Leader
It is unfortunately not true to say that the only friend to the Christian is a Christian. Everyone, with the exception of a few free spirits like Gibbon or Nietzsche, has befriended the Christian by virtue of his own inertia; by virtue of his own intellectual dishonesty; and by virtue of his fear of public disapproval. Like the spark of electricity whose inertia carries it over the gap when a circuit is broken (we see it every day above the trolley cars!), the Christian belief has lingered on, a century beyond its time. It is the electrical spark which fills the gap between Popery and the New Thought. It is no longer a current, but a fireworks.
An unfortunate state of affairs, which for the sake of our racial mental integrity should be altered! But why does it exist? What are the causes of this inertia—this posthumous belief?
The causes can be readily wrapped and bundled into one cause—human nature. It is human nature to want to believe in a God. It is human nature to accept a system of belief handed down from generation to generation. It is human nature to overcome the inconsistencies and the logical difficulties of such abelief as peremptorily as possible. What is the result? We look toward the scriptures, and find God: satisfaction of condition number one; but there is the objection that the teachings of the scriptures are obscure, contradictory, and ill-suited to modern business. Condition number two, however, overcomes this difficulty. We are told at home, in the church, and at the school that the Bible must be interpreted “liberally”. It is “symbolical”. One does not literally offer the other cheek; one does not literally love one’s neighbor as oneself, etc. Condition number two is satisfied by a shifting of our original positions. We are no longer literal Christians; we are liberal Christians. In other words, we are not Christians at all; we have nailed Christ toourcross, not to His own. We have distorted His doctrine in order to fit our modern twentieth century. Oh well, what does it matter? Condition number three can satisfy this discrepancy. The case is not one for argument; it is a question offaith. We havefaithin Christ’s arguments.Webelieve that in spirit we are still Christians, although in the letter of the law we are pharisees. We assign to ourselves the pompous right of interpretation and revision (annihilation?) of the original doctrine: and this in spite of our vaunted humility! Christ, we say, meant well. We mean well. Therefore we are Christians. The argument is dismissed, and condition number three is satisfied.
Whatisa Christian?
Here is a question which ought to urge us to pause in calm deliberation. Do we mean that “all good men” are Christians? Or do we designate, by this word, only those whose lives conform to the original doctrines of faith, charity, love, and humility? If the former, then the question is merely one of definition. If the latter, it is one of revolution.
The Christians, with the supreme perspicacity of their kind (one must have the insight of a Jew to be a Christian!)—the Christians have sensed the danger to which their doctrine has been recently subjected by modern science, and seeing that there is no hope in the open battle-field, have had recourse to an ingenious subterfuge. They say that all good men are Christians: that is, they do not say it brazenly, but theyimplyit. I have several times heard the most extreme atheist of my acquaintance surnamed “Christian”by one of these canny believers. And in this manner the believer successfully covered up the difficulty; smothered what would otherwise prove to be a revolution; prolonged the spark that jumps the gap between Popery and the New Thought. It is a clever ruse—very clever. But it does not fool the free spirits.Theybelieve that a reference to the original doctrines of the Bible, and a strict interpretation, not necessarily of what they say, but at least of what theymean(in other words, an honest interpretation), is the only possible means of telling what is Christian and what is not. Socrates, for instance, was a good man. But obviously he cannot be called a “Christian”, since he reached the earth, and left it, long before that deluge began. The free spirits, therefore, prefer intellectual honesty to dissimulation and rationalization, and, in the words of Christ—who was honest, in spite of His followers—seek to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”.
The free spirits wish to call a spade a spade. A Christian is a Christian if he believes in the immaculate conception and the resurrection. Otherwise he is a pagan, or at the most an amorphous Christian. In either case he may or may not be “a good man”. The free spirits think that, from the point of view of physiology at least, the immaculate conception is no less than a great distortion of nature, to be classed with miscarriages, abortions, and infanticides. But, you say, we are not physiologists: we are idealists. O shades of the Greek idealism—O classicism—where has the Deluge washedthee! O Truth, where is thy sting? There was an element of sanity in Socrates’ hatred of the poets and of the national legends, was there not, my friends? Homer’s imagination taught all the other poets how to lie about the gods and the national heroes. Might it not go similarly with the apostles? And unfortunately, in this case, there are twelve of them to deal with instead of one? But no Socrates!
In other words, the free spirits do not care to compromise their position. They take pride in their own intellectual integrity. They agree with Christ in some respects. But they look upon the Christian pill as altogether too large for a sane man to swallow. In fact, to be free with you, they think that Christ was a little bit too much inspired by Himself—by His own divinity—and thatHe allowed emotion to cloud what might have been a superior intellect.
But the free spirits go one step further. They believe that to find fault with human nature for not responding to Christianity (in the strict sense of the word) is but to blame the patient for not being cured by the medicine. For instance, this love of your neighbor—that fictitious personage who haunts the domicile of the imagination, dressed in a black suit and a derby—this love of neighbor, is nothing but one of those abstractions which the later day Christians—the amorphous Christians—have made in order to satisfy the dictates of strict Christianity. The free spirits say: “There is nothing we would rather do than love our neighbor, if you mean by that, one, or even several, individuals. Such a love makes life worth while. But we refuse, quite frankly, to love our Neighbor, meaning thereby a whole city, or a nation, or a continent. Such love only gives rise to international jealousies, and is a cause of wars.” In other words, the free spirits think that only fools and fanatics can be in love with grand, sweeping, meaningless abstractions. We can love individuals. But to love an abstraction (such as Humanity, the Poor, the Nation, Evolution), is to marry oneself to nihilism, mechanism and metaphysics: it is to immerse one’s personality in an ocean of imagination. What is Humanity, anyway? Who has ever seen it? For the past hundred years the Christians have been romantically chanting about the salvation of it. But it is time now that the world wake up to thefactthat Humanity is not an inclusive term meaning all individuals: it is, rather, a generalization meaning non-individuality.
So we take our stand, not only against that distortion of the Christian doctrine which permits of calling “all good men” Christians; not only against the strict Christian doctrine which stands for the effete virtues of Faith, Charity, Love, and Humility; but also against a more pernicious mixture of the two which is tending, by means of Dry Laws and Common Freshman Years, to undermine the integrity of the individual. You say, we are not idealists. Ah, but weareidealists. But we believe that ideals are only vital in so far as they are individualized (i.e., belong to an individual). And Christianity makes hash out of the individual.
What! We are no longer to deal in subtleties? Of course we are to deal in subtleties—(away with your blunt, hard-headed American who talks by statistical tables!). But although subtle and delicate, we are yet to be honest. That is the point: we are to be truthful. But Truth is essentially a pagan virtue. When men are truthful, Christianity becomes superfluous.
RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.