people. The pious are represented as being constantly delighted by
these little surprises, these bouquets and chocolate boxes from the
divinity. Or contrawise he contrives spiteful turns for those who
fail in their religious attentions. He murders Sabbath-breaking
children, or disorganises the careful business schemes of the
ungodly. He is represented as going Sabbath-breakering on Sunday
morning as a Staffordshire worker goes ratting. Ordinary everyday
Christianity is saturated with this fetishistic conception of God.
It may be disowned in THE HIBBERT JOURNAL, but it is unblushingly
advocated in the parish magazine. It is an idea taken over by
Christianity with the rest of the qualities of the Hebrew God. It
is natural enough in minds so self-centred that their recognition of
weakness and need brings with it no real self-surrender, but it is
entirely inconsistent with the modern conception of the true God.
There has dropped upon the table as I write a modest periodical
called THE NORTHERN BRITISH ISRAEL REVIEW, illustrated with
portraits of various clergymen of the Church of England, and of
ladies and gentlemen who belong to the little school of thought
which this magazine represents; it is, I should judge, a subsect
entirely within the Established Church of England, that is to say
within the Anglican communion of the Trinitarian Christians. It
contains among other papers a very entertaining summary by a
gentleman entitled—I cite the unusual title-page of the periodical—
“Landseer Mackenzie, Esq.,” of the views of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and
Obadiah upon the Kaiser William. They are distinctly hostile views.
Mr. Landseer Mackenzie discourses not only upon these anticipatory
condemnations but also upon the relations of the weather to this
war. He is convinced quite simply and honestly that God has been
persistently rigging the weather against the Germans. He points out
that the absence of mist on the North Sea was of great help to the
British in the autumn of 1914, and declares that it was the wet
state of the country that really held up the Germans in Flanders in
the winter of 1914-15. He ignores the part played by the weather in
delaying the relief of Kut-el-Amara, and he has not thought of the
difficult question why the Deity, having once decided upon
intervention, did not, instead of this comparatively trivial
meteorological assistance, adopt the more effective course of, for
example, exploding or spoiling the German stores of ammunition by
some simple atomic miracle, or misdirecting their gunfire by a
sudden local modification of the laws of refraction or gravitation.
Since these views of God come from Anglican vicarages I can only
conclude that this kind of belief is quite orthodox and permissible
in the established church, and that I am charging orthodox
Christianity here with nothing that has ever been officially
repudiated. I find indeed the essential assumptions of Mr. Landseer
Mackenzie repeated in endless official Christian utterances on the
part of German and British and Russian divines. The Bishop of
Chelmsford, for example, has recently ascribed our difficulties in
the war to our impatience with long sermons—among other similar
causes. Such Christians are manifestly convinced that God can be
invoked by ritual—for example by special days of national prayer or
an increased observance of Sunday—or made malignant by neglect or
levity. It is almost fundamental in their idea of him. The
ordinary Mohammedan seems as confident of this magic pettiness of
God, and the belief of China in the magic propitiations and
resentments of “Heaven” is at least equally strong.
But the true God as those of the new religion know him is no such
God of luck and intervention. He is not to serve men’s ends or the
ends of nations or associations of men; he is careless of our
ceremonies and invocations. He does not lose his temper with our
follies and weaknesses. It is for us to serve Him. He captains us,
he does not coddle us. He has his own ends for which he needs
us… .
4. GOD IS NOT PROVIDENCE
Closely related to this heresy that God is magic, is the heresy that
calls him Providence, that declares the apparent adequacy of cause
and effect to be a sham, and that all the time, incalculably, he is
pulling about the order of events for our personal advantages.
The idea of Providence was very gaily travested by Daudet in
“Tartarin in the Alps.” You will remember how Tartarin’s friend
assured him that all Switzerland was one great Trust, intent upon
attracting tourists and far too wise and kind to permit them to
venture into real danger, that all the precipices were netted
invisibly, and all the loose rocks guarded against falling, that
avalanches were prearranged spectacles and the crevasses at their
worst slippery ways down into kindly catchment bags. If the
mountaineer tried to get into real danger he was turned back by
specious excuses. Inspired by this persuasion Tartarin behaved with
incredible daring… . That is exactly the Providence theory of
the whole world. There can be no doubt that it does enable many a
timid soul to get through life with a certain recklessness. And
provided there is no slip into a crevasse, the Providence theory
works well. It would work altogether well if there were no
crevasses.
Tartarin was reckless because of his faith in Providence, and
escaped. But what would have happened to him if he had fallen into
a crevasse?
There exists a very touching and remarkable book by Sir Francis
Younghusband called “Within.” [Williams and Norgate, 1912.] It is
the confession of a man who lived with a complete confidence in
Providence until he was already well advanced in years. He went
through battles and campaigns, he filled positions of great honour
and responsibility, he saw much of the life of men, without
altogether losing his faith. The loss of a child, an Indian famine,
could shake it but not overthrow it. Then coming back one day from
some races in France, he was knocked down by an automobile and hurt
very cruelly. He suffered terribly in body and mind. His
sufferings caused much suffering to others. He did his utmost to
see the hand of a loving Providence in his and their disaster and
the torment it inflicted, and being a man of sterling honesty and a
fine essential simplicity of mind, he confessed at last that he
could not do so. His confidence in the benevolent intervention of
God was altogether destroyed. His book tells of this shattering,
and how labouriously he reconstructed his religion upon less
confident lines. It is a book typical of an age and of a very
English sort of mind, a book well worth reading.
That he came to a full sense of the true God cannot be asserted, but
how near he came to God, let one quotation witness.
“The existence of an outside Providence,” he writes, “who created
us, who watches over us, and who guides our lives like a Merciful
Father, we have found impossible longer to believe in. But of the
existence of a Holy Spirit radiating upward through all animate
beings, and finding its fullest expression, in man in love, and in
the flowers in beauty, we can be as certain as of anything in the
world. This fiery spiritual impulsion at the centre and the source
of things, ever burning in us, is the supremely important factor in
our existence. It does not always attain to light. In many
directions it fails; the conditions are too hard and it is utterly
blocked. In others it only partially succeeds. But in a few it
bursts forth into radiant light. There are few who in some heavenly
moment of their lives have not been conscious of its presence. We
may not be able to give it outward expression, but we know that it
is there.” …
God does not guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess
restraining and correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would
fly into the air, there is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly
for you or keep an ill-tended engine going; if you would cross a
glacier, no God nor angel guides your steps amidst the slippery
places. He will not even mind your innocent children for you if you
leave them before an unguarded fire. Cherish no delusions; for
yourself and others you challenge danger and chance on your own
strength; no talisman, no God, can help you or those you care for.
Nothing of such things will God do; it is an idle dream. But God
will be with you nevertheless. In the reeling aeroplane or the dark
ice-cave God will be your courage. Though you suffer or are killed,
it is not an end. He will be with you as you face death; he will
die with you as he has died already countless myriads of brave
deaths. He will come so close to you that at the last you will not
know whether it is you or he who dies, and the present death will be