As some most pure and noble face.
Seen in the thronged and hurrying street,
Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace, A flying odour sweet,
Then passing leaves the cheated sense
Balked with a phantom excellence.
So in our soul, the visions rise
Of that fair life we never led; They flash a splendour past our eyes,
We start, and they are fled; They pass and leave us with blank gaze, Eesigned to our ignoble days.^
3.' " To whom shall we go ? " Shall we close with the teaching of the philosophical deist ? What will he give us in return for our confidence ? A cold abstraction, a far-off some- thing, a personified tendency, a hard law, a rigid and lifeless thing like the marble statues which men worshipped of old, more imposing indeed but less beautiful, a being unknown and un-
1 J. H. Friswell, This Wicked World, 35. * William Watson, The Fttqilive Ideal.
286 TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
knowable, whom we cannot approach, cannot realize, cannot pray to, cannot love. What consolation is there here in our sorrow ? What strength is there here in our temptation ? What purifica- tion is there here in our sin ?
^ Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you — did he ever convince anybody — did he ever for one mad moment convince himself — that it must be to the interest of the individual to feel a public spirit ? Do you believe that, if you rule your depart- ment badly, you stand any more chance, or one-half of the chance, of being guillotined than an angler stands of being pulled into the river by a strong pike ? Herbert Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason he refrained from wearing feathers in his hair, because he was an English gentleman with different tastes.^
\ * 4. Shall we turn to the other religions of the world ? There is a little group of people in Liverpool who have built a mosque and profess the tenets of Mohammedanism. There are a few people in England who profess to find in Buddhism that which meets their religious craving. But would it be uncharitable to say that such persons are religious curiosities, more eager for that which is novel than for that which is true? Can we imagine any serious sober-minded Englishman deliberately choosing any religion the world has ever seen in preference to Christianity — choosing, say. Buddhism, that religion of despair which takes away God, who is the very object of religion ; or Confucianism, which calls to the worship of ancestors, no more worthy of worship than our contemporaries ; or Brahmanism, with its many gods rather than one ; or Zoroastrianism, with evil raised almost to the level of the good ?
^ I own in full the spiritual power which there is in every attempt of heathenism after God, but though there be other religions than the Christian, surely the full notion of religion is not to be gathered out of their imperfection, but out of the more perfect faith which does what they try to do and is what they try to be. If a man asks me what a tree is, I will not send him to a stunted, frost-bitten bush high up Mount Washington, but to the oak or elm which under the best conditions has opened the tree life into fullest glory. If any one asks me what a man is, I will not show him a Kafir or a Hottentot, but the best specimen of manhood that Europe or America can bring. And yet the mountain shrub is certainly a tree, and the Hottentot is certainly
^ G. K. Chesterton, llifi Napoleon of Notting I fill.
ST. JOHN VI. 68 287
a man. So if anybody asks me what religion is, I will not point to Mohammedanism or to Buddhism, though they surely are religions ; I will go to Christianity and in its central motive take out the real central force of all religion.^
^^"xBi " To whom shall we go ? " Shall we turn to selfi Shall we make ourselves our standard ? Instead of having before our eyes, in our thoughts, in our ideals, in our prayers, something that all men acknowledge as superhumanly lovely and ennobling, and all Christians deem assuredly Divine, shall we look to ourselves, to our own meagre selves, with our faults and our appetites, our tastes, our pettinesses; if so we shall lack the one thing that elevates, the sympathy with the best. Soon our path curves farther and farther away; it leads to absorbing and unsatisfied hunger after lower ends ; and finally a death is felt approaching to which we look forward with reluctant acquiescence and secret terror, instead of with trustful expectation as but a step in the upward path.
(1) Expediency may be a motive of good living and a means of human development. We all know how frequently it appears and what power it very often has. We are told that a good life is the best life, the safest and the happiest. " If you do what is wrong, no matter what may be the present pleasure of it, you certainly will suffer. If you do what is right, no matter how hard the struggle to which it sets you now, you certainly will prosper. Therefore, it is not well, it is not prudent, it is not expedient to be wicked." The doctrine is immensely true. Its certainty is emphasized by all that we already know of human history, and misgivings of still more terrible assertions of it stretch forward into the other world. And the doctrine certainly is lofty, inasmuch as it asserts that right and wrong are not mere whims and fashions, but essential and eternal things, that they have to do with the very structure of man and of the world, that both man and the world are built so that the wrong finds its punishment and the right its reward. And certainly it is a doctrine which does to a very great extent control the actions of mankind. Some people will even call it religion. Some people will make religion to be nothing but a great system of expediency stretching out into the world beyond the grave. But clearly this