Letters to a missionary

C. K. nCDEN

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

LETTERS TO A
MISSIONARY

BY

R. F. JOHNSTON

AUTHOR CF "BUDDHIST CHINA," ETC.

London :

WATTS & CO.,

17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. 4

1918

£Og0
TfcH

CONTENTS

Introduction

Letter

I

Letter

II

Letter

III

Letter

IV

Letter

V

Letteb

VI

Letter

VII

Letteb

VIII

Index of Names

Vll

1

16

33

1G

05

90

118

138

loo

1026531

INTRODUCTION

It seems desirable to explain the circumstances under
which the following Letters came to be written.

Early in 1917 I received a circular letter from the
Rev. Stanley P. Smith, a missionary stationed at
Tsehchowfu, in the south-east of the Chinese province
of Shansi. In this letter Mr. Smith states that as long
ago as 1885 lie became the leader of a small party of
young men (known as " the Cambridge Seven ") who
decided to devote their lives to missionary work in
China. For seventeen years Mr. Smith worked in con-
nexion with the well-known society known as the China
Inland Mission, and then (about the year 1902) was
asked to retire from the .Mission owinc to his " views
on eschatology " — in other words, his refusal to believe
in an everlasting lull. According to Mr. Smith's own
belief, "eternal punishment11 is an undoubted truth,
because clearly taught in the Bible; he denies, however,

thai the term translated by the word "eternal" neces-
sarily means "everlasting." While continuing, there-
fore, to have absolute faith in the Scriptural doctrine
of hell, he maintained that it had been misunderstood,

that the torments of 1 i«-l 1 would not, in the strict sense,

\astjbr evert and thai "the revealed consummation of
things was universal reconciliation, when the great God
and Father would become 'all* /'// <■/// his intelligent

vii

viii INTRODUCTION

creatures." From the point of view of the China
Inland Mission, which officially held and taught the
doctrine to which Mr. Smith objected, his milder inter-
pretation of the Scriptural texts was heretical ; it was
necessary, therefore, that he should cease to co-operate
with that Mission in bringing the "glad tidings" of
Christianity to the people of China.

Though dismissed from the Mission, Mr. Smith ex-
plains that his relations with it continued to be friendly.
He carried on his own missionary work independently,
but a vague understanding existed between them that
if the Mission ever saw fit to moderate the rigour of its
official views on the subject of hell, or even to allow
its individual members to hold and express views of a
milder type, Mr. Smith's independent mission would
then be re-united to the parent body.

During the twelve ensuing years Mr. Smith saw
reason for hoping that the milder views advocated by
himself were beginning to prevail, and he confidently
looked forward to a reconciliation. In 1914, however,
his hopes were rudely extinguished by the action taken
by the Rev. Henry W. Frost, Director for North
America of the China Inland Mission. In that year
this high authority published in the official organ of
the Mission a statement of doctrine which made it
quite clear that the China Inland Mission (commonly
called the C.I.M.) still adhered to the theory of hell-
torments in its most savage form. The damned were
to include not only " unsaved " Christians, but also all
the untold millions of "heathen" who "had never
heard of Christ" ; the sufferings of the damned, more-
over, were to be conscious sufferings and were to last
literally for ever. It was further declared that these

INTRODUCTION ix

views were "fundamental," "necessary" and "essential"
to the Christian faith, and that "to have fellowship
with Christians in corporate service " who held a milder
creed was " unwarrantable from the standpoint of the
individual, and dangerous from the standpoint of the
truth."

Mr. Smith vigorously protested against this horrible
doctrine, and felt that unless it were retracted or modi-
fied he could never consent to allow the work of his
independent mission to pass into the hands of the
C.I.M., because in his opinion "nothing less than the
character of God and the honour of Christianity were
at stake." The object of his circular letter was to
enlist the support of people who sympathized with the
attitude he had taken up. "There are two possible
courses," he says, "now open to me. One is, to extend
the work of the mission, if God will touch the hearts of
some of His children to support it. The other is, we
might possibly rejoin the C.I.M. if toleration is granted.
The founder, Mr. Hudson Taylor, believed the time
would come to pass when it would be possible to
admit it."

It is clear from various passages in Mr. Smith's letter
that, apart from his sturdy disbelief in the literal end-
lessness of hell, his religious views arc substantially those
of old-fashioned Protestant orthodoxy. By describing
his views as " old-fashioned " I mean that they appear
to have been wholly uninfluenced by modern Biblical

criticism, whether "higher" or textual, and thai his

general doctrinal position serins to be practically identi-
cal with thai of Protestant England before the days of
Colenso and the publication of Essays and Reviews.
With Mr. Smith's general position, however, the letters

x INTRODUCTION

that follow are only indirectly concerned ; they deal
primarily with certain moral and other problems arising
out of his controversy with the C.I.M. on the subject of
the Christian doctrine of future punishment.

Of the eight letters which this book contains, the
first three were written in answer to the circular letter
already referred to. Later on, Mr. Smith was kind
enough to send me a number of pamphlets which had
been printed for him by a well-known publishing firm —
the Commercial Press of Shanghai. He also sent me
a short letter, from which the following passages are
extracted.

" Tsehchowfu,

"June 17, 1917.
"Dear Sir,

"... Under another cover I am sending
you four booklets and a copy of ' Final Correspond-
ence with the C.I.M. ' Perhaps at your leisure you
might have time to look through them, though
that is asking a great deal ! . . .

" At present, with what evidence I have before
me, I cannot look upon you as a Christian, or as a
friend of Christianity; but here I may be mis-
taken, for I mostly know your destructive senti-
ments and not your constructive ones. For my
part, I am a convinced believer in Christ, and a
believer in the Bible as containing a Divine revela-
tion of True Religion. ... I hate the doctrine of
an endless hell just as much as you do, but the
grounds of our hatred differ. I would be thankful
if the C.I.M. could be compelled to reconsider its
position as to this question, but I don't want with
the overthrowing of a miserable unscriptural dogma
to couple with that the subversion of Christianity ;
but, on the contrary, to help to remove a great

INTRODUCTION xi

stumbling-block from the reception of Christianity
and establish it more firmly than ever upon a true
Scriptural basis.

" You are quite free to quote from my letters to
you, and from my booklets.

" I would add that I seek the good of the C.I.M.
and not its harm, though my conscience compels
me to take the action I am taking. I do not de-
spise the Mission as a Mission, nor the missionaries
who compose it, nor, generally speaking, the
doctrines for which the Mission stands. I believe
the C.I.M. is doing great good in China. Its
missionaries as a rule are (so far as I know) men
and women who exhibit a Christian character and
unselfishly seek the spiritual welfare of the Chinese.
" Yours very sincerely,

(Signed) "Stanley P. Smith."

Mr. Smith's pamphlets were of great interest, but it
is unnecessary to deal with them in detail in this intro-
ductory chapter, as they are discussed in my letters.
They throw a vivid light on the teachings of the C.I.M.,
and a perusal of them would perhaps startle a good
many of those well-meaning Christians in the British
Umpire and in the United States who contribute
lavishly to the support of foreign missions without
taking pains to investigate the nature of the religion
which they an- helping to propagate among the civilized
peoples of Asia. It is clear that, in putting forth the
views mentioned above, the Rev. Mr. Frost did not

intend to speak lor himself alone, but for the Mission
B8 a whole, or at least for that very large section of the

Mission —the North American -of which he was and

still is Director. After slating lli.it all who "die out.
of Christ," whether lhe\ have " heard the Gospel " or

xii INTRODUCTION

not, will be condemned to conscious torments which will
last for ever — a doctrine which he held to be "essential
to the Gospel of Christ " — he added that this doctrine
41 expresses what true Christians may well make their
basis of fellowship in interdenominational service";
and he exhorted all friends of the Mission earnestly to
pray that it would be " wholly and ever true to the
doctrines upon which it was founded."

In answer to Mr. Smith's direct enquiries, Mr. Frost
replied that the views published by him in the official
onran of the Mission " were those of the American
branch of the C.I.M." ; he did not venture to say
definitely that the other branches would assent to his
statement of the Mission's fundamental creed, but he
was evidently confident that such was the case ; were it
otherwise, the Mission would necessarily undergo dis-
integration, as the American members, siding with Mr.
Frost, would no longer be able to "have fellowship with
Christians in corporate service " who declined to share
their views as to what constituted essential Christian
teaching. Mr. Smith, however, wisely decided to test
the matter by writing to the General Director of the
C.I.M., Mr. D. E. Hoste, drawing his attention to the
doctrinal statement published by Mr. Frost in the
American edition of China's Millions (the Mission's
official organ) and asking him to insert in the English
edition of that organ a public notification to the effect
that the statement in question, though made in good
faith, was misleading, that Mr. Frost's action in publicly
and definitely associating the Mission with his own views
was unauthorized, and that the Mission as a whole did
not endorse what he had written. Mr. Hoste firmly
refused to publish any such notification, and thereby

INTRODUCTION xiii

gave tacit approval to the action taken by Mr. Frost.
.V final appeal to Mr. Frost merely elicited the laconic
remark, " I cannot conscientiously alter the position
which I have taken."

It was in the pages of an American theological
journal, nearly as well known in England as in the
United States, that Dr. Hastings Rashdall, now Dean
of Carlisle, wrote the following words a few years ago.
" How far orthodox people of the last generation
really did believe that the whole heathen world was
doomed to everlasting torments unless they heard
and accepted what is technically called the gospel,
I will not attempt to inquire. If we go far enough
back, there certainly was a time when such a creed
was held. . . . Modern orthodox theology has given a
more uncertain sound upon this matter ; but it cannot
be denied that missionary appeals have frequently
assumed that some awful fate was in store for the
heathen, no matter how fully they acted up to their
light and no matter how great the measure of that
light, if they died without having accepted the gospel
message. ... It would be a waste of time to argue
against such a view at the present day."

If these pages achieve the distinction of coming
under Dean Rashdall's notice, I trust he will realize
that the doctrine which he believed to be extinct
U ^till very much alive.

Writing in 1907, he declared that if ur went far
enough (inck we should find that it was an actually
existing belief — implying thereby that we should
have to go a long way back to find it so. If he
could have looked forward instead of backward he

xiv INTRODUCTION

would have found it still flourishing among a large
and influential section of missionaries in China (not
to mention their supporters at home) ten years after
he announced that it had long ceased to exist !

If it is surprising to find Dean Itashdall imperfectly
informed on this subject, stranger still i6 it to meet
with one who is himself a missionary similarly assuming
that this ghastly doctrine of the damnation of all
non-Christian peoples is a thing of the past. In his
valuable book Our Task in India, Mr. Bernard Lucas,
writing of the missionaries of an earlier day, says
they regarded all non-Christians " as passing in a terrible
procession, minute by minute, to an eternal woe.-"
In illustration of this, he might have quoted the
edifying hymn — once popular in missionary circles — of
which a stanza runs as follows : — •

" The heathen perish day by day,
Thousands on thousands pass away ;
C) Christians, to their rescue fly !
Preach Jesus to them ere they die."

It may be that in India (the only mission-field,
apparently, with which this writer is personally
acquainted) the doctrine is no longer believed or
taught — though, as will be seen presently, there is
reason to doubt this ; but granting that it is so, why
should poor China alone be compelled to support it
in its unhallowed decrepitude ?

To drive this monstrous superstition out of its last
refuge may be a diliicult task ; in view, however, of
its love for dark corners and underground passages
(otherwise how could it have escaped the keen eyes
of Dean Kashdall and Mr. Lucas ?) perhaps the most
effectual method of shortening its life is to drag it

INTRODUCTION xv

but into the full blaze of publicity and expose its
wizened and writhing carcase (as the Chinese in
pre-historic days used to expose their witches) to the
pitiless rays of the sun. In this laudable enterprise
it is hoped that the publication of this little book
will be of some small service ; but the success of the
operation must depend on the public itself, or on
those members of the public who provide the funds
without which foreign missions would gradually wither
away.

It is only fair to emphasize the fact that the
infamous doctrine of the eternal damnation of sinners
and of all the " heathen " is not taught, even in China,
by the entire missionary body. Outside the C.I.M.
and the smaller missions which are in friendly alliance
with it, the doctrine would probably be repudiated
more or less energetically by the great majority of
missionaries now working in China. That it is not
absolutely confined to the C.I.M. is undoubtedly true;
and probably it is privately entertained by a good
many missionaries who, knowing that it is now a
discredited dogma among educated Christians in the
Wist, would be shy of maintaining it in public. That
the theology of the mission-field is often of an
antiquated type is a fact which should be too well
known to ueed emphasis. "Serious enthusiasm for
missions," as Dr. Rashdall remarks in the essay from
which I have already quoted, " tends to be associated
with a rather narrow theology. The greatest of the
missionary societies of the English Church is largely
in the hands of the narrowest section of the narrowest
party in that Church. The authorities of the Church

xvi INTRODUCTION

Missionary Society have been known to refuse an
admirably qualified candidate of otherwise evangelical
opinions on account of a measure of sympathy with
critical theology which few of our present bishops
would disclaim." Missionaries, however, can be narrow
in their theology without holding that all who fail
to undergo the process of "conversion," and all
who have never heard "the gospel," will assuredly
be damned. That this doctrine is no longer insisted
upon as the most urgent of all reasons for sending
missions to the millions who would otherwise be " lost,"
is proved by the fact that it seems to have been almost
totally ignored by the various writers and speakers
who took part in the great Missionary Conference at
Edinburgh in 1910. Indeed, the few references to it
that I have come across in the voluminous reports of
that Conference clearly indicate that it had already
ceased to form part of the creed of enlightened mission-
aries. It is true that the following extracts are from
reports sent in not from China but from India ;
nevertheless the sentiments expressed appear to have
been received with equanimity by the Conference
as a whole, which included many representatives from
China. " More than one writer," we are told in the
course of some editorial observations, " refer to the
opposition to the Christian faith which is aroused
by the insistence on the doctrine of eternal punishment,
ivhkh was a prominent characteristic of the preaching
of missionaries a generation ago and still characterizes
the teaching of a certain number." A missionary is
quoted as follows: "Few causes have prejudiced
the Hindu mind more, and aroused fiercer opposition,

INTRODUCTION xvii

than the traditional view of the final destiny of the
wicked. . . . The traditional view, however honestly
held, should never be placed in the forefront of mission-
ary teaching." (See Edinburgh Conference Reports,
vol. iv. pp. 193-4. These extracts alone seem to show
that even in India the hell-doctrine is not, as Mr.
Bernard Lucas thinks, entirely obsolete.)

I am only too glad to assume, however, that this
ugly superstition has been condemned or set aside by
the majority of the missionary societies now working
among the numerous peoples called " heathen," and
that even in China its propagation is mainly confined
to the C.I.M. As there are a great many societies at
work in China, representing a large proportion of the
sects into which Christendom is divided, it may seem
hardly worth while to emphasize the eccentricities of a
single Mission — a Mission which, moreover, is looked at
askance by most of its rivals. But no one who has
travelled in the interior of China, and is sufficiently
interested in missionaries and their activities to be able
to differentiate one missionary bodv from another, will
dispute the fact that throughout many of China's inland
provinces the influence of the C.I.M. is greater than
thai of* all other Protestant Missions put together.
Very many thousands, if not millions, of Chinese have
derived all their knowledge of Christianity from the
itinerating members of this zealous and ubiquitous
society, which draws its large army of evangelists from
Kvera] European and American nationalities and from
agreal variety of Protestanl sects. The C.I.M., more-
over, i> "a ociatedr in a very friendly way with a
group of other societies, which look up to it as their

I!

xviii INTRODUCTION

"predominant partner,* and appear to be in entire
sympathy with it in matters doctrinal.1

I have just remarked that by most of the other more
important missions the C.I.M. is looked at askance.
This is but a mild way of stating the attitude towards
the C.I.M. which /'// private conversation is often as-
sumed by individual missionaries belonging to other
societies. The "revivalism," for example, which is one
of the most distressing features of C.I.M. methods, has
been described to me by the shocked members of other
missions as "nauseating," and some of the C.I.M. doc-
trines— including that which forms our main topic —
are denounced in terms of ridicule or disgust. Now
the question arises, If the more enlightened members
of the missionary body disapprove of C.I.M. teachings
and methods as whole-heartedly as in private they often
say they do, how is it that they do not state their views
publicly in such a way as to compel the C.I.M. to justify
itself (if that be possible) before the bar of public
opinion or before some authoritative ecclesiastical tri-
bunal— if, in Protestantism, such can be found ? Perhaps
it is merely professional etiquette that restrains them —
the kind of etiquette that prevents one doctor from

1 The C.I.M. works in every province of China except three.
In its Jubilee year (1015) it possessed 225 mission stations, over
1000 foreign missionaries, nearly 3000 paid or unpaid native
a— istants and workers, and 754 organized churches. Eleven
other missionary societies are associated with the C.I.M. They
co-operate with it in evangelistic work and agree with it in
aim and principles. " The complete subordination of all other
forms of work to the direct preaching of the Gospel " is part of
the C.I.M.'s fixed policy. For these and other facts see the Rev.
S. Couling'e Encyclopaedia Sinica, 11)17. The C.I.M. is there
described as " by far the largest Missionary Society operating
in China."

INTRODUCTION xix

accusing another of incompetence or negligence. But
although among missionaries esprit de corps is very
strong, there are certain limits beyond which it ceases
to be effective. For example, missionaries of an extreme
Protestant type are frequently most bitter in their
criticisms of the Roman Catholics ; indeed, they do not
shrink from suggesting that the Romanists are inspired by
the Devil, and in many of their publications the " hosts
of Rome" are spoken of as the allies of the "hosts of
Dark m Heretical bodies such as the Seventh Day

Adventists and Unitarians are sometimes referred to in
terms of >harp disapproval ; Anglicans come in for a
good deal of censure on account of their real or sup-
posed anxiety to cultivate intimate relations with Rome;
and missionaries who are suspected of being tainted
with Modernism or "Liberal" theology are often re-
ferred to by the orthodox majority in all missions in
terms of undisguised distrust, indignation, or contempt.
As for the Romanist opinions of all Protestant mis-
sionaries, I need only refer my readers to Father
i; it ram Wblferstan's illuminating book on The Catholic
( Tiurch in China. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact
thai Dearly all the sectarian jealousies and animosities
of the Christian West are reproduced on a smaller
scale in the mission-field, it is undoubtedly true that
the mosl earnest and intelligent members of the

missionary body do try hard to cultivate mutual good-
will, to .avoid unnecessary friction, to act on the prin-
ciple of "live and lei live," and to present a united
and harmonious front (in appearance if not In reality)
i'i the forces of "heathenism.11 "The amount of

harmony and concord," says (anon ( '. II. Robinson,
"which is to he tumid to-dav in the Mission Field is,

xx INTRODUCTION

happily, greater than many are apt to imagine. It

exists to a far larger extent amongst the representa-
tives of missionaries abroad than amongst the repre-
sentatives of missionary societies at home." (The
Missionary Prospect, pp. 234—5.)

Professional etiquette, then, and a general desire for
concord, are partly responsible for the extraordinary
spectacle of the largest and most active of Christian
proselytizing agencies propagating through the length
and breadth of China certain doctrines which (to quote
the Rev. Mr. Stanley Smith's vivid phrase) " brand the
character of God with infinite disgrace," while its sister-
missions maintain towards this potent and aggressive
society of God-calumniators a public attitude of good-
humoured laisscr-faire and cheerful unconcern. It would
almost appear that the maintenance of a more or less
fictitious appearance of harmony in face of the "heathen'1
and "infidel" enemy is to them of more pressing im-
portance than the defence of the honour of their God.
It is not that Christian meekness forbids their engaging
in public controversy. If some isolated agnostic, or a
professor of the Hongkong University, makes a casual
remark, in the course of a newspaper article, to the
effect that intelligent men no longer regard the Bible
as a wholly accurate record of historic or scientific fact,
these genial laisser-faire missionaries and their lay allies
will promptly pour forth the vials of holy wrath on the
head of the sacrilegious sceptic who has dared to ques-
tion the authority of their infallible and divinely-
inspired Scriptures. (This has actually happened within
the last eighteen months, as can be seen by a reference to
the correspondence columns of The Noj-th China Daily
News in the early summer of 1917.) Vet if numbers

INTRODUCTION xxi

of their own missionary colleagues publicly and persist-
ently advocate an eschatological theory which, if true,
proves the Christian God to be guilty of atrocities that
make Satan or the Germans look like bungling ama-
teurs in devilry, they maintain a discreet and courteous
silence.

But mere esprit de corps and a desire to avoid friction
are inadequate to account for this curious phenomenon.
The real reason will be found, I think, to lie deeper.
It seems to be based on a more or less subconscious
knowledge that eternal damnation is only one of a
lar«-e number of traditional Christian doctrines which
the moral perception of mankind is showing a rapidly
increasing tendency to discard, and that to reproach
the C.I.M. for continuing to hold doctrines of this
kind might provoke a highly embarrassing retort and
possibly give rise to questions which, if thoroughly
sifted, might shake the whole structure of orthodox
Christianity. It would be quite legitimate for the
C.I.M. to reply to these reproaches in terms such as
the following : —

We entirely agree with you that the doctrine of
everlasting damnation involves grave moral diffi-
culties, and Dial it is difncull for the human mind
to reconcile it writh the existence of the all-loving,
merciful, and omnipotent Deity postulated by
Christianity. Hut the doctrine was not invented
by us ; it has been revealed to mankind by God
Himself through the medium of authoritative
Scriptures which .'til Christians believe to he di-
viner) inspired. You m.iv say it is horrible, hut we
have nothing to do with th.it it is not for us to

dictate to God what laws He should make for our

xxii INTRODUCTION

government or to criticize the arrangements wisely
and lovingly made by Him for the disposal of our
souls. If you deny this particular doctrine simply
because you do not like it, you are assuming the
totally unwarrantable liberty to pick and choose
between God's revealed truths. Instead of going
to the Bible in a spirit of trustful humility to
learn from it what righteousness and truth consist
in, you are presuming to accept those of its teach-
ings that suit your taste, while you impiously
reject the rest. This being so, you cannot pretend
that you recognize the Bible as your ultimate and
infallible authority ; you make what you are pleased
to term your own moral consciousness your author-
ity, and if you turn to the Bible at all it is only
to obtain confirmation of your private opinions.
If the Bible fails to give you the desired confirma-
tion, or contradicts you, its testimony is rejected.
In other words, you treat the Bible just as you
would treat any other book, which is precisely what
the infidels and agnostics presumptuously urge us
to do. Perhaps if you are sincerely anxious to
have the right to call yourself a Christian, you
will attempt to show that the doctrines which you
dislike are not really in the Bible, or that the
Biblical passages on which doctrines were founded
have been incorrectly interpreted. It is of course
theoretically conceivable that you are right — we
are bound to admit as much, because as faithful
Protestants we ourselves reject the interpretations
put by the Church of Rome on the tn es Petrus
and many other important Biblical texts. We
would have you remember, however, that the doc-
trine of eternal punishment has not only been
taught dc fide by the undivided Church, but has
also been accepted as true by the Churches of the
Reformation, and that, though many individuals
have called it in question, the vast majority of

INTRODUCTION xxiii

theologians in both the Catholic and the Pro-
testant divisions of Christendom have held it to
be clearly proved by the infallible and unmistak-
able words of Scripture. We cannot but feel,
therefore, that your real reason for rejecting it is
not that vou honestly believe it to be unscriptural,
but simply that you have arraigned it before the
tribunal of your own fallible intellect or con-
science, and have rashly presumed to condemn it
as morally objectionable. We take the liberty of
warning vou that even in Protestantism the exer-
cise of the right of "private judgment" may
carrv you a great deal further than you may care
to go ; at any rate there are others who will readily
follow where you have led, but will see no reason
for stopping where vou stop. In reproaching us
for our fidelity to traditional Christian orthodoxy,
how can you be sure that others, more logical or
more daring than you, will not finally join the
r-growing throng of people who make no secret
of the tact that they have definitely broken with
Christianity ?

I think most of inv thoughtful readers will admit

tint if the Directors of the C.I.M. chose to state their

in some such words as these, it would be difficult

for their- missionary critics to confute them; and this
i- perhaps tin- he I explanation of the curious fact to
which I have drawn attention, that the C.I.M. has
not hitherto mil with any public opposition from other
Christian bodies when it enunciates doctrines which
represenl the Christian deity as a monster of cruelty

and injusl ice.

I mid hardly Bay thai my object in publishing flu's

hook i> not merely to draw public attention to the

survival among missionaries in China of a preposterous

xxiv INTRODUCTION

doctrine which enlightened Christendom has emphati-
cally repudiated and the mention of which in these daws
of little faith is apt to produce more smiles than
groans. My aim will be unfulfilled unless I can
persuade some, at least, of the supporters of foreign
missions not only to undertake a critical examination
of the teachings and methods of the missionaries whom
they employ to carry Western religion to Asia, but
also to scrutinize with equal care the foundations of
their own conceptions of religious truth. It was not
an agnostic, not a would-be destroyer of religion, but a
devout Christian and a high official of the Methodist
Episcopal Church (George Preston Mains), who lately
drew attention to "the persistent attempt to bind the
Church to views which the educated mind of the age
has not only out -grown, but which it utterly rejects."
Nowhere is this attempt made more persistently than
in certain areas of the mission-field. I referred above
to a discussion which recently took place in the columns
of a Shanghai newspaper. It would doubtless have
horrified the orthodox contributors to that discussion
had their attention been drawn to the following words
by a historian of science, quoted with hearty approval
by the venerable occupant of a Scottish pulpit.
" There is not an intelligent man in the whole wide
earth who longer believes that the Mosaic account of
Creation is true ... or that the sun stood still in
Gibeon. We are past all that. This is something."
Alas ! these beliefs are still stoutly maintained in China
by English and American missionaries who would be
deeply mortified if they were to hear themselves
described as unintelligent. The same preacher adds
that even Orthodoxy " is obliged to admit that its con-

INTRODUCTION xxv

ception of the Bible has changed. It can no longer
regard the Old and New Testaments as the infallible
Word of God. . . . The priestly representation of a
bloodthirsty Deity has become morally abhorrent, and
the sacrificial system as transferred to Christianity is no
longer endurable." (Webster's Theology in Scotland,
1915.) Mr. Webster's words may be applicable to the
case of his own countrymen, who in recent years have
shown an increasing desire to throw off the shackles of
the horrible creed inherited by them from their fathers,
but he would have been less optimistic in his language
if the Chinese mission-field had come within his range
of vision. A distinguished American divine writes in a
theological journal of the "forever outgrown notion of
vicarious punishment.'1 I can assure him that the notion
still flourishes like a rank weed in China. Canon Storr
is one of the many able theologians of our time who
have warned his fellow-Christians that " reconstruction
and reformulation of dogma are imperative.'-' He adds
that "an immense intellectual revolution has been
accomplished, and theology must boldly face the
situation." There is very little indication as yet ot
any intent ion to lace it boldly on the mission-field.

Whether "reconstruction and reformulation" will
really meel tin- spiritual requirements of the modern
mind either at home or abroad, or whether the religion
thai emerges from the hands of the rebuilders will be
entitled to bear the name of Christianity, are questions
on which an opinion has been hazarded in the course of
tin- following Letters, though perhaps they hardly come

within the scope of one who stands outside all the

Christian organizations. However thai may he, there

arc sign^ on all hands thai changes of vital importance

xxvi INTRODUCTION

are taking place in the attitude of thoughtful men —
both lay and clerical — towards the Christianity of the
creeds and churches, and that the process of change will
be hastened and intensified by the great war. There
is little likelihood that Christianity will maintain even
her present slight hold on men's hearts and minds unless
she consents to pour out the dregs that remain in her
old bottles and shows a readiness to fill them up with
the new wine for which the souls of men are spiritually
athirst. Be it admitted that the process will be a
dangerous one, for the old bottles may burst — indeed,
many believe they must necessarily do so. Nevertheless,
Christianity must take the risk, great as it is ; for if
she refuses to supply the new wine to those who ask,
they will assuredly go and seek it elsewhere, perhaps in
bottles with a different label and bearing the name of a
different vintage. In the meantime it is earnestly to
be hoped that Christendom will not continue to allow
the old bottles with their nauseating dregs to be
exported to China and other " heathen " lands under
the deceptive label of " true religion." If the peoples
of the West value the souls of the "heathen1' as
highly as they profess to do, they will surely prohibit a
traffic which is just as morally indefensible as the trade
in opium or cocaine.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY
LETTER I

A short time ago you were kind enough to send me
a copy of your circular letter dealing with the circum-
stances which led to your enforced retirement from the
China Inland Mission and to the establishment of your
independent mission at Tsehchowfu. Your letter is
addressed to the Christian public, to which, doubtless,
you assumed that I belonged. In these days of " re-
statement" and "reinterpretation" and incessant shift-
ing of old religious landmarks, it seems to be impossible
to obtain an authoritative or intelligible definition of
what Christianity really is— except, of course, from the
Church of Home, which, whatever its demerits may be,
does at least possess the great merit of knowing its own
mind. Men whose views would have brought them to
the stake a few generations ago, and would have been
condemned as outrageously heretical and even blas-
phemous in our grandfathers' I ime, are to-day occupying
posts of influence and dignity in the Christian priest-
hoods and ministries, and are in many cases looked up
to as pillars of highly respectable orthodoxy. In spile,
however, of the nebulous character of present day
Christianity^ I may as well confess a1 the outset thai so

2 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

far as I am aware there is no Christian Mission in China
which would regard me as entitled to Christian member-
ship. Indeed, if any Mission were so latitudinarian in
its views as to regard me as a spiritual brother, I fear I
should be ungrateful enough to question the validity of
its own claims to be regarded as a Christian body.

Nevertheless, as you have taken the initiative in
including me among your correspondents, you will allow
me, I hope, to write to you in return, and to tell you
very frankly some of the thoughts that your letter has
suggested to me. In the first place, it seems to me that
you deserve high respect for the courage and honesty
shown by you in your dealings with the C.I.M. and in
your efforts to establish a new Mission on a broader
doctrinal basis ; and that you are to be warmly con-
gratulated on your repudiation of the infamous doctrine
of an everlasting hell.

During almost twenty years1 residence in China I
have travelled a great deal in the inland provinces, and
have seen and heard something of the work and teach-
ings of the C.I.M. and many other Missions. I have
also been a student of missionary literature. I was well
aware, therefore, of the main characteristics of the
theology (and demonology) taught by the C.I.M. I
knew that its Christianity was in many respects narrow
and even repulsive, and of a kind that would excite
little but contempt and disgust if it were preached to
educated congregations in twentieth-century America
or England. The vast majority of Western residents
in China rarely go beyond the treaty-ports, where the
C.I.M. is not much in evidence; thus it is not surpris-
ing that they often express incredulity when they are
told of some of the more glaring peculiarities of that

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 3

special type of Christianity which is propagated in
China by the C.I.M. and which the "heathen " Chinese
are expected to welcome as " tidings of great joy." In
this letter I wish to devote my attention to your own
main subject ; I will therefore omit all reference to
other features of C.I.M. teaching and confine myself to
that particular piece of "good news" which, as you
point out, has lately been emphatically re-affirmed by
those entitled to speak on its behalf. This good news
is to the effect that not only all who have heard the
gospel and are not "saved" in this life, but also all
"heathen" who have never heard of Christ, will go to
"absolutely unending, conscious suffering." This, we
are informed, is a "fundamental, necessary, and essential"
part of Christian teaching ; whence it follows that "to
have fellowship with Christians in corporate service"
who do not assent to these views is "unwarrantable
from the standpoint of the individual, and dangerous
from the standpoint of the truth."

You say in your letter that it was on account of your
disagreement with views of this kind that you were
obliged, fifteen years ago, to retire from the C.I.M.
Since your dismissal, the tendency in the Mission "had
been towards toleration in eschatology," and you hoped
that I he doctrinal differences between yourself and the
Mission mighl be gradually effaced; but the recent
pronouncemenf above quoted has compelled you to per-

ive thai the estrangemenl must continue. I sincerely

trust that very wide publicity will be given to your
letter, mid that the British and American public will

realize, perhaps for the first lime, the hideous nature of

some of the religious teachings which they themselves,
through the moral and material support 80 generously

4 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

given by them to the C.I.M., are helping to propagate
among the people of China.

And yet, after all, is it not true that the C.I.M., in
preaching the doctrine of everlasting damnation, is
acting in strict fidelity to the very principle by which
you yourself are guided — namely, " the divine inspira-
tion, authority, and sufficiency" of the Bible? The
difference between you is one of interpretation. The
C.I.M. finds, on consulting its infallible authority, that
everlasting damnation is taught there ; you, consulting
the same infallible authority, find that everlasting dam-
nation is not taught there. Who is to judge between
your divergent interpretations ? It is doubtless true
that the educated non-Roman Christendom of to-day is at
one with you in rejecting the tenet you very justifiably
complain of; but it is no less certain that the view
taken by the C.I.M. is the traditional Christian view,
and has been supported by the opinion of the vast
majority of Church Fathers and theologians. It is a
significant, fact, moreover — though probably neither
you nor the C.I.M. would ascribe great importance to
it — that the doctrine is held to be de fide by the only
Christian Church which (if its own statement is accu-
rate) can show unbroken continuity from apostolic
times, and which claims perpetual divine guidance and
infallibility. In one rather cryptic sentence you imply
that you might possibly rejoin the C.I.M. if "tolera-
tion" were granted. By "toleration" is apparently
meant liberty to members of the C.I.M. to believe or
disbelieve, as they choose, in the doctrine of everlasting
damnation. You add that the founder of the Mission,
Mr. Hudson Taylor, " believed the time would come to
pass when it would be possible to admit" such tolera-

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 5

tion. This seems to require explanation. Did Mr.
Taylor mean that members of the C.I.M. might be
allowed later on (but not now) to preach a doctrine
(universal salvation) which is flatly contradicted by the
liible ? Or did he mean that everlasting punishment
was not part of the Bible teaching, and that the C.I.M.
had hitherto erred in supposing that it was ? Or can
he have meant that the Almighty might be expected,
at some indeterminate date in the future, to change his
mind about everlasting punishment and to annihilate
the hell which, in a cruder state of his moral develop-
ment, he had prepared for the Devil and his angels ?
If the C.I.M. remains as true to its own principles as
yon are to yours, and also adheres to its own interpre-
tation of the book which you both accept as your
ultimate authority, how is it possible that any recon-
ciliation between you can take place ? Even if the
Mission, while officially adhering to its own interpre-
tation of the Scriptures, consented to allow its individual
members to hold and teach views which were incon-
sistent with that interpretation, it is difficult to see how
yon could conscientiously consent to avail yourself of
such toleration; for by so doing you would be allying
yourself with a Mission which in its official teaching
was engaged in what you believed to be the nefarious
work of impugning the "character of God" and the
"honour of Christianity."

This brings me to a matter of great importance.
You say that before your retirement from the C.I.M.
you "had conn- to see from Scripture" thai there could
be no such thing as "strictly aidless wrath and punish-
ment," and that "the revealed consummatioD of all
things was universal reconciliation." I gather that

6 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

you were led to investigate the Biblical texts bearing
on t lie* subject because the doctrine gave you discomfort

and seemed to have an "important bearing on the most
grave subject of the character of God." In other words,
you had an uneasy feeling that if God is indeed omni-
potent and \f he consigns any of his creatures to ever-
lasting torment, it would be difficult if not impossible
for you to regard him at the same time as a God of
limitless compassion and love. To escape from this
dilemma you studied the eschatological passages in the
Bible for yourself, and I can well imagine your satisfac-
tion when you arrived at the wished-for conclusion that
endless punishment is not taught there. You then
made your views and conclusions known, and, as a
result, you were obliged to sever your connexion with
the C.I.M. Now I hope it is not impertinent to ask
what action vou would have taken if your Scriptural
studies had led you to a different conclusion — to the
conclusion which has been arrived at by innumerable
Christian saints, popes, theologians, and simple Bible-
students like yourself, and which the historic Churches
have officially endorsed as correct or at least have
refrained from repudiating ? Would you have bravely
refused to pretend that you saw good where you saw
evil ? Then it would have been necessary for you to
surrender the Bible as an infallible doctrinal or moral
guide. Or would you have insisted that at all costs
the testimony of the Bible must be preferred to the
testimony of your own moral consciousness ? I gladly
welcome your recognition of what you term " an in-
superable moral difficulty " in the view that an all-good
and omnipotent Deity condemns men to endless suffer-
ing, and yet I must candidly tell you that the general

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 7

tenor of your letter leaves me with the painful impres-
sion that had you been compelled to recognize the doctrine
as Biblical you would have accepted it with dutiful
obedience and allowed the " insuperable moral difficulty "
to float quietly away into some stagnant backwater of
the river of your mind. You might, indeed, have suc-
ceeded, perhaps at a ruinous moral cost, in adapting
yourself to a point of view similar to that of Pascal,
who held that man's "wretched rules of justice" have
no application to the Deity, who must not be called
unjust even if he chooses to sentence the entire human
race to eternal damnation; or possiblv you might have
forced yourself to see eye to eye with Jonathan Edwards,
who. you may remember, thought at one time that
eternal damnation was "a horrible doctrine,11 but
afterwards contrived to persuade himself that it was
"exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet.11

To me it seems a pitiful thing that men should force
themselves, against their better feelings, to accept a
disgusting doctrine as true simply out of loyalty to a
book that they believe infallible. In an old number of
1% Chinese Recorder (vol. ix. 1878) I find a missionary
in China writing thus: " I freely grant that my feelings
are as much opposed to this awful doctrine of eternal
punishment as any man's. But I da/re not trust my
feelings to arbitrate cither this or other things hard
to be understood. It is madness to allow our rebellious
feelings to eliminate from our creed what God's words

plainly teach." (The italics are in the original.) It
must have been unhappy Christians of this type that

Lecky had in mind when he wrote thus: "They accord-
ingly esteem it a matter of duty, and a commendable
• rcise of humility, to stifle the moral feelings of their

8 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

nature, and they at last succeed in persuading them-
selves that their Divinity would be extremely offended
if they hesitated to ascribe to Him the attributes of a
fiend.11

The question I have put to you in the last paragraph
but one will not, I trust, be set aside as irrelevant ; for
although you yourself are not, as it fortunately hap-
pens, in the embarrassing position of having to choose
between the Bible and your own moral consciousness,
there are multitudes of other Christians who may at
any time find themselves in this awkward predicament ;
and it is from men like yourself that they may reason-
ably expect counsel and help. I would remind you,
while on this topic, that the following words were
written in the middle of the last century by one of the
contributors to Essays and Reviews : " With respect
to the moral treatment of His creatures by Almighty
God, all men, in different degrees, are able to be judges
of the representations made of it by reason of the moral
sense which He has given them." This is reasonable
and satisfactory ; but what is to be done if the judg-
ments arrived at by the moral sense conflict with the
statements of a book which the possessor of that moral
sense regards as infallible ?

I do not presume to give a personal opinion as to
whether you are right or wrong in your interpretation
of the Biblical texts on which the hell-doctrine is based.
If the matter could be settled by a majority vote there
is no doubt whatever that you would be defeated. I
am inclined to think that Justin Martyr, Minucius
Felix, Cyprian, Lactantius, Augustine, Gregory the
Great, Ansehn (whose Cur Dens Homo tells us how
the punishment of sinners " gives honour to God "),

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 9

Thomas Aquinas, Luther and Calvin and their suc-
cessors, are all against you. You are at liberty to claim
Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa as your
allies ; and Origen, as you know, believed that even
the Devil himself would finally be saved. Origen's
opinion is often triumphantly quoted by those who
hold views like yours, but his lapses from orthodoxy in
this and other respects have long ago been condemned
by the Church. Consignor Louis Duchesne, in his
Early History of the Christian Church, remarks that
Origen's system "is scarcely recognizable as Chris-
tianity," but is "a sort of compromise between the
Gospel and Gnosticism"; it is a system "in which
the traditional teaching is rather evaded than incorpor-
ated."' You could summon Ccelestius and Pelagius as
nitnesses 011 your side. They, indeed, were heretics;
but as you yourself and all the members of the C.I.M.
are also heretics in the sight of the Church which
rejected Pelagianism, there seems to be no grave reason
why you should not regard their testimony as valid if
you choose to do so — and Origen's too, if it comes
to th.it. Among medieval authorities you could cite
Joannes Scotus Erigena, for did he not declare that
evil had no substance and that all would ultimately
lx- God? The heretical Catharists also believed in
universal salvation, and at a later period the same
belief distinguished the followers of John Cameron. In
1658, again, there was a hook published in England
called of the torment* of Hell: the foundations and
pillars thereof '. discover* d, searched, .shaken, ami removed,

which denied that the conception of a place of eternal

torment was "either scriptural or credible"; and a
clergyman named Bvanson, in the lasi quarter of the

io LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

eighteenth century, gave up his belief in eternal punish-
ment "though continuing to believe in 'long pro-
tracted1 misery for sinners." (See Robertson's Short
History of Freebhought, 3rd ed. vol. ii. pp. 77, 203.)
By the middle of the seventeenth century it would
appear that Universalism had become a rather preva-
lent heresy in England, for in 1648 the Puritans secured
the passing of an Act against " blasphemies and here-
sies,ri whereby it was made a punishable offence to
declare that " all men shall be saved." In spite of
this Act, which I presume soon became obsolete, the
Universalist heresy maintained its ground, as is proved
by the publication of the books last mentioned. In
the eighteenth century John Wesley, in his Journal,
refers with disdain to two writers whose views seem to
have been not unlike yours. One apparently believed
that hell would last five million years and would then
be annihilated, while the other advocated the still more
cheerful theory that it would last no more than a
paltry 30,000 years. Wesley complains that " these
menders of the Bible " " not only obtrude their novel
scheme with the utmost confidence, but even ridicule
that Scriptural one, which always was, and is now held
by men of the greatest learning and piety in the
world. " He concludes that writers who venture to
question the truth of the Scriptural teaching "promote
the cause of infidelity more effectually than either
Hume or Voltaire.*" It is evident that Wesley would
have disapproved most strongly of the views put
forward by yourself!

Nearer our own time, however, your heresy has been
shared by numerous theological writers of eminence ;
indeed, there is reason to expect that before long the

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY n

traditional view will be as rarely maintained as yours
was in Wesley's time. Perhaps we should not be
surprised to find that the C.I.M. is conservative in this
respect, when we remember how recently it was that
so spiritually-minded a man as F. D. Maurice was de-
prived of his professorial chair at King's College,
London, because he dared to call in question the end-
lessness of hell-torments. His opinions were pro-
nounced, in 1853, to be "of dangerous tendency, and
calculated to unsettle the minds of the theological
students." Farrar also received much abuse for similar
views, and his "-liberality of thought," according to
one of his biographers, kk barred his elevation to the
episcopate." He confessed, however, that the Scriptural
teaching contained what seemed to be "irreconcilable
antinomies," and that the subject of future punishment
was "full of difficulty and mystery." The late Dr.
Illingworth was conservative and cautious, and inclined
to the belief in everlasting punishment "on the ground
of it> long and wide prevalence in the Church,11 but he
drew a distinction between "punishment" and "tor-
ment," observing thai "the horrible pictures of ever-
lasting torment " had "not a shred of justification in
the pages of the New Testament." Some candidly
admit thai tin- Bible texts are ambiguous. A clergy-
man of our own day, the Rev. .F. I). -Jones of Bourne-
mouth, expresses his opinion as follows: "I will quite
okly confess," he says, "thai Scripture gives us no
plain and unmistakable guidance. There are texts thai
may be quoted on the one side, and texts thai may be
quoted on the other." Dean Inge definitely states thai
we are justified in believing thai "all creation " will

I" aved, hut he does not seem to base this belief

12 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

on the letter of Scripture. The Rev. J. R. Cohu (in
his Vital Problems of Religion) does not think it worth
while to discuss what he calls " the hell of popular
superstition,''' and says that the mere thought of such
a hell is " blasphemy against God." The Rishop of
Hereford (in his Libert// of Prophesying) observes that
" the masses of Protestant Christians are still intensely
and intractably materialistic in their eschatological
beliefs "1 ; but why does he blame the masses, seeing
that they merely believed what they were taught by
the clerical body of which the bishop himself happens to
be an unusually enlightened member ? The Rev. Dr.
A. E. Garvie (in The Missionary Obligation, published
in 1914) says that when he was a boy " it was thought
a heresy of the deepest dye to question or doubt the
everlasting duration of future penalty for all who did
not die believing in Christ. . . . One cannot but
wonder how those who seriously entertained it could
find any comfort, joy, or hope in life, and still more
how they could hold that the God who could so deal
with His creatures was love. . . . The individualism
of the older evangelicalism is yielding to-day to a uni-
versalism which recognizes that the salvation of all is
necessary to the completeness of tin.' salvation of each."
The Rev. R. J. Campbell (since his return to the
Church of England) has published a pamphlet called
What is Hell? in which he supports the hypothesis of
an "intermediate purificatory state," for the existence
of which the Biblical evidence is, I fear, hardly con-
vincing; and he adds, "there is nothing in the New
Testament to justify anyone in declaring that the
punishment of any single soul is everlasting."

Mr. Frederick Spencer, in his recent book The Mean-

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 13

mg of Christianity, is very outspoken. "Of all gods
since the world began," he says, " the Christian God has
been represented as in effect the most unjust, the most
cruel. ... Of all iniquities, the doctrine of eternal
punishment is the greatest. It is the vilest sin that
has stained mankind.'1 When we find that Christians
can, with impunity, express themselves with such
vigour as this, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the w> damnable heresies11 of a few generations ago
are gradually turning the tables on the old orthodoxies.
It was a member of the medieval Universalist sect of
the Catharists who declared that if he could only get
hold of "the false and perfidious God of the Catholics,
who created a thousand men in order to save a single
one and damn all the rest, he would break him in
pieces and tear him asunder with his nails and spit in
his fai History repeats itself. The Catharists are

a mere memory, but to-day we have with us Mr. H. G.
Wells, who makes his Mr. Britling express his attitude
towards the God of Christian orthodoxy in words that
are Bingularly reminiscent of those used by the plain-
spoken Catharist. "Why! if I thought there was an
omnipotent God who looked down on battles and

deaths and all the waste and horror of this war — able to
prevent these things— doing them to amuse himself — /
would spit ni his empty face.™ Few of our modern Uni-
eersalists speak with the blunt candour of the Cathar-
ists and Mr. Wells, nor do they talk aboul coming to
fisticuffs with the Deity; but they are equally positive
that if God is all that Orthodoxy represents him to be
he m:i\ indeed command and compel our obedience, bu1
is utterly unworthy of our worship or our love.

i4 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Id Catholic France, as in Protestant England, men
long ago began to grow restive under the Christian
doctrine of hell, and if the subject has been debated
there with less liveliness than among ourselves this
is merely because the doctrine of purgatory tends to
thrust that of hell into the background. It is interest-
ing to note that Universalism was taught in the short-
lived religion founded by that remarkable man
Guillaume Monod, who died in 1896, and who, had his
environment been more suitable than it was for the
reception of a new " revelation,1'' might well have come
to be hailed as one of the world's greatest religious
teachers. In 1845 he published an article in which
he calculated the numbers of those who according to
Protestant doctrine (which, of course, recognizes no
purgatory) were condemned to everlasting torment. He
purposely kept his figures low in order to protect him-
self against the charge of exaggeration. " I suppose,"
he says, "that in the time of the Apostles there were
about 10,000 Christians among 100,000,000 inhabitants
of the world ; thus for every man saved, 10,000 went
to hell. To-day, assuming that there are about
1,000,000,000 inhabitants of the earth, and at most
1 ,000,000 true Christians (that is, Christians ' converted'
in the technical Protestant sense), there are 1,000 men
damned for each man saved. It has been calculated
that one man dies every second, 3,600 every hour,
86,400 every day. Of these 86,400 souls there are
more than 86,300 who die unconverted." Basing his
estimate on the orthodox doctrine which he repudiated,
he observed that during the past eighteen centuries
(onlv a small fraction of the time man has lived on

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 15

this globe) thirty thousand million souls have been
sent to hell.

With reference to Monod's estimate of the number
of souls eternally lost, I may invite your attention to
a statement published in the official organ of the
C.I.M. in August 1911. We are told that during the
last century, which was marked by great missionary
effort, " it has been roughly computed that, while three
or four million souls have been brought to Christ, there
ha- been a growth of population of something like two
hundred millions of mankind, and an increase of
utv-fold of the darkness over the light." Now
according to the C.I.M. all these two hundred
millions, less the three or lour millions " brought to
Christ," have gone to everlasting damnation; and that
is, of cour>e, but a small portion of the total number of
souls which, during the last century alone, have been
doomed to everlasting wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Not long ago. Bays the Rev. A. S. Peake (in his book
on The Bible, 1913, p. 429), "the appeal used to ring
out on missionary plat Conns that the heathen were
dropping into hell at the rate of sixty a minute,
b< ( an se tin Church had no1 sent the Gospel to them."

Dr. Peake describes this doctrine as one of ''blood-
curdling brutality," hut he frankly admits that it was
involved in the logic of the theological position of
those who held thai without belief in Christ there

ild be no solvation. Now dors the C.I.M. seriously
maintain thai -i creed which contains a divine

elation of this appalling nature deserves to be de-
scribed as "glad tidings of great joy"? If so, would
it be possible, do you think, to persuade the C.I.M.
to imparl t" us its conception of l>n<l tidings?

LETTER II

A professor of English in an American University
has recently stated that in all his experience as a
University teacher he has come across only three male
students who believed in an eternal hell. The reasons
given to him for the disbelief were various, but may be
summed up in two conclusions: "a perfect God could
not countenance eternal torture " ; and " God could
not be considered victorious and perfect as long as
suffering and rebellion existed in his universe.11 These
young collegians were almost unanimous in their
certitude " that all souls will finally reach the condition
known as heaven." {The Hibbcrt Journal, January
1917, p. 300.)

This statement concerning the beliefs of educated
young America will doubtless be as pleasing to your-
self as heart-breaking to the C.I.M. It affords a very
striking proof of the rapidity with which, in this
irreverent age, the grip of religious tradition is
slackening, and of the powerlessness of the orthodox
pulpits to stem the revolutionary current.

There are men still living who remember the panic
that was caused in religious circles in England when
a number of clergymen published the book entitled
Essays and Reviews. A prominent archdeacon spoke
of it as being incomparably the worst book he had ever
seen in any language, and declared that through its

16

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 17

influence young men were being "tainted and corrupted
and thrust almost to hell." One of the contributors
to that famous or infamous book was the Rev. H. B.
Wilson, who timidly and guardedly suggested that
" all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in the
bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose, or to be
quickened into higher life." For this opinion, among
others, he was tried for heresy and sentenced to a
year's suspension from his living. Wilson and one of
lii— fellow-essayists who had been similarly condemned
appealed to the Privy Council, and Lord Chancellor
Westbury, in reversing the sentence, uttered the famous
judgment whereby everlasting punishment was ruled
to be an open question. You doubtless remember the
witty epitaph composed for Westbury, wherein it was
said that he "dismissed Hell with costs " and "took
away from orthodox members of the Church of England
their last hope of everlasting damnation." In spite of
Westbury, however, there were many who still remained
hopeful ; and indeed it is evident that both outside
and inside the Anglican Church the "last hope of
everlasting damnation"1 is by no means extinguished
yet. After Westbury's judgment had been given amid
the subdued applause of the general public, the clergy
vainly tried, through the famous Dr. Pusev, to re-
establish their discredited dogma. A declaration was
drawn up, under Dr. Pusey'8 guidance, in which full
belief was expressed in the verhal inspiration of the
Scriptures "as not Only containing, but, being, the
Word of God.*1 It also affirmed that according to
"the words of oin- Missed Lord" the punishment of
•• the Cursed," no less than the life of the tw righteous,"

would last for ever. Every clergyman in the country

1 8 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

was urged to sign tin's declaration "for the love of
God " ; but the 11,000 sin-natures which were appended
to it were won " perhaps less by the love of God," as
an able historian has remarked, "than by the fear of
man." We are told a great deal nowadays about the
wickedness of University professors — English as well
as German ; it is interesting, therefore, to note that
professors were nearly as ready then as they are now
to defy orthodox and conventional opinion. Of forty
Oxford professors only nine signed Pusey's declaration,
and of twenty-nine Cambridge professors only one.

That is an old story now, and if a twentieth-century
Dr. Pusey were to issue a similar declaration to-day it
is improbable that even a single professor would be
prepared to court ridicule by appending his signature,
though possibly a score or two of the clergy might be
induced to do so. For other allies he would find
himself obliged to appeal to the Church of Rome and
to such bodies as the Salvation Army, the Plvniouth
Brethren, and the C.I.M. Dr. Inge, after giving his
powerful support to the Universalist theory, not only
escapes all ecclesiastical censure, but is appointed to the
deanerv of St. Paul's ; writers and preachers like the
Rev. Mr. Cohu, the Bishop of Hereford, and Dr. Garvie
dismiss the beliefs of the once revered Dr. Pusey as
mere superstition ; and the Rev. R. J. Campbell gives
utterance to Universalist views in terms which, had he
been a contemporary of the Essayists and Reviewers,
would assuredly have proved an effectual barrier to his
return from Nonconformity to the Church of England.
Turning from the clergy to the laity, we have seen that
Mr. Wells, through the mouth of one of his own
characters, talks about spitting in the empty face of

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 19

the god of orthodoxy; and instead of being uncere-
moniously hurried off to the stake at Smithfield he is
conducted by a host of admirers to an honoured place
among the social and religious teachers and prophets
of this age of anarchy and iconoclasm.

Yet the Universalists and Neo-Christians and In-
visible Deists are not going to carry everything before
them without vigorous protests from those who cling
to the old beliefs. Even so liberal a thinker as Von
Hugel declares that the idea of " the Final Restitution
of all Tilings and Souls — as taught by Clement and
Origen — is not, at bottom, compatible with the whole
drift, philosophy, and tone (even apart from specific
sayings) of our Lord." As a loyal Catholic (though
with strong .Modernist sympathies) he even goes so far
aa to suggest or imply that the doctrine of an everlasting
hell " answers to the deepest postulates and aspirations
of the mosl complete and delicate ethical and spiritual
senses!" (The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. ii.
p. 219. See also p. 228.)

Quite recently a book has been issued under the title
of The New Pelagiarmm. It bears an episcopal im-
primatur, and it provides what I suppose is the Romanist
answer to the moral problem which I propounded in
my firsl letter (pp. ~> 7). "The Christian Church, the
Christian doctrine, is semper e (idem. No matter whether

the doctrine is repellent, is repugnant to human thought

or human sent i men I , the Church can allow no difference.

This Lb Christianity. Mankind may accept or reject.
Hut if the faith is to alter, ii erases to be the faith of
the Christian tradition, it is do Longer the Gospel
preached by Christ." The author of this delectable

ho.»k (J. Ilerhert Williams) goes on to Bay t li.it hy the

2o LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Church's teaching "any mortal sin unrepented of, be
it only one single act, means everlasting damnation";
and he gives us the cheerful intelligence that in the
Gospel " those who are damned appear as the majority
of mankind." Similar utterances from the .same
(Roman Catholic) standpoint may also be gleaned from
the pages of such carefully censored journals as The
Tablet. In its issue of October 11, 1913, this journal
makes the following observation : " Living in a very
soft age, men easily persuade themselves that, as they
put it, if God is love, there cannot be a hell. Yet the
language of Scripture is unmistakable. It is clear that
the punishment of mortal sin will last for ever. . . .
The same duration is ascribed to Heaven and to Hell,
and there is no difficulty in accepting the words literally
with regard to Heaven.'1'' I may also refer you to the
" profession of faith " which Cardinal Vaughan, in 1900,
called upon Dr. St. George Mivart to sign, after the
latter had published certain heretical articles in two
monthly reviews. One of the statements to which he
was called upon to signify his adherence was as follows :
" I firmly believe and profess that the souls of men
after death will be judged by God, and that those who
are saved will ' go into everlasting life ' (Matt. xxv. 46),
and those who are condemned 'into everlasting punish-
ment.' I reject as false and heretical all doctrines
which teach that the souls in Hell may eventually be
saved, or that their state in Hell may be one which
is not of punishment. (Cf. Constitution of Council o
Lateran, iv.)"11

Probably your friends of the C.I.M. would disdain
to lean for support on Roman Catholic theologians. I
happen to know something of the peculiar nature of

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 21

that "Christian charity*' which characterizes the re-
lations between the C.I.M. and the predominant partner
in the holy company of Christian societies ! But if they
feel obliged to refuse to strengthen their case by the
citation of "Papist" testimony, they need have no
qualms about accepting that of a Protestant clergyman
with whom most of them would probably be proud to
claim spiritual kinship. I refer to the Rev. George
Gordon Macleod, whose edifying discourse on "Hell':
is now before me. This pillar of Protestant orthodoxy
protests indignantly, like the Romanist author of The
New Pelagian/ism, against the softness of our present
age and the growing tendency to disbelieve in the
precious doctrine of everlasting damnation. " The God
of Abraham,"1 says Mr. Macleod, " used to thunder in
his ire. He ruled with rod of iron, and dashed to
pieces sinning nations like a potter's vessel. Put our
modern God has no iron in his constitution. He has
sheathed his sword, and doffed the cap of doom, and
sat down helpless in heaven, an indulgent weak-
ling. . . . That is the popular god, and I, for one,
refuse to worship him ; for I have nothing to do
with the creation of man's wishes, but with the God
of the Bible. ... 'I am Jehovah, I change not,"*
i> a word that smiles modern thought and popular
infidelity right on tin- cheekbone and teeth, and
will one day put an end to all unbelief in His
power to punish in Hell. The reign of iron lasts

still! The SI • God who hurled oceans over Alps

and Andes, drowning a world, and scorched Sodom to
cinders in a hurricane of lire, and choked the streets

of Jericho with corpses, and threw the Roman dogs
on Jerusalem, to tear it limb from limb until, in

22 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

wild struggle of darkness and lire, a nation Pound its
grave— reigns still! The same God who cursed Cain,
and Miit remorse upon Esau, and dug a grave for
Corah, flung Jezebel to bhe dogs, and slew Belshazzar
at his own banquet-table, and hurried Judas to a
suicide's eternity -reigns still, unchanged for ever; and
what He has done before He can do again. ... I
totally refuse to have anything to do with your india-
rubber god, whom you can spit at and live, for he is
not the God of this Bible. ... I scout him from my
soul as the Devil's god and yours. ... If hell is not
proven I deny the truth of God in toto ; and, ere I
finish, I am prepared to impeach the prophets and
apostles as liars, and Jesus Christ as the biggest
impostor that ever trod God's earth. . . . We are
treated to some fine new theories of the future of
wicked men nowadays. UniversaMsm (or the devil's
theory of hell), with the blandest of smiles, comes up
to tell us that all alive, saint and sinner, will turn up
in heaven at last! . . . This theory is not often boldly
avowed, but secretly believed, I am convinced, it
generally is; and, by God's help, I will blast your soul-
damning heresy to-day. ... If there is no hell, there
is no heaven. They have the same foundation — God's
truth — and if hell be a fable, heaven is a fable, too!
There is as much proof in this Bible for a hell as for
a heaven. . . . Drown the tires of hell, and you drown
the music of heaven. . . . The plan of redemption is
i»ne. Take hell out of it, and the whole scheme is a
dead failure. . . . The eternity of punishment and
the divinity of Jesus stand or fall together. Jesus
was not dod if there is no hell. . . . There is no
death in hell. . . . Death, which is a monster on

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 23

earth, would be an angel in hell. If Death went there,
all the damned would fall down and worship him, and
a shout of triumph rend the fiery vault till all was
still ! . . . I warn you, decent and respectable sinners,
you shall be turned into hell. . . . Your decency is
damning you while it keeps you from Jesus. The
harlots and the publicans shall go into heaven before
you who make a Christ of your morality.'1

The concluding sentence of this extraordinary pro-
duct of Christian piety indicates, I may note, the
survival of that venerable theory, once widely held in
Christendom, that the virtues are but " splendid vices "
or "filthy rags" if unaccompanied by a belief in
Christ. Even Pascal was a victim of this pitiful de-
lusion. "Without Jesus Christ," said Pascal, "man
must be a creature of vice and misery ; with Him he
is delivered from both. In Him is all our virtue and
all our happiness ; apart from Him is nothing but vice,
misery, error, darkness, death, despair. Not only is it
impossible, it would be useless to know God otherwise
than through Jesus Christ. We know God only by
Jesus Christ. Without this Mediator all communication
with Cod i^ barred."

Whatever may be thought about the unnecessary
vigour and lack of delicacy of the Rev. Mr. Macleod's
language, it would be hardly fair for Christians to blame
or ridicule him for liis notions of God and Hell. They

are practically identical with the doctrines which have
been held l>v countless learned and devoul Christians
in nasi cent iirics, and they are based on those writings
which all Christians, including yourself, believe to he
divinely inspired. Hia picture of the God worshipped
i)

24 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

by him is not a very engaging one, bui who can deny

thai it is a substantially corrccl account, as far as it
goes, of the Old Testament Jahveh? The Abbe* Loisy's
description in Ins Religion of Israel (Lug. trans., 15)10,
pp. TOO -5) may be more choice in its Language, but
the god portrayed by Loisy is not a whit more attrac-
tive or lovable than Mr. Macleod's Jehovah. It is
only fair to M. Loisy, however, to admit that he does
not share Mr. Macleod's admiration and reverence for
that capricious, vindictive, and irascible deity.

Dr. Gore, the present Bishop of Oxford, in his
recent little book on The Religion of the Church,
condemns Universalism — the belief that every created
spirit will be finally saved — no less emphatically than
Mr. Macleod, though his language is considerably less
trenchant and impetuous than that of his Scottish
fellow-Christian. lie says that Universalism is " flatly
contrary, plainly contrary to the language used by our
Lord about the destinies of men, and generally to the
Language of the New Testament," though he hesitates
to say that Christians are "absolutely shut up" into
what he admits to be the "almost intolerable belief in
unending conscious torment for the lost." He seems
to incline towards the theory of " conditional immor-
tality," and to the belief that utterly depraved souls
may finally be annihilated ; though he does not mention
the tact that in the fifth century the doctrine of the
complete annihilation of evil was rejected by the Church
as heretical.1 In any case the Last Judgment men-

1 See Vim Hugel, The Mystical Elf nun! of Religion, vol. ii.
pp. 228 9j for some interesting remarks on this Btibject. He
cite- Goethe, Richard Rothe, and Heinrich Holtzmann as being
among the modern upholders of the theory of " conditional

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 25

tioned in the New Testament " leaves men," he says,
"divided into saved and lost," and he does not think
it is possible to attach any other sense to " the tremend-
ous language of the New Testament " than that wrong-
doing " may bring the soul to a spiritual ruin so
complete as to become final and irrecoverable."

This view, which is also that supported by the
Rev. F. C Kempson in his book The Future Life and
Modern Difficulties, has met with severe criticism from
a writer in the Church Quarterly Review (see the issue
for April 15)09, p. 200). He points out that "a
universe where there was an ultimate loss of souls
through the complete determination of the will towards
evil would be an essentially atheistic universe, for it
would be one in which the evil was in the end partially
triumphant over the good." This, I think, is a very
sensible criticism, but doubtless Bishop Gore and Mr.
Frost and other believers in final and irrecoverable
damnation will continue to ignore this point of view,
and persist in contrasting the alleged optimism of
Christianity with the alleged pessimism of "heathen"'
religions.

Lecky spoke truly when in his History of European
Morals he said thai such doctrines as thai of everlast-
ing torture "surpass in atrocity any tenets thai have
ever been admitted into any pagan creed." The adop-
tion of siieli tenets, he iviiiarks, "might well lead men
to doubt the universality of moral perceptions. Such
teaching is, in fact, simply demonism, and demonism in
it> most extreme form." Yel Christian missionaries

immortality.' \'<>n Huge) himself thinks ii " cannol 1»' far
from the truth," but regards it. "taken in it- strictness/' aa
untenable.

26 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

repeatedly refer to the " demonism " of China as if it
were something peculiar to "heathendom"! It lias
been asserted by a "devoted missionary" (for so he is
described in a foreword to his own hook) that in China
" the little children live in dread of the pictures of the
Buddhist hells shown by the mendicant priests." I
have had many years of intercourse with the Chinese
peasantry, and have probably had a wider personal
experience of the habits and customs of the Buddhist
monkhood than any Christian evangelist ; yet I never
came across a Buddhist monk in China who showed
pictures of the Buddhist purgatories (Buddhism has
no everlasting hell) to little children, nor have I
ever heard Chinese parents complain that their little
ones "lived in dread"' of -such things. The missionary
who has made the assertion just quoted is W. Remfry
Hunt (see his Heathenism under the Searchlight, 1908,
p. 41). If it were true that Buddhist monks were in
the habit of terrifying little children with pictures of
hell, I should cordially agree with Mr. Hunt in his
suggestion that such creatures are unworthy of being
called men. lint when he goes on to declare that a
person of this kind "could not be placed anywhere in
( Ihristendom without his being looked upon as a monster,
or as a curiosity," thereby implying that Christendom
knows nothing of such people, I venture to question
whether he i> as fully acquainted as he ought to be
with the habits of Christian priests and preachers. If
he- were to turn to the pages of his Buckle or his Lecky
he would speedily discover that both Catholic priests
and Protestant parsons have covered themselves and
their religion with shame and infamy by the systematic
cruelty with which they have stained and wounded the

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 27

tender minds of children with their ghastly tales of the
punishments that may be awaiting them in hell. To-
day I have chanced to light upon a passage by a lay
writer in a recent number of the Nineteenth Century
and After (February 1917, p. '380). " No decorous
language," he says, " is equal to the emergency in
dealing with the criminal folly of those ivho terrify
children and insult God by describing burning tortures
to be inflicted for ever on hapless victims of Provi-
dential atrocities." Missionaries like Mr. Hunt, who
are so ready to heap abuse and insults on religions other
than their own, and upon the priests of those religions,
should remember not only that inutterable cruelties
have been committed in the past by Christian priests
and ministers, but that these cruelties were perpetrated
on persons who were obliged to submit to their ghostly
ministrations or run the risk of being tortured to death
on charges of heresy or apostasy.

Referring to the efforts made by the Romanist clergy
to foster their hideous demonism among the ignorant
masses, Lecky remarks that probably few English-
men "are aware of the infamous publications written
with this object, that are circulated by the Catholic
priests among the poor." He goes on to refer to a
tract "for children and young persons M called The

Sight (if Hell, by tin-- Rev. J. Furniss. His quotations
from this work are of SO revolting a character that I
will spare yon the repetition of them, and in any case
you probably know the work, for many writers have
quoted from it.

I am not competent to sav whether Father Kumiss's

pamphlel does or docs not give a correct portrayal of
the character of the Christian deil y ; thai is a question

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

which Christians alone can decide. Others may at
least deduce from the hook sonic idea of the true
character of the writer bimself; and they will, I think,
agree with me thai Father Furniss was I ho last person
whom a wise parent ought to have entrusted with the
custody of his child's hodv or with the nurture of his
soul. Mr. C. T. Gorham has justly remarked concern-
ins Father Furniss's tract that "a Church which can
allow such a work to be circulated by authority among
children stands self-condemned as outraging the senti-
ment of humanity and blaspheming the Deity it claims
to reverence." Perhaps the most stupefying remark in
the passage quoted by Lecky is the sentence which
follows a horrifying description of a child's sufferings
in hell — God was very good to this child. No wonder
Lecky says in another passage that Christian priests
have ascribed to God "acts which are, in fact, consider-
ably worse than any that theologians have attributed
to the Devil." A doubt might even be expressed as
to whether the Devil himself, if he exists, can be much
inferior to men of Father Furniss's stamp in delicacy of
moral perception.

" Even Satan's self with thee might dread to dwell
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell."

Protestants, however, cannot flatter themselves that
their own conceptions of their Deity are always of a
much loftier kind than those of the benighted Catholics,
Hi- less likely to terrify little children. I have given you
extracts from the Rev. Mr. Macleod's lurid dissertation
on the subject, and it is as well to remember that Mr.
Macleod was merely carrying on a familial- Protestant
tradition. I think it was Hazlitt who told how some

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 29

Kidderminster women once nearly stoned a parson to
death for declaring from his pulpit that " hell was
paved with infants' skulls." If indignation and wrath
can ever be righteous, I hope you will agree with me
that it was righteous in the case of these ladies of
Kidderminster. The anecdote suggests the reflexion
that if women had not been debarred by the man-made
and man-ruled Church from helping to build up its
creed and to shape its doctrines, we should have had a
far more humane Christianity, a Christianity far more
worthy of the name of a " religion of love," than that
which we have actually received from the hands of
celibate priests and sour-minded and devil-haunted
Puritan fanatics.

It was in the house of a missionary in China that
I first came across a well-thumbed copy of Richard
Baxter's famous book The Saints' Everlasting Rest — a
book which, according to one of his biographers, " will
always command the grateful admiration of pious
nadirs." That eminent Puritan divine, whom Dean
Stanley called "the chief of English Protestant school-
men," makes (lie following cheerful remarks about the
Almighty's direct responsibility for the torments of hell
and the gratification which he derives from observing
the anguish of his victims. "The exceeding greatness
of such torments may appear l>\ considering the principal
author of them, who i> God himself; the place or state
of torment; thai these torments are the fruit of Divine
vengeance; that the Almighty takes pleasure in them;
that Satan and sinners themselves shall be God's
executioners; Hint these torments shall be universal,
without mitigation and without end."

Baxter was by no means peculiar in these views

;>o LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Halyburton, in his hook The Great Concern of Salvation,
after describing the torments of hell, also announced
thai the "contriver of these torments'1 was no other
than "Infinite Wisdom"; and a clergyman named
Hutcheson is quoted by Buckle in his Civilization in
England as distinctly imputing to the Deity "a sensa-
tion of pleasure in injuring even the innocent.11 The
clergy of seventeenth-century Scotland "boasted,11 says
Buckle, "that it was their special mission to thunder
out the wrath and curses of the Lord. In their eyes
the Deity was not a beneficent being, but a cruel and
remorseless tyrant. They declared that all mankind, a
very small portion only excepted, were doomed to eternal
misery." These horrible men even went so far as to
declare that before the Almighty's attention was en-
gaged with the creation of the world and of man he
occupied his leisure in the preparation and completion
of hell, " so that, when the human race appeared it
might be ready for their reception.11

Among Protestant sects of the present day I suppose
few cling more devotedly to a belief in hell than the
Plymouth Brethren, some of whom are engaged in evange-
listic work among the Chinese in my immediate neigh-
bourhood. A tract issued by this sect is now before
me, and from it I select one or two fragments of the
"glad tidings" with which it seeks to awaken unbe-
lievers to a sense of their guilt and to frighten children
into a recognition of the Christian Deity as the God of
Love. " It is a solemn thing for a man to stand up and
say you are all lost. And that is what Christianity
tells us is the state of all by nature.1' The author then
proceeds to quote the texts upon which Christianity

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 31

bases its knowledge of the horrible fate of the uncon-
verted, and says of Revelation xxi. 8 that it is " the
final, solemn warning of Him who sits on the throne.
It is the Lord speaking from heaven.'1 He addresses
himself to the question of hell's existence, and after
answering it with a decided affirmative he asks two fur-
ther questions: (1) Will the body suffer in hell as well
as the soul ? (2) Will hell be everlasting ? His reply
is that the " solemn words " of Jesus compel us to say
" yes " to both questions. Then he proceeds to ask, " Is
a belief in hell necessary to salvation ? " and in capital
letters he answers, "IT CERTAINLY IS." Why?
Because " the Saviour'' has said so. Jesus was "God
manifest in the flesh," and "if we refuse to believe Him,
we make Him a liar! ' Hence u?io one can deny"* the
existence of hell "and be saved." (The italics are in the
original.) He refers to a " pastor Russell," who appears
to have held Universalist views similar to your own, and
sums up his opinion of this heretic in these forcible
words (reinforced with capital letters)," the plain, simple,
damning fact is, Pastor Russell CONTRADICTS THE
LORD."

Your ideas about God and about Hell mav di Her very
considerably from those of Vaughan, Furniss, Macleod,
Baxter, and the Plymouth Brethren, and also (less widely)
from those of Gore, Inge, and Campbell, but the more
their views differ from yours and from one another's,
the more remarkable is it thai you should all profess
to derive your notions from the same infallible source.
What are we l<> say aboui an inspired book that lends
itself, in the hands <>f thoroughly well intentioned and
devoid investigators, to such varying and incompatible

32 LITTERS TO A MISSIONARY

interpretations? And again I ask you in all earnestness,
What course is lo be adopted by those who fully share
your dismay al the doctrine of divinely-ordained ever-
lasting punishment, hut nevertheless find themselves
reluctantly compelled, after as conscientious an examina-
tion of the sacred text as von yourself have carried out,
to agree with those learned, devout, and orthodox theo-
logians, Roman and Protestant, who hold that the
appalling doctrine which has aroused your most justifi-
able abhorrence is clearly and unequivocally set down
in the Bible ?

LETTER III

It is doubtful whether any means exist whereby
the Rev. Mr. Frost and other staunch believers in an
everlasting hell could be made to see their creed in its
true hideousness ; it should not be impossible, however,
to devise some means of testing the strength of their
convictions, and perhaps the severity of the tests might
compel them to relax, to some extent, the rigidity
of their religious ideas. It would be interesting, for
example, to know whether they would remain true to
their conceptions of the truth, and dare to state their
beliefs without either ambiguity or reserve, if they
were sent as chaplains to one of the war-fronts and
brought into contact with non-Christian troops —
natives of India or Egypt or Morocco. Let us give a
loose rein to our imaginations and assume that Mr.
Frost, at the head of a chosen band of his disciples
from the C.I.M., is addressing some of these men jus!

before a gnat battle, and thai he lias been vainly

making a lasl attempt to bring the horror of their
spiritual situation before their mental vision. Shorn
of all .euphemisms, equivocations, and discreel reticences,
the address might take a form something like this: —

" We Christians have asked rou heathen to come

and help us to defeal our enemies in battle; and

for your willingness to do this, and for the courage

34 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

and loyalty displayed by you, we offer you our
grateful thanks. At the same time we, like you,
have a duty to perform, and our duty is to warn
you that, unless you can be persuaded to accept
Christ during the few hours or days that you may
have to live, you are doomed to everlasting per-
dition. Your friends and relatives who fought and
died so nobly last week while charging the enemy's
trenches have already, we regret to inform you,
been condemned to the flaming pit, and are now
writhing in agony which, by the decree of the
ever-loving and most merciful God, will last for
ever. Their sufferings, like those in store for
yourselves, are such that compared with them the
agony of the wounded on the field of battle is
like lying on a bed of lilies. You yourselves will
shortly be ordered to make an attack, and it is
quite certain that a great many of you will be
killed. Those who are killed, being heathen, will
assuredly be damned. You are about to plunge
into a man-made hell on earth; but its horrors
are as nothing when compared with the everlasting
hell into which you will plunge later on. It is a
matter of sincere regret to us that we cannot give
you a more cheerful send-off, and we admit that
our words are hardly calculated to stimulate either
your loyalty or your martial enthusiasm. But just
as it is your duty to fight, and to die if necessary,
for the cause of the Christians who are employing
you, so it is our duty to inform you of the only
condition on which you can possibly escape ever-
lasting torture. As none of you appear to be
willing to accept our counsel, we are obliged to
break to you the painful intelligence that you are
all under sentence of damnation. It seems rather
hard, perhaps, that we Christians should ask you
to coin, ana fight for us, and that, having fought
and died for us, large numbers of you should then

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 35

be sent to hell. It may possibly console you, how-
ever, to know that you would have certainly gone
to hell in any case sooner or later; and that as
your torments will last for ever it really matters
very little whether they begin to-morrow or a few
years hence. After a few trillion centuries of
torture (which will bring you no nearer to the end
than you are to-day) you will realize that it is
of no consequence whether you entered hell after
seventy years or after only twenty years of earth-
life. Meanwhile, you must try and cheer up in spite
of our not very encouraging exhortation, because
it is above all things necessary that you should
do your utmost to help us Christians to win tins
war! By winning the war we hope to have ever-
increasing opportunities of spreading the glad tid-
ings of Christianity among your heathen country-
men ; and it may, or should, comfort you to know
that, though your own damnation is irrevocably
fixed, we may possibly be able, partly as a result
of your courage and loyalty to us, to destroy the
false religions invented by the Devil and accepted
by your deluded ancestors (all of whom you will
meet in hell), and to save the souls of some of
your children by inducing them to believe the
glad tidings which you so contumaciously reject.
"^ our death may, in fact, be of great practical use
tuns iii thai you will be unable to thwart us in
our future efforts to lead your families into the
way of salvation; and we assure you that we in-
tend I" lake full advantage of the new oppor-
tunities for Christian evangelization thai we may
obtain as a result of this war.1 Your officers are

1 Tin- hi- been frequently insisted upon by writers in the

missionary journals Bince the war began, and similar views and

hopes have been set forth in the columns of ordinary newspapers.

Times (Literary Supplement, Augusl 24, 1 916) tells us tliat

"Foreign Missions are coming to their own. . . . Who knows

36 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

aboul to give you the word of command to go
over the parapet. Charge the enemy with a stout
heart. We cannot commend you to God, for that
would be blasphemy, as he has already disowned
you and consigned you to the Devil; nor can we say
God-speed, for it is Satan, not God, who is your
master. If von survive, we will make another
effort, though we fear it will be a hopeless one, to
convert you to our holy and joyous creed; if you
are killed we cannot, indeed, pity you — for that
would mean that we questioned God's perfect love
and justice in condemning you to everlasting pain
and woe; but you may depend on us to make the
best possible use of you as a horrible warning to
others, and we shall not fail, if we have the chance,
to describe your sufferings in hell to the little
children whom you may leave behind in your
heathen home.11

I venture to say that in this imaginary address to
"heathen" troops there is nothing whatever, in prin-
ciple, which is inconsistent with the appalling creed
openly and joyously professed by Mr. Frost and those
tor whom he speaks in the C.I.M. Doubtless they
would complain of its excessive candour, its want of

but tint through this war a new- era may open for all Christian
missions throughout the world?" Sec also the "Open Letter
to the Laymen of the Christian Church in Great Britain,"
signed >»\ twenty-eight influential laymen belonging to various
( bristian denominations, and published in The Times of
November -7, 1914. The writers looked forward to "a great

national movement of enlistment under the banner of Christ"
tn take place alter the war, and hoped that this movement would
mean "the dawn of a new day in missionary history." They
refeired to the paramount necessity of extending and establish-
ing "the world-wide Kingdom of God, which is the only sure
foundation Of peace "

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 37

tact, or its indiscreet disclosure of Christian "mysteries" ;
but Mr. Frost will hardly deny, I think, that it is in
substantial conformity with his own doctrinal position,
and that it merely states in blunt, unambiguous lan-
guage certain " fundamental, necessary, and essential "
troths of the Christian religion as he understands it.

I fear that very much in these letters will be highly
distasteful to you, because, after all, you yourself are a
convinced Christian and a believer in an "eternal"
(defined as "age-long"') though not in an " everlast-
ing " hell. That theologians and orthodox Christians
must believe, or profess to believe, in a hell of some
kind, goes without saying. To cease to believe in hell
would be equivalent to a surrender of the Bible. This
being so, it is a remarkable fact that educated men
and women in Western Christendom treat the question,
as a rule, with complete indifference ; and the clergy,
more often than not, are now recognizing this indiffer-
ence on the part of their flocks by a discreet avoidance
of the whole subject. My experience is that the clergy
of to-day show a very significant anxiety, when hell is
mentioned, t<> talk about something else. If pressed,
Anglicans will usually take refuge in the statement
that the ( lunch of England does not authoritatively
teach the existence of an everlasting hell, as it was

excluded from the Thirty-nine Articles. One such
clergyman expresses the opinion (in a Letter to me) thai

the doctrine "would appear I > have been introduced

at the Reformation"! Like many Anglo-Catholics

of to dav he would like to saddle the Protestants with
the unpleasant features of Christianity; but in this

easel fear the attempt musi fail. The Fourth Council

38 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

of Lateran (1215) gave a clear decision on the subject,
and the doctrine is, as I have already stated, de fide in
the Church of Koine at this day. In proof of this I
will quote from The Students C 'atholic Doctrine, by
Charles Hart, published this year (1917) with the usual
imprimatur. " It is of Faith that there is a Hell ; that
its duration is eternal ; and that the wicked will there
be tormented for ever in company with the devil and
the lost angels. Our Lord Himself has told us this in
the terrible doom that He will pass on the reprobate
immediately after the Last Judgment : ' Depart from
Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared
for the devil and his angels ' (Matt. xxv. 41)."

Modern apologists may perhaps argue that the theory
of everlasting damnation, if not borrowed from pre-
Christian religious thought, was at least anticipated in
it. Even if this wvw strictly true it would not affect
the question. We are not inquiring into the sources
of Christian dogmas — some of which have a lowlier
origin than most Christians care to admit — but merely
criticizing an article of the Christian faith which to
the modern mind has become intolerably repulsive. In
any ease, it is very doubtful whether any true pre-
Christian parallel exists. The Homeric Tartarus was
a place of punishment, but Greek religion contained
no dogma that the torments of the wicked would last
for ever. Such a dogma would, indeed, have been
inconsistent with the popular ideas connected with the
theory of re-incarnation. In Plato's Dialogues, it is
true, we are told that the incurably wicked will never
emerge from Tartarus (ovnore exfiaivovoiv) — but the
fanciful stories of the under-world which Plato put
into the mouth of Socrates in the Pkaedo, the Gorg'ias;

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 39

and the Republic cannot be regarded as forming part
of any existing religious system. They are myths or
parables, and were recognized as such by those for
whose amusement or edification they were narrated.
After expounding the Phaedo myth, Socrates is made
to utter a warning against a too literal interpretation
of what he had said. " A man of sense ought not to
say, nor will I be very confident, that the description
which I have given of the soul and her mansions is
exactly true. ' He merely ventures to think that " some-
thing of the kind is true." A somewhat similar warning
occurs in the Meno (86b) after the discussion of some
of the doctrines of Pindar and other " inspired " poets.
Jowett admitted that Plato's mythical scheme of next-
world punishments was more merciful than that de-
vised by Christian theologians (see his Dialogues of
Plato, vol. ii. p. 176), and he adds that Plato "does
not, like Dante or Swedenborg, allow himself to be
deceived by his own creations " (p. 188). It should be
added that Plato's conceptions of Tartarus are strictly
ethical. It is the morally wicked who are to suffer
there — especially the tyrants and potentates who have
abused their power — not religious doubters or infidels
or persons who have had no opportunity of forming
correct opinions about the gods.

Sometimes Christian apologists attempt to minimize
hell's importance by suggesting that very few human
beings ever have been or can be sinful enough to
qualify for admission. Such compromisers usually in-
clude Judas among the few who arc wholly beyond

hope of salvation. The term Semi-Universalism has

been given to those whose theory of hell may be
summed up in such words as these: "We believe in

E

4o LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

hell, but we only know for certain of one man sent
there n (quoted in The New Pelagianism, p. 98). Even
Judas has his advocates and whitewashes in tliese
degenerate days ; for if you will refer to The Interpreter
magazine for July 1907 you will find there an article
by Mr. W. A. Cox, arguing that Judas was really a
well-meaning person, and that he sincerely repented of
the part played by him in the tragedy of the Passion.
Another writer (George Barlow), discoursing pleasantly
of Judas, has remarked that numerous people " who
have won in the Christian Churches the titles and
honours of saints, have outstripped him in unblushing
and systematic lying"; and it is even suggested, with
bold optimism, that Judas " may some day be born
as a Redeemer upon some star even now barely swim-
ming within the ken of our most powerful telescopes " —
a notion which recalls the Buddhist idea that Varna,
the demon-king of Purgatory, will, in some distant age,
become a Buddha and a saviour of men.

There is another way by which many Protestants of
otherwise sound orthodoxy try to mitigate the horrors
of the Christian dogma of an everlasting hell. Their
suggestion is that sinners who die unrepentant, and the
" heathen " who have had no opportunity of "hearing
the Gospel " in this life, may in the next world be
given a chance of repentance and of hearing about
Christ and " the way of salvation,11 and may thereby
escape the doom of damnation. Among the quite
recent exponents of this view are Dr. J. D. Jones in
his sermon on The Great Hereafter, and S. J. Whitmee
in his booklet Hope for those who Die in Darkness.
Many people will be repelled by the very title of the
latter book, which implies that all a infidels " and non-

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 41

Christians die in a state of "darkness" — a typically
Christian assumption. In any case the theory is quite
inconsistent with Catholic orthodoxy, which declares
that a man's destiny is determined for all eternity by
the state of his soul at the time of death. " At the
moment the soul is separated from the body by death,
it receives the judgment of irrevocable salvation or
damnation." (Catholic Doctrine and Discipline Simply
Explained, by Philip Bold, with an imprimatur by
Cardinal Vaughan.) This latter is one of the numerous
doctrines of orthodoxy which are becoming as in-
credible as that of eternal damnation. The Rev. Dr.
Griffith Jones, for example, speaking at the London
City Temple in April 1917, is stated to have publicly
repudiated his former belief "in which most of us,"
he says, "were brought up," that every man's eternal
destiny is settled by " whatever position he was in at
the moment of death.11 (See the London Times, April
9, 1917.) He was a little premature, however, in his
announcciiiriil that the doctrine in question "is dead
and will never be resurrected." lie evidently omitted
to consult the Pope and the C.I.M.

It is highly improbable that any attempt at com-
promise between the believers and the disbelievers in
an everlasting hell will give genera] satisfaction to be-
wildered Christians. Those within the Churches show
a growing tendency, as I have remarked, to push hell
into the background, as though they were ashamed of

it. By modern writers outside the Churches it is
usually mentioned in terms of ridicule or disgust.
For example, Dr. Gilberl Murray*, the distinguished
Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, who, I under-

42 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

stand, makes no secret of his disbelief in all the Chris-
tian orthodoxies, has expressed his opinion about the
hell-doctrine in vigorous words which will doubtless
sound startling in the ears of those who adhere to the
traditional teachings. "Probably throughout history
the worst things ever done in the world on a large scale
by decent people have been done in the name of religion,
and I do not think that has entirely ceased to be true at
the present day. All the Middle Ages held the strange
and, to our judgment, the obviously insane belief that
the normal result of religious error was eternal punish-
ment. . . . The record of early Christian and medieval
persecutions which were the direct result of that one
confident religious error comes curiously near to one^
conception of the wickedness of the damned." {Four
Stages of Greek Religion, p. 22.)

Dr. McTaggart says in Some Dogmas of Religion
that " if the mass of Englishmen ceased to believe
in any religion, many of them would lose much
happiness by ceasing to believe in heaven, but many
of them would gain much happiness by ceasing to
believe in hell.''1 It is certain, however, that religion
will long outlive the belief in hell. One of the
foremost living authorities on religious psychology —
Dr. J. B. Pratt — remarks that " the most noticeable
fact about the Christian doctrine of hell at the present
time is that belief in it is rapidly disappearing. . . .
For a very large number of Christian people, who are
in other respects quite orthodox, hell has become a
kind of joke." When religious beliefs become objects
of mirth among their own nominal supporters we may
be sure that their reign is over. The fact seems

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 43

to be that educated lay "Christians1' to-day are not
caring whether the Bible teaches everlasting damnation
or not. They have made up their minds that the
doctrine is a revolting one, and they refuse to believe it.
It is rarely that we now hear people say " it is in the
Bible, therefore it must be good and true." Any
doctrine that their moral sense disapproves of is rejected
without further enquiry; and if the Bible says it is
true, so much the worse for the Bible.

Perhaps you have read the articles by " A Student
in Arms " that appeared not long ago in The Spectator.
Describing the attitude of the British soldiers in
Flanders towards the questions of death and the here-
after, the writer made this observation : " Very few
men are afraid of death in the abstract. Very few
men believe in Hell." The Spectator circulates widely
among country parsons and loyal Christians of every
denomination, all of whom are prompt to rush to the
defence of their favourite dogmas when rude hands
venture to assail them. It is of exceptional interest,
therefore, that in this case only one reader wrote
to complain of the statement that British soldiers
disbelieved in hell. Thai reader was a Roman Catholic
naval chaplain. In a letter of expostulation which
appeared in the issue of November 11, 1916', he said
thai those who knew the fads of the case must have
read the statement with amazement. "The facts are,"
he said, "(1) thai the majority of the combatants in
the present war do believe in hell; (2) that among

those who believe in hell are found the bra\est men."

The characteristic coolness of the second assumption
will not escape you. We are nol told thai believers

44 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

in hell are among the bravest men, which might or
might not be true, but that the bravest men are found
among the believers in hell. I wonder by what statis-
tical or other method the reverend father discovered
this fact !

To this Utter, as it appeared in print, was appended
the following editorial footnote: " The gallant Roman
Catholic chaplain may be in the right as to the men
of his own creed. We are convinced that he is wrong,
and that 'A Student in Arms' is right, in regard to
the majority of Protestant Englishmen."

As a matter of fact the statement made by the
" Student in .Arms '" was neither new nor startling.
The same opinion was expressed several years before
the present war by the Rev. A. H. Craufurd, an
Anglican clergyman who in 1909 published a book
entitled The Religion of II. G. Wells and other Essays.
'' I have found while ministering to English soldiers,"
he says (p. 124), "that very few of them seem to have
any real expectation of a future life. They speak of
a dead comrade as being at rest in much the same
way as they would speak of a dead horse." If this is
the case with private soldiers, what is to be said about
educated civilians ? On this point let a distinguished
philosopher be our witness. " Of most cultivated
Christians,"1 says F. C. S. Schiller, " it may be safely
said their belief in hell is practically a very faint and
unimportant factor in their life, and that in heaven
fainter still." {Riddles of (he Sphinx, 1910 ed. p. 363.)
Benjamin Jowett said much the same thing. "Many
sermons have been filled with descriptions of celestial
or infernal mansions. But hardly even in childhood
did the thought of heaven and hell supply the motives

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 45

of our actions, or at any time seriously affect the
substance of our belief.1' (Dialogues of Plato, vol. ii.
p. 170.)

I wonder whether your experience of the living
faith of Christians leads you to accept the view of
the "Student in Arms" and the writers last quoted,
or whether your own staunch belief in hell prompts
vou to assume, with the Roman Catholic chaplain,
that it is still sincerely shared by the majority of your
fellow-Christians. Personally I am of opinion that
the "Student in Arms" was right; and though the
fact (if it be a fact) of the lack of belief in hell
necessarilv indicates the decay of orthodox Christianity
and of the traditional faith in a divinely-inspired
Bible, I feel convinced that it portends nothing but
good for the future of both morals and religion.

LETTER IV

Since writing the foregoing letters I have received
your letter of June 17 (1917), together with the follow-
ing pamphlets written by yourself, all of which I have
read with interest.

A Plea and a Protest.

Chinese Philosophy and the truth as it is in Je.svs.

The Spiritual Condition of the Heathen, a Reply to

the Rev. H. W. Frost.
A Last Appeal, an Open Letter to D. E. Hoste.
Final Correspondence between the General Director

of the China Inland Mission, the Director of

the North American Branch of the C.I.M., and

S. P. Smith.

I observe from one of your pamphlets {The Spiritual
Condition of the Heathen, p. 55) that a fellow-mission-
ary has written to you saying that people who think
as you think (namely, that hell-torments are not endless)
are " blasphemers of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost " ;
and I share your surprise that, regarding you as a
blasphemer, he should extend to you his " affectionate
Christian regard.-" You say in the same passage that
Mr. Frost, American Director of the C.I.M., shows
similar inconsistency in assuring you that he never
ceases to give you his "true esteem and affection in

46

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 47

Christ " in spite of his public declaration that it is
"unwarrantable and dangerous" to have "fellowship
in corporate service " with such people as yourself. I
entirely agree with you that these inconsistencies are
surprising. But I must venture to point out what I
fear is a similar inconsistency on your own part. You
say that vou are quite ready to rejoin the C.I.M. and
to co-operate with it in evangelistic work provided you
are not compelled to subscribe to such of its tenets as
you hold in abhorrence. Is it not strange that you
should be willing to co-operate with men who, in spite
of the fact that they " preach Christ crucified;' main-
tain doctrines which you believe to be not only untrue
but also hurtful to the cause of missions in China and
to religion generally ? ( See your Final Correspondence,
p. 4.) And is it not stranger still that you, a devout
Christian, should express personal feelings of " friend-
ship and goodwill " for a man who has publicly
declared his unshakable faith in a dogma which in your
opinion "brands the character of God with infinite
disgrace1'? (Ibid. pp. 4-5.) x

In my first Letter (pp. 5-7) I propounded amoral
problem. I asked what you would have done if,
detesting the dogma of everlasting punishment as you
do, your examination of the Scriptures had led you, as
it has led countless other Christians, no less conscien-
tious and devout than yourself, including Mr. Frost
and Mr. Hoste and their followers in the C.I.M., to the
hones! conviction thai the detested doctrine does, as a

matter of feet, form part of the teaching of a hook
1 Of. |>|>. 6-8, above.

48 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

which von believe to be or to contain the infallible
utterances of the Almighty. I pointed out that the
alternatives before you would apparently have been
either to surrender your belief in the Bible as an
infallible moral and doctrinal guide, or to ignore the
testimony of your conscience, perhaps at ruinous moral
cost to your own personality. You have not touched
upon this matter in your letter, but your pamphlets
make it only too clear what your answer would be.
For example, on page 6 of your Reply to Mr. Frost you
write thus : " I care not to raise the question of God's
justice, but only to test any statement by Scripture ;
and as Mr. Frost maintains that to perish is to endure
endless conscious suffering, then I strenuously assert
that the idea that God will permit any one single
creature of His, be that one Satan, demon, or man, to
suffer such a punishment, is an idea which is utterly
unscriptural. Such a dogma as endless conscious
suffering involves such unthinkable ' frightfulness,' that
it should be sustained by absolutely unassailable and
incontrovertible scriptural proof, but I defy Mr. Frost
to bring forward a single Scripture to prove it." (The
italics in my quotations from your pamphlets are your
own.) All this clearly signifies that if unassailable
scriptural authority could be produced for the dogma
(and the vast majority of theologians have believed
that it certainly can), then, rather than surrender your
faith in a book, you would dutifully accept a teaching
that proved your God to be a worker of " unthinkable
'frightfulness.1" Again, on page 49 of the same
pamphlet vou imply that against the judgments ot
Scripture there can be no appeal. " Now, reader, make
vour choice," you say, " and God help you to make

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 49

the scriptural and, therefore, right one." It apparently
did not occur to vou to say simply, " God help you
to make the true one." Further, after making some
wise and appropriate observations on the ghastliness of
the conception of a literally "everlasting" hell, you
proceed as follows : " I do not in the least raise the
question of the justice or injustice of the above sup-
posed procedure. Believing that ' God hath spoken ' in
Scripture, and that He is perfect in love and wisdom,
the only question I care to raise is this : Is the above
teaching scriptural? If it is, I am bound to loyally
accept it. I should consider it the height of presump-
tion and impiety to do otherwise." (J Plea and a
Protest, p. 29.)

I fear there is no possibility of doubt that in your
opinion the infallibility of the Bible must be main-
tained at all costs, and its teachings received with
docilitv and reverence by every faithful Christian,
even if they include teachings which disgrace God and
involve Christianity in the profoundest pessimism. As
for the unhappy believer in the orthodox view, he
must, I suppose, content himself with such cold
comfort as his Chinch can give him, and with the
reflection that, bring neither an infidel nor a heretic, he
himself may reasonably expect to escape damnation.
I must, give the Church the credit of admit ting,
however reluctantly, that the dogma of an everlasting
hell is not an agreeable one. In my second letter

(pp. 19-20) I quoted some utterances on the subject
from The New Pelagiamism and '/'he Tablet, and I may
lure add some equally cheerless words from a Manual

of Catholic Theology. " We readily acknowledge,'' says
the ttomanisrl writer, "the difficulty of reconciling the

50 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

eternity of Ilrll with the existence of an infinitely
merciful God, but the doctrine is taught so distinctly
that we have to accept it, like other doctrines which
we cannot understand/1 As far as I can gather, this
point of view is Protestant as well as Catholic ; and I
am glad to see that your fellow-missionary, Dr. Good-
rich (as quoted by you on page 7 of A Plea and a
Protest), admits that even the modified conception of
hell held by yourself is "still very dreadful." He
wisely makes no attempt to reconcile it with the theory
of a Deity who is both omnipotent and omnibene-
volent, and concedes, like the writer in the Catholic
Manual, that he is up against something that he does
not understand.1

Mv reading of your pamphlets has been accompanied
by a steadily growing realization that between our
respective standpoints there is a profound chasm which
nothing can bridge, and that on the moral and religious
issues touched upon in these letters we can agree only
to differ. Our irreconcilable views as to the position
to be accorded to the Bible are sufficient in themselves
to destroy all hope of profitable discussion. For you,
the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God ;
for me, it is a human production, whence it follows
that (like all things human) it contains errors and
imperfections. To you, " one incontrovertible Scrip-
ture is worth a tome of human argument " (see your
Last Appeal, p. 25); the intrinsic merits or demerits of
this or that scriptural teaching are apparently a
secondary consideration ; if it is scriptural it is divine
and infallible, and there is an end of the matter. I

1 C'f. Introduction, pp. xiv-xvi.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 51

wonder how or bv what authority you know the Bible
to be the infallible Word of God. How do you know
that the Quinisextine Council (of the year 692) which
first gave cecuinenical sanction and recognition to the
canon was divinely inspired to utter a correct decision
in the matter ? If those who at a still earlier date
collected and authenticated the books of the canon
were divinely safeguarded against error, how is it that
they failed to detect and exclude passages which we
now know to be forgeries and interpolations — some of
them of great doctrinal importance ? How do you
account for the fact that (to use the words of Dr.
Peake, Professor of Biblical Exegesis at Manchester)
"passages which at one time were regarded as un-
questionable portions of Scripture are now by common
consent looked upon as spurious Vl ? How is it that, to
quote the same high authority, " men have often
dogmatically asserted the verbal inspiration of a
passage which is demonstrably corrupt " ? Are you in
a position to state definitely what books comprised the
O.T. canon at the time of Jesus? If so, how was it
that the canonicity of several O.T. books was still
undetermined at a period so late as the close of the
first Christian century ? (I refer to the disputes about
Esther and Keclesiastes and one or two others.) How
is it that Protestants and Catholics are still not abso-
lutely agreed among themselves to this day as to the
contents of the canon and as to the status of the
Apocrypha?

There is another very serious question which I
venture to put to you. " When the early Protestant
dogmatists," saya Dorner, "took their stand upon

Scripture alone, they forgot that the corpus of Scrip-

52 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

ture, the Canon, was a product of the Church, and that
only an infallible interpretation of the Canon could
make the infallible book infallibly intelligible." Who,
I ask, is your infallible interpreter? Is it possible that
there are two popes — one in Rome and one in Shansi ?

Your staunch Protestant principles doubtless forbid
you to recognize the Scarlet Woman as your spiritual
mother, but I think you will find, if you consider the
matter, that your position is, in principle, not so far
from that of the Roman Church as you suppose.
Some remarks by Auguste Sabatier have, it seems to
me, a very obvious bearing on cases like yours. " The
Catholic," he says, " agrees in advance to accept all that
the Church teaches or may teach, whether or not it is
in conformity with his moral or religious convictions.
There have been, perhaps there still are, Protestants
who take this attitude" with regard to the Bible, and
so far, in method at least, they are still Catholics."
Again : " To believe that a doctrine is true because it
is in the Bible is something entirely different from
saying that it is in the Bible because it is true. In
the former case, the external supernatural authority
of the Bible alone decides as to truth : in the latter,
the Christian reason and conscience are the supreme
tribunal. In the first case the Christian vacates his
independence of thought ; he judges of religious things
according to the judgment of others ; in the second, he
judges of them for himself.'1 Sabatier further points
out the u irreconcilable inconsistency " into which
every Protestant Church falls " when, owning itself
fallible, it seeks to correct its human fallibility by
proclaiming as its fundamental dogma the external

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY S3

infallibility of the biblical canon which it has itself
constituted.'1 {The Religions of Authority and the
Religion of the Spirit, Eng. trans. 1910, pp. 161, 221,
239. Some similar views will be found expressed in
Herrmann's Faith and Morals, Eng. trans. 1904, pp.
18 f.)

The veteran missionary Dr. Joseph Edkins, in his
book on Religion in China, tells us how a Chinese
controversialist " referred to the difference, as he
described it, in moral tone between the Old and New
Testaments." The Chinese, complains Edkins, "look
at the book as ours, not as His. . . . Nothing in the
common course of things can lead an educated pagan to
look on the Bible, when he first sees it, as other than a
human book. This Chinese said he preferred the New
Testament to the Old very much, and threw ridicule on
some parts of the Old Testament." Here the critics of
to-day are distinctly on the side of Edkins's candid
Chinese opponent, not on that of Edkins himself, and
this change of attitude towards the liible has resulted,
as we know, in an entirely new theory of inspiration
and a doctrine of "progressive revelation1'1 of which
Edkins, probably, had never heard, and which would
have shocked and perplexed him if it had been brought
to his notice.

Edkins's book was published in 1859 — the year before
the appearance of Essays and Reviews — and he was a
contemporary of the author of The Pentateuch and the
Book of Joshua Critically Examined. At the very
time when In-- keen-witted Chinese friends were shock-
ing him with their critical attitude towards Old
Testament morality and with their unwillingness to

54 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

acknowledge the divine authorship of the- Bible, an
intelligent Zulu was opening the eyes of Bishop
Colenso bo startling facts which were destined to turn
the bishop into the arch-heretic of his day and to
throw the Christians of England — or at any rate the
country vicars and most of the bishops — into a state
of frenzied disorder. Many passages in Religion in
China suggest the reflexion that if Edkins's mind had
been a little less opaque than it was, if he had been less
tightly bound by the shackles of tradition and less
contemptuous of the questions and criticisms which
reached him from members of one of the most intelli-
gent and mentally active races on earth, he might have
written a book which would have rendered Colenso's
unnecessary, and which would have secured to him,
instead of to Colenso, the honour of being offered up
as a victim on the altar of obscurantism and religious
bigotry.

Edkins lived out his days (he died in 1905) as a
thoroughly orthodox and acquiescent defender of what
is known in Protestant circles as " the unmutilated
Bible'1'' — by which is meant a Bible in which all the
forgeries, interpolations, spurious readings, and mis-
translations continue to be reverenced as the inspired
Word of God. A few of his broader-minded succes-
sors, however, are adopting a much more sympathetic
and respectful attitude towards both "heathen" criti-
cisms and "liberal" theology; and some of them have
even been known to mention the higher criticism with-
out prefixing the scornful but meaningless epithet
" so-called."

" Chinese students,1'' says one missionary writer, " are
;iuare of the modern attitude towards the Scriptures.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY $5

They are the product of the human mind, and stand
in the same category with the Chinese Classics. The
early narratives are mythical, and Christ is an idealized
human teacher. Our theological students with a smat-
tering of science are in difficulties over Genesis, and
one has a suspicion that there is a doubt in their minds
that zee are keeping something back." {Edinburgh Con-
ference Reports, vol. iv. p. 67.) That this doubt should
have arisen in the minds of these Chinese students
speaks volumes for their intelligence and perspicacity.
Another missionary writes thus : " For a missionary to
teach the Bible just as it was taught a hundred years
ago is folly, in the light of all that has been learned
about the Bible since " ; and another (a member of the
Society of Friends) says with great candour : " To
preach the theory of verbal inspiration and the Bible
as a text-book of science is to court disaster sooner or
later. There i.s no need to bind on the Chinese a yoke
which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.vi
(Ihnl. pp. G7-8.)1

In 1907 the Rev. W. K. McEibben, who spent four-
teen years as a missionary in China, wrote as follows
in a journal published by the Divinity Faculty of the
University of Chicago: " If we hold to the conception
of the Scriptures as an unerring rule of life and con-
duct, it is difficult to avoid extenuating or apologizing
tor tin- low standards of conduct of many who are held
up as models. Deceit, savagery, cruelty, treachery,

1 Cf. Bishop Gore, Orders mui Unity, \>. 191 : "The old
Protestanl orthodoxy stood by tin' sole and final authority of
ilir Bible as the infallible word of God. Bui it i^ exactly iliis
position which modern know li'iiir'- is making more and more
impossible."
i

56 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

lewdness, hulk larger and more prominently in the
narrative than we like to think. . . . Use and wont
have made our perceptions obtuse at home, else we
should not still he giving prizes to children for reading
the Bihle through. But in the mission-field these
things stand out in all their native literalness. lit,
China at least they stand in painful contrast to the deco-
rum of native writings that originated in the same ancient
periods, and they produce questionings always, and un-
disguised revulsion often. I recall how an old Christian
quietly collected and concealed Scripture portions con-
taining so innocent a narrative as the Book of Ruth
after we missionaries had distributed them. It was
God's truth, we said, and God would take care of it.11
He goes on to remark that " the only healthy reaction
upon much of the narrative ,1 in the Bible is "disgust,
repudiation." I wonder what Edkins would have said
if he had lived to hear a brother-missionary talking of
the Bible like this! Beside these remarkable admis-
sions I may place an equally illuminating passage from
an article published in 1909 by no less responsible a
Christian functionary than the Anglican bishop of
Tasmania. " There are many who still refuse to allow
the existence of moral difficulties in the Old Testament.
They bathe them in the glow of religious fervour, or
dissolve them in the aqua fortis of an unquestioning
faith. . . . But must not careful reservations be made
before we explicitly maintain that this heterogeneous
material, containing elements so crude and contra-
dictory, is fitted for laying the foundations of Christian
character? . . . We have plain proof of lack of prin-
ciple in the fact that the Church of England, impelled
by tradition, still orders the reading of passages

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 57

which in any other connection would be sternly
repressed." x

In view of such frank utterances as these (which,
had they been made by agnostics or freethinkers, would
have been denounced with indignation as blasphemous
calumnies) it is amazing to find that the ardour of the
Bibliolaters is by no means damped, their faith in the
Bible as a supernatural panacea for the world's misery
in no way shaken. There arc men and women who
still devote their time and energy, and their own and
other people's money, to the world-wide dissemination
of Bibles and " Scripture portions," and who annually
publish statistics showing the enormous circulation of
this literature in every language and in every country.
Can we be surprised at the circulation when we re-
member that wealthy agencies exist for the sole purpose
of distributing this book throughout the world at
merely nominal prices or for no price at all? Can we
be surprised at the statistics so triumphantly flourished
by the Bible societies when we remember that in the
history of I he world's literature there never was a book
so prodigiously, lavishly, and persistently advertised as
the Bible has been?2 If this book is in very truth

1 For -nine apt remarks mi tin- influence <>f < > I • I Testament
precedents on the theory of persecution. Bee Walter Hobhouse's
The Church and the World, \>. 383.

1 < f. the report of the 1 13th annua] meeting of the British and
Foreign Bible Society, published in The Times of May 3, L917.
Our (it the Secretaries Baid "thai the Society had helped i<>
produce or circulate the Bible in 504 Languages. . . . During
tin- la-t eleven rears, mi new languages baa been added al
tin- rah- of one language in less than every six weeks. More
than thirty million copies of the Scriptures had been seul oul by
tin- Society during tin- lasl three years." In an advertisemenl

published in The Spectator of June 30, L917, by tin1 -a Society,

the follovi ing remarks occur : '" Every week the Society is sending

58 LKTTERS TO A MISSIONARY

ot Mich transcendent merit as it is represented to be,
it' it is indeed unapproachably superior to all other
books as a guide to right living and right thinking, if
it is manifestly superhuman in thought and utterance,
it' it is indeed the shrine of " the lively oracles of God,11
does it not seem a little surprising that there should be
any need for the artificial stimulation of its circulation
through the medium of advertisement ? Surely a book
that possesses such overwhelming claims to human ad-
miration and reverence, a book that emanates from the
Godhead and contains messages of extreme importance
to human welfare, might be counted on to speak for
itself and to make its own way among mankind. But
what are we to say when we are confronted by the
stupefying fact that this sacred volume contains pas-
sages and chapters so crude in morality, so objectionable
in thought and language, that Chinese Christians are
ashamed to let them be seen by their " heathen " neigh-
bours ? We can easily guess how scathingly Christian
missionaries would have criticized such passages if they
had found them in the Confucian classics or in the
Buddhist sutras ; how is it that they speak in honeyed
whispers — if they speak at all — when they find them
in the Bible?

Please do not misunderstand me, or assume that I

out thousands of Testaments, Gospels, and Psalters to military
and naval hospitals, wherever the wounded are being nursed.
For Boldiers and sailors in the great war it has already provided
over 6,000,000 of these books in sixty different tongues. To do
this entails huge expense. . . . During this present year, 1017,
merely to print its editions, the Society must pay £30,000 more
than it paid before the war. Will you help in this sacred duty?
Scud your gift at once to the Secretaries."

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 59

have the faintest desire to estimate the Bible at any-
thing less than its true value. Opinions will always
differ, no doubt, as to what that true value is. Such
differences of opinion are legitimate and unavoidable,
so long as men's minds are not all fabricated after one
fixed pattern. Deliberately to under- rate the Bible
would, in my opinion, be as futile and meaningless as
to under-rate the Upanishads, the Leng-yen Sutra, the
Bhagavadgita, Plato's Dialogues, the Book of Mencius,
Shakespeare's Sonnets, the poetry of Shelley or Alfred
Noves, the Theohgia Germanica, the "picture-poems"
of Wang Wei, or the Plays of Bernard Shaw. I do
not regard any of these books or collections of books
(not even the last-named) as perfect or infallible ; but
I have derived great pleasure and profit from them all,
as from a multitude of others that I might name,
and certainly I have no wish to insist that other people
should draw their spiritual and moral sustenance from
precisely the same sources that have been spiritually or
morally helpful to myself, or that they should accept
my classification (if I were foolish enough to make one)
of the relative values of different productions of human
genius. Perhaps, in view of the endless diversities of
human nature, and therefore of human needs, the best
plan would be for each one of us to try to create his
own Bible bv submitting all the literature that comes
his wav to the test of personal experience, and by the

gradual assimilation of all that he finds spiritually or
intellectually nutritive. The very attempt to do this
would be a spiritual exercise of inestimable value.
M.uiv, of course, would prefer to find their Bible not in

books at all, but in art or in nature; and no book-lover

has the right to assert that he finds richer spiritual

60 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

nourishment in his books than others find in pictures
or in mountains. In great numbers of the new Bibles
conscientiously selected from the best-known literature,
I have no doubt whatever that we should find numerous
passages, perhaps whole chapters, from the Christian
Scriptures; nor have I any desire to see such passages
excluded, Bv all means let us be grateful for every
sublime or beautiful or edifying utterance that the
Bible contains — and it contains a great many; but let
us cease attributing fictitious values to Biblical texts
simply because they are Biblical. What is good in the
Bible would be equally good if found in any other
book ; what is worthless or crude should be frankly
recognized as such ; what is ethically objectionable or
revolting to the moral perception should be condemned
with no more hesitation than we should condemn it if
we found it in the pages of a " pagan " philosopher or a
Restoration dramatist. Moreover, it seems to me that
every honest student of Biblical or any other literature
should utterly eschew the ignoble practice of twisting
words out of their natural sense in order to make them
conform to some preconceived theory or to a higher
moral attitude than that attained by the Biblical
authors, and of attempting to prove, by forced exegesis,
that black means white or that evil can be reinter-
preted to mean good.1

1 That even the Church is beginning to awaken to the pressing
nature of these considerations is shown by the recent decision of
the Canterbury Convocation to discontinue the use of the impre-
catory Psalms (especially Psalm .58) in public worship. Equally
interesting is it to notice how strongly this decision was and i9
resented by many devout Christians, both lay and clerical. See
the letters which appeared in The Times during July ]!)17. A
comment of a religious writer in the columns of The North China
Daily News is worth quoting : " The objection to bowdlerizing the

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 61

I strongly recommend you to ponder the words of
Jean Reville, who (speaking for Liberal Protestantism)
savs it is "not because they arc in the Bible that we
meditate upon the exhortations of the prophets or the
appeals of Christ," but because those exhortations and
appeals are beneficent and beautiful in themselves;
whence it follows, he adds, that " we are quite free to
condemn and reject anything which, in this same Bible,
shocks our reason or is repugnant to our conscience."' If
you object to Reville's testimony on the ground that
he belongs to a nation which (before the war) was
spoken of by many Englishmen and some Americans as
a nation of infidels or atheists (epithets which, since
August 1914, have been transferred to the Germans),
perhaps you will listen more patiently to an American
who spent many years in China as a missionary. "An
officially authoritative pope," he says, "does not more
effectually play the usurper over men's minds than does
a mechanically authoritative book. Living religion is
the presence of God in the heart of man. A mechani-

Psalter is thai once this sort of thing begins there is no knowing
where it will end. What becomes of the Comminatiou Servicer
What of large parts of the < >M Testamenl ? < me is reminded of
the Biblical critics who begin by questioning the authenticity
of a few chapters and <*i ■< 1 l>y denying the divinity of Christ.'
(Cf. the remarks which I have put into the mouths of the China
Inland missionaries in the Introduction, p. xvi.) It will be
interesting to observe whether those portions of the Psalms and
other parts oi the Bible which the Christian conscience is a1 last
beginning t<» I"- ashamed <»i are to be deleted from tin' Bibles
which, in their 604 languages, have been placed in the hands of
the converted "heathen* and recommended to them as the
inspired Word of God and as the Bource of the material pre
eminence and the alleged moral and spiritual superiority of the
M estern nation-. ; or whether it will continue t<» be assumed thai
the ancienl Jewish conceptions of morality and spiritual truth are
i enough for the benighted inhabitants of Asia.

62 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

ca] scriptural authority tends to sap the life of true
religion, telling us that the familiar formula, 'thus
»,ii t li the Lord/ certifies the veritable mandate of God.
It saves trouble, indeed, to repose upon authority,
either of pope or of book. But the repose is stupefying
and tends to forgetful ness of the real presence, the God
within.11 {The American Journal of Theology, October
1907, p. 588.) I would remind you, again, that the
English " Broad Church " of to-day admits no less
readily than candid Frenchmen and candid Americans
that our own moral instincts, not the Bible, must be
the final court of appeal. Mr. J. E. Symes, late Princi-
pal of University College, Nottingham, writes thus at
the very outset of his eloquent account of this type
of Christian thought. " Suppose,11 he says, " that the
Broad Churchman is considering the doctrine of Ever-
lasting Punishment. If this doctrine appears to him
unreasonable, or seems to clash with his moral instincts,
he cannot accept it, whatever the Bible and the Church
mav say or appear to say about it." Nor is this posi-
tion monopolized by the Broad Church. Dr. Kirsopp
Lake, whose clarity of thought and utterance is a
quality more often displayed by French than by Eng-
lish theologians, puts the matter in this way : " The
theology of the past," he writes, "offered little or no
hope for the salvation of an unbaptized person, however
good a life he may have led ; even the fate of unbaptized
infants was regarded as doubtful. At present it is safe
to say that no one who maintains such monstrous pro-
positions will even gain a hearing from the general
public. Yet that is not because the old view misrepre-
sented the logical results of the traditional theological
system, but because the increased sense of abstract

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 63

justice puts such teaching out of court, and regards it
as the reductio ad dbsurdum of the theory from which
it was deduced.""1 {The Stewardship of Faith, p. 164.)
Even the occupants of Anglican pulpits are now taking
courage to say in public some of the things they have
long said in private to their friends. The vicar of
an important South London parish, asked where he
found the seat of authority in religion, answered as
follows : " Where Martineau found it — the inner voice.
The seat of authority is not wholly in Bible or Church ;
it must ultimately be in the enlightened consciousness
which has to judge the credentials of any claim to
authority. That is why Broad Churchmen are not very
enthusiastic about foreign missions. We want to spread
the light, not merely to make converts. We are less
anxious that Mohammedans should become Christians
than that they should live up to the best in their own
faith.11 This passage is quoted with disapproval by
another Anglican clergyman of a very different school
of thought— the Rev. H. E. Fox, and when we learn
that Mr. Fox was Honorary Secretary to the Church
Missionary Society his disapproval will hardly surprise
us. In bis Little book Rationalism or the Gospel? he

pleads with much greater zeal than success Cor the

maintenance of the traditional views of Scripture and
orthodox Christianity. Mr. Fox's position is one with
which vou will hardly expecl me to sympathize ; never-
theless I fully agree with him when he Bhows thai views
of the " Liberal * or Broad Church type (which to me
are as welcome as to him they are horrifying) musl lead
to consequences of an extremely serious nature for
historic Christianity. "Moses and all the prophets,"
he Bays, "were among the credentials to which Jesus

64 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Christ appealed. The emendations of speculative criti-
cism did not appear till eighteen centuries had passed.
If this criticism is valid, if modern authority is justified
in its readjusted estimate of the Hebrew Scriptures, how
could they have been used as they were by Him who
declared that both His doctrine and the very language
in which it was expressed had been given Him by His
Father? If the twentieth century is right, then the
first was all wrong. The assured results not merely
vitiate the doctrine of the early Church (as some are
now urging), but even the teaching of Jesus Christ
Himself. The question is not superficial ; it is vital."
With this view, I repeat, I am in full agreement, though
I fear that if writers like Mr. Fox hope to frighten
men into a re-acceptance of the old orthodoxy by
threatening them with the extinction of Christianity
as an institutional religion, they will be grievously
disappointed.

LETTER V

In a former letter (pp. 14—15) I referred to the
French Universalis! Guillaume Monod. Believing him-
self to be the bearer of a new message from the Eternal,
his religious teachings were of a constructive rather than
a destructive nature, but he often indulged in criticisms
of the orthodox Christianity which he believed that his
own teachings were destined to supersede. One of his
sermons contains an eloquent discourse on the horrors
of that grim and unlovely type of Christianity which I
have ventured to criticize in these letters. I translate
the following extract from the peroration of the French
original, which will be found in a very interesting book
entitled Psychohgie TTune Religion, by G. Revault
rTAllonnes. M. .Monod has been describing the heaven
and hell of Protestant orthodoxy, and is trying to show
his hearers how morally hideous is the conception of an

eternal hell CO-existing with an eternal heaven.

"In the oik- place (heaven) is Jesus Christ with
the few souls thai he has been able to rescue from
the power of Satan, in the other place (hell)
Dearly the whole of the great body of sinful man-
kind, for whom Christ gave his life in vain. And

above both heaven and hell stands God, for ever

bestowing benedictions on the elect and working
Vengeance Oil the lost ; with his right hand heap-
ing benefits on the saved, with his b('l hand nn-

65

66 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

ceasingly raining blows <>n the damned ; rejoicing
both in the perpetual happiness of the few and in

the endless despair of the many. Christians, can
you really believe in this? Can you hear such
things without trembling? Ah! if this horrible
heaven could for a moment be realized, Jesus
Christ would not enjoy a moment's rest. To those
he had redeemed he would speak words like these :
() my well-beloved, do you not hear the wailing of
my brothers? Come with me to deliver them!
They are your brethren, your children ; they are
bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. Let us
go down to them where they dwell in agony so
that we may raise them up to share our happiness
— if indeed there can be any happiness at all for us
while they are suffering hopeless pain. I will take
their sins upon myself, I will bear for them the
weight of divine justice, you will preach to them
of my love, and God will convert them. Let us
■ leave behind us, in heaven, those theologians who
can content themselves with such a heaven as this
is now ; for you and me, heaven is not heaven
while there exists a hell."

The complacent " theologians " to whom Mo nod
referred in this striking little celestial vignette were of
course men like Calvin and his successors (including, I
fear, those who share the views of Mr. Frost and the
C.I.M.), who saw or professed to see nothing unjust,
nothing dishonouring to God, nothing self-contra-
dictory, in the conception of a state or place of ever-
lasting suffering co-existing with a state or place of
everlasting bliss. He may also have had in mind
theologians like Tertullian, who (in De Spectacidis)
declared that the contemplation of the agonies of the
damned, so far from diminishing the joys of heaven,

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 67

would actually be, to the blessed saints, a source of
added happiness. Dr. William James, who, as you
know, was very far from being an orthodox Christian,
remarked that if heaven were offered to the entire
human race "on the one simple condition that a certain
lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life
of lonely torture " it would be a " hideous thing "', for
mankind to accept such a bargain. I doubt whether a
man could be found to-day who would openly disagree
with James in principle, however much he might
secretly doubt his own ability to reject the bargain if
it were offered to him. This shows that the point of view
of theologians of Tertullian's stamp is, happily, no longer
possible to our own age. Few Christians of our time would
dare to say, as Calvin said in his Institutes; that it was
God's pleasure to doom men to destruction, that he
saves some and damns others " without any respect to
human worth," and that "it is plainly owing to the
mere pleasure of God that salvation is spontaneously
offered to sonic while other- have no access to it."1

That this view was not peculiar to Calvin I have
shown in a former letter see pp. 29-30). And indeed,
if we begin by assuming the truth <>f the Calvinistic
heme of Salvation' —and Damnation— it is diffi-
cult to avoid Calvin's conclusion that the sufferings
of the damned give pleasure or a1 leasl give no
displeasure — to the Almighty. Even if we suppose
thai Cod is sorry to see his creatures engulfed In the
bottomless pit, this sorrow can only be temporary: for

it' it lasts a- long as any of his creatures arc Buffering

pain, Hnn it will lasl for eternity ; because, by hypo-
thesis, hell and its torments are eternal. Is it to be
iimed, then, thai God is eternally unhappy? No

68 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Christian can be willing to involve his creed in a
pessimism so profound as this. Moreover, any such
theory would contradict the hypothesis of God's eternal
perfection; for it is absurd to predicate perfection of
a being who suffers the pain of eternal sorrow. The
presence of such pain would of itself constitute a very
serious imperfection in the divine personality. Look-
ing at the matter sub specie aeternitatis, then, it must
be conceded that the sufferings of those in hell cause
no unhappiness to God. Unless, therefore, the Chris-
tian God is one of the fabled Di Securi, and therefore
regards mankind with utter indifference, we are obliged
to assume that he contemplates their sufferings with
feelings analogous to those which in mankind would
be called pleasurable.

It is needless to say that there are serious moral
difficulties involved in this conception of the Deity.
We are told that he is pre-eminently a God of Love,
and that his love embraces all creation. Is this merely
a flattering hyperbole, invented for the purpose of
currying favour with a Deity whose sole preoccupation
is the magnifying of his own glory, or is it literally
true ? If it is true, his love must extend not only to
the elect but also to the damned. This being so, why
does he not show his love for the damned in a more
amiable way than by inflicting everlasting torture upon
them ? If he wishes to save them but cannot do so,
there must be an opposing force stronger than his
own, in which case he is not God. According to the
statement of one of the most illustrious of saints —
Catherine of Genoa — hell would be transformed into
heaven if but a single drop of love could fall into it.
But as hell is to last for ever, it is clear that the

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 69

transformation imagined by St. Catherine will never
take place. In other words, although God's love is
by hypothesis infinite, he will never allow ;i single
drop of it to reach the wretched creatures whom he
has condemned to everlasting perdition : because, if he
did so, hell would ipso facto turn into heaven. A
few Christian theorizers, like John Chrysostom, John
Damascene, Prudentius the hymn-writer, and others
of less note have suggested that God might, in answer
to prayer, grant some mitigation of the sufferings of
the lost, at least during certain intervals of "breath-
ing time " (rc.spinit'io). Even St. Augustine was not
opposed to this view, and it: has never been condemned
by the Church. But if it is true, this theory only
serves to bring God's responsibility for the agonies
of the damned into stronger relief; for a Deity who
could mitigate the sufferings of a lost soul could
presumably abolish those sufferings altogether, and
would certainly do so if he were literally an omni-
potent God of literally boundless love.

Then are we to suppose that God hates the damned?
All things considered, tins seems probable; but in
th.it case hatred must be one of God's attributes, for
at least so long as then- are damned souls for him
to hate. Hut as it has been ordained that damned
souls are to exist, and to Buffer, for eternity, God's

hate must also hi- eternal. Now if hate and love
coexist eternally in the divine bosom, it is mere
Bycophancy for his worshippers t<> pretend, as I hey
persistently do, that "Love" and " God " are practi-
cally synonymous terms. If the C.I.M. is right in

contending thai all non-Christians are among the
damned, it i> obvious that the damned -the objects

7o LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

of God's hate — are vastly more numerous than the
saved — the objects of his love. Why then do Chris-
tians hail him as a (iod of Love, and totally ignore
the far more conspicuous fact that he is a God of Hate ?
And what are we to say about the attitude of the
blessed saints and angels who comprise the population
of heaven ? They, like their God, presumably con-
template the sufferings of the damned without any
feeling of uneasiness, and perhaps — as Tertullian and
others have announced — with feelings of positive
pleasure. It is clear that the sight or knowledge of
hell cannot grieve them, for heaven is, by hypothesis,
a place or state into which no grief can enter. More-
over, for an angel in heaven to feel or express sorrow
or pity for the damned would be perilously near
blasphemy or rebellion against God, because it would
indicate sympathy with the eternal victims of God's
eternal rage or hate, and would imply a belief that
God had not treated the lost souls with infinite mercy
and love. (On this point I may refer you to Letter III,
p. 3C.) The saints in heaven are, we are assured,
in a state of eternal and perfect bliss, and such a state
is incompatible with feelings of sorrow or pity for
others. Such emotions would necessarily be accom-
panied by a desire to remove their cause, otherwise
they would not be sincere. This means that the saved
would long for the salvation of the damned. But the
existence of such longings, which must remain eternally
unfulfilled, would necessarily mar the perfection of
heavenly bliss. Moreover, if the saints longed for the
salvation of the damned they would be guilty of sin,
because they would be longing for something of which
God disapproved. This would expose the illusory

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 71

nature of heaven itself, because it would show the
hollowness of the accepted hypothesis that into heaven
neither sin nor disharmony can find entrance.

It might be argued that God will conceal from the
elect all knowledge of hell, and will even cause them
to forget, when they reach heaven, that they had ever
heard of the punishments in store for the wicked.
Clearly there are grave objections to this theory. We
should have to assume, for example, that important
parts of the Christianity learned on earth — including
some doctrines which, according to Mr. Frost, are
" fundamental, necessary, and essential " constituents
of the Gospel message (see Letter I, p. 3) — are blotted
from the minds of the saved as soon as they reach
heaven. We should also have to suppose that they
cease to retain the faintest recollection of all those
among their friends and relations who had died in the
"darkness" of unbelief — otherwise awkward questions
would arise as to what had become of them. But
why should God go to the trouble of effacing all
knowledge of hell from the minds of the saved if
hell's existence is perfectly compatible with divine
mercy and infinite love ? Is it conceivable that God
-hould be ashamed of his own handiwork ? If the
damnation of sinners and non-Christians has been or-
dained Ijv a perfectly righteous and benevolent Deity,
whv should God take Bteps to conceal from the know-
ledge of lii> saints bo brilliant and conspicuous a proof
of his Loving-kindness ?

There remains the theory thai God is the author

of a divine fraud, whereby be makes hell appear (to

the eyes of the saints) to be wholly i'rvc from un-
pleasantness—perhaps even to be, from the celestial
o

72 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

point of view, a kind of replica of heaven itself.
Adopting this theory, we must assume that the
Almighty, by the exercise of his omnipotent wizardry,
causes his holy ones to see justice in injustice, good
in evil, pleasure in pain, and truth in falsehood. This
means that God, in order to save his own reputation
in heaven, lies to his saints by throwing hallucinatory
dust in their eyes. This procedure is hardly creditable
to the Divine character, even if the dust be composed
of jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, and emerald, and the
other costly materials that form the constituent parts
of the celestial city (see Revelation xxi. 19). And even
here we find an irreconcilable contradiction — for are
we not told that into that city there shall enter
nothing that maketh a lie (Rev. xxi. 27 and xxii. 15) ?
"Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" is specifically
excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem. What, then,
becomes of God himself?

From a God who takes pleasure in the eternal
torments inflicted by his own decree on vast multitudes
of his own creatures, it is but the shortest of steps
(if even that be necessary) to the personage known to
Christians as the Devil. Hitherto I have said very
little about this impressive product of the religious
imagination, though he plays so exceedingly prominent
a part in the cosmic drama associated with the Chris-
tian creed that to ignore him altogether would be
nearly as unpardonable as to deprive Hamlet of the
Prince of Denmark or the Chinese Lun Yu of the
figure of Confucius. Indeed, a perusal of the mission-
ary literature of the C.I.M. and its allies reveals the
fact that the demonology of this type of Christianity

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 73

is at least as important, for all practical purposes, as
its theology.

I have already drawn your attention to the general
unwillingness of the nou-Komanist clergy of to-day to
be dragged into a discussion about hell (see Letter III,
p. 37). I think it may be observed that they are
equally unwilling, as a rule, to give any definite opinion
about the nature and functions of the Devil. Just as
they have awakened to a knowledge of the fact that
educated Christian laymen no longer believe in the
infernal torture-house which figured so conspicuously
in the Christian literature and pulpit dissertations of
a bygone day, so they have realized that men are apt
to show amused incredulity when they are told about
the objective existence of a personal spirit of evil. If
it is true, as Dr. Pratt says (see p. 42), that hell has
become a kind of joke, it is to be feared that the Devil
is in serious danger of degenerating into a mere buffoon,
whose inglorious role in the future will be to add to
the gaiety of nurseries. Nevertheless, it is still too soon
to assume that the Devil has been whittled away into
un abstraction or a myth. Christian Demonology,
eager to prolong t lie life of her most kingly offspring,
has procured tor him a valuable ally in the shape of the
Muse of Poetry. The Devil has borrowed the garment?
of Goethe's IVfephistopheles and .Milton's Satan, and by
arraying himself in these gorgeous robes he has suc-
ceeded to some extent in disguising his decayed and
shrunken form and in maintaining, lor the lime being,
the outward Bemblance of majestic diabolism. His pre-
tensions to world rulership are still taken seriously by
the extreme right and left wings of thi' Christian arm}
— the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism ;

74 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

it is still commonly believed, among missionaries, that
over all non-Christian lands his unhallowed sway is
almost unchallenged, and that his demon-armies can
only be put to flight by the use of the divine talisman
which is concealed in the pages of the Bible.

From the Church of England — that favourite home
of compromise — no clear statement as to the existence
or non-existence of the Devil can be expected. The
Anglican clergy of to-day are unlikely to emulate the
example of the vicar who (as we know from the once
well-known case of Jenkins v. Cook) excommunicated
one of his parishioners for expressing disbelief in a
personal Devil. The result of the legal proceedings
in that case was not such as to encourage the Church
to incur further risk of ridicule and defeat, even in
defence of their cherished Devil. There is ample evi-
dence, however, that as recently as the middle of the
nineteenth century Satan was almost if not quite as
real a personage to many of the Church of English
clergy, and probably to most of their parishioners, as he
was to Martin Luther. Luther, you may remember, was
once disturbed by mysterious footsteps in the monastic
cloister; "but as I knew it was the Devil,1"' remarked
the undaunted Reformer, " I paid no attention to him
and went to sleep." Luther got off lightly; not so
the unhappy Romuald of Ravenna, whose sleep was
interrupted for nearly five consecutive years, because
the Devil used to come and lie on his feet and legs
and torment him with a persistence that was truly
diabolic.

In 1852 there was published in London a volume
of Lectures by Twelve Clergymen of the Church of
England. The title of the book was The Millennial

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 75

Kingdom. It is important to note the date, of publi-
cation, because it was in the decade immediately pre-
ceding certain epoch-making events in the worlds ot
science and theology which were destined to initiate or
hasten changes of a momentous character in the real
as distinct from the nominal beliefs of British Chris-
tians.1 Those who are inclined to doubt whether any
such changes have taken place, and who like to think
that Christianity is the same "yesterday, to-day, and
forever," might do worse than dip into the pages of
The Millennial Kingdom, which, if it dissipates their
dreams of Christian immutability, may at least, by
wav of compensation, afford them some innocent
amusement.

1 The following dates may be of interest : —
1845. Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

published.
1849-1850. The Gorham Case.
1850. F. W. Newman's Phases of Faith and W. R.Greg's Creed of

Christendom published.
1850. Woman burned alive by French Catholic peasants for

witchcraft.

1852. Delitzsch'e Genesis published, showing the composite
character of that book.

1853. Hupfeld's Sources of Genesis published.

1856. Two Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles published, one
by Dean Stanley, the other by Dr. Jowett.

1858. Two papers on Involution read before the I. inneaii Society,

London: one by Charles Darwin, the other by A. K.

Wallace.
\y..V<i. "Our Lady of Lourdes" showed herself to Ilcrnadette

Boubirou .
1809. M mil - Bampton Lectures on the Limits of Religious

Thought published.

1 859. The Origin of Species published ; also Edkins's Religion in
China

1860. Essays and Reviews published.

i!'.<;i- 1879. I olenso's treatises on the Bible published

l(i'»2. Judgmenl given in the Essays and l.'rrirws case (see p. I7>

1862, Foundation of the China Inland Mission,

76 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Unfortunately the book is now rarely seen, for the
davs of its popularity have long since vanished. As
it is probably unknown to you, I will take the liberty
of quoting a few sentences from the discourse of the
Rev. C. J. Goodhart, whose contribution to the book
is entitled "The Removal of the Curse.'1 After setting
forth the anticipated joys of the Millennium, Mr.
Goodhart proceeds to tell us about the fate of the
Devil. "Satan will be shut out," he explains, "both
from the earth and the air. If we may judge from
some intimations given us in the Word of God con-
cerning that mischievous spirit, called as he is the
prince of the power of the air, and working as he
evidently did in Job's case in perfect consistency with
that character, I am disposed to believe that he may
be more instrumental than many imagine in causing the
elemental disturbances which afHict our world. Inclined
as I feel always to believe .simply the statements of
Scripture, I understand that he inhabits the air with
his legions, and roams over the earth in search of
mischief and for prey.""1

It is a pity Mr. Goodhart is no longer with us, for
it would be highly interesting to ascertain from him
whether airships and aeroplanes do not interfere, to
some extent, with the aerial peregrinations of Satan
and his lawless crew. Perhaps, however, we are to
understand that the men who invented these ingenious
contrivances were inspired by the Devil himself, who
wished to use them for the furtherance of his own

1 In his commentary on Ephesians vi. 11-12, St. Jerome
stated that "this air which divides heaven and is called the
void is full of powers adverse to man." This, he adds, was the
" opinion of all the learned."

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 77

diabolical designs. Events have occurred during the
present war, in connexion with flying machines of all
tvpes, which would appear to give a certain amount
of plausibility to this theory.

To proceed with Mr. Goodhart's discourse : " And
however either cholera on the one hand, or atmospheric
blight on the other, may be rightly accounted for from
natural causes, and both justly traced to the provi-
dence of God, yet we may be sure the Devil takes
pleasure in the evil effected, and we may feel scarcely
less certain that he cheerfully and diligently works in
it all, up to the point of the permission given him."

Here we note that the old belief in the diabolic
causation of disease has been forced to give way to a
more enlightened view ; yet, though it is no longer
held that cholera and " atmospheric blight " are due
to the direct agency of the Devil, we are assured that
they give him pleasure, and that he " cheerfully and
diligently works" in the evil brought about by such
calamities — which, by the way, are "justly traced" to
the agency of God himself! The Devil's activities in
this direction are, however, subject to certain limita-
tions: he can only work evil "up to the point of the
permission given him." Unfortunately, -Mr. Goodlmrt
failed to appreciate the grave implications of this
theory. If God "permits*1 the Devil to work evil, it
is f';iir to assume that he could have withheld his per-
mission and thereby prevented the evil. Hut if God
"permits*1 evil which he could have prevented, he

thereby shares the Devil's responsibility, and becomes
a partner in his guilt.

Mi'. GrOOdhart*8 remarks on this subject conclude .^

follows: "In the day, however, of the coming renewal,

78 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

all this will be at an end. Shut up in the bottomless
pit, and the earth he laboured to mar becoming thus
his prison-house, he will be impotent for evil beyond
the walls of his own dungeon ; while heaven and earth
reflect each other's beauty, and only exchange their
influences for mutual blessings."

The fantastic materialism of this conception is start-
ling, and the fact that it is founded on the letter of
Scripture does not make it less so. The Devil, one
would have supposed, is a spiritual being, and should
therefore be able to demonstrate, even more effectually
than the English poet Lovelace, that for him stone walls
are no prison and iron bars no cage. Yet Cardinal
Bellarmine, as late as the seventeenth century, thought
it " very probable " that the fire of Purgatory was a
real and true fire, and one of his reasons for this opinion
was the existence of the active volcano of Etna — a
clear intimation of his belief that the sufferings of
the dead were to take place in a definite subterranean
locality which would eventually become the Devil's
prison-house. Dean Inge tells us that the Church ot
Rome " still teaches not only that the purgatorial fire
is material, but that it is situated in the middle of the
earth.11 {Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 150.) He
is candid enough to add, however, that his own Church
is in no position to throw stones at the Romanists, for
the Church of England, too, is crudely materialistic in
some of its imaginings. The fact is that the teachings
of modern science, which have been so often anathema-
tized by the Churches for their supposed materialistic
tendencies, have actually had the very remarkable effect
of abolishing much of the grotesque materialism that
disfigured traditional Christianity.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 79

Few Church of England clergymen of to-day are
likely to affirm their belief in the personality of the
Devil in such distinct and unambiguous terms as those
used bv Mr. Goodhart seventy years ago. It is true
that the Devil is still referred to, from time to time, in
the sermons of our modern divines, but the difficulty is
to know what such references really mean. In these
days of " rei interpretation1' it is not sufficient to ask a
clergyman what he believes, it is also necessary to under-
take the task — often a very wearisome one — of trying
to find out what meaning (other than the obvious one)
he attaches to the words in which he states his belief.
If a parson of three hundred — or one hundred — years
ago declared that a certain calamity had been brought
about by the Devil, there would be no reason to doubt
that he meant precisely what he said. We should know
that when he spoke of the Devil he meant a spirit of
evil endowed with a distinct personality. But if the
Archbishop of Canterbury informs our own generation
— as he actually did inform it in August 1914 — that
the great war was caused by the Devil, we cannot be
certain that his meaning has been correctly conveyed
by his woids. If he were a layman dealing with a " pro-
fane*1 subject, and not a Christian prelate dealing with
;i religlOUfl one. we should assume as a matter of course
that Ihs words were to be taken at their face-value. It

is quite possible, however, thai the archbishop was

merely using the conventional phraseology of religion

to express I he rather platitudi IS sentiment that "this

war is an evil thing and the result of evil causes."1 On
the other hand it is equally possible that he meant
exactly what he said. For all I know to I he eonl rai \ ,

the archbishop may believe as firmly in the Devil's

80 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

existence as in his own or God's. I lis words, as reported,
were to the effect that this war was " not God's war but
the Devil's war." Now if by "the Devil" he merely
meant " evil," what did he mean by " God " ? It is
clear that the terms "God" and "Devil" were used
antithetically, and if by the one he did not mean a
personal spirit of evil, what reason have we for supposing
that by the other he did mean a personal spirit of
good ? If by " God " he meant God, we are justified in
assuming that by "the Devil" he meant the Devil.
If this assumption is correct, the archbishop is of
course exonerated from any suspicion of ambiguity
in this particular instance, and we can only regret
that his admirable example is not followed more
generally by his brother-prelates and the rest of the
clergy.

The same problem confronts me when I find a Scot-
tish Episcopalian rector declaring that "the Devil is
making his supreme effort for the domination of the
world." (This I take from one of the 1916 issues of
the monthly magazine of Christ Church, Morningside,
Edinburgh.) These words are even more explicit than
the archbishop's, and the reference is to the same world-
wide calamity ; but what docs the statement mean ?
Does "the Devil" stand for the Satan of theology?
Does it mean "evil" in the abstract? Or are we to
understand that it is a new Christian name for the
Kaiser ? If the words were not intended to express
literal fact, would it not have been desirable to avoid
the use of a term which old-fashioned Christians
doubtless interpreted in its natural sense, and which
must therefore have tended to galvanize a dying super-
stition into renewed vitality ?

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 81

I have already observed that belief in the Devil is
still seriously entertained by the Church of Rome and
evangelical Protestantism. Fiercely antagonistic as
they are in many theological battle-fields, they are
brothers-in-arms in defence of the personality of the
arch-enemy of mankind. They are equally unanimous
in their testimony to the personal existence of the in-
numerable demons who help their chief to torture men's
bodies and (when "permitted") to ruin their souls.
The Catholic teaching on this subject is so well known
that I need not dwell upon it. A recent statement of
it will be found in chapters x and xi of The Student's
Catholic Doctrine, published in 1917. From another
authoritative volume of recent date I extract the follow-
ing : " One of the greatest errors of our own time is the
common assumption that evil spirits do not exist, or
that if they exist they no longer possess or torment
men." (Christ and the Powers of Darkness, by J. God-
frey Raupert, 1914. Cf. also his book The Dangers of
Modern Spiritualism, and A. V. Miller's Sermons on
Modern Spiritualism.)

Equally free from ambiguity is the teaching of that
section of Protestantism which is so powerfully repre-
sented in the mission-field by the C.I.M. Ample
evidence to this effect could easily be produced from
the Mission's official publications, but you. as a former
member of thai Mission, are well aware of its doctrinal
position and therefore require do such evidence. The
following short passage, however, is perhaps worthy of

notice, not because it is unique or in any way unusual,
hut becau • it is very typical of the altitude of the

C.I.M. towards the whole subjecl of demonology. In
the official organ of the Mission, under date of December

82 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

1912, there is an account of a successful proselytizing
campaign among some Chinese hill-tribes. Numbers
of converts were enrolled, but an epidemic of fever
broke out which, we are told, " tried the work badly,"
and which necessitated a removal of the Christians'
meeting-place " from one hamlet to another." To the
missionaries it was a " strange " thing that God should
test the new converts so severely before they had become
"established." This appears to imply a belief that
the epidemic was deliberately sent by God as an
experimental method of testing the genuineness of the
conversions. It does not seem to have occurred to
them that by moving the Christian meeting-place from
hamlet to hamlet, and thereby attracting crowds away
from the infected to the uninfected hamlets, they were
probably responsible, to a grave extent, for the spread
of the disease. Perhaps they would have said that the
converts had nothing to fear from the epidemic, because
the Lord would assuredly protect his servants, and that
the "heathen" — well, they were only "heathen" and
the Devil might look after his own. Unfortunately
for this theory, it is clear that the converts enjoyed no
immunity from the disease; indeed, it is implied that
it was they who suffered the most. The narrative
proceeds as follows : " The heathen, of course, say
that the demons are punishing these hill-people for
giving up the worship of demons. Certainly, the power
of the demons is great among these people. Praise God,
we baptized fifteen believers in this village, one of them
a wizard belonging to the place. His conversion is an
outstanding evidence that the Saving Power of the Lord
is far above the power of the demons. During our short
tour we baptized sixty-five converts. Hallelujah ! "

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 83

In this passage we have a very interesting proof of the
survival among modern missionaries of the primitive
Christian theory that the "heathen gods" are really
demons, and that though these demons are very power-
ful the "Saving Power" of God can overcome them.
This being their sincere belief, it is not surprising that
Christian missionaries too often show an astounding
ignorance of the nature of the religions that stand in
the way of their own propaganda, and that their
published accounts of such religions are almost in-
variably full of the wildest misrepresentations and the
grossest calumnies.

It is possible that your attention may not have been
called to the reports of the annual meeting of the
C.I.M. held at Kingsway Hall, London, on May 9,
1(J16. The following extract is of special interest in
connexion with • my present subject: "At the evening
meeting . . . the chief speaker was the Rev. T. Darling-
ton, of Szechuan, who, after dealing with the theories
of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, said that
there Satan was working with indomitable energy for the
spiritual and moral undoing of China, and those who
lived in that country were not very long before they
believed vn the existence of a personal devil.'''' {North
China Dai/// Xezvs, June 8, 1916.)

Mr. Darlington's words dearly imply a belief that
people who wire not convinced of the Devil's existence
before they reached China would speedily become
convinced of it after their arrival there. In other
words, Mr. DarlingtOD seems to have assumed that

China afforded more abundanl evidence of the Devil's

personality than could be found in Europe. Hut was
this simply a missionary's wuv of declaring that in

84 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

China there was a great deal of sin and wickedness ?
If this was all he meant, we may place his utterance
side by side with that of Thomas Carlyle, who after
conducting Emerson through the East End of London
and showing him something of the misery and squalor
that existed there, said, " Will you believe in the Devil
now, man?" In view, however, of the system of
demonology to which the C.I.M. has always remained
faithful, it is highly probable that Mr. Darlington
intended his remarks to be taken literally and seriously.
That being so, there are some questions which, with
equal seriousness, I should like — if I had the pleasure
of his acquaintance — to put to him. If, as he evidently
believes, there is more sin in China than in the West,
how does this prove the personality of the Devil ? If
the lesser sins of the West are insufficient to produce
conviction of Satan's personal existence, why should
the greater sins of China be expected to do so ? If
non-personal causes, or merely human causes, are
sufficient to account for the sins of London, why should
a personal or demonic cause be necessary to account for
the sins of Canton ? Further, on what principle does
Mr. Darlington weigh the sins of one people against
those of another ? What makes him so confident that
China is, as a matter of fact, more sinful than the
West ? Is not his confidence based simply on the
a priori assumption that a "heathen" land must be
more sinful than a Christian one, and that Taoism,
Confucianism, and Buddhism must (owing to Satan's
patronage of them) be morally and spiritually inferior
to Christianity ? My own experience of Eastern and
Western lands has convinced me (rightly or wrongly)
that the people of China are, on the whole, no more

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 85

prone to wickedness than those of the West, that
neither East nor West has any right to claim moral
superiority over the other, and that to abolish Con-
fucianism and Buddhism in favour of Christianity would
do grave injury to China. I cannot refrain from adding
that if Mr. Darlington wished to gain general acceptance
for his theory as to the moral inferiority of China and
her religions, he selected a singularly inopportune
moment for the purpose. At the time when he de-
livered his address, the great war, with its hideous and
unparalleled accompaniments of vice and crime, had
already lasted for nearly two years ; and I should have
thought that if Mr. Darlington expected to find his
personal Devil in that part of the globe which was most
conspicuous for its wickedness and sin, it was quite
unnecessary for him to carry his explorations beyond
the confines of Europe.

Believers in the personal existence of the Devil are
convinced, on Scriptural authority, that he is destined
to be overthrown by his heavenly rival ; but they have
never been able to explain, so far as I am aware, how it
18 that the hopelessness of his position as the antagonist
of Omnipotence is apparently unrecognized by himself,
in spite of tin- fact that his final defeat has been made
the Bllbjecl of a divine revelation to man. It is hardly
conceivable that if the Devil knew what was in store
for him be would continue a struggle which was bound
to end in irretrievable disaster for himself: \>t how
can he fail to be aware of it if it is known to man?
Even if he has unaccountably failed, throughout all
the past ages of his ill-spent, life, to acquire knowledge
on a subject of such vital interest to himself, it is inex-

86 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

plicable that he should not be in a position to acquire
it to-day. Why should he not learn it, for example,
from the very pages which I am now writing ? Mr
Frost, if he saw these letters, would probably declare
that they were written under the Devil's inspiration —
for are not all things evil attributable to the Devil ?
Surely, then, the Devil cannot be ignorant of the con-
tents of letters of which he is himself, in a sense, the
author ; and if he is now overlooking my shoulder as I
write (a grave possibility, especially as it is close on
midnight) he cannot fail to learn the dreadful truth —
which is that all his best-laid schemes, like those of
Burns's mouse, must infallibly "gang a-gley," that all
his efforts to strive with God are utterly futile, and
that he himself is under sentence of eternal damnation.
A reference to pages 77—8 will show him that when
the Millennium Kingdom is inaugurated he is to be
"shut up in the bottomless pit," and that the earth
which he tried so hard to mar will then become his
prison-house. Doubtless the mere fact that his over-
throw is prophesied in the Bible would not cause him
much alarm, for it may be assumed that if he ever casts
a glance at that sacred volume he regards its references
to himself as scurrilous slander altogether beneath the
notice of a self-respecting Devil, or as the one-sided
utterance of a hated rival who, by his own confession,
is tainted with jealousy. But if he learns at last from
a sincere well-wisher who is one of his own human
instruments of guile — and as far as I am concerned he
is very welcome to the information — that his heavenly
opponent is in the strictest sense of the word omnipotent
and therefore absolutely certain of victory, it is scarcely
credible that he should be willing to continue a perfectly

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 87

hopeless struggle. Satan's power, however vast, is — by
the Christian hypothesis — finite, whereas the power of
God, also by Christian hypothesis, is infinite. No
multiplication of finite quantities can bridge the chasm
between the finite and the infinite, and therefore, if
Satan is as intelligent as he is usually represented to
be, he cannot be ignorant of the obvious fact that even
if he were reinforced bv a billion demon-allies — each of
them a billion times more powerful than Beelzebub or
Moloch — his forces would literally be no nearer equality
with the forces at the disposal of God than they were
on the day when, after his calamitous defeat in heaven,
he was

"Hurled headlong naming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms."

It is of course conceivable that Satan is an unxtiUing
combatant, and that he is compelled to fight like
a gladiator merely for the amusement of the heavenly
hierarchy, who, when they tire of the long day's sport,
fully intend to turn their celestial thumbs downwards.
If, however, Satan is willingly maintaining a struggle
against an opponent whom he knows to possess
resources of [tower thai are literally infinite, he must
be either the grandest of heroes or the sorriest of fools :
and in neither case can he be regarded as a suitable
exponent of undiluted wickedness.

It cannot be denied that there are innumerable
Christian legends which represent Satan as being

easily fooled as a guileless child. To devise means

Of duping him seems to have heen a la\oiuite

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amusement in medieval Europe. Nor is it only men
who have overcome the Devil by trickery : the same
unsportsmanlike behaviour is believed by some of the
Church Fathers to have been resorted to by God
himself. Origen's theory of the Atonement was to
the effect that bv the Devil's successful temptation
of man he acquired rights over the disposal of men's
souls. God offered Christ's soul in exchange for the
souls of men, and the bargain was accepted ; but the
Devil was duped, because Christ overcame both him
and death. The idea was afterwards expressed in
a somewhat graphic way as follows : The bait was
Christ's humanity ; the Devil snapped at it, and was
left hanging on the hook of Christ's divinity. On the
whole, however, Christians are not generally disposed
to admit that their Arch-Adversary is a fool — on the
contrary, they constantly assert that he is possessed
of extraordinary intelligence. And surely they are
guided by a true instinct ; for where would be the
glory of evading the clumsy booby-traps of a muddle-
headed Devil ?

If Satan, then, is no fool, are we to accept the
alternative that he is the most heroic figure in the
universe ? It may be true ; but if the Devil is a
hero he cannot be wholly wicked, because, being
endowed in a superlative degree with the virtue of
courage, he is to that extent virtuous. Lord Brougham
is said to have been so captured by the courage of
Satan in Paradise Lost that he was sorry he did not
win ; and I am not sure that we should not be justified
in saying the same of the Satan of orthodox theology.
A doubt may even arise in our minds as to whether
Satan has not been made the victim of Divine

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 89

misrepresentation, and whether the roles of God and
the Devil should not be reversed. Satan, as I have
said, cannot be wholly wicked if he strives so heroically
in a cause predestined to failure ; whereas God is
certainly not wholly good if, being omnipotent, he
condemns millions of souls — or even one single soul —
to everlasting pain from which he can but will not
grant release. Moreover, we have no reason to suppose
that Satan would ever have thought of creating a hell,
or would have done so if he had thought of it ;
whereas God, we are told, both thought of it and did it.
But there is another possible explanation of Satan's
heroic persistence. What if he maintains the struggle
because, with better knowledge than man possesses,
he is aware that the contest is not a hopeless one ?
What if God's omnipotence turned out to be a fable
after all — merely a baseless story circulated among
mankind to discourage rebellion and keep them in
a state of reverential awe? What if Satan were to
assail heaven once more with his legions of fallen
angels (as we are told in the Second Book of Paradise
Lost he thought of doing) and succeed, this time, in
dethroning its Divine despot? We may be sure that
in one respect, ;it least, he would make good use of
his power: he would open the gates of hell— certainly
to release his fellow-sufferers, and possibly (who knows p)
to admit his vanquished foe.

LETTER VI

At the beginning of my first letter (p. 1) I referred
to the difficulty, in these days of "restatement" and
" reinterpretation," of obtaining an authoritative de-
finition of what Christianity really is. There is an
ever-growing number of people who call themselves
Christians, and even cling to the phraseology of the
creeds, and yet are sceptics or infidels with regard to
many of the doctrines which have been regarded by
all the great historic Churches as absolutely essential
to the faith of a true Christian — doctrines so essential
that in the days when the Churches were backed by the
whole strength of the State, the persons who doubted
or denied them were liable to the ghastly punishments
reserved fcr heretics and apostates. In these days of
dwindling faith the expression of disbelief in even the
fundamentals of Christianity is no longer a criminal
offence ; but it is a very doubtful question whether the
" Liberal " Protestants, Broad Churchmen, and Modern-
ists of to-day, having surrendered many of the essential
tenets of historic Christianity, are justified in applying
the Christian name to the belief's which they find it
possible to retain.

It cannot be denied that many of these neo-Chris-
tians, by forcing new meanings into the old verbal
formulae, have gone far to reject the religion of their

90

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 91

forefathers. By retaining the form while they reject
or transform the content of the old creed, they seem
to think they have preserved all that is essential — as
though the Christian faith were merely a heap of verbal
counters to which they, the players, are entitled to
attach any meanings that happen to suit their game !

Among the "reinterpreted" doctrines are those of
the Fall and Redemption of man, the Atonement and
the Resurrection of the Body. In respect of these
dogmas the newer views (e. g. Atonement = at-one-
ment) have practically won the day, even among people
who pride themselves on their orthodoxy. The changes
have come about so gradually that most people are
hardly aware that there has been any change at all.
Modern ideas about the Incarnation, however, have not
yet quite succeeded in supplanting the orthodox theory,
and existing divergences as to the meaning of this
central dogma are sufficient to justify grave doubts as
to whether the term "Christianity" can legitimately
be stretched so far as to include those who disbelieve
(for this is what it comes to) in the Godhead of Jesus.
Keble certainly gave a satisfactory proof of his ortho-
doxy when he declared with emphasis that "this .Jesus
of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, is indeed the Most
High God, Creator and Possessor of Heaven and Earth
and of all things visible and invisible''; but with this
dear and unambiguous statement of Catholic doctrine
in our minds, what are we to say about the terms in
which a younger theologian — a contemporary of our

own — prefers to express the same central tenet of the
Christian religion? "If we are to form a light con
ception of God," says the Rev. William Temple in
Foundations, "we must look at Christ. The wise

92 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

question is not, ' Is Christ Divine p1 but, 'What is God
like?' and the answer to that is 'Christ.'" To pre-
tend that in these statements Keble and Temple have
merely used different phraseology to express identically
the same truth is, to say the least, disingenuous.

In 15S3 one John Lewes, "an obstinate heretic,"
was burned alive at Norwich for "denying the Godhead
of Christ.-" It is fortunate, not only for lay heretics,
but also for many of our " clerks in holy orders ,1 to-
day, that they were, born in the nineteenth, not in the
sixteenth, century. There are scholars among them
who " restate " far more drastically than Temple. For
example, Dr. D. C. Macintosh of the Yale Divinity
School, while not going so far as to agree with the
Drews school in its denial of the historicity of Jesus,
has nevertheless arrived at the conclusion that a belief
in his existence is not essential to Christianity ! And
there are members of the English clergy who have
expressed the same opinion.

I purposely refrain from enlarging upon the views of
German critics, because the present aim of the de-
fenders of the established creeds in the allied countries
(especially England) is, as you have doubtless observed,
to establish a direct causal relationship between the
higher criticism as manipulated by wicked German
professors and the atrocities committed during the
war by the German army and navy. But it is, of
course, an absurd mistake to suppose that the neo-
Christians of to-day are to be found only in Germany.
They are confined to no single country, and are
certainly to be met with in America and England as
well as in France, Holland, and Italy. The ordinary
lay public in those countries (especially the two first

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 93

named) are not yet very familiar with the advanced
views referred to, because for the most part they are
put forward in expensive theological works and in
"heavy" reviews which are seldom read bv the average
layman ; moreover, they are expressed in language
which is deliberatelv couched, as far as circumstances
permit, in the verbal formulas of Christian tradition,
and therefore appear, on a superficial reading, to be
more orthodox than they really are. Yet even the
layman, if he is exceptionally wide-awake and intelli-
gent, is beginning to enquire into the meaning for him
of the unparalleled unrest which he cannot help seeing
around him in all the Churches. He finds the ablest
writers and thinkers in Christendom insisting on the
gravity of the crisis with which the Church is now
faced, and on " the urgent necessity for a restatement of
( christian doctrines and a revision of Christian methods.'1
(The Bishop of Hereford, in his farewell sermon at St.
.Margaret's. Westminster, as reported in The Times
of December !). 1912.) He will find distinguished
preachers admitting, in sermons preached before mixed
congregations, that the very creeds (to quote the
bishop again) are "partially obsolete11 and "cannot be
rightly or reasonably clothed with a precise and final
authority." The enquiring Christian of to-day is
assured, on the one hand, that in the Apostles1 Creed
is to be found "the common basis of Christian though! "
(the Rev. A. E. Burn, D.I).); ye\ la- will be told, on
the other hand, thai "our beliefs concerning 'God the
Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth1 are
radically difterenl from the beliefs <>l our fathers,"

and that "tin' only woids in that ;-(iil<i<i oi il<

Apostles' < reed which we can interpret as our ancestors

94 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

did arc the words 'the,1 'of,' and 'and.'" (Henry
Goodwin Smith, D.D., formerly professor of System-
atic Theology.) Dogmas have been discarded one by
one, and are being or have been replaced by substitutes
which the Christian public are encouraged to think are
the same old dogmas because they are dressed up in the
same old names. Heresies (some of them anathema-
tized by Popes and Church Councils centuries ago) are
rampant in all the Churches, and doctrines which to
the scandal and horror of Christendom were daringly
attacked by the "infidels" and "atheists" of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are now lightly
surrendered, reinterpreted, or declared " unessential ':
by men who are the professional exponents of Christian
thought and the official defenders of the Christian
" deposit of faith." To-day the warfare is not only be-
tween " infidel ,1 and Christian but also between Chris-
tian and Christian, and the conflict is being fought out
at the very threshold of the holiest sanctuaries of the
faith. "Difficulties," said Father Tyrrell, "have ac-
cumulated to a degree that makes the ablest and most
cultivated minds to be those least capable of effecting
a reconciliation between orthodox theology and the rest
of the field of knowledge.'11 (A Much-abused Letter, p.
40.) Those "ablest and most cultivated minds11 are
now engaged in vain efforts to construct a new Christian
edifice on the foundations of the old one without pull-
ing the old one down to make room for the new. An
English bishop asserts that orthodox Protestant Chris-
tianity "has received a series of intellectual shocks, the
seriousness of which it is impossible to exaggerate,"
and that certain time-honoured doctrines have been
" riddled by the shot and shell of criticism." (Bishop

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 95

Gore, in Orders and Unity.) A well-known English
clerical writer of unblemished orthodoxy sorrowfully
admits that the Western world of to-day is no more
Christian than it was in the days preceding the reign
of Constantine, and that " the atmosphere in literature
and art, in novels and dramas, in newspapers and
reviews, is not only no longer Christian, but is largely
anti-Christian, even on the ethical side." (Dr. J. N.
Figgis, Civilisation at the Cross-roads, pp. 29-31.)

A Scottish minister (the Rev. D. Macmillan, in
Facing the Facts, p. 243) declares that even God-
fearing Scotland is calling for " a restatement of
Christian doctrine " on the ground that " the old
doctrinal position has been undermined" and that
nothing as yet has been found to put in its place.
A few months before the outbreak of war The Record
(a Church of England weekly) referred to " the lament-
able fact" that the criticism now predominant not
only in the German but also in the English Univer-
sities " maintains views respecting the Old Testament,
and even in some cases respecting the New, which are
totally inconsistent not merely with their accuracy in
detail, but with their substantial truth." Cambridge

DOf an active Society of Heretics, the J'cns ei

origo of a Beiies of papers which, had they appeared
a few generations ago, would have added a ruddier

glow to the fires of Sniithficld. Both Oxford and
Cambridge harbour tutors, lecturers, and professors
whose disbelief in the Christian Creeds is a matter
of common knowledge, yet these men retain their

academic positions as guides and teachers of the rising
generation without a word of serious protest either
from the Iniversily authorities or from parents and

96 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

guardians. When, about four years ago, some stir was
caused by the prosecution of an uncultured rationalist
under one of the obsolescent blasphemy laws, it was
a very distinguished English professor, a man of letters
of European reputation, who wrote to the Press and
suggested that if the authorities wished to renew the
vitality of those laws they should begin by prosecuting
several members of the professorial and tutorial staffs
of the two Universities (including himself) and at
least two highly respectable members of His Majesty's
Government.

The ranks of the clergy contain men who explicitly
or implicitly avow their disbelief in the " nature-
miracles" of both Testaments, and also in the dogmas
of the Virgin Birth of Jesus and his bodily Resur-
rection and Ascension ; and candidates for Anglican
ordination not long ago were so obstinate in their
refusal to make a solemn declaration of their belief
in the truth of the Old and New Testaments that
it became necessary to modify the wording of the
formula. Biblical scholars of high reputation have
admitted that it is impossible to write a biography
of Jesus, because there are no trustworthy materials
out of which such a biography can be constructed.
This is allowed even by so reverent and conservative
a critic as Professor A. S. Peake. According to the
late Professor Cheyne of Oxford, " it is abundantly
established by criticism that most of what is contained
even in the Synoptic Gospels is liable to the utmost
doubt," and that " what may reasonably be accepted
is by no means capable of use as the basis of a doctrine
of Incarnation." He also refers to the "considerable
probability" that the Crucifixion is unhistorical. {The

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 97

Reconciliation of Races and Religions, 1914, pp. 201-2,
185.) We also know that this critic inclined to the
belief that the Twelve Apostles never existed, and
that Jesus was not betrayed by Judas or by anyone
else. And yet Dr. Cheyne succeeded in persuading
himself that he was not only a Christian but an
Anglican !

Perhaps even more shocking to orthodox sensibilities
than the views of this Oxford professor of the Inter-
pretation of Holy Scripture are those of the great
French modernist, the ex-abbe Loisy. This scholar
has suggested that after the Crucifixion (the historicity
of which he sees no sufficient reason to doubt) the
body of Jesus was thrown into a common malefactors1
trench, and that if it had been looked for a few days
later it would have been unrecognizable.1

It is clear, then, that those orthodox writers (lay
and clerical) who ever since the outbreak of war
have been trying to make out that the iniquities of
Germany are traceable to the prevalence in that
country of what they love to describe as "the vaga-
ries of the so-called 'higher criticism,'1 would do
well to disabuse themselves of the idea that similar
"vagaries'1 arc rarely met with in England, America,
and Prance. It was in 1914 — shortly before war was
declared — that the Bishop of London, at a meeting
of the Cpper House of Convocation, presented a

1 "On pent supposer que lea Boldata d^tacherenl le corps de
la croix avaui le Boir el le miren1 dans quelque fosse commune,
o 1 rem ietaft pele mfile lea reatee des suppliers. Lea conditions
de sepulture rarenl telles qu'au boul de quelques jours it aurail
impossible de reconnaitre la dlpouille du Sauveur, quand
DiCmeoo L'aurail cherchee." (Loisy, Lee fivangilee Syrwptiquee,
p. 223.)

98 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

petition signed by 676 priests of" his diocese " express-
ing grave anxiety at the unchecked denial of funda-
mental truths of the Faith by some who hold office
in the Church." At the annual meeting of the
Catholic Union held on June 26, 1914, Cardinal
Gasquet delivered a lecture on the spread of Liberalism
in religion in both France and England. He pointed
out that the tendency of non-Catholics appeared to
be " towards absolute vagueness and uncertainty on
the part of those who continue to believe anything
at all of the truths of Christianity. Here in England
the most fundamental doctrines of the Incarnation of
our Lord are rejected or explained away, even by
those who continue to claim membership in a Church
which professes itself to be Christian." He added that
" if we look to France we find a State which, as
a State, has cut itself off' from the profession of any
form of religious belief, and has even excised the name
of God from the approved books intended for the
instruction of the young." (See The Times, June 27,
1914.)

The fact that the keenest critics of the orthodox
Christianity of the Churches are themselves Christians,
or like to call themselves so, is precisely what imparts
a special significance and piquancy to the present
situation. It would, of course, be easy to find most
of the heresies of our contemporary Modernists and
Broad Churchmen in the works of numerous writers
who do nut lay claim to the Christian name ; but
I purposely avoid all reference to such writers, because
orthodox Christians have a well-known habit of dis-
posing of their non-Christian opponents by declaring
that they are prejudiced against Christianity and

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 99

therefore cannot be admitted as witnesses ; or that
they are sciolists, with no expert knowledge of Chris-
tian theology or Church history ; or that they confuse
the accidents of Christianity with the essentials ; or
that they lack the Christian " experience " which could
alone justify them in disputing the utterances of those
to whom such " experience " is familiar; or that they
are men of evil lives and infamous character who
profess disbelief in Christian dogmas because they
wish to find some logical excuse for their abandonment
of Christian morals. These simple methods of crush-
ing "infidelity" and heresy cannot be successfully
adopted by the upholders of traditional Christianity
when their opponents are not only men of irreproach-
able character, but are also trained theologians who
insist, legitimately or otherwise, on their right to call
themselves Christians. These daring innovators are
the friends, not the enemies, of Christianity (or, at
least, of what they believe Christianity to be capable
of becoming), and their criticisms of orthodoxy or
credal restatements are therefore entitled to be treated
with a respect which perhaps we can hardly expect
the Church to pay to the criticisms of confessed
enemies. "There is nothing wanton about them,"
Dr. Sanday says, "nothing supercilious, nothing
cynical ; they obey their conscience and go where their
conscience leads them ; they are evidently, all of them,
genuinely religious men and good ( !hris1 Ians." ( ./ Reply
t<> the Bishop of Oxford's Open Letter on the Basis of
Anglican Fellowship, 1914, |>. '.ID.) Even Bishop Gore
is obliged to admit (see the Oxford Diocesan Magazine
for .lune 191 4) thai " we have not i<> do with men who
have any lend, ocy to hypocrisy or personal insincerity.'''

ioo LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

Another thing that tends to embarrass the orthodox
in their attempts to withstand the assaults of their
"advanced" fellow-theologians is their disquieting
knowledge of the fact that the heterodoxy of one age
has often become the orthodoxy of another, and that
men whose opinions seem dangerously heretical to-day
may be regarded as the conservatives of a not distant
future. Hence we find an increasing reluctance to
initiate prosecutions for heresy. One generation is
shocked by Essays and Reviews (1860), or, through
its representative Lord Shaftesbury, declares Ecce Homo
(1865) to have been "vomited from the jaws of hell."
The next generation sees nothing very dreadful in either
Essays and Reviews or Ecce Homo, but is alarmed by
Lux Mundi (1889), the disintegrating effects of which
caused an orthodox wit to give it the alternative title
of Flux Mundi. Those whose spiritual eyesight was
not blasted by Lux Mundi winced with pain at some
of the pages of Contentio Veritatis (1902). Many of
those who survived all these shocks without spiritual or
moral collapse are now scandalized by Foundations (1912)
and horrified by the Rev. J. M. Thompson's Miracles
in the New Testament (1911) and Through Facts to
Faith (1912). xVnd I think we may confidently pro-
phesy that when the writers of Foundations are a score
of years older, more than one of them will be found
among the active opponents of some new school of
religious thought that shows a disposition to climb
still higher — or (would you prefer me to say ?) to descend
still lower. One, at least, of the contributors to
Foundations seems to anticipate that at some future
date he and his colleagues may be looked upon as
conservative old fogies. " Will not a future genera-

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 101

tion," he asks, "look on a position such as ours as we
look on the 'harmonies'' of Genesis and Science which
abounded in the magazines of the 'seventies'1 and
' eighties ' ? " I fear the answer to that question can
only be (to use political phraseology) in the affirmative.
The Church has always had critics and restless inno-
vators within her own borders, but till recent years it
was usuallv possible to find some effectual means of
silencing them. The Church of Rome expels the
Modernists from her communion, but she is no longer
able to strike at the root of the evil, for the simple
reason that she no longer dares to use physical force.
Against the abbe Loisy she launches the major ex-
communication. In other days this would have com-
pelled him to choose between recantation and death :
in this twentieth century the only material calamity
that befalls M. Loisy as a result of his excommunication
is that he loses the services of his pious charwoman.

Hut if the Churches of Christendom and the main-
tainers of the various Christian orthodoxies can no
longer exterminate heresy by means of thumbscrew and
stake, anil cannot, in the circumstances, accuse the
h actio to whom I have referred of being antagonistic
to religion, they stand on strong ground when Ihey
declare th.it men who deny some of the fundamental
tenets of traditional Christianity should cease to exercise
priestly and ministerial functions in the Church. This
is the attitude ot' men like Professor Benjamin H. War-
field of Princeton, the Bishops of Oxford and Zanzibar,
the Dean of Canterbury, ami the 07f> priests of the
Diocese of London who signed the above-mentioned

petition to Convocation. It cannot he denied that

102 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

their case is a very strong and reasonable one. What
they say, in effect, is that when a clergyman finds
he has ceased to believe in the Church's creeds and
has moved away from the doctrinal position which at
his ordination he promised to defend, his plain duty is
to retire from his official position as one of the Church's
licensed ministers. Dr. Wace, for example, puts the
case in a nutshell when he says that when ordained
clergymen are led by criticism " into conclusions which
are inconsistent with that unfeigned belief in the truth
of the Scriptures which our Church professes, and
which . . . the Church has held from the time of our
Lord, their place is not in the ministry." (The Record,
November 14, 1913.) Sometimes the opinion is ex-
pressed that men who retain their official positions in
the Church while they disbelieve in the Church's
doctrines, or in the Church's interpretation of those
doctrines, are guilty of conduct which is likely to mis-
lead or to deceive. Lord Hugh Cecil states this point
of view in the following words : "It is a plain question
for plain people. And I think plain people will decide
that a minister of the Church of England who definitely
rejects the Apostles' Creed or certain clauses of it, and
yet retains his benefice, is not acting the part of a man
of honour." (The Times, April 23, 1914.)

The suggestion that modernist and liberalizing
theologians are not men of honour is, in my opinion,
a cruel slander. Most of these men, if not all, con-
tinue to call themselves Christians and retain their
offices in the Church not from any selfish or hypocritical
motive but from a chivalrous and disinterested desire
to relieve Christianity of its incrustation of puerile
superstition and pseudo-metaphysics, and start it on a

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 103

new career of spiritual and moral usefulness ; and be-
cause they sincerely believe that without some such
restatement or reinterpretation as they have attempted
Christianity is doomed to extinction. Nevertheless, I
am in entire agreement with the writers last quoted
in thinking that persons who hold extreme Modernist
or Liberal views should give up their official positions
in a Church that exists for the express purpose of
teaching, maintaining, and promulgating creeds and
dogmas in which they have ceased to believe. Indeed,
I would go much further, and say that in my opinion
such men should cease to call themselves Christians. It
is surely far from right that men should apply to new
religious syntheses of their own a term which for many
centuries has been intimately and exclusively associated
with beliefs and tenets which they largely or wholly
repudiate. The retention of the Christian name by
men whose beliefs or opinions are completely subver-
sive of Christian orthodoxy must necessarily tend to
sophistication and misunderstanding, and cannot serve
the highest interests of either morality or religion.

Doubtless " the soul that is alive and wants to live and
grow must," ;ls Ivrrell Bays, "have a congenial, intelli-
gible idea of the world it would live in, and will there-
fore either adapt and interpret the current theologies
to suit its requirements or else break away from them
altogether and make a home for itself" {Through ScyUa

mid Charybdis, p. 219); but it is the second alternative,
I think, which should be adopted by those who deny

the truth of the "current theologies" as authorita-
tively interpreted, or «rho have serious doubts as to the

truth of doctrines which have been declared by the official
1 sponents of the creeds to be essential to Christianity.

io4 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

I do not for a moment deny that it is perfectly
possible to attribute new meanings to old dogmas.
There is no special difficulty in restating Christianity
" in terms of modern thought," as the saying goes, for
the simple reason that all language is conventional and
can be made to mean anything whatever. Man is lord
not only of the Sabbath but also of the words which
stand as arbitrary symbols of his ideas. A Catholic
bishop, it is said, once addressed a haunch of venison
with the words "I baptize thee carp." The reason
for the selection of the name of a fish in this case was,
of course, an eminently practical one — the day was
Friday and the bishop was hungry. Now had it been
the Church's rule that on Fridays good Catholics must
abstain from both flesh and fish, but were at liberty to
derive what nourishment they could from a diet of
flowers, the bishop might just as readily have con-
ferred upon that haunch of venison the baptismal name
of " yellow primrose " or " flower in the crannied wall."
Any statement whatever can be shown to be true, or
plausible, if unqualified freedom of interpretation is
allowed. If I declared that a cow jumped over the
moon you may refuse to believe me, and perhaps you
will accuse me of trifling with you, as Hamlet trifled
with Polonius when they discussed the shape of a cloud.
But what if I assure you that my statement is perfectly
true, and that I am prepared to prove it so conclusively
that you will be compelled to agree with me ? The
only preliminary stipulation I have to make is that
you will give me full liberty to put my own interpreta-
tion on the words moon, over, jumped, and cow. I do
not insist on imposing any novel interpretation upon
the remaining word " the."

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 105

When we contemplate some of the attempts that
have been made in recent years to restate Christian
doctrine, we feel impelled to ask why it is considered
necessary7 to "restate " or "reinterpret11 at all. If the
conceptions underlying the old formulas are obsolete,
what is the use of retaining the formulas while rejecting
the conceptions which alone gave them life ? Many of
our modern prophets of Christian " reinterpretation "
bear a significant resemblance to the Neoplatonists,
who, as Jowett said in his introduction to the Timaeus,
" had a method of interpretation which could elicit any
meaning out of any words." We know that Anaxi-
mander's philosophy was an attempt to "restate" the
current Greek religion in terms that were agreeable to
the thought and knowledge of his own educated con-
temporaries, but what was the result ? It is precisely
the "restated" part of his philosophy, the part that
re-embodied the obsolescent religious conceptions of his
time, that is grotesque and impossible to us.1 We also
know that Dyanand SarasvatT, the founder of the Arya
Samaj, " reinterpreted r the Vedas in such a way as to
adapt them to a more refined spirituality than that
which formed their original environment. Hy a violent

gesia he also strove to show that the sacred pages
contained, al leasl in genu, all the scientific and other
knowledge that has been acquired by man in the course
of the ages subsequent to the Vedic "revelation." The

ilt is satisfactory only to those who are willing to

1 ( t. what Mr. C.C.J. Webb calls "the damnosa hereditaa of a
belief in the supernatural dignity «>f tin- heavenly bodies be
queathed by Plato ••nut Aristotle t«» the Schoolmen issuing in
lata] consequence to tin' Christian tradition (nth which the
Schoolmen had attempted to combine it." (Stttdies in tU>- iii*tur;/
■;/ Xtiiural Theology) p. 313.)

106 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

subordinate all other considerations to the dogma of
the divine inspiration of the Vedas.

One of the ablest of the younger Anglican Modernists
of our time says " there is an obvious advantage in
keeping old names, even when we give them new mean-
ings. It is a recognition of the real continuity of
thought underlying successive changes of interpretation.
Forms are the last things to change, not the first. And
it is a good way in which to recommend new ideas to
people who would be unwilling to receive them in less
familiar shape.11 (J. M. Thompson, Through Facts to
Faith, p. 46.) This is plausible enough, but the method
is often a cloak for much ambiguity and apparent (not
necessarily real) insincerity. It also enables Christian
apologists to claim apparent victories over the assailants
of doctrinal Christianity when as a matter of fact those
assailants have already attained (as they say at the
Western battle-front) all their objectives. Further, the
employment of this method makes it extremely difficult
to ascertain what the Modernist's beliefs really are. (I
have said a few words on this subject on pp. 60 and
79-80.) One of the most respected Anglican divines of
our time (I am not quite sure whether he would accept
the designation " Modernist 11 as applicable to himself)
affirms his " entire and strong belief in the central
reality of the Supernatural Birth and the Supernatural
Resurrection " [of Christ]. (Dr. Sanday's pamphlet on
Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism, p. 28.) Now who
would understand from this that Dr. Sanday (if I under-
stand him aright) rejects the dogma of the Virgin Birth
and rejects the dogma of the Bodily Resurrection of
Jesus from the grave ? While discarding the material-
istic (but orthodox) doctrine of the carnal resurrection,

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 107

Dr. Sanday tries to justify his faith in the Resurrection-
dogma by signifying his acceptance of the evidence for
the theory that " the Risen Lord as Spirit still governed
and inspired his Church." Now this last statement is
one which probably no agnostic or non-Christian would
think it worth while to dispute. It may mean anything
or nothing. It may mean only what we should mean
if we declared that the spirit of Nelson still governed
and inspired the British Navy. This remark might
well be said to contain a certain amount of truth which
could be verified from experience and history, yet it
does not necessarily imply a belief that Nelson, if he
survived at all, was in a position to know anything
whatever about the doings of the Navy after his death
or continued to take the smallest interest in its victories.
Sir Oliver Lodge remarks that "it is not difficult to
interpret the legend of 'Adam,'" and after giving us
his own interpretation of that legend he says, " the
whole parable is very consistent with evolutionary
science." (Reason and Belief, pp. 120-121.) This is
nowaday s a favourite form of apologetic, but it is simply
heating the aii". I suppose no " infidel," no rationalist,
was ever foolish enough to deny that the Adam legend

or any other Biblical story was susceptible of a mythical
interpretation by which it could be brought into line
with modern science or harmonized with a refined ethic.

I wonder if Sir Oliver Lodge could name a single story
presei Ved ill any of the sacred hooks of i he whole world

thai could not be forced into conformity with scientific
truth or an up -to-date morality hv being treated as a
parable or myth and "interpreted*' with a moderate

amount of ingenuity and skill. We know lh.it the

fables aboul the gods of Olympus were so treated by

108 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

the educated "pagans" of antiquity, and we know that
the loves of Krishna have been given a spiritual inter-
pretation by modern Hindu reformers. But though it
is undoubtedly true that even the most indecent or most
puerile of the narratives and legends contained in the
various sacred documents of the world's religions can be
made to glow in the chaste light of a benign inter-
pretation, it is extremely questionable whether it is
morally justifiable to adopt this method of prolonging
the lives of obsolete creeds and thereby maintaining
popular belief in the divine authorship of the primitive
ethical codes and the crude cosmologies of our remote
forefathers.

The resolutions which were proposed by the Bishop
of London in the Upper House of Canterbury Convo-
cation in 191 4-, and carried by a lai'ge majority, asserted
that the three Creeds were "the necessary basis of the
teaching of the Church,''' and that "the historical facts
stated "' in those Creeds were " an essential part of the
Faith." {The Times, May 1, 1914.) Now for my own
part I concur with those who hold that persons who
do not believe in the alleged " historical facts" here
referred to must be regarded as having rejected "an
essential part of the Faith " and should renounce the
vain attempt to persuade themselves or others that they
are still Christians.

Sir Edward Clarke, president of the National Church
League, forwarded to the two Anglican archbishops, in
1914, a petition bearing 96,153 signatures. After as-
serting the supremacy of " Holy Scripture,11 the peti-
tioners argued " that the statements of the Creeds
commonly called the Apostles1 Creed and the Nicene
Creed may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 109

Scripture, and that it is incumbent upon every member
of our Church to believe that our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of a
pure virgin, made upon the Cross (by His own oblation
of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the
whole world; and did truly rise again from the dead."
I am in entire agreement with the ninety-six thousand
persons who signed this petition that people who feel
unable to accept these statements of alleged fact in
their natural and obvious sense are not strictly entitled
to call themselves members of the Church of England or
of any Christian Church that regards them as essential
truths of the Faith.

I have already remarked that it is becoming in-
creasingly difficult to know what a member of the
clergy really means when he declares his "belief1 in a
Christian doctrine. Can we be surprised at this when
we learn on clerical authority that " the Thirty-nine
Articles have been quite honestly interpreted in almost
889 differenl ways"? {Byways of Belief, by the
Rev. Conrad Noel, p. C2±Q.) Surely this is a sufficiently
adequate illustration of the lad, to which I have
already drawn attention, thai human language, if not
always and necessarily an imperfect vehicle of human
thought, i- nevertheless capable of an endless variety
of interpretations. The ease of the Thirty-nine
Articles must he regarded as a specially striking one
when we remember what infinite pains were taken to

make their meaning as plain and unambiguous as
possible, and how it was expressly slated, ill the
declaration that accompanied them, that each Article

no LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

was to be taken in its " literal and grammatical
sense.1"'

As an example of the class of doctrine that, without
being definitely surrendered, is nowadays frequently
" reinterpreted " in such a way that its original and
traditional meaning is entirely annulled, let us take
the dogma of the Virgin Birth. Hooker said long ago
that this dogma is " a thing which of necessity we must
believe.11 Now Hooker lived before the days of
Modernist or Broad Church reinterpretation, and we
may be quite sure that when he said " virgin birth "
he meant virgin birth. In citing the case of Dr. San-
day I have already shown that we cannot speak with
the same assurance of some of our modern theologians.
Fortunately, however, we may still find, even in the
Anglican priesthood, an occasional writer or preacher
who really says what he means, and whose words are as
free from ambiguity as words can be. One of these is
the Rev. N. P. Williams, chaplain-fellow of Exeter
College, Oxford. He refers to the Virgin Birth as
being one of " the three crucial miracles,'11 the two
others being the Resurrection and the Ascension. These
three wonders, he says, " are rooted in the very tissue
of historic Christianity, as I conceive it ; they are bone
of its bone, and flesh of its flesh : the full credit of the
' infallibility of the Church 1 has been irretrievably
hvpothecated on their truth.11 {Form and Content in
the Christian Tradition, p. 144.) He goes on to say
that he rejects the " mythological explanation 11 of
these wonders, and accepts them as literally true in
that material sense which carries with it the sanction
of the Church. In the following courageous and lucid

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY in

words he makes it clear beyond the possibility of
doubt that " virgin birth " means to him exactly what
it meant to Hooker. " I trust," he says, " that I am
not insensible to the effect of genuine a posteriori
evidence : and if at any future time an ostrakon or a
papyrus leaf is unearthed at Nazareth which proves
beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus was the son of
Joseph, I shall frank/// admit tltat Catholic Christianity
has tumbled down with a crash, and I shall proceed to
look round for some other theory of the universe. But
I have a shrewd suspicion that no such ostrakon or
papyrus will ever emerge.11 (Ibid. p. 90.) Similarly he
says (on p. 120) that if it were proved beyond the
shadow of a doubt that Jesus was not born of a virgin,
he would "at once and without hesitation abandon, not
merely the belief in the Virgin Birth, but all the rest
of Catholic Christianity as well.11

In one respect, indeed, Mr. Williams's challenge is
not quite fair. If, as a matter of historical fact, Jesus
had a human father, it is practically inconceivable that
any convincing proof of tins could be furnished. Even
if the ostrakon or papyrus imagined by Mr. Williams
were actually discovered, the Church would merely
defy the world to prove that the statements contained
in it were true; and obviously no such proof could be

forthcoming. What those of US who stand outside

Christianity feel about tin- question is thai the burden
of proof I hit Jesus was born of a virgin rests with
the Church, and that the evidence hitherto furnished
in support of this article of the Christian creed is
Ludicrously inadequate. It is easy for Mr. Williams
to challenge unbelievers to disprove the virgin birth,
because he knows thai the circumstances attending

ii2 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

human procreation and birth are such that disproof of
virginal birth in any alleged instance is a practical
impossibility, especially when the parties concerned
have been dead for many centuries. If I chose to
assert that Homer, or liuddha, or the next-door
neighbour of Shakespeare's great-grandmother, was
born of a virgin, I fancy that Mr. Williams would find
it as difficult to confute me as it would be for me to
satisfy him that Jesus had a human father. All this,
however, does not affect the value of Mr. Williams's
unambiguous testimony to his honest belief in the
literal truth of the Church's doctrine with regard to
the parentage of Jesus.

Would that every clergyman could be induced to
state his beliefs in language equally unmistakable !
Yet Mr. Williams is not alone, for we find similar
lucidity and definiteness in the statements made by
the Rev. R. A. Knox. Mr. Knox is another Oxford
scholar, who, on account of his thoroughly uncom-
promising orthodoxy, is regarded by many of his own
party as a somewhat disconcerting if not dangerous
champion of their cause, but he has nevertheless written
a very entertaining book about the "Loose Stones"
which he has discovered in the " Foundations " of
neo-Christianity. Now when Mr. Knox states his
belief in the dogma of the Ascension, it is evident from
his language that he really holds the doctrine which
the Church enjoins upon all Christians — namely, that
the resuscitated physical body of the risen Jesus was
actually removed from the surface of the earth and
disappeared from the view of the wondering disciples.
Criticizing the views of Canon Streeter, he writes as
follows : " Mr. Streeter says he knows of no living

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 113

theologian who would maintain a physical Ascension in
this crude form. I have no claim to be a theologian-
I can only say that as a person of ordinary education I
believe, as I hope for salvation, in this literal doctrine '■>
I believe that, whatever change may have glorified the
Risen Body when it passed beyond the cloud into a
new mode or sphere of existence, the earth has ever
since the Ascension been the lighter by so many
pounds' weight, and the sum of matter in the world
the less by so many square inches of volume." (Some
Loose Stones, 1913, p. 85.)

Speaking for myself, I feel convinced that Mr.
Williams and Mr. Knox are defenders of a system of
ecclesiastical trenches the advanced "elements" of
which are already in occupation of an ever-advancing
enemy, and that the cause for which they are fight-
ing so bravelv is utterly doomed ; nevertheless I pay
willing homage to their pertinacity in the defence of
untenable positions, and it seems to me that so long as
they defend those positions they have a much better
right to be called Christians than those equally brave,
sincere, and well-intentioned persons who are engaged
in " reinterpretation." It is much to be desired thai
all priests and ministers in the various Churches would

express themselves with Mr. Knox's and Mr. Williams"-,
scrupulous avoidance of equivocal phraseology, and
would show themselves equally anxious to remove all
doubt as to the degree of correspondence between their
words and their thoughts. Dogmatic Christianity
would then cease to deserve the reproaches, dow
constantly brought against it by both friends and foes,
that it eludes the grasp of the modern intellect l>\
1 ransforming itself into a wraith of indefinite form and

ii4 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

no substance. Laymen, also, with clearer ideas of
what Christianity really teaches than they can be
expected to have at present, would be able, at last,
to settle accounts with their own consciences and
answer a plain " Yes " or " No M to the direct question,
" Are you, or are you not, a believer in the Christian
religion ?" x

I hasten to admit that there is no copyright in the
word " Christianity,1"' and that anyone is quite within
his legal rights in giving that name to any code of
belief or disbelief that he chooses to construct or
to accept. There is nothing to prevent a Jew, a
Mohammedan, or an African fetish- worshipper describ-
ing himself as a Christian if the whim takes him ; and
indeed there are Christian theologians to-day whose
religious conceptions as stated by themselves seem to
me to be such that they would be far more fittingly
and accurately expressed in terms of Buddhist thought
than Christian. The "Christ" of the writers I refer
to seems to be more closely related to the " Buddha " or
" Buddha-heart " of certain Mahayana schools than to
the Jesus of history. Yet if for old associations1 sake,
or because of the inveterate contempt with which most
Christians still regard all "heathen" religions, they
prefer to paste the label "Christianity" over the
pigeon-hole of their religious beliefs, who is to say them
nay ? Nevertheless, I think it is very highly desirable
for many reasons — logical, historical, philological,
moral, and religious — that the term " Christian 11 should

1 Since these pages were written Mr. Knox has been
received into the Church of Rome. This was the logical out-
come of his principles, and is a fresh indication of his candour
and sincerity. These are qualities which too often seem to be
lacking in the Church from which he has seceded.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 115

be strictly limited to those who adhere to the doctrines
of the great historic Churches of Christendom, and
who attribute no meanings to those doctrines which
are inconsistent with the meanings authoritatively
sanctioned.

It seems to me that those among our English-
speaking contemporaries who (in addition to all docile
members of the Church of Rome) have the best right
to call themselves Christians are men like yourself and
(in spite of vour disagreement with them on the sub-
ject of hell) your correspondents Mr. Frost and Mr.
Hoste ; laymen like Lord Halifax and Mr. G. K.
Chesterton ; prelates like the Bishops of Oxford and
Zanzibar ; and theologians like Mr. Williams, Mr.
Knox, Mr. Leighton Pullan (author of Missionary
Principles and the Primate on Kikuyu), Mr. Oliver
Chase Quick (author of Essays in Orthodoxy), and
Professor Benjamin B. War field of Princeton Theologi-
cal Seminary, who has published an illuminating
criticism of the "Christless Christianity11 of Professor
D. C. Macintosh of the Yale Divinity School. (See The
Harvard Theological Review, October 1914.) These
men, and multitudes of others of whom they may be
taken as representatives, continue — in spite of minor
differences among thsnnelves — to givethsir ua^uss-
tioning adherence to the bulk of the beliefs, traditions,
and dogmas upon which the Christian Church was

founded, and which have been held and taught by its
accredited spokesmen through all the centuries of its
existence as an organized institutional religion. To
this somewhat heterogeneous list of eont emporary
Christians I would add the name of the present Duke of
Argyll, who, in spite of tin- COane and vulgar rhetoric

n6 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

of the speech which he delivered on the subject of the
Kikuyu controversy before the English Church Union
on June 2!^, 1915, is clearly entitled to say that the
faith which he defends in vigorous if vituperative
language is no other than "the Faith of the Church of
the Ages,-" as it has been " handed down from its first
guardians, whose successors brought it to our shores."
Whether his Grace can be regarded as a fitting
exponent of Christian charity is quite another question,
upon which I am perhaps unqualified to express an
opinion. (The speech to which I allude was published
in 1915 by the Society of SS. Peter and Paul,
" Publishers to the Church of England.11)

The men I have named are among those who
voluntarily and joyously accept the doctrinal teachings
which the Christian Churches once propagated and
maintained by more rigorous and violent methods
than they are at liberty to employ to-day, but which
those Churches still regard as essential parts of that
divine revelation of which they believe themselves
to be the supernaturally-guided custodians. After
an age-long struggle which drenched Europe and
many parts of Africa and America with the blood
of millions of sufferers, men have now won for them-
selves the right to accept or reject those Christian
doctrines as they choose, and it is a right of which
an ever-increasing number of us are eagerly and
thankfully availing ourselves. To me, that right to
reject what I believe to be false in history, repulsive
in morals, and superstitious in religion is of priceless
value — one of those glorious possessions that make
life truly worth living. To you, it must be little
better than a superfluous privilege, for you are the

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 117

willing bondsman of authority and tradition, and
in your eyes there is nothing whatever in orthodox
Christianity (except the doctrine of an everlasting
hell !) which can be rightly described as false, repulsive,
or superstitious. But those of us who glory in, and
most gladly exercise, our hard- won freedom of thought
and speech are hardly " playing the game " (so it
seems to me) if, while we maintain views which your
Church has repeatedly declared to be " damnable
heresies,11 we usurp a name or label which is clearly
yours by every right of prescription. In the dark
days of ecclesiastical supremacy the utterance of
heresies immeasurably less "damnable11 than those
contained in these letters would have brought upon
me the dread sentence estre bntsle tout vyfz. This
fate is unlikely, I hope, to befall me (at least in this
world !) now that the power of priesthoods has sunk
into decav ; but it is not to the organized forces of
Christianity that I owe gratitude for my immunity,
nor is it to the Christian religion that I go for such
spiritual nourishment as my nature seeks. I have
not the right, and certainly I have not the wish, to
cull myself ;i Christian; and I believe that thousands
of my fellow-countrymen who give themselves that
name, and perhaps have never doubted that it is rightly
theirs, would express themselves in terms very similar
to mine if they could be persuaded to take religious
questions more seriously than they usually do, and
would Bubmit their beliefs to the candid criticism and
judgment of their own intelligence and their own
moral perception.

LETTER VII

It is usual for adherents of orthodox Christianity,
and especially for Christian missionaries of the type
criticized in these letters, to describe their hostile
critics, and all who express disbelief in the Christian
creed, as persons who are blind to all the spiritual
verities and "crassly materialistic ,-1 in their mental
outlook. It is constantly said or implied that all
possible alternatives to Christianity have been tried
and found wanting, that Materialism — once, apparently,
Christianity's most dangerous rival — is now discredited
by both philosophy and science, and that the Christian
interpretation of the universe is the only one that
is capable of satisfying the human heart and brain.
Missionaries in China constantly assure us that the
sole choice before the Chinese people is the choice
between Materialism and Christianity ; and when
it is suggested that one might conceivably adopt a
philosophy or religion which was neither Christian
nor Materialist, we are told that the man who de-
liberately rejects " the truth as it is in Jesus ,1 is sure
to find himself floundering, sooner or latter, in the
noisome abyss of " Materialism.''1

I shall have a few words to say in my next letter
about the Materialism which is alleged to be character-
istic of persons like myself; meanwhile, all I have
to say is that so far am I from accepting Materialism

118

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 119

as a metaphysical theory of the universe that one of
my chief complaints against a large number of your
fellow-missionaries is not that they are too spiritualistic
(I use the term in the philosophic, not the " spookish"
sense), but that they are not spiritualistic enough ;
not that they are opponents of Materialism, but that
they themselves, in many of their religious conceptions,
are too grossly materialistic.

It is, I think, an easily ascertained fact that it is
by no means the most orthodox Christians, as a rule,
who have the keenest sense of the spiritual. Modernists
seem to be far better endowed in this respect than
loyal Catholics or Anglicans ; and members of the
Society of Friends have, I think, a quicker and surer
apprehension of things spiritual than strict Protestants
of the type that is so powerfully represented in the
C.I.M. One might perhaps go a good deal further
and say that many of the most spiritually-minded
people are not religious at all in the conventional
sense of the word — that is to say, they are believers
in DO formulated creed and arc worshippers in no
church. We need not feel surprised that such should
be the case when we remember that it is often a
realization of the gross materialism of some of the
Christian dogmas in their traditional form that compels
many of the most religious men and women of our time
to withdraw from the creed hound Churches.

It is hardly worth while insisting on a fact which
i^ admitted nowadays even hv enlightened office holders
in the Churches themselves. The present Dean of
SI. Pauls has made some appropriate comments on

the subject in his Personal Idealism and Mysticism
• p. lot) and in his contribution ioContentio VerUatis

K

wo LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

(1016 ecL pp. C29S and 306-7). The dean's criticisms
are mostly directed against the materialism associated
with the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Eucharist
and the materiality of purgatorial fire, though he also
refers to the "chaotic-11 teaching of his own Church
with regard to the story of " a literal flight through
the air" and a "geographical heaven," which forms
the basis of its doctrine of the Ascension : That this
doctrine has been officially taught in its crudest form
by the Church of England is painfully evident from
the phraseology of the fourth of the Thirty-nine
Articles. The English clergy of to-day are ashamed
of such teaching, of course, and try to explain it
away : not so their predecessors of a pie-scientific age.
If you will turn to The Principles of the Christian
Religion, by " The Most Reverend Father in God,
William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury " (that is
to say, William Wake, who died in 1757), you will
find the following description of the Ascension : " He
was taken up Visibly in the Presence of all his
Disciples. A Cloud came down under his Feet, and he
mounted by Degrees in it. They follow'd him a long
Lime with their Eyes; till at last having lost Sight
of Him, but yet still looking after him to the Place
where he passed, Two Angels appeared to them, and
thus confirm,d them in the Truth of what they had seen.1'
We saw in my last letter (p. 112) that this ridiculous
doctrine, which is implicitly rejected by Dean Inge, is
still treated with something more than respect by at
least one scholarly writer in Oxford. It is well to
remember, however, that Oxford has been described
(probably by a member of your own University —
Cambridge) as " the home of lost causes " !

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 121

Father Tyrrell could, on occasion, speak as severely
as any Protestant divine about the materialism fostered
by the Church of his adoption. Writing of sacer-
dotalism, for example, he says it is "based on a crudely
material imagination of the source and nature of the
priest's spiritual dignity and authority ; on the arroga-
tion of magical, quasi-physical powers." {Through
ScyUa and Charybdis, 1909, p. 50.)

The materialism of many Protestant beliefs has re-
ceived an equally rough handling from neo-Christian
critics. I have already quoted the Bishop of Hereford's
statement that the Protestant masses are still, in certain
respects, "intensely and intractably materialistic"
(see p. 112). Archdeacon Wilberforce is another wit-
ness on the same side. " Half the epitaphs on tomb-
stones," he savs, "and most of our hymns, are sheer
materialism." (Spiritual Consciousness, p. 52.)

That the crudely materialistic teachings of many
missionaries have been regarded with disgust and amaze-
ment by " the heathen " of Asia need not be emphasized
by mi\ seeing that frank references to the subject are to
be found in the printed Reports of the Edinburgh
Missionary Conference of 1910. We are told, for ex-
ample, thai educated Orientals find in missionary teach-
ings ample evidence of " the gross and unspirit ual way
in which the materialistic West deals with spiritual
matters.'1 (Edinburgh Reports, vol. iv. p. 1(57.) It "ill
he sufficient, perhaps, to give a single instance <>l the
materialistic imaginings approved of by that influential
Missionary Society from which you were expelled on
account of your latitudinarian views on the subject oi

hell. In the English edition of the official organ of

that Society I find an account of the funeral of an

122 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

elderly Chinese woman who had become a Christian
convert. Her son also was a convert, and "the idea
of this son was that she need not be mourned for in
the same way as those who have no hope, for she was
saved and her body would be in the earth only for a short
time. . . . Now, is it not worth while to go to China
to see the power of God in such dark hearts ? " (China's
Millions, June 1911, p. 90.)

It is but too obvious from this anecdote that the
Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body had
been preached to these poor Chinese converts without
any attempt at " restatement " ; and as no indication is
given that the missionaries had found it necessary to
" talk down ,: to their converts, or that the converts
with their " dark hearts " were incapable of understand-
ing a more spiritual version of this article of the
Christian creed than that which they were given, it
seems necessary to conclude that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the flesh was held in all its crude literal-
ness by the missionaries themselves. I am far from
blaming them for this. The doctrine was officially
taught by the Christian Churches up to a very recent
date — certainly up to the time when good Churchmen
felt it a sacred duty to protest against cremation.
" There can be little doubt,'1 as Sir Henry Thompson
says, " that the practice of cremation in modern Europe
was at first stopped, and has since been prevented in
great measure, by the Christian doctrine of the resur-
rection of the body." (Encycl. Brit. 11th ed. vol. vii.
p. 403.) Thus the missionaries whose published words
I have quoted were merely simple-minded and trustful
Christians who were not familiar with the labyrinthine
paths of "reinterpretation.'1 That the "advanced"

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 123

clergy of to-day are trying to disown this grotesque
doctrine is an easily-verified fact. The Rev. A. W. F.
Blunt, in The Faith of the Church (1916), admits that

the words of the Creed are perhaps "still popularly
understood as meaning the revivification of the material
body which is laid to rest in the grave," but he adds
that " the deeper thought of the Church has rejected
this view.1' It is a pity that this "deeper thought"
did not applv itself, at an earlier date, to the task of
expressing itself intelligibly. Generations of English
Christians might then have been spared the painful
duty of chanting such puerilities as —

" On the Resurrection morning
Soul and tiody meet again."

The Church of Rome, as usual, adheres faithfully
to the traditional teaching. The Student's Catholic
Doctrine, published in 1917, tells us distinctly that
" the body will remain in the earth till the last day,
when God will send His Angel to call the dead to life;
and in an instant man's soul will be re-united to his
body from which it had been separated by death. . . .
Even •-"ill will he united again to the sa/me body which

it had hi this life, in order that, as the body was its
partner in doing good or evil, it also may share its
reward or punishment ." Similarly lather A. V. Miller
declares thai Christianity "includes explicit belief in

the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the docile acceptance

of all Hi- teaching, above all, if the resurrection of the

real material body, which, together with our souls, forms
one single personalil \ ."

Speaking in Westminster Abbey not long ago. Canon
Charles denounced this doctrine (so recentl) regarded as

i24 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

strictly orthodox in his own Church) as K materialistic "
and as "sheer imbecility." What has the predomi-
nant Church of Christendom to say in reply to this
serious charge? If an "infidel11 were to describe an
essential tenet of the Christian Faith as "imbecile," all
the Churches would turn upon him and rend him — or
have him prosecuted under the blasphemy laws. How
comes it that the clergy of rival Christian bodies are
able, with complete impunity, to hurl abusive epithets
at one another's most cherished beliefs ?

It is an instructive fact that it is precisely the
grotesquely materialistic portions of Christian teaching
that have always met with the greatest ridicule and
opposition from the Chinese as well as from the Hindus ;
indeed, the very doctrine of the resurrection of the
material body has been plaintively alluded to by
missionaries as forming one of the most serious stumb-
ling-blocks to the advance of Christianity, not only in
countries with a venerable civilization of their own,
like China, but even among such backward peoples as
the natives of Madagascar. (See Edinburgh Reports,
vol. iv. p. 298.)

It is highly interesting, in reading the accounts given
by missionaries of their arguments with friendly un-
believers among the Chinese, to find that the doctrines
which meet with the most decided opposition are no
other than those which modern criticism is at last
slowly compelling Christianity to surrender. Edkins
for example, mentions "a man of fine intellect11 who
was quite willing to admit the good that existed in
much of the Christian teaching, but could not be per-
suaded to believe in the miracles or in the divinity
of Jesus. More recently (see ChhuCa Millions, 1912,

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 125

p. 1-57), we are told of some " priests and readers " who
showed considerable intellectual curiosity with regard
to Christianity, and were read)' to admit that "Jesus
Christ was a good man," and that " they knew we were
earnest in our preaching " ; but although " courteous
in manner" they were "distinctly hostile to the truth,"
for alas ! they denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus ;
thereby showing themselves, to that extent at least,
fully abreast of the most recent theologieal scholarship
in the Christian West.

Further evidence to the same effect may be gathered
from the Reports of the Edinburgh Conference, to
which I have referred. "The virgin birth, the miracles,
and the resurrection of Christ are obstacles noted by
several writers, also the divinity of Christ, which a
Chinese writer says is the greatest intellectual hindrance
among scholars" (vol. iv. p. 44). Precisely the same
melancholy ^ate of affairs is reported from Japan.
"The doctrines of the Deity of Christ, the Virgin
Birth, the Resurrection, and others involving the
miraculous or supernatural, are denied or treated with
contempt as mere superstitions." (Ibid. p. 87.) A mis-
sionary in China asserts that "laxity of moral thought
and consequent dulness of conscience make the Chinese
generally very dial' to the glad tidings of great joy."
(Ibid. p. Ii8.) Perhaps other things besides these
alleged imperfections in the Chinese character have
made the Chinese people deaf to those "glad tidings" !

We know from the painful experience of many
centuries that Christianity, while always insisting <>n

it-, pn- eminent right to he called B religion of l<>\e,

baa again and again proved it-elf to he, in practice, a

ii6 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

religion of the most virulent hate. I think it is
Montaigne who says somewhere that "there is no
enmity so extreme as the Christian." It may or may
not be true that Christians " love one another,'''' but
it will hardly be disputed that they seem to have
singularly little love to spare for outsiders; or at any
rate that their " love " for non-Christians, heretics, and
infidels manifests itself in remarkably unpleasant ways.
The fact that Christian intolerance of " heathen "
faiths is diminishing pari passu with the fading of
the belief that non-Christians are everlastingly damned
seems to be more than a mere coincidence. A person
who sincerely believes that the vast majority of man-
kind are doomed to suffer unending anguish can hardly
be otherwise than deficient in sympathy for his fellow-
men ; and as breadth and depth of sympathy usually
appear to co-exist with high moral attainment, it would
seem that a real belief in the eternal doom of all who
do not share one's religious opinions must indicate a
comparatively low degree of ethical development. On
this point Professor Stratton has some interesting re-
marks in his Psychology of the Religious Life. He shows
that a belief in hell and a readiness to emphasize the
torments of the damned seem to be connected with that
"cruel fascination of suffering" and that "primitive
instinct for torture " which are characteristic of many
children and of uncivilized mankind, and he points out
that " a primary heartlessness in many men makes them
take a kind of pleasure in witnessing or imagining
pain in others." He remarks that "as the ingenious
contrivance of tortures for the damned has given an
imaginative satisfaction to the savagery of some, so
the persecution of heretics and infidels has, under a

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 127

religious gloss, sometimes physically gratified what was
nothing but a wolfish thirst for blood." G. A. Coe
writes in a somewhat similar strain. " When a crowd
of Christians," he says, "applauds a revivalist for
picturesquely assigning to a savage hell persons who
disagree with his theology, what happens is a flaring up
of instinctive pugnacity — the same thing that makes
men enjoy a dog fight." {The Psychology of Religion,
1916, p. 124.) Stratton also shows that "with the
growth of human sentiment " there comes a gradual
" revulsion from the worst features " of such doctrines
as that of eternal damnation, " and the duration if not
the intensity of the agony is reduced " ; so that "even
among those who would hardly formulate their belief
as favouring the salvation of all, there is a growing
hesitation in affirming a positive belief in eternal
punishment. The change in the informal, or unofficial,
creed of Christendom may well be due in part to the
growing sense of kinship with men of different
nationalities and different religious faiths."

Mr. Frost and his friends of the C.I.M. would prob-
ably repel with intense indignation the suggestion
that their belief in the damnation of unbelievers was
an indication of their own moral immaturity and their
lack of sympathy for their fellow-men; and it may
be only fair to them to admil thai in their case the
immaturity is perhaps not so much of ■•• moral as of
an intellectual kind. They are held Cast in the grip
of religious beliefs which to a large extent are shock-
ingly barbarous and degrading, and they are incapable

Of the mental effort nrce-sa r\ to s<| themselves free.

Their grotesque and misshapen Creed is like a wicked
stepmother in a fairy-tale, who has fed them from the

128 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

days of their docile and impressionable childhood with
the poisonous and debilitating products of her own
nauseous cookery, and, in order to debar them from
access to more wholesome nourishment, has locked the
doors of their minds and thrown away the key.

That the survival of the hell-fire doctrine is not
wholly due to undeveloped sympathy, or to a lack of
delicacy in ethical perception, seems to be shown by
the general readiness of believers to admit that the
doctrine presents serious moral difficulties, and that
they would gladly escape from it if escape were pos-
sible. Even the Roman Catholics appear to perceive
that the orthodox teaching about hell is not precisely
a thing to be contemplated with unalloyed satisfaction
(see p. 49). There is no doubt whatever as to what
Christians would have thought of it if they had found
it elsewhere than in their own religion. In my first
letter (p. 19) I mentioned a Roman Catholic book
called The Nezo Pelagumism, in which the doctrine
of final salvation for all was severely handled, and the
orthodox doctrine of an everlasting hell vigorously
defended. This book, published simultaneously in
London and St. Louis (U.S.A.) as recently as 1915,
bears the nil obstat of a Censor Dcputatus and the
imprimatur of a bishop. It contains a paragraph
which throws a very curious and instructive light on
the workings of the Christian (or perhaps it would
be fairer to say the ecclesiastical) mind when engaged
in the painful task of trying to reconcile the modern
conscience to distasteful or obsolescent dogmas. The
author is speculating as to what would have been the
attitude of the Christian world towards the doctrine
of everlasting damnation if it had not been adopted

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 129

by Christianity, but had been "discovered in any fresh
found cult of the remote East.1'' Many Christians, he
assures us, " would have regarded it as an esoteric
mysterv of deepest interest. But when, on the con-
trarv, it belongs to the religion from which revolt is
made, there is readily discovered in it a vulnerable
qualitv, and assault is led against the doctrine without
del ay. v>

Now if this hypothetical situation were the true
one — if in very truth it had been Christianity that
taught universal salvation, and Buddhism, let us say
that taught everlasting damnation — I do not hesitate
to affirm that Christian writers, so far from regarding
the endless-hell theory as one of "esoteric mystery"
and of "deepest interest,11 would have promptly seized
upon it with the utmost eagerness as a signal proof
of the degraded character of the " heathen M religion.
Recognizing that the enemy had put a most potent
weapon into their hands, they would never have
wearied of denouncing the ghastly barbarity of a
creed which could find place for a tenet so in-
expressibly hideous. Christian missionaries would have
reserved their bitterest sarcasms and their fiercest

maledictions for a doctrine which, as they would have
insisted, was sufficient in itself" to prove the Satanic
authorship of the Buddhisi religion. Nothing else is
required, they would have Baid, to indicate Hie utter
unfitness of thai faith to he mentioned in the same
breath with tin- divinely-inspired message of Christian
love whieh brought to suffering mankind the assurance
of ultimate salvation for all. Buddhism, they would
have insisted, was irremediably tainted with infamy

t'nr inventing or accepting a (loci line which was grossly

no LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

j

insulting to God and to human nature, and utterly
incompatible with the existence of justice, beneficence,
or rationality in the scheme of the universe.

And would not the Christian critics of such a Buddh-
ism have been entirely justified in their reproaches
and denunciations? I think they would. Setting
hypothetical situations aside, however, what do we
find are the real facts ? It is Buddhism which teaches
universal salvation, and Christianity which holds forth
the "glad tidings" of everlasting torment for some,
at least, and probably for the vast majority of the
human race, past, present, and to come ; and Christian
missionaries, conscious as they are of the inky gloom
of their own eschatology, have nevertheless had the
amazing audacity to declare that Buddhism as com-
pared with Christianity is " profoundly pessimistic,1'
and have contemptuously and arrogantly described it
not as the " Light " but as the " Night " of Asia.

Christian missionaries have distinguished themselves
by their remarkable ingenuity in devising opprobrious
descriptions and epithets for the Eastern faiths which
it is their cherished ambition to destroy. One of
these missionaries — Dr. Edkins — described Buddhism
as "philosophy gone mad"; and his reason for this
judgment was that Buddhism was " philosophy assum-
ing the prerogatives which can only belong to a
heavenly religion." Well, I think we may congratu-
late the peoples of Eastern Asia on having been left —
until the coming of Christianity — in blissful ignorance
of a " heavenly religion '" which consigned all their
sages, all their ancestors, all but a minute fraction ot
their contemporaries, and all their unborn descendants
who should pass through life as "heathen," to an

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 131

eternity of unutterable anguish. Nor need we pity
them for having had to content themselves for so many
centuries with a Confucianism which knew nothing of
the wiles and inventions of priests, and which laid
far more stress on man's relations to his fellow-men
in this world than on the future of his soul in a
problematical world beyond the grave. Nor need we
condole with the Chinese for having had to put up
with a " philosophy gone mad," which, for all its
madness, has never imperilled the sanity of its own
adherents. Doubtless Confucianism and Buddhism
have their faults, but in some respects, at least, they
need fear no comparison with a "heavenly" religion
which, in cynical disregard of its own heavenliness, has
not contented itself with inventing an everlasting hell
in the world beyond the grave for all who die without
its blessing, but has also, on countless occasions, gone
out of its way to turn earth itself into a hell for
the living.

I wonder whether vour very natural detestation of
the theory of everlasting punishment has led you to
overlook the t'icl that it was partly owing to this
theory thai the Church, in its early days, made head-
way againsl "paganism" and gradually became trium-
phanl throughoul Europe? The early Christians, as
Lecky says, "maintained thai an eternity of torture
was reserved for the entire human race then existing
in the world, beyond tin' range of their own com-
munity," and "made the assertion of litis doctrine
one of their main instruments of success. " Lecky'a

comment on this is a \er\ apposite one, ami should

b- seriously pondered by those who imagine thai the

132 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

early Christians were brimful of tenderness and love
for the whole world, and that the world basely repaid
their love with malice, hatred, and all uneharitableness.
"Then' can be little doubt," he says, "that a chief
cause of the hostility felt against the Christian Church
was the intolerant aspect it at that time displayed.
The Romans were prepared to tolerate almost any
form of religion that would tolerate others. . . . But
the Christian teachers taught that all religions, except
their own and that of the Jews, were constructed by
devils, and that all who dissented from their Church
must be lost." In principle, you will note, there is
very little to choose between the attitude of the early
Christians and that of Mr. Frost and his friends ; for
they, too, hold that all unbelievers, whether they have
heard of Christ or not, will be consigned to a hell
where they will suffer conscious torment for ever.
Lecky goes on to observe that the pagan philosopher
who opposed Christianity " could not foresee the
ghastly histories of the Inquisition, of the Albigenses,
or of St. Bartholomew ; but he could scarcely doubt
that the Christians, when in the ascendant, would
never tolerate rites which they believed to be con-
secrated to devils, or restrain, in the season of their
power, a religious animosity which they scarcely
bridled when they were weak.'1 As the endless-hell
doctrine was, as you believe, untrue, you must admit
that Christianity, to some extent at least, made its
fortune through trading with a lie.

I need hardly remind you, in this connection, of the
innumerable other lies on which the Christian Church
built up its mighty edifice. Most of them are asso-
ciated with the history of the Papacy, and doubtless

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 133

you yourself have no desire to extenuate the corrupt
practices of Romanist theologians and the evil machin-
ations of the Antichrist who wears the triple tiara.
The forged Decretals are described by one of your
fellow-Protestants — a distinguished French theologian
— as " the most colossal and barefaced fraud of
which history has to tell," and perhaps this is hardly
an exaggeration. But candour will compel you to
admit that even the text of your own ultimate
authority — the inspired Word of God — has been
grievously tampered with by the blasphemous hand of
man. I will not dwell upon the interpolations in the
New Testament, because you would probablv refuse
to recognize them as such ; but how is it that Protest-
ant writers who are so ready to denounce the forgeries
foisted on Christendom in the interests of the Papacy
are so curiously silent about Deuteronomy and Daniel 'i

You say that the theory of everlasting damnation
reflects on the honour of God, and, assuming that a
personal Deity exists, I entirely concur with you. Hut
many of us feel that, if indeed there be a persona] God
who is omnipotent, this is far from being the only

Christian doctrine thai reflects upon his honour. This
was realized ages ago by some brave heretics whom the
infuriated Church proceeded, in the customary Chris-
tian fashion, to exterminate. The Pelagians used
words almost identical with your own (though in
reaped <>f a doctrine to which you have raised no
objection) when they declared thai "the doctrine of
original sin and natural corruption, by which persons
are supposed to he horn under a necessity of sinning,
did cast 11 reflection mi tin- honour and Justice of God"

134 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

These words I quote from Wall's History of Infant
Baptism. The author adds a comment of his own to
the effect that " this argument was plausible among
the vulgar.1-' I venture to suggest that its plausibility
ceased long ago to be confined to the " vulgar.11 It
is now coming to be admitted by an ever-increasing
number that the whole " scheme of salvation " is full
of moral enormities ; and I think you will admit, on
reflection, that if you yourself take the liberty of
singling out one objectionable doctrine for censure,
you can hardly withhold from other men the right to
denounce what they consider reprehensible in other
doctrines. To your fellow-Christian Jean Reville,
" the God who can only forgive men's trespasses by
inflicting infinite suffering upon an innocent person in
place of the guilty, is a monstrous God whom we can-
not adore, seeing the meanest man with any delicacy of
conscience is morally superior to such a god.11 It was
an English clergyman of the 'nineties who made the
startling admission that " the orthodox Atonement is
as vile as anything to be found in heathendom," and
that the addition to it of the doctrine of predestination
" makes it infinitely viler still.11 The two doctrines
constituted, in his opinion, " the most savage supersti-
tion which has ever existed in the world. The god of
orthodoxy is the very wickedest being which it is
possible for the human mind to conceive.'1 {The
Fortnightly Review, December 1892.)

I know it is often difficult for submissive Christians
who have never given much serious thought to the
details of their creed to realize the essential meaning of
a doctrine which comes to them dressed up in the fine
robes of pious verbiage and sanctified tradition ; it

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 135

might be good for such Christians, perhaps, if they
would sit at the feet of a little child, who in these
simple and unsophisticated words is said to have given
a vivid picture of one aspect, at least, of a prominent
doctrine of the Christian faith. " God was very angry,
and said He must kill somebody. Jesus said, Kill
me."

In view of the utterly divergent opinions that now
exist in non-Roman Christendom with regard to the
topics discussed in these letters, am I not justified in
begging you to consider very seriously whether the
work of converting the hundreds of millions of people
you call " heathen " should not be postponed until
Christians have made up their minds as to what the
doctrines of Christianity really arc, and until they
can declare with an absolutely clear conscience that
their gospel is not only irrefragablv true but is also
of such a character as to be really deserving of that
laudatory description so often applied to it in the
mission-field — '* glad tidings of greal joy"? In making

this suggestion I do not by any means wish to advocate

the discontinuance of all the activities of the Christian
missions in China. I have the highesl admiration for
a greal deal of the work done by those missions in the
spheres of medicine, education, and general philan-
thropy. Yon will fully understand, I trust, thai my
criticisms and suggestions refer solely to the labours of
those who arc devoting themselves to the propagation
of doctrinal Christ iani f v and to the weakening, if I m » I
the deliberate destruction, of the existing moral and
spiritual bases of Chinese civilization.

You may think it a horrible and blasphemous

L

136 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

proposal on my part that the holy work of Christian
proselytism should be suspended or abandoned. I
hive been emboldened to make it, however, by my
knowledge of the fact that the same suggestion has
actually been put forward by members of the English
clergy and has received the support of a prominent
member of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Writing
in The Nineteenth Century and After only two months
before the great war broke out, Father Bernard
Vaughan gave utterance to these striking words :
"From my observation I am inclined to agree with the
Chaplain Fellow of Trinity, Oxford, who, speaking of
Anglican missioners and the differences in doctrine
among them, says : ' If we ourselves have no clear idea
of what the Christian revelation really is, then it is
much better to leave the unfortunate heathen alone.'
One thing is certain, and it is this, that what with
Christian doctrine, Christian morality, and Christian
ritual ever shifting among non-Catholic missioners, it
is almost impossible for a Chinaman, or a Japanese, or
Mussulman, to discover what Christianity really is."

Let me quote, in addition, the words used by the
Bishop of Zanzibar (himself a missionary bishop) in an
Open Letter to his episcopal brother of St. Albans :
" At the present time, having regard to her exceedingly
chaotic system of Truth,"" the Church of England is
" entirely unfit to send missionaries to heathen or
Muhammadan lands." And I think, if the bishop had
considered the matter a little further, he would have
seen no reason to confine this judgment to his own
Church.

I trust you will agree with me that the sentiments
expressed in the foregoing quotations are worthy of

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 137

being carefully weighed by all missionaries, and also by
all those who are the moral and material supporters of
the costly structure of Foreign Missions. If, however,
you reject as impious or impracticable the proposal that
all Christian proselytism should be suspended, I have
another suggestion to put before you. You have
boldlv admitted that the doctrine of everlasting tor-
ment, if true, " brands the character of God with
infinite disgrace.11 It is eminently satisfactory that
you should have committed yourself thus far. Will
you not be bolder still, and say openly that it condemns
him as a Fiend? If the Directors of the C.I.M. were
to ignore a challenge of so terrific a character as this —
for you would be practically charging them with Devil-
worship — the public would naturally conclude that
your opponents were afraid to meet you in open
controversy, or were so ashamed of their revolting creed
that they dared not raise their voices in its defence.
This would obviously shatter whatever claims they may
possess to be the bearers of a divine message to the
"heathen," and might even lead men to ask whether
the time had not arrived for the "heathen'1 East to
send its missionaries to the Christian West.

LETTER VIII

Very real wants at the present time in matters
religious are clarity of thought and lucidity of speech.
Too many people are content to leave the things that
appertain to religion in a confused jumble, either
because they shrink from the labour of bringing order
into chaos, or because they have a superstitious idea
that vagueness is a necessary attribute of holiness, and
that it is better to leave sacred things in the dim
religious light of shrine and cloister than to bring them
out for critical examination into the glare of sunlight.
In Anglo-Saxon society, at least, the free discussion of
religious topics is still apt to be frowned upon. One
reason often given for the avoidance of such topics is
that by uttering views of an unconventional or hetero-
dox nature you may be trampling upon your neighbour's
deepest feelings and violating the sanctities of his inner
life. Too often, however, it may be suspected that the
true, reason of your neighbour's sensitiveness is a wholly
different one : he is afraid that if you penetrate into
that inner sanctuary of his you will find it empty, or
in a state of disorder which will infallibly betray the
infrecjiiency of his own visits. "I always have a
suspicion," says a scholarly observer of human nature,
" that if a man says that a subject is too sacred to
discuss, he probably also finds it too sacred to think

138

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 139

about very much either.'''' (A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard,
p. 78.)

I have already remarked that it is no longer a crime
punishable by torture and death to repudiate the
Chinch's authority or to deny her creeds. In the
British Army and Navy, indeed, the old persecuting
spirit is not quite extinct, and English magistrates
have been known to abuse their position by showering
insults upon free-thinking witnesses who refuse to be
browbeaten into admitting a belief in the Christian
deity ;l but on the whole the modern State is showing
increasing reluctance to meddle with the individual's
beliefs and disbeliefs, and we may reasonably hope that
he will never again be deprived of his personal liberty
or political rights on account of his refusal to sign a
declaration of religious orthodoxy. " In England we
are now fairly tolerant," as Mr. St. George Stock has
remarked ; " but we have become so in exact proportion
as the State has become secularized.1'1 {Looking Facts
in the Face, 1910, p. 52.) The Church, indeed, is still
bitterly hostile to those who reject her claims, and this
hostility (which is powerless nowadays to manifest
itself in the Bhape of dungeon and stake) often takes
the disagreeable form of slander and misrepresentai inn.
The Church (I refer no1 merely to Hie Church of Rome)
also doe- its besl t<> boycott all literary productions
that are inimical to its interests, and through its
powerful organizations, it- great wealth, its social and
political influence, and also through the Btrong hold
which it ha- over a large section of the Press, it is able
to achieve very considerable success in checking the

' For an example of this, see G, M. Trevelyan's De Uaeretico
tburendo, ' ambridgej England, 191 i. |>|>. i 5.

i4o LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

circulation and counteracting the influence of " infidel "
literature. In spite of all this, there is no longer any
very cogent reason, even from the not very exalted
point of view of practical expediency, why every man
who hates cant and insincerity and hypocrisy in all
their forms should not make a determined effort to
come to an understanding with his own religious con-
sciousness and cease to pretend that he is a believing
Christian when he knows in his heart of hearts that he
is nothing of the kind.

These letters have already made it abundantly clear
to you that you were fully justified in expressing doubts
as to whether my own religious sentiments and beliefs
were compatible with Christianity.1 I would gladly
have refrained from offering a statement, however
meagre and incomplete, concerning my own religious
position — such statements must always have an un-
pleasantly egotistic flavour — but to prevent any possible
misconception on your part I may perhaps be permitted
to respond to your observations on this subject by a
few further remarks which will show you why it is that
I make no claim to be regarded as your fellow-Christian.

I have already explained that, although it would be
absurd to question the legal right of the modernizing
or liberalizing theologians and their lay followers to
call themselves Christians, I think it would be fairer
to orthodox members of the Christian Churches, much
less confusing to the average educated layman, and
more in accordance with historical accuracy, the con-
tinuity of religious tradition, and the usage of centuries,

1 See Introduction, p. x.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 141

if the term " Christian " were strictly confined to those
who can honestly and unequivocally confess themselves
to be whole-hearted believers in those characteristically
Christian doctrines which the great historic Churches
have always regarded as essential to the integrity of
the Faith "once delivered to the saints." So long as
the Church was able to rely on the necessary co-opera-
tion of the State, it punished all who dared to express
disbelief in those doctrines with the harshest penalties
\\ Inch human ingenuity could devise ; and we are surely
justified in assuming that it was not for the sake of
giving picturesque emphasis to her merely temporary
opinions about legitimately-disputable " unessentials M
that the divinely-guided " lbide of Christ" committed
unspeakable atrocities which have earned for her an
immortality of infamy. Now as I myself am a disbe-
liever in most of the essential and characteristic tenets
of historic Christianity— including the orthodox doc-
trines relating to the alleged Godhead, moral perfection,
and divine mission of Jesus of Nazareth— and as I
therefore go even further than most of the Liberals and
Modernists in my rejection of the Christian claims, i1 is
obviously impossible thai I tan applv to myself a Label

which I would withhold from then).

Nevertheless, it may interesl you to know that, in
spite of my energetic protests, 1 have been assured by
Bom< of my clerical friends (of whom 1 have many) thai I
am ;is much entitled to be styled "Christian " as they are.
In view of the knowledge which I happen to possess <>f

me of their own Little heresies it is conceivable thai
this is nol bo remote from the truth as tnighl be sup-
posed! The claim thai the) so indulgently make on
my behalf, however, is nol one thai I should dream of

i42 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

putting forward for myself. It seems to be mainly
based on the fact that I am not a member of that ne-
farious gang of professional soul-extinguishers known to
orthodox Christians as "Materialists"; indeed, it is
solely through the sermons and writings of Christians
that the manifold iniquities, if not the aetual existence,
of that unholy group of stealthy conspirators against
the common weal has come to my knowledge.

By saving that I am not a Materialist I mean that
the world of sense, as we know it, is an abstract thing,
unintelligible and self-contradictory, and that we are
therefore compelled to believe it to be controlled and
transcended by a world of reason which is also immanent
in it. Mechanical determinism as a theory of the uni-
verse seems to me, on philosophical (that is to say
metaphysical) grounds, to be inadmissible, however
true it may be for the limits which circumscribe the
activities of science. There is, I think, no real anti-
thesis between the spiritual and the phenomenal, but I
believe that the material world, if contemplated sub
specie aetemitatis, would be found to be spirit, and that
a spiritual interpretation of the universe is the only
possible one. In other words, I regard spirit as the
ultimate basis of reality. Again, deeply impressed as
I am by the eternal wonder of the human mind and
personality, I cannot believe that the consciousness and
the self-consciousness of man are mere epiphenomena,
merely the fortuitous results of bodily activities or
molecular motion. I cannot accept the naturalistic
hypothesis that mind is (to use James Ward's phrases)
"secondary and episodic," or a mere collateral product
that arises " as often as matter falls into the appropriate
organic condition." I cannot persuade myself that the
human spirit is the product of, or solely dependent on,

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 143

physical causes, or that it is the mere creature of the
material things that it employs and shapes to its own
uses or through which it energizes.

The Abbe Loisy has told us — and I agree with him —
that " the question which lies at the bottom of the re-
ligious questioo to-day is not whether the Pope is in-
fallible, or whether there are errors in the Bible, or even
whether Christ is God or whether a revelation exists,
but whether the universe is inert matter, empty, deaf,
soulless, pitiless : whether men's conscience finds in it
no echo truer and more real than itself." I agree with
James Ward, too, when he says (in his Realm of Ends)
that "either the world is not rational, or man does not
stand alone and this life is not all," and it is not the
former of these alternatives that I believe to be true.

["here is one point, however, about which I hope
there will be no mistake. When I say that I cannot
accept a materialistic theory of the universe, I do not
mean thai I am ready to join in the hue and cry of
orthodox Christians after what they love to stigmatize
as " Materialism," which very often turns out to be
nothing more dreadful than a sturdy belief in the reality
of scientific progress, a desire to exploit the world for
the good of mankind rather than for "the glory of
(iod." a distrusl <>f the " truths" (so often proved to be
untruths) of theology, a refusal to believe in the super-
naturalism specially associated with the Christian re-
ligion, a persuasion that man's moral and spiritual
proj 1 depends more upon the amelioration of social
and industrial conditions than on the dissemination of

Aesiasl ical do" ma-, and a firm conviction 1 hat Church-
truth i> infinitely heller than a truthless Church.

In view of the brutal frankness with which I have
deal! with " acred'11 things in ome of the foregoing

i44 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

pages, it may surprise you to learn that some of the
great mystics of all faiths — Christian, Jewish, Sufi,
Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist — are to me a powerful
source of attraction. I am not surprised that numbers
of the Christian mystics have been suspected or accused
of doctrinal heresy, and that many of their works have
been condemned by the Church, for however firmly in-
dividual mystics may believe in the dogmas of their
creed it is very evident that those dogmas form no essen-
tial part of their religion, or at least that their mystical
experiences are readily susceptible of interpretations
which necessitate no dogmatic assumptions of a specifi-
cally Christian type. Christian mystics, as E. Hermann
has said (The Meaning and Value of Mysticism, p. 372),
" have often laid more emphasis upon their mysticism
than upon their Christianity." Even in the sermons
preached by Meister Eckhart his ecclesiastical superiors
found no fewer than twenty-eight questionable " items,"
and seventeen of these were finally pronounced, by a
papal bull, to be heretical. Molinos, the great Spanish
mystic, was consigned to a dungeon on account of his
heresies, and the Beghards and Beguines and many
other mystics and mystical sects also felt the full weight
of the Church's disapproval. Many mystics (of whom
Madame Guyon was one) have owed their escape from
condemnation only to the fortunate circumstance that
their doctrines were capable of two entirely different
interpretations, one orthodox, the other heterodox.
(See Delacroix, Etudes d'Histoire et de Psychologic die
Mysticisme, p. 270.) Mysticism, indeed, has been well
described by Royce as " the ferment of the faiths, the
forerunner of religious liberty, the inaccessible refuge
of the nobler heretics.''' The mystics, as the same
philosopher has told us, " may be of any human creed.

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 145

Their doctrine passes ' Like night from land to land,'
and 'has strange power of speech.1" {The World and
the Individual, First Series, p. 85.) "All mystics,"
said one of them, " speak the same language, for they
come from the same country.'-1 A sympathetic study
of the mystics compels us to recognize the deeply signifi-
cant facts that an identity of spiritual experience is
discernible beneath all the varieties of doctrinal super-
structure which we find in their writings, and that the
great mystics of every religion are united by the in-
visible bonds of a spiritual kinship. Perhaps you will
understand what I mean if you will take up that beauti-
ful little book, the Thcolog'ia Germanica, and consider
what changes would be necessary before it could be
turned into a handbook of either Buddhist or Taoist
mysticism. I believe you would find that the omissions
and modifications which would be necessary to make it
perfectly intelligible to a spiritually-minded Taoist or
Buddhist who had never heard of Christianity would not
affect, in the aggregate, more than four pages of the
standard English translation. Similarly if lias been
id of the mystical writings of Thomas Traherne that
merely by the omission of a few passages they might
be fit ted "for the use of members of any creed <>r Beet."
Many of the beautiful devotional compositions of the

Quakers and allied seels, and of men like (ierrard

Winstanley, contain much thai might be restated in
terms of Hindu or Buddhisl mysticism. More easily
still, perhaps, might the works of some of our modern
Western mystics be rewritten in terms of Buddhisl
thought. Many of Maeterlinck's writings mighf he so

treated; MMne of the na I u re 1 1 1 v s I ies (poetfl and pre

writers) of modern Europe are to some extent Buddhists
without knowing it ; in Edward Carpenter the Buddh-

146 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

istic strain is plainly visible ; and even in Rudolf
Eucken it has been said (rightly or wrongly) by one of
his critics that he is " an idealistic mystic who should
find his true refuse in Buddhism.'1 The Sermons of the
late Archdeacon Wilberforce are a conspicuous instance
of how the Christian mysticism of modern times reaches
out in a Buddhistic direction. If anyone who has an
adequate acquaintance with the works of mystics of the
T'ien-t'ai and Clfan schools of Buddhism will glance
through Wilberforce1 s books — for example, those en-
titled Seeing God, Mystic Immanence, and Inward Vision
— he will see that there would be very small difficulty
in adapting them to the spiritual needs, and restating
them in the customary phraseology, of Chinese Buddh-
ists. Nor would the process of adaptation necessitate
any serious interference with the archdeacon's funda-
mental ideas.

"Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee
Is not to know thine own divinity."

These lines (by J. Rhoades) were often quoted by
Wilberforce with profound appreciation — indeed he
once declared that for him they had become "quite an
obsession " ; nevertheless, it can hardly be questioned
that the idea expressed in these lines is more charac-
teristic of Mahayana Buddhism than it is of orthodox
Christianity. The Buddhist tells us that the true
divinity of man — which he calls Fo-hsm " the Buddha-
heart,1' or Fo-hsing " the Buddha-nature " — is con-
cealed behind the veil of Avidya (zvii-ming), which
means nescience, or lack of spiritual insight. This
Avidya is what the Christian mystic Tauler would
describe as blindness to the Divine Light. When a
man awakes from the illusory dreams which arise from

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 147

Avidya, and his spiritual eyesight (fien-yen, to use the
Chinese phrase) is clarified, he recognizes the Buddha-
hood within him — his own spiritual self, which is part-
transcendent and part-immanent — and through that
very recognition enters into the an'io mystica with the
eternal Buddha-nature or Dharmakaya which he shares
with all living beings.1 This theory is tersely summed
up by Chinese Buddhists in the four words chien hsmg
cVing Fo, which signify that to behold or know one's
own nature as it really is in its essence is to become
Buddha. The wisdom or enlightenment which alone
can destroy the veil of illusion that conceals from view
the Buddha-nature is very Far from being a merely
intellectual virtue; it has its ethical side also, and it is
of great interest to note that here Indian and Chinese
thought come into contact with Greek. (Cf. Adam's
Vitality of Platonism, pp. 130 f. and 217.) Now this
eternal and universal Buddhahood or Buddha-nature is
practically identical with what mystics of different
types and schools would variously describe as the
Inward Light, the Beyond that is Within, the Wise
Silence tin- Indwelling Christ, the Christ Self, the
Inborn Logo--, the Immanent Godhead. Here it may
be mentioned that it is precisely because Buddhists
recognize, as one of the fundamental truths of their
religion, that all living beings truly participate in the
Fo-hsins or Buddha-nature what archdeacon Wilber-
force would call "Christ " thai Buch a conception a
that of the everlasting dan mat ion of multitudes of nun,
or of a single one, is totally irreconcilable with, and is
therefore wholly absent from, Buddhisl teachings, n
is a significant fact that Wilberforce himself, firmly

1 • r. Outline* qf Mahayana BuddhUm, by I> T. Suzuki, pp.

r, ll.-. if. and 290 it. '

148 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

believing as he did in the immanence of the Godhead,
or of " Christ," in all human beings, including evil-
doers and " the heathen,'-' unreservedly accepted the
logical conclusions to which this theory pointed ;
hence he utterly repudiated the traditional Christian
teaching regarding the eternal ruin of human souls and

DO O

the doctrine of an everlasting hell. It is hardly necessary
to add that he was careful to distinguish between the
" immanent Christ " and the historic Jesus, just as the
mystical Buddhists (and indeed all Buddhists who have
a real grasp of their own religion) differentiate between
the " immanent Buddha " — as well as the transcendent
Buddha of the " Lotus " and similar sutras — and the
historical figure, who, as Prince Siddharta, left his father's
palace to become a wandering ascetic. The " true
spiritual self of each of us," says Wilberforce, " is one
with the Christ ; indeed, in a sense, is the Christ""
{Inward Vision, p. 103) ; but he also emphasizes what
he deliberately calls "the distinction" between "the
Lord Jesus " and " the universal mystic Christ," which is
another name for the "immanence of God." A similar
distinction is drawn with increasing boldness by many
of the most daring of our theologians and preachers.
" Paul's Christ," says the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams,
" is greater than any single human incarnation of the
Divine could be," and "no single interpretation of the
word will unlock the meaning of all the references. . . .
There is no doubt that the Christ-conception existed
before Jesus." 1

1 The Working Faith <>/ H Liberal Theologian, p. 158. See also
Mysticism and the Creed, byW. F. Cobb, D.D., pp. j20ft'., and
Bishop Boyd Carpenter's The Witness of Religious Ea perience,
1916, ]>i». 61-2, 10:5. Cf. T/,r Future of Christianity, by Reginald
II. Crompton, 1916, pp. 24o ff. In this last-named book, which
is deserving or careful perusal, no attempt is made to preserve

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 149

The present revival of interest in mysticism is un-
doubtedly due, in large part, to the widespread decay
of belief in dogmatic Christianity, and to the hope
which animates many of the educated laity and the
" advanced " clergy of our time that even if neither
Liberalism nor Modernism succeeds in giving Christi-
anity a new lease of life, copious draughts of a rejuven-
ating elixir may still be drawn from the perennial
fountain of mysticism. It is very doubtful, however,
whether this last hope will be realized, or whether the
Christian Church could ever bring itself to accept the
terms which a triumphant mysticism would undoubt-
edly impose. Many theologians— not only those of the
Ritschlian school — have declared that mysticism is
essentially opposed to traditional Christianity and con-
stitutes a serious danger to all forms of the Faith that
by any stretch of the religious imagination can be
termed orthodox. E. Hermann {The Meaning and
lii/ue of Mysticism, pp. 290, !^!)1 ) declares that the
"rapidly increasing mystical literature " of to-day, even
when it professes to be "specifically Christian," is
"essentially a polemic againsl the historic Christian
faith": and he also tells us thai the antagonism of
mystics towards professional theology is "often tinged
with contempt."' However this ma} be, there is good
reason to believe thai the leanings towards mysticism
which are now so noticeable .among some of the most
spiritually-minded men and women of our time will
tend in no small measure to bring about one most

even the semblance <>i' Christian orthodoxy. Mr. Crompton
point* out ' 1 p. 256) thai " the miserable failure of < bristianity is
not due to the Eternal < In-i-i. bul to the mistaken conception
that .1. -11, wot the < brisl made flesh. To ■ 1 ■ • or It

extent, depending very Largely on our own h ill . the < brisl is in

V III. III. "

150 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

desirable consummation — the decay of the arrogance
and intolerance hitherto shown by the representatives
of Western religious thought towards all the faiths
of " heathendom," and the growth of a new bond of
spiritual sympathy between the truly religious minds
of all nations and all creeds.

But if I am to continue my egotistic remarks about
my own religious position, what am I to say about
those foundation-rocks of almost every creed — Immor-
tality and God ? As to whether human individuals
as such do or do not " survive " the death of the body,
I will not venture to express a decided opinion, for
the simple but entirely adequate reason that I have
not met with sufficient evidence to justify a conclusion
one way or the other. Though I have been, for several
years, a deeply interested member of the Society for
Psychical Research, I find myself unconvinced, as yet,
by the arguments whereby some of my fellow-members
— Sir Oliver Lodge and others — profess to have demon-
strated that the individual human personality survives
the crisis of death. Nevertheless, the subject is one
on which I maintain an open mind ; and if some day
I awake in the next world and realize from personal
experience that Sir Oliver and his friends were correct
in their interpretation of the evidence available to
them in their lifetimes, I shall take the earliest oppor-
t unity to offer them my sincere congratulations — always
provided, of course, that the rules permit of telepathic
communications being transmitted from the tropical
regions of the spirit-world to the temperate. For the
present, I have already gone so far as to declare my
provisional acceptance of the theory that " man does
not stand alone and this life is not all," and there

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 151

I leave a question on which, as it appears to me,
neither Religion nor Psychic Research has given us
the right to dogmatize.

I am afraid that candour compels me to confess to
a feeling of similar uncertainty with regard to God ;
but I am emboldened to make this terrible confession
by my knowledge of the fact that within Christianity
itself — not to mention other religions — the different
conceptions of the Godhead are hopelessly irreconcil-
able. The Rev. George Gordon Macleod and the
Rev. T. Rhondda Williams (if I may take these two
as representatives of utterly opposed types of Christian
thought) both call themselves Christians, and theoretic-
ally they worship the same God ; yet I cannot help
thinking that Mr. Rhondda Williams would recoil
with horror from the hideous monster adored by Mr.
Macleod, and I fear it is no less probable that Mr.
Macleod would not hesitate to denounce Mr. Rhondda
Williams's God as one whom you could "spit at and
live" or (to use another of Mr. Macleod's illuminating
if disrespectful phrases) as a mere "indiarubber god*1

(see p. 22).

All educated Christians, I may be told, would
repudiate Mr. Macleod's God with disgust. Bui whai
right have they to do so, Beeing thaf Mr. Macleod
derived every detail of his port rait ore direct from a
book which all Christians believe to be pari of the
inspired word of the verj Deity whose main purpo
in inspiring it was to gi\e mankind a trustworthy
revelation <>f himself? I gravely doubt whether Mr.
Rhondda Williams baa as much right as Mr. Macleod
has t., declare that his God is the God of Christianity ;

and I think a candid judge would tell us that Mr.
Uhondda Williams's God is M\y much nearer in type
M

1 52 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

to the God of the " heathen " Cleanthes, or to the
God of the "heathen" Seneca, or to the God of the
"heathen" Rabindranath Tagore, than to the God
hitherto worshipped by the vast majority of professing
Christians. For my own part I would much rather do
homage to the God of " pagan " Stoicism, or the God
of Hindu mysticism, or the God vaguely hinted at by
Confucianism, than abase myself before that Jewish
tribal Deity who still excites devotional fervour among
hundreds if not thousands of Christian missionaries in
China. I may be reminded that it is not the Old
Testament God but the God revealed by Jesus that
Christians are supposed to worship ; but what does
the difference amount to in practice ? Have not
thousands of the twentieth-century disciples of Jesus
shown themselves ready and anxious to believe that
the God revealed by Jesus was capable of sending
flocks of bellicose angels to save the lives of a few
British soldiers at Mons, while he failed to depute
even a single baby-angel to protect the women and
children of Belgium and Serbia from atrocities un-
speakable ? Is it not professional exponents of the
Christian Gospel who are to-day inviting us to believe
that the God of Jesus has deluged the world with
blood and inflicted brutal tortures on millions of
people of all nations and all faiths, merely as a gentle
reminder that some of them have lately shown a
reprehensible tendency to "forget" him? Was it not
Christian clergymen (and they presumably know some-
thing of the character of their own Deity) who assured
us that the God of Jesus has scattered ruin and
devastation and misery and unutterable pain through-
out half a world merely as a loving indication of his
dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party in England for

LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY 153

attempting to "rob" him by disendowing the Church
in Wales ? After all, was Mr. Macleod so far astray
as some " advanced " Christians would have us believe
in his delineation of the character of the Christian
Deitv ? A certain "gloomy dean'' once told us (at
a moment when the gloom was irradiated by a Hash
of genial irony) that "an honest God is the noblest
work of man." The God created by Jews and Chris-
tians may be honest in a narrow sense — honest, at
least, in revealing the darker side of his own person-
ality ; honesty, however, is not the only quality one
wants in one's God, and for my own part I will confess
that the graceful figure of the Greek Apollo with his
lyre is to me infinitely more attractive, infinitely more
worthy of love and admiration, than that of the
beetle-browed Jehovah with his rod of iron and his
tables of stone.

I venture to say that the name of "God" has been
more "soiled by all ignoble use '" than any other in
the language. .Mr. William Archer spoke well when,
in his book aboul .Mr. Wells's new god, he questioned
whether it was possible "to deodorize a word which
comes to us redolent of 'good, thick, stupefying
incense-Smoke,1 mingled with the reek of the tut/o-

iln jr." "Can we,*' be asks, " beat into a ploughshare
the sword of St. Bartholomew and a thousand other
deeds of honor.' God his been by far the most tragic
word in iIm' whole vocabulary of the race -a spell to
conjure up all the worst liends in human nature.*1
God musi not \m- held responsible for this misuse ..t
hi- name and this misinterpretation of his holy pur-
poses? Perhaps not: bul of what avail, then, are
his inspired Bible, hi- infallible popes, his divinely-
guided Church? For hundred of thou and of yean

154 LETTERS TO A MISSIONARY

man has been teaching himself, by slow and painful
experience, that it behoves him to keep his body under
strict control, so that it may not become the slave
of its passions and appetites : how is it that Christ,
though armed with divine wisdom and divine omni-
potence, has been so singularly unsuccessful in checking
the maleficent activities of that " mystical body " of
his — the Church ?

On the whole I doubt whether Christianity, for
all the efforts of its countless theologians, has ever
furnished us with a better definition of God than that
given us by a benighted "heathen" Stoic of ancient
Rome — Dens est mortali juvare mortalem — " God is
the helping of man by man." Even if it is philoso-
phically inadequate it is at least a good definition to
live by ; and perhaps when men have succeeded in
bringing this God into being, and have securely
enshrined him in the sanctuaries of their own hearts,
they will at last find themselves brought into contact
with a Divinity whom they can love and reverence
without hypocrisy and without self-abasement. This
God will not require them to prostrate themselves
at his feet like sycophantic courtiers, nor will he
compel them, under pain of hideous penalties, to
"glorify His holy Name for ever and ever"; but he
will teach them to love and understand him through
loving and understanding one another, and he will
help them to make this world a place of profounder
happiness and more wondrous beauty than any " king-
dom of heaven " that ever took shape in the dreams
pf prophet, saint, or priest.

INDEX OF NAMES

ADAM, J., 147

Albigenaes, 132

icon Journal of Theology, The, 62
Anaxiiiiander, 105
Ansulm, 8.
Apocrypha, The, 51
Apollo, 153

lea' Creed, The, 108
Archer, William, 153
Argyll, Dllke >>f, 115
Arya BamSj. LOB
Augustine, St., 8, 69

Barlow, George, 40
Bartholomew, St., 182, 154

ter, Richard, 29, :;i
Beelzebul

Heghards, The, 114
Beguines, I he, ill
BeUarmine, Cardinal, 78

Benson, A. <'.,

Bhagavadglta, The, 59

Bishop Gore's Challenge to Critic inn, IOC
Blunt, ROT. A. W. I'., 128
Bold, Philip, 41
l;i ater, Bishop, 149

id Church,
.lum, Lord, 88
BuckJ

Buddha, The, 112
Buddhism, 26, 10, 88-86, ill, 129-181,

MS 148
Burn, I!' i \ B

Uyuaps 0) ;

C.ilvm. 9, 88,

I

Campbell, Bev. R. J., 12, 18,81

. 19, 120

■, I'd
■
I . 146

I, 18
I oi Genoa, i

I i, The, xix

nply
I, II
He Union,
I, Lord Hugh, 102
■ vd Buddhl in , I4'p
Charles, « anon, I.:'.

K., 11- j

Chicago, University of, 55

China Inland Mission, pailim.

China'* Million*, xii, )'.'•.', 124

< '< - arse Krcordt r, The, 7

Christ and the Power* of Darkness, 81

Chrysostom, John, 69

II and tht World, The, 57
Church Missionary Society, The, xv-
xvi, 63

}uarttrly Review, The, 25
i ■ 'lu- dots- roads, 95

Clarke, Sir Edward, 108
Cleanthea, 152
I nt of Alexandria, u

Cobb, Dr. W. F.,148
Coe, G. \., 127
i . lestius, 9
Cohu, Rev. J. R.,12, 18
Colenso, Bishop, ix, ".1, 76
Confucianism, 88, 84, B6, 181, 162
ConU ntio !'■ ritatis, 100, 119

\h. W. A., 40

Craufurd, Rev A, 11. 1 1
Crompton, R< ginald EL, 149
( lyprian, B

D Allonni s, G. Revault, I I
Damascene, John, I B

..on, The,

Danb

D krlington, B -86

I i;u v. in, Chai I-

D* B

. 144

I iclii / i h, 75

i. i. The, 9, , 86,88,48, 78,

Dorner, i . a.. 61
1 1, wt School

Duchi n< '■! i i o
i . i i i ivatl, 100

/ ■ .< , 6 1

i .111

Edinburgh M I onforenoe, x\\,

nil, 66. 1 'l. 124, 126
Bklkins, Dr. Jon i . 124,

I 10
i vid», Jonathan, 7

i56

INDEX OF NAMES

Emerson, 84

Bneyelopadia Britannica, 122

English Church Union, The, 116

Bphetians, 7t>

Erigena, Johitnnes Scotus, 9

Essays and Reviews, ix, 8, 16, 53, 75,

100
Essays in Orthodox)/, 115
Ejther, 51

Etudes d'llistoire et Psychologic du
.Mysticisme, 144
Erangiles Synoptiques, Les, 97
Evanson, 9

Faring the Facts, 95

Faith and Morals, 53

J?<ii<A o/ the Church, The, 123

Figgis, Rev. J. N., 95

Final Correspondence, etc., x, 46, 47

Form and Content in tlie Christian

Tradition, 110
Fortnightly Review, The, 134
Foundations, 91, 100
Four Stages of Greek Religion, The, 42
Fox, Rev. II." E.,63, 64
Friends, Society of, 55, 119
Frost, Rev. Henry W., viii, xi, xii, xiii,

25, 33, 36, 46, 47, 48, 66, 71, 86, 115,

127, 132
Furniss, Father, 27-2S, 31
Future of Christianity, The, 149

Garvie, Dr. A. E., 12, 18

Gasquet, Cardinal, 98

Oenesis, 55

Germans and Germany, 18

Gnosticism, 9

Goethe, 24

Goodhart, Rev. C. J., 76, 77, 79

Goodrich, Dr., 50

Goodwin Smith, Dr. llenrv, 94

Gore, Dr.. Bishop of Oxford, 24, 25, 31,

55, 95, 99, 101, 106, 115
Gnrgias, The, of Plato, 38
Gorham, C. T., 28
Gorham Case, 75
Gregory of Nyssa, 9
Gregory the Great, 8
Guyon, Madame, 144

Halifax, Lord, 115

Halvburton, 30

Hart, Charles, 38

Harvard Theological Review, The, 115

Hazlitt, 28

Hereford, Bishop of, 12, 18, 93, 121

Hermann, E., 144, 149

Herrmann, 53

Eibbert Journal, The, 16

Hinduism, 152

History of Infant Baptism, 134

Hobhousc, Walter, 57

Holtzmann, Heinrich, 24

Horner, 112

Hongkong University, xx

Hooker, 110, 111

Hoste, D. E., xii, 47, 115

Hume, 10

Hunt, W. Remfry, 26, 27

Hupfeld's Sources o) Genesis, 75

llutcheson, 30

Hllgel, Baron F. von, 19, 24

niingworth, Dr., 11

Inge, Dean, 11, 18, 31, 78, 119, 120, 153

Institutes of Calvin, 67

Interpreter, The., 40

Inward Vision, 146

James, Dr. William, 67
Jenkins v. Cook, 74
Jerome, St., 76
Jones, Rev. Griffith, 41

Rev. J. D., 11, 40

Jowett, Benjamin, 39, 44, 75, 105
Joyous Gard, 139
Judas, 39, 40
Justin Martyr, 8

Kaiser, The, 80

Kcble, 91, 92

Kempson, Rev. F. C, 25

Kidderminster women, 29

Kikuyu Controversy, 116

Knox, Rev. R. A., 112, 113, 114, 115

Lactantius, 8

Lake, Dr. Kirsopp, 62

Last Appeal, A, 46, 50

Lateran, Council of, 20, 37-38

Lecky, 7, 25-28, 131, 132

LFng-yen Sutra, The, 59

Lewes, John, 92

Liberal Party in English Politics, 153

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 107, 150

Loisy, 24, 97, 101, 143

London, Bishop of, 97, 108

Looking Facts in the Face, 139

"Lotus " Sutra, 148

Lourdes, Our Lady of, 75

Lucas, Bernard, xvii

Luther, 9, 74

Lux Mundi, 100

Macintosh, Prof. D. C, 92, 115
Macleod, Rev. George Gordon, 21,

23,24, 28, 81, 151, 152,153
Macmillan, Ilev. D.,95
Maeterlinck, 146
Mahfiyfma, 114, 146, 147, and see

Buddhism.
Mains, George Preston, xxiv
Manscl's Bampton Lectures, 75
Manual of Catholic Theology, 49
Martineau, 63

.Maurice, F. I)., 11
McKibben, Rev. W. K., 55
McTaggart, Dr., 42

INDEX OF NAMES

157

Meaning and Value of Mysticism, The,

144, 149
Mencius, 59
Mephistophelcs, 73
Methodist Episcopal Church, xxiv
Millennial Kingdom, The, T4, To
Miller. A. V.,81, 123
Minucius, F. li ,

Miracles in the Nets Testament, 100
Missionary Principle! and the Primate

. 115
Missionary Prospect, The, xx
Mivart, Dr. St. George, 20
Modernism, xix, 90 f. et passim
Molinos, 144
Molocli, s7

Monod, Guillaume, 1-1, 15, 65, GG
Montaigne, 126
Much Abused Letter, .4. 94
Murray, Dr. Gilbert, 11
Mystic Immanence,

Religion, 19, 24
dam, 144-160
Mysticism and the Creed, 149

National Church League, The, 108

a, 107
X. oplatoniats, 105

' Pelagianism, The, 19, 21, 40, 4'.',

Newman, Cardinal, "5

P. W., 75

Nlcene ( '■

'am and After, The, 27,
136
Noel, Bey. Conrad, i1 '-i

North 1 1 1 Hi-' 'i New*, xx, 60, 83

Noyc.-, Attn 1

Open /./■" Basis of Ai>>j

•

..I r,< Mahiyina Buddhism, 1 it
Oxford, Bishop "f, 101, 115, and tti
, l)r.

; list Lost, 88, 80
Pascal, T. 23

96

Pelagi

/ . ■•<.- of Joshua

urn, 78,
119

he, at Plato, 38, 89

-

/ mda r.ntest. A, 41

. il,.- KM. ,154

/ 1

•. Dr. J. H., 42, 73

Principles 0/ the Christian Religion, The,

120
Prudentius, G9
Rsvchical Research, The Society for,

150
Psych oloffied'unt Rel ig i 0

hology of I. The, l'-'T

ilogy of the Religious Life, 126

Pullan, Rev. Leighton, 115
Puritans, 10, 29
Pusey, Dr., 17, 18

Quakers, see Friends, Society of.
Quick, Bev. < (liver Chase, 115
Quinisextine Council, 51

Rashdall, Dean, xiii, xiv, xv

rm or the Qospel, 68
Baup rl J Qodfi ■■■■■. vi
Realm of Ends, The, 143

./i (i/).' Belief, 107
/, onciliation of Races and Religions,
The,

. 102

)3, 51, T5
»/! of H. '.'. WtllS and other Essays,
The, 44

ions of Authority and the Religion
Spirit, 53
Republic, The, of Plat
/. otton, The Book of, 72
Beville, Jean, 61, 131
Bhoades, J., 140

Bhondda Williams, Bev. T., lis, 151
162

a „f tht Sphinx, The, 44
Bitschllan Bchool, 1 19

Bon. .1. M., 10
1 in. in 0. II , xix
Borne, » 'Inn. li "f, xix, xxii, 1, 4, 18
•JT, 28, 82, 88, 43, 50, 52, T3, M ,t

isid, T 1

1. 21
Boyee, Josiah, 1 1 1

Ruth, Bo

.ti. r. Augusts, 62

. Is

Banday, Dr., 99, 106, i"T, 110

I
Bchilli 1 ' -' , 11
Scotland, Bellgion in, iv

Ood, 1 !'•
BemJ

•

. xix
Shaft 1 ord, 100

Bhakespeai
.

Shell.

Smith, !(■ I ''>'"-

phli tN by, tOff.

i58

INDEX OF NAMES

Society of Heretics, The, 95

Socrates, 38, 39

Some Loose Stvnet, 113

Spectator, The, 13

Spencer, Frederick, 12

Spiritual Condition of t lie Heathen, The,

46
Spiritual Consciousness, 121
St. Albans, Bishop <>f, 186
Stanley, Dean, l'9, 75
Steicardship of Faith, The, 63
Stock, Mr. St*. George, 139
Stoicism, 152, 154
Storr, Canon, xxv
Stratton, Prof., 126, 127
Streeter, Canon, 112
•' Student in Arms, A," 43-45
Student's Catholic Doctrine, The, 38, 81,

123
Studies in the History of Natural

Theology, 105
Suzuki, D. T., 147
Swedenborg, 39
Symes, J. E., 62

Tablet, The, 20, 49

Taoism, 83, 84, 145

Tartarus, 38, 39

Tasmania, Bishop of, 50

Tauler, 147

Taylor, Mr. Hudson, ix, 4, 5

Temple, Rev. William, 91, 92

Tertullian, 60, 67

Theologia Germanica, 59, 145

Theology in Scotland, xxv

Thirty-nine Articles, The, 109, 120

Thomas Aquinas, 9

Thompson, Rev. J. M., 100, 106

Sir Henry, 122

Through Facts to Faith, 100, 106
Through Scylla and Chan/Mis, 103, 121
Timaeus, The, of Plato, 105

Tima, The, 35,41, 60, 93, 98, 102, 108
T'ien-t'ai Buddhism, 146
Tralierne, Thomas, 146
Trevelyan, O. M., 189
Tyrrell, Father, 94, 103, 121

Unitarians, xix

Universalism, 10, 13, 14, 18, 19, 22, 24

et passim
Upanishads, The, 59

Vaughan, Father Bernard, 130

Cardinal, 20, 31, 41

Vedas, The, 105, 106

Vitality of I'latoaism, The, 147

Voltaire, 10

Waco, Dr., 102

Wake, William, 120

Wall, Rev. W., 134

Wallace, A. R.,75

Wang Wei, 59

Ward, .lames, 142

Warfield, Prof. Benjamin B., 101, 115

Webb.C.C. J., 105

Webster, Rev. Alexander, xxv

Wells, H. (i., 13, 18,153

Wesley, John, 10, 11

West bury, Lord Chancellor, 17

Whitmee, S. J., 40

Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 121, 146, 148

Williams, J. Herbert, 19

Rev. N. P., 110-113, 115

Wilson, Rev. H. B., 17
Winstanley, Gerrard, 1 15
Wolferstan, Father Bertram, xix
Working Faith of a Liberal Theologian,

The, 149
World and the Individual, The, 145

Zanzibar, Bishop of, 101, 115, 136

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