DREAMS AND REALITIES. 



537 



devil shail have a chance if he will resolve to 

 mend his ways." 



This, again, is all very well, and no doubt the 

 terror can easily be exterminated after we know 

 it to be baseless. But, then, what are we to think 

 of the religion in which so fearful a belief grew 

 and flourished — a belief which, according to you, 

 is calculated to drive men mad, to make them 

 pray for annihilation as infinitely preferable to 

 the state which it reveals, and which so far from 

 exerting a moral influence pollutes the imagina- 

 tion and lowers the tone of character of all who 

 accept it ? Your contention is really that the his- 

 torical Christianity, the actual belief of millions 

 of men and women, deserves upon this head all 

 that its fiercest adversaries have ever said against 

 it. You add, indeed, that a religious creed may be 

 put together in conformity with the official docu- 

 ments, which omits this ghastly superstition. Pos- 

 sibly, but a creed must be judged by its fruits, by 

 the effect which it actually produces upon living 

 men and women ; aud if, in its actual working, it 

 formulates or protects such detestable doctrines as 

 this, it is useless to complain of the facts. If Chris- 

 tianity meant really what it meant for Mr. Mau- 

 rice or Mr. Erskine of Linlathen or Canon Farrar, 

 it would be a very much milder form of belief 

 than it has actually been. Only as a matter of 

 fact it has had quite a different meaning for 

 Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Luther, 

 " thousands of theologians," and millions upon 

 millions of professed believers. The fact affords 

 a conclusive presumption that the belief is what 

 Dr. Newman would call a development, not an 

 " incrustation." It must have an organic con- 

 nection of some kind with the vital principles of 

 the creed, or it would not have grown so vig- 

 orously and flourished so persistently wherever 

 Christianity has been strongest. Accidental dog- 

 mas may be ingrafted upon a creed here and 

 there under special circumstances ; they die and 

 drop off when the conditions alter ; but a phenom- 

 enon so universal and enduring could hardly be 

 produced unless there were an underlying logical 

 necessity which binds it indissolubly with the 

 primary articles of the faith. It is, one must as- 

 sume, a consequence of the mode of conceiving 

 the universe implied in the very structure of Chris- 

 tianity, not an addition from without. In any 

 case, we are virtually asked to adopt a new creed, 

 because the old has fostered a detestable supersti- 

 tion. It is no strained inference that some more 

 radical remedy is required than a simple omission 

 of a particular clause of the revealed code. The 

 whole must require to be remodeled. We can- 



not retain the amiable parts of a doctrine while 

 leaving out the sterner elements, or be sure that 

 we can clip and mangle without emasculating. 



Is, then, the Christian doctrine of a future 

 world to be regarded as simply a curse to man- 

 kind ? That seems to be the reasonable inference 

 from Canon Farrar's assertions, though it is as 

 far as possible from being the inference which 

 the canon draws. If I took his representation 

 of Christianity to be true, I should regard it as 

 necessarily including a very large element of devil- 

 worship. No dogma can be of more importance 

 than one which serves as the basis of the whole 

 moral system and governs the whole application 

 of religious principle to conduct. If the accepted 

 version of this doctrine be utterly repulsive, we 

 should be forced to hold that Christianity poisons 

 the springs which it represents as the sole sup- 

 port of the spiritual life. No other doctrine is so 

 important in regard to practice, and none so hor- 

 rible. And yet I believe, as I suppose all moder- 

 ately intelligent persons believe, that Christianity 

 not only represents the teaching of many of the 

 greatest and most moral of mankind, but was for 

 centuries one of the chief reforming agencies in 

 the world. I leave it to Canon Farrar and those 

 who agree with him to solve this paradox upon 

 their own principles. Upon mine the explana- 

 tion is simple enough. It is that the so-called 

 belief in a future life — whether in hell or heaven 

 — has always been in reality a dream, and not 

 strictly speaking a belief at all. Occasionally 

 this dream, like others, passes into hallucination ; 

 as a rule it is as flimsy in its texture as other 

 dreams, and really supplies new symbols for the 

 emotions instead of suggesting genuine motives 

 for action. Tbe ignorant and the childish are 

 hopelessly unable to draw the line between dream- 

 land and reality; but the imagery which takes 

 its rise in the imagination as distinguished from 

 the perceptions, bears indelible traces of its ori- 

 gin in comparative unsubstantiality and vague- 

 ness of outline. If Christianity counseled men 

 in sober earnestness to interpret the universe as 

 significant of a cruel and arbitrary despotism, it 

 would deserve unmixed reprobation. The true 

 statement is that it generates fantastic and some- 

 times horrible dreams which are insufficiently dis- 

 tinguished from realities. The confusion has some- 

 times disastrous results ; but they are not such as 

 might be anticipated from the matter-of-fact state- 

 ment which confounds poetry with prose and shad- 

 ow with substance. 



There is, of course, a logical groundwork for 

 this as for other wide-spread beliefs. The sources 



