Part 55

I oppose the Christian religion because I do not think the Christian religion is beneficial to mankind, and because I think it is an obstacle in the way of Humanism.

I am rather surprised that men to whom my past work is well known should suspect me of making a wanton and purposeless attack upon religion. My attack is not wanton, but deliberate; not purposeless, but very purposeful and serious. I am not acting irreligiously, but religiously. I do not oppose Christianity because it is good, but because it is not good enough.

There are two radical differences between Humanism and Christianity.

Christianity concerns itself with God and Man, putting God first and Man last.

Humanism concerns itself solely with Man, so that Man is its first and last care. That is one radical difference.

Then, Christianity accepts the doctrine of Free Will, with its consequent rewards and punishments; while Humanism embraces Determinist doctrines, with their consequent theories of brotherhood and prevention. And that is another radical difference.

Because the Christian regards the hooligan, the thief, the wanton, and the drunkard as men and women who have done wrong. But the Humanist regards them as men and women who have been wronged.

The Christian remedy is to punish crime and to preach repentance and salvation to "sinners." The Humanist remedy is to remove the causes which lead or drive men into crime, and so to prevent the manufacture of "sinners."

Let us consider the first difference. Christianity concerns itself with the relations of Man to God, as well as with the relations between man and man. It concerns itself with the future life as well as with the present life.

Now, he who serves two causes cannot serve each or both of them as well as he could serve either of them alone.

He who serves God and Man will not serve Man as effectually as he who gives himself wholly to the service of Man.

As the religion of Humanism concerns itself solely with the good of humanity, I claim that it is more beneficial to humanity than is the Christian religion, which divides its service and love between Man and God.

Moreover, this division is unequal. For Christians give a great deal more attention to God than to Man.

And on that point I have to object, first, that although they believe there is a God, they do not know there is a God, nor what He is like. Whereas they do know very well that there are men, and what they are like. And, secondly, that if there be a God, that God does not need their love nor their service; whereas their fellow-creatures do need their love and their service very sorely.

And, as I remarked before, if there is a Father in Heaven, He is likely to be better pleased by our loving and serving our fellow-creatures (His children) than by our singing and praying to Him, while our brothers and sisters (His children) are ignorant, or brutalised, or hungry, or in trouble.

I speak as a father myself when I say that I should not like to think that one of my children would be so foolish and so unfeeling as to erect a marble tomb to my memory while the others needed a friend or a meal. And I speak in the same spirit when I add that to build a cathedral, and to spend our tears and pity upon a Saviour who was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, while women and men and little children are being crucified in our midst, without pity and without help, is cant, and sentimentality, and a mockery of God.

Please note the words I use. I have selected them deliberately and calmly, because I believe that they are true and that they are needed.

Christians are very eloquent about Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Our Father which is in Heaven. I know nothing about gods and heavens. But I know a good deal about Manchester and London, and about men and women; and if I did not feel the real shames and wrongs of the world more keenly, and if I did not try more earnestly and strenuously to rescue my fellow-creatures from ignorance, and sorrow, and injustice than most Christians do, I should blush to look death in the face or call myself a man.

I choose my words deliberately again when I say that to me the most besotted and degraded outcast tramp or harlot matters more than all the gods and angels that humanity ever conjured up out of its imagination.

The Rev. R. F. Horton, in his answer to my question as to the need of Christ as a Saviour, uttered the following remarkable words:

But there is a holiness so transcendent that the angels veil their faces in the presence of God. I have known a good many men who have rejected Christ, and men who are living without Him, and, though God forbid that I should judge them, I do not know one of them whom I would venture to take as my example if I wished to appear in the presence of the holy God. They do not tremble for themselves, but I tremble for myself if my holiness is not to exceed that of such Scribes and Pharisees. Oh, my brothers, where Christ is talking of holiness He is talking of such a goodness, such a purity, such a transcendent and miraculous likeness of God in human form, that I believe it is true to say that there is but one name, as there is but one way, by which a man can be holy and come into the presence of God; and I look, therefore, upon this word of Christ not only as the way of salvation, but as the revelation of the holiness which God demands.

I close these answers to the questions with a practical word to everyone that is here. It is my belief that you may be good enough to pass through the grave and to wander in the dark spaces of the world which is still earthly and sensual, and you may be good enough to escape, as it were, the torments of the hell which result from a life of debauchery and cruelty and selfishness; but if you are to stand in the presence of God, if you are ever to be pure, complete, and glad, "all rapture through and through in God's most holy sight," you must believe in the name and in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, who came into the world to save sinners, and than whose no other name is given in heaven or earth whereby we may be saved.

Such talk as that makes me feel ill. Here is a cultured, educated, earnest man rhapsodising about holiness and the glory of a God no mortal eye has ever seen, and of whom no word has ever reached us across the gulf of death. And while he rhapsodised, with a congregation of honest bread-and-butter citizens under him, trying hard with their blinkered eyes and blunted souls, to glimpse that imaginary glamour of ecstatic "holiness," there surged and rolled around them the stunted, poisoned, and emaciated life of London.

Holiness!--Holiness in the Strand, in Piccadilly, in Houndsditch, in Whitechapel, in Park Lane, in Somerstown, and the Mint.

Holiness!--In Westminster, and in Fleet Street, and on 'Change.

Holiness!--In a world given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to ignorance, to humbug, to the worship of the golden calf.

Holiness!--With twelve millions of our workers on the verge of famine, with rich fools and richer rogues lording it over nations of untaught and half-fed dupes and drudges.

Holiness!--With a recognised establishment of manufactured paupers, cripples, criminals, idlers, dunces, and harlots.