ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

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{The Wandering Jew 1893}

 

“Is Christianity Played Out?” - The Wandering Jew Controversy - 3

 

The Daily Chronicle.
Tuesday, January 24, 1893.

1. Letter from ‘Anglican Priest’.
2. Letter from ‘Awestruck’.
3. Letter from ‘A Sceptical Working Man’.
4. Letter from ‘A Christian Working Man’.
5. Letter from William J. L. Hooper.
6. Letter from ‘A. E.’

Extracts from other letters.

Editor’s announcement, closing the discussion.

 

IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT?
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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—The Christianity of hell-fire and everlasting torture is most decidedly played out. It now only crouches as a thing of shame in the darkness of ignorance and bigotry, or lurks as a vague terror in the imaginations of the credulous and weak. If, in these days of popular education, you teach the Englishman with the average amount of logical power in the one breath that “God is Love,” and in the next breath that God is allowing the great stream of humanity to flow on age after age only for the most part to be lost in an ocean of irremediable despair, why, then it is scarcely to be wondered at that he rejects the whole scheme as a simple insult to his common sense. But this teaching has been delivered by Christian teachers as a vital component part of Christianity. The popular mind has been impregnated with the doctrine.
     Now, common sense and right reason constitute our ultimate court of appeal for all practical purposes here on earth; if these are to be subordinated to theories which are irrational and unscriptural, and which shock the moral sense; if a man’s judgment is to be over-ridden and emasculated by illogical dogma inculcated in the name of Christianity, then you cannot wonder if he sets aside the whole system as an effete and threadbare superstition of mediæval priestcraft—a clumsy spiritual device for extorting money, and for terrifying people into a mock morality as slavish as it is spurious.
     The doctrine of everlasting hell-fire, whether served with grim relish as a choice morsel from fashionable pulpit, raved over in meeting-house, or shrieked out by street fanatic, is the germ of modern scepticism.
     Thousands are unable to pray; thousands are indifferent to the claims of Christ; thousands have been rendered reckless or desperate, simply because Christ and his teaching have been grossly misrepresented, and God the Father wantonly and wickedly libelled.
     If Mr. Buchanan has imbibed this kind of Christianity I can understand his rejection of it, and can forgive and sympathise with much of his hostility to it. And if this be the case let him set aside the misconstructions which have been placed upon Christ’s highly figurative language, and Oriental phraseology; let him set in due proportion the love and justice of God; let him realise that Christ’s ideal comprehends the due reward of the righteous and the just punishment of the wilfully wicked, and then reconsider his whole position.
     Punishment will and must of legal necessity follow evil-doing; but punishment is remedial not wantonly tyrannical, and Christ’s mission (as I understand and believe it) was for the ultimate good and restitution of all things and all men. It was for the entire human race. Some can be purified and exalted by joy; others can only be ennobled by discipline and sorrow; and many, just as they have only their own folly to thank for their misery here, so will have but themselves to blame for unhappiness and loss hereafter.
     Why should we eliminate the promises of good from the Christian scheme? Of what worth is any religion—any life—any ideal, or any God which does not promise—which does not retain hope?
     A living Christ with his catholic ideal, his comprehensive grasp of human needs, his pure and lofty morality, his divine nature blended so perfectly with human sympathies—this Christ, I say, is the only solution to the maddening mysteries of existence. He furnishes the one and only key to unlock the secrets of the universe. And the Christianity of this Christ— the Christ of the gospels and the pure Church—is not, and never will be, played out until the last enemy of God and man shall have been abolished, until the curtain shall have fallen upon the mighty tragedy of Time, and the Triune God shall be all in all.
     I can rejoice with Mr. Buchanan that the gospel (!) of hell-fire is very nearly played out, I can rejoice with him that the outraged common and moral sense of mankind has revolted against the idea of a furious and tyrannical God; but I can further rejoice that men who strive for purity and fight the lusts of the flesh are daily grasping with a firmer hold the sympathetic love and power of the living Christ, while they banish the baleful spectre of a hell-loving God to the hideous grave it deserves.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                               ANGLICAN PRIEST.
     London, Jan. 21.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—It is with a considerable amount of nervousness I presume to join in the controversy which is being conducted in your paper by so many learned and clever men. I am another working man, and this subject has an intense interest for me, believing as I do that it is the root of our whole social system.
     “A Working Man” asks what would the world be to inhabitants of fourpenny lodging-houses without Christ? Does “”A Working Man” really suppose that such men think about Christ at all, or entertain any hope in his salvation? Their only hope and only idea is where to obtain the next 4d. for the next night’s lodging, and sufficient food to carry them through the day. How many men does he know with a wife and three or four children who are struggling through the world on a bare pittance—who “praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and are grateful for the benefits which Christianity has conferred upon them? They cling to life, because life with all its bitterness is sweet to them, as it was to Mr. Buchanan’s dying dog. I do not say they reject Christianity, most of them. Oh, no. If you speak to them about it they will tell you they suppose it’s all right. But they continue to get drunk when they have the money, they beat their wives when they are in a bad temper, and they are not particularly moral or honest. But they are Christians. Oh, yes, they believe that Christ died to save them; if they don’t believe it, they will go to hell when they die, and burn for ever. Of course they know no more about it than the Archbishop of Canterbury does, but why need they bother, so that they believe?
     I do not believe. I do not believe that the Bible was inspired by God, and I do not believe that Christ’s crucifixion was anything more than the persecution of a great social reformer.
     I will relate a personal incident if you will allow me, for the purpose of better explaining my case. You don’t know  me, so it does not matter. I, unfortunately, had a drunken, good-for-nothing father, of whom when I was a child I had a terrible fear. In those days I used to lie on my bed at night in fear and trembling, praying, “Please, Jesus, make my father come home sober to-night, and please make him good, and don’t let him beat my dear mother.” But Jesus did not hear me. Night after night I prayed, and night after night came home the drunken savage, until eventually he bolted, and left my mother weak and delicate and broken-hearted to struggle through the world with three of us. And now, I, crushing in my heart the natural aspirations of most men, am content to work for my mother and a bed-ridden sister. I have not tasted liquor—I mean intoxicants—in my life; I have done my best in the circumstances in which I have been placed; no man can say I have ever injured him; and in my own small way I have been able to do a little good. But the mind I have, which is perhaps a very poor one, will not allow me to accept the Christian faith; and will “A Working Man” dare maintain that if I die to-morrow a just, merciful, and almighty God will consign me to eternal torment?
     Surely “A Working Man” is in error when he imagines it is the rich and well-to-do who reject Christ and Christianity! They are the upholders of it, who fill our churches and chapels, who dress in their silks and broadcloths to pay homage to the Carpenter’s Son, who was born in a manger; and who put the silver—which they have ground out of the flesh and blood of the workers—into the plate to pay the minister to preach “Blessed are the meek and lowly,” “Take ye no heed for the morrow,” “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”
     Would that I could gather together all the misery which is in this terrible London—the white-faced women with their breaking hearts—the starving and weeping children—the crushed and hopeless men—the sick and suffering—and show them to Mr. Le Gallienne. Could he look upon them and hear their moans, and say, “Whatever is, is right”? And these are the weak and meek and lowly ones, the poor in spirit, who have been driven to the wall and trampled under the feet of the strong. It is you strong ones—who can push us weak ones aside, and can conquer all obstacles in your path— who are blessed. There is much that is beautiful in the world for you which is not for us—the beautiful countries which you may go to, among the trees and the flowers; and the sunshine and the blue sky; but we must live in gloomy rooms in back streets week after week and year after year. Mr. Le Gallienne will shrug his shoulders at this, and say, “It is wondrous strange, but we cannot understand it; neither can we understand why or how a blade of grass grows.” No, but we can understand that the blade of grass may be good; but is it not impossible for the human mind to conceive anything good in misery and suffering, when there is an omnipotent power which can prevent it, but does not?
     I am sure to-day there are thousands of men who believe, with me, that Mr. Buchanan stands on an impregnable rock, and these thousands are also honouring the brave words of a brave man who has dared the contumely and perhaps the persecution of Christians.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                           A SCEPTICAL WORKING MAN.
     Jan. 19.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—When I was quite a “nipper” I learned to love Christ in my way from a patient and loving mother who loved Christ, and if I did not know Christ was a man should have thought he was a woman. We have been brought pretty low for the want of all earthly things, such as food, clothing, bedding, furniture, &c., through a drink-loving father (when sober, no better man in the world). It was no unusual thing to see our scanty home cleared—in fact, the “traps” had more rides than we had. What was her conduct through it all? Just to get us all together and pray to that Christ who never left her, even to the last, when she and I followed our father to the Queen’s Bench, where he died on a Christmas Day, at half-past three p.m., and when she had five to care for, three of whom were quite unable to help; and although in former years she had her head bandaged up, after being thrust through a window, yet for all this scarcely a murmur escaped her lips. She loved the man that treated her thus, and would say: “It was the drink, not father, that did it, sonny”; and then in after years how she kept us all together and died a happy death. I tell you I shall never forget it, although it is nearly fifty years ago; and how in after life I took upon myself the responsibilities of life, and have had to part with four boys out of six, and one by death. That beats all your sick monkeys; and when your head feels more like a pot of boiling lead than anything else, and when the doctor says, “I have done all I can,” and you watch beside the one who has stood by your side as you have fought life’s battles together, and you cannot articulate goodbye for very love, and when you think how she stood by you when all your little savings had gone in building societies’ failure, and said, “Never mind, we’ll pull through, mate.” I could go on like this much longer, but feel I must pull up by saying Christ is not played out and Christians neither. I know what I am saying. I’ve been on both sides, and would sooner be a Christian if there is nothing to follow; but I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him.—I am, dear Sir,

                                                                                                           A CHRISTIAN WORKING MAN.
     Jan. 19.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—With your kind permission, I will step into the witness-box on behalf of Christianity. I was for many years a follower of the late Mr. Charles Bradlaugh and Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation. Rather more than two years ago I was walking in Hyde Park in a very unhappy state of mind—in fact, that very night I intended to destroy my life. I had been asking myself, “Is life worth living?” While walking in the park I heard a voice say loudly, “Is life worth living? No; life apart from Jesus Christ is not worth living.” I looked about and discovered a gentleman preaching—Mr. Josiah Nix, of the West London Mission, the superintendent of which is the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. In the great crowd that Sunday afternoon I noticed many ladies dressed like hospital nurses. Their presence reminded me of the months that I spent many years ago in children’s hospitals as an indoor patient and what they taught me there. The preacher’s remarks and the presence of “The Sisters of the People” made me think Mr. Josiah Nix was talking about the power of Jesus Christ to save. I followed the mission band to their hall at Wardour-street, and that very Sunday night I got converted. No, Christianity is not played out; and when I think of the changed lives, families made happy, freethinkers turned into followers of Jesus Christ, drunkards reclaimed, I trust I may be pardoned for wishing that the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Mr. Josiah Nix, and the noble devoted “Sisters of the People” may be spared for many years to carry on their Christian work. I maintain that if the leaders of all Churches would follow their great Teacher, and take to the open air, much good may be done towards making a heaven on earth for many poor creatures. My old comrades of the Social Democratic Federation took to the street corners; hence the rapid spread of Socialism.
—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                                       WILLIAM J. L. HOOPER.
     42, High-street, Eltham, Kent, Jan. 23.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Mr. Buchanan says he has no sympathy with that crude Atheism which holds up everything vital in Christianity to sport and ridicule, but does he realise that in a more polished way he is doing precisely what he judges in others? He draws a picture of the Jesus that he knows; he distinguishes between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ (upon what authority he does not tell us), and presents to us a caricature which no one would recognise did he not put the name to it. What conceivable right has he to deny to the Lord Jesus Christ all he claims to be, and substitute a Jesus who exists only in his own imagination? Mr. Buchanan charges others with hypocrisy but encourages it in himself; for where is greater hypocrisy if the Jesus he described is the same as the one presented in the New Testament? The two cannot be genuine persons. If Jesus of Nazareth was not all he said he was, he is the biggest impostor the world has ever seen.
     That Christendom deserves all the hard things said about it may be allowed. There is one who will give it a severer sentence still, for he will spue it out of his mouth. But Christianity as a revelation from God is quite another thing, and cannot be judged in the same way. Whether Christians are all they ought to be is one thing; whether Christ is all the scriptures say he is is quite another. Do not let us confuse these two things. Christianity does not depend upon the consistency or inconsistency of those who profess it. And that it has survived all the dark deeds perpetrated in its name is one proof of its divine origin.
     The root error of Mr. Buchanan’s theory is his misrepresentation of Christ. He has his ideas about him, but he does not know him simply because he judges from a human point of view. It happened that one morning this week I was reading Matthew xvi., and anyone would have believed that portion of scripture had been written for this special occasion. The question raised, and raised by Christ himself, is “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” All sorts of speculation is rife, just as it is to-day. But what answer does Christ accept? The answer of Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” Mark, Christ accepts it, clearly and unmistakeably. Does Mr. Buchanan acknowledge the claim? If he did, he could never write as he does. But one point more—there is the rub, Jesus says to Peter: “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” This is what unbelievers, secularists, &c., kick at; this is what humbles all human pride. Flesh and blood cannot, of itself, ever know Christ. It may say he is this, that, and the other, but know him in all that he really is it never can—that can only be by revelation. “Search the Scriptures; . . . they are they which testify of me.”—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                                                                           A. E.
     Jan. 20.

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     “H.” writes:—“I am not anxious to discuss the question whether Christianity is played out, for no two of your correspondents have yet agreed on a definition of Christianity. But the success or failure of Christ is a question transcending all others in importance. Much as I sympathise with Mr. Buchanan’s righteous anger at the selfishness of men and the vanity of human institutions, I prefer to believe, with Robert Browning, that ‘God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world.’”
     “R. V. A.” holds that the admission that Christ’s “moral triumph consisted in the transcendent beauty of his own personal life, is the key to the whole situation. Christ’s morality is effective because it is centred in his own personality. Remove the names of Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, or those of any of the great moralists, past or present, from their respective systems, the system will remain intact. Perform the same process with Christ’s morality, and it crumbles  away.” He denies that there is “any real resemblance between the teachings of Christ and those of ‘any other Great Spirit.’ To maintain that the Christian creed can be used to support every kind of conduct is untrue, when we remember the test, the only test of Christianity—viz., Is a thing sanctioned and advocated by Jesus Christ?—for the imitation of his life and teaching is Christianity—and true Christianity is alone that.”
     “I. G. S.” says that “the conclusion we reach is that if we take in the ideals of Jesus in connection with his other teaching, and strip away from the veneer of creeds and ceremonies with which they have been overlaid, and set them before us in the clear light of heaven and common sense, we can see that Christianity, so far from being a failure, has opened to out view a grand form of evolution in the world of mental and moral consciousness, and that even now it is making its effects widely felt, and that it will in the future transform the face of the world and new-mould human society, bringing to pass a veritable kingdom of heaven on earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness.”

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     *** Notwithstanding the great interest which this discussion has aroused, we shall be obliged to close it to-morrow, as it is quite impossible for us to do justice to the enormous amount of correspondence which has reached us on the subject. We have received many hundreds of letters, a large number of which we should have been glad to publish if we could possibly have found room.—[ED. D. C.]

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The Daily Chronicle.
Wednesday, January 25, 1893.

Editor’s announcement, continuing the discussion.

1. Letter from W. Bramwell Booth.
2. Letter from ‘Evolution’.
3. Letter from R. B. Holt, F.T.S.
4. Letter from William Pierce.
5. Letter from Charles E. Bacon.
6. Second letter from ‘N’.
7. Letter from W. T. Harverson.
8. Letter from ‘Du Lavender’.

Extracts from other letters.

 

IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT?
_____

     *** We had hoped, in accordance with our announcement yesterday, to be able to close this discussion to-day, but, to meet the earnest wishes of a large number of our correspondents, we have decided to continue it till the opening of Parliament, when it will be impossible for us to find room for any more letters on the subject. —[ED. D. C.]

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Your correspondent an “Anglican Priest” announces with the aggressive arrogance so largely adopted by the apostles of modern cant that the “Christianity of Hell-fire,” by which he means the Christianity taught by the Bible and by the Prayer-book of his own Church, “is played out.” Permit me as one of the “fanatics” who in his elegant phrase still “shriek it out in the streets,” to assure him that he is mistaken, and to tell him that it is the Christianity of humbug which, while it wears the garb and draws the pay of the English Church, writes down the plain teaching of her authorities—it is this wretched travesty of religion which is “played out” at last. Thank God Jesus Christ, the despised Nazarene, has power on earth to forgive sins. This is that which Mr. Buchanan does not know about, and that of which, therefore, he can no more give as reliable counsel than can a man deaf from his infancy explain to us the beauty and variety and power of human speech. The letters from himself and others in your columns illustrate wonderfully the truth of our Lord’s saying, “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” No doubt Mr. Buchanan is a well-meaning man, but the fact is that he and others of your critical correspondents are as ignorant of the Divine Jesus as, say, the courtiers of Spain were ignorant of America before Columbus sailed. That continent was very much of a fact notwithstanding, and happily there are hundreds of thousands of plain and honest men who can attest the power and presence of a Divine Christ in their lives as confidently as Columbus and his crew could speak of the New Land when once they had found it. If anything could be finally settled by mere human testimony this matter of a spiritual Christ would have been disposed of long ago. But apart from God there is no real knowledge, though there may be learning, just as there is no true progress though there may be movement.
     I heard General Booth say in Exeter Hall this afternoon that the Christianity which is played out is that which was never worked in. I agree with him.—Yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                       W. BRAMWELL BOOTH.
     Headquarters of the Salvation Army,
         Queen Victoria-street, E. C., Jan. 24.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Some will, doubtless, think it strange that a Theosophist should assert that not only is Christianity not played out, but also that it is impossible if ever should be. Such, however, is the position I assume, and I defend it thus: If Jesus spoke the truth when he said “The Kingdom of God is within you”—evidently that kingdom has nothing to do with physical boundaries or social arrangements. God may reign in the slave of a despot as easily as in a citizen of a democracy. God’s kingdom therefore is represented by the moral, not by the civil, law. Now in law is our only possibility of cognosing God. The domination of supreme caprice may be a necessary postulate for certain theological systems, but such a God is repudiated by our deepest and truest intuitions. Law therefore personifies God to us in nature—

. . . the great First Cause
Acts not by partial but by general laws,

consequently, in this sense, it is quite logical to say, “Whatever is, is right,” while whatever is, is wrong, may seem equally true to a person or a nation that habitually violates the “beautiful order” which is the true condition of happiness. The best could not be the best for all, if it harmonised only with the imperfections of one. Then, when Paul speaks of “Christ in us, the hope of glory,” does he not mean by Christ, that consciousness of Deity which alone constitutes a true manhood, and that bringing our personal wills into harmony with divine law is our sole hope of redeeming both man and nation from the ills that now afflict them? To trust in an external materialistic Christ seems dangerously like idolatry.
     To endeavour to universalise dogmatic domination for the benefit of a priesthood was an attempt to set human in the place of divine law. This, naturally, has proved a failure, in spite of the devotion of thousands of true Christians, who, guided by the Master in them, have worked out their own salvation by striving for the good of others, without questioning the teaching of their Church or doubting the creed of their fathers. This blind faith is pretty well played out. “The light that lighteth every man” still shines as brightly as ever, and fuller knowledge only makes us trust to it more readily and with deeper reverence for the giver of it. This light is the true Christ; happy are they who find him.—Yours very obediently,

                                                                                                                                   R. B. HOLT, F.T.S.
     10, Bedford-place, Jan. 23.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—The brief summary of my discourse on Mr. Buchanan’s “Wandering Jew,” and the interesting correspondence which has appeared in your columns, does not quite accurately follow my line of thought.
     I am not concerned in the literary quality of the “Wandering Jew,” though personally I think some of the lyrics I learnt when a youth from Mr. Buchanan’s pages worth a wagon-load of Wandering Jews; but coming to the matter of the book, its strength lies in the fact that it contains a good deal that is true. There is no use denying it, the long story of mediæval Christianity is for the most part a monstrous repudiation of all that is truly Christian. The pagan travesty of Christian worship; the vamped up Flamen Dialis, tricked out in a few rags of Christian symbolism, claiming to be a priest in the new religion; the application of the sword, and the stake, and the gibbet to propagate the teaching of Jesus; all this is as much a source of wonder to us as it is to Mr. Buchanan; and it is more—it is a cause of deep pain and shame.
     But when our poet discriminates between Christ and what has been set forth as Christianity, he is only following a method which has always been followed by Christian reformers. And it is specially characteristic of our own time. “The return to Christ” is the key to all our vital and progressive Christian thought. Lives of Jesus Christ are among the most widely read religious publications of our time, and the very words of Christ are being scientifically studied, and as far as may be, in complete independence of traditional theological conceptions, as they have not been since the first century of Christianity. The criterion of our theology is becoming, more and more exclusively the personality of Jesus Christ. How widespread this influence is in religious thought is evidenced by “The Wandering Jew,” and the author’s further elucidations of its purport in your columns. But Mr. Buchanan, like the rest of us, needs to “return to Christ,” for he is living among conventionalities of his own. His references to the simple, veracious, generous-hearted Jesus, do not serve to cover his ignorance of Christ’s real teaching. Nor does he know much of the efforts which are being made by Christian teachers and communities to present, both by word and deed, the real Christ to the world. I, therefore, invite him, not to a discussion of these principles, but to visit us, and to see and hear for himself how some earnest folk, who believe that the Jesus of the Gospels is the “strong Son of God,” and the true Saviour of men, are endeavouring to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth.—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                                                 WILLIAM PEARCE.
     New Court Chapel, Tollington-park, N.
         Jan. 24.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Is Christianity played out? Has the body of ethical doctrine known by that name ever had fair play, though Socialism now seems to be giving Christians a chance? But Churchianity, of whatever sect, the practice of the mere mechanics of religion has not ceased, and never will while people who claim to be specially saved go on making money like other people, sinning in systems like other people, enjoying the good things of this life like anyone else, and refusing to denounce bad laws or to help to change them because they derive personal profit through their continuance, and think they gain forgiveness and absolution by registering a number of attendances at a house of worship in which the pulpit is the paid slave of respectability.
     If Christianity means anything, it means ascetic renunciation and crucifixion of self, and what religious tonguester and patterer of fine phrases does that? Many men and women are fairly good, renounce and give away—what they won’t miss and can afford; but won’t work for the abolition of the bad institutions that make such aid, which encourages cadging, necessary. No hypocrisy is more nauseating than that of the men who make money by writing and preaching of the beauties of holiness and elevation above the world, and yet live as the rest of the world, allowing themselves to be forced by the conventionality of the time, to which they should be superior, to commit thousands of miserable little sins in the year, and drown remorse in the gin-bottle of lachrymose repentance. This—while recommending others to accept the faith because once received it will bear one up against worldly temptations, and that if we do steadfastly right we shall, even if all men are against us, be fed in a manner as mysteriously as Elijah; and that God’s giant hand will stretch through illimitable space and bear us up. Man is evolved from the brute, and is of the earth earthy. He may be spiritually born again every day, but he still remains flesh, and of very poor quality. Those who preach the gospel of contentment generally have their bread very well buttered, and it is the easiest thing in the world when you have a good digestion, dine out four nights a week, and never know what actual want is (the nearest approach to it being an ungratified desire for superfluous luxuries) to cry with Browning, “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” All right in the world! with the fever den festering, vice skulking, oppression trampling on the weak, the hospital filled with the victims of Christian capitalists, the gaol with society’s criminals, the workhouse with the “blessed poor,” the missionaries carrying the Bible in one hand and the advertisement of their employers in the other, hideous corruption and loathsome hypocrisy sit enthroned in high places—the very religion which is to change all this, a corpse, with the galvanism of ecclesiastical dodgery and thaumaturgy grinning through. I am a groper in a sunless gulf of doubt, and I would ask of those cocksure people—those “spiritual middlemen and traders in salvation,” who, as Matthew Arnold says, “know so much about the Trinity that they could even tell you of the trappings and hangings of the council chamber,” those people whose waistcoats could not be made out of the Almighty’s great-coat—why, if the gods are not, as Lucretius puts it in a magnificent passage, virtually away minding their own business, why is Evil allowed to creep over the world, and if the sufferings which we endure are part of a plan of preparation, where is the justice and mercy in subjecting us to it if it be devised beforehand that thousands of us will never stand the trial, but will renounce, are driven to renounce, through a cruel and remorseless destiny, the idea that God is Love? Le Gallienne’s argument that it is all necessary reminds one of the father who said to a son, “How beautiful is all in nature! See how that bird’s bill is designed to fetch the little fish out of the deep holes.” “Yes,” said the boy, “but it’s rather rough on the fish.”
     I fully believe that much of evil would pass away if we could act up to the high moral standard of Christian ethics; but if you ask men to receive Christianity because it inculcates morality, is it not placing morality above the faith? But it is curious that when reformers try to bring Christianity to the streets the foremost defenders of privilege and property are the buttresses of chapel and church, the smug-faced worshippers of the powers that be, hedged around with the divinity of rust and corruption.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                             CHARLES E. BACON.
     Hither Green, Jan. 18.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Mr. Le Gallienne makes a remark in his last letter which surprises me—namely, his allusion to Mr. Buchanan’s “solitary backer, ‘M,’” and his “guffaw.” The latter word is rude, and Mr. Le Gallienne must be told quite frankly that although we fully appreciate his charming verse the only reason that Mr. Buchanan has a “solitary backer”—if indeed  “M.” backed him at all—is that the contest is so painfully unequal. We, “M” and I, agree with Mr. Buchanan, but we cannot hit Mr. Le Gallienne when he is down. That is the only reason we are silent.—Yours obediently,

                                                                                                                                                               N.
     Jan. 21.

_____

 

     “E. L. T.” directs attention to what he considers to be the weakest point in Mr. Buchanan’s argument. When he maintains that Christianity has been telling us for nearly 2,000 years that “whatever is, is right,” he displays his inability to understand the substance of Christ’s teaching. The Christian doctrine is that everything in this world is wrong in consequence of the first man’s error. Hence the necessity of a Christ. “Whatever is, is right,” is a Deistic pronouncement following naturally on the theory that an Omnipotent Being overrules the universe.
     G. M. regrets to find that Mr. Buchanan has failed to apprehend the Divine nature and character of Christ. Admitting that Christianity has not accomplished all that it might, humanly speaking, have been expected to accomplish, where is the defect? If it has not succeeded according to human expectations, it is not because it is devoid of power, but because the qualifying conditions for exercising that power have not been complied with.
     The Rev. F. G. Headley maintains that it is neither just nor true to say that Christianity has proved a failure because it has “not had a fair innings.” It has been so overlaid with creeds, articles, and dogmas, that to this hour the preaching of “Christ crucified” is, as of old, to some a stumbling-block and to others foolishness.
     “Credo” holds that the point at issue is not “Is Christianity a failure?” but that it is “Is Christ a failure?” Christ’s claim to be divine, which is the keystone of the whole system, throws the question a stage further back, and converts it into the equally serious question, “Is God himself a failure?” If Christ be not what he claims to be, and is represented in the New Testament to be, the whole fabric falls to the ground, leaving absolutely nothing in its place. God and Christ stand so close together that separation is impossible, and “Credo” hopes that the present discussion will call forth “a clear trumpet sound on this tremendously important subject.”
     The Rev. G. Hargreaves considers it is puerile to fret and fume because Christianity has not accomplished more during the last 1,800 years. Considering the antagonistic forces, our own littleness, the lessons to be learned, and the apparent issues involved, it is a marvel that so much has been done. The hopeful prayer of Christ on the cross runs counter to Mr. Buchanan’s idea of Christ despairing. Christianity has made as much progress as science, but to judge it by the middle ages is to be as unjust as it would be to judge science by the age of alchemy and astrology.
     “H. S. R.” holds that Mr. Buchanan’s argument is an attempt to blame Christ for the faithlessness and misconceptions of his followers. The cause of this cry of failure is the impatience of men who cannot wait the Father’s will.
     “A Follower of the Christ of Nazareth” utters her protest against the Christ depicted by Mr. Buchanan. She calls upon him to state where and when Christ ever recommended a policy of complete quiescence and stagnation. All experience tends to prove that the striving after the perfection required involves a struggle rather than quiescence.
     “J. M.” holds that it is not by looking at the problem of pain outside ourselves that we shall find an answer to the question, Why it is?
     “An Englishwoman” writes “Mr. Buchanan may scoff at Pope and Tennyson, but their words and their influence will live and make for righteousness.”
     “A German Governess” says that “A Working Man” in his letter fully expresses the feelings which every Christian must feel on reading the arguments which Mr. Buchanan’s poem has raised.
     “A Leicester Clergyman” glories in the “sterling integrity and ardent charity displayed in the letter of ‘A Working   Man.’”

_____

 

The Echo, London.
Wednesday, January 25, 1893.

[Note: The following ‘interview’ was not included in the cuttings from the Liverpool Record Office but I thought it should be added here since Richard Le Gallienne refers to it in his next letter. Harriett Jay included most of it in Chapter 27 (‘The Wandering Jew’) of her biography of Buchanan, however she omitted the first paragraph.]

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH

ROBERT BUCHANAN.
_____

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN.

     The Editor having asked me to interview myself, with a view to answering certain questions which might interest his readers, I have endeavoured, as delicately as possible, to approach my subject. At the moment when the request arrived, I was seated at my own supper table, listening to my good friend Malato’s disquisitions on the subject of Anarchy, and enjoying the brilliant sallies of one of the noblest-hearted, yet least understood, of men, Henri Rochefort. Having been engaged all day with George Sims, disputing whether the heroine of a forthcoming drama should hang herself with her own garters or poison herself with rat-powder, I was not in the most amiable of tempers; but under soothing assurances that the larger portion of the world, including all professional critics, was to be dynamited, I gradually yielded to temptation, and unbosomed myself to the cross-questioner. The first question suggested by the Editor, and put by myself to myself, was categorical.
     With what object did you write the “Wandering Jew”?
     Because, I replied, I thought that only one subject remained to the modern singer—that of fin-de-siècle Christianity, and because, in my opinion, the legendary Christ of the Gospels was the one immortal spirit which had never been faithfully represented in poetry. All my life I had been haunted by the conception of a worn-out Saviour, snowed over with the sorrow of centuries, old, weary, despairing, yet indignant at the enormities committed in his name. This figure was no fancy to me, but an awful and ever-present Reality. I could not believe in his power to save the world or to discover the God of his promise. But I did believe in his suffering, in the beauty of his character, in his supremely loving tenderness to human sorrow. No longer the beautiful Good Shepherd of early imagination, he seemed to me sad with the sadness of piteous old age, still haunted by his youthful Dream, but scarcely hoping now that it would ever be realised. I was asked:—
     Did you intend in the poem to satirise the progress of Christianity among the Churches?
     Well, not to satirise—the subject, I think, being too pitiful for satire—but to describe, in a succession of vivid  pictures, how Christianity had been a cloak to cover an infinity of human wickedness; how Churchmen had juggled, and cheated, and lied, in the name of Christ, and forgotten the real sweetness of his humanity. Here I was only to do, in  verse, what the great historians, from Gibbon to Lecky, had done before me. There was to be nothing in my poem, and there is nothing in it, which could not be justified and illustrated by overwhelming historical testimony.
     Why did you omit to describe such things as the cruelty of the Inquisition and the terrors of the Massacre of  St. Bartholomew?
     Because my book was to adumbrate the truth, not to support it by a mere catalogue of horrors. Because I wished to say just enough, and no more, to point home the charge on which Jesus Christ was to be arraigned, historically, and condemned. That charge was not to be the gist of my poem; otherwise I should be doing no more than other writers had done before me. What I desired to show was the despair of a supremely loving being who began in divine hope and has ended in apparent failure, not because his moral conceptions were false, but because his supernatural promises have never been verified. “Are men worth saving?” Jesus was, then, to ask himself, at the end of eighteen centuries of wasted effort. History, the record of man’s experience, was to supply the answer. Yet my Christ, clinging still to the hope of a heavenly explanation, clinging to that hope as men of his temperament will ever cling to it, was not wholly to despair. Had I made him continue to assert his miraculous pretensions, I should have pleased the so-called Christians. Had I made him admit his utter failure, I should have pleased the Materialists. I desired to please neither.
     Do you believe, then, that Christianity is a failure?
     Here I referred myself, rather irritably, to my own letters in a contemporary.
     One journal says you are an Atheist. Is that so, Robert Buchanan?
     I should not be the least ashamed of that even if I deserved it. Unfortunately, I am not an Atheist.
     Why unfortunately?
     Because, then, the whole question would be easy to me. I should not be lost in wonder at the eternal conflict between Good and Evil.
     Do you believe in another life?
     Do I believe I breathe and live? Do I believe that I came into this world to lose, not to find, my personality? To one who thinks as I do the question is absurd.
     But that other life was Christ’s solution of the problem?
     And it is mine; but it is only a belief, not a certainty; a hope, a faith, even, not a reality. The testimony of all Science is against it. The spectacle of human Stupidity, of the colossal selfishness and folly of Humanity, makes the mind despair often, as Christ despaired. And even the theory of another life, of an ever-continuing evolution, does not explain the horrible waste and anarchy of Nature.
     Here I took myself severely to task—cornered myself, so to speak, on the subject of my irresolution. There was no escape; I had to answer.
     Come, I said to myself, are you not falling between two stools? You think the failure of Jesus was his faithfulness to the conception of a personal immortality, of a God, and of heavenly kingdom, you believe centuries have been wasted over dogmas concerning the absolutely Unknowable; you know Herbert Spencer better, and really venerate him more, than your Bible (here I winced!); and yet you have not the courage to say boldly, this world is the only one, and all we can do is to make the best of it! You are not a Christian, you are not a Theist, and yet you absolutely and indignantly reject not merely Atheism, but Pantheism. Your own “Flying Dutchman,” indeed, was damned by reading the philosophy of Spinoza. What, in the name of common sense, are you? You reject all known creeds, and offer yourself no new one as a substitute.
     All creeds, I answered, are to me attempts to verify through the intellect what can only be apprehended by the insight. Just in so far as a creed repels me on the human side, just in so far as it is dogmatic, arrogant, tyrannous over the will, do I cease to follow it. I have absolute, or comparatively absolute, knowledge of only one thing in the Universe—Myself. Sum; et percipi. All beyond myself exists only as phenomena.
     In that sense, metaphysically speaking, you are God?
     Just so!
     God? You—Robert Buchanan!!—who collaborate in Adelphi dramas, write letters to the newspapers, and interview yourself to gratify the whim of an editor and your own self-conceit?
     At all events, my own nature is the only touchstone by which I can apprehend the malevolence or beneficence of Nature at large. I love (when I am rational) my fellow-men. I sicken at the sight of human suffering. I would, if I were able, abolish all sin and sorrow. Surveying myself, I am chiefly conscious of one thing—that, without some more ample life than this I live, my functions would be incomplete; I should have existed for no purpose whatever. I yearn for the eternal help and sympathy of those most dear to me. I have held them in my arms as they died; I have been certain, I am certain, that they cannot be dead at all. Personally, I would not care to live a day longer if I were not to live indefinitely. Personally, again, I have no interest in a God outside of myself, whom so many say they “love”; to meet that God I would not care to step one foot beyond the grave! I wish to be reunited with those I have loved, and who have loved  me. All Heaven, all hope, all faith, all continuance, is merely an image of my own personality, my own love.
     We are getting too metaphysical. The Editor wants to know what you meant by those two lines in the dedication of the “Wandering Jew”:

Father on Earth, for whom I wept bereaven,
Father more dear than any Father in Heaven?

     What I meant is expressed in my previous answer. I mean that it is impossible to love what is beyond our comprehension. To love God is to love the mystery of one’s own existence.
     You appreciate the ties of this world so deeply, yet you suggest in your poem that human beings, after all, may not be worth saving?
     That is the mood of despair which I have expressed through Jesus, in the “Wandering Jew.” Human baseness, and, above all, human stupidity, as expressed in history and corroborated in everyday experience, are so appalling, the aims of life are so trivial, the business of life is so mechanical! But here and there we catch a gleam of comfort, we come face to face with one of those quasi-divine characters, like Jesus,

“Who are the salt of the earth, and without whom
The world would smell like what it is—a Tomb!”

     These things restore our faith, at least for a moment.
     Your faith in what?
     In Humanity, in the perfectibility of human nature. If we deny that, we take away the basis of all Religion, and become pessimists, pure and simple. Pessimism is moral Death, and since the root-idea of modern Christianity is pessimism, or a belief in natural depravity, Christianity is already a dead creed.
     I am sorry for you, Robert Buchanan. Believer and unbeliever, outcast from all camps, enemy to all dogmas, where are you to rest your feet?
     Here, on the rock of my own personality. If I admit my own baseness, I destroy all the godhead in the world. If I lose faith in my own infinite capacities of love and sympathy, I abolish the last hope of immortality. If I despise this life, this world, even the flesh and its happiness, I spit in the Fountain of all Grace, I accept everything that is human, I reject all the Christian cant about “sin” and “atonement.” It is because this life, at its highest, is supremely beautiful and sane that I believe it will continue. I respect my body too much to call myself a Christian, I loathe the phenomena of evil too utterly to admit myself a Pantheist, and I have too little reverence for what I do not understand to think myself a Theist. I might dub myself a Humanist, if that word did not imply some sort of satisfaction with the intellectual juggleries of Positivism. But I really do not wish to label myself at all. I am content to be in sympathy with all religions, just in so far as they respond to my yearning for personal sympathy and love.
     Here, having had quite enough of myself, I cut short the interview.

_____

 

The Daily Chronicle.
Thursday, January 26, 1893.

1. Robert Buchanan’s sixth (final) letter.
2. Letter from ‘A Salvationist’.
3. J. Morrison Davidson’s third letter.
4. Letter from ‘Poor Clerk’.
5. Letter from ‘Q.’
6. Letter from W. Hollins (Salvationist Working Man).
7. Letter from ‘A Bricklayer’.

Extracts from other letters.

Gen. Booth on Christianity.

 

IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT?
_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I had purposed to say nothing further until your discussion was concluded; but as I see that it is to continue, and that the disputants are wandering more and more from the point (illustrating daily my statement concerning the “nebulousness” of modern “Christian” views), will you permit me to interpose a few words? I notice with pleasure that Mr. Bramwell Booth, on entering the arena, thinks it quite enough to beat his brave old Drum. Having proved on another occasion how much I sympathise with the secular work which is being done by the Salvation Army, I am delighted to think that Mr. Booth credits me with good intentions, just as I credit him with what is far more precious—generous deeds. I care very little what religion a man swears by, so long as he is a philanthropist and a humanist, and I think that Mr. Booth and his fellow workers are appealing to the ignorant and helping them in the only way possible—by interesting them in their own physical welfare. This discussion, however, is not for them.
     Do not let us wander away from the main question. When all is said and done, the question between Christ, or Christianity, and the World, is this—Is there, or is there not, another Life beyond this Life we live? Everything hangs or falls by that. If Christ established, or if Christianity can establish, that splendid certainty, Christianity will never be played out. If the Christ who is coming is to give us no further information on that head, his advent will alter nothing. That was his promise: Life Everlasting, conscious Life with an Eternal Father. Humanity up to date has proceeded on the assumption that it was false, or at least doubtful. Christians themselves seldom, or never, act as if it had any serious influence on their lives. It comforts the poor and weary; it puts a halo of hope around the head of the suffering. But is it true? To enter deeply into an answer to that momentous question would far transcend the limits of this letter. But in whatever is said, the question should be constantly borne in mind.
     Now, Jesus of Nazareth clearly claimed to be the Incarnation of the living God, not in the sense in which all good men are incarnations, but in the special sense that he, more than any other human being, represented the Godhead. To establish his claim he did one thing—if Christian evidence is to be credited. He performed miracles, even to the extent of raising the Dead. If he did not perform miracles, he was either self-deluded or an impostor, and in any case he failed, if he did not perform them, in establishing his theory of Immortality. Now, the man who can believe that miracles are possible under any circumstances whatever can take Christianity at one bite, without a single grain of salt. The man who rejects the theory of miracles can never save his soul alive (as so many men seek to do) by simply believing that Jesus was the best of men, and that his moral teachings were supremely beautiful; for he must acknowledge in the same breath that Jesus was ignorant of the laws of Nature, and that the teachings of Jesus, however beautiful, were based upon a thaumaturgist’s delusion.
     We may refine all this away. We may follow Mr. Matthew Arnold in his pitiful feats of literary Jesuitry, put all the miraculous business aside, in order to throw one last straw of hope to the sinking Church of England. We may potter and quibble about “poetry” and “essential” religion just as much or as little as we please. But with the loss of the supernatural pretension perishes the whole fabric of organised Christianity. How many of us believe now in the raising of Lazarus, or in the miraculous draught of fishes? Just as many, no doubt, as believe that the sun once stood still and that the earth is flat. Yet because rational men have refused to believe these things, millions of human beings have perished by sword and fire, countless homes have been made desolate, and the House of Life has been occupied by a spectral Man in Possession for 1,800 years.
     All that is over, however, say the Christians, and Christ, who has been utterly misunderstood and misinterpreted, is coming to occupy his Kingdom. Yes; but what is he coming to prove? Merely, cry the literary falsetto, that men ought to be very good, very kind to each other, very tolerant and temperate, and then they will be happy. Well, we know that already. It is the very truism of Science, of Experience. Ah, but he is coming also to punish the wicked, to call the vain and proud to account, say the Preachers. Well, Nature itself has been doing that from time immemorial; so savagely, indeed, that most of her punishments seem out of all proportion to the offence! Is he coming, though, to establish the one great thesis which he failed in proving, that men have imperishable Souls? If so, why has he delayed so long? Why has he allowed Science and Free-thought, in very despair, and at the last moment, to act upon the assumption that he was a Dreamer, and that, with the very best intentions, he has only succeeded in causing temporary misery to the whole human race?
     In the poem which first led to this discussion I have pictured the living Christ as I conceived him, covered with the despair of the centuries, alive at last to the fact that Evil triumphs in the world, and that God still remains Unknown, Unknowable, Inconceivable. My sympathy, the sympathy of all right-thinking men, is with this Jesus, this forlorn Outcast, who based his heavenly promise on his belief in the power of pain, of exquisite suffering and self-sacrifice, to redeem the human race, but who feared, even as he passed through the shadow of Death, that God had forsaken him. Like all who love their fellows absolutely and unselfishly, he was crucified. His Spirit survives to haunt the earth, to continue the old weary quest for God. His name has been taken in vain by all the Churches; he is still despised and reviled by all the Pharisees. What, then, is he? The Soul of Human Suffering, knocking at a Gate that has never been opened, dreaming a Dream that has never been realised. Has he proved anything that common knowledge, common experience, does not prove? If he has satisfied the world of Immortality, Yes! If he has merely echoed the truism that the crown of human life is goodness, No!
     Therein lies the crux of the whole discussion. To regard Jesus Christ as merely a fine Social Reformer, or as the Spirit of perfect Humanity “which is to be,” is to shut one’s eyes altogether to his divine pretensions. We want to know something more. Have we or have we not been, are we or are we not, sacrificing the beauty and the happiness that alone make this globe habitable to a mere Chimera?—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                           ROBERT BUCHANAN.
     Jan. 25.

     P.S.—May I take this opportunity of thanking the numerous correspondents who have addressed me personally, and among whom are many sincere “Christians,” for their helpful words of sympathy? I have found it impossible to answer them all individually, but I fully appreciate the generous spirit which has prompted them to write to me.—R. B.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Mr. Buchanan’s foresight at least cannot be impeached. “The Wandering Jew” was in evidence at a great gathering of 3,000 or 4,000 “fanatics” who crowded Exeter Hall this afternoon. These men and women were evidently of opinion, if one might judge by their enthusiasm and fervour, that Christ-ianity was not played out. They were equally unanimous, judged by the same sign, in agreeing that one form of “Christianity” was played out—namely, toothless Christianity. Said the white-haired old “general” who is leader of this Gideon’s host, “Oh, this toothless Christianity, that is played out!” Then arose upon the air, as a response to this statement, a mighty chorus of “Hallelujah” and “Thank God.” Now it occurs to me, Sir, that General Booth, with that practical insight for which he has become famous, has struck to the root of this controversy. Is it not largely because the Church of Christ (?) has become toothless, and mutters and mumbles where she ought to speak and act out, that Mr. Buchanan has felt impelled (if not compelled) to raise this question? She has too often been the lisper of soft nothings; has forgotten how to smite iniquity with a fist of iron; has been more concerned about tithe, mint, anise and cummin, about washing of cups and platters, about new moons and Sabbath days and fasts, and has neglected the weightier matters of the law, to relieve the oppressed and fatherless, to unbind the heavy burdens, to break every yoke—in a word, has neglected love, justice, and mercy.
     Does not the social work of the Salvation Army teach the Churches a lesson they would do well to lay to heart? It is a significant fact that the organisation which is usually looked upon as the exponent of the narrowest of creeds has risen highest in its practical belief of the salvability of man.
     The “fanatics” this time are the best Secularists; not, however, Secularists à la G. W. Foote, who endeavours to appropriate Mr. Buchanan’s eulogiums of “Secularism.” By the way, it would be interesting to learn what the National Secular Society has ever done in alleviating the woes of humanity.
     With regard to Mr. Buchanan—to whom the whole Christian world is indebted—I would, in uttering a protest against the vulgar attacks made upon his bona fides by men who understand neither the man nor his spirit, remark that for myself I have long been convinced that “The Wandering Jew”—the patient, long-suffering, ever misunderstood, but not “eternally condemned Christ of the nineteenth century”—has many servants who neither wear his livery nor accept his divinity.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                                 A SALVATIONIST.
     Jan. 25.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I sincerely rejoice that you have seen your way to allow this profoundly interesting question to be further discussed in your columns. It is such a comfort to get away from the dreary St. Stephen’s play-actors and their doings for the briefest season. Not one of your correspondents, nor one of the preachers whose sermons were reported in Monday’s paper, has dared to face the real issue. To me at least that issue is as clear as a sunbeam. Christ, whatever else he may have been, was beyond all question an Anarchist-Communist, if ever there was one. It is true he sanctioned, though grudgingly, the payment of tribute to Cæsar, but that was only part of his marvellous, all-embracing philosophy of life. One may well pay taxes to the State if it is one’s duty when one’s coat is requisitioned to give one’s vest also.
     In the ancient world, among masters and slaves alike, the lex talionis universally obtained—“an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Crassus acted on it, so did Spartacus. But that rule of conduct Christ exactly reversed. He announced that evil was not to be overcome by evil, but by good, and that good in concrete form. Mr. Buchanan’s desiderated “orb of rational polity” was the “commune pure and simple.”
     The “world” which Christ came to combat by word and deed was the institution of private property, with all its monstrous buttressing paraphernalia of “sovereigns and statesmen,” lords and commons, armies and navies, priests and parsons, judges and policemen, prisons and workhouses, banks, insurance offices, stock exchanges, and Liberator Societies. He dissolved the whole fabric of the “society” which we are all vainly struggling to keep from falling to pieces about our ears. The princes of the Gentiles bear dominion over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them, but among you (Christians) it shall not be so. He that would be greatest among you, let him be the least. Let him be the servant of all.
     The test of admission to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was: Sell all you have and give to the poor, and join this communistic society which I have founded, where the distinction of meum and tuum no longer exists. That was the leaven that was to leaven the whole lump of suffering humanity.
     It has, alas! not done so; but surely the “failure” is not Christ’s but ours. I can in some measure understand the all but “onconcaivable ignorance” of men like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Foote, of the National Secular Society (whose out-of- date occupation I had hoped was by this time gone), but the attitude of “Christian” bishops, with their public palaces and patronage and big incomes, and even of prosperous Dissenting Nonconformist stipendiaries of the altar, beggars me entirely. In the name of the vagrant Nazarene, who had not where to lay his head, I say to all such—

By the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods above,
Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel love.

     The Gospel of him who dared to say, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, was to be without money and without price, and, lo! it has been converted by the “classes” into the subject-matter of one of the genteel professions!
     It is all very sad, Mr. Editor. “The prophets prophesy falsely; by them the priests bear rule, and my people love to have it so.” Anyhow, Sir, you have done the world an inestimable service by opening the columns of The Daily Chronicle to the many earnest souls who have written to you, and you may depend that, though the fulness of time is not yet, God will arise, and His enemies shall be scattered.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                   J. MORRISON DAVIDSON.
     Democratic Club, Jan. 24.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Will you allow a puzzled church member to say a few words? From experience I am quite sure Christianity is not played out in its influence on thousands, and in my own case it is still a power for good. The question, however, will keep forcing itself on me. How can Christ be regarded as a success in regard to the whole world? We Christians call the heathen our brothers, if they are, God appears to have neglected them, for there is no other name given under heaven whereby a man can be saved but that of Jesus Christ, yet these millions never heard of our Saviour. Ministers, when they preach, speak as if all the world was comprised of Europe and America; they speak of Christ as the mighty Saviour of the world, yet for 1,800 years hundreds of millions of Chinese and others have been passing away in ignorance that Jesus ever trod this earth. Will any minister explain? Another thing that puzzles me is the question of “hell fire”! This term is seldom heard now in church or chapel. But why not? If it is in the Bible by what authority do our present pastors and ministers ignore it? They may have excellent reasons, but it is only fair they should let their less fortunate followers know by what process of reasoning eternal torment has been banished from their teaching of Christianity within the last twenty years.
     If there are some who, like Mr. Booth, still adhere to the old doctrine, will they try to explain to our troubled minds how a God who commands us to love our enemies, and is called Love, can torment for ever one who at the very worst could only have rebelled against him for the space of one short human life, or at the best may have lived only a few years amid doubt, trial, and temptation?
     If our preachers won’t tackle these questions, how can they wonder if those who ponder them without an answer gradually lose grip of Christianity, and are almost forced to believe there may be truth in the assertion that Christianity is played out?—Yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                                         POOR CLERK.
     Jan. 25.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—It might be well before the Christianity controversy closes to suggest that Mr. Buchanan and his co-disputants remind one of the knights who quarrelled at the crossways over the suspended shield, which was gold on one side and silver on the other. The parties are not on common ground, and argument by quotation from the Gospels is quite futile when the accuracy of these sacred records is itself in dispute. Mr. Buchanan ought at least to say whether he accepts the Gospel life of Christ as a correct history, or whether he takes the view of Matthew Arnold in “Literature and Dogma,” that the disciples did not themselves understand the character and the sayings of their Master, and consequently were bad reporters of his words and deeds. Those who hold different views on that point obviously cannot argue. Apart from the theological question, there can be no doubt about the spirit of Christianity being an absolute fact. Many a man has been described as naturaliter Christianus. It seems rather like a debating society problem to ask whether Christianity in that sense has made the world better since the era of Christ. But if that question be answered in favour of Christianity, it logically follows that Christianity has not lost its force, and the mere questioning of its power or existence only furnishes an opportunity to testify to both. Mr. Buchanan, I should think, is as good a Christian as any one else, although he has hardly learnt to be tolerant in his ideas or moderate in his expressions. He seems to be a parallel to Elijah, when he exclaimed in the wilderness as a prophet of Jehovah, “I only am left.” It is idle to question whether churchism or chapelism be coincident with Christianity. Would it not be better to lay aside useless religious recrimination and apply a little common sense in studying the tide of the centuries and the change in the spirit of the present age?—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                                                                               Q.
     Foreign Office, Jan 25.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I have not, being a working man, received a college education, and therefore I feel I have no right to take part in this discussion. My experience is like the working man whose letter appeared a few days ago in your columns. Life without Christ to me is hopeless, and not worth living. When young I was led into materialistic beliefs, and I lost faith in all religion. I cannot tell you, Mr. Editor, the years of wasted energy and misdirected efforts such teaching brought me. But about six years ago I put faith in Jesus, and to me he has been no failure, but become life itself. Divines may laugh, and learned men discuss conversion and the new birth, and smile and shrug their shoulders at the poor man’s testimony, but God has wrought in my soul this change through faith, not in another world, but faith in Jesus.
     Mr. Buchanan errs when he says to-day that it is not by the fine moral teaching of Jesus, but the promise of recompense in another world, that comforts Christians. I tell him that it is the moral teaching of Jesus carried out in renewed and regenerated hearts that quickens and comforts humanity, and enables them to live a higher and better life. Look at the Salvation Army, to which I belong. They speak with a voice of thunder. Scores of thieves now honest men, unfortunate women reclaimed from vice to virtue; drunkards now sober, are trophies of Jesus. Christianity does attract the working man in the present. It helps him to return good for evil. Show me the man or woman made regenerate by secular teaching, and I will bring 100 made new creatures by faith in Jesus. There will be a terrible day of reckoning for some people in this world for the wrongs they have done.—I remain, dear Sir,

                                                                                                                         W. HOLLINS,
                                                                                                                   Salvationist Working Man.
     20, Victoria-place, Clapham, S.W., Jan. 21.

 _____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Will you please find a corner for me? I am a bricklayer, and the little I know about reading and writing is only what I have picked up here and there as best I could. But I have read some of the letters on “Christianity Played Out.” I was brought up in a neighbourhood where the drink demon was the god of every home. Not knowing anything of religion, never going to a Sunday-school, it is no wonder I became a slave to drink—the curse that followed me wherever I went. I have tried times out of number to get free from the cursed bondage of drink. Often have I wept in despair. I have left my home and gone about the country, thinking that among strangers I might do better; but after years of travelling I came home worse than ever. Did ever Mr. Buchanan get like that? I think not. And, of course, he cannot understand another truth which I have enjoyed for the last nine years—that is, my complete deliverance from drink, and love for it gone out of my life, though I am every day mixing with those who drink. Who has brought all this about? The very Christ that some make so little of. What is there to keep me from falling a victim to drink again? I am just as weak; the drinking-houses are all around me the same as ever; the old companions are ever ready to buttonhole me, and many places where I go to work ask me to have drink. Mr. Buchanan, I believe, has a kind heart. I believe he would feel pity in that heart if he saw me drunk after nine years of temperance, and my dear wife and children depending on me for all they get. Mr. Buchanan might pity but he could not help me. No mortal man could. But I am kept through the mighty power of the Living Christ, who can save all the drunkards in the world. Therefore, with the kind heart I believe Mr. Buchanan to have, if he cannot understand the Lord Jesus Christ, he will praise him for what he has done for me, a fellow creature. Dear Sir, it is hard work for me to write—do forgive the faults.—Yours respectfully,

                                                                                                                                     A BRICKLAYER.
     Forest-gate, Jan. 21.

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GEN. BOOTH ON CHRISTIANITY.
_____

     Large as were the gatherings which marked the first of “Two Days with God,” in connection with the Salvation Army, the meeting held yesterday in Exeter Hall must be regarded as having eclipsed them in point of numbers.—General Booth conducted the morning service, and in the course of his address dwelt still further with the necessary concomitants for “A religion for the times.” Proceedings were resumed after a short interval, and the hall was crowded in every part.—After the usual prayer-meeting and opening service, the General delivered a rousing address, in which he dealt principally with a question which is being argued out in the columns of The Daily Chronicle. He was naturally opposed to those who say that Christianity is played out. Such a statement was contrary to the fact. Christianity was not played out, it was being played in, and being played in through the medium of the Salvation Army. His remarks on the subject were received with great enthusiasm, and were evidently endorsed by his immense audience. At the evening meeting, General Booth advanced once more to the attack, and gave a lengthy and characteristic address. Basing his remarks upon the story of Elijah, the prophet who told Ahab the will of God, he said that what Christianity needed in the present day was that the truth should be told in the same manner. That was what the Salvation Army wanted—to be able to stand up, and, reckless of consequences, tell the truth to the world. There was only one way of telling the truth. They might talk about their “pleasant afternoons.” They had nice sermons, intellectual treats, and so on; they made the Church a sort of educational and scientific medium; some wanted to make it a sort of club, in which men and women could meet and talk. That was the sort of thing which was generally advocated, and when a man came, Elijah-like, and told the people the truth, they said they would soon make an end of him. “Art thou the man that troubleth Israel,” they said. And he replied, “It is not I but thou and thy father’s house which have forsaken God.” He (the General) had a message to them from God, and he had to ask them how long they were going to be making up their minds whether they would serve God or Baal, and how long they were going to leave the matter unsettled.—The service closed with singing and the benediction. —To-day there will be a series of services for officers only at the Congress Hall, Clapton, at which the General will speak.

_____

 

The Daily Chronicle.
Friday, January 27, 1893.

1. Percy Dearmer’s second letter.
2. Letter from Arthur Clayden.
3. Letter from Roden Noel.
4. Letter from F. P. Williamson.
5. Letter from ‘J. E.’
6. Letter from ‘W. K. F.’
7. Letter from Thos. Child.
8. Letter from ‘A Victim’.

 

IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT?
_____

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Mr. Le Gallienne is less ignorant than Mr. Buchanan, and is mainly in the right. But why will not these gentlemen acknowledge that they have not sufficient theological knowledge for the work they are trying to do? They have not even read their brief, and so fall easy victims to Mr. Foote, who has. Mr. Le Gallienne’s history is even worse than his theology. He says “Reform of a Church has apparently always to come from outside.” Will he give one instance of this? As a matter of fact, it never has, not even if we bound our vision, as Mr. Le Gallienne does, by the Reformation. The Puritan revolution reformed no Church; it set itself to reform the nation, and was followed by a century and a half of unblushing immorality, but it was in no sense the reform of any Church. He mentions Wesley; but it is notorious that Wesley’s movement, so far from coming from without, was a movement almost exclusively of Church of England clergymen. Nor was it marked, as Mr. Le Gallienne most strangely asserts all reformations to have been, by an abandonment of symbolism: quite the contrary. And has there been no reformation in the present century? Has it not been marked by this very symbolism, so much that there is not a Dissenting chapel in England that does not bear some trace of this same symbolism?—which it is curious, by the way, to find a poet condemning. Our point against Mr. Le Gallienne is that we include him whilst he excludes us—that he is too narrow for us, in short. He is impatient with us for being interested in the dispute about inspiration, just as a man who was unversed in art would be impatient with the dispute about impressionism, simply because he does not know enough about it. Do let Mr. Le Gallienne be diffident, or when he grows older he may fossilise into another Mr. Buchanan.
     May I add three points?
     (1.) The fact of this controversy proves that “Christianity” is not played out. A decadence is unconscious, and is not given to heart-searchings.
     (2.) The point of real interest would be, “Is the Church played out?” We are quite prepared to hear that religious individualism is dying.
     (3.) The study of history has had much to do with the destruction of prejudice against the Church. Historical experts do not bear out the anti-Catholic statements made in this controversy, least of all Mr. Foote’s strangely one-sided statement that drink, vice, gambling and bloodshed are the result of Christianity.—Yours, &c.,

                                                                                                                                 PERCY DEARMER.
     St. Anne’s, South Lambeth, Jan. 23.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—The crux of the difficulty lies here: the only authority we possess on Christianity is our Bible, and, according to the plain letter of that Book, the late Mr. C. H. Spurgeon and the orthodox school are unquestionably nearer the truth than Mr. J. Page Hopps and the heterodox school. But by a consensus of opinion among thoughtful men to-day this teaching is simply found to be impossible. No one, save the Salvation Army, ventures to do more than hint Mr. Spurgeon’s eschatology, and even General Booth virtually abandons it by his social scheme. A real belief in eternal torments for unsaved, but saveable men, excludes all worldly considerations. A few years ago a thrill of indignation went through society because two or three dozen ineffable poltroons stood on the banks of the Serpentine and allowed a child to drown before their eyes, but what was that compared with the spectacle before us, on the orthodox assumption? Millions of people going down to a fate compared with which drowning is delight, and on the banks of the appalling “Serpentine” tens of thousands of nominal Christians, too intent on worldly gain and self-enjoyment to even cast a glance at the perishing multitude! This is the supreme anomaly—this the crux of the whole difficulty. A generation or so back a noted infidel uttered these words: “Did I truly believe, what myriads say they do, that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in the next, the spirit of truth be my witness! Religion should be to me everything.” Just so. No words can adequately portray the criminality of the orthodox dweller in ease and luxury. Jesus Christ’s “certain rich man” lifting up his eyes “in torment” is scarcely equal to the necessities of the case.
     Mr. J. Page Hopps sketches a beautiful ideal Christianity, but I fancy Mr. Robert Buchanan smiled as he read it. Neither Jesus Christ nor St. Paul would recognise in it the religion which they taught. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hopps finds himself in the anomalous position of a pick-and-choose disciple, and like a good many other ticklers of Greek ears, he has not many of Edwin Long’s heroines to rejoice over. Church and world are practically one to-day on the question, “Diana or Christ?” What then? Must the question, “Is Christianity played out,” be answered in the affirmative? God forbid!
     Six questions demand authoritative replies:—
     (1) Is Christianity irrevocably committed to a personal devil?
     (2) Does Christianity include a doctrine of eternal future punishment?
     (3) Is the whole superstructure of the evangelical faith a fair deduction from the teachings of Christ and his apostles?
     (4) Is the Bible an authority from which there is no appeal?
     (5) Are our conceptions of right and wrong absolutely reliable?
     (6) Does human reason count in religious discussion?
     If the Rev. J. Guinness Rogers would grapple with these questions, and the difficulties indicated in this letter, I think he might possibly relieve a good deal of anxiety, and reassure even devout and life-long worshippers of the Christ.
—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                               ARTHUR CLAYDEN.
     Upper Norwood, Jan. 25.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—I see that Mr. Buchanan, writing again in your columns, raises the question of miracles. When Mr. Lecky penned his “History of Rationalism,” he was able to take for granted that miracles were universally discredited among sensible people; and yet Lord Brougham had already seen a cloud rising in the cloudless skies of scepticism, though no bigger than a man’s hand, and “that cloud,” he said, “is modern Spiritualism.” Now, it is only by refusing to investigate the great body of evidence afforded, say, in the publications of the Society for Psychical Research and elsewhere (for instance, in occultist or theosophical works), that scientific rationalism can take up this free and easy position as regards the abnormal phenomena we term miracles. There is no doubt that the growth of the Christian Church is very difficult to explain, as Christian apologists have contended, without admitting either that Christ rose from the dead, or that he was universally believed by Christians to have done so. Nor can the record of miraculous events be eliminated, without arbitrary violence, from the historical portions of the New Testament. That the belief in their occurrence powerfully influenced the followers of Christ in the inferences they drew from his own words and career as to their Master’s nature and work, it is moreover impossible to deny. But we must remember that the alleged miracles of Jesus are on the whole only eminent, arresting assertions, and instances of beneficent power—by them he fed the hungry, enhanced innocent pleasure, healed disease, brought back life where death had apparently triumphed. And these effects may be either regarded as resulting from the interposition of occult forces equally subject to law as those with whose operation we are more familiar, or as produced by the wonder-working creative energy of a divinely-beneficent imagination.

                                                                                                                                         RODEN NOEL.
     Jan. 26.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—One aspect of the case has not yet been put, for the statement of which I should like strongly to plead permission. The distinction between Christianity as the doctrine of Christ, and that which, under the guise of orthodox and other Christianity, has been preached and practised in his name, has already been sufficiently pointed out; but the relation of that hydra-headed departure from the truth of Christ to the teaching of Christ himself, and the reason and law of such declension, have not even been hinted, germane as these things are to the question discussed.
     There are those, Sir, who not only, as many do, sorrowfully admit that the doctrines and divided condition of the Church are the cause of the world’s unbelief, but who hold, as part of their fundamental position, that that Church was, through perversion of Christian truth, and as a spiritual teacher, to come to its end, that it has accordingly done so, and that another and truer Church or body of doctrine was to take its place as the instructor of mankind. This is the strain of the New Testament. All the prophecies of judgment uttered by the Lord and his apostles are against that corrupted, consummated Church; and it was because of this corruption and connected with it that he was to come again. These prophecies of the Second Coming are invariably connected with this falling away from the faith; and who could fall away from the faith but those who had professed it? Judgment everywhere begins “at the House of God.” It would be easy enough to demonstrate that such perversion of the Lord’s teaching has overtaken every variety of the creed of Christendom—from its Trinity of Persons, through its substitutionary atonement, its salvation by faith alone, and its resurrection of material bodies, down to its exhibition of a material hell-fire prepared by God as a punishment for the sins of this life. It is these vicious things themselves and their thousand vicious applications which have brought the Church in Christendom internally and vitally to an end and plunged the world in unbelief.
     But did Jesus Christ not expect such a result? Certainly; nor could it take him by surprise, as it seems to do the  newly-opened minds of men. He not only expected, but distinctly foretold the end of the so-called Christian “age,” the consummation of its dead Churches, and the night of unbelief that would settle down upon the world—the very state of things amidst which we now find ourselves, which some are, with inconceivable short-sightedness, accepting as proof that Christianity is played out. If ever a condition of spiritual life, such as we now see, was plainly foreseen and diagnosed, the present state of the world is so in the 24th Chapter of Matthew, in spite of the theologians and their impossible limitation of that chapter to the destruction of Jerusalem. “The end, or consummation, of the age,” not of “the world” as in our version (a phrase the Revisers also were afraid to touch, except by marginal reference) is that state of the Church in which the Son of Man when he comes shall not find faith. In face, then, of a distinct and detailed statement of the present corruption of Christianity by its founder himself, where is the perception of facts or the rational insight which can permit men to ask if Christianity has failed when that condition of things is itself a vital part of Christianity’s fulfilment? Since when was it (since Mr. Buchanan became a prophet?) that evidence began to run by the rule of contraries, and foresight was baulked by verification? If anything could prove the fulfilment of Christianity, the divine foreknowledge of Jesus, and the need and actuality of the Second Coming of the Lord as the means of unfolding spiritual truth, it is the faithless condition to-day both of the world and of the Church.
     But if the Christ be Lord why did he not prevent such a catastrophe, and all others to boot? As a matter of absolute power alone anything may be done by omnipotence; as a matter of absolute wisdom, plainly it will not be so: Divine power will do what Divine wisdom directs. And this resolves the knot of the world’s trouble. It was necessary for man’s regeneration that his self-will and self-intelligence should assert themselves in relation to the pure truths of Christianity, working out that relationship by exhibiting the evil and disastrous effects of substituting themselves for the truth— necessary that man should become conscious of what his creedal tinkerings and practical denials of these truths meant, so that his moral perception, driven eventually from these devices of the self-intelligence, and seeing at length whither they lead, should turn from them, and by the purifications of this age of trial, come humbly to the feet of Christ, desiring to know in simplicity just what he has to say to the truer self in man. In this way is man being prepared, both intellectually and morally, through his self-incurred and properly disastrous failure, called Christendom, for the acceptance of the waiting Christ and his teaching—the Christ that is to be, for this is he, in spite of Mr. Buchanan’s sneers at sentiment.
     It is really for this the world is unconsciously looking to-day—the clear, full, explicit interpretation and unfolding of that genuine and rational Christianity which the New Testament contains. Even the fallen Church has always believed in this fuller light, though she has been ready enough, and still is, to persecute any who would point it out to her. The intellectual entrance into the things of faith is coming however, in spite of all she can do to keep it back. It will come in the fulness of time and in the wisdom of him who foresaw the conditions of its need and of its possession. When we ourselves are ready we may be sure that that will not be wanting.—Yours obediently,

                                                                                                                                         THOS. CHILD.
     Jan. 26.

_____

 

THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Is not the statement of Mr. W. Bramwell Booth that “Christianity taught by the Bible” is the “Christianity of Hell-fire” much more “aggressively arrogant” (to use his epithets) than any made by an “Anglican Priest”? Statements are not proofs. I defy him to produce one single passage in the original Greek as a proof of his statement. When such awful issues are at stake one must consult the original, and not an inaccurate or misleading translation. Such dogmatic assertions as his have driven, and are still driving, numbers into agnosticism and atheism.—I am, your obedient servant,

                                                                                                                                                 A VICTIM.
     Dover, Jan. 24.

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