ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)
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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901) |
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{The Wandering Jew 1893}
“Is Christianity Played Out?” - The Wandering Jew Controversy - 2
The Daily Chronicle. 1. Richard Le Gallienne’s third letter.
IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT? THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Pope may be as poor a creature as Mr. Buchanan pleases, but he possessed one quality at least which Mr. Buchanan would do well to cultivate: that of saying what he had to say in the fewest possible words, together with the inestimable virtue of keeping to the point. Mr. Buchanan seems to be proud of the ungainly generalisation “twaddle.” I suspect he uses it as a mild expletive. However, “The Essay on Man” is not necessarily “twaddle” because he says so. Not that I would or could claim for it that it is great literature, but literature it is by virtue of its style, and its perfect adjustment of means to ends. The effect on the reader in those six lines I had the temerity to quote is something over and above assent or dissent with the writer’s meaning: it is that of pleasure in the perfect expression—a pleasure at the same time deepened with the sense of the serious import of the matters expressed. However, it seems to me hopeless to discuss an artistic question with a man to whom “Paradise Regained” and “Lucile” are all one, and to whom the Adelphi is a temple of truth to life. The discussion of the religious question seems hardly more possible, as Mr. Morrison Davidson has very ably pointed out, with so erratic an opponent. The reader will bear me witness that I have endeavoured to keep close to the “essential” points under discussion. Mr. Buchanan, however, goes off at every invitation of the nymph Rhetoric, and whirls a mazy dance with her, garlanded with flowers of speech and drunk with Shelleyan ecstasy. When they have finished their turn together, he is found far away indeed from the starting-point, often right away on the other side. Mr. Morrison Davidson, every way more fitted to deal with him on such points than I, has brought him to book for some of his historical and economical inconsistencies. Even in his yesterday’s letter he gives himself away wholesale. First we have a Promethean outburst against the high gods; then, as if repentant after the rhetorical debauch, we hear the still small voice of sobriety: “I need hardly add that the mood which I have described is not my normal one; that, in other words, I hope and believe where others despair and doubt.” Then, in that moving picture of the dying (stage-) dog, we read that, with all his pain, “even in his suffering, he so loved his life, &c.” Surely that sounds rather as if life were a good thing after all. Looking back over a melodious past, the dog had probably the good sense to see that, whatever his sufferings had been, his various canine joys preponderated in the retrospect. Ah, to know the taste of a mutton-bone once more! or to be after the rats in the barn! Just one more set-to with the next-door terrier, and death were less bitter. The mystery of pain, as I said in my letter, is indeed the mystery of mysteries, but it is not to be solved by crude and flippant comparisons of the mysterious government of the world with earthly monarchical systems. Mr. Buchanan’s solitary backer “M.” may guffaw at it, as both he and Mr. Buchanan seem to have a taste for superannuated forms of humour; their favourite retort of “young, young,” for instance. Now, there is no gibe easier to answer than that of being “young,” nor is there any self-delusion deeper than that of men who suppose that because Solomon was blasé, blasé persons are necessarily Solomons. “Ah! you cannot put old heads on young shoulders,” is a beautifully adjustable remark, for it is no less lamentably true that you cannot put young heads on old shoulders. It is a mistake to assume the paternal. The paternal is never convincing. Mr. Buchanan talks of literary Innocents, babes, and sucking-bottles; but has he forgotten that it is out of the mouths of babes and sucklings whence truth is prophesied to come, and always has come? On the authority of his earlier books, I venture to say that Mr. Buchanan was a wiser man at twenty than he is to-day. But no more of this “twaddle” about being young, I pray you. It sounds so ludicrously like “sour grapes.” RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. P.S.—I am afraid “A Priest” invites me to a purely theological controversy. It was not my intention to raise, and I have no wish to engage on, such. However, at the moment I have only time merely to acknowledge his letter. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—When Mr. Buchanan began, I feared how he would end. It is the old question, after all, that he has asked—Why doesn’t God kill the devil? Robinson Crusoe could not say why, nor can we; but that is no reason why we should get into a rage because there are in the world a great many unpleasant things, and a great many unpleasant people. But Mr. Buchanan is now essentially a dramatist and a novelist, and it is his business to paint with a big brush and in strong colours; though even as a dramatist and a novelist he overdoes it when he more than suggests that London is a kind of preliminary hell, and that most of us are rudimentary demons, going about seeking whom we may devour. When some ruffian, crank, or fool explodes his dynamite, we try to calm down the man who declares that the greater part of the nation has a hand in it; and when a bank smashes, the wisest people refrain from asserting that the whole financial system of the country is rotten, or even that every man is only a lurking cheat: so when we see the squalor, the purposeless pain, the devilry of great cities, the need for reflection is urgent, lest the sad reckoning go all wrong. To-day, the misery of London is great, but it might astonish Mr. Buchanan if he could really know what is going on in Shadwell, Whitechapel, Bermondsey, and Bethnal-green, with perhaps many thousands of homes as happy in their way as his own; the strugglers used to their struggles, and bearing bravely and even cheerfully, deprivations that would drive Mr. Buchanan half mad. J. PAGE HOPPS. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I am a reader of your paper, and a working man; in fact, I may say, have been a very hard one all my life, and reading the letters about Christ or Christianity—I suppose it means the same thing—being played out, I have taken the liberty of sending these few thoughts of mine; but if you think they are hardly fit to put in your paper, why, just throw it in your waste-paper basket. A WORKING MAN. _____
The Daily Chronicle. 1. Robert Buchanan’s fifth letter.
IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT? THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I desired to stand aside from this discussion until the stream of general argument is exhausted, when, with your permission, I will say a few last words; but I must call attention, en passant, to the conduct of some of the disputants. Mr. Le Gallienne is hopeless; he persists in twaddling on and abusing the “plaintiff’s attorney,” and when even “A Priest” challenges him to an argument, retreats into a corner. Mr. Page Hopps, a nondescript parson, appropriates nearly everything I have said, and then recommends me to study it as his philosophy. Mr. Davidson, in a letter of undoubted excellence, finds fault with my “logic” for arguing that Jesus relied too much on human perfectibility, and then in the same breath arguing that Jesus discovered man to be “imperfect.” Was not my meaning clear: that Jesus started with a tremendous faith in the perfectibility of men, and of the success of his own mission, but that experience convinced him thoroughly of human imperfection? The only writer who touches the quick of the controversy is “A Working Man,” who tells us what the Spirit of Christ has been to him—a helper and a comforter. That, I have contended, Jesus has been to thousands. And why? Not on account of his fine moral teaching, which resembles the teachings of nearly every other great Spirit, but because of his promise that the sorrows of this world should be justified in another. Take away the bonus of immortal life, and Christianity is a need altogether unattractive to even the martyrs of the human race. ROBERT BUCHANAN. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Perhaps many people think that little good can result to religion by newspaper discussions, but one who is obliged to confess to being a baptised member of the Church of Christ can hardly let Mr. Buchanan’s extraordinary ideas of Christ pass without comment. H. ANSON. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Mr. R. Le Gallienne defines essential Christianity as “The belief in the beneficence of the Power who made us, in the spiritual significance and ultimate blessedness of existence, and the life for others.” This is pure Deism. Voltaire could have subscribed to every article of this essential Christianity. Nay, it can be accepted by every Mohammedan and every Jew. But is not this making Christianity so vague that by broad spreading it disperses into nothingness? If Christianity does not mean that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah of the Jews, what does it mean? Mr. Le Gallienne and many more are nowadays trading a new article under an old name, a proceeding I characterise as neither fair to the modern manufactures, the Freethinkers and Deists, or the old vendors, the Church. There is nothing distinctive about Mr. Le Gallienne’s Christianity. What I mean by it is what the world has meant by it for the past 1,800 years, a supernaturally given and supernaturally established system of doctrines intended to save men after they are dead. Is that supernatural system played out? That is the important question which deserves answering before any further attention is paid to the pretensions of the amiable gentlemen who are setting up an entirely new firm to trade on the good old name. SAT. BHAI. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—We can stand a good deal nowadays, but Robert Buchanan of Maresfield-gardens, alternately patronising and snubbing Jesus Christ, is a little too much even for nineteenth-century toleration! Yet we owe him thanks. We owe thanks to anyone, however offensive his arrogant self-assertiveness, who breaks into the monotonous self-gratulations of orthodox “Christianity,” with its sickening disregard of facts, and tells us point-blank that a Christianity which has constituted itself the patron of war, sweating, and speculation, and has promulgated a new Gospel of Success, is a failure—and a failure worthy of every vigorous epithet that the strong air of Hampstead Heath can inspire. But it is too much to ask us to regard the mouther of them as a “dispassionate observer of human progress”! And have we indeed to add to the long list of ravers who have wasted their blows on a hobgoblin Christianity, which was largely the product of their own distorted fancy, the name also of this last Scottish seer? Who is this man who so glibly undertakes to “shear Jesus the Christ of all supernatural pretensions,” and who so complacently pronounces him “almost perfect” but “far too sanguine,” and accuses him of trying to save mankind by “mere sentiment” and a love destitute of a “rational polity”? Are we expected to bow our heads to the patronising critic in his arm-chair, rather than to the Crucified on his cross? It has been remarked by Christians before this—and is indeed too sadly true—that “among the first to crucify him, were he to return among us, would be the members of his own Church”—yet not all, even of the Bishops! But are we, forsooth, to postulate that “Christianity has saved no living soul” simply because it has not succeeded in saving the soul of Mr. Robert Buchanan? One can fancy, Jesus, the criticised, saying with his gentle sarcasm to this modern Nicodemus: “Art thou, Robert Buchanan, indeed the teacher of Israel, and knowest not these few things following:— HENRY BAZETT. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Apropos of the discussion respecting the alleged failure of Christianity now appearing in your columns, would it not be well to ask the disputants what they mean by Christianity? It might prove that Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Hopps are not so far apart as they seem. As a simple matter of fact, would not any definition of Christianity that commended itself to 99-100ths of sincere professing Christians effectually bar the claim of either Mr. Hopps or Mr. Morrison Davidson to the title of Christian? N. _____
The Daily Chronicle. 1. Letter from ‘C.’
IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT? THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I presume that Mr. Robert Buchanan is a Scotchman; and I seem to hear throughout the stormy paragraphs of his “indictment of the creed of Christ” the ring of that dull fury, so much more monstrous than Torquemada, by which the respected champions of the Covenant supposed themselves to be defending God. I assume Mr. Buchanan does not love that narrow but effective creed, which with the passion of the orthodox for an assured basis of truth combined a hopeless blindness to the real meaning which the human tradition of the Church attaches to its dogmas. But the shadow of it is upon him. And when, assuming this to be Christianity and seeing all other creeds through its refraction, a man of a certain literary violence records his mighty protest, the attack will not lack energy: but it will be pointless. No man can successfully argue with that for which he has no sort of sympathy; and without desiring to be disrespectful to Mr. Buchanan, I will venture to say that his recent diatribes prove him to be as incompetent to understand the religion by which most civilised men have lived for a goodly tale of generations, as a Bushman would be to appreciate the Louvre. C. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I have no desire to add another word, but Mr. Buchanan seems “fearfully and wonderfully made.” He now tells us that I mainly wrote what he had already written. This throws the best light yet upon his curious depreciation of literature or letters, and suggests a question of psychology. Mr. Buchanan probably knows what he means: we only know what he writes: and it is quite possible that he has hidden his measured meaning under unmeasured language. J. PAGE HOPPS. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—When Mr. Buchanan says his “few last words” in this vital controversy—the most vital that I can remember—I beg he will concentrate his best attention on the real matter in issue. Christ’s “supernatural ideals” are also his, and nothing more need be said on that score. It is the “orb of rational polity” that is now alone in question. J. MORRISON DAVIDSON. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—It appears that Mr. Buchanan has a difficulty in recognising and discussing the facts brought forward by some of his opponents. Allow me, therefore, to ask Mr. Buchanan to meet me in the Bedford Congregational Lecture-hall on any convenient evening for the discussion of the question, or in a more limited form, the facts of British Christianity. This would enable us both to keep to facts in the presence of competent judges, and you could make a special provision for supplying your own columns with the result. If Mr. Buchanan prefers to have the discussion in his theatre, I am equally willing to meet him there. Mr. B., I believe, is of Highland ancestry; so am I; and allow me to assure him that there are many of our countrymen who will not regard it as beneath his poetic, dramatic, or literary greatness to accept this challenge from the humble son of a Free Kirk, Scottish Presbyterian.—Yours, &c., N. MACNEILL, Congregational Minister. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—A singular contest on the subject of the failure or non-failure of Christianity has arisen in your columns, owing to the review of the work of a gentleman who was once well described in a weekly paper as going through the world raving because God has not made him a genius. Mr. Buchanan, the Proteus of literature, who once sought to hound Rossetti out of the hearts of the lovers of the beautiful and true, now apparently seeks to hound Christ out of the hearts of Englishmen. He and some other correspondents assume calmly that Christianity is “played out” because it has not achieved the task they have assigned to it. It has not made the world happy; it has not produced a heaven on earth; it has not secured a universal eight-hour day—therefore it has failed. They seem blind to the fact that this is the interpretation of the aim of Christianity invented by a few sentimental optimists of latter days. I do not profess to know much, but I am inclined to think that if I want to know what Christianity means I had better take the opinion of those who speak with some authority—of Christians now living, of Christians dead, of the voice of the vast Church speaking through the ages; perhaps even the utterances of the Founder of Christianity himself may be allowed to have some weight. I find all these agreeing that the aim of Christianity—whether right or wrong—is not to improve the world, but to save the soul, not to regenerate society, but to prepare citizens for a city beyond and above our ken. Hence we cannot say whether Christianity is a failure or a success till we are beyond the veil. Of course, Christ and the Church and the majority of Christians may be mistaken—but so may Mr. Robert Buchanan and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, R. C. FILLINGHAM. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Christianity can hardly be said to be played out, because it has not been tried yet. It is probable that if it were applied as a ruling principle to national and international affairs, the “world” would promptly come to an end. Political economy, society in the popular sense, commerce as at present conducted, politics as at present understood, and a variety of institutions upon which the whole system of our civilisation rests and the world (apart from mere matter) depends, would in such a case cease to exist. Now Jesus of Nazareth most clearly pointed out that the world would certainly continue to conduct its affairs in its won way (the present way) till a certain radical change took place, which he said would inaugurate an entirely new state of things. But he declared that neither he, nor any one else, knew when this would happen. Jesus, however, promised that the result of faithful endurances on the part of his disciples and friends would be to them personally infinite peace and conscious blessedness. Christianity therefore appears to be a personal and private matter not admitting of analysis and statistical tabulation, or even of scientific definition. Neither is it dependent upon religious views, dogmas, or creeds. Jesus said that the pure in heart should see God. They do. Whether purity of heart would be still attainable if, as some people want us to believe, Christianity were no longer a vital force, is another question. Mr. Buchanan’s Wandering Jew is about as like Jesus of Nazareth as he is like Pontius Pilate, but the extremely absurd part of the whole thing is that this phantom raised by Mr. Buchanan is made to lament as a catastrophe utterly unexpected precisely that which the real Jesus foretold would happen. Could not some kind friend induce Mr. Buchanan either to read his Bible before writing, or else to write about something else?—I am, yours faithfully, J. B. HYDE. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—I have admired Mr. Robert Buchanan since his boyhood. In that old quadrangle of Glasgow College (alas! gone like a dream) we used to look up to him with “awful eye.” We were all proud of him, and the local papers said “The immortal wreath will be his.” It was only on examination day we could say to him, “Art thou become as one of us?” &c., for we felt that Buchanan’s presence simply beggared every man’s chance of the Glasgow “Newdigate,” when, luckily, he was off to London after David Gray. SCOTCH CALVINIST. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—And pray, in reply to Mr. W. S. Glinwarton, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is responsible for “the unchristian transportation” of Mr. Buchanan’s consumptive monkey? I always thought the Creator of the universe, being omnipotent, must of necessity be responsible for everything happening in it; but, according to Mr. Glinwarton, he ceases to be answerable for the fate of an animal transported from its natural habitat to a climate unsuited to it! Was there ever more precious nonsense? Either man and his actions are absolutely the outcome of the Creator’s will, or the Creator is not omnipotent—which is it, Mr. Glinwarton, please? To speak of man as a being that is independent of the will of the Omnipotent, and that can act outside the sphere of its compulsion, betrays a state of intellectual muddle which one would fain hope is rare within the walls of Trinity College, Cambridge.—I am, &c., HORACE HUMPHRYS. _____
The Daily Chronicle. Pulpit References: Mr. T. P. O’Connor’s Views. Letters: Extracts from other letters.
IS CHRISTIANITY PLAYED OUT? PULPIT REFERENCES. At several places of worship in the metropolis yesterday the discussion which has been carried on in these columns for several days past was the subject of special reference. We append brief reports of several discourses “In Defence of the Faith”:— THE REV. DR. CLIFFORD. Preaching at Westbourne-park Chapel last night to a crowded congregation, the Rev. J. Clifford, LL.D., said:—The discussion which has taken place in the columns of The Daily Chronicle during the past week on the question, “Is Christianity Played Out?” is full of interest in itself for the display it gives of mind battling with mind and of spirit with spirit, and it is also full of interest as far as the contents of the correspondence are concerned; but to me it is a sign of the new era upon which we are entering, in which the mind of Jesus Christ is taking possession of a wider area of human thought, life, and action. Christianity was born in controversy, and Christ was a controversialist. He had such a power of intellectual defence, and his ability in answering questions and replying to attacks was so great, that we read that no man durst ask him anything. But the interest in this controversy is quickened by the thought that it occurs in the columns of a great daily newspaper. Many will recollect that Mr. John Morley founded the Fortnightly Review with two purposes, one to get rid of “Mr. Anonymous,” and the other to secure the discussion of all sorts of subjects from all sorts of sides. After occupying the chair for fourteen years, Mr. Morley stated in his valedictory address that the benefits of the abolition of the anonymous were not so great as was expected, but the gains in the discussing all sorts of topics far exceeded his expectations. How much greater must be the importance of a discussion like the present, which was carried on, not in the pages of a ponderous review published at a high price and read only by a few, but in the columns of a great daily paper, whose readers numbered hundreds of thousands, and stimulating them to proper interest in the subject. I rejoice that this controversy has occurred. There are exaggeratons in it, personalities have been indulged in, and things stated which, perhaps, the writers wish had not been said; but such a residuum of good influence has been left. The end of Christianity had been foretold often in the past. Hume and Voltaire had done so, and Bishop Butler stated that the opponents of Christianity did not argue about it as a living thing, but as one already dead, and whose decease they were accounting for. I look upon these controversies as simply the protest of the human spirit against having eternal truths wrapped up in human conventionalities, and reading over the letters in The Daily Chronicle, as I have done, carefully, I find that the question which underlies them all is: “Who is the authentic Jesus Christ? How may we know him? By what method may we be sure that we are expressing his thoughts? By what process are we to find out his Christianity from amongst all the claimants to that position?” There ought to be no difficulty in answering these questions if we adopt a scientific process and reason as we should about similar problems. But the question was also asked. Was any Christianity of use to them considering the failures, and the great mass of human misery which confronts us? In what way was the Christianity of Jesus Christ responsible for the failures which have been done in his name? How are we to condemn Christianity because Judas Iscariot betrayed his Lord with thirty pieces of silver? Mr. Buchanan states that Jesus Christ, while being a great moral triumph, has been an intellectual failure. If Christ has failed in the direction of mind, he has failed elsewhere. If he cannot give satisfaction to the thought of man, he cannot bring satisfaction to the heart of man. Jesus Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to life. He is the revealer of the future, and has taught us that death is the halting-place in the journey of the human spirit from time to eternity. According to Mr. Buchanan, the teaching of Christ has delayed human progress instead of advancing it, by directing men’s minds from this world altogether to the world which was to come. But the strange feature about this allegation is its inopportuneness. He might have made it thirty years ago; indeed, the charge carried us back to the time of Kingsley and Maurice, and the men who have gone to work for the purpose of bringing the powers of the Christian Churches upon the evils of to-day. The true cry of the Church to-day is, “Let’s get heaven here and now.” But the charge is more than inopportune; it is directly opposed to the teaching of Christ himself. Said he, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his justice shall be added to you.” Seek it with the greed that people seek for food and clothing, and get it established among men so that the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven. True there are stragglers and laggards in the great army whose thoughts are fixed on heaven alone, but to-day the attention of the Church is being directed more and more to this world, whose sin and misery is not and cannot be thereby the will of God. Then, says Mr. Buchanan, Christ’s teaching is nebulous. Why his teaching is so clear that I have never had the slightest hesitation in knowing what he wants done. My only difficulty is how to do it. He did turn from this world, but not from its lilies, not from nature in its revelation of the divine power and of divine wisdom, not from the sparrow as it fell from the housetop, nor from the cornfield, for in these he found the material and bases upon which he founded his divinest teachings. But he did turn from the world of cold formality, of hypocrisy, of injustice, of cruelty, and of wrong-doing. The teachings of Christ have been canvassed by some of the cleverest writers in London during the past week, and the discussion has brought before us the conclusion that Jesus Christ is seeking to get the rule of right and justice established on this earth, that he himself is bringing us nearer to the time when that will happen. _____
THE REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES. Yesterday afternoon the Rev. H. Price Hughes took “Is Christianity Played Out?” as his subject for the conference at St. James’s Hall. There was a very large and enthusiastic audience, who frequently broke into cheers as point after point was scored by the speaker. Mr. Price Hughes began by briefly sketching Mr. Buchanan’s poem, “The Wandering Jew,” in which Christ is represented as for ever wandering through this world because God has disappointed him and refused to save the world from its misery. The spirit of man with the attendant spirit of death sit in judgment on Christ because he has turned the glad earth into a lazar-house, and because he has taken away the comfort of death, which is no longer the end of all things. All the martyrs to Christian zeal, the Jews, Mahommedans, Buddhists who have been slaughtered in the name of Christ, rise as witnesses against him, and he admits that he is utterly disappointed, and that he has utterly failed. The poem contains two distinct attacks. It attacks Christ for raising false hopes and for exciting strife; it attacks the Eternal Father for allowing the earth to be full of misery. Mr. Price Hughes went on to say that it would do all Christians good to ponder this attack on historical and ecclesiastical Christianity, for it was still in our midst. How had the Christians treated the pure and saintly Hypatia, in later times Bruno and Gallileo, and still later George Hollyoak, who was imprisoned for months in the name of Christian justice? and how had we treated Josephine Butler, the noblest woman of our age? We must beware lest we are again inadvertently betrayed into similar conduct. While deprecating the wars of the past, the time has not yet come for us to say that we are not as our forefathers were. Although a great uprising of brave men and women swept the Contagious Diseases Act from our statute books, our heathen and degraded government in India makes provision for the immorality of the soldiers, and wherever a regiment is sent harlots are sent with them. If this is Christianity, then down with Christianity as the vilest thing on earth! Lord Kimberley also says that we cannot afford to give up the opium traffic with China. We cannot afford to give up the damnation of the Chinese! No wonder they call us “foreign devils.” While the liquor traffic is in our midst, and while ministers of the Prince of Peace justify war, no wonder that the noblest souls turn from ecclesiastical Christianity with loathing and contempt. We admit that the name of Christ is associated with every kind of devilry, but for this Jesus Christ is no more responsible than Mr. Buchanan himself. In the height of the French Revolution Mdme. Roland exclaimed, “O, Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name,” and we can also say, “O Christ! what damnable crimes are committed in thy name.” But Christ is only responsible for his life and his teaching. When did he do wrong to any man? When did he utter one word to justify wrong? There is nothing in this terrible poem to give intelligent Christians fear. Christ’s claims rest on no Church, but always he says, “Believe in me, abide in me, obey me, come to me.” If the miserable ecclesiastical history of Christianity leads us to turn away from everything and everyone, and look into the face of Christ, the very wrath of man will praise God. Mr. Buchanan grossly exaggerates the extent of this ecclesiastical apostacy. He devotes seventy pages to a vivid description of crimes done in the name of Christ; to the blissful record of deeds done in his name only six pages. He brings every witness, from earliest years down to Voltaire, against Christianity; on his side, only John the Baptist, St. John the Divine, Mary Magdalene, and St. Paul. Were there no martyrs? Is there no Church of the whole world? Are there no missionaries? No saintly Catherine of Sienna? No Bunyan, Howard, Wesley? No sweet St. Francis? Not one witness since St. Paul? Not one in all that vast multitude who have escaped for ever from sin and misery, and washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb? Never was there a more unjust and contemptible triumph! Mr. Buchanan says the judge was the spirit of man; he must have been Judge Jeffreys of the bloody assizes! Mr. Buchanan has grossly misrepresented the state of social life which he says was destroyed by Christ. So far from being represented by the bright picture which he draws, we have only to turn to classical writers to see the awful condition of mankind before the coming of Christ. He has also grossly underestimated what Christianity has done since Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea. We can best estimate this by dividing the human race into men, women and children. Man owes everything to Christ. Before he came man was nothing, the working man was a slave, democracy did not exist. The followers of the carpenter of Nazareth were known as the friends of slaves. It was Livingstone, a Christian missionary, who first roused the conscience of Europe about the slaves of Africa. It was Clarkson in England and Garrison in America who freed the slaves there. The race owes the death-blow of slavery to Christianity. Women, too, owe everything to Christ. Before he came they were despised, the property and chattels of their husbands. It is Christianity which has produced such women as Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, Lady Henry Somerset and Miss Willard. Before Christ came, in civilised countries children were murdered wholesale. Now Christianity has produced Benjamin Waugh and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. For the first time in human history all the law of the land is used to defend helpless children against the cruelty of their parents. Even Mr. Buchanan’s fierce protest against wrong could not have been written had he not seen in the face of Jesus Christ the infinite pity and the victorious love of God. _____
THE REV. G. W. KEESEY. The Rev. G. W. Keesey, preaching last night at the Sutherland Congregational Chapel, Walworth-road, devoted his sermon to the discussion on Christianity which has appeared in The Daily Chronicle during the past week. His text was Mark x., 42, which, he said, was part of the words of Christ illustrating his system, doctrine and polity. During the past week or two another Daniel had come to judgment, and the wonder was that the Christian Church had survived until now. The rush of rhetoric was so great that if it had its way it must inevitably carry the Church of Christ off. But the world was not built upon rhetoric, nor simile, nor metaphor, nor upon a disregard of logical sequence. What they had heard through the columns of The Daily Chronicle during the week consisted of all this and of but little more. He, for one, was not going to deny that Robert Buchanan, play-writer and poet, had some ground upon which to rest his theses; but he was going to contend that, despite Mr. Buchanan’s accusations, Christ’s claims were good, and the Christian doctrine, as shown in the New Testament teaching, was reliable, was worthy of credence, and was worthy of living up to. He did not know that play-writers were the best judges of Christianity. A man who seldom went to a theatre was not the best judge of the ordinary influences of a theatre; and a man who was found more in the theatre than in a church of Christ, than in a church of any denomination, could hardly be the best judge of what went on in the Church of Christ. A man whose time was devoted to literature of what he might call a somewhat æsthetic kind could hardly be up to date in literature of a heavier and more philosophical kind. Consequently, although a great stir had been made by Mr. Buchanan’s letter it did not follow that all he said was verifiable, or that they as Christian people should be much troubled thereby. Having given a résumé of Mr. Buchanan’s letters, he said that Christ was spoken of as a divine anarchist. By the term anarchist they did not mean a man of peace or a man who was willing to abide by the laws of his country. If Christ was a divine anarchist it hardly seemed compatible with this condition—that he should at the same time have been a man of peace. That Christ was not a revolutionary demagogue was evident from the fact that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it. As to Christ’s social system, let them look at his commandment as to tribute. The preacher went on to contend that the Church of Christ was fulfilling his teaching, and that, where the Christian Church led the Secularists followed. _____
MR. T. P. O’CONNOR’S VIEWS. In a striking article in the Weekly Sun headed “The Age of Unrest,” Mr. T. P. O’Connor says: “Some well-known literary men—Mr. Robert Buchanan at their head—are discussing in The Daily Chronicle the question whether ‘Christianity is played out’? I have not much confidence in the discussion of such subjects in the columns of a daily newspaper; but, then, we live in days when the Press is gradually taking with millions of people the place of the pulpit, and when every question is debated in the familiar columns of the daily journal. It is a portentious sign of the times—for good or for ill—that no question is considered too profound, too sacred, too much apart, for the freest and plainest discussion in the cheapest newspaper. Whether one likes it or not, therefore, it is impossible to avoid dealing with topics of even so sacred and stupendous a character as the place of Christianity in our modern civilisation. . . . . If one were to be really plain spoken, one would have to confess that so far as the attendance at Christian worship or the practice of the ordinary ritual of Christian Churches were concerned, the greater part of the population in our large towns have practically ceased to be Christian. In my many years of life and experience in London I have rarely known a case where the people of the small middle-class houses went to church; and it is quite notorious that working men have ceased to go there. If you pass through the working-class quarters on a Sunday in nearly every great city—especially in London—you will find the people in the streets. Some are making their late purchases; some are bringing home their dinners from the cook-shops; some are walking with their sweethearts; none are even thinking of darkening the doors of the church or the chapel. If money could do it, this ought to be the most religious country in the world. There is scarcely a State in the world in which money is poured out so lavishly for the support of the edifices and the preachers of religion. We have splendid cathedrals; we have richly endowed sees; our prelates are ranked as equal with the highest in the land; and in the Dissenting communities the preacher is the social equal and the political and temporal as well as the spiritual guide of the majority of his congregation. And yet—and yet there are these millions, standing not angrily—it would be almost better that they had feeling enough about it to be angry—but in absolute apathy, and in genuine and unaffected indifference, at the doors of the lordly cathedral and the modest chapel. . . . What the workers—and especially the poor and the weary and the fallen amongst them—have a right to expect from the ministers of all religions, the one thing which will make any impression on their hearts and imaginations—is that the clergyman shall definitely and finally take up the cause of the masses against privilege, monopoly, tyranny—the unjust division of the fruits of labour. Every Christian minister—by the mere fact of his being a Christian minister—ought to be an agitator—a demagogue in the true sense of the term, a leader and even an inciter of the people against all wrong. It is in the cabins, in the attics, in the slums, even in the dens of vice that he ought to find his place, not in the castle of the broad-acred lord or the comfortable suburban residence of the well-to-do merchant. In every struggle for the increase of the people’s rights, liberties, and enrichment, the minister of every creed ought to be counted on with certainty to be on the popular side. If no other leader can be found to begin a Labour struggle, he ought to come forward in the cassock, the soutane, or the Geneva robe. It will be said that these are ‘counsels of perfection,’ that clergymen, after all, are but human beings, and that the sacrifice asked of them is too great. Be it so. If clergymen enter any Church merely for the sake of the comfort, the ease, or the enjoyment they get out of it, then they have no right to rail when their lay fellow-men laugh in their faces at their preachings of a gospel of self-denial, poverty, and war against social inequalities. They must take their choice, these men who call themselves the servants and priests of Christ. Either they must take up their cross like him whom they profess to follow, or be content to range themselves in the ranks of common men who make no pretences to superior virtue, and do not array themselves in the garb of the religious teacher. Until there is some such correspondence between preaching and practice in the teachers of Christianity, the Churchman may preach to the rich landowner, and the Dissenting clergyman to the comfortable soap-boiler; but the workman will roam the open streets or haunt the public-house.” _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—Does Mr. Buchanan seriously flatter himself that we are going to accept his summing up of a case which has so manifestly gone against him? It is neither for him nor for me, but for public opinion to decide between him and me and the many writers who have come forward in support of my position—that Christianity, in its essence, apart from creeds and Churches, is more than ever influential amongst us to-day. As a bit of “bluff” his letter is charming, as it is unconvincing. But surely the humour of the position must appeal to him, each of us claiming the various testimony as corroborative of our own particular contention. Personally, I am more than satisfied with the upshot of my criticism that “The Wandering Jew,” apart from questions of literary style, was futile because of the unsoundness of its theme. Christ was not a phantom amongst us to-day I said, and I gave good reasons for my statement. Mr. Buchanan laid most stress on what he considers the social failure of Christ. It has been shown by several correspondents that it is precisely in his social influence to-day that we must find the most convincing signs of his vitality. Mr. Buchanan has all through entirely begged the question put to him at the beginning as to the meaning of the Socialistic movement. One has but to read such an exposition of it as Mr. Williams Morris’s “News from Nowhere” to see that the joyous subjection of self (which, so far as our social life is concerned, is the very first law of Christianity) is also the first law of Socialism. Our social life so far has been a failure; not because we have followed the altruistic teachings of Christ, but simply because we haven’t. We are moving rapidly on the way to give them their first serious trial. RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. _____
THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,—You will perhaps allow me, as President of the National Secular Society, a little space in this discussion, especially as both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Le Gallienne have highly praised Secularism when it does not take the form of sneering at—well, at what superstition those gentlemen elect to retain. G. W. FOOTE.
[Note: This letter also appeared in The Freethinker on 28th January, 1893.] _____
The Comtesse Hugo (a relative of Victor Hugo) writes:—Jesus of Nazareth is what he is. But no one of us is bound to accept submissively either the San-Peter’s or the Luther’s qualification of that unparalleled figure. Your correspondents, however clever and trustworthy they may be, are right or wrong, but it is no duty or business of ours to endorse their opinions. The only point of general interest in the course of the present polemics would be—the provocation of a conscientious examination of history since Augustus’ reign, the acknowledgment following it, that the beautiful and holy doctrine of Jesus was since his sacrifice brought to practice by only a few select persons, . . despite the great talking which was made everywhere and by all sorts of people about Christianity, and despite the high trumpetings which were blown by those who could afford trumpets. My conclusion is that the time is come to see in the facts the excellence of the Golgotha martyr’s teachings, the highest and premier feature of which being brotherhood. I declare, therefore, the play not to be out, but simply ready for performance.” _____
“Is Christianity Played Out?” - The Wandering Jew Controversy continued
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