TEE ETEICS OF RELIGIOX. 



337 



but it would require the expenditure of vast in- 

 genuity and research, and would not, I am inclined 

 to think, be of much use when it was obtained. 



Nor is the difficulty to be got over by taking 

 any definite and well-organized sect, whose prin- 

 ciples are settled in black and white ; for example, 

 the Roman Catholic Church, whose seamless uni- 

 ty has just been exhibited and protected by an 

 (Ecumenical Council. Shall we listen to Mr. 

 Mivart, who "execrates without reserve Marian 

 persecutions, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 

 and all similar acts?" or to the editor of the 

 Dublin Review, who thinks that a teacher of 

 false doctrines " should be visited by the law 

 with just that amount of severity which the pub- 

 lic sentiment will bear ? " For assuredly com- 

 mon-sense morality will pass very different judg- 

 ments on these two distinct religions, although it 

 appears that experts have found room for both 

 of them within the limits of the Vatican defini- 

 tions. 



Moreover, there is very great good to be got 

 by widening our view of what may be contained 

 in religion. If we go to a man and propose to 

 test his own religion by the canons of common- 

 sense morality, he will be, most likely, offended, 

 for he will say that his religion is far too sublime 

 and exalted to be affected by considerations of 

 that sort. But he will have no such objection in 

 the case of other people's religion. And when 

 he has found that in the name of religion other 

 people, in other circumstances, have believed in 

 doctrines that were false, have supported priest- 

 hoods that were social evils, have taken wrong 

 for right, and have even poisoned the very sources 

 of morality, he may be tempted to ask himself, 

 "Is there no trace of any of these evils in my 

 own religion, or at least in my own conception 

 and practice of it?" And that is just what we 

 want him to do. Bring your doctrines, your 

 priesthoods, your precepts, yea, even the inner 

 devotion of your soul, before the tribunal of con- 

 science ; she is no man's and no god's vicar, but 

 the supreme judge of men and gods. 



Let us inquire, then, what morality has to say 

 in regard to religious doctrines. It deals with 

 the manner of religious belief directly, and with 

 the matter indirectly. Religious beliefs must be 

 founded on evidence ; if they are not so founded, 

 it is wrong to hold them. The rule of right 

 conduct in this matter is exactly the opposite 

 of that implied in the two famous texts, "He 

 that believeth not shall be damned," and 

 " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet 

 have believed." For a man who clearly felt 

 22 



and recognized the duty of intellectual honesty, 

 of carefully testing every belief before he re- 

 ceived it, and especially before he recommended 

 it to others, it would be impossible to ascribe the 

 profoundly immoral teaching of these texts to a 

 true prophet or worthy leader of humanity. It 

 will comfort those who wish to preserve their 

 reverence for the character of a great teacher to 

 remember that one of these sayings is in the 

 well-known forged passage at the end of the sec- 

 ond gospel, and that the other occurs only in the 

 late and legendary fourth gospel ; both being de- 

 scribed as spoken under utterly impossible cir- 

 cumstances. These precepts belong to the Church 

 and not to the gospel. But whoever wrote either 

 of them down as a deliverance of one whom he 

 supposed to be a divine teacher, has thereby 

 written down himself as a man void of intel- 

 lectual honesty, as a man whose word cannot be 

 trusted, as a man who would accept and spread 

 about any kind of baseless fiction for fear of be- 

 lieving too little. 



So far as to the manner of religious belief. 

 Let us now inquire what bearing morality has 

 upon its matter. We may see at once that this 

 can only be indirect ; for the Tightness or wrong- 

 ness of belief in a doctrine depends only upon the 

 nature of the evidence for it, and not upon what 

 the doctrine is. But there is a very important 

 way in which religious doctrine may lead to mo- 

 rality or immorality, and in which, therefore, mo- 

 rality has a bearing upon doctrine. It is when 

 that doctrine declares the character and actions 

 of the gods who are regarded as objects of rev- 

 erence and worship. If a god is represented as 

 doing that which is clearly wrong, and is still 

 held up to the reverence of men, they will be 

 tempted to think that in doing this wrong thing 

 they are not so very wrong after all, but are only 

 following an example which all men respect. So 

 says Tlato : ' 



" We must not tell a youthful listener that he 

 will be doing nothing extraordinary if he commit 

 the foulest crimes, nor yet if he chastise the crimes 

 of a father in the most unscrupulous manner, but 

 will simply be doing what the first and greatest of 

 the gods have done before him. . . . 



" Nor yet is it proper to say in any case — what 

 is indeed untrue— that gods wage war against gods, 

 and intrigue and fight among themselves ; that is, 

 if the future guardians of our state are to deem it a 

 most disgraceful thing to quarrel lightly with one 

 another : far less ought we to select as subjects for 

 fiction and embroidery the battles of the giants, 

 and numerous other feuds of all sorts, in which 



1 " Eep." ii., 373 ; translation of Davies and Yaughan. 



