May X7, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
15 
" To the Unknown God " 
By J. G. Squire 
ATHEISM is no longer widely professed. Thirty 
f^L years ago people were common who held that the 
/ ^ non-existence of God was completely demon- 
X _^.strated by the fact that the ourang-outang could 
stand on his hind-legs and eat an apple like a man. As 
Mr. H. G. -Wells observes in the preface to his proclamation 
of faith {God, the Invisible King, Cassell, bs. net), there is a 
general inclination amongst men who are outside the churches 
to profess belief in a God. The tendency has naturally been 
welcomed by the orthodox : but this welcome Mr. Wells 
resents. It is not the Christian God, he says, to whom he 
and " the new believers " adhere, and there is no reason why 
parsons should " swell with self-complacency " when anyone 
who has left the Christian community declares that he has 
found the Deity. Here he does the parsons an injustice. 
When Charles Bradlaugh was struggling to get into the House 
of Commons, an elderly Conservative said that it would be 
all right if the new member would only acknowledge " some 
sort of a God." He was laughed at for the phrase : but 
obviously a belief in some sort of God is evidence of a better — 
a more humble, for instance— frame of mind than downright 
negation. It also shows that a man has some sense, and it 
admits, as far as it goes, that the Church has something to 
say. At any rate, Mr. Wells has a God : and he beUeves his God 
is the God of many people outside the Church, and many 
inside who do not really believe in its formulas. 
He states in his preface that wliatever his religion is it is 
not Christianity. But he alio says that there is nothing in his 
book " that need shock or offend anyone -who is prepared for 
the expression of a faith different from and perhaps in several 
particulars opposed to his own." This sentence is, to say 
the least, optimistic from a writer who talks of " an outrageous 
mythology of incarnation and resurrection," and " that 
bickering monopohst who will have none ' other gods but me' "; 
and who refers to the sacrament as " an obscene rite of 
symbolical cannibaflsm." Undergraduate profanity still has 
charms for Mr. Wells : but he really has been at some 
pains to study the history of Christian doctrine, which is to 
be found in quantities in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Un- 
fortunately, his study of the fathers has been conducted in a 
scarcely sympathetic spirit. He seems to think that the 
Church was dealing merely with words and with ideas spun 
like cobwebs without any relation to reality ; he does not 
seem to realise that an early Christian can have had a brain, 
though one can quite imagine Mr. Wells taking part in (and 
being turned out of) the Council of Nicasa himself. At any 
rate there it is. He finds it all ridiculous, and the Trinity most 
of all. And having dismissed the Christian Trinity as a " fan- 
tastic, unqualified danse dtrois," Mr. Wells proceeds to outline 
the " fine and subtle theology " which " the new believers," 
" we of the modern way," are evolving. A hush : Swift 
whispers ; And as. the limbs of the new cosmogony appear 
one by one we receive them with precisely that thrill of 
excitement that we felt at the advent of the giant rats in The 
Food of the Gods and the octopuses in Mr. Wells's grimmest 
short story. The vague and floating beliefs of half the 
world have reached " the phase of definition " (the word 
" definite " is about the most frequent adjective in the book) 
and Mr. Wells produces — a new Trinity. It consists of two 
Beings and a God. There are three ; but they do not happen 
to be three in one. 
***** 
First of all. there is that which underlies all phenomena. 
Of this Mr. Wells says we know nothing, and he cidls it the 
Veiled Being. 
The Veiled Bcinj;, enigmatical and iiiconiprcheiisiblc, broods 
over the mirror upon which the busy shapes ol life arc moving. 
It is as if it waited in a great stilhiess. Our lives do not deal 
with it. and cannot deal witli it. It may be that they may 
never be able to deal with it. 
The Veiled Being, says Mr. Wells, in a not very helpful 
sentence, " may be of practically [my italics] hmitless 
intricacy and possibility." It is " altogether outside good 
and evil, and love and hate." 
And coming out of this veiled being, proceeding out of it in 
a manner altogether inconceivable, i.s another lesser being. 
This is the maker of our world Life, the Will to Be ; and it 
is " conceived of as both good and evil." A first Being 
incomprehensible, a second inconceivably proceeding (it is 
strange how useful is the terminology 01 what Mr. Wells calls 
the " burlesque " Athanasian Creed) : and with the third wc 
come to God. God is the God in the Heart and he is " a 
strongly marked and knowablc personality," with very 
definite characteristics. He is " the Captain of Mankind," 
" a huge friendliness " : he does not necessarily know much 
more than we do about the Veiled Being, and " the fact that 
God \s finite is one upon which those who think clearly among 
the new behevers are very insistent." He is " a young 
God " ; a person " as real as a bayonet thrust or an cm- 
brace." He is not Providence : he does not replenish 
bank balances or save lives, in response to prayer. But he is 
a stimulant and a friend. And finally, if you want another 
name for this stimulating friend, you get it : " He is the 
undying human memory, the increasing human will." In 
other words, he is the Spirit of Man, or, as some call it, " the 
spirit of the herd." One might almost call him " Public 
Spirit." It is an odd thing to worship. But no, Mr. Wells's 
God is not worshipped. 
Mr. WeUs talks enthusiastically about his beliefs as being 
the religion of the future. He hopes, apparently, to link 
up all the Higher Thought Centres, and in the end to achieve 
a theocracy. God will be the Invisible King of all the world. 
Wc shall not allow portraits of other kings to appear upon our 
stamps : for God must be on " our letters and receipts " — 
though how, Mr. Wells, who seems otherwise to object to sym- 
bols, does not explain. But indeed, as Mr. Wells woultl 
say, there does not seem enough in this theology to justify 
hopes of a world-wide Church. What is new iis not " very 
definite," and what is definite is not new. In his preface 
Mr. Wells does show an inclination to confess that the com- 
pass of theologies has been boxed, and at one point we half 
expect the New Machiavelli to proclaim- himself the New 
Manichffian. But his prevailing weakness is an underlying 
assumption that the mere fact that he lives at this point in 
time, that he is " modern," implies that he has novel 
spiritual experiences and enables, or rather entitles, him to 
discover new truths about Eternity. Both his passion for the 
latest thing and the antique quality of his experience come 
out sometimes in his very phraseology. " In the reeling 
aeroplane or the dark ice-cave God will be your courage." 
It is true that our benighted ancestors did not know the aero- 
plane (or trinitrotoluol), and therefore could not use it as an 
Olustration : but they spoke with some fervour of the great 
deep and the vadley of the shadow of death. The contempla- 
tive man, throughout all recorded time, has, like Mr. Wells, 
felt the workings of conscience and marvelled at the immensity 
of the heavens and the surging luxuriance of life. He has 
heard a still small voice within his heart and been comforted 
when he listened to it, and known the blessedness of self- 
sacrifice ; he has surveyed the material world and guessed 
at the Power working behind it. Life is still the same, the 
heart is still the same, and the " starry vault " js still the 
same, as they were when Augustine was alive or Plato or the 
magis of Chaldsea. The problems and our inadequacy to 
understand them remain unchanged : and a man has the 
option of learning " the Grammar of Assent," and accepting a 
revealed religion and an established creed ; or of giving the 
incomprehensibles new names with capital letters which 
do nothing to explain them; or of merely saying that he 
believes in " some sort of God," and leaving it at that. That 
IS what Mr. Wells would have been wise to do. His atternpt 
to make a system out of his haziness is a hopeless failure. 
He seems at one moment to realise where he stands when he 
says tliiit, although (iod is finite, yet " if the reader believes 
that God is Almighty and in every way infinite tiie jiracticid 
outcome is not very different." We shall not sec that Church 
with its remarkable creed beginning; 
" I believe in one finite God who never ha.s made anvthiug and 
never could make anything. . ." 
And however numerous the new gropers may be they will not 
get their dubious hypothesis, the Mind of the Race, upon the 
postage stamps. . One may believe in a God without belonging 
to the Church, but one is not going to build out of odds and 
ends of psychology and metaphysics a " new subtle theology " 
which will purge the human race of its sins. I should hke to 
.see Mr, Wells's own powers of sarcastic criticism, which are 
great, turned against this i^emarkable compost of the nebulous 
and the arbitrary. 
