There is one last serious aspect of this problem wherewith the spiritual forces of the nation are faced, and that is the weakening of the nation's soul which the new policy has entailed. Whosoever considers the manner in which religion has lost its grip on the masses, the passing away of all discipline, the decay of idealism, and the slow but steady emptying of the churches, cannot but feel that the greatest need of to-day is a revival ofreligion. Unless the soul controls the body, man atrophies and perishes. The Church for many centuries has striven to garrison the nation's soul, and to bring the body under discipline. But the Church no longer can bring its power into play, for the churches are left deserted more or less. The proportion of the industrial population who never enter a church's door is vastly greater than is commonly supposed. Professor Cairns, a careful and judicious observer, who would make no statement that could not be verified, has declared that three out of five soldiers at the front have had no connection with the Church. The toilers of our cities are rapidly relapsing into that paganism out of which Christianity rescued the world at the first. What the world needs is God. It is only when the face of God is unveiled to the awe-filled eyes of men that they can realise the foulness of moral degradation. In the light of that holiness which marshals all the forces inthe universe to war against sin, and in that light alone, does the soul realise the awfulness of sin. When that realisation comes, then the history of the world becomes mainly the history of sin—that dread power which saps the vitality of nations, disintegrates empires, ruins civilisations, and which brings upon proud capital cities the flaming judgment of sword and fire. The function of the prophet is to keep clear before the eyes of men the moral issues which are laden with life or death. The mission of the Church is to replace the spurious and fleeting joys of sin by the true and enduring joy of a life in unison with God.
But the State renders the Church impotent and makes the revival of religion in our day impossible. That may seem exaggerated, but it is true. For the State has driven alcohol into the homes, and has consigned not only the husband, but often the wife also, to the degrading influence of alcohol not only on Saturday but on Sunday. In vain does the callto return to God sound in the ears of a population sunk in the torpor of alcohol. No prophet can rouse such a people. 'If a man, walking in a spirit of falsehood, do lie, saying, "I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people."'[4] The Church is powerless against thirty public-houses to the half-mile! Alcohol bars the door against every movement for the social and spiritual uplift of the nation. If the nation is to be saved, the nation must act. Arise, O Israel!
We must look at our population in a new light and see them not as makers of munitions but as sons of God. The horribly cynical attitude of our rulers is that which regards men merely as munition-makers. They survey them only from the low ground of self-interest. It is not in relation to the peril of the hour that this problem has to be faced, but in relation to man's high calling asthe son of God. These men and women are our brothers and sisters, bearing the image of God, and created to be heirs of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. Can we go on working their ruin, damning them body and soul? A race that will not cleanse the fountains of its national life, that will not remove from its midst the forces of degeneration, that shrinks from that moral surgery which will alone save the body-politic—such a race cannot hope to go on swaying the destinies of the world. But this is our confidence, that through the horrors of war the nation will waken to the deep issues of life and death, and that the forces of moral and social renewal will advance a hundred years in one day. We can hear the marshalling of the forces in our midst which will transform and enrich the nation. There is arising the cry of the coming victory:
'The King shall follow Christ, and we the King.'
[1] In theRecord, the official organ of the United Free Church of Scotland, there appeared in the August number, 1916, a letter written by a 'Special Constable' which gives a terrible word-picture of a slum family:
'Let me give a personal experience of one of the multitude of family tragedies directly due to drink which come under my notice. A family of eight persons—four of them adults—occupied a single room in a slum area.
'The eldest son, aged twenty-one years, was in the last stage of consumption, and occupied the only bed in the room. On visiting the house one morning, I found the lad lying on the floor, in a corner. He had required to vacate the bed for his mother, and during the night there had been born into these surroundings another of those immortal souls who, in the words of Kingsley, "are damned from their birth."
'The following day the mother was sitting at the fireside, and was never back in bed till the son died some days later. It is hardly necessary to add that the mother, the infant, and another girl followed him at short intervals. On the day of the mother's funeral the husband got drunk and had to be locked up—the twentieth-century method of remedying evils of this kind.'
[2] The distribution of licences in our cities is a crying evil. The following are examples of the provision made in the wards of Edinburgh:—
Number of Population toWard. Population. Licences. each LicenceMorningside 24,320 18 1351Merchiston 24,436 21 1163St. Giles' 24,277 118 205St. Andrew's 11,166 87 128
In proportion to the poverty and misery of the population are the licences increased. In the Cowgate of Edinburgh there are 12 licences, and in the Canongate, 19. The same proportion applies to all our cities.
[3]The Drink Problem of To-day, p. 182.
[4] Micah ii. 11.
For the historian of the future who may essay the task of elucidating the moral progress or decay of the British Empire, one date will stand forth as a landmark—April 20, 1915. For it was on that day that the House of Commons refused to follow 'the King's lead.' On the 6th April it was announced that 'By the King's command no wines, spirits, or beer will be consumed in any of His Majesty's houses after to-day.' No announcement ever cheered the heart of a nation more than that. It was as if an electric current had suddenly passed through an inert mass, galvanising it into life. When Lord Kitchener and other leaders loyally followed the King's example, the men who foughta weary battle for the emancipation of the nation from the yoke of alcohol, and whose hearts were oft sickened by long-delayed hopes, felt that the day of moral victory had dawned at last. The nation, delivered from the enemy within its gates, would bring its full power to bear upon the enemy that threatened its destruction from without. In house and mess and restaurant alcohol was banished. But all these fair hopes were rudely shattered when the House of Commons at the end of fourteen days refused to banish alcohol from the precincts of Westminster. The dawn of hope ended once more in gloom.
It is only as yet possible to surmise as to the forces which led to the great refusal. The nation, with the almost unanimous voice of its wisest and best citizens, had called for the deliverance of the people from alcohol by its total prohibition. Employers of labour, whohad no sympathy originally for the prohibition movement, were converted to it by the spectacle of the nation's marshalling of its forces being steadily hampered by drunkenness. The leaders of all the Churches pressed for it; the Press began to plead for it; Mr. Lloyd-George openly declared that 'drink is doing us more damage than all the German submarines put together'; and there is no doubt but that the King and Lord Kitchener expected that their example would give an impetus which would carry prohibition to victory. But the House of Commons shattered that hope. The forces of reaction immediately began to raise their head, and to the tables of the home and the mess alcohol slowly returned to resume its fell sway. The nation that had braced itself for social surgery was presented with soothing medicine in the form of the Central Control Board.
Though it is impossible to assign causes to these effects with certitude, yet it is safe to say that this failure was thefruit of the party system. We have seen how the play of political parties one against the other devastated the countryside. The party politicians think primarily of votes, and anything that would cost them votes is banned. They knew in what peril the nation stood before the war, but they did not summon the nation to prepare for war and endure hardness. That would have been unpopular—and would have cost votes. They kept the nation in ignorance of its peril, and cowered before the people whom they kept in the dark, terrified to use firmness lest the firm hand on the reins should mean their unseating. They went further: when Lord Roberts warned the State in prophetic terms, they held him up to derision. The greatest calamity that ever befell the human race we owe to the party politicians.
Behind the party politician there is the caucus, and behind the caucus the party funds. The power of money is proverbial, and behind the party politicianis the exchequer supplied by his supporters. That exchequer is replenished by the sale of honours. When Oleander, a Phrygian and erstwhile slave, was the minister of the Emperor Commodus, Rome saw the woeful spectacle of the rank of Consul, of Patrician and of Senator exposed to public sale. We hold the decencies of life in too high regard to do that. Secretly and decorously our senatorships and the ancient orders of our knighthood are assigned. At one end of the social scale national degeneracy makes the trader in alcohol a plutocrat; at the other end the same national degeneracy makes him a legislator and a pseudo-aristocrat. The alcoholic trade was too wise to be on terms of friendship with one party alone; it sought relationship with all. Nobody can object to the man who pays the piper calling the tune. In Ireland the publican is even a greater power in politics than he is in England. And the power behind the politicians brought all its forces into play. When, in 1887, Lord Iddesleigh,superseded at last, fell dead in Lord Salisbury's waiting-room, the latter, writing to Lord Randolph Churchill, exclaimed, 'As I looked upon the dead man before me I felt that politics was a cursed profession.' And Lord Salisbury knew.
The party politician, even in the maelstrom of a world's devastation, pursued his familiar course. Before the war he failed to warn the nation and to prepare. In the midst of the war he still strove to keep the nation in the dark. After months of calamities the nation was told that all was going well, and the people were obsessed with the idea that final victory was at hand. If the people only knew their peril they would have made any sacrifice for their country and their homes. But they were not told. And the party politician shrank from demanding or enforcing a sacrifice which the nation did not realise to be necessary because of its ignorance. The policy of pusillanimity pursued before the war was still regnant. The politicians who shrankfrom demanding sacrifice in peace, shrank from demanding it in war. They did not know the heart of the nation. There was no sacrifice the nation would have shrunk from, if the demand were made. The nation knew that it needed discipline, and it asked for discipline, but asked in vain. And to-day the same pusillanimous policy sacrifices prohibition to the fear that the munition-workers might give trouble. They knew not, and they know not, the heart of this nation. But the fact remains that to-day the nation is spending 180 millions or so a year on alcohol, while the Government calls on the people to exercise the greatest economy that the war may be waged to the end. It is a sad and strange spectacle.
It was fortunate for the cause of the world's freedom that there was found in Europe a great nation which was not under the sway of party politicians.The German Emperor is reported to have said that the next great European war would be won by the most sober nation. When the war began and the Tsar issued his great rescript abolishing vodka the Emperor is said to have exclaimed, 'But who could have foreseen this wonderful coup!' Some day it will doubtless be the accepted fact that the deliverance of the Russian nation from the degenerating power of alcohol won the war. For through that great act of a statesman's prevision the Russian Empire experienced a resurrection from the dead.
The statesmen of Russia knew the evil effects of alcohol. It was to vodka that they mainly owed the defeat and humiliation of the Japanese war. The manhood of Russia could not be rapidly mobilised owing to the grip of alcohol on the race; and the operations were ever hampered by its fell power. When the Russian Empire was called upon to fight for its life, the Emperor resolved that this time it would fight unfettered.The sale of vodka was temporarily suspended, and the armies were mobilised with rapidity and precision. Misery and poverty were banished from the villages. The doss-houses and jails were emptied. A great nation resolved to fight with all its vigour. Though vodka constituted a State monopoly, and though Russia drew from it an enormous revenue, yet that revenue was unhesitatingly sacrificed. 'We cannot,' said the Tsar before the war, in a proclamation to his people, 'make our fiscal policy dependent upon the destruction of the spiritual and economic powers of many of my subjects.' On August 22, 1914, the Tsar issued an order that all vodka and other spirit shops should be closed till the end of the war. When the beneficial results of this policy were fully realised the Tsar made a final decision. 'I have decided,' he announced, 'to abolish for ever the Government sale of vodka in Russia.' Russia was thus finally delivered from the greatest of its enemies—the enemythat destroyed its homes. And Russia has accepted its deliverance with a joyful heart. At first M. Bark, the Finance Minister, was 'staggered when prohibition was suggested.' After six months' experience of its results he declared: 'If I proposed to reopen the vodka shops there would be a revolution.' Thus was effected the greatest social reform in the history of the world. 'Since China proscribed opium,' was the verdict of aTimeseditorial, 'the world has seen nothing like it. We have been well reminded that in sternly prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors, Russia has already vanquished a greater foe than Germany.'
And so it proved. Through vanquishing alcohol Russia found a power which is now vanquishing Germany. On eyes cleared from the fumes of vodka there rose the vision of God. The Russian went forth tying his knapsack on his back as one who took up the Cross. They endured defeats which might haveoverwhelmed them, but they were unconquerable. Through hardships and privations undreamed of the Russian soldier retained his health and fighting power. Though he often confronted the enemy with no weapon but his bare breast, he never despaired. Wounds which in other campaigns would have been inevitably fatal, healed, and life conquered death. Though oft deprived of sufficient food, he endured fatiguing marches, and in the midst of the nervous strain of defeat and retreat he remained cheerful, determined, and confident of victory. At last, with 'firm faith in the clemency of God,' the Russian hosts turned at bay and stood fast. When the clouds were darkest, it was as if the sun broke forth when the news was flashed through the world that the Russians had stormed Erzerum. To-day Armenia is freed, and the great surge of the Russian hosts is rolling west. For the Russians knew that a holy war could not be waged by a drunken nation;and in the power of self-sacrifice they have snatched victory from what seemed irretrievable defeat. While Britain continued to sacrifice its strength and its wealth at the shrine of alcohol, while the wives and the children of the men who were fighting and dying were left to the comforting of publicans, while the munition-workers were hindered and marred by the lure of strong drink, while the best of the manhood of the British race called in vain for deliverance from the yoke of the national bondage, Russia in the might of a great renunciation was gathering its forces and advancing to victory. Autocracy has delivered Russia from the bondage of centuries; democracy has surrendered its power to the party politician, and the party politician has kept Britain still enslaved.
It would be difficult to overestimate the evil consequences for the future ofthe race which will inevitably ensue from the great refusal. Let me endeavour to make clear one of these evil consequences. Had the House of Commons on April 20th of last year resolved to follow the King's lead, instead of spurning it; had it made that lead effective, what would have been the result? One effect would have been that to-day we would have had an army delivered from the bane of alcohol. The King's officers and the men who wear his uniform would have followed the King's example.
It is the commonplace of much of the speaking from religious platforms that we are to have a new era inaugurated when the men come back from the war. The religious life of the nation is going to be quickened; its moral forces are to be vastly strengthened; there is to be a new earth when the war is over—if not a new heaven. These hopes are, however, doomed to disappointment. It is not the ranks of those who are striving for temperance that will receivereinforcement when the great army comes home.
Let any one who thinks that we are on the verge of a great social or religious revival consider the facts. (The difficulty is that we fail to face facts and delude ourselves with vain imaginings.) The great fact to which we blind ourselves is that the manhood of the nation, for the first time in its history, has been brought into the atmosphere of alcohol, and acclimatised to that atmosphere to the number of between four and five millions. In that remote period before August 1914, the British army was a volunteer force mainly recruited from 'the adventurous and the derelict.' The recruiting area was largely the congested wards of our great cities. The men who enlisted did so, in the great majority, after they had already acquired a taste for the exhilaration of alcohol. It was in the circumstances expedient that in the canteen provision should be made, under military supervision, for their being suppliedwith a purer alcohol than the public-houses provided. The results were beneficial rather than otherwise.
The strange thing, however, is that the canteen system which was necessary for the small voluntary army should have also been imposed by the Army Authorities upon the full manhood of the nation when they sprang to arms in defence of King and country. Though no trainer would ever allow the use of alcohol by those preparing for any athletic sport, though the man who would excel at football or racing or boxing or shooting, as a first step eschewed all alcohol, the Government of this country provided alcohol as an integral part of every camp where the heroic of the race set themselves to endure hardness. 'The greater endurance of the non-alcoholic soldier or worker is now not a matter on which there can be or is any difference of opinion.'[1] For the youth of the nation,wearied with the hardness of unwonted exercise, away from the influence of mothers and loved ones, warned by the Secretary of State for War against alcohol, the Government provided the narcotic of alcohol. Millions came within the sphere of its baneful influence who never would have been so exposed in days of peace. And not only so, but though it has been scientifically established that alcohol lowers the vitality, a paternal Government, in the mud and misery of the trenches in Flanders, provided for each soldier the sustenance of rum, though from such a stimulus no benefit could accrue. 'Small doses of alcohol ... cause ... a distinct flushing of the skin due to dilation of the cutaneous capillaries, the skin becoming first warmer and the blood in the internal organs cooler than before the alcohol was taken. After a time the skin temperature falls, but there is no corresponding increase of temperature of the blood in the internal organs. This means that the body haslost heat by the skin. The evaporating moisture of wet putties and stockings carries away a further amount of heat, whilst the contracting wet materials exerting pressure on the lower limbs, after a time tend to compress vessels in the skin, and especially to interfere with the return of venous blood and lymph to the larger veins and lymph channels. The lowered temperature and the impaired nutrition due to this obstructed circulation together are accountable for the "trench foot." ... A man is not at his best, whether working or fighting against enemies or diseases, if he is taking alcohol. Lord Roberts knew this, and His Majesty the King, Admiral Jellicoe, and Lord Kitchener appreciate it. How soon will the nation realise it?'[2]
The Government supplied the soldiers in the camp and in the trench with the means of decreasing their fighting efficiency. To the 'tot of rum' can betraced a proportion of the cases of unstable nervous equilibrium which the war has produced. Men who were total abstainers, pledged Rechabites, and others were swept by a paternal Government into the ranks of those who derive from alcohol a false exhilaration. 'The national conscience,' writes Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, 'has not yet been thoroughly aroused to the importance of the issues at stake—that in peace or in war intemperance is the link in the chain of our national life which gives greatest evidence of weakness and most cause for anxiety.' Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain. Though every laboratory worker and every physiological chemist tells us, with the cold precision of science, that alcohol is not a stimulant but a depresser, that the elation it produces is simply that of a narcotic, that it diminishes the energy and dulls the enthusiasm of man, that it leaves the mind and body more exhausted than before—yet the stupidity entrenched in high places cannot learnthe lesson. It trains the armies on alcohol; it seeks to sustain the embattled hosts with alcohol.
The great refusal of April 20, 1915, meant that this national organisation for the training of the manhood of the race in the use of alcohol went on unhindered. Of all the products of the great war this is the most amazing. Let any one consider the situation and judge. In every camp and barracks the visitor will find the State-established monopoly of the canteen. The canteen is set up by the State, and the taxpayer provides the building, rent and rate and tax free, for the contractor, who runs the canteen. Abroad, the canteens are almost exclusively in the hands of one co-operative society, whose board of management is mainly composed of officers in the Service and some of them recently heads of regimental institutes. 'Clearly there is a great deal of "military" money invested in it.Surely it is not a good thing that a society of this kind should have the privilege of making a good deal of money out of supplies to the private soldier.'[3] Whatever be the system of administering the canteen, whether by the regimental officers or by contractors, the fact remains that behind the canteen are the resources of the nation. And the contractors of the canteen supply in some cases amusements. 'I know of a camp where the contractor supplied the singers, and not very desirable ones either.'[4] Recreation is thus used to encourage the consumption of alcohol by the army.
While the taxpayer is thus behind and supporting the canteen, the counteracting forces are left to the support of the charitable. The Y.M.C.A. or Church huts are there not by right but by favour, and whatever attractions they provide are provided by means of voluntary contributions. The State provides the meansof degeneration; it is left to the voluntary effort of private citizens to provide the means of healthful recreation. It is truly a strange world.
Do the parents of the youth of this country realise the situation? Henceforth every boy when he reaches the age of eighteen is drafted into a camp. And there the State makes provision for acclimatising him to the atmosphere of alcohol. To frequent the canteen is manly, and few will be able to resist. It means that by the million the future citizens of this country will acquire a liking for alcohol. They find there the door of escape from weariness and monotony, a false joy of life and a meretricious colour lighting up drab and grey days. Hitherto the youths of this country were protected by the slow evolution of beneficial restrictions. In Scotland the public-houses were shut on Sundays. The young men were protected on at least one day in seven. But when at the age of eighteen they put on the King's uniform that protection ceases.The public-house is shut, but the canteen is open on Sunday. Not even on one day in seven is there protection from temptation for the youths of this country now conscripted. The fathers and mothers who give their sons to their country do not realise the provision a grateful country is making for darkening their souls by the fumes of alcohol. If they realised it, there would arise a demand before which even those who refused to follow their King would bow. Without that national demand there will be no escape from the consequences of the great refusal. Those who delude themselves with the hope that out of the great war will come a moral and religious revival will have a rude awakening. Out of the social conditions now upheld by a beneficent Government there cannot emerge any ethical revival. The ranks of those who have learned the narcotising benefit of alcohol and who will naturally turn to the same comfort, will be greatly multiplied.
Let me conclude with a personal experience. On a car in one of our great cities in this last summer, a man sitting beside me began a conversation. Though he was a stranger to me, he began to speak out of a heart sore distressed. His son had been home on leave. 'Every night he was at home he was under the influence of drink. Before he enlisted he did not know the taste of alcohol.... When he went away back, he was drunk leaving the station.... A few days later word came that he was killed.... The last we saw of him was his going away drunk.... His mother is in sore distress.... She is old-fashioned in her faith and she cannot get out of her mind the words that drunkards cannot enter the kingdom of God. What do you say?' Thus he spoke in disjointed sentences, palpitating with emotion. All I could say was that hell was not for such as his son, in myopinion; but that hell was essential for the due disciplining of those who maintained the conditions which made his son a drunkard. But how many are there to-day in this country like that poor father and mother? They gave their all: this is their reward.
[1] Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, M.D., LL.D,The Drink Problem, p. 79.
[2] Lieut.-Colonel Woodhead, M.D., LL.D.,The Drink Problem, p. 81.
[3] A correspondent inThe Times, April 22, 1916.
[4]Ibid.
The misery which the slow evolution of urban and industrial civilisation has wrought in the crowded areas of our cities is manifest to the least observant eye. The pitiful condition of the man in the slum makes its clamorous appeal to the conscience of the race. But there is a condition even more pitiful. It is that of many of the dwellers in the spacious squares and terraces where the rich and the leisured are segregated. They are far removed from the slum where the miserable are massed; but they have created a slum in their own souls. And of the two, the condition of him whose soul is a slum is truly the more grievous.
They have everything that life can desire of material good. These houses stretching for miles in their regular uniformity are replete with appliances of luxury and comfort such as a Roman emperor might have sighed for in vain; every desire of their heart they have the power and the will to gratify;—and yet life is dreary. The people that ought to be supremely happy are on the whole miserable. They have reduced life to a series of sensations. But the dread spectre of satiety dogs the footsteps of the devotees of sense. If they were mere animals they would be perfectly happy. Their misery is that they are endowed with souls. And the starved soul will not let them rest.
What has pauperised the rich is this—they have lost the sense of God. Their fathers were saved from the tyranny of their senses by the fact that they kept open the window towards theInfinite. But the growth of knowledge and the triumphs of science gradually shut that window, so that now scarce a glow of light penetrates to the dusty and dark recesses of the soul. The soul no longer thrills with the Divine; all the thrill they can know is that of gratifying the body. And that way leads only to the self-loathing of repletion. To escape from themselves they rush in clouds of dust along the roads, demanding 'speed in the face of the Lord.' But all in vain is a sated body hurled from London to Brighton, for at the end it is sated still.
With the shutting of the window towards the Infinite, all restraint vanished. So long as there remained a sense of a moral order in the universe which could only emanate from a Moral Governor, and so long as the soul felt that the way of life lay in conformity to the will of the Unseen Ruler, life was kept under control. The will never wholly relaxed its effort to keep the outgoings of lifein unison with God. But, then, there came the startling realisation that there was no God, or, if there was, that He was a mere negligible factor. The processes by which things came to be as they are could be explained; and because they could be explained, of course, God had nothing to do with them! God was steadily pushed further and further away. Back from a mythical Eden some five thousand years ago, He was pushed into the recesses of æons that made the brain reel to contemplate; away from a heaven which seemed quite near, He was removed far off into the abysses of heavens which had become astronomical. Everything could be explained—it was only a question of time when life would yield its secret. As the universe grew wider and wider there was in it no place for God. In that world which once He was deemed to have created, now He was superfluous. And the restraints which the thought of Him imposed were thrown to the winds.History once more repeated itself. 'They treat it,' wrote Bishop Butler of religion in his day, 'as if ... nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.' The dawn of the twentieth century found a generation which far outstripped the eighteenth. By its headlong plunge into the vortex of pleasure it was determined to avenge itself for the days when life was disciplined by the thought of the judgment-seat of God.
Alongside of this emancipation from the restraints of religion there was a singular development of interest in religious matters. Never were there so many books published regarding the sources of Christianity and the authenticity of that various literature which composes the Bible. And votaries went on incessantly tunnelling the great barrier which shuts us in from what lies beyond the visible, and they even heard,as it were, the tapping of those who drove a tunnel to meet them. But all that activity was wholly divorced from that religion which is inherently spirit and life. It was the interest of the antiquarian in the earthen vessel which holds the treasure, not the interest of the soul in the treasure itself. The frame was the object of endless discussion and speculation, but the eyes were blind to the picture enclosed by the frame. They thought that they were engaged in the works of religion, while their work was as remote from religion as the labour of one who would set himself to expound the glory and wonder of art by explaining the texture of canvas and analysing the chemical components of paint. And, while the ancient documents were studied more and more under the microscope, the image of the Son of Man faded more and more before the eyes of men, and the ideal of love of duty was left as lumber under accumulating dust: religion had a place in the socialscheme, but the place was the museum of antiquities. It was no longer a power in life; it had become a matter of mere historic interest.
The new atmosphere in which men lived made it impossible to present the Christian appeal to them as that appeal came home to the heart of humanity for nineteen centuries. For the life-blood of religion was ever the passion of love and gratitude evoked by the forgiveness of sin. But the sense of sin died in the heart, and a generation that knew not sin could only wonder at the meaning of a gospel which proclaimed the forgiveness of sin. No golden age lay behind when man was sinless; there was no 'fall' from a high estate, and consequently no restoration was needed. The spiritual tale of man's first sin was a matter of mockery; and the teaching of prophet and saint regarding iniquity was but 'an obsolete and fanaticaleccentricity.' Walt Whitman has given expression to man's new attitude:
'I could turn and live with animals, they are soplacid and self-contained,I stand and look at them long and long;They do not sweat and whine about their condition;They do not lie awake in the night and weep for their sins.'
Nothing was, in fact, further from the thought of the latter-day generation than to lie awake weeping for their sins. 'As a matter of fact,' writes Sir Oliver Lodge, 'the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their punishment; his mission, if he be good for anything, is to be up and doing.' That is an absolutely correct diagnosis. So little does the 'higher man of to-day' worry about his sins that he sinks into the slough of animalism undisturbed by any thought of wrong. Having sacrificed every canon of Christian morality, he goes forth out of his house where the peace is unbroken by the clamorous voices of children, andhe pursues his mission of being 'up and doing'—directing his energies in Whitechapel to keeping alive the children of the diseased and the miserable. This is the fine fruit of our 'higher man': having destroyed in his home that race whose product he is, unrepentant of his crime, he devotes himself to saving the race in the slum. His mission to be 'up and doing' savours of the slime—but he knows it not. His whole life is the proof that he has forgotten the meaning of iniquity, and that he is incapable of worrying about his sins.
In all the books wherein the life of to-day is portrayed there move men and women whose consciences are no longer troubled by the thought of any wrong. With a photographic accuracy Arnold Bennett has set forth the lives of men and women emerging from the gutter into ease and riches, but the world to which they attain is a world where the thought of God ceases to inspire or disturb. He indeed pauses in a moment of grimsatire to visualise a soul in the throes of realising sin. The heroine of three books, Hilda Lessways, shuts her ears to the call summoning her to her mother's bedside, only to find her dead when selfishness suffers her to arrive. From the house where her dead mother lies she goes to the station to meet a relative and comes face to face with a well-dressed epileptic. She watches him, almost shuddering. He stares at her with his epileptic eyes ... and she rushes home a nervous wreck. 'She knew profoundly and fatally,' expounds Mr. Bennett, 'the evil principle which had conquered her so completely that she had no power left with which to fight it. This evil principle was sin itself. She was the sinner convicted and self-convicted. One of the last intelligent victims of a malady which has now almost passed away from the civilised earth, she existed in the chill and stricken desolation of incommutable doom.' Our author knows his world, and in that world only the sight of an epilepticconvinces of sin. And the realisation, as might be expected, only throws the victim more surely into the grip of sin. For that world knows no longer any God who saves from sin.
There is no ground left on which religion can appeal to the conscience of such a generation. In the eighteenth century Wesley and Whitefield sent through the decaying masses of England a vitalising breath as they proclaimed the joyful gospel of deliverance from sin, and men arose from the mire with lives transfigured. In our day religion can find no such approach and no such triumph. For like the whispering of an idle breeze is a proclamation of sin's forgiveness to those who know no sin. For us it is but a childish malady which we have long outgrown. The passion of sin forgiven will no longer thrill our souls.
And this life which our modern writers describe is one of appalling dreariness.As the new generation grow in knowledge every ideal vanishes; as they move upward in the social scale they shut out God. The Chapel loses its power; men wear Wesley's clothes but know not his spirit. Arnold Bennett makes us see the dying epoch. He describes the whole town assembled in the market-square to celebrate the centenary of Sunday schools. The vast crowd sing 'Rock of Ages' and 'There is a Fountain filled with Blood.' The volume of sound is overwhelming. 'Look at it,' says Edwin Clayhanger to Hilda Lessways; 'it only wants the Ganges at the bottom of the square.' 'Even if we don't believe,' she replies, 'we needn't make fun.' And amid the singing crowd, mocked at and jostled, struggles Mr. Shushions, the oldest Sunday-school teacher in the Five Towns, who long ago had rescued the Clayhangers from the workhouse, but now had 'lived too long' and 'survived his dignity.' 'The impression given was that the flesh would be unpleasant and uncanny to the touch.' It is a grimpicture of an effete life still moving, mummified and repulsive, among men.
The old ideal was dead; but there was no ideal new-born. Life was dreary, but happiness was still pursued. When the family would move to the new house where science surrounded them with all the appliances of comfort and luxury, then Edwin Clayhanger was convinced he would find happiness. The day comes and they move to the new house. But that very morning there is a quarrel with his father. He had been ingenuous enough to believe that the new house somehow would mean the rebirth of himself and his family. 'Strange delusion! The bath-splashings and the other things gave him no pleasure, because he was saying to himself all the time, "There is going to be a row this morning. There is going to be a regular shindy this morning."' They come to the new house but they cannot sit down to dinner together.
'Father thinks I've been stealing hisdamned money,' snaps out the son in a barking voice, and refuses to meet him at table. And the father takes his dinner alone. The end of the ghastly quarrel is that the son gets an increase of half a crown to his weekly wage! That is the measure of the 'new birth' which he had so fondly anticipated. He does not realise that after being emptied from vessel to vessel, however much larger and more beautiful the vessels become, filthy water remains filthy water still.
What is there left to those for whom the vision of God thus fades? The fathers amassed money, and they had the joy of conflict, and a sense of duty. But the sons have not the joy of conflict. They inherit houses built for them, and money for which they have not toiled. What are they to do? Their fathers found endless interest in Church and Chapel, and they gave of their wealth. The sons no longer believe in Church and Chapel. They have no traditions of social service. They regard the class fromwhich their fathers sprang with aversion and with fear. Their favourite topic of conversation is the shortcomings of the working-classes. One whole winter they denounced the iniquity of the State making any provision, however pitifully small, for the decayed veterans who fall out of the ranks of toil; another winter they declaimed with bitterness against the crime of the State making provision through insurance for the ill-health of their servants and employees! They have little taste for books, and money cannot buy the sense by which beauty floods the heart. There is nothing left them but self-indulgence. To that they sacrifice everything. Food and clothes and physical pleasure fill up the circuit of the days. Then weariness seizes them. They become the captives of boredom. They rush hither and thither. They carry to the Highlands a life which is intolerable hi London; they bring back to London a life which is intolerable in the Highlands. They live lives isolated from thejoy and innocence of childhood—for that is the ideal they have made their own. They rush after anything which will promise the 'easier and quicker passing of the impracticable hours.' They still maintain some connection with the Church, but their attitude is that of patronage and not of allegiance. The preacher must be an echo of their voices or they will have none of him. There must be no preaching of stern duty or of judgment to come—that is antiquated! When they come to church there must be the gospel of soothing rest—fulsomely administered in a saccharine form! Religion must be a narcotic; its end that they may forget. But even then it must be in the smallest doses and at long intervals. Thus their places in church are getting emptier and emptier, and the day of worship saw their cars stand in serried rows by wayside inns. They have created for themselves a grey, dull world. 'If they do abolish God from their poor bewildered hearts, all or mostof them,' wrote Carlyle, 'then will be seen for some length of time, perhaps for some centuries, such a world as few are dreaming of.' And that is what they were fast doing when the thunder of the guns echoed doom. They were without God and without hope in the world.
To some this may appear an exaggerated and distorted picture. It may in fact be pointed out that in these last years there was a greater activity of social service directed towards the help of the poor and miserable than ever before. That is true. But it is true also that it was wholly ineffective. It was the activity mainly of ignorance. It was the throwing of half-crowns to the starving; it was not the giving of love. They gave charity; they did not give themselves. They acquiesced with hardly a protest in the social organisation which inevitably swelled the ranks of the poor and increased the burden of their misery. By that social organisation many of them profited. They gave doles; but it wasto pacify their poor consciences. They instituted 'charity organisation societies,' making charity as it were a deal on the Stock Exchange. If only they had thought of it they would have instituted a 'Divine Spirit Organisation Society.' The one would not be more irreverent than the other; for charity is the fruit of the Spirit. They were to have charity without the Spirit—so they adopted the methods of the market-place. By means of ledgers and visitors they were to separate the deserving poor from the undeserving. Their charity was to be directed towards the deserving. They forgot that there could not be such a thing as charity for the deserving—only justice! There was the noise of much machinery, but the noise was made by a handful. The rest gave only of their lucre. And all the time, while they studied the social problem and organised charity, the measure of human misery went on increasing. The rich grew richer and the poor grew poorer, amid the greatest activity of socialreformers. It was all futile because it was uninstructed. It only palliated the pain; it never sought to dry up the fountains of human misery. The professional charity organisers saw the human wrecks being borne on the flood to doom, and from the banks, in security, they threw them life-belts. But they never thought of plunging themselves into the wild waters and breasting the flood at the risk of their own lives that they might save. Man cannot save man without blood, and there was only water in their veins.