Chapter 11

The Christians martyred or murdered millions, many millions, of innocent men and women. Does _that_ prove that Christ was divine? No: it only proves that Christians could be fanatical, intolerant, bloody, and cruel.

And now, will you ponder these words of Arthur Lillie, M.A., the author of _Buddha and Buddhism_? Speaking of the astonishing success of the Buddhist missionaries, Mr. Lillie says:

This success was effected by moral means alone, for Buddhism _is the one religion guiltless of coercion_.

Christians are always boasting of the wonderful good works wrought by their religion. They are silent about the horrors, infamies, and shames of which it has been guilty.

Buddhism is the only religion with no blood upon its hands. I submit another very significant quotation from Mr. Lillie:

I will write down a few of the achievements of this inactive Buddha and the army of Bhikshus that he directed:

1. The most formidable priestly tyranny that the world had ever seen crumbled away before his attack, and the followers of Buddha were paramount in India for a thousand years.

2. The institution of caste was assailed and overthrown.

3. Polygamy was for the first time assailed and overturned.

4. Woman, from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed to develop her spiritual life.

5. All bloodshed, whether with the knife of the priest or the sword of the conqueror, was rigidly forbidden.

6. Also, for the first time in the religious history of mankind, the awakening of the spiritual life of the individual was substituted for religion by body corporate.

7. The principle of religious propagandism was for the first time introduced with its two great instruments, the missionary and the preacher.

To that list we may add that Buddhism abolished slavery and religious persecution; taught temperance, chastity, and humanity; and invented the higher morality and the idea of the brotherhood of the entire human race.

What does _that_ prove? It seems to me to prove that Archdeacon Wilson is mistaken.

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

What _is_ Christianity? When I began to discuss religion in the _Clarion_ I thought I knew what Christianity was. I thought it was the religion I had been taught as a boy in Church of England and Congregationalist Sunday schools. But since then I have read many books, and pamphlets, and sermons, and articles intended to explain what Christianity is, and I begin to think there are as many kinds of Christianity as there are Christians. The differences are numerous and profound: they are astonishing. That must be a strange revelation of God which can be so differently interpreted.

Well, I cannot describe all these variants, nor can I reduce them to a common denominator. The most I can pretend to offer is a selection of some few doctrines to which all or many Christians would subscribe.

1. All Christians believe in a Supreme Being, called God, who created all beings. They all believe that He is a good and loving God, and our Heavenly Father.

2. Most Christians believe in Free Will.

3. All Christians believe that Man has sinned and does sin against God.

4. All Christians believe that Jesus Christ is in some way necessary to Man's "salvation," and that without Christ Man will be "lost."

But when we ask for the meaning of the terms "salvation" and "lost" the Christians give conflicting or divergent answers.

5. All Christians believe in the immortality of the soul. And I think they all, or nearly all, believe in some kind of future punishment or reward.

6. Most Christians believe that Christ was God.

7. Most Christians believe that after crucifixion Christ rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven.

8. Most Christians believe, or think they believe, in the efficacy of prayer.

9. Most Christians believe in a Devil; but he is a great many different kinds of a Devil.

Of these beliefs I should say:

1. As to God. If there is no God, or if God is not a loving Heavenly Father, who answers prayer, Christianity as a religion cannot stand.

I do not pretend to say whether there is or is not a God, but I deny that there is a loving Heavenly Father who answers prayer.

2 and 3. If there is no such thing as Free Will Man could not sin against God, and Christianity as a religion will not stand.

I deny the existence of Free Will, and possibility of Man's sinning against God.

4. If Jesus Christ is not necessary to Man's "salvation," Christianity as a religion will not stand.

I deny that Christ is necessary to Man's salvation from Hell or from Sin.

5. I do not assert or deny the immortality of the soul. I know nothing about the soul, and no man is or ever was able to tell me more than I know.

Of the remaining four doctrines I will speak in due course.

I spoke just now of the religion I was taught in my boyhood, some forty years ago. As that religion seems to be still very popular I will try to express it as briefly as I can.

Adam was the first man, and the father of the human race. He was created by God, in the likeness of God: that is to say, he was made "perfect."

But, being tempted of the Devil, Adam sinned: he fell. God was so angry with Adam for his sin that He condemned him and all his descendants for five thousand years to a Hell of everlasting fire.

After consigning all the generations of men for five thousand years to horrible torment in Hell, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, down on earth to die, and to go Hell for three days, as an atonement for the sin of Adam.

After Christ rose from the dead all who believed on Him and were baptised would go to Heaven. All who did not believe on Him, or were not baptised, would go to Hell, and burn for ever in a lake of fire.

That is what we were taught in our youth; and that is what millions of Christians believe to-day. That is the old religion of the Fall, of "Inherited Sin," of "Universal Damnation," and of atonement by the blood of Christ.

There is a new religion now, which shuts out Adam and Eve, and the serpent, and the hell of fire, but retains the "Fall," the "Sin against God," and the "Atonement by Christ."

But in the new Atonement, as I understand, or try to understand it, Christ is said to be God Himself, come down to win back to Himself Man, who had estranged himself from God, or else God (as Christ) died to save Man, not from Hell, but from Sin.

All these theories, old and new, seem to me impossible.

I will deal first, in a short way, with the new theories of the Atonement.

If Christ died to save Man from sin, how is it that nineteen centuries after His death the world is full of sin?

If God (the All-powerful God, who loves us better than an earthly father loves his children) wished to forgive us the sin Adam committed ages before we were born, why did He not forgive us without dying, or causing His Son to die, on a cross?

If Christ is essential to a good life on earth, how is it that many who believe in Him lead bad lives, while many of the best men and women of this and former ages either never heard of Christ or did not follow Him?

As to the theory that Christ (or God) died to win back Man to Himself, it does not harmonise with the facts.

Man never did estrange himself from God. All history shows that Man has persistently and anxiously sought for God, and has served Him, according to his light, with a blind devotion even to death and crime.

Finally, Man never did, and never could, sin against God. For Man is what God made him; could only act as God enabled him, or constructed him to act, and therefore was not responsible for his act, and could not sin against God.

If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's act. Therefore Man cannot sin against God.

But I shall deal more fully with the subject of Free Will, and of the need for Christ as our Saviour, in another part of this book.

Let us now turn to the old idea of the Fall and the Atonement.

First, as to Adam and the Fall and inherited sin. Evolution, historical research, and scientific criticism have disposed of Adam. Adam was a myth. Hardly any educated Christians now regard him as an historic person.

But--no Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement; no Atonement, no Saviour. Accepting Evolution, how can we believe in a Fall? _When_ did Man fall? Was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? Was it when he was a tree man, or later? Was it in the Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, or in the Age of Iron?

There never _was_ any "Fall." Evolution proves a long slow _rise_.

And if there never was a Fall, why should there be any Atonement?

Christians accepting the theory of evolution have to believe that God allowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to form from the sun, that He allowed Man to develop slowly from the speck of protoplasm in the sea. That at some period of Man's gradual evolution from the brute, God found Man guilty of some sin, and cursed him. That some thousands of years later God sent His only Son down upon the earth to save Man from Hell.

But evolution shows Man to be, even now, an imperfect creature, an unfinished work, a building still undergoing alterations, an animal still evolving.

Whereas the doctrines of "the Fall" and the Atonement assume that he was from the first a finished creature, and responsible to God for his actions.

This old doctrine of the Fall, and the Curse, and the Atonement is against reason as well as against science.

The universe is boundless. We know it to contain millions of suns, and suppose it to contain millions of millions of suns. Our sun is but a speck in the universe. Our earth is but a speck in the solar system.

Are we to believe that the God who created all this boundless universe got so angry with the children of the apes that He condemned them all to Hell for two score centuries, and then could only appease His rage by sending His own Son to be nailed upon a cross? Do you believe that? Can you believe it?

No. As I said before, if the theory of evolution be true, there was nothing to atone for, and nobody to atone. _Man has never sinned against God._ In fact, the whole of this old Christian doctrine is a mass of error. There was no creation. There was no Fall. There was no Atonement. There was no Adam, and no Eve, and no Eden, and no Devil, and no Hell.

If God is all-powerful, He had power to make Man by nature incapable of sin. But if, having the power to make Man incapable of sin, God made Man so weak as to "fall," then it was God who sinned against Man, and not Man against God.

For if I had power to train a son of mine to righteousness, and I trained him to wickedness, should I not sin against my son?

Or if a man had power to create a child of virtue and intellect, but chose rather to create a child who was by nature a criminal or an idiot, would not that man sin against his child?

And do you believe that "our Father in Heaven, our All-powerful God, who is Love," would first create man fallible, and then punish him for falling?

And if He did so create and so punish man, could you call that just or merciful?

And if God is our "maker," who but He is responsible for our make-up?

And if He alone is responsible, how can Man have sinned against God?

I maintain that besides being unhistorical and unreasonable, the old doctrine of the Atonement is unjust and immoral.

The doctrine of the Atonement is not just nor moral, because it implies that man should not be punished or rewarded according to his own merit or demerit, but according to the merit of another.

Is it just, or is it moral, to make the good suffer for the bad?

Is it just or moral to forgive one man his sin because another is sinless? Such a doctrine--the doctrine of Salvation for Christ's sake, and after a life of crime--holds out inducements to sin.

Repentance is only good because it is the precursor of reform. But no repentance can merit pardon, nor atone for wrong. If, having done wrong, I repent, and afterwards do right, that is good. But to be sorry and not to reform is not good.

If I do wrong, my repentance will not cancel that wrong. An act performed is performed for ever.

If I cut a man's hand off, I may repent, and he may pardon me. But neither my remorse nor his forgiveness will make the hand grow again. And if the hand could grow again, the wrong I did would still have been done.

That is a stern morality, but it is moral. Your doctrine of pardon "for Christ's sake" is not moral. God acts unjustly when He pardons for Christ's sake. Christ acts unjustly when He asks that pardon be granted for his sake. If one man injures another, the prerogative of pardon should belong to the injured man. It is for him who suffers to forgive.

If your son injure your daughter, the pardon must come from her. It would not be just for you to say: "He has wronged you, and has made no atonement, but I forgive him." Nor would it be just for you to forgive him because another son of yours was willing to be punished in his stead. Nor would it be just for that other son to come forward, and say to you, and not to his injured sister, "Father, forgive him for my sake."

He who wrongs a fellow-creature wrongs himself as well, and wrongs both for all eternity. Let this awful thought keep us just. It is more moral and more corrective than any trust in the vicarious atonement of a Saviour.

Christ's Atonement, or any other person's atonement, cannot _justly_ be accepted. For the fact that Christ is willing to suffer for another man's sin only counts to the merit of Christ, and does not in any way diminish the offence of the sinner. If I am bad, does it make my offence the less that another man is so much better?

If a just man had two servants, and one of them did wrong, and if the other offered to endure a flogging in expiation of his fault, what would the just man do?

To flog John for the fault of James would be to punish John for being better than James. To forgive James because John had been unjustly flogged would be to assert that because John was good, and because the master had acted unjustly, James the guilty deserved to be forgiven.

This is not only contrary to reason and to justice: it is also a very false sentiment.

DETERMINISM

CAN MAN SIN AGAINST GOD?

I have said several times that Man could not and cannot sin against God.

This is the theory of Determinism, and I will now explain it.

_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's acts._

The Christian says God is our Maker. God _made_ Man.

Who is responsible for the quality or powers of a thing that is made?

The thing that is made cannot be responsible, for it did not make itself. But the maker is responsible, for he _made_ it.

As Man did not make himself, and had neither act, nor voice, nor suggestion, nor choice in the creation of his own nature, Man cannot be held answerable for the qualities or powers of his nature, and therefore cannot be held responsible for his acts.

If God made Man, God is responsible for the qualities and powers of Man's nature, and therefore God is responsible for Man's acts.

Christian theology is built upon the sandy foundation of the doctrine of Free Will. The Christian theory may be thus expressed:

God gave Man a will to choose. Man chose evil, therefore Man is wicked, and deserves punishment.

The Christian says God _gave_ Man a will. The will, then, came from God, and was not made nor selected by Man.

And this Will, the Christian says, is the "power to choose."

Then, this "power to choose" is of God's making and of God's gift.

Man has only one will, therefore he has only one "power of choice." Therefore he has no power of choice but the power God gave him. Then, Man can only choose by means of that power which God gave him, and he cannot choose by any other means.

Then, if Man chooses evil, he chooses evil by means of the power of choice God gave him.

Then, if that power of choice given to him by God makes for evil, it follows that Man must choose evil, since he has no other power of choice.

Then, the only power of choice God gave Man is a power that will choose evil.

Then, Man is unable to choose good because his only power of choice will choose evil.

Then, as Man did not make nor select his power of choice, Man cannot be blamed if that power chooses evil.

Then, the blame must be God's, who gave Man a power of choice that would choose evil.

Then, Man cannot sin against God, for Man can only use the power God gave him, and can only use that power in the way in which that power will work.

The word "will" is a misleading word. What is will? Will is not a faculty, like the faculty of speech or touch. The word will is a symbol, and means the balance between two motives or desires.

Will is like the action of balance in a pair of scales. It is the weights in the scales that decide the balance. So it is the motives in the mind that decide the will. When a man chooses between two acts we say that he "exercises his will"; but the fact is, that one motive weighs down the other, and causes the balance of the mind to lean to the weightier reason. There is no such thing as an exterior will outside the man's brain, to push one scale down with a finger. Will is abstract, not concrete.

A man always "wills" in favour of the weightier motive. If he loves the sense of intoxication more than he loves his self-respect, he will drink. If the reasons in favour of sobriety seem to him to outweigh the reasons in favour of drink, he will keep sober.

Will, then, is a symbol for the balance of motives. Motives are born of the brain. Therefore will depends upon the action of the brain.

God made the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the brain; therefore God is responsible for the action of the will.

Therefore Man is not responsible for the action of the will. Therefore Man cannot sin against God.

Christians speak of the will as if it were a kind of separate soul, a "little cherub who sits up aloft" and gives the man his course.

Let us accept this idea of the will. Let us suppose that a separate soul or faculty called the will governs the mind. That means that the "little cherub" governs the man.

Can the man be justly blamed for the acts of the cherub?

No. Man did not make the cherub, did not select the cherub, and is obliged to obey the cherub.

God made the cherub, and gave him command of the man. Therefore God alone is responsible for the acts the man performs in obedience to the cherub's orders.

If God put a beggar on horseback, would the horse be blamable for galloping to Monte Carlo? The horse must obey the rider. The rider was made by God. How, then, can God blame the horse?

If God put a "will" on Adam's back, and the will followed the beckoning finger of Eve, whose fault was that?

The old Christian doctrine was that Adam was made perfect, and that he fell. (How could the "perfect" fall?)

Why did Adam fall? He fell because the woman tempted him.

Then Adam was not strong enough to resist the woman. Then, the woman had power to overcome Adam's will. As the Christian would express it, "Eve had the stronger will."

Who made Adam? God made him. Who made Eve? God made her. Who made the Serpent? God made the Serpent.

Then, if God made Adam weak, and Eve seductive, and the Serpent subtle, was that Adam's fault or God's?

Did Adam choose that Eve should have a stronger will than he, or that the Serpent should have a stronger will than Eve? No. God fixed all those things.

God is all-powerful. He could have made Adam strong enough to resist Eve. He could have made Eve strong enough to resist the Serpent. He need not have made the Serpent at all.

God is all-knowing. Therefore, when He made Adam and Eve and the Serpent He knew that Adam and Eve _must_ fall. And if God knew they _must_ fall, how could Adam help falling, and how _could_ he justly be blamed for doing what he _must_ do?

God made a bridge--built it _Himself_, of His own materials, to His own design, and knew what the bearing strain of the bridge was.

If, then, God put upon the bridge a weight equal to double the bearing strain, how could God justly blame the bridge for falling?

The doctrine of Free Will implies that God knowingly made the Serpent subtle, Eve seductive, and Adam weak, and then damned the whole human race because a bridge He had built to fall did not succeed in standing.

Such a theory is ridiculous; but upon it depends the entire fabric of Christian theology.

For if Man is not responsible for his acts, and therefore cannot sin against God, there is no foundation for the doctrines of the Fall, the Sin, the Curse, or the Atonement.

If Man cannot sin against God, and if God is responsible for all Man's acts, the Old Testament is not true, the New Testament is not true, the Christian religion is not true.

And if you consider the numerous crimes and blunders of the Christian Church, you will always find that they grew out of the theory of Free Will, and the doctrines of Man's sin against God, and Man's responsibility and "wickedness."

St. Paul said, "As in Adam all men fell, so in Christ are all made whole." If Adam did not fall St. Paul was mistaken.

Christ is reported to have prayed on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

That looks as if Jesus knew that the men were not responsible for their acts, and did not know any better. But if they knew not what they did, why should God be asked to _forgive_ them?

But let us go over the Determinist theory again, for it is most important.

_If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's acts_.

The Christians say Man sinned, and they talk about his freedom of choice. But they say God made Man, as He made all things.

Now, if God is all-knowing, He knew before He made Man what Man would do. He knew that Man could do nothing but what God had enabled him to do. That he could do nothing but what he was foreordained by God to do.

If God is all-powerful, He need not have made Man at all. Or He could have made a man who would be strong enough to resist temptation. Or He could have made a man who was incapable of evil.

If the All-powerful God made a man, knowing that man would succumb to the test to which God meant to subject him, surely God could not justly blame the man for being no better than God had made him.

If God had never made Man, then Man never could have succumbed to temptation. God made Man of His own divine choice, and made him to His own divine desire.

How, then, could God blame Man for anything Man did?

God was responsible for Man's _existence_, for God made him. If God had not made him, Man could never have been, and could never have acted. Therefore all that Man did was the result of God's creation of Man.

All man's acts were the effects of which his creation was the cause: and God was responsible for the cause, and therefore God was responsible for the effects.

Man did not make himself. Man could not, before he existed, have asked God to make him. Man could not advise nor control God so as to influence his own nature. Man could only be what God caused him to be, and do what God enabled or compelled him to do.

Man might justly say to God: "I did not ask to be created. I did not ask to be sent into this world. I had no power to select or mould my nature. I am what You made me. I am where You put me. You knew when You made me how I should act. If You wished me to act otherwise, why did You not make me differently? If I have displeased You, I was fore-ordained to displease You. I was fore-ordained by You to be and to do what I am and have done. Is it my fault that You fore-ordained me to be and to do thus?"