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WHY DO MEN REMAIN CHRISTIANS?

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ENDEAVOUR in these pages to describe the ultimate reasons

or at any rate to push the analysis a step further back-which impel different sets of men, equal upon the whole in moral excellence and intellectual power, to accept or reject, in each case very positively, the Christian Revelation. The question is itself one of supreme interest, and the answer, should one be found, will greatly modify the conditions of the controversy and the methods of carrying it on.

The actual question to be decided is whether a certain historical Person was or was not what the history and his own recorded words claim for him, and the mere fact that this question, after being submitted to the judgment of mankind for nearly 2000 years, still remains an open one, invests the subject with a profound intellectual interest. And at the beginning we must make a separation between the mere arguments that are employed on both sides in the controversy, and the motives which determine the opposing parties to take their respective sides in it. The former, as, for example, the date and composition of the Gospels, the incredibility of "miracles" (socalled), the discrepancies of MSS., and the veracity of the "reporters," are merely instruments of warfare adopted to defend a position taken up under the influence of far different motives, many of which are obvious enough, though the leading and decisive motive remains, we think, yet to be traced. Assuredly momentous questions like this are not decided by difficulties connected with the destruction of ever so many swine under circumstances not adequately explained, nor even because of a more or less ingenious theory that St. Mark wrote the first Gospel, and that the rest copied his facts and his errors. The stream of human thought is not moved by chips and straws like these, which are carried away upon its surface, and do but mark the

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strength and direction of the current. The causes which determine men's beliefs at any given time are partly those of circumstancei e., historical events and movements, which belong to the domain of historical science, and can only be explained after the phase of opinion has become the subject of study and criticism; partly those of nature i.e., the original constitution of the human mind, which belong to philosophy, and can be examined and their influence traced at any timé. In the case before us the recent discovery of Evolution is the chief historical event, and the certainty that the human mind is an outcome of the evolutionary process is the chief fact in nature with which we have to do. But first we must ask, as the combatants perhaps too rarely do, what we mean by the Christian religion. And this we answer, as is surely best, in the words of its Founder: "God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal (or spiritual) life." Those who believe that this is true are Christians; those who disbelieve it I will venture to call in this paper Rationalists-not, I need hardly say, by way of disparagement, but simply because the word describes the state of mind which examines the facts of the Universe in the light of science, and comes to a conclusion adverse to the Christian claims because of what by strict process of reasoning it finds to be true in nature.

Human reason, trained to regard Evolution as the law of the succession of things in time, is confronted with three great questions about God. First of all, is there anything in nature that shows traces of a rational source of things such as Deism believes and inculcates? To this we reply that Evolution upon the whole makes it more we will not say probable, but-credible, that such a rational source exists, standing aloof from nature, and directing, not merely its creation, but its course and operations by settled principles of administration. So far as that small portion of the Christian religion which it possesses in common with Deism is concerned, there seems some reason for supposing that it may be strengthened by the discovery of Evolution, which reveals to us something bearing very strong resemblance to a "plan" or an "arrangement" or a "purpose." At any rate, there is no necessary antagonism between Rationalism and such a belief as this, which, even if it be unknowable, is not irrational, and is not contradicted by anything that experience makes

us aware of.

Secondly, is the Author of nature, supposing Him to exist, a moral Being to whom the term "righteous" can be applied? Here again Rationalism, arguing from Evolution, is not of necessity driven into a hostile attitude, but suspends its judgment or is content to be neutral. It is true, of course, that "competition," "struggle," "survival," fittest," are not words of morality, nor does the evolutionary pro

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cess lend itself very easily to moral conceptions. Still it is so evident that in the human stage of existence progress is conditioned and carried forward by moral conduct, so that by degrees "fitness" comes to mean "goodness," and there are besides so many plain signs of a survival of righteousness, that Rationalism is not constrained by any powerful motives to take up an adverse position. It merely points. out that absolute proof is impossible, that there are other things to be taken into account, and that in any case the God thus believed in is to reason unknowable.

The third and last question about God is this: Is this righteous Being, supposing Him to exist, a Being of whom it can be said that He loves the world, especially with the Christian addition that He so loves it as to have wrought a transcendent act of mercy and power on its behalf? In an instant the whole scene is transformed into one of active and angry antagonism. Now why should this be? Is it possible to state the reason for it in some short decisive phrase which shall place us at the centre of the problem and enable us to see what direction the solution will take, even if we cannot all at once work it out? Let us try. Rationalism, being deeply offended by the proclamation of the love of God without evidence, answers curtly that Jesus Christ is much too good a man to be the son or representative of any being that reason can find traces of in a world which ex hypothesi he must have created.

To those who remember Mr. Mill's famous remark that Christians had done well to attach their worship to Jesus Christ, coupled with his denunciation of the crimes and cruelties of nature, there is nothing paradoxical in this-it is simply the very natural answer which Rationalism, thus challenged, returns to his suggestion. But then the mere existence of what Mr. Mill regards as crimes and cruelties does not of itself either cause or justify this pessimistic spirit; they are at worst only part of the ancient mystery of evil which existed in the consciousness of mankind long before it was appropriated by the rationalistic spirit. No, the case is far worse than this. For this demand to acknowledge the love of God is addressed to reason at the very moment when it has begun to recognise, as the central and dominant factor in the constitution of nature, that evil, in whatever form it appears, is not, so to speak, an after-thing in creation, not the result of a fall, not the rebellion of the human will against the law of God, but essentially part and parcel of the course and constitution of things, a necessary condition of progress, and not to be got rid of by any means that nature has placed at our disposal. Hence the Christian revelation presents itself in the guise of a mere vain Utopianism, impossible, insufficient, and profoundly irritating. Men who have accustomed themselves to the spectacle of the struggle for existence as nature's common law, and have sworn to themselves to

survey the facts of life as they are, and as competition has made them, refuse to be cheated by any sentimental glamour, and to believe things, not because they are probable, but because they are pleasant. And the case is rendered worse when they are asked to adopt a course of action and a theory of life founded upon these beliefs, which draw the mind, as they think, from the sober realities and stern duties of the world as we know it, from the necessity of securing such happiness as is attainable by natural means, from the task of finding remedies for human ills in a life the secret history of whose incurable sorrow science has but just laid bare. The human heart may confess, indeed, to the existence of an instinctive craving after Divine love, to which, however, no response that reason can approve has yet been given, and so may come to resent the Christian solution of the problem as a slight upon its wounded affections.

This, then, seems to me the essential reason why Rationalism sets itself against Religion, and so long as fidelity to convictions in spite of pleasant inducements to the contrary is held in honour among men, so long ought Rationalism of this kind to be accounted honourable, and not stigmatised as positively wicked, by those (even) who dissent most strongly from it. But I hasten to add that in all this I feel that I am speaking as an outsider, and may therefore be quite mistaken in judging of other persons. I have dwelt upon the subject chiefly because it seemed the most direct road towards settling that other question, "Why do men remain Christians?" for it is at once more easy, more safe, and more important to learn why we ourselves believe than to speculate why others do not. And what we may call the reconciling tendency comes out more strongly than

ever.

Not only is the Christian belief determined by natural causes as much as non-belief, but by one of those ironical and perplexing paradoxes, that in some minds arouse the spirit of negation and doubt more surely than do the terrors and pains of nature itself, the causes of both are ultimately traced to the same origin. I have said that the recognition of evil as a law of nature is a dominant and central fact from which human thinking can never escape. But being central it determines equally in the direction of faith or doubt. It is like some lonely lake lying high up among the hills, from which on either side, in opposite directions, through different scenery, two divergent streams take their appointed course. We have traced our way up to it by the stream of Rationalism, we shall leave it by the streamlet of Idealism.

The power to think about oneself and about things implies, or even necessitates, the power to think the best of them. Idealism is an innate tendency of the disposition of man, and also a necessary reaction from Rationalism, a positive to the negative pole. Optimism is an

ordinary and almost commonplace product of nature, which pours forth from her prolific bosom pleasant reminiscences of the past, spiritual enjoyments of the present, sanguine anticipations of the future, together with transcendent intuitions of the infinite that impel the mind to make the best and think the best of all the experiences of life, to insist on seeing the soul of goodness in things evil, to invest nature with the attributes of beneficence and kindness. Confronted with the central fact of evolutionary law, and in her turn invited to accept only what reason can deduce from admitted facts, Idealism breaks impatiently away from the thraldom of fact and law, and commits what seems to Rationalism the inexpiable fault of seeing things as other than they can be proved to be. It is as though the waters in the lake were driven by internal pressure to make for themselves another outlet away from that of experience and reason. Goaded, yet also guided, by its own imperious instincts, Idealism denies the sufficiency of reason to deal with all the facts of life and humanity, and claims reality for that which is incapable of proof. Life, it declares, is enjoyment (as Evolution suggests), and enjoyment is impossible unless we idealise the facts of nature, think well of them, get good out of them, or, in plain homely language, persist in hoping for the best.

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And yet in face of the interpretation of nature by Evolution, the struggle sooner or later is felt to be unavailing it is a kind of desperate uprising of unarmed citizens against the disciplined forces of law and order. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the attempts-so futile, and yet, as efforts of human thinking, often so splendid—to get rid of Evolution, to disparage its results, to circumscribe its efficiency, to doubt faintly, to deny with half a heart. comes the necessity of appealing for assistance from without, from powers that are not subject to reason's ken, from facts that are beyond the scope of the nature we know and try to understand. And so by strict natural order and necessity we arrive at Religion, which may be defined as Idealism, in its search after some justification for its own existence, finding what it wants ready fashioned to its hands, completely answering its expectations, in the Christian religion, or more correctly in the person of Jesus Christ. All that faith, which is merely spiritual optimism, requires is not that its object should be proved to be true, but that it should be incapable of being proved to be untrue, and this condition is fulfilled to perfection by the way in which the Christian Revelation is presented to the judgment of mankind. Arguments in self-defence and in self-justification Idealism no doubt employs, just as Patriotism compels good citizens under stress of peril to use the deadliest weapons they can lay hands on. In which field of warfare Christian advocacy commits many mistakes, and not infrequently gets much the worse of the encounter. But all

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