From the general results on the community, I now pass to consider those on the life of the individual which may be expected to follow the collapse of Religion.
Mr. Mallock in his New Republic, made the original and droll remark that even Vice would lose much of its savor were there no longer any morality against which it might sin. As Morality will probably not expire though its vigor must be considerably reduced by the demise of its Siamese twin, Religion, it would seem that Vice need not fear, even in such a contingency, the entire loss of the pleasures of disobedience. Nevertheless (to speak seriously), it is pretty certain that the temperature of all moral sentiments will fall so considerably when the sun of religion ceases to warm them that not a few will perish of cold. The Faithless World will pass through a moral Glacial Period, wherein much of our present fauna and flora will disappear. What, for example, can become, in that frigid epoch of godlessness, of Aspiration, the sacred passion, the ambition sainte to become perfect and holy, which has stirred at one time or other in the breast of every son of God; the longing to attain the crowning heights of truth, goodness, and purity? This is surely not a sentiment which can live without faith in a Divine Perfection, existing somewhere in the universe, and an Immortal Life wherein the infinite progress may be carried on. Even the man whose opinions on the general unimportance of religion I am venturing to question in these pages, admits frankly enough that it is not the heroic or saintly character which will be cultivated after the extinction of faith. Among the changes which he anticipates, one will be that the respectable man of the world, the lukewarm, nominal Christian, who believed as much of his creed as happened to suit him, and led an easy life, will turn out to have been right after all, Precisely so. The easy life will be the ideal life in the Faithless World; and the life of Aspiration, the life which is a prayer, will be lived no more. And the lukewarm men of the world, in their easy lives, will be all the easier and more lukewarm for leading them thenceforth unrebuked by any higher example.
Again, Repentance as well as aspiration will disappear under the snows of atheism. I have written before on this subject in this Review,3 and will now briefly say that Mr. Darwins almost ludicrously false definition of Repentance is an illustration of the inability of the modern scientific mind to comprehend spiritual phenomena; much less to be the subject of them. In his Descent of Man, this great thinker and most amiable man describes Repentance as a natural return, after the satisfaction of selfish passions, to the instinct of sympathy and good will to his fellows which is still present and ever in some degree active in a mans mind And then, a sense of dissatisfaction will inevitably be felt (Descent of Man, p. 90). Thus even on the showing of the great philosopher of evolution himself, Repentance (or rather the dissatisfaction he confounds with that awful convulsion of the soul) is only to be looked for under the very exceptional circumstances of men in whom the instinct of sympathy and good will to their fellows is ever present, and moreover reasserts itself after they have injured them in flat opposition to ordinary human experience as noted by Tacitus, Humani generis proprium est odisse quem læseris.
The results of the real spiritual phenomenon of Repentance (not Mr. Darwins childs-play) are so profound and far-reaching that it cannot but happen that striking them out of human experience will leave life more shallow. No soul will survive with the deeper and riper character which comes out of that ordeal. As Hawthorne illustrated it in his exquisite parable of Transformation, men, till they become conscious of sin, are morally little more than animals. Out of hearts ploughed by contrition spring flowers fairer than ever grow on the hard ground of unbroken self-content. There bloom in them Sympathy and Charity for other erring mortals; and Patience under suffering which is acknowledged to be merited; and lastly, sweetest blossom of all! tender Gratitude for earthly and heavenly blessings felt to be free gifts of Divine love. Not a little, perhaps, of the prevalent disease of pessimism is owing to the fact that these flowers of charity, patience, and thankfulness are becoming more and more rare as cultivated men cease to feel what old theologians used to call the exceeding sinfulness of sin; or to pass through any vivid experiences of penitence and restoration. As a necessary consequence they never see the true proportions of good and evil, joy and grief, sin and retribution. They weigh jealously human Pain; they never place human Guilt in the opposite scale. There is little chance that any man will ever feel how sinful is sin, who has not seen it in the white light of the holiness of God.
The abrogation of Public Worship was mentioned above as one of the visible consequences of the general rejection of religion. To it must here be added a still direr and deeper loss, that of the use of Private Prayer whether for spiritual or other good, either on behalf of ourselves or of others; all Confession, all Thanksgiving, in one word all effort at communion of the finite spirit with the Infinite. This is not the place in which this subject can be treated as it would require to be were the full consequences of such a cessation of the highest function of our nature to be defined. It may be enough now to say that the Positivists in their fantastic device of addresses to the grand être of Humanity as a substitute for real prayer to the Living God, have themselves testified to the smaller the subjective part of the value of the practice. Alas for our poor human race if ever the day should arrive when to Him who now heareth prayer, flesh shall no longer come!
With Aspiration, Repentance, and Prayer renounced and forgotten, and the inner life made as easy as the outward, we may next inquire whether in the Faithless World the relations between man and man will either remain what they have been, improve or deteriorate? I have heard a secularist lecturer argue that the love of God has been a great hindrance to the love of man; and I believe it is the universal opinion of Agnostics and Comtists that the enthusiasm of Humanity will flourish and form the crowning glory of the future after religion is dead. It is obvious, indeed, that the social virtues are rapidly eclipsing in public opinion those which are personal and religious; and if Philanthropy is not to be enthroned in the Faithless World, there is no chance for Veracity, Piety, or Purity.
But, not to go over ground which I have traversed already in this Review, it will be enough now to remark that Mr. Justice Stephen, with his usual perspicacity, has found out that there is here a rift within the lute, and frankly tells us that we must not expect to see Christian Charity after the departure of Christianity. He thinks that temperance, fortitude, benevolence, and justice will always be honored and rewarded, but
If a purely human morality takes the place of Christian morals, self-command and self-denial, force of character shown in postponing the present to the future (qy., selfish prudence?) will take the place of self-sacrifice as an object of admiration. Love, friendship, good-nature, kindness, carried to the height of sincere and devoted affection will always be the chief pleasures of life, whether Christianity is true or false; but Christian charity is not the same as any of these or of all of them put together, and I think, if Christian theology were exploded, Christian charity would not survive it.