as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any
stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this
astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in
doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on
every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but
lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I
will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the
great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged
women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their
homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced)
said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage
upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and
forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed.
Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said
by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman's intellect. But I found that
the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's intellect; for it was
their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that "only women"
went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry
habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was
being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and
its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too
coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality
too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too
little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of
religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I
have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, "One thinks one thing, and
one another," and rebuked also for its union, "It is difference of
opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs." In the same
conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for
despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.
I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be
quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all
wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong
indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing
must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also
spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but
they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish
and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering
preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish
refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then
there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my
rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption.
Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the
ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key to this twisted and
unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the
supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of
the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as
much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation
which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from
heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must
have been Antichrist.
And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck
me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another
explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we
were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short;
some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too
dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would
be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be
the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short
men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider
him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that
he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale
hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly
blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary
thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is
Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in various ways. I
tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers
anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that
this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern
world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic
pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined
extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man
thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man
was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate
dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple
exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous
exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts
and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of
preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the
matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there
was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread
and wine.
I went over all the cases, and I found the key
fitted so far. The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of
Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained. It
was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity, but a complication of
diseases in Swinburne. The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because
he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be. The faith of Christians
angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be. In the
same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there
is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is
something a little anti-human about Malthusianism.
Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that
Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an
element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists
in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to
think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely
temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance
each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very
meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this point of the
speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide. In
that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions
which yet somehow amounted to sanity. This was just such another contradiction;
and this I had already found to be true. This was exactly one of the paradoxes
in which sceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I had found it right.
Madly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt
these passions more madly than I had felt them long before I dreamed of
Christianity. Then the most difficult and interesting part of the mental
process opened, and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous
thoughts of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching the
optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both
things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning. Here I shall
only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the
idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox
theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and
man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but
both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let
me trace this notion as I found it.
All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of
equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little.
Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution
which seeks to destroy the MESON or balance of Aristotle. They seem to suggest
that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger
breakfasts every morning for ever. But the great truism of the MESON remains
for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their
own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in
with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which
Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved
and solved in a very strange way.
Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance;
Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently
opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that
it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the
martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so
much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live
taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the
same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It
is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed
in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of
courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the
sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually
stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut
his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange
carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be
a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he
will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of
furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death
like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle
with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has
done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide
and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living
and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the
European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage,
which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of
life.
And now I began to find that this duplex passion
was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a
moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for
instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere
prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say
that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there
were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would
see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not
necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but
it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism
and pessimism—the "resignation" of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of
two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full
strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the
heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for
this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the
soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and
searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of
the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow
small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being
proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange
expedient to save both of them.
It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated
them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in
another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I
am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of
sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a
vague or mean view of his whole destiny—all that was to go. We were to hear no
more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute,
or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of
the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had
pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast,
but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if
clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it.
Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be
expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the
same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could
only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St.
Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of ONE'S
SELF, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and
bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go—as long as he
let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy
pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the
original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool
(though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth
saving. He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again in
short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by
keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on
both points. One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly
think too much of one's soul.
Take another case: the complicated question of
charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy.
Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity
certainly means one of two things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving
unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what
a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be
beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some
people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could
be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed
even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was
pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution.
It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a
great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for
men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity
came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one
thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we
must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It
was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly
kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much
kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild.
And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had
established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for
good things to run wild.
Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as
they look. Really they require almost as careful a balance of laws and
conditions as do social and political liberty. The ordinary aesthetic anarchist
who sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a paradox that
prevents him feeling at all. He breaks away from home limits to follow poetry.
But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased to feel the
"Odyssey." He is free from national prejudices and outside patriotism.
But being outside patriotism he is outside "Henry V." Such a literary
man is simply outside all literature: he is more of a prisoner than any bigot.
For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little difference
whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked out. What we want is
not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments; we want the
universality that is inside all normal sentiments. It is all the difference
between being free from them, as a man is free from a prison, and being free of
them as a man is free of a city. I am free from Windsor Castle (that is, I am
not forcibly detained there), but I am by no means free of that building. How
can man be approximately free of fine emotions, able to swing them in a clear
space without breakage or wrong? THIS was the achievement of this Christian
paradox of the parallel passions. Granted the primary dogma of the war between
divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the world, their optimism and
pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts.
St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more
shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could
paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions were free because both
were kept in their place. The optimist could pour out all the praise he liked
on the gay music of the march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners
going into battle. But he must not call the fight needless. The pessimist might
draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds. But he
must not call the fight hopeless. So it was with all the other moral problems,
with pride, with protest, and with compassion. By defining its main doctrine,
the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what
was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise
possible only to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. Historic
Christianity rose into a high and strange COUP DE THEATRE of morality—things
that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice. The spirits of
indignation and of charity took terrible and attractive forms, ranging from
that monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the first and greatest of the
Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official
shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal. Poetry could be acted as well
as composed. This heroic and monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished
with supernatural religion. They, being humble, could parade themselves: but we
are too proud to be prominent. Our ethical teachers write reasonably for prison
reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent
philanthropist, go into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse before it
is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly against the power
of millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern
tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey.
Thus, the double charges of the secularists,
though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real
light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised
celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been
fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept
them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and
white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of
pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of
the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is
tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on
virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not
merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by
saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours
coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather
like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern
of the cross.
So it is also, of course, with the contradictory
charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true that
the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight; and it IS true that
those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like
statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen
and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for
so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good in the
idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All
that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good
things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans,
having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a
club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured
out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge.
But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in
the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the
last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes
this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture;
the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis,
the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly
interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies,
that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that
is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply
the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real
problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal
ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she
achieved.
This is what I have called guessing the hidden
eccentricities of life. This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and
not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but
knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of
life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those
underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover
mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and
also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one
wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one. Any one might
say that we should be neither quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find out
how far one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite
happy—that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, "Neither
swagger nor grovel"; and it would have been a limit. But to say,
"Here you can swagger and there you can grovel"—that was an
emancipation.
This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the
discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble,
upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and
ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch,
yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned
there for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all
different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and
fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom
apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and
crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the
benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the
crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern
millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold
next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man's body as in
Becket's; the balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom.
Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung
at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the
sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is
what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more
interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but
more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all
this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while
remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a
perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another
emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, "You shall all
be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent;
the Frenchmen less experimental and swift." But the instinct of Christian
Europe says, "Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman
may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of
these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called
France."
Last and most important, it is exactly this which
explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of
Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the
earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an
inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not
afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her
great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea
become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no
flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and
tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong
enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the
Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea
of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the
forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one
can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious.
The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the
lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the
north. Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards. Here it
is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge
blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the
nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in
the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees
or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits,
even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to
be careful, if only that the world might be careless.
This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People
have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy,
humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as
orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It
was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this
way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and
the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast
with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad
along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so
exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of
Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too
worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would
have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or
accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would
have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would
have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the
bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a
heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is
to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a
snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration
which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of
Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall;
there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one
stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian
Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all
has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies
thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the
wild truth reeling but erect.
