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.
Even if the same sentiment of charity were kept alive in a Faithless World, I do not think its ministrations would be continued on the same lines as hitherto. The more kind-hearted an atheist may be (and many have the kindest of hearts) the less, I fancy, he could endure to go about as a comforter among the wretched and dying, bringing with him only such cold consolation as may be afforded by the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest. Every one who has tried to lighten the sorrows of this sad world, or to reclaim the criminal and the vicious, knows how immense is the advantage of being able to speak of Gods love and pity, and of a life where the bereaved shall be reunited to their beloved ones. It would break, I should think, a compassionate atheists heart to go from one to another death-bed in cottage or workhouse or hospital, meet the yearning looks of the dying, and watch the anguish of wife or husband or mother, and be unable honestly to say: This is not the end. There is Heaven in store. But Mr. Justice Stephen speaks, I apprehend, of another reason than this why Christian charity must not be expected to survive Christianity. The truth is (though he does not say it) that the charity of Science is not merely different from the charity of Religion; it is an opposite thing altogether. Its softest word is Væ Victis. Christianity (and like it I should hope every possible form of future religion) says, The strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak. Blessed are the merciful, the unselfish, the tender-hearted, the humble-minded. Science says, The supreme law of Nature is the Survival of the Fittest; and that law, applied to human morals, means the remorseless crushing down of the unfit. The strong and the gifted shall inherit the earth, and the weak and simple go to the wall. Blessed are the merciless, for they shall obtain useful knowledge. Blessed are the self-asserting, for theirs is the kingdom of this world, and there is no world after it.
These Morals of Evolution are beginning gradually to make their way, and to be stated (of course in veiled and modest language) frequently by those priests of science, the physiologists. Should they ever obtain general acceptance, and Darwinian morality take the place of the Sermon on the Mount, the old droit du plus fort of barbarous ages will be revived with more deliberate oppression, and the last state of our civilization will be worse than the first.
Behind all these changes of public and general concern, lies the deepest change of all for each mans own heart. We are told that in a Faithless World we may interest ourselves in friendship, and politics, and commerce, and literature, science, and art, and that a man who cannot occupy every waking moment of a long life with some or other of these things must be either very unfortunate in regard to his health, or circumstances, or else must be a poor creature.
But it is not necessary to be either unfortunate oneself or a very poor creature to feel that the wrongs and agonies of this world of pain are absolutely intolerable unless we can be assured that they will be righted hereafter; that there is a God who judgeth the earth, and that all the oppressed and miserable of our race, aye, and even the tortured brutes, are beheld by Him. It is, I think, on the contrary, to be a poor creature to be able to satisfy the hunger of the soul after justice, the yearning of the heart for mercy, with such pursuits as money-getting, and scientific research, and the writing of clever books, and painting of pretty pictures. Not that which is poorest in us, but that which is richest and noblest, refuses to occupy every moment of a long life with our own ambitions and amusements, or to shut out deliberately from our minds the Riddle of the painful Earth. A curse would be on us in our lordly pleasure-house were we to do it.
Even if it be possible to enjoy our own good fortune regardless of the woes of others, is it not rather a pitiful wreck and remnant of merely selfish happiness which it is proposed to leave to us? The world, we are told, is full of pleasant people and curious things, and most men find no difficulty in turning their minds away from its transient character. Even our enjoyment of pleasant people and curious things must be held, then, on the condition of reducing ourselves philosophers that we are, or shall be to the humble level of the hares and rabbits!
Regardless of their doom the little victims play.
Surely the happiness of any creature, deserving to be called Rational, depends on the circumstance whether he can look on Good as the final goal of ill, or believe Ill to be the final goal of any good he has obtained or hopes for; whether he walk on a firm, even if it be a thorny road, or tread on thin, albeit glittering ice, destined ere long to break beneath his feet? The faith that there is an Order tending everywhere to good, and that Justice sooner or later will be done to all, this, almost universal, faith to which the whole literature of the world bears testimony, seems to me no less indispensable for our selfish happiness than it is for any unselfish satisfaction in the aspect of human life at large. If it be finally baulked, and we are compelled to relinquish it for ever at the bidding of science, existence alike on our own account and that of others will become unendurable.
In all I have said hitherto, I have confined myself to discussing the probable results of the downfall of religion on men in general, and have not attempted to define what they would be to those who have been fervently religious; and who we must suppose (on the hypothesis of such a revolution) to be forcibly driven by scientific arguments out of their faith in God and the life to come. To such persons (and there are, alas! many already who think they have been so driven, and to whom the sad result is therefore the same) the loss must needs be like that of the darkening of the sun. Of all human sorrows the bitterest is to discover that we have misplaced our love; labored and suffered in vain; thrown away our hearts devotion. All this, and much more, must it be to lose God. Among those who have endured it there are, of course, as we all know, many who have reconciled themselves to the loss, and some tell us they are the happier. Yet, I think to the very last hour of life there must remain in every heart which has once loved God (not merely believed in or feared Him) an infinite regret if it can love Him no more; and the universe, were it crowded with a million friends, must seem empty when that Friend is gone.