THE NEW GOSPEL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 24, 13 June 1901, Page 17

THE NEW GOSPEL.

At long intervals the New Zealand public are favored with sundry controversial expositions or statements — usually under the cover of a coy anonymity — of what is vaguely termed ' the new gospel ' These are, for the most part, bits of noisy declamation against Christianity as effete, inoperative, or dead ; and vapid claims as regards the conquering march of the new code of ' scientific morality.' These anonymous flare-ups are in practically every instance marked by a baptismal innocence of knowledge of philosophy and of the literature of the subject which they presume to treat ; by a singular haziness of expression ; by much heat and little light ; and by the bumptious assertiveness that usually betokens that intellectual hollowness which is noisy and that mental rawness which is proud.

A recent discussion on the ' new gospel ' in a Wanganui paper is no exception to the general rule just stated. Right reason demonstrates, and the facts of human history and experience prove, that ' from whatever point of view we examine the problem of human life, either in its physical, psychological, or moral aspect, if we are to reach a solid ground on which to rear a theory of existence, of knowledge, or of morals, we are logically driven to the recognition of God. Without a Supreme Cause of all being, the existence of the universe is an absurdity. Without the existence of a Supreme, Absolute, Substantial Truth, every attempt at building up a theory of knowledge results in a mesh of scepticism out of which reason cannot escape, and in which, without contradicting itself, it cannot rest. Without the recognition of a Supreme, Intelligent Ruler at the back of the moral law, morality is without a meaning, and life without value to make it worth living.' The distinction between right and wrong is founded in the order of the universe, which is a reflection of Divine Nature as conceived by the Divine Intelligence. And it is eternal and unchangeable, because God is what He is, and cannot vary in His Nature.

Carlyle rallied the all-knowing sciolists of his day w»th the caustic remark that to them ' the creation of the world is little more mysterious than the cooking of a dumpling.' They have endeavored to do away with the Kingdom of God on earth and to preach in its stead the coming of the Kingdom of Man. But the apostles of the new dispensation find, somehow, that the world cannot hobole along without some substitute for religion and the moral law. Mr. Harrison stoutly argues that religion must remain. So does Professor Clifford. So likewise does Mr. Spencer. The last-mentioned authority tells us in the Xwetcenth Century for January, 1884, that science will by no means dissipate religious beliefs and sentiments ; that 1 whatever of mystery is taken from the old interpretation is added to the new ' ; and that religion is the highest outcome of human development. Society cannot go on without ] aw — without some rules of the game of life, * rules which,' as a recent writer says, ' have prevented the world from presenting on a large scale the drama of the Kilkenny cats.' The apostles of rationalism must therefore either promulgate a new code, or find a new basis for the old one. It is significant that they have, as a rule, accepted the general human feeling that, in themselves, the time-honored old laws of conduct are right; that 'justice, brotherly love, self-denial, truthfulness, and decency must continue to rule the world if the world is to go on creditably. . . The great difficulty is that, as there is no use in a law unless there be something to make men keep it, some motive power must be found to replace the fear of the Lord, formerly held to be the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him, which was its end.'

But here the real trouble began. The apostles of •scientific morality ' mutually devour each others' theories

and claw each others' eyes out. Neither is there any agreement among them, and the Simple Simon who sets out in search of the god of the ' new gospel ' will find himself chasing a rainbow or endeavoring to imprison a straggling moonbeam. And yet the crude anonymities who dash forth with their smoky rush-lights to show the world the noonday sun, treat this ' new gospel ' as a definite, settled, demonstrated, and unified code, and represent it as having already captured the citadels of human thought and action and swept the gr^at Creator — tho one Foundation of the whole moral law — into a dustbin. The voices of the new apostles are, it is true, heard amid the din of human things. But it is a confusion of tongues as bad as that of Babel, and the sounds that reach our ear-drums from their conventicles are utterances of angry strife and flat contradiction. To style such a medley of contradictory opinions a ' gospel * or a ' system ' of any kind — old or new, scientific or unscientific — would be about as appropriate as calling a jumble of disjointed boulders a palace or a dozen quarrelling cornerboys a disciplined standing army.

Professor Clifford, for instance, places the essence of the ' new gospel ' in what he terms * Cosmic Emotion.' By this awesome-looking term he, however, means nothing more than wonder, delight, and poetic rapture at the universe as sueh — at the starry heavens, the fleeting clouds, the rolling ocean, the towering mountain-tops. But Mr. Harrison and all the other apostles fall upon him and beat him with extreme violence for his silly sophisms and his absurd expressions. And they want to know if Cosmic Emotion is likely to be of much practical benefit to mankind ; or if the widow and orphan will be comforted by talking of sunsets ; or if the roue will control hh passions by contemplating, say, the path of a comet. 'It would,' as Mr. Harrison appropriately remarks, ' be like offering roses to a famished tiger, or playing a sonata to a man in a fever.' Mr. Spencer is confident that the ' new gospel ' should consist in the worship of the Unknowable (with a capital U, of course), as a substitute for God. But this was voted rank heresy by Sir James Stephen, Mr. Harrison, and sundry other apostles of the new dispensation. They will not accept the Unknowable as a god, whether it be spelled with a capital Uor a small v. The unlucky deity was attacked with Mr. Harrison's best satire in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1884. 'The religion of the Agnostic,' says he, w comes " to the belief that there is a sort of a something, about which 1 can know nothing." ' 'To make a religion out of the Unknowable,' he adds, ' is far more extravagant than to make it out of the Equator, or the Binomial Theorem.' And elsewhere he cruelly says that the new Spencerian god who is called in to dethrone the Almighty, 1 might be a gooseberry or a parallelopiped.' And — {• i though himself a rationalist — he tells how the anguished i'esh-widowed mother, the helpless, the oppressed, the poor, . .c sorrowful, come to those false prophets and will-o'-the- \> isps and exclaim : ' " Your men of science would rout our I.i iests and silence our old teachers. What religious faith <lo you give us in its place ?" And the philosopher replies ( 1 l ls full heart bleeding for them), and he says : " Think on the Unknowable." ' Which, by the way, reminds us of Sydney Smith imploring a distressed friend to ' think of the multiplication table.'

Mr. Harrison himself holds fast to a revised version of Comte's ' Religion of Humanity ' (capitals and all). The object of this particular variant of the ' new gospel ' is the cult or worship of Humanity — 'recognising your duty to your fellow-men on human grounds.' The object of this cult is not the 4 elect ' of Humanity, but the ' millions, who people the earth and subdue it.' But Sir James Stephen and Professor Huxley and Mr. Spencer and Professor Clifford and other rationalistic leaders speak with marked disrespect about Mr. Harrison's most unfortunate god. They refuse, with positive rudeness, to offer incense to the new deity ; and, instead they assail his godship's nostrils with the assafcetida of ridicule and contempt. Professor Huxley, for instance, describes him as ' a gigantic fetish.* Sir James Stephen says : ' Humanity, with a capital H, is neither better nor worse fitted to be a god than the Unknowable, with a capital U. They are as much alike as six and half a dozen. Each is a barren abstraction to which

any one may attach any meaning he likes.' And he very correctly declares that this speckled variety of the * new gospel ' can never fulfil the function of a religion, since it cannot ' govern men and societies.' And Mr. Spencer is shocked at the ' astounding claims ' of Mr. Harrison's strange creed and describes it as a ' retrogressive religion.'

Sir James Stephens waxes indignant at the idea of worshipping humanity, even with a capital H clapped, like a respectable new silk hat, upon its unkempt head. * Mankind,' he exclaims in the Nineteenth Century for June, 1884, •is the object of our worship ! — mankind ; a stupid, ignorant, half-beast of a creature. For my part I would as soon worship the ugliest idol in India.' And he compares Mr. Harrison's ' awe and gratitude to humanity ' to ' a childless woman's love for a lap-dog.' And verily Humanity, in the mass, makes a mighty frowsy god : a composite of all sorts of contradictories — of a few saints, a goodly bulk of indifferently good people and a great mass of indifferently bad or downright wicked ; of Caucasians, pigtailed heathen Chinees, Kalmuk Tartars, Solomon Island head-hunters, unwashed Herbert River cannibals, and so on. The composite god made out of the ' average ' of this strange collection of races and characters would be a mungrel of a bilious-looking yellow hue, with eyes and eye-browe slightly aslant, spindle-shank legs, education wofully below the Second Standard, and morals — well, the less said ab»ut them the better. But we should keep a sharp eye upon the till if this mere ' average ' of 1,400,000,000 ' humans ' were about. Such is the god for whom Mr. Harrison would supplant the Almighty — the great Creator of all things ! Verily, one wonders why he went to the trouble of fashioning a new idol when he had ready to hand such beauties as Jupiter and Baal and Mumbo-Jumbo. They had the small merit of having at least the god-like characteristic of strength.

We mention these things (1) to show the fatuity of the dogmatic bumptiousness of the petty advocates of the * new gospel ' who air their shallow theories from time to time in the secular Press. Incidentally, our summary treatment of the subject will serve to point out the ruinous depths of folly into which otherwise learned men may fall when they leave the sure ground of experimental science and — with unscientific prepossessions against the idea of an all-wise and all-seeing Creator and First Cause to Whom each of us is personally responsible — set themselves to spin theories as to the origin and destiny of the human race. Mr. Harrison — rationalist though he — states that k the essence of religion ' is 'to govern and unite bodies of men.' He grants that ' theologies long did ' this ; that they did it ' for twenty or thirty centuries ; and that they accomplished this so well that * the hallowed name of religion Has meant in a thousand languages, man's deepest convictions, his surest hopes, the most sacred yearnings of his heart, that which can bind in brotherhood generations of men, comfort the fatherless and the widow, uphold the martyr at the stake, and the hero in bis long battle.' Sir James Stephen, for all his advocacy of one variety of the rationalistic ' new gospel,' admits that Cheist, the Saviour of the world, has continued through long ages ' the object of passionate devotion and enthusiasm ' to untold millions of people, only because He ha 1 * been believed by them to be living and to possess authority which (we may add) His acts had proved to be divine. Founders of ' new gospels,' if they hope for success, would do well to furnish to the world credentials somewhat after the manner of Him who died on Calvary. Sir James Stephen emphasised this homely truth by telling the wellknown story of /Talleyrand, who, when asked by a Frenchman what was the b&t means of floating a new creed, recommended the inquirer to ' try the effect of being crucified and rising again on the third day.'