CONCLUSION

While such developments have been possible in the fierce light of political strife, the process of disintegration and decomposition has proceeded in society at large till unbelief can hardly be reckoned a singularity. Within the pale of all the Christian Churches dogmatic belief has greatly dwindled, and goes on dwindling: and “Christianity” is made to figure more and more as an ethical doctrine which has abandoned its historical foundations, while preserving formulas and rituals which have no part in rational ethics. The mythical cosmogony out of which the whole originally grew is no longer believed in by any educated person, though it is habitually presented to the young as divine truth. Thousands of clergymen, economically gripped to a false position, would gladly rectify their professed creeds, but cannot; because the political and economic bases involve the consent of the majority, and changes cannot be made without angry resistance and uproar among the less instructed multitude of all classes. The Protestant Churches collectively dread to figure as repudiating the historic creed; while the Roman Catholic Church, conscious of the situation, maintains a semblance of rigid discipline and a minimum standard of instruction for its adherents, counting on holding its ground while the faculty of uncritical faith subsists. Only by the silent alienation of the more thoughtful and sincere minds from the priesthood can the show of orthodoxy be maintained even within the Catholic pale.

In all orders alike, nevertheless, the “practice” of religion decays with the theory. The Churches are constantly challenged to justify their existence by social reforms and philanthropic works: no other plea passes as generally valid; and it is only by reason of a general transference of interest from religious to social problems that the decay of belief is disguised. “Piety,” in the old sense, counts relatively for little; and while orthodoxy is still a means of advantage in political life, religion counts for nothing in international relations. In the war of 1899–1902, “Bible-loving” England forced a quarrel on the most Bible-loving race in the world; and at the time of the penning of these lines six nations are waging the greatest war of all time irrespectively of racial and religious ties alike, though all alike officially claim the support of Omnipotence. In Berlin a popular preacher edifies great audiences by proclaiming that “God is not neutral”; and his Emperor habitually parades the same faith, with the support of all the theologians of Germany—the State supremely guilty of the whole embroilment, and the deliberate perpetrator of the grossest aggression in modern history. On the side of the Allies “Christianity” is less systematically but still frequently invoked. On both sides the forms of prayer are officially practised by the non-combatants, very much as the Romans in their wars maintained the practice of augury from the entrails of sacrificed victims; and “family prayer” is said to be reviving.

Everywhere, nevertheless, the more rational, remembering how in the “ages of faith” deadly wars were waged for whole generations in the very name of religion, recognize that Christianity furnishes neither control for the present nor solution for the future; and that the hope of civilization lies in the resort of the nations to human standards of sanity and reciprocity. The ties which hold are those of fellow-citizenship.

There can be no doubt among rationalists that if modern civilization escapes the ruin which militarism brought upon those of all previous eras, the principle of reason will continually widen its control, latterly seen to be everywhere strengthening apart from the dangerous persistence of militarist ideals and impulses. When it controls international relations, it will be dominant in the life of thought. In the words of a great fighter for freethought, “No man ever saw a religion die”; and there are abundant survivals of pre-Christian paganism in Europe after two thousand years of Christianity; but it seems likely that when the history of the twentieth century is written it will be recognized that what has historically figured as religion belongs in all its forms to the past.

The question is sometimes raised whether the age of decline will be marked by movements of active and persecuting fanaticism. Here, again, the answer must be that everything depends upon the general fortunes of civilization. It is significant that a number of clerical voices proclaim a revival of religion as a product of war, while others complain that the state of struggle has a sterilizing effect upon religious life. While organized religions subsist, there will always be adherents with the will to persecute; and from time to time acts of public persecution occur, in addition to many of a private character. But in Britain public persecution is latterly restricted to cases in which the technical offence of “blasphemy” is associated with acts which come under ordinary police jurisdiction. After the unquestionable blasphemies of Arnold and Swinburne had to be officially ignored, it became impossible, in the present stage of civilization, that any serious and decent literary indictment of the prevailing creeds should be made a subject of persecution; and before long, probably, such indictments will be abandoned in the cases of offenders against police regulations.