Part 7

Here we touch the vital centre of the whole. On no subject does man ever show himself so violently crazed as on religion. The gods of the past, created by his fanatical imagination, were more or less the deified types of his own vices, or symbols of such virtues as he feebly strove to attain, but he had no real faith in their power to aid or to circumvent his designs. Yet, in lunatic fashion, he behaved as if he thought them omnipotent, though conscious all the while of the silly comedy he was playing with himself. Now, after two thousand years of the pure and beautiful Gospel of Christ which teaches how “god-in-man” might be realised, a lesson to which has been added the strong affirmation of Science, emphasising the fact that “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” Man still plays the crazed crank with dogma, and refuses to realise the Actual Alive Intelligence behind creation, which, from the delicate fluff of a small bird’s feather or moth’s wing, up to the height of solar systems, works in perfection and balance to the exactitude of a pin’s point. This living, loving Presence the dogmatists wellnigh ignore, preferring to move in their own small orbit of creed rather than risk the broader spaces of assured glory. The narrow spirit of self-absorption not only limits their outlook, but holds them bound in a condition of deplorable egotism, like that of an “unco guid” Scotch body who, after accepting many useful kindnesses from a friend to whom she “gushed” affection, changed her sentiments as soon as a slight difference arose between them, and with much unctuous piety let it be known that she was obliged to leave that once “precious” friend’s name “out of her prayers”! The monstrous conceit that could imagine God capable of noticing a name left out of a Scotchwoman’s prayers, or out of any prayers whatsoever, would be ludicrous if it were not so pitifully expressive of barbaric ignorance--and who shall count the thousands of similar narrow mind and heart who have a lurking hope that heaven is for them alone, and that their “dear friends” will all be left out in the cold!

Sanity in religion would mean sanity in everything. A sane acceptance of the actual Motive Force of things,--a Force, tenderly embodied to us by Christ’s teaching as the “Our Father” of us all, would do more for our souls and bodies than all the Churches; an intelligent study and comprehension of the minute and careful work of creation, showing us that nothing is wasted, nothing lost--but that all tends in an onward direction to “some far-off divine event,” would help us to find and keep the balance of our brains. We must be brought to realise that Evil, persisted in, works its own recoil on the evil doers, whether they be nations or individuals--the movement of things being always towards Good. “I and my Father are one”--said Our Lord, for which He was stoned. The failure of the Churches is the insanity of dogma, which has supplanted the sanity of Christ.

BRAIN BALANCE

The brain, as all physiologists know, is a complex and marvellous mechanism--so amazing in its movements, so miraculous in the result of these movements, that no scientist has yet been able entirely to probe its powers or foresee its progressive possibilities. Some there are who declare that all impulses, good and evil, are primarily started by the brain--others, more subtly accurate, aver that the brain itself is impelled or “pushed” to action by an influence stronger than itself, mysterious, unnameable, but nevertheless all-potent, which we call “free-will,” but which may more justly be termed “free-spirit”; that is to say the “free” and deathless force which the Creator gives to each human being to use according to the laws He has ordained, but which, turned aside from these, can be debased as surely as exalted. This untrammelled power is bestowed on every man and woman born into the world, and its mode of action is frequently swayed by impressions, sometimes pre-natal, and sometimes by the “afterwards” of early surroundings. If the material brain of a child is sound and healthy, the impulses which move that brain should be sane and pure--but, unhappily, through the physical mentality of irresponsible persons who recklessly take the divine responsibility of parenthood upon themselves, it often chances that a brain, perfectly organised in the matter and placement of its cells, conceives ideas and actions which are little short of devilish in their ingenuity of evil and mastership of cunning. How is this? It is not the forty pairs of nerves which convey sense and feeling to the brain that are guilty of criminal suggestion--they are merely the telegraph wires on which messages are sent. But Who is the sender? Who or what is responsible for the messages which prompt wicked deeds? We feel that we do not have to inquire as to the source of Good, inasmuch as that Divine Manifestation is everywhere about us. One thing, however, is certain--that evil propensities corrupt and obstruct the blood-vessels of the brain and distort its images and impressions, so that its powers become perverted--and instead of creating helpful work for the welfare of humanity it dwells on what shall harm and terrorise and destroy. But we must and should realise the fact that an obstructed brain is a more or less _insane_ brain. Its channels do not run clear. From these blocked passages inhuman thoughts are generated as weeds from slime; and fiendish or vicious ideas take shape and action like noxious vermin bred from a stagnant pool. Therefore, if we would have regard to sanity in the race, it should be our business to see to the “Brain-Balance” of our social, ethical, political, and religious conditions, and eliminate from our lives such things as tend towards incipient lunacy. “Crazes” for this or that particular person or fashion are painfully common, and always ludicrous, accompanied as they frequently are by a didactic obstinacy resembling the pompous assertiveness of poor madmen who conceive themselves to be exiled kings. Men and women run about jabbering and gesticulating on the “preciousness” of this or that form of art, when it is utterly opposed to truth and nature, and in this sort of spirit they have held up the “Futurists” and “Cubists” as something worthy to be looked at, much as a child might hold up for admiration a dirty rag doll. Insane themselves, they seek to lead others into the chaos of their own insanity, and this trend towards a warped mentality has of late displayed itself in all the arts, such as the sculpture of Epstein, the crotchets and quavers of De Bussy, and the large output of revoltingly sexual fiction and coarse verse. The “pose” of a supreme and scornful egotism marks these devotees of sham and ineptitude, and though they may, in mere numbers, be a negligible quantity, they spread infection, just as one fever-stricken person may infect a whole neighbourhood. From an unsanitary mental outlook no good can come, and the moral filth in which Germany has wallowed for years has so poisoned the German brain that it can devise nothing but treachery and evil. It is a brain that is choked with miasma--and it may be centuries before it is cleansed and restored to sanity.

Meanwhile let us pull the beam out of our own eye before we try to cure other nations’ blindnesses. We have been mad enough in our disregard of honest warnings--we are pretty mad still. We have vied with the old-time “cities of the plain” in reckless orgies of vice and intemperance; but the great War has pulled us back on the road to ruin, and it seems we may be given another chance. Let us begin then by a good try for Sanity. In the first place let us make such laws for those who marry as shall compel them to submit to a searching health examination, so that union may be forbidden to the unfit. A diseased man or woman should no more be allowed to mate than any other diseased animal. The animals arrange this themselves, in a much more common-sense way than humans. They only rear healthy progeny. It is for us to do the same, and to see to it that the _mentality_ of children is safeguarded and set on a sound basis. This cannot be done by forcing education at too early an age, or perplexing young brains with difficulties of learning almost too much for their elders to grasp. The brain in childhood records impressions as a disc prepared for the phonograph records sound, and the circles marked on it in early days are seldom or never effaced. Therefore care must and should be taken that such impressions are of the best. Corporal punishment should never be resorted to as a means of training. A blow to a sensitive child frequently means a lasting contempt for the parent or teacher who inflicts it, and excites a rebellious spirit towards life in general. A vicious impulse or an act of crass stupidity does not necessarily mean inherent wickedness or obstinacy--it only shows that there is some “clog on the wheel” in the brain, which a day’s fasting and cooling medicine may remove. At any rate, such a method of cure is better worth trying than the rod and angry threats which have no real effect on “insane impulse.” Sometimes--indeed often--a physical defect in the brain is the cause of evil thoughts and evil deeds, as in the recent case of a man whose warped mind always tended towards murder and mutilation, and who was found to have a thickening of a portion of the cranium which pressed heavily upon certain of the cells within. The operation of “trepanning” was performed by a surgeon who was scientifically interested in the case, with the result that the previously insane criminal is now a person of perfectly normal type and harmless disposition. Who that knows the history of the German Kaiser’s ancestry can doubt that his brain has been more or less diseased from his birth, and that with his approach towards the “grand climacteric” the incipient lunacy bred within him has become more active and less capable of control! No _sane_ man would have acted as he has done, for, prior to the war, the trade of Europe was practically in Germany’s hands, and in the interests of his country a sane man would have realised the fulness and value of such a conquest, peacefully obtained without the sacrifice of millions of useful lives.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER

The brain is affected by “insane impulse” in the same way as the digestion is affected by improper food. An error in diet will cause pain and general _malaise_--so will an evil influence or suggestion disorganise the brain cells and create obstacle and confusion within their marvellous formation and movement. A child, from earliest years, needs watching--and those who have that duty to perform should be carefully selected persons who are particular as to general surroundings. A child’s mother or nurse should be a refined woman of soft voice and gracious manners, able to control her own moods as well as the moods of her young charge, so that distinct “character” may be formed and insisted upon. A “no” should be absolute--a “yes” equally so. Character “tells” from the very beginning. The youngest child understands a discipline of firmness conjoined with sweetness and affection--the smallest boy has an ineffable contempt for weakness and vacillation. From the “character” displayed by their elders, children draw their own conclusions. An impatient, hot-tempered father makes callous, indifferent, more or less contemptuous sons and daughters. Children invariably despise and laugh at “temper” in their fathers and “fuss” in their mothers. And the mocking, jeering spirit of scorn is a spirit that grows with years, and makes of the person it dominates an often spiteful and vicious influence in society, creating mischief and rejoicing in the unhappiness of others. One sweet, strong, independent character unconsciously forms the nucleus of many others, while one soured malcontent infects a whole community. We have only to consider the “character” of Prussian militarism--how from two or three blatant and braggart egotists it has spread its infection through an entire people, till the brain of the whole German nation has become clogged with thick and poisonous thought and has been driven by “insane impulse” to the committal of the greatest crime in history. If we would avoid such crimes for the future we must see to it first that the race is healthily and sanely born, and secondly that “character” is the only basis on which all education must be founded, or it will be merely a house of cards, toppling at a breath. And the corner-stone on which “character” itself must be reared is a high and reasonable faith in the Supreme Cause of all creation, coupled with an earnest and devout following of the divine order in which that great Force at the back of all things has ordained this Universe to move.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion is not what the Churches would have us accept as such. It is not man-made dogma. So far as Christianity is concerned, the saying is true that “There never was but one Christian and He was crucified.” No more uplifting faith was ever taught than that of Christ; but it has never been spiritually realised or fully practised. Read Christ’s own words in the New Testament, and then ask where shall we find His commands obeyed? In some exceptional cases there have been saintly lives and saintly deeds resulting from the sincere and devout application of the Gospel--but in dealing with this question we have to think of mankind in general, not in an individual sense. This horrible war with its riot of blood and carnage is a damnatory answer to professing Christianity. Man has made of himself his own god--and in the God as revealed or explained in all the conflicting religious “formulas” he has ceased to believe. Faith of any kind must be supported by reason. And Science is the door to the highest heaven of faith. Every new discovery, every new aid to man’s well-being on the planet, is a fresh proof of God. It has taken twenty centuries and more for us to begin learning the wonders of electricity, though the miraculous force, with all its component and divergent radiations, was with us always. It may take us twenty times twenty million centuries to discover God--nevertheless He is with us, notwithstanding our intellectual blindness and lack of Spiritual perception. Science is our peep-hole, through which we may, even now, glimpse Him, but which in time to come will not only be our window, but our open door, through which we may approach Him, full-eyed, without fear. But, to arrive at this, we should remember that Science, like every other power bestowed upon us, must be used sanely; and through “Free-Will”; that is to say, we may bend its force to either good or evil. It is good when we use it for the advantage of humanity--it is evil when we make of it an agent to injure or destroy humanity. The scientist who employs his abilities to discover means whereby he may remedy disease, eliminate pain, and assist his fellow-men to the betterment of life, is that “good and faithful servant” who, when God comes, He finds watching--but the scientist, equally brilliant, who devotes himself to the invention of fiendish instruments of destruction and death, whereby he may make the wholesome earth a terror, the sea a snare, and the sky a scourge, is a warped intellectuality, moved by “insane impulse,” which, combined with creative activity, makes of him a devil rather than a human being. Let any thoughtful person try to realise himself engaged day and night on the work of evolving some instrument of death more cruel than any old-time torture, will he maintain that such persistent concentration on the means of killing can mould him into a worthier or nobler individual? But reverse the position and let him imagine himself absorbed in finding out remedies for pain and suffering, aids to happier and more useful living for mankind in general, will he not admit that however difficult his work may be of accomplishment, he knows within himself that he is striving for constructive good, not destructive evil, and that his science is an output of clear sanity which must bring, not only deep contentment to his mind, but also the consciousness that his energies are moving in harmony with the Divine Spirit of law and order.

This is the true and only religion--to bring one’s soul into unison with the infinite beauty and reason which prevail everywhere in Nature. And the Christian Faith, could it but be relieved from ecclesiastical dogma, is the truest symbol we have of our spiritual and immortal destiny, for it teaches the possible god-in-man which should be born through the purity of woman. Carry the symbol further, and we find the Crucifixion of Love through selfishness and hypocrisy--yet another step, and we are shown the Resurrection from the grave--“the Light of the World” released from the stone and seal of priestcraft, breaking free from the cerements of prejudice, and ascending to the Father of us all! Search as we may through all the religions of the world, we shall never find a grander, simpler “Symbol” of eternal truth than this--the faith preached by Christ. But it must be divested of its clerical encumbrances. Like a glorious ship that has lain too long in harbour, it must be cleansed of weed and barnacle and launched unhindered into the open sea. And those who man the ship must be free from self-interest, from “cranks” and meddlesome theories and formulas--briefly, they must be _sane_, with the great sanity of nature and nature’s immutable laws. Without this neither Religion nor Civilisation can endure. They can only be crazed attempts to build that “house upon sand,” of which we have been told that “the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; AND GREAT WAS THE FALL OF IT!”

HAS CHRISTIANITY FAILED?

Has Christianity failed? No! Men and women have “failed,” but _not_ Christianity. The very question is to my mind terrible and blasphemous--one of the many terrible and blasphemous utterances common to the Press and current literature during recent years.

It is a shame to a professingly Christian nation that such a question should be asked at all. The greatest, purest religion in the world can have no weight with mere apes of humanity, who practise the most appalling hypocrisy in front of the sacred altars, and assume to believe in and to obey Christian precepts, while indulging to excess in their own private and particular selfish vices and passions, without restraint and without regret.

The nations have mocked at God and disobeyed His laws. It is the old story over again. “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Christ said, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”

Christianity is based on two great laws--love to God and love to one’s neighbour; can any one say that modern civilisation fulfils these demands?

We have only to note the fearful corruption in Church and State, in every phase of politics and business, and the unspeakable vices which pollute so-called “society,” and poison our literature and art, to realise that the “cities of the plain” were no whit worse than our own, and merit no less than they a rain of fire.

But Christianity itself, as taught by Christ, towers above all “failure,” despite the apathy and hypocrisy of thousands of its professing priests, who in many instances are as selfish and flagrant blasphemers as the worst atheist and iconoclast in _un_christianised and brutalised Germany.

Without that heavenly faith which helps us towards the attainment and reverence of the Divine in all things, what has Germany become? More cruel and callous, more lost to every sense of decency and honour than the savages of prehistoric times, she is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

But let us take care that we do not join her in her rush towards annihilation. Political shams and treacherous intrigues would drag us thither--“Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.” If a weak section of men and women fail to find their souls, Christianity itself has not “failed,” nor will it fail; because it is the divine expression of the unconquerable Spirit of Truth.

The most brilliant House of Lies ever built by man’s careful stupidity falls into dust at the lightest breath of a truth based on eternal equities. The microbes in a rotting cheese may deny the existence of the sun because they do not see it, and may ask, “Has the daylight failed?” But the sun pursues its glorious course, lightening the visible universe.

So it is with Christianity. And those who presume to ask “Has it failed?” are but the microbes in the rotting cheese.

SNOOKS’S OPINION

Snooks is one of those entertaining persons who makes a point of giving an “opinion” on everything. From the Almighty downwards he has what he calls a “calm common-sense view” on all subjects in heaven or on earth, and his chief object in life is to get that “calm, common-sense view” on all to the front, so that the poor, purblind, uneducated public who seldom have any time to indulge in “views,” and still less chance to express them, may understand that there yet exists one truly great man of sane and sober judgment--namely, SNOOKS.

Before the War he used to write letters to the _Times_ on the urgent necessity there was for complete disarmament. In fervent language he pressed the reduction of naval expenses. He was, and is still, under the impression that the _Times_ is still as it was in ages past--a British Thunderer; an Oracle which manifested itself as “I am Sir Oracle; and when I open my mouth let no dog bark.” He forgets that journalism is now only a monstrous Syndicate, not expressive of thoughts, but of Shares and Dividends, and that if the _Times_ were what it once was, it would not publish any letter from Snooks. But Snooks is “fixed” in his opinions. He admits no change in the course of things--an old-established institution must, without argument, remain always as such, and must not totter to decay. When decay sets in, despite Snooks, he firmly denies its possibility.

“Nonsense!” he says--“D’ye think I’ve come to my time of life without knowing better than that? Teach your grandmother!”

Just at the time when he wrote letters about naval expenses and disarmament, one or two other “Snooks’s” popped up and replied. He was not pleased with their replies, as they opposed him. So he took up that Scheme of Idiots, the “Channel Tunnel,” and wasted a deal of ink in seeking to point out what a fine thing it would be to spend needless millions on a tunnel which the Richborough Ferry makes superfluous. His arguments fell a little flat, and he was for a short period reduced to writing about “the first primrose in my back garden”--and “I hope some of your readers have noticed the very early arrival of the wasp this year,” to the indulgent _Daily Mail_. But he never has found quite enough to do in the way of letter-writing to satisfy his ambition. There are not enough wrongs for a Snooks to set right--people of place and position do not make enough mistakes for a “Snooks” to correct. Daily and nightly he is consumed by the desire to see his name in print, and his craving sometimes leads him to look up familiar Latin quotations, more or less applicable to the political situation, and to send them (with the usual signed letter) to certain small newspapers whose position and reputation make the chance of their editor’s classical scholarship doubtful. To see himself in print, no matter how or when, is Snooks’s joy. And now that the war is blowing the dust of human affairs in all directions, Snooks has, as some press reviewers say: “come into his own.” He finds, so he states with engaging modesty, that if HE had been consulted, there would have been no war.