God The Invisible King Part 6

It is here that those who explain this modern religiosity will seem most arbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of G.o.d, as men will relate of a close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims of his kings.h.i.+p. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the existence of G.o.d but their realisation of him, so with regard to these qualities and dispositions they have little argument but profound conviction. What they say is this; that if you do not feel G.o.d then there is no persuading you of him; we cannot win over the incredulous.

And what they say of his qualities is this; that if you feel G.o.d then you will know, you will realise more and more clearly, that thus and thus and no other is his method and intention.

It comes as no great shock to those who have grasped the full implications of the statement that G.o.d is Finite, to hear it a.s.serted that the first purpose of G.o.d is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power. For that he must use human eyes and hands and brains.

And as G.o.d gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning to apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But it is possible to define the broad outlines of the attainment he seeks.

It is the conquest of death.

It is the conquest of death; first the overcoming of death in the individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose, and then the defeat of that death that seems to threaten our species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun. G.o.d fights against death in every form, against the great death of the race, against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness, misconception, and perversion. He it is and no other who can deliver us "from the body of this death." This is the battle that grows plainer; this is the purpose to which he calls us out of the animal's round of eating, drinking, l.u.s.ting, quarrelling and laughing and weeping, fearing and failing, and presently of wearying and dying, which is the whole life that living without G.o.d can give us. And from these great propositions there follow many very definite maxims and rules of life for those who serve G.o.d. These we will immediately consider.

3. THE CRUCIFIX

But first let me write a few words here about those who hold a kind of intermediate faith between the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.d of Youth and the vaguer sort of Christianity. There are a number of people closely in touch with those who have found the new religion who, biased probably by a dread of too complete a break with Christianity, have adopted a theogony which is very reminiscent of Gnosticism and of the Paulician, Catharist, and kindred sects to which allusion has already been made.

He, who is called in this book G.o.d, they would call G.o.d-the-Son or Christ, or the Logos; and what is here called the Darkness or the Veiled Being, they would call G.o.d-the-Father. And what we speak of here as Life, they would call, with a certain disregard of the poor brutes that perish, Man. And they would a.s.sert, what we of the new belief, pleading our profound ignorance, would neither a.s.sert nor deny, that that Darkness, out of which came Life and G.o.d, since it produced them must be ultimately sympathetic and of like nature with them. And that ultimately Man, being redeemed and led by Christ and saved from death by him, would be reconciled with G.o.d the Father.* And this great adventurer out of the hearts of man that we here call G.o.d, they would present as the same with that teacher from Galilee who was crucified at Jerusalem.

* This probably was the conception of Spinoza. Christ for him is the wisdom of G.o.d manifested in all things, and chiefly in the mind of man. Through him we reach the blessedness of an intuitive knowledge of G.o.d. Salvation is an escape from the "inadequate" ideas of the mortal human personality to the "adequate" and timeless ideas of G.o.d.

Now we of the modern way would offer the following criticisms upon this apparent compromise between our faith and the current religion. Firstly, we do not presume to theorise about the nature of the veiled being nor about that being's relations to G.o.d and to Life. We do not recognise any consistent sympathetic possibilities between these outer beings and our G.o.d. Our G.o.d is, we feel, like Prometheus, a rebel. He is unfilial. And the accepted figure of Jesus, instinct with meek submission, is not in the tone of our wors.h.i.+p. It is not by suffering that G.o.d conquers death, but by fighting. Incidentally our G.o.d dies a million deaths, but the thing that matters is not the deaths but the immortality. It may be he cannot escape in this person or that person being nailed to a cross or chained to be torn by vultures on a rock. These may be necessary sufferings, like hunger and thirst in a campaign; they do not in themselves bring victory. They may be necessary, but they are not glorious. The symbol of the crucifixion, the drooping, pain-drenched figure of Christ, the sorrowful cry to his Father, "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?" these things jar with our spirit. We little men may well fail and repent, but it is our faith that our G.o.d does not fail us nor himself. We cannot accept the Christian's crucifix, or pray to a pitiful G.o.d. We cannot accept the Resurrection as though it were an after-thought to a bitterly felt death. Our crucifix, if you must have a crucifix, would show G.o.d with a hand or a foot already torn away from its nail, and with eyes not downcast but resolute against the sky; a face without pain, pain lost and forgotten in the surpa.s.sing glory of the struggle and the inflexible will to live and prevail... .

But we do not care how long the thorns are drawn, nor how terrible the wounds, so long as he does not droop. G.o.d is courage. G.o.d is courage beyond any conceivable suffering.

But when all this has been said, it is well to add that it concerns the figure of Christ only in so far as that professes to be the figure of G.o.d, and the crucifix only so far as that stands for divine action. The figure of Christ crucified, so soon as we think of it as being no more than the tragic memorial of Jesus, of the man who proclaimed the loving-kindness of G.o.d and the supremacy of G.o.d's kingdom over the individual life, and who, in the extreme agony of his pain and exhaustion, cried out that he was deserted, becomes something altogether distinct from a theological symbol. Immediately that we cease to wors.h.i.+p, we can begin to love and pity. Here was a being of extreme gentleness and delicacy and of great courage, of the utmost tolerance and the subtlest sympathy, a saint of non-resistance... .

We of the new faith repudiate the teaching of non-resistance. We are the militant followers of and partic.i.p.ators in a militant G.o.d. We can appreciate and admire the greatness of Christ, this gentle being upon whose n.o.bility the theologians trade. But submission is the remotest quality of all from our G.o.d, and a moribund figure is the completest inversion of his likeness as we know him. A Christianity which shows, for its daily symbol, Christ risen and trampling victoriously upon a broken cross, would be far more in the spirit of our wors.h.i.+p.*

* It is curious, after writing the above, to find in a letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby, almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed.

"If I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do," he says, "I would gladly look on it, but the fallen Head and the closed Eye exclude from my thought the idea of glorified humanity. The Christ to whom we are led is One who 'hath been crucified,' who hath pa.s.sed the trial victoriously and borne the fruits to heaven. I dare not then rest on this side of the glory."

I find, too, a still more remarkable expression of the modern spirit in a tract, "The Call of the Kingdom," by that very able and subtle, Anglican theologian, the Rev. W. Temple, who declares that under the vitalising stresses of the war we are winning "faith in Christ as an heroic leader. We have thought of Him so much as meek and gentle that there is no ground in our picture of Him, for the vision which His disciple had of Him: 'His head and His hair were white, as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire: and His feet like unto burnished bra.s.s, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His voice was as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars; and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and His countenance was as the sun s.h.i.+neth in its strength.'"

These are both exceptional utterances, interesting as showing how clearly parallel are the tendencies within and without Christianity.

4. THE PRIMARY DUTIES

Now it follows very directly from the conception of G.o.d as a finite intelligence of boundless courage and limitless possibilities of growth and victory, who has pitted himself against death, who stands close to our inmost beings ready to receive us and use us, to rescue us from the chagrins of egotism and take us into his immortal adventure, that we who have realised him and given ourselves joyfully to him, must needs be equally ready and willing to give our energies to the task we share with him, to do our utmost to increase knowledge, to increase order and clearness, to fight against indolence, waste, disorder, cruelty, vice, and every form of his and our enemy, death, first and chiefest in ourselves but also in all mankind, and to bring about the establishment of his real and visible kingdom throughout the world.

And that idea of G.o.d as the Invisible King of the whole world means not merely that G.o.d is to be made and declared the head of the world, but that the kingdom of G.o.d is to be present throughout the whole fabric of the world, that the Kingdom of G.o.d is to be in the teaching at the village school, in the planning of the railway siding of the market town, in the mixing of the mortar at the building of the workman's house. It means that ultimately no effigy of intrusive king or emperor is to disfigure our coins and stamps any more; G.o.d himself and no delegate is to be represented wherever men buy or sell, on our letters and our receipts, a perpetual witness, a perpetual reminder. There is no act altogether without significance, no power so humble that it may not be used for or against G.o.d, no life but can orient itself to him. To realise G.o.d in one's heart is to be filled with the desire to serve him, and the way of his service is neither to pull up one's life by the roots nor to continue it in all its essentials unchanged, but to turn it about, to turn everything that there is in it round into his way.

The outward duty of those who serve G.o.d must vary greatly with the abilities they possess and the positions in which they find themselves, but for all there are certain fundamental duties; a constant attempt to be utterly truthful with oneself, a constant sedulousness to keep oneself fit and bright for G.o.d's service, and to increase one's knowledge and powers, and a hidden persistent watchfulness of one's baser motives, a watch against fear and indolence, against vanity, against greed and l.u.s.t, against envy, malice, and uncharitableness. To have found G.o.d truly does in itself make G.o.d's service one's essential motive, but these evils lurk in the shadows, in the la.s.situdes and unwary moments. No one escapes them altogether, there is no need for tragic moods on account of imperfections. We can no more serve G.o.d without blunders and set-backs than we can win battles without losing men. But the less of such loss the better. The servant of G.o.d must keep his mind as wide and sound and his motives as clean as he can, just as an operating surgeon must keep his nerves and muscles as fit and his hands as clean as he can. Neither may righteously evade exercise and regular was.h.i.+ng--of mind as of hands. An incessant watchfulness of one's self and one's thoughts and the soundness of one's thoughts; cleanliness, clearness, a wariness against indolence and prejudice, careful truth, habitual frankness, fitness and steadfast work; these are the daily fundamental duties that every one who truly comes to G.o.d will, as a matter of course, set before himself.

5. THE INCREASING KINGDOM

Now of the more intimate and personal life of the believer it will be more convenient to write a little later. Let us for the present pursue the idea of this world-kingdom of G.o.d, to whose establishment he calls us. This kingdom is to be a peaceful and co-ordinated activity of all mankind upon certain divine ends. These, we conceive, are first, the maintenance of the racial life; secondly, the exploration of the external being of nature as it is and as it has been, that is to say history and science; thirdly, that exploration of inherent human possibility which is art; fourthly, that clarification of thought and knowledge which is philosophy; and finally, the progressive enlargement and development of the racial life under these lights, so that G.o.d may work through a continually better body of humanity and through better and better equipped minds, that he and our race may increase for ever, working unendingly upon the development of the powers of life and the mastery of the blind forces of matter throughout the deeps of s.p.a.ce. He sets out with us, we are persuaded, to conquer ourselves and our world and the stars. And beyond the stars our eyes can as yet see nothing, our imaginations reach and fail. Beyond the limits of our understanding is the veiled Being of Fate, whose face is hidden from us... .

It may be that minds will presently appear among us of such a quality that the face of that Unknown will not be altogether hidden... .

But the business of such ordinary lives as ours is the setting up of this earthly kingdom of G.o.d. That is the form into which our lives must fall and our consciences adapt themselves.

Belief in G.o.d as the Invisible King brings with it almost necessarily a conception of this coming kingdom of G.o.d on earth. Each believer as he grasps this natural and immediate consequence of the faith that has come into his life will form at the same time a Utopian conception of this world changed in the direction of G.o.d's purpose. The vision will follow the realisation of G.o.d's true nature and purpose as a necessary second step. And he will begin to develop the latent citizen of this world-state in himself. He will fall in with the idea of the world-wide sanities of this new order being drawn over the warring outlines of the present, and of men falling out of relations.h.i.+p with the old order and into relations.h.i.+p with the new. Many men and women are already working to-day at tasks that belong essentially to G.o.d's kingdom, tasks that would be of the same essential nature if the world were now a theocracy; for example, they are doing or sustaining scientific research or education or creative art; they are making roads to bring men together, they are doctors working for the world's health, they are building homes, they are constructing machinery to save and increase the powers of men... .

Such men and women need only to change their orientation as men will change about at a work-table when the light that was coming in a little while ago from the southern windows, begins presently to come in chiefly from the west, to become open and confessed servants of G.o.d. This work that they were doing for ambition, or the love of men or the love of knowledge or what seemed the inherent impulse to the work itself, or for money or honour or country or king, they will realise they are doing for G.o.d and by the power of G.o.d. Self-transformation into a citizen of G.o.d's kingdom and a new realisation of all earthly politics as no more than the struggle to define and achieve the kingdom of G.o.d in the earth, follow on, without any need for a fresh spiritual impulse, from the moment when G.o.d and the believer meet and clasp one another.

This transfiguration of the world into a theocracy may seem a merely fantastic idea to anyone who comes to it freshly without such general theological preparation as the preceding pages have made. But to anyone who has been at the pains to clear his mind even a little from the obsession of existing but transitory things, it ceases to be a mere suggestion and becomes more and more manifestly the real future of mankind. From the phase of "so things should be," the mind will pa.s.s very rapidly to the realisation that "so things will be." Towards this the directive wills among men have been drifting more and more steadily and perceptibly and with fewer eddyings and r.e.t.a.r.dations, for many centuries. The purpose of mankind will not be always thus confused and fragmentary. This dissemination of will-power is a phase. The age of the warring tribes and kingdoms and empires that began a hundred centuries or so ago, draws to its close. The kingdom of G.o.d on earth is not a metaphor, not a mere spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain project; it is the thing before us, it is the close and inevitable destiny of mankind.

In a few score years the faith of the true G.o.d will be spreading about the world. The few halting confessions of G.o.d that one hears here and there to-day, like that little twittering of birds which comes before the dawn, will have swollen to a choral unanimity. In but a few centuries the whole world will be openly, confessedly, preparing for the kingdom. In but a few centuries G.o.d will have led us out of the dark forest of these present wars and confusions into the open brotherhood of his rule.

6. WHAT IS MY PLACE IN THE KINGDOM?

This conception of the general life of mankind as a transformation at thousands of points of the confused, egotistical, proprietary, partisan, nationalist, life-wasting chaos of human life to-day into the coherent development of the world kingdom of G.o.d, provides the form into which everyone who comes to the knowledge of G.o.d will naturally seek to fit his every thought and activity. The material greeds, the avarice, fear, rivalries, and ign.o.ble ambitions of a disordered world will be challenged and examined under one general question: "What am I in the kingdom of G.o.d?"

It has already been suggested that there is a great and growing number of occupations that belong already to G.o.d's kingdom, research, teaching, creative art, creative administration, cultivation, construction, maintenance, and the honest satisfaction of honest practical human needs. For such people conversion to the intimacy of G.o.d means at most a change in the spirit of their work, a refreshed energy, a clearer understanding, a new zeal, a completer disregard of gains and praises and promotion. Pay, honours, and the like cease to be the inducement of effort. Service, and service alone, is the criterion that the quickened conscience will recognise.

Most of such people will find themselves in positions in which service is mingled with activities of a baser sort, in which service is a little warped and deflected by old traditions and usage, by mercenary and commercial considerations, by some inherent or special degradation of purpose. The spirit of G.o.d will not let the believer rest until his life is readjusted and as far as possible freed from the waste of these base diversions. For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by great inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of his professors.h.i.+p or research fellows.h.i.+p, which exact an appearance of "practical"

results. Or he may be obliged to lecture or conduct cla.s.ses. He may be able to give but half his possible gift to the work of his real apt.i.tude, and that at a sacrifice of money and reputation among short-sighted but influential contemporaries. Well, if he is by nature an investigator he will know that the research is what G.o.d needs of him.

He cannot continue it at all if he leaves his position, and so he must needs waste something of his gift to save the rest. But should a poorer or a humbler post offer him better opportunity, there lies his work for G.o.d. There one has a very common and simple type of the problems that will arise in the lives of men when they are lit by sudden realisation of the immediacy of G.o.d.

Akin to that case is the perplexity of any successful physician between the increase of knowledge and the public welfare on the one hand, and the lucrative possibilities of his practice among wealthy people on the other. He belongs to a profession that is crippled by a mediaeval code, a profession which was blind to the common interest of the Public Health and regarded its members merely as skilled pract.i.tioners employed to "cure" individual ailments. Very slowly and tortuously do the methods of the profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of devoted men working as a whole under G.o.d for the health of mankind as a whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the "leech," with its crocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and illuminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing and economic life of the community.

And again quite parallel with these personal problems is the trouble of the artist between the market and vulgar fame on the one hand and his divine impulse on the other.

The presence of G.o.d will be a continual light and help in every decision that must be made by men and women in these more or less vitiated, but still fundamentally useful and righteous, positions.

The trouble becomes more marked and more difficult in the case of a man who is a manufacturer or a trader, the financier of business enterprise or the proprietor of great estates. The world is in need of manufactures and that goods should be distributed; land must be administered and new economic possibilities developed. The drift of things is in the direction of state owners.h.i.+p and control, but in a great number of cases the state is not ripe for such undertakings, it commands neither sufficient integrity nor sufficient ability, and the proprietor of factory, store, credit or land, must continue in possession, holding as a trustee for G.o.d and, so far as lies in his power, preparing for his supersession by some more public administration. Modern religion admits of no facile flights from responsibility. It permits no headlong resort to the wilderness and sterile virtue. It counts the recluse who fasts among scorpions in a cave as no better than a deserter in hiding. It unhesitatingly forbids any rich young man to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Himself and all that he has must be alike dedicated to G.o.d.

The plain duty that will be understood by the proprietor of land and of every sort of general need and service, so soon as he becomes aware of G.o.d, is so to administer his possessions as to achieve the maximum of possible efficiency, the most generous output, and the least private profit. He may set aside a salary for his maintenance; the rest he must deal with like a zealous public official. And if he perceives that the affair could be better administered by other hands than his own, then it is his business to get it into those hands with the smallest delay and the least profit to himself... .

The rights and wrongs of human equity are very different from right and wrong in the sight of G.o.d. In the sight of G.o.d no landlord has a RIGHT to his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not justified in drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free to spend the profits of a speculation as he will. G.o.d takes no heed of savings nor of abstinence. He recognises no right to the "rewards of abstinence," no right to any rewards. Those profits and comforts and consolations are the inducements that dangle before the eyes of the spiritually blind. Wealth is an embarra.s.sment to the religious, for G.o.d calls them to account for it. The servant of G.o.d has no business with wealth or power except to use them immediately in the service of G.o.d.

Finding these things in his hands he is bound to administer them in the service of G.o.d.

The tendency of modern religion goes far beyond the alleged communism of the early Christians, and far beyond the t.i.thes of the scribes and Pharisees. G.o.d takes all. He takes you, blood and bones and house and acres, he takes skill and influence and expectations. For all the rest of your life you are nothing but G.o.d's agent. If you are not prepared for so complete a surrender, then you are infinitely remote from G.o.d.

You must go your way. Here you are merely a curious interloper. Perhaps you have been desiring G.o.d as an experience, or coveting him as a possession. You have not begun to understand. This that we are discussing in this book is as yet nothing for you.

7. ADJUSTING LIFE