tell me that the seven days of creation are seven epochs. I did not ask that. To my question whether man has fallen, as the Bible says, or risen, as science declares, no reply has been given.
There is only a specious likening of a man's life, saying that man falls from the innocence of his childhood to sin through the knowledge of evil, and requires redemption. My question is avoided, and a new sophism given me which is also untrue. A child is not innocent. It is only ignorant and weak. Its natural impulses are those of a savage. It requires to learn the knowledge of good and evil to subdue these instincts. This symbolism of the child is utterly false. A child is to us a very beautiful thing because its tenderness, its helplessness, its clinging affection awaken in us feelings of love, of protection, which we feel are beautiful. All men should, all men I think do, love children, but the beauty is in the man's emotions that are awakened, not in those qualities of the children that awaken them.
To go beyond this and say that a child should be a model to man is to display ignorance of what children are, to mistake effect for cause, to exalt childishness into a virtue. Theologians use this argument, which is merely a play upon our affection for children, to try and induce us to accept their theology with the same ignorant confidence that a child accepts all it is told by its parents. It would suit theologians for all men to be babes in this sense, in their senselessness. But if theology will bear the light of reason, why ask us to accept it blindly? Why? Is it because it will not bear scrutiny?
And surely of all the answers, this answer about the character of God is the most extraordinary. "God is not really unjust or partial, or revengeful. That is merely the impression His acts make on us." Truly here is an argument. How can anyone, even God, be judged except in His acts? If His acts are revengeful, is not He revengeful? "No!" says the theological scientist, "that is merely your ignorance. Events make a wrong impression on you."
How, then, am I to judge which are wrong and which are right impressions? God acts, as it seems to me, angrily; He is not angry. On other occasions He acts, as it seems, mercifully. How am I to know that this impression of mercy is not an error? How, in fact, am I to know that anything exists at all? If God's anger and partiality and changeableness are merely impressions of my mind, are not all His attributes merely impressions also, and do not exist? In fact, is not God Himself merely an impression and He does not exist? Where are you going to stop? The theologian will doubtless say, "When I tell you." But then he is unfortunately arrogating to himself an authority which does not exist, an authority to twist and turn the Bible to suit his own sophisms, an authority to bind your mind which no one has given him. Impressions forsooth. What impressions can any candid mind have of the scientific theologian? And when the boy read the explanation of the difference between the all-presence of God and the all-presence of Satan, I am afraid he laughed.
But prayer is a serious matter. No one can feel anything but sorrow to see the explanation of God and prayer. The theological scientist again repeats the Bible words and has his own explanation. No, God is not moved by prayer. This is merely another wrong impression of ours, an impression taken from the Bible words. The action of prayer is not objective, but subjective; its effect is not on God, but on you.
Now mark what he has led himself into. Prayer will purify a man. To ask God for what he wants won't make the slightest difference in God's acts, but will in your own feelings. Nevertheless, as of course no one would or could pray unless he hoped to be answered, man must be told that God does listen. But this is not true. Therefore, according to theological science, the Bible directly tells us a falsehood in order to lead us into a good action. Is there any escape from this? There is none. The whole meaning and reason of prayer is that God does listen, that He does forgive if asked, that He does help us and save us. Unless a man held this belief firmly he would not pray. Try and you will see. Imagine to yourself, as the theologian declares, that God is quite unmoved by prayer, and that the action of prayer is subjective, and see if you can get up any prayer at all. It is impossible. How much fervency will there be in a request you know will not be granted or attended to? How much subjective action will follow that prayer? The subjective action is absolutely dependent on your belief that God does listen and is influenced by your prayer. But the scientific theologian says your premise is false.
Can you imagine this theologian's prayer? Can you see him kneeling and uttering supplications to a god whom he knows he cannot affect or influence, and pausing now and then to see how the subjective effect on himself was getting on? But it is not even a subject to be bitter over, only to be sad. Truly, if I wanted to make a man an atheist and a scoffer, a railer at all religion, at all religious emotions, at all that is best in our natures, I would take him to a scientific theologian and have him taught the scientific theological theory of prayer.
And again, though the boy understood how a man could be the son of his father, the husband of his wife, the father of his son, three different relations to three people, it did not help him to understand how he could be so to one person. A man cannot be his own son and his own father, and have proceeding from him a third person different and yet the same. The argument seemed to him childish.
As to the teaching of Christ, of what use is a teaching that is suitable only to an ideal state of things? Is it any use to me to tell me that if everyone agreed at once to follow this teaching the world would be perfect? Even if this were true, what would be the use? The world never has accepted it and does not do so now. No one does except a few people who are called visionaries or fanatics. Even the Quakers only accept a part, and it is well for them that their fellow citizens do not accept even that part, or these Quakers would soon be robbed of their wealth. A nation of Quakers would be a nation of slaves. All this talk of what would happen if at a given signal all the world became perfect is useless dream talk. I want realities. This code of Christ is not a reality. No quicker way of destroying civilization and all that it means could be desired than by attempting to follow it. We must be ready and prepared to fight other nations, we must have armies and navies, and we must honour them. We must have magistrates, and police, and prisons, and gallows.
"I went," thought the boy, "to these theological scientists, for help in my everyday life, for clear directions and explanations, and what do they give me? A mass of words meaning nothing, words and words, and tangled thoughts; evasion and misrepresentation, misty dreams and cloud-hidden ideals. They cannot explain, and therefore the whole thing is false. There is no truth anywhere in it. The whole teaching of the Bible, from the Creation down to the incarnation of Christ and His second coming, is one huge mistake. Why people keep on believing it I cannot say. But anyhow I have found out its falseness, and I will not. Let it all go. It will make no difference and be rather an advantage. What use have I ever had from this religion that has been dinned into me? It gave me false ideas of the world and nature which I have had to unlearn. It gave me an unworkable code of conduct which I never tried to follow, but I got into trouble for it. To call oneself a Christian is merely a way of talking. No one is so really, and the only difference between me and the others will be that while they are not Christians but think they are, I am not a Christian and know I am not."
Was the boy glad or sorry? I do not know. I think perhaps he was both. He felt like a man who has shaken off a burden, a load that contained mere weight and no useful thing. He would step more lightly in future.
But he felt, too, like a man who has skirted a precipice, secure in that a railing fenced him in from danger, when he suddenly discovers that the railing is decayed to the core and will vanish at a touch. He felt dizzy and afraid, and the feeling grew upon him.
May be, he thought, it is a good thing to have a religion. People of all faiths, of all nations, seem to cling to theirs very strongly. It is the one thing they cannot bear to lose. Yet I do not know what they get from it. At least I do not know what people get from Christianity. What I look for in a faith are these three things.
I wish an explanation of my origin, of the origin of man and his relation to this world, and to what there may be beyond this world. I want an explanation I can accept, and that is not contradicted by the knowledge we acquire from other
