ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

{The Wandering Jew 1893}

“Is Christianity Played Out?” - The Wandering Jew Controversy - 4

The Daily Chronicle.
Saturday, January 28, 1893.

1. Letter from ‘B. P. B.’
2. Richard Le Gallienne’s fifth (final) letter.
3. John Page Hopps’ third letter.
4. G. W. Foote’s second letter.
5. Letter from H. M. Bengough.
6. Letter from Isabel Lakeman.
7. Letter from Robt. Smith.

Extracts from other letters.

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

     SIR,—In common with innumerable readers, I have watched the battle waged round these words, and I have wondered that nobody, unless it be Mr. Bramwell Booth, has tried to call attention to what Christianity is actually doing, and even he has understated the case in an extraordinary degree. When 100 years ago the French men of science quarrelled vigorously as to whether a fish floating in the water weighed less than a fish on dry land, it was a long time before anybody thought of weighing the creature under either condition. This has become a stock jest, but nobody has seriously thought of weighing the body politic with and without Christianity.
     I am myself a Roman Catholic, and therefore I will begin with Protestant work. Did Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Le Gallienne ever hear of Clewer? Passing over Howard and Mrs. Fry as gone beyond modern ken, can anybody who either knew Catherine Booth or read about her, or saw the omnibuses on the day of her funeral driving up to the Bank with black flags, doubt that the force which moved her is not “played out”? Suppose if you like that Mrs. Booth was a delusion, and that her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Bramwell Booth, is also a delusion, and throw in Miss Rye, and the Girls’ Friendly Society, and Dr. Barnardo, and Lord Shaftesbury, who to my personal knowledge slaved year in and year out like a negro slave, and take Miss Davidson of Friedenheim and Mrs. Meredith of a dozen works, and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who watches the police cases (as I know), and Canon and Mrs. Butler (the one dead, the other surviving), and the noble mission men and women of various denominations, fretting to pieces lives which might otherwise have been full of æsthetic calm and delight—take, as I say, all these various people from every shade of Protestantism and call them humbugs and delusions—what a huge delusion is that which set them all going, and how very far it is from being “played out”!
     Next, let me speak of the Roman Catholic world. Perhaps people think of that as an extinct delusion. The scholastic philosophy, whatever it was, is popularly supposed to be dead. Thomas Aquinas has quailed before Francis Bacon. Theology has gone to rejoin miracles. But there is one thing which has survived, and which nothing can kill. Tear it up by the roots in one part of the world and it puts forth leaves in another; how the seed got there baffles the onlooker—it is Catholic charity. What a preposterous delusion! Stamp on it, dance the Carmagnole over it—it is quite useless. Catholic charity, says the philosophic observer, is really driven of a devil. It is a Juggernaut, absorbing the lives of men and  women. Only listen. The last computation of the white-bonneted Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul was 17,000. When, earlier in the century, the cholera fastened on Naples, the General of the Jesuits flung the Sisters at it as an officer flings regiments. They died, and others took their place. What the Rector of Eyam did in Derbyshire 200 years ago (a story of the Plague) Monseigneur de Belzunce did in Marseilles. Poor deluded clergymen, both of them!
     In modern days, look at the Irish Sisters of Mercy and Charity; two seperate Orders, founded within the century. Those of mercy are literally all over the place. For one thing they have a home in Great Ormond-street, where they have fifty beds, and while they have a corner to spare they will take in not only passing ailments but cancer and consumption, and nurse them to the end. For another example, they have a refuge in Crispin-street, just beyond the Great Eastern Railway, where they have been putting shoulders to the wheel for nearly forty years. They have been driven by that remorseless dignitary Monsignor Gilbert; I have had the honour of his kind friendship for nearly that space of time, and can bear witness that something has never ceased to drive his reverence and the clergy under him. And, lastly, it may interest Liberal politicians to be told that I hear from Californians that the most noted Sister of Mercy in the Golden West is Mother Russell, the sister of the Attorney-General. When this Order kept its Jubilee in 1880 it had 212 houses in all parts of the world. And the Irish Sisters of Charity, whose foundress, Mrs. Aikenhead, only died in 1859, are spreading in the same way. Schools, hospitals, girls’societies, there really is no end of them. Why, the Hospice for the Dying in Dublin alone has 108 beds. If you want to die in peace and quietness, and under loving care, go there—and then make room for somebody else!
     It seems to me that to write about Christianity being played out is as wide of the mark as to write of the extinction of potatoes or roses. Looked at merely as a natural or supernatural phenomenon, the modern world might as well try to get rid of Niagara or the oil-wells.—I remain, Sir, yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                                                       B. P. B.
     Westminster, Jan. 27.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—It is a pity that Mr. Buchanan did not at first speak as directly to the point as he has done in his to-day’s letter and in his interview in last night’s (Wednesday’s) Echo. But, clearly as he speaks in both places, when one puts both utterances side by side his meaning grows a little obscure again. In The Chronicle to-day he says that Immortality is the crux of this question, and seems to have pretty well made up his mind that it is a chimera. In the Echo, however, when deep calls unto deep within the soul of Robert Buchanan—“Do you believe in another life?”—out comes the emphatic response: “Do I believe in another life? 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.” To one who speaks so erratically, the question is surely pertinent. Mr. Buchanan goes on to say that “it is only a belief, not a certainty,” with him, “a hope, a faith, even, not a reality.” How a thing can be all three, a hope, a faith, and a belief, is difficult to see, unless Mr. Buchanan means thus to mark the development of his belief—for belief surely relates to certainty, and hope and faith to uncertainties. However, we have had enough confusion over mere words. So far as I can understand Mr. Buchanan, he accepts immortality on exactly the same grounds as I do: not on reasoning, but intuition, instinct. He even, I fancy, believes in it more emphatically than I do. Perhaps it is that he has more to lose by it than I, a more assertive personality. However, he gives no more reasons than I/ Mark that. He says it is his unconquerable instinct, and neither science nor the anarchy of nature shall frighten it out of him. Well, then, if Immortality be, as he says, the crux of Christ’s teaching, Mr. Buchanan evidently accepts Christ. He and I have evidently been fighting about names all the time. Indeed, the more I think of the matter, the more I recall Mr. Buchanan’s previous work, the more I believe we have. Mr. Buchanan repudiates the various conventional exponents of Christianity from the beginning till now. So do I. He repudiates the exaggeration of the other-worldly element in Christianity, at the expense of our life here and now. So do I, and what is more important, so did Christ! Surely the difference between him and his predecessor Buddha was that he blessed, where the other condemned, the natural affections and joys, bade us eat, drink, and be merry, but to do all these various things, ever keeping in mind the higher significance of them all, not growing merely sunk in them, forgetful of the fact that life is an evolution from flesh to spirit. Christ, no more than Byron, would have us “hope to merit Heaven by making earth a Hell.”
     Unfortunately the spiritual side of Christianity has been exaggerated, and by men who, as a rule, have not the least understood it, applying it as a maceration instead of a transfiguration of the body. The social side of it has been  neglected. Now at last when it is beginning to operate there seems a danger of the spiritual side being lost sight of. That in the long run will prove equally disastrous, for you cannot permanently help a man’s body unless you likewise help his  soul. “Inward evermore to outward.” The social and spiritual must work side by side, and surely it is not a poet who would divorce them.
     I once wrote of Mr. Buchanan that “he was a spiritualist in a world of materialists.” That was, I said, his significance. Mr. Buchanan (or at any rate his publishers), thought sufficiently well of the remark to quote it in subsequent advertisements of his book. Well, if that is still true of Mr. Buchanan, as, after all, it would seem to be from his latest utterances, there is nothing more for me to say. I would humbly ask to bring my poor sling and pebbles into his service. It was simply because I had felt that so gladly in his other writings that his “Wandering Jew” gave me a shock. If it is only an attack on conventional Christianity, why, more power to it! But I still feel that Mr. Buchanan has left his purpose in his poem too obscure. It leaves one quite at a loss how finally to take him. However this be, this correspondence will have done some little, one cannot but think, towards the vitalisation of the Churches. The professing Christian may be once more reminded by it what the world expects from him, and those who are only “essential” Christians have every reason to be encouraged by the witness called forth to the spread of what Mr. Buchanan prefers to call Humanity. The word, to my mind, isn’t big enough, nor do I find any substitute for the word “Christianity,” which covers the whole ground. However, so long as we keep fast hold of the thing itself, the name doesn’t matter. I am told that the name of Christian is “polarised,” that it stinks of bloodshed, and so on. Some suggest “Pagan” as a substitute, but surely that is polarised too. For me, on the other hand, the name is still, as it was to Crashaw, “an universal synod of all sweets”; and the reason, doubtless, is that I have ever in using it thought of Christ himself and not of his unworthy followers.
     Mr. Buchanan’s poem may, I say, have a good effect on the orthodox Christian, but it just as readily lends itself to the scoffer and the materialist. It behoves Mr. Buchanan, before he has done, to tell us clearly on which side he stands. The question at bottom is not of “Christianity” or any other “ism,” but it is—Am I or not a spiritual being? Have I a lower and a higher nature, and am I to heed the promptings of the higher as well as of the lower, or to satisfy the lower only? Am I to listen to my intuitions of purity and gentleness, or live only for myself and my appetites? There can be no doubt as to how Mr. Buchanan would answer these questions. There is also, unfortunately, no doubt how another powerful, though small, section of modern society would answer it. I refer to the so-called cultured and “intellectual” class—a class which is getting more and more control of the Press; men who are pessimists to the backbone, without any faith in life, or their fellows, scoffers at enthusiasm, sneerers at love, mockers of morality in every shape and form, cynical sensualists who care for nothing but their own poisonous pleasures; selfish to the finger-tips—men who, in fact, are doing their utmost to preach their fin de siècle gospel, the new gospel of self. Nothing in the least matters, say, or at least imply, these people. To be amused, to be tickled, is all. You may be just what you please, so that don’t bore us. If your tastes incline you hogwards, be a hog. What does it matter? If you prefer attempting the angel—well, you may play the rôle prettily, even with some originality. Conventional as it is, sacred art is full of colour. But really it doesn’t matter; and the one thing you have to do, hog or angel, is to live for yourself. I hope that, at least, Mr. Buchanan will make it quite clear once more that these are not to count him amongst their captains. “Christians” may live up to their ideals miserably enough, but most of the men who attack them have no ideals to live up to.

                                                                                                                   RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
     Jan. 26.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—In his letter of yesterday, Mr. Buchanan goes “to fresh woods and pastures new,” but still shows how largely he is under the glamour of the old superstitions, and how little he has been influenced by modern scholarship and  criticism. He assumes that the Gospels report Christ correctly, and he makes him responsible for the amazing claim “to be the Incarnation of the living God.” But he does not appear to notice how grossly inconsistent this is with his own pictured ideal of “this forlorn Outcast.” As for “miracles,” we can well afford to keep them in suspense until we decide about the “miracles” that are said to happen now. There are plenty of people in London who say they know that the blind have been made to see and the lame to walk, by what people who limit the forces of Nature to the resources of a hospital would call “miracles.” Personally, I know no limits to Nature’s possibilities, and it does not stagger me that a being like Jesus Christ, in a receptive age, should work “miracles.” Mr. Buchanan seems disposed now to be content with Christianity if it can establish and confirm the hope of Immortality. But how can it? The so-called resurrection” of Jesus (body and all) is no argument in favour of, still less a proof of, Immortality. Indeed, it tells the other way; for we know that the millions of bodies held by the dark mother in the dust will never rise again. No, if Mr. Buchanan wants proof beyond the hope that shines with its myriad beams from within and from without, he must consent to consult unexpected teachers. During the last few days or weeks, the great authorised teachers of religion have been fiercely fooling over the question whether we should eat a wafer and drink a thimbleful of wine in the morning or the evening as a supreme act of devotion to God; and, meanwhile, the majority are asking whether there is so much as a God at all. And yet, here in London, are unknown and unmarked people who say that the dead are proving they are alive. It is the old story: “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and clever, but hast revealed them unto babes.”—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                               JOHN PAGE HOPPS.
     South Norwood-hill, S.E., Jan. 27.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Mr. Morrison Davidson is a peculiar controversialist. By luck, fate, or Providence he figures as a protagonist on the Christian side in this discussion. How far he is entitled to this pious pre-eminence I will not determine. What I wish to point out is the singular conception of debate he appears to entertain. He goes on repeating his arguments without the slightest reference to his opponents’ replies, as though the logical victory lay with the man who has the last word. In three letters he does no more than assert that Christianity means Communism. Now, he must surely be aware that it is not so defined by any Christian sect, nor by any Christian divine. Mr. Davidson simply sets up a Christianity of his own; and because some of us tell him so he talks about “the inconceivable ignorance of men like Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Foote.” But the point of the joke is to come. Mr. Davidson, in his second letter, gave a little catalogue of illustrious social thinkers who had revolved around the “orb of rational polity”—and there was not a Christian among them!
     Mr. Davidson may or may not be aware—it makes no difference to the fact in either case—that the Essenes were a numerous Communistic society before the formation of any Christian Church; in fact, before the apostolate of Jesus Christ. If we may trust the Acts of the Apostles, the primitive Christians took up this idea, and a pretty mess they made of it! It was all dead, and done with—miserably “played out”—by the time St. Paul wrote his Epistles.
     As President of the National Secular Society, I am informed by this oracular gentleman that I follow an “out-of-date occupation,” which he “had hoped was by this time gone.” It would be better for Mr. Davidson to live a little less in the region of “hope,” and a little more in the region of fact. But I remember that he was always of his present disposition. Formerly he took a pride in his impotent sneers at Charles Bradlaugh, sneers which were too frequently anonymous, and often sliding into positive defamation. He simply did not know Mr. Bradlaugh or the National Secular Society, and his ignorance of the society retains all its old perfection. As a matter of fact, the N. S. S. is stronger than ever in every element of vitality.
     While I await the “fulness of time” which is to vindicate Mr. Davidson as a holy prophet, permit me to express my delight at the remarkable harmony among your crowd of correspondents! All they have in common is the name. If Christianity is not played out as to its beneficence, it is obviously played out as to its intelligibility. I am also delighted to find that next to nothing is said about heaven and hell, or any sort of future life. The great idea of all seems the welfare of men and women in this life; and that, whether they know it or not, is Secularism. For although Secularism is negative, as it opposes the fancies of superstition, it is positive as it affirms the realities of life; having knowledge as its basis, utility as its guide, and brotherhood as its aspiration.—I am, &c.,

                                                                                                                                           G. W. FOOTE.
     Jan. 26.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Before the very interesting and valuable correspondence that has been carried on in your columns is brought to a close I would wish to point out three questions, that present perhaps the greatest difficulties to would-be believing Christians, have not been replied to by any of your correspondents. Perhaps because they are unanswerable, or I should say undemonstrable in print. They are (1) the immortality of the soul; (2) the power of God to work miracles; (3) the origin of pain and suffering. As these are difficulties that have been discussed from the earliest days of all religions, it is, of course, impossible to treat them fully in a newspaper correspondence, still I would dare to hope that some brief reflections that have done much to satisfy me may make the way clear to some others.
     (1) Mr. Buchanan asks that Christianity should prove the truth of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It seems strange that he should require Christianity to prove what has been accepted as true by philosophers before the Christian era, and what recommends itself as true to almost every intelligent soul. It is, indeed, incapable of dialectic  demonstration. The Christian believes it on the word of the Lord Jesus; the secularist may find ground to believe it on the promptings of his interior consciousness, or on the evidence of the best of ancient philosophy.
     (2) The power of God to work miracles. The difficulty experienced by even believing Christians in accepting this doctrine has always surprised me. That there can be any question of the competence of an Almighty God who has created the world, whether by a single fiat, or by the not less miraculous method of a progressive and systematic evolution, to alter or suspend the laws which he has made for the government of this creation, seems to me incomprehensible. What, is Mr. Buchanan or nay other mortal, to limit the power of the Almighty? Would an African Bushman when first shown a machine be surprised at, or think of questioning, the power of the maker of the machine to control, or change, or stop the working of the machine? And to those who believe in the greatest of all miracles, the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, is it not reasonable even according to poor human powers of reason that such a miracle should be supported and accompanied by other manifestations of divine power?
     (3) The origin of pain. Here we are confronted with an undoubted difficulty, one that has puzzled mankind from the earliest ages, and that will remain a mystery, it may be supposed, until the time for clearing all mysteries comes. It is as we Christians believe connected with the origin of evil and sin, for death and pain are, we are told, the direct consequence of the Fall. It is useless to ask, why did God allow sin to enter the world? We with our finite comprehensions cannot aspire to criticise the plans of infinite Wisdom. But this much we can see even here on earth, that the noblest types of humanity are still those who have been “perfected in suffering.”

                                                                                                                                 H. M. BENGOUGH.
     United Service Club, Jan. 27.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—In Mr. Buchanan’s letter published by you to-day, he asks, “Is there or is there not another life beyond this life we live?” Seekers after truth have in all ages earnestly asked this momentous and all-important question; they have tried, and still are trying, to pierce the gloom of the tomb, in order, if possible, to discover whether Death (with whose power, alas! we are all too familiar) can with its icy touch, freeze and destroy our consciousness, our spirit-life, in like manner as it does the physical. I, like many thousands, have stood face to face with this question, and like them regard the “life which is beyond the life” we live as a great and solid reality, a continuance of the God-life which has been implanted in us on this side of our existence. As there is never a seed-time without a harvest, so I am persuaded that this germ of divinity is an earnest of that future in which we look for the fuller expansion and complete development of that germ in the eternal presence of the source of life. As far as I can judge, Mr. Buchanan believes in the perfect humanity of Christ. If Christ were merely human then his blameless life was one of the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. If he were only human, why, then, have we not, or do we not see, other men equally good? To which I reply that humanity apart from divinity has proved itself utterly unable to cope with the inroads of evil. Evil was not, we believe, originally common to humanity, and if we could find to-day one example of humanity pure and simple, we should see a manifestation of God himself on earth. If Christ be God, and if the life of God be eternal, then we, as partakers of that life, must live for ever. —Yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                               ISABEL LAKEMAN.
     106, Stapleton Hall-road, N., Jan. 26.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

SIR,—The theory that underlies Christianity and Scripture, which embodies it, is that God made a beautiful world fitted for the happiness of the beings he placed upon it, but that an enemy was intent on marring it, and did mar it, and so sin came into it and all our woe. I raise not the question of the origin of evil, which appears to transcend all human speculation. But would it be difficult to show throughout the entire current of human history that there is a devilry intent on defacing everything that is true, good, and beautiful? I think the evidence of this is overwhelming. In the parable of the tares and the wheat, zealous servants asked whether the Lord of the harvest would that they should gather out the tares. The answer was significant: “Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.” Afterwards we learn that the harvest is the end of the world. Now, have not the professors of Christianity largely ignored this injunction of Christ? The wheat is found in all Christian communities, from the apostolic times to the present. Believing men and women, in spite of their terrible surroundings, are to be found all through the ages. I stay not even to mention them. Their songs are embodied in every hymnal, and the influence of their lives is potential, even though centuries have passed away since they lived.
     Through the influence of Christianity (I stay not to indicate the process) slavery died out of Europe before the close of (I speak from memory) the twelfth century. Previously the serfs wore their owners’ collars about their necks. By the same influence it was abolished—after the crusade of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Brougham, and others—in the West Indies. By the same divine influence, doubtless, the 4,000,000 of slaves in the United States were emancipated, and that great lovable man Abraham Lincoln, in recognition of the services of Garrison, George Thompson, and other eminent abolitionists, commissioned them to replant the flag of the Union on Fort Sumter.
     Is it not a fact that to Christianity, and ergo and pre-eminently to Christ, everything in the shape of missions, hospitals, asylums for orphans and lunatics and the uplifting of the downtrodden and oppressed everywhere throughout Christendom (so called) is due? Withdraw the influence of Christian lives from the nations of the world, and the influence of Scripture from human literature, and what a ghastly skeleton would survive! The Americans, in the fierceness of the anti-slavery strife, sent a defender of slavery to Scotland, one Breckenridge, a clergyman, to a public controversy. He met his match, and went back defeated. The spirit of Christianity rived the Evangelical Alliance at its inception, because it was unsound on the question of slavery. But it is needless to enlarge. The recent sneers of one (no ornament) of the Episcopal Bench on the Northampton cobbler and others will damage his order beyond reparation. I have done, trusting you may find a corner for this by one unknown to fame.

                                                                                                                                         ROBT. SMITH.
     Holloway, N., Jan. 24.

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The Echo.
Saturday, January 28, 1893.

Pistol Shots: Notes and Comments by Dr. Joseph Parker.

PISTOL SHOTS.
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NOTES AND COMMENTS.
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BY DR. JOSEPH PARKER.

     I believe that I began the practice of self-interviewing, and that I began it in these columns. Mr. Robert Buchanan has taken the hint. Every man has his little boast. This is mine.

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     Robert Buchanan has found God in himself. We now know the divine initials. We have reverted to polytheism. If Robert Buchanan is right, there are at least fourteen hundred million gods on the earth at this moment, and, according to The Echo, eight of them, in London alone, committed suicide last week. Fourteen hundred millions, yet they do not total up to almightiness!

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     A long, long time since, according to public report, a woman was interviewed. It was an open-air interview. The reporter said to her, “If you will eat this fruit, you and Adam will be as gods.” She took it. To-day she is the mother of fourteen hundred million gods, all living at this moment. They are poor gods, though; riotous, selfish, devouring, blood- thirsty gods. Personally, I don’t care for them. They frighten me. I cannot pray to them. I cannot trust them with money. I get out of the way of most of them when I can.

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     Robert Buchanan wants to meet himself on the other side of the grave. “I would not care to meet any other god.” Has Robert Buchanan ever looked into a mirror? It is a nice idea for a god to look at himself. But it is a poor sight. It is the supreme disappointment of the day. If Mr. Buchanan had said Humanity is Deity, we could have seen a gleam of poetry in the vast audacity. When he says that Robert Buchanan is God, we seem to see audacity reduced to impudence. But it is not so; it is only his way of putting things, and he will put them better some day. I am not going to throw this brilliant genius into the waste paper-basket as another exploded deity. Mr. Buchanan is on his way to the true and eternal Altar.

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     Mr. Buchanan makes too light of his indigestion. He says he interviewed himself at supper time. What had he to supper? To eat? To drink? Had he been much out in the open air during the day? Or had he been working in dramatic clay, and making idols for market sale? Welsh rabbit—popularly so spelled—is not a good theological medium. Under its influence many persons have become nocturnal pessimists.

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     We must know what Mr. Buchanan had to supper that night if we would really know the value of his monologue. There are suppers which make men genial. Under their liquid influence the monkey-gods sing cheerfully, and the dark earth blushes into roses. Name your supper, O genius, if you please. You were “irritable,” too, you say! An angry god, under six feet high, cannot possibly be Almighty, or he would pacify his own breast and soothe his soul with lullabies or lollypops.

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     Robert Buchanan wishes to be reunited with those whom he loved, and who loved him, and he wants no other god or heaven. What a little heaven! And, pray, what is love? The word love is quite as difficult to define as is the word God. The dictionary is helpless in both cases. We may be able to love more people in Heaven than we can possibly love on earth. We may even see a line of beauty in some whom we have here accounted unlovely and hostile. Perhaps even Mr. Le Gallien may not be wholly without charm and virtue. How hardly shall a reviewer enter into the Kingdom of Heaven! Yet he may, by some postern gate.

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     O, that Le Gallien! He has a hard fist. He has, too, a deft literary hand that can lay up blows for future use. He is fair, though. I cannot find in him any trace of petty spite. Of course, like the rest of us tiny gods, he has his difficulties with the epithets, and sometimes he pinches the nose of the man whom he is delicately shaving. But some noses do heedlessly get into the way. Mr. Buchanan has replied to Mr. Le Gallien, but he has not answered him. Mr. Buchanan has not fairly and closely faced The Christ.

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     He thinks Christ was disappointed. I say he was not. Thus opinions differ. Love cannot be finally disappointed. Its rewards are in itself. Vaster than spatial heaven is the heart of love. It carries hell as well as heaven. It saves the worst. It loves the lost. Its night of weeping is forgotten in the morning of its joy.

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     Mr. Buchanan has the notion that one world is about enough for him. That may be so. But, unfortunately for his choice, there is no one world. That is the forgotten point. The Secularist says he believes in agriculture and does not concern himself with astronomy. He forgets that without astronomy agriculture would be impossible. The worlds go in clusters. There are no orphan stars. The earth waits upon the sun, and only grows warm by his coming. Every candle is lighted at the sun. Every machine is driven by the sun. Even the ice carries its own hidden sun-spark. No, Mr. Buchanan, no. You cannot have only one world except at the expense of a privation which means death.

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     Every now and then Mr. Buchanan comes round to the right point in this self-interview. Poet-like, he shoots over the chasms, and settles down in green places and down where the roses grow. Hear him:—”The modern man is apt to brag of his practicality, and to forget that all his vaunted nineteenth century poetical inventions were the gifts of dreamers.” Good. That is what the poor old pulpit is trying to say every Sunday. Only the pulpit goes one step backward, and asks, Where did the dreamers come from? Scientific men can play at making universes, if you will grant or assume the protoplasm. But I won’t. I insist on knowing where the protoplasm comes from. So I must ask where Mr. Buchanan gets his dreamers, and when he produces the dreamers I will ask them where they got their dreams, and what control they have over them, and what is all their mystery. Mr. Buchanan cannot have his dreamer without accounting for him.

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     But there is the dreamer! True. And there is the Bible! And there is the believer! And there is the higher dreamer who did not dream a railway, but who dreamed a God! Whether that God is a dream or a reality, it represents the most powerful influence that was ever wielded by the human mind. It makes all other conceptions poor. It turns creation into music.

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     Mr. Buchanan says he “rejects all the Christian cant about ‘sin’ and the ‘Atonement.’” This really amounts to nothing. Rejection is not necessarily either logic or poetry. Creation need not tremble. There is a “sin” which Mr. Buchanan does recognise, for he says of himself, “I admit my own baseness.” No larger admission can be made. Even Christianity does not bring a heavier accusation against him. Read this admission after each of Mr. Buchanan’s declarations against Christianity, and it will assess the value of all his ventose thoughtlessness. Let him remember Sterne’s words:—”Of all the cants that ever were canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrisy be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.” Mr. Buchanan can affirm the truthfulness of this view. May he soon come to a healthier mind. No soul can prosper on the east wind, any more than the body can prosper on the publishers’ lavish meanness in their payment of poets and preachers.

                                                                                                                                   JOSEPH PARKER.
     The City Temple.

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The Daily Chronicle.
Monday, January 30, 1893.

Pulpit References:
1. Archdeacon Farrar (Westminster Abbey).
2. Canon Scott-Holland (St. Paul’s Cathedral).
3. The Rev. G. W. Allen (Chapel Royal, Savoy).
4. The Rev. Dr. Clifford (Westbourne-park Chapel).
5. The Rev. C. Fleming Williams (Rectory-road Congregational Church, Hackney).
6. The Rev. F. Sloper (Greville-place Congregational Church, Kilburn).
7. The Rev. T. Charke (Oakley-place Wesleyan Chapel, Old Kent-road).
8. The Rev. William Pierce (New Court Chapel, Tollington Park).
9. The Rev. G. Hugo Heynes (Honor Oak Baptist Church).
10. The Rev. W. Jellie. (Unitarian Chapel, Stamford-street, Blackfriars).

Letters:
1. Letter from Ben Tillett.
2. John Page Hopps’ fourth letter.
3. Roden Noel’s second letter.
4. Letter from E. H. Blakeney.
5. Letter from Queensberry.

Extracts from other letters.

IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT?
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PULPIT REFERENCES.

     The controversy which has been going on in these columns for the past fortnight was largely referred to yesterday by preachers of all denominations in London and the announcement of the subject was sufficient to draw overflowing congregations. We append several brief reports:—

ARCHDEACON FARRAR.

     Preaching yesterday afternoon at Westminster Abbey from Matthew vi., 14, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” Archdeacon Farrar said that the cause of much of the misery and hopelessness of the present day was the egotism of man. To a great many men this world was simply a looking-glass, wherein was reflected nothing but their own evil desires, their own low aims; and so without God they became lower than the beasts, and were forced to exclaim at the littleness of man. Until the power of Christ was paramount upon the earth there would always be sin and suffering, and humanity could never rise to its highest aspirations. A pessimist spirit could easily be fostered and the seeming failure of Christianity to avert the evils which were rampant around them might lead some to ask whether, after all, Christianity was still a power amongst them. But did they remember the greatness of God, in whose eyes a thousand years were but as yesterday. The power of God was manifest to them in a thousand ways—in the aurora, with its pillars of fire, in the low mutter of the thunder, in the stress of the storm. Surrounded as they were by the wonders and beauties of nature, by the discoveries which science was daily making, by that firmament of stars of which this globe (which was but man’s transient home) forms such an insignificant part, surely all this vast universe was sufficient to show the nothingness of man, and that they were but the creatures of a day. There could be nothing so futile as to resist the will of God, the Creator of the universe and the moral ruler of the world, who had sent his two archangels, Conscience and Soul, to be his ministers, and to direct men’s footsteps. God was the glory of this world. As the sun, after a night of darkness, illumines this earth of theirs, so did he in his splendour light up men’s moral nature, bidding them put aside all hypocrisy, all subterfuges, all hiding-places of shame, the living of a dual life in one body, the doing of evil that good might come. In order that they might have a share in God’s glory they must be open as the sunlight. In Christ alone could they apprehend the power and the glory of God, and in him alone could they who were now sitting in darkness see the great light.

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CANON SCOTT-HOLLAND.

     Preaching the last sermon of his January course at St. Paul’s Cathedral yesterday afternoon, to a crowded congregation, Canon Scott-Holland said in spite of all the present-day talk about the “failure of Christianity,” the kingdom of heaven had come down to be here on earth, and was with us still—a force which could do all things for humanity if we would only suffer it. There was hope for the poor suffering earth, and a new day for mankind would  dawn, though it lingered. The “wilderness would yet blossom like the rose.” For this all men and women must labour, for the kingdom of heaven would never come to pass by any trick of mysterious magic, like a delightful transformation scene. They might well be astounded when Christianity, which laid such value on labour, was accused of withdrawing men from practical activity in helping their fellows. Every declaration made by Christ, every lesson in every parable, taught that the kingdom of heaven was a kingdom of work. But if they were astounded by the accusation, they had reason to be much more so when believers made the charge possible by leading idle lives, as if the possession of private property released a man from all responsibility incurred when he was made “an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” The work might be secular, but it must be a putting forth of the best of their talents in God’s service; and it must be work which laid some stress upon the character, and achieved its true purpose by testing the will. Mr. Morley had declared that “the saddest sight was a man willing and able to work and unable to obtain it.” Alas! thousands were standing so idle in our market places, but there was a sight as sad, and that was a man who never had had any work to do and did not wish for it— who regarded work as an ugly necessity to be avoided. The latest gospel in the world was not “Man, know thyself”—he would never know that; but “Man, know thy work, and do it.” Blessed was the man who had found his life’s work, and who lived up to it, for labour was life.

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THE REV. G. W. ALLEN.

     At the Chapel Royal, Savoy, last night, the Rev. G. W. Allen, the curate of St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey, preached from II. Peter ii., 4, “Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” He said:—”The remarkable correspondence which has just concluded in the columns of an influential morning paper as to whether or no Christianity is played out, suggests to all Christians thought and reflections of the most pressing moment. If, instead of rushing directly at this question, some time had been first given to setting forth in plain language exactly what was meant by the terms and concepts involved, a great deal of quite unnecessary controversy and misunderstanding would have been avoided. Christianity, as a thoughtful participant of the correspondence has pointed out, is a somewhat ambiguous term; and “Is Christianity played out?” might mean one of several things. It might mean “Has Christ failed?” or it might mean “Have the Churches calling themselves Christian  failed?” There are two main views of the work of Christ and his value to the world. Of these two views, the first seems naturally suited to be a first condition, a philosophy which would commend itself to minds in an elementary state of knowledge, and inclined, therefore, to take a superficial rather than a comprehensive view of things. That there is an element of truth in this external view I am as sincerely convinced as I am that there is a still larger element of truth in the other. These two views, which I call the external and the internal, might also be termed, as principles, the law and the gospel, although both are warmly asserted to be the gospel by their adherents. According to one, God is outside things, as a self-contained, positive, creative power, making towards life and light and righteousness. Secondly, God is, where his kingdom was declared by Jesus Christ to be, within us. Christ’s function in the world was, first, to be an exemplar to man of what a really divine (and therefore natural) life is, how little it regards external conditions, and lays all emphasis on inward spirit. Secondly, to reveal to man this transcendent truth (which, apart from Christ, he would never learn from the external, where alone, of himself, he could learn anything) that life was rather an orderly evolution than a probation, and that God’s perfect law was not a system arbitrarily imposed, which something prevented man from being for ever able to keep, but simply a declaration of what he would naturally and spontaneously do when he had grown up to the full-grown man, and had realised that his nature was not contrary to his Father’s but was one with his Father’s. Here, then, side by side, are these two great, main philosophical conceptions as to what salvation and redemption really mean. According to the one, they mean the saving of the world from a state into which it has got in spite of God’s will and power. According to the other, they mean its orderly evolution from a state of temporary fall, worked by God’s power in order to manifest to his creatures his power in its restoration. If Christ be a Being with a problem to work out, I venture to maintain that no one has the right to pronounce upon his failure until they can show that he has exhausted all the means in his power and all the time at his disposal; and also that our present sight-faculty cognises the whole of existence, and that there are no planes of consciousness as yet beyond our apprehension. And I will also add that a failure which needs to be vehemently asserted and elaborately demonstrated is not apt to be a very disastrous sort of failure. This correspondence shows clearly that, whatever professing Christians may think about it, the world understands clearly enough that Christ is of little avail unless his spirit is embodied and manifest in the life and character of those who profess his name. We may say we believe in Christ, and assert it till we are black in the face, but until we show it by our acts and spirit, the world will only scoff. And the world is quite right. A Christ that could only get himself talked about and outwardly worshipped would be a very undivine and poor sort of power. Far better reject the name of Christ altogether than take it and treat it as a dead profession and not as a living, vitalising spirit. We Christians sadly need a warmer love, a deeper charity. There is no reason why we should not now arise as one man and sweep sectarianism to the winds, and realise that we are not brethren because we see exactly alike, but because, whatever we may or may not see, God is our Father. Meanwhile, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, let us cling to the conviction that in respect to his work in human evolution Christ knows what he is doing, and is not slack, as some men count slackness. He might have perfected a few in 1,800 years perhaps, but to perfect a few is not his purpose. On this point Holy Scripture speaks with unmistakable clearness, and the human heart in its deepest ground confirms and approves the testimony. He who is divine can aim at nothing less than universal ends, absolute success; even as our Lord expressed it when he said, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

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THE REV. DR. CLIFFORD.

     The announcement that Dr. Clifford would continue his discourses on the correspondence in The Daily Chronicle was sufficient to fill the great chapel at Westbourne-park in every part last night. Not only were the aisles, galleries, altar rails, and pulpit crowded, but hundreds were unable to gain admission. Dr. Clifford commenced by asking the question, “Is Christianity played out?” and went on to say that he intended to attempt an answer to the question from the point of view of the Victorian era. The life of a man tested, sifted and judged him, and the facts which entered into the life of a people surely warranted a reading of them which might bring his hearers to safe and reliable conclusions as to the forces which had been at work. Christ is Christianity. That was an aphorism current thirty years ago, and as brief utterance most adequately expressed the convictions of men. It was the creed of creeds, the centre of centres, the impulse of service, and the alpha and omega of Christianity to-day. If Christianity was Christ, then certainly the facts which went to make up the history of Christ were the base upon which Christianity rests. It was a body of ideas, therefore the ideas of Christ ought to be discoverable by taking the same pains, and by the same method, as they strove to find out the ideas of Mahomet, or Tennyson, or Turner. But Christianity was a spirit as well as a body of thought, and its spirit was to be judged by the spirit of its Founder. He did not close his eyes at certain antagonistic facts which had marred the onward spread of Christianity. He could almost shudder at priests uttering their benedictions upon armies going to war, and at divines who went to their Bibles for arguments to uphold American slavery. Injustice which ate into the very heart of labour had been defended by a misreading of the Scriptures. Forget these things they could not, nor would they if they could. Mr. Buchanan’s book was serviceable, in that in the most eloquent and forcible terms it had pointed out the way in which these detrimental forces had been working. Yet, in spite of this, Christianity was life, and was doing the best work which was now being done, and these sinister facts only proved the strength of the Christian spirit. Personal ascendency was the only one worth considering. The better a man was the purer would be his spirit, the clearer his conception of justice. He who made good men was the real leader of mankind. Was Christ doing anything like that to- day? Dr. Clifford then went on to give instances in his own experience of the effect of Christ on the lives of men, and asked what new force was it that had been at work producing these effects? He did not mean to say there were no hypocrites. If they knew any society in which there were no hypocrites, he hoped they would tell him of it—he would like to see it. But the testimony of a converted man was as real and convincing to him as that of any chemist after making experiments in his laboratory. True, this was a silent work. The best life of the world never spoke, the truest life was scarcely ever vocal. It prayed, and yearned, and fought—in silence. Besides personal ascendency there was also the ascendency of ideas. One of the greatest ideas which they owed to Christianity was that of the fatherhood of God. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Christ bade them look upon himself if they wished to know what God was like. Men were quickened by that thought, and if there was one special characteristic of the Victorian Era it was that this idea of God was taking its rightful place—that God was not waiting to be made the Father, but that he was the Father. The researches of science during the past fifty years had brought back some of the old Hebrew awe of God, for it had taught men that God was the same always, and that his law ran through all the universe. Was Christianity played out? Why, if they wanted to compare the triumphs of Christianity in any other fifty-five years, they must go back to the first century of the Christian era. A new conception of humanity had arisen, a new heaven and a new earth were springing up around them, wherein dwelt righteousness, and this idea was beginning to permeate their whole social order. They were looking forward with a mighty hope to a great and final victory, and he asked all—Atheist, Agnostic, Socialist, Communist, Collectivist, Christian—to forget their difference, and to go forth to fight the evil and sin of the world.
     Dr. Clifford announced at the close of the service that he would next Sunday again refer to what he called “the supremely interesting controversy” now going on in these columns.

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THE REV. F. SLOPER.

     At Greville-place Congregational Church, Kilburn, last night, the Rev. Francis Sloper preached to a crowded congregation, taking for his text Matthew xxvii., 22, “What shall I do then with Jesus?” He said:—How much better it is for us to find a space in a morning paper devoted to a vital and practical question touching the life and conduct of humanity than columns of trash, or of murder, or of a horse-race, or a thousand other things which pander to the morbid taste for evil within us, ill-calculated to ennoble but rather to degrade our life! Personally, I thank the editor of The Daily Chronicle, and the author of “The Wandering Jew,” and the critic who raised this question which has aroused so many from that somnolence peculiar to our sluggish Christianity. The whole discussion is as a trumpet blast, re-echoing the prophetic warning, “Woe unto them that are at ease in Zion.” “Is Christianity played out?” is pre-eminently a people’s question. Jesus Christ was a man of the people. He preached to the people. He died for the people. He is Son of Man, and what is vital to man is vital to him. The subject touches the very soul of business, for it has to do with the business of the soul. In the course of the case now on trial there has been a clearing of the ground. It is agreed that the horrible deeds perpetrated in the name of Christianity are as far removed from the first principles of the religion itself as the poles are asunder. This clearing of the ground is what is wanted to-day in so many of the Churches where thorns and briers are allowed to remain. Confession of past wrong-doing will help to clear the way for many loving, earnest, humanitarian  souls, who have read Christianity only in the light of secular history. We utterly repudiate the idea that the enormities committed in the name of “Holy Church” have been done in the name of the Holy Christ. We observe, now that a good deal of rubbish is cleared away, that the defendant in the case is not Christianity, but Christ himself. “What shall I do with Jesus?” was the primary question in Mr. Buchanan’s poetic ideal. The figure of Jesus, as pictured to him, was, he says, “no fancy to me, but an awful and ever-present reality.” Mr. Buchanan’s poetry and philosophy show that it is Jesus, not Christianity which is, so to speak, on trial. Pilate’s question is the question of the age. It is being asked by every man before whom Jesus is brought for judgment. Jesus is not played out; he is not effete. Even Mr. Buchanan admits that he cannot get rid of him. Whoever touches Jesus with eloquence or literary power at once arouses peculiar and special attention. Strauss, Renan, and, we may add, Buchanan will live in literature because they have attempted to do something with Jesus. Pilate wanted to get rid of all responsibility respecting him. The godless world follows the Roam governor. But it is useless. Certain forms and methods of Christianity are “played out,” but Jesus lives on. Not as “The Wandering Jew,” but as the Great High Priest at the Throne of the Universe, and by his spirit in the hearts of believers. It is for Christendom to crucify Barabbas and to crown the Saviour Lord of all. It is the spirit of Barabbas in the Church and the world which is responsible for the failures wrongly attributed to Christianity.

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THE REV. T. CHARKE.

     Preaching last night at Oakley-place Wesleyan Chapel, Old Kent-road, the Rev. T. Charke considered the question “Is Christianity played out?” Takings as his text, “And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John v. 4), he said that the question of the failure or success of Christianity had been raised within the last two or three weeks. They were indebted to The Daily Chronicle for taking up such subjects as these. He had not had the opportunity of saying there, but he had said it before, and was very glad to have the chance of saying it again, that he considered that paper the most Christian daily paper they had. It had often been a question of very great concern to him how they would be able to properly represent the Christian side of things in the daily press. As he had seen so much literary power squandered upon mere trivialities, and sometimes worse than trivialities, and had seen such reports and articles as appeared in some newspapers, he had felt a longing that the time might come when they would have the Christian ideal and the Christian spirit represented in their daily press. He thanked God that there had been a grand movement in that direction within the last two or three years in The Daily Chronicle, and he considered that much was done to help that movement when such subjects were taken up as that to which he alluded. It was seldom they could get one who attacked Christianity to pin himself to a certain point. Mr. Robert Buchanan had this merit, however, that he had selected a particular point on which to fight out the battle. They had the picture of Christ arraigned before humanity, had heard all the charges that could be laid against him on the ground that he had destroyed human life in its old natural ways and natural ideas, and on the ground that those who had called themselves by his name had been guilty of some of the most horrible cruelties that had ever blackened the page of history. Robert Buchanan had naturally been criticised, and his reply at first had been that he had been misinterpreted; but on explaining he had admitted saying that Christ’s mission had failed. But he had gone on to say that he did not mean to say that Christ had failed to produce a perfect character. He had admitted that Christ’s was the divinest life ever lived. That was no very great failure. Mr. Buchanan had further admitted that Christ had not failed as a teacher. He had taught immortality so well that even Robert Buchanan might believe in it; but the charge against him was that he had expected too much of humanity, that he had been too generous and too kind, and that he had proceeded by the process of faith to do what Mr. Buchanan thought ought to be done by secular means. It appeared, however, that Mr. Buchanan had been giving way to his own moods of despair, so it was really a picture of Robert Buchanan and not a picture of Jesus Christ that was considered. Mr. Buchanan in his moods had several false conceptions of Christianity itself. Merely conventional Christianity was played out, but that was not the Christianity of Christ. True Christianity was that divine human life which Christ himself had lived here, and was being reproduced in society, so that men were living a new life of love instead of the life of selfishness. Either Christ was what he said he was, or he must drop from the page of history. It seemed to him that Mr. Buchanan stood at the very centre of the universe and judged everything from its relation to himself. Having read Herbert Spencer he had begun to take the finest figure in history, and to represent him as a great pessimist. The man who did that must give a false conception of Christianity and Christ, and a false idea of God and man’s relation with him, and such a man was not likely to have the truth on his side.

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THE REV. WILLIAM PIERCE.

     At last night’s service at New Court Chapel, Tollington-park, the pastor, the Rev. William Pierce, made a further reference to the correspondence in the columns of The Daily Chronicle. He said Christianity certainly needed explanation, and the great writers and preachers had not failed to explain it, so far as they had understood it, and that was but little Some unbelievers seemed to think that it was their especial duty to cross-examine Christians, and there was not a knotty problem in the Bible—and for all that in Nature—but what they said, “Explain that.” Let them explain it. These people wanted everything explained, but Christians did not profess to be able to answer all the mysteries of life, as some things were left to be worked out and others to be found out. Christianity was far from being a mere theory. In the course of the correspondence Christ had been accused of persecuting the people, but to accuse Christ of that was unjust. There were persecutors who did not profess to be Christians. Did the “Skeleton Army” profess Christianity? Why make him responsible for these things? It was unjust to do so. To accuse Christ of much that was done in his name was unjust. Referring to the condition of the poor, the preacher reminded his hearers that Christ was a poor man, and always was and always would remain a friend of the poor. The giving of alms to the poor was not the most important work of Christians who were assisting this class, but they were helping them in many other ways. Christianity had influenced public opinion. It was through Christianity that the slaves had been freed. If there was any other power why did not the believers in it show it? It was impossible to examine Christianity like an article of food, by analysing it in a laboratory. Before it could be understood faith must be employed. If Mr. Buchanan would leave off writing stage plays and go amongst the poor and see the work done by Christians, and assist in it, then he felt Mr. Buchanan would leave off writing about the Wandering Jew, and cease to be a wandering Gentile.

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THE REV. G. HUGO HEYNES.

     The Rev. G. Hugo Heynes, preaching last night at the Honor Oak Baptist Church, from 1 Cor. xv., 13 to 18, quoted from Mr. Buchanan’s letter of Thursday last to the effect that Christ’s claim to establish immortality was based upon his miracles. If miracles are established, the supernatural is at once established and our immortality assured. The supreme miracle of Christianity is Christ’s resurrection from the dead. If that be established, the others become at once credible. What are the difficulties in believing in miracles? First the credibility of the writers. The preacher quoted Mr. Buchanan’s letter, wherein he accepts Christ as an historic personage, “and sympathises with him.” He accepts the evangelist’s records so far; then why is this record incredible as regards the miracles? Mr. Buchanan will hardly charge these men with willing falsification or fabrication, for then he would show himself very credulous in accepting their portrayal of Christ’s teaching. It is a moral impossibility that they should be fascinated by a beautiful life with which Mr. Buchanan sympathises, and yet do such an immoral thing as publish a lie. Were they deluded? This at once lays a charge against Christ of willingly deceiving them. But Mr. Buchanan cannot allow that, after saying that he sympathises with Jesus. He surely can have no sympathy with one whom he believes to be a trickster—one whom he says, “like all who love their fellows absolutely and unselfishly, he was crucified.” Such a man could not willingly deceive. The only other conclusion then is that Jesus was himself deceived, and his disciples also. Mr. Buchanan speaks of the nebulousness of Christian views. Surely his own views are in a still more nebulous state. It is far easier and less credulous to take “Christianity,” miracles and all, “at one bite” than Mr. Buchanan’s incredulous and contradictory position. The evidence for Christ’s resurrection is irrefragible, and, if that is so, the supernatural at once becomes possible, and immortality is assured in Christ’s own resurrection.

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THE REV. W. JELLIE.

     At the Unitarian Chapel, Stamford-street, Blackfriars, yesterday, the Rev. W. Jellie devoted both services to the consideration of the subject of “Is Christianity Played Out?” his head for the morning being “Which Christianity?” and the evening, “Christ of To-day.” He said the discussion going on arose out of a review of a curiously pessimistic book by Robert Buchanan, entitled “The Wandering Jew,” and he was astonished that so astute a man should have adopted the craft of a controversialist, seeing that it could only lead to bitter regrets and unkind criticisms. Speaking of the various letters which had appeared, he said Christianity was not a mere form of doctrinal teaching, but an all-pervading love of God and of the human race. The three great features of the Christian religion, having their different eras, were dogmatism, ecclesiasticism, and evangelism, each of which survived in some form at the present day. There seemed to be signs that all these were played out, and that a party was arising who would have none of these, but only Christ himself, that in place of doctrine and dogma we were to lay hold on his true spirit, and that Christianity was intended, not for the elect or churchgoers only, but for all people on the earth. Wherever poverty was relieved and sin fought there was Christ, and if it were asked, “Is Christianity played out?”—the Christianity of Christ, the pure heart-worship of God, and universal brotherhood of man—the ages would reply in a voice of thunder, “Never”; but if it were a mere empty rite and hollow creed, a thing of forms and ceremonies, of doctrines and dogmas, a mere system of human reasoning, the sooner it was played out the better, and if God were to be looked upon as a creature of wrath, sending forth his son to die a cruel death in order to propitiate him, while the future was a mere scheme of rewards and punishments, then not only ought it to be “played out,” but to be “drummed out.”

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—The correspondence that has been going on in your columns prompts me to write because so much has been said by the purely professional teacher of doctrine. The mixed assembly of wits, priests, atheists, doctrinaires, altruists, materialist, and theosophists have advocated their peculiar beliefs.
     Most of the mistakes of your correspondents appear to me to have been made because too much importance has been attached to an ism, the materialism of institutions, rather than affixing upon humanity in general the blame for all wrong-doing. I mention wrong-doing not because I should like to define what is wrong-doing. Archbishop Trench gives, to my thinking, a clear definition of the altruism of Christianity:—”In all wealth a principle of evil is implied; or in perfect state of society, in a realised kingdom of God upon earth, there would be no such thing as property belonging to one man more than another. In the moment of the Church’s first love, when that kingdom was for an instant realised, ‘all that believed were together, and had all things common,’ and this existence of property has ever been so strongly felt as a witness for the selfishness of man that in all ideas of a perfect commonwealth—which, if perfect, must, of course, be a Church as well as a State—from Plato’s down to the Socialists’, this of the communion of goods has been made a necessary condition.”
     Since the preacher has become the lawyer of religion, dogma, creed, doctrine, formula, rites, ceremonies are fetishes maintained with chant and dirge and doleful iteration, from the crescendo of the highly-paid semi-operatic vocalists to the ruder and more brutally real tom-tom of the Hallelujah Chorus.
     A great many sympathise with Mr. Buchanan, and one feels that most of real religion is to be found in the inspirations of such men as Shelley, Swinburne, and Tennyson.
     Were we not humanists who seek the root of things, the cause and not only the effects, upon which to concentrate our thoughts, there is little in institutional forms of religion to give hope. That with each child given to the world, in spite of the inexorable laws of heredity, there is a modicum of original virtue, cannot be questioned, and that this small modicum has been the crystal drop keeping humanity from moral putridity is the answer to those who are surprised that virtue exists, in spite of all the man-made rules, which would crush it out. That the ordinary moral worldling is less of a hypocrite than those professing an outward semblance of piety while “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” is a question open to two constructions.
     If institutional religion is real religion then the Agnostic is saved from the ignominy which attaches to the various religious sections.
     That the Church is hand-in-hand with the State—the War Office—and prays that the Lord will specially privilege their respective clients by blowing to smithereens the other side;
     That the Church is hand-in-hand with the class who are maintained at the expense of the utter degradation and impoverishment of the masses;
     That the religious teacher takes a substantial dinner with the wealthy and then idiotically attempts to satisfy the craving of the stomach of the poverty-stricken by a promise of fulness hereafter—are facts too serious for contemplation.
     We have commercialised the Church, and, like everything commercialised, we make evil out of good.
     The family life commercialised, to grow and train a family on commercial principles, to love and to marry subject to the same conditions; the alliance of the Church with the governing influences, its acquiescence in the fact of great standing armies and bands of men ready to belch out hell and destruction, result from the failure of Christians, not Christianity. Until the Church can cast off its State and commercial moorings, and discountenance the viciousness which prostitutes and murders millions by war, famine, disease; until the wars caused by commercialism, the famine caused by commercialism, the disease caused by commercialism are traced to their economic source, until these, those holding aloof from doctrine and religious system, have a full right to deny the efficacy of Christianity.
     I know that put against this will be the fact that thousands of men and women are sacrificing life and health in true work of help and charity. My reply is that unless it can be proved that these good hearts would not have done it under other conditions I venture the opinion that, as the institution was the only agency of the spirit of help and love, they had no other means of expression.
     From the prelate, priest or preacher who is satisfied that the evil in the world is “God’s own good way” to those whose philosophy of life is limited to rites, ceremonies, and systems of religious teaching, down to those who reflect discredit upon the great human family by thinking that religious system is alone to blame, when the character of the people is responsible for all errors and ethical falseness; for after all the Church is only the ethical looking-glass of the nation.
     Christianity is not played out as an altruistic conception, if so, to be logical, all the fundamental principles of conduct are played out. Truth is not dead because there are errors of falseness;
     The ideal of honour because there are failures;
     Love, trust and faith, because of betrayal;
     Purity because of vice;
     Honesty because of dishonesty.
     Judge any society of men or family life by such a stupid standard, analyse to the individual, and lay bare; what a  failure! One only sees the genius of good in humanity by the mighty impersonal character of goodness.
     As an altruist and humanist, I do not want Christianity tested by the failure of the people of the world to grasp its essentials; as a Socialist I don’t want Socialism to be judged by an institution, but by its principles of truth. Christianity is not played out because there has hardly yet been a practical experiment of its unselfish teaching.

                                                                                                                                           BEN TILLETT.
     Jan. 29.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—It may be useful if I say, in reply to Mr. Arthur Clayden, that I entirely accept his rather satirical description of my position, when he says, “Mr. Hopps finds himself in the anomalous position of a pick-and-choose disciple.” I believe that the doctrine of Development and the law of the Survival of the Fittest through Natural Selection apply to Christianity. Christianity is the “tree of life” planted by the river; and while some grub at the roots or munch the bark, I am with those who keep their eyes on the fruit, and who even then “pick and choose,” marking the unripe and the ripe. Small blame to us if we have shed the old half-savage, half-Jewish sacrificial ideas and symbols, if we have exchanged the fall for the rise of man, if we have taken Jesus at his word and changed Jehovah for our Father, if for ourselves and others we have put out the fires of Hell, if we regard as solemn fooling all this fuss about candles and altar decorations, priestly millinery, and posturing, and the hour of the day when you should eat or drink your little bit of saving bread or wine, and if we say that Jesus Christ belongs to the markets and the streets.
     Yes, I do “pick and choose,” just as the wise, keen-sighted, receptive Jesus would do if he were here, and I do not shrink from saying that if, as Mr. Clayton says, ! have “sketched a beautiful ideal Christianity” which “neither Jesus Christ nor St. Paul would recognise” (because, as I understand him to mean, that beautiful ideal is “too good to be true”) the explanation may be found in that very doctrine of Development and in that very law of Natural Selection which Mr. Clayden calls a policy of “pick and choose”; and I venture to predict that if Mr. J. G. Rogers responds to his summons —to come in and set us all right—he will do this very thing, and will, like a sensible man, give us, from his point of view, an ideal of Christianity up to date.
     Partly because it so entirely bears upon the subject, and partly because of a misprint, allow me to ask attention to my column advertisement in to-day’s paper (page 3), and to the sentence at the end, which should read:—”Apart altogether from the development and work of Our Father’s Church, there will probably be many who will think it a good thing to circulate ‘The Ideal’ for its own sake, as testimony and teaching. Mr. Page Hopps will be glad to hear from these.”

                                                                                                                               JOHN PAGE HOPPS.
     South Norwood-hill, S. E., Jan. 28.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—With reference to the very impressive poem of my friend Robert Buchanan, may I say that I personally believe Christ to be still alive, like all the rest of the “dead,” and leading the race on to higher attainments, by virtue of the moral triumph of his life and death on earth, which to my mind were unique—must have been so, or he could never have influenced the world as he has done, though, of course, the divine spirit of man won other triumphs before him, and has won other triumphs after him. Only, since he is the greatest moral genius the world has seen, he is also our leader and guide in conduct, in the art of living. He is, moreover, the Son of God in a special sense, by virtue of his God- consciousness, of his unrivalled knowledge of the fact that we are sons of God, and his eminent success in the “incarnation,” or realisation of his teaching, that God is Love, in his own life and death. Since suffering is and must be, our highest manifested God is he who taught and exemplified its use, its high purpose in educating and ennobling character, for Love shines brightest, and learns her perfect work, through suffering. How else can she learn it?

A man grew God upon the shadowy Cross,
And taught the world to triumph in love’s loss,

as I have put it elsewhere.
     But I do not admit that Jesus was an ascetic, or opposed to pleasure. The reproaches made to him because he feasted with publicans and sinners, his love for the Magdalen and for St. John, his turning water into wine at the marriage feast, all negative the idea. Only he would have pleasure made unselfish, and not cruel, have it rendered also more common, the portion of all. Hence he leads the “advanced” and reforming party now. But I believe all the superstructure of so-called Christian dogma to have been the result of trying to define where no definition was really possible. Feeling, intuition indeed, assures me that Christ has realised his divine manhood as I have not, but that I as a man am in the end capable of realising it too. Yet it is a mistake to make that conviction into dogmas, definitions of the nature of God and man. That has led to all the obscurantism, persecutions, and neglect of right action with which the Christian Churches are chargeable; and yet they have done much good by virtue of their Founder’s spirit constraining them; have been the salt of the earth, and kept human society from disintegration. Immortality follows as a matter of course from the inherent (though latent) divinity of man, who is yet, however, in course of development. If Christ be living and leading us now from his ’vantage ground of perfected divine manhood within the veil (having “learned obedience through the things he suffered”), he is not despairing, though sorrowful (as at the grave of Lazarus before he raised him) on account of all the evil that has been done in his name, as well as all the foolish inferences men have drawn from his words and his career; but his intentions from the first having been clearer than ours, they are not duller now, and he knows that “the mills of God grind slowly,” that man “advances in a spiral” by making first one mistake, then another, but correcting them, and, nourished upon this experience, inviting pain. But shadows show blacker as the dawn brightens; the race is ever more pervaded by his spirit, for are not men and women more and more devoting themselves to help the weak and sorrowful, to establish the ideal State, the city of God on earth? The mischievous idea of “other-worldliness,” that men must regard this life as essentially evil, and withdraw from it in order to secure personal immunity from the endless torments to be inflicted by an angry God on the majority of sinners, found no countenance from Jesus. “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He himself had no such meaning.
     The millionaire who ruins thousands recklessly by speculation, and rises upon their ruins, though equipped with all the respectable virtues of top hat, frock coat, and Church membership, has so far lost his soul. So has the lord of many acres who evicts poor families from their ancestral homes that he may “kill time” with hi friends by killing animals nobler than himself. So has the autocrat who whips women and sends men to lifelong torture on mere suspicion of loving liberty, though both of them may be good fathers and good husbands. But a good doctrine of “other-worldliness” Christ does preach—that love will purify his children, even by fire, and that if the work is not completed here it will have to be done hereafter, which includes the idea of righteous punishment; and yet another—that “there remaineth a rest for the people of God,” that is, for those who have realised, more or less completely, their divine humanity. Christ is the most humane and comprehensive of great religious teachers. For the man or woman, healthy in soul and body, does not want extinction, the Nirvana of Buddha; he wants more, and higher life; that is the law of his being; it is only the utterly miserable, crushed, and degraded who want the stagnation of death. But, however you may rearrange the conduits for distributing material and mental wealth in the community—and they want a deal of rearranging—you can never eliminate pain and disappointment. Nature, hostile to man, would be too strong for you; and, therefore, the virtues of patience, fortitude, faith in the goodness of God, self-suppression, which Christ preached, can never be played out; the weak and unhappy, moreover, will ever turn to him, the consoler, who promised rest to those who take his yoke upon them, which is easy; rest here, but deeper rest under more favourable conditions hereafter. It is of little use rearranging the conduits while the waters of happy life remain poisoned. But modern secularism is impregnated with the ideal of benevolence and self-sacrifice preached by Christ, and descending from generation to generation, as hitherto believed with supernatural sanctions. It is in the air we breathe, in the mother’s milk that feeds us; though it had to contend with the selfishness, arrogance, and cruelty of our baser selves, with the beast and the devil in us.—I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                                         RODEN NOEL.
     Jan. 27.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—One of the initial misconceptions which vitiate most, if not all, of the unhappy controversies that rage from time to time round the subject of Christianity and its influence on the world, is that strange misconception which prevents men from ridding themselves of the idea that Christianity is a system of mere doctrines externally imposed to be a rule of faith and practice. The truth is that Christianity is the reverse of this. The Gospel of Christ is not, strictly speaking, a system at all, but a life—a life that is the gradual unfolding of a hidden informing principle within. Now, a life implies growth, and is necessarily, therefore, organic; whereas the false view of Christianity regards it as an organisation. True, there is a very real sense in which we may regard it as an organisation; but, fundamentally, it differs from an organisation precisely in that matter of growth, even as a crystal differs from a herb or flower. I believe that this misconception has not merely vitiated our estimate of the Gospel, but has, for the majority of people, debarred them from conceiving even of God himself as other than something external to themselves; thereby robbing him, as such, of his infinite attributes. “An immeasurable clergyman” (as Tennyson is reported once to have said)—too often that is the best concept of him who is the ever-living Spirit and Wisdom of the universe. “God is Spirit,” says St. John, “and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” But life means not growth alone, but love, and love is better than any system, and nobler, deeper, than any logic. Systems were intended to be the handmaids of religion, enabling men to grasp the full spiritual meaning behind them; they do not serve as the finite vehicles of an infinite truth. But men have emptied truth of her eternal content, and been content to worship these handmaids of religion rather than enter into the fulness of communion with the eternal and absolute Spirit. and wrangling over the creed and the letter they have passed over, unheeding, the profound significance of the spiritual content. It is ever so, and has been from time immemorial.
     It is curious that men should not hesitate to bring the ethic of Christianity before the bar of their private judgment in the most reckless fashion, without a thought that, but for this very Christianity which they reject, they could never have attained their present power of vision, or the clearness of moral judgment which they possess. It is actually by means of Christianity that their moral standard has been raised high enough for them to judge of its moral influences. It is not too much to say that whatever is loveliest and purest in modern civilisation is the result of that three years’ ministry given by the Galilean waysides long ago.
     And, as though to arrest the attention of so many perplexed hearts in our day, come these words to mind, borne across the gulf of nineteen centuries:—”If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.” Who that has ever honestly put this into practice has ever known it to fail?—Faithfully yours,

                                                                                                                                     E. H. BLAKENEY.
     Trinity College, Cambridge.

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THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE.

     SIR,—Is it possible I can believe my own eyes? is the thought that rushed uppermost in my mind to-day when I saw the heading in your paper, which I instantly bought. Is Christianity played out? It is some 17 years ago that, no longer being able to restrain myself, I felt compelled to make a declaration to the effect that, as far as I was individually concerned, my Christianity, of which I had at one time been most earnest about, had certainly played out, and left me high and dry. I have suffered a good deal of social ostracism for that declaration since then. Amongst other things, I have been excluded from Parliament. I am delighted to find that the times have so changed since the short time ago I allude to that it is possible for a discussion on so important a subject to be started by one of our leading daily papers, which surely is a hopeful sign of the times. It is a very difficult matter to attack Christians, for so surely as you do so on any one particular point they will evade it by replying that is not Christianity, or, at any rate, is not the Christianity which they believe in. One would imagine that on the most vital point, the one about which St. Paul, I believe, said, “If Christ be not risen, then is our faith in vain,” or words to that effect, there would be unanimity of opinion, but I have lately frequently met Christians who, when discussing this wonderful story of Christ not only rising from the dead but ascending or descending to heaven (wherever that place may be), say that it was only a spiritual resurrection and ascension. In that case I have never been able to get an answer to the very natural question that arises, What became of his body, which was found missing from his grave, if that be so? If Christianity has taught us anything all these hundreds of years, it is certainly that the resurrection and ascension was a physical one, and that Christ rose again with his body. It would be well for those people that assert that Christianity is not played out to enlighten us on the subject of what their own particular faith is on this point, or of that particular Church, whichever it may be, to which they belong.
     For myself I was utterly unable on the evidence of the story, as told in the Bible, and which is most contradictory, to believe in such a marvellous event as the physical resurrection and ascension of Christ; and, with the words of St. Paul I have quoted ringing in my ears, my Christianity played out on this point alone and left me not a shred of evidence to cling to. These Christians are a wonderful people! The last acrobatic mental feat of turning themselves inside out to support their faith which has attracted my attention is the controversy going on in a quarterly review, and entitled, “Happiness in Hell.” Rather than lose this hideous dream of their own imagination, which human reason will no longer accept, although their faith is irrevocably entwined with it, we now have a Christian individual trying to soften things by promising happiness in hell. If happiness in hell, why not misery in heaven? Surely the one is as reasonable as the other, and these two places, unless they are entirely mythical, are dependent on one another. Do away with hell and where si the authority for their heaven? To my mind, and to thousands of others, Christianity is completely played out, and has not a leg to stand on.—Yours faithfully,

                                                                                                                                     QUEENSBERRY.
     Carter’s Hotel, Albemarle-street, Jan. 26.

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     John Varley:—“As far as I understand the verboseness of the professors of literature, it seems to me that Mr. Buchanan is in the right. Christianity disappointed its first adherents who expected an early millennium; and it cannot prove that the small progress of the last nineteen centuries is due to a ‘form of hope’ which its devotees have often thought right to propagate by persecution.”
     “Truth Seeker”:—“It would be best to define first what is Christianity. There are numberless denominations, all calling themselves Christians, yet all differing considerably, and what is more strange, exhibiting an unaccountable hatred of each other. Moreover, they none of them adhere in any marked degree either to the teachings of Jesus or Paul. It appears to me that after all the much abused theosophy is in truth nearer to the teachings of Christ than any of the so-called Christian sects.”
     “One of the Weaker Sex”:—“It is no use for Mr. Buchanan to try and argue why Jesus is a comfort to thousands. Jesus has evidently never been a comfort to Mr. Buchanan, and therefore it is futile for Mr. Buchanan to try and specify why he is a comfort to those who sing with the heart’s emotion, ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.’ Love is a language of the heart and not a logical deduction.”
     Henry Binns:—“From Mazzini to Max Müller—from George Fox to Whittier—from Whitman to Edward Carpenter, from Tolstoi to Tennyson, from Browning to Herbert Spencer, there is one great and diverse, but not uncertain, prophecy of a Democratic religion upon whose borders we stand, free of sects, of creeds, and of priests, unbound to any prophet, dogma or tradition, but embracing all and yet more than all.”
     James Williams:—“You are considered a fool if you do not bring your reason and best judgment to bear on all matters of business, but directly you come to the consideration of so-called religious things you must let some one else think for you. Pope, bishop, priest, minister, beliefs, creeds, Thirty-nine Articles, confessions of faith, and what not— surely the world is getting sick of these things. Look at the spirit and temper of some of those who have written and spoken on this very subject. Why, they don’t seem to understand the first principles of Christianity, and clearly show they are of the number of those who would crucify the Christ of to-day if they only could.”
     Frank White:—“There are evident signs that the religion of Jesus is about to become a mighty power for good in our midst. Men are beginning to follow his teaching and example, instead of trusting in doctrines about his nature and office. They are beginning to try the experiment of trusting in the heavenly Father as he did. They are beginning to see that the way of approach to the Father is through purity of heart, instead of correctness of creed: that they must lose themselves in the service of others. Men are beginning to learn, through personal experience, the truth of these, and all these other priceless treasures which Jesus obtained for them through his communion with his Father and their Father—his God and their God. Surely, then, the religion of Jesus, instead of being played out, is but just coming into practical existence amongst us.”
     Albert Carman:—“I am afraid Mr. Buchanan is not doing the intellectuality of Christ justice in making so much of his supposed faith in an unseen world. Any one reading the passages in which Christ makes reference to this subject, cannot but be convinced that his ‘Kingdom of God’ was meant to be that ideal state of the world in which all human conduct and God should be founded on his own ethical teaching. Nay, more, time after time he reproved his disciples for their superstitions, and when the Pharisees questioned him about the unseen world he promptly replied that it was not here or there, but that ‘the Kingdom of God is within you.’”
     Rev. James Le Pla:—“I rejoice that such a controversy has taken place, because I believe that instead of doing harm it will do an immense amount of good. It will show up much that has in the past gone forth under the name of Christianity that is false and contrary altogether to the teaching and spirit of Christ. I am confident that as a result we shall have in the future a more manly and robust and real Christianity than we have had in the past.”
     “A Country Reader”:—“Neither Mr. Buchanan, whom one may think mistaken, but whom one must honour for his courage, nor any of those who think with him on this subject, has escaped or can escape the influence of 2,000 years of even the imperfect Christianity which has furnished many of his weapons, and which, even imperfect sympathy with it must perceive, is slowly but surely widening and making room for a fuller world-life based less on old formulæ than on a larger appreciation of Christ as Christ, which Mr. Buchanan will be among the first to welcome.”
     W. A. Aubrey:—“Apart from Christianity, the old question of Cain, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ is quite unanswerable. ‘Homo homini lupus’ is the law of nature, and ‘survival of the fittest’ means, in plain English, salvation for the strong. On strictly scientific principles we ought to inveigle the unemployed and other social failures into a huge lethal chamber, and then turn on the gas. This would at once save the poor rates, and solve the Labour problem. The very fact that such an expedient would not be tolerated by the British public is in itself a sufficient proof that Christianity is not ‘played out.’”
     “Another Scot”:—“With all respect to this graphic writer (Mr. Buchanan), I cannot help feeling that were he destined to be a latter-day prophet he would not only be gifted with the art of making his meaning clear to the simple and unsophisticated, but would also be able to inspire them with a new hope, and, to some extent, lay the foundation of a larger and better faith. But this, it seems to me, is just what Mr. Buchanan does not do. He gives no convincing reason for throwing over Christianity, and at the very best only creates a kind of mental and moral confusion, out of which nothing tangible comes.”
     W. Rees Jeffreys:—“The philosophic optimism of Browning, and the trustful faith in the divine leadership felt by many a less cultured soul, has always been a source of strength to the workers for mankind, and must not be confused with the pious snuffle of those, who, comfortable under existing conditions, shut their eyes to injustice and say ‘all is well.’ This self-same hopefulness will be an inspiration to those who have made part of their lives the high ideal of civil and social duty, which finds its most faithful journalistic exponent in The Daily Chronicle.”
     East Ender:—“The crux of the whole question lies in this—that the time, treasure, and blood spent in applying the principles has shown up to the present time very poor results in proportion to the expenditure. The harvest truly is great, the professional labourers (clergymen) more than sufficient, the result is practically nil. This bad show is not due, I contend, to Christ’s teaching, but to the want of it. The principles of Christianity are all that could be desired, but the method of application is a total failure.

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

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