Christianity and its Founder – The Views of a Thoughtful Man (With which I fully concur)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his book “The Stark Munro Letters” writes about a conversation with an Anglican Curate who had called upon him to enquire if he was going to attend the Parish Church nearby. Having established that Doyle was not a Roman Catholic, a Dissenter, or a little lax in his church attendance the conversation continued:-

“At least you cling fast, no doubt, to the fundamental truths of Christianity?”

“I believe from the bottom of my heart,” said I, “that the founder of it was the best and sweetest character of whom we have any record in the history of this planet.”

But instead of soothing him, my conciliatory answer seemed to be taken as a challenge. “I trust,” said he severely, that your belief goes further than that. You are surely prepared to admit that he was an incarnation of the God-head?”

I began to feel like an old badger in his hole who longs to have a scratch at the black muzzle which is so eager to draw him.

“Does it not strike you,” I said, “that if he were but a frail mortal like ourselves, his life assumes a much deeper significance? It then becomes a standard towards which we might work. If, on the other hand, he was intrinsically of a different nature to ourselves, then his existence loses its point, since we and he start upon a different basis. To my mind it is obvious that such a supposition takes away the beauty and the moral of his life. If he was divine then he COULD not sin, and there was an end of the matter. We who are not divine and can sin, have little to learn from a life like that.”

“He triumphed over sin,” said my visitor, as if a text or phrase were an argument.

“A cheap triumph!” I said. “You remember that Roman emperor who used to descend into the arena fully armed, and pit himself against some poor wretch who had only a leaden foil which would double up at a thrust. According to your theory of your master’s life, you would have it that he faced the temptations of this world at such an advantage that they were only harmless leaden things, and not the sharp assailants which we find them. I confess in my own case, that my sympathy is as strong when I think of his weaknesses as of his wisdom and his virtue. They come more home to me, I suppose, since I am weak myself.”

“Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what has impressed you as weak in his conduct?” asked my visitor stiffly.

“Well, the more human traits – ‘weak’ is hardly the word I should have used. His rebuke of the Sabbatarians, his personal violence to the hucksters, his outbursts against the Pharisees, his rather unreasoning petulance against the fig tree because it bore no fruit at the wrong season of the year, his very human feeling towards the housewife who bustled about when he was talking, his gratification that the ointment should be used for him instead of being devoted to the poor, his self-distrust before the crisis – these make me realise and love the man.”

“You are a Unitarian then, or rather, perhaps, a mere Deist?” said the curate with a combative flush.

“You may label me as you like,” I answered (and by this time I fear that I had got my preaching stop fairly out); “I don’t pretend to know what truth is, for it is infinite, and I finite; but I know particularly well what it is NOT. It is not true that religion reached its acme nineteen hundred years ago, and that we are forever to refer back to what was written and said in those days. No, sir; religion is a vital living thing, still growing and working, capable of endless extension and development, like all other fields of thought. There were many eternal truths spoken of old and handed down to us in a book, some parts of which may indeed be called holy. But there are others yet to be revealed; and if you are to reject them because they are not in those pages, we should act as wisely as the scientist who would take no notice of Kirschoff’s spectral analysis because there is no mention of it in Albertus Magnus. A modern prophet may wear a broadcloth coat and write to the magazines; but nonetheless he may be the little pipe which conveys a tiny squirt from the reservoirs of truth. Look at this!” I cried, rising and reading my Carlyle text*. “That comes from no Hebrew prophet, but from a ratepayer in Chelsea. He and Emerson are also among the prophets. The Almighty has not said His last to the human race, and He can speak through a Scotchman or a New Englander as easily as through a Jew. The Bible sir, is a book which comes out in instalments, and ‘To be continued,’ not ‘Finis,’ is written at the end of it.

My visitor had been showing every sign of acute uneasiness during this long speech of mine. Finally, he sprang to his feet, and took his hat from the table.

“Your opinions are highly dangerous, sir,” said he. “It is my duty to tell you so. You believe in nothing.”

“Nothing which limits the power of the goodness of the Almighty,” I answered.

“You have evolved all this from your own spiritual pride and self-sufficiency,” said he, hotly. “Why do you not turn to the Deity whose name you use? Why do you not humble yourself before Him?”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“You said yourself that you never went to church.”

“I carry my own church about under my own hat,” said I. “Bricks and mortar won’t make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple. I am sorry to see that you differ from Him on that point.

… After all, it might have been better had I listened to what he had to say and refused to give my own views. On the other hand, truth MUST be as broad as the universe which it is to explain, and therefore far broader than anything which the mind of man can conceive. A protest against sectarian thought must always be an aspiration towards truth. Who shall dare to claim a monopoly of the Almighty? It would be an insolence on the part of a solar system, and yet it is done every day by a hundred little cliques of mystery mongers. There lies the real impiety.

*”One way or another all the light, energy, and available virtue which we have does come out of us, and goes very infallibly into God’s treasury, living and working through eternities there. We are not lost – not a single atom of us – of one of us.”