The Hearts of Men Part 6

CHAPTER X.

THE WAY OF LIFE.

Perhaps it does not matter. It may be that all this speculation about the First Cause, about the Ruling Power of the world, is unnecessary.

What matter if G.o.d be inscrutable, if He has given us commands for our lives that are clear, if He has laid down for us His will that we should follow. Even if Law be not a full explanation, even if a knowledge of all Law would not mean a knowledge of everything, what would this signify if we can see enough of the laws that govern our lives so to order ourselves as to reach the goal? Whether the Theist be right or the Buddhist, in his theories of the world, the main question with which we are concerned is ourselves. Has any religion a working code of life that is true, that is adapted to us as we are, that is not in conflict with facts and common sense? What matters its name or its supposed origin? Is there such a thing? So thought the man, turning from abstract ideas to real necessities. After all, what I and all men want is not abstract ideas, whether of G.o.d or Law, but present help and guidance. Has any G.o.d taught any believer a perfect code of life, has any Buddhist searcher discovered the natural Law of life? For if so I would know them. Never mind the whence or how, give me the facts.

It seemed to him, looking back in the beginning of faiths, that morals, that rules of life had no part there. When the Northman saw Thor in the thunder there was no moral code there. The Greek G.o.ds were frankly not so much immoral, which predicates a code of morals, as unmoral. They knew of no such thing. It is the same with all the early G.o.ds, with the Hindu G.o.ds and those of all other early beliefs. The Chin savage on the Burmese frontier sees G.o.ds in the great peaks, but these G.o.ds demand from him no moral observance, they impress upon him no moral standard.

All that the early G.o.ds demanded was fear, reverence, wors.h.i.+p. Even the Jehovah of the Jews asked at first only this. It is not till you get to the third commandment that conduct comes in, and the moral code was scanty. The early G.o.ds of all kinds, of all faiths, had no moral code either for themselves or man. They demanded only obedience and fear and wors.h.i.+p. The moral code came later.

It seems unnecessary now to consider whence they came, how they grew, why they became added to the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds, which was all that early religion meant. Some of that will come elsewhere. It is immaterial here which is only the man's search after a code, any code that would act. For it remains that all faiths when once they had left the elementary stage did add a code of conduct as part of their religion, saying it came from G.o.d, or was an immutable law, and tried to induce men to follow it by declaring that it alone would lead to happiness hereafter. All the greater faiths have these codes. "And I," said the man to himself as he searched, "I care nothing whence the code is supposed to have come, truly or falsely, as long as I find it. I want a guide to life as it is. Has any faith such a guide? For each declare that it alone has. Show me these rules to life."

The books showed him. They showed him codes of all degrees, from the simplest to the most complex, from the plain cult of courage, the very first and most necessary of all virtues, to the immensely complicated code of observances of the Brahmin; and outside religions there were the philosophies of Greece and Rome, of India and China, of Persia and Germany, and Scotland.

Now should man so order his life as to live righteously here, and to be of good repute before man and his own conscience? How shall a man so form himself here that if indeed there be a life hereafter he may enter it without fear? What are these codes?

It seemed to him that there ran in some ways a great sameness through the creeds, that up to a certain stage they differed but little. Courage against the foe, courage to face suffering, truth and honesty, and later mercy and compa.s.sion, charity of act and thought, courtesy and beauty of mind; these were the additions the faiths made, little by little, to the ground-work of reverence of the G.o.ds. And so they grew, adding bit by bit, as civilisation increased and necessity dictated. They added many of them sanitary rules, observances for was.h.i.+ng, for cooking, for choosing food, incorporating with religion whatever practice found useful, and thereby giving a sanct.i.ty which it would otherwise have lacked. Sometimes rules were added to preserve the race pure, as with the Jews or the Hindus, evolving in the latter religion into the vast system of caste that separates the different races, all of whom call themselves Hindus. With the two faiths as just mentioned the tendency was to narrowness and restriction, to the exclusion of other races; with others, such as the Mahommedan and Buddhist, it was to expansion, to the acceptance of other peoples, until at last some great Prophet arose to give coherence and form to the whole and include it in the sacred books.

So arose the codes, the man thought. But this hardly matters. What are the codes?

It seemed to him that out of all the faiths only two held codes that rose much above the level of savage conduct. We cannot go back to the codes of Moses or Mahommed; we cannot accept the narrow racial limitations of Hinduism; we have outgrown the simple ethics of Zoroaster and the Egyptians. The teachings of Confucius and Laotze are strange to us, and the philosophies, if they seem clear, are so singularly unconvincing. They lack so greatly all that appeals to mankind; they are so much codes in the head and not for the heart; they are as mathematical drawings compared to a work of art; they do not ring true.

And so there were quickly left for him only two, the codes of Christ and of Buddha, the examples of the two greatest prophets the world has known.

And between the teachings of the great Teacher who lived two thousand and five hundred years ago, and that of the man G.o.d of the Christians six hundred years later, what difference is there? They start from different beginnings, they work towards perhaps different ends; but in the methods, in the rules of life, what difference is there? That which was taught by the sea of Galilee is but the echo of the words spoken long before below the Himalayan Hills. They are the same, read them. The two greatest faiths the world has known, the two greatest teachers that ever came to man to help him in his need, have brought him the same message. Believe not in the world, believe not in wealth, in power, in greatness, in strength. These are not what man should seek. Nay, but leave the world behind you because it is all evil, all very evil.

Nothing of this world is of any value. In a man's heart is his greatest treasure. Make therefore your heart pure from the world. Leave it all and turn to G.o.d, to righteousness. Cultivate your own soul apart from all the pleasures of life. The other world can be gained only by abjuring this. Wealth and honour and ambition, all the glories of the world, are but traps to catch you. Even the loves we love are wrong. The Buddha left his wife and child. The Christ never married, and denied even his mother any love beyond that of a disciple. It is all the same.

Their lives, their teachings are the same.

The man sighed as he read. Surely, he said, these are hard things to believe, that the world is evil. No, but it is not evil. That a man can only fit himself for heaven by being unfit for earth. I cannot believe this. I have not changed since I thought this over as a boy. This is not a true code, not a true rule, not a true faith, whether Christian or Buddhist. I did not believe then, a boy; I do not believe now, a man.

The world is not evil. There is evil there, but so much of good. There are stains there truly, but so much of beauty. Do you think I can watch the sun rise, the daily marvel which is beyond words, and hate the world? Can I see the man I love, the men who have helped me, who have been with me, the men who are my friends, and say that they are of a world that is evil? And the women, the girls, the children, are their lives for us nothing? Are they of a world that we must abjure? It is never so. Truly, there are in these teachings, whether of the Christ or of the Buddha, much that is of beauty, much, so much that touches our hearts, I had at times fain believe. But I find in the world beauty also, beauty that comes as near, that comes nearer than they do. When a man is honest and honourable and true, and rises to great position, to be spoken well of by all men, is that an evil thing? Is the wealth that comes of the keen brain, the strong will, a calamity? Are our loves, our hopes, our fears but evil? Yet they are of the world. Beautiful as is the teaching, there are in the world things far more beautiful. I will never believe, never, that the world and flesh are partners to the Devil. I will never believe that.

"And more," said the man slowly. "No one ever does believe it--none but a very few. The world has rejected it always; not from wickedness, but because the teaching is never true. They do not acknowledge their disbelief. No! The Christians and the Buddhists maintain their faith by words. But in secret, in their own hearts, before the world, in the action of their own hands, have they ever acknowledged these beliefs?"

Neither the Christ nor the Buddha are the models men follow, because men are sure that, though there be truth in their teachings yet it is not all the truth, though there be beauty yet are there other beauties as great, nay greater than these. The world is never evil, and if it were, to follow these doctrines would not be the way to make it better.

Then the man turned from his books again to the world beneath him, he came to reality from dreams. I have learnt nothing? No, but I have learnt something. I have learned what I have yet to learn. And I have learned more. I know why I disbelieve, because I love the world as it is, and because I will never believe that what calls to my heart from there is wrong. The beauty of things is the truth of things. And in truth and beauty is the voice of G.o.d as surely, nay more surely than in the voice of any prophet of two thousand years ago.

CHAPTER XI.

HEAVEN.

"I am not getting on very well," he thought. "I have looked for three things, and two I am sure I have not found. I have found nowhere any explanation of the Universe, of the First Cause; I have found nowhere any true rule of life. Yet these are two of the three 'truths' that the faiths offer to me as inducements to believe. 'We will give you,' they say, 'a theory of this world and of its origin which is true, which will help you in this life because it will show you what you are and the world is, and whence you came. We will give you through this troublous life a guide that will never fail you, a staff that will never break.

And finally, if you believe, you shall attain after death the happiness that is without end.'"

So they promise, and of their promises I have tried two. Have I found that they give what they declare? Is there anywhere any belief of the First Cause that is true, that is the whole truth? There is none. And is there any guide to life that can be followed in sincerity and truth?

There is none. There remains only heaven. There remains only the bribe, the promise of happiness, if we will believe as they declare, if we will do as they say.

It may be that here is the secret, that I shall come now to the answer; it may be that this is the key to all. If there is in the heaven they promise us such a fulfilment of glory, such an appeal to our hearts that they cannot but answer, what matter the rest? Happiness is our end in life. For what do we strive all our days but for happiness, for truth, for joy, for the beauty of life? What matter that in the theory of the First Cause we can see no truth, that in the rule of life I can find only a contradiction of beauty, if in the end in heaven these are attained? The end, if the end be perfect, will reveal the truth and the beauty in the ways that are now hid. What is this heaven?

When we think of heaven, when with our eyes shut we try to recall all they have taught us of the Christian heaven, what are the images that come up? It seems as if we went back all those years to when we were little lads beside our mothers, and as the fire flickered across the unlit room, full of strange shadows, we said our childish prayers and leant our heads heavy with sleep upon her knee. It is our mothers that tell us of the heaven, whither they would that we should go, that urge us with imaginings of beauty to come to be "good." It is a childish heaven of which we learn, a heaven full of girl angels with white wings and floating dresses, of golden harps, of pearly gates, of everlasting song. There are, I think, no men there, only girls; no sheep, but fleecy lambs. It is a heaven that appeals only to them. And is it very different when we grow up? Indeed I think not. It is the same heaven always, the same conception full of childish things. Did you ever hear a sermon on the heaven, did you ever read a book, did you ever listen to a discourse that did not take you back again in memory to that far-off fire-lightened room of childhood? Surely there is nothing in all the world so babyish as the general idea of the Christian heaven. Can you imagine a _man_ there, a man with great deep voice and pa.s.sion-laden eyes, a man with the storms of life still beating on his soul amid these baby faces and white wings? "Ah," said the man, "they must make us into infants that we may enter their heaven. When I revolted against it as a boy as but a kindergarten, without even the distraction of being put in the corner, was I wrong?"

May be, for there are things beyond this. "In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." "The peace of G.o.d which pa.s.seth all understanding." "Where G.o.d shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." These are not childish things.

Happiness that hath no sorrow, light that knows no shadow, glory that never ends.

I read a book long ago; I have forgotten the name of it, I have forgotten who wrote it, and I remember that at the time I did not understand it. The book was on the subject of perfect happiness, on heaven, which is postulated as the ideal peace. And what this book tried to show--what, indeed, it showed, I think--was that happiness if _perfect_ was near akin to annihilation. The argument ran something like this. "You are happy in some particular employment, say in singing a hymn, in some particular att.i.tude, let us say in kneeling. If your happiness in this act and att.i.tude is perfect, they will endure for ever. You will pa.s.s eternity kneeling and singing the same hymn. For consider, Why do you ever change your acts, your att.i.tudes? Because a particular act or a certain att.i.tude has become wearisome. But if it be stated that your happiness is _perfect_ you can never feel satiety, never feel any desire for change. The wish for change is born of the feeling of wearisomeness. You have had enough of one thing, you want another. But if you are perfectly happy this cannot be. Life would become a monotony, a satiety near akin to death. And if indeed peace be the highest happiness, then would this perfect peace be so near annihilation that the difference would only lie in that your consciousness of happiness still remained." Thus did this writer show that if the Christian heaven be as declared, _perfect_ happiness, so it must be almost indistinguishable from death.

I do not think this writer had ever read of the Buddhist Nirvana, I do not remember that he ever even alluded to it. He was thinking of the Christian heaven and trying to make out what it was like, and that was what he found. He, taking the Christian ideal and working it to its inevitable conclusion, arrived at the same result as Buddhist teachers starting from such widely different premises have arrived at: the Christian heaven and the Buddhist peace are the same.

Readers of my former work, "The Soul of a People," will remember how the Buddhists arrive at Nirvana. It is the "Great Peace." Life is the enemy. Life is change, and change is misery. The ideal is to have done with life, to be steeped in the Great Peace. Thus do the purer ideas of the Christian heaven and the Buddhist heaven agree. It is the "Peace that pa.s.seth all understanding" for each.

And yet perfect happiness, sleep without waking, light without shadow, joy without sorrow, gaiety without eclipse. Can this ever be heaven? Let us look back on our lives, we who have lived, and let us think. Let us close our eyes that the past may come before us and we may remember.

What are the most beautiful memories that come before us, that make our hearts beat again with the greatest music they have known, that bring again to our eyes the tears that are the water of the well of G.o.d? What have been the greatest emotions of our lives? There has been struggle and effort, unceasing effort, crowned maybe with success, but maybe not, effort that we know has brought out all that is best in us, that we rejoice to remember. There will be no effort in heaven, only rest; there is no defeat, and therefore no victory, only peace. Therefore also, because we can have no enemies there we shall have no friends. Our friends! How we can remember them. We have loved them because we have hated others. But in heaven there is no hate, only an equality of indifference. Heaven is nothing but joy. But consider, has joy been the most beautiful thing in your life, is it joy that sounded the deepest harmonies? Remember how you have stood upon that faraway hillside and laid to rest your comrade beneath the forest shadows? Was it not beautiful what your heart sang to you while you said "Farewell," and tears came to your eyes? There are no farewells in heaven.

There are women you have loved, women whose eyes have grown large and soft as you have spoken to them in the dusk of evenings long ago. You have loved them because they were women. What will they be in heaven?

And the children! Think of that childless heaven. Think of the children who laugh and play, and come to you to laugh with them, who cry and come to you for comfort. They will require no comfort from you in heaven, and how much will you lose? The child angels are never naughty. They can never come to you and hide their heads upon your shoulder and say "I was wrong. I am very sorry. Please forgive me." None of these notes shall ever sound in heaven. There are no tears there. But do you not know that the greater beauties can only be seen through tears, which are their dew?

What is it that sounds the deeper notes of our lives? Is it suns.h.i.+ne, happiness, gaiety? Is it any attribute of the heavens of the religions?

Surely it is never so. It is the troubles of life, the mistakes, the sorrows, the sin, the shadow mysteries of the world, that sound in our hearts the greater strings.

And are these to be mute in your heavens? Are we to fall to lesser notes of eternal praise, of eternal thanksgiving? Prophets of the faiths, what are these heavens of yours? Is there in them anything to draw our hearts? Have you pointed to us what we really would have? Your sacred books are full of your descriptions, of your enticements; you have beggared all the languages in words to describe what you would have us long for. And what have you gained? Is there any one man, one woman, one child, not steeped in the uttermost incurable disease, in feeble old age, who would change the chances of his life here for any of your heavens? There is no one. Or if you were to say to a man, "Choose. You shall be young again, and strong, or you shall go to heaven." Which would he choose? Therefore, ye teachers of the faiths, are your promises vain. I do not believe in nor do I fear your h.e.l.ls, those crude places of fire and pitch and little black devils. I care not for your heavens; I would not go there, not to any of them, neither to the happy hunting ground, nor to heaven, nor to the garden of the Houris nor to Nirvana, _not if they be as you tell me they are_. Nor do I want to merge my ident.i.ty in the Infinite. This life is good enough for me, while I retain health and strength. I am not tempted. Nor is anyone tempted.

Whom have you persuaded? You know that you have enticed no one. No one is deceived. Men will die for many things, they will leap to accept death--but not for your heavens. All men _fear_ death and what is beyond, the righteous who you say have earned heaven no less than the unrighteous. All faiths have had their martyrs, but that is different.

They have died to preserve their souls, as soldiers die to preserve their honour, gladly. Even the G.o.dly do not believe. They will have nothing of your heavens. I cannot understand how either Christian or Buddhist came to imagine such unattractive, unreasonable heavens.

And so they have all failed. No religion gives us an intelligible First Cause, no religion gives us a code of conduct we can follow, no religion offers us a heaven we would care to attain.

There are many definitions of religion. I have written some on my first page. It will be seen that they all hinge on one of these ideas, either that religion is a theory of causation, or it is a code of conduct, or that it is concerned with future rewards and punishments.

But if indeed religion have any or all of these meanings, then is religion false, then are all religions false. And more, no one who thinks over the subject, no one who takes it seriously would believe any one of them, could take any as a satisfactory explanation. No one accepts any code of religious conduct as absolutely workable, no one is attracted by their heavens. I am sure of these things.

Then shall I sit down with Omar Khayyam and say:--

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about; but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went."

Shall I say all religion is but windy theory and no one cares for it?

Neither do I.

The man put down his books and laughed. No one believes? But every man believes, or would like to believe. Every man is at heart more or less religious. I see that in daily life as I go. Why? Why? What is it he finds? I will not give up. I will not come out at that same door. I will try again in a new line. I must be on the wrong road. Let me try back and consider. What is it in religion that we see and love and feel is true? Who are the people that we would be like? Is it the scientific theologian with his word-confusion about h.o.m.oiousios? Is it the Hindu sophist making theories of Brahm? Is it the Buddhist word-refiner speculating on Karma? Surely it is not any of these people. It is the street preacher crying to the crowd, "Come and be saved"; it is the peasant with bowed head in the sunset listening to the Angelus; it is the priest in his livelong lonely exile. These _are_ Christians, and their thoughts are the religion worth knowing. It is they who are near G.o.d. I care not for the intricate intellectual mazes a Hindu can make with his brain, but I care for the coolie. I can see him now, putting his little ghi before the G.o.d, giving out of his poverty to the mendicant. It is he who knows G.o.d, even if his G.o.d be but the G.o.d of the hill above him. And it is the woman crying at the paG.o.da foot for succour; it is the reverent crowds that look upon the paG.o.da while their eyes fill with tears; it is the Buddhist monk, far away beneath the hills, living his life of purity and example that I reverence. They _have_ religion. I will go to them and ask them what it is. I am sure it is not what the theologians of all creeds have told me. What do these poor know of thought and speculation? They do not think, they _know_.

What is it that they know? Not certainly what the professional divines tell me.

I do not believe these thinkers or their thoughts. If I believed that what they say is religion--is, in fact, so--I would have done with it.

That is where most men end. They ask the divines what religion is. The divines produce their theories and creeds. The enquirer looks and examines and reflects. For he says, "If the professional men don't know what their own faith is, who does?" But I will not end so. I _will_ know wherein the truth of religion lies. I will now go to those who know, because they _know_, not because they think. My books shall be the hearts of men.