I Believe and other essays

No one ever goes to his parish priest and asks if adultery is wrong. Yet innumerable clergymen have told me that they are constantly asked by parishioners if there is “any harm” in the use of methods to limit families.

Such people are not, of course, of a very spiritual life, or very acute intelligence, or they would easily find the answer to such a question for themselves. But very few of us are either spiritually minded or of uncommon intelligence, and legislation must be for the average man. Voltaire said, “on dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons,” and what was spoken as a sneer contains the germ of a great truth. Let me say once more, and I am certain of what I say, that the “gros bataillons” are quite ignorant of their moral obligations in marriage in so far as they relate to the question under discussion.

Why?

The truth is, in the first instance, very difficult to convey from the pulpit and to a mixed audience, though, to take three great names at random, the President of the United States, and our own Bishops of Ripon and London have spoken out. In accusing the clergy and nonconformist ministers of shirking their duty we must remember the enormous difficulty of their task. I have no responsibility but that of my own conviction, and no one is compelled to buy this book who does not wish to do so. It is therefore quite easy for me to sit in my study and write as I am doing. But the preacher, great as his opportunity and influence are, must by the nature of the case, be in a very different position. He is an official and recognized leader of his flock in spiritual affairs, a hundred considerations weigh with him; he is constrained on all sides by prejudice and convention which might do incalculable harm in other directions if the one was outraged and the other ignored. The position of the priest is admirably summed up in a pamphlet which Father Black has sent me. In it he explains that it is impossible for a preacher when addressing a general congregation to speak in other than general terms, or to say all that he may feel it is, in some cases, very desirable or even necessary to convey. He cannot but be aware that with sins of impurity especially, the very persons who commit them are generally of too delicate ears to endure to hear them called by their right names. This sentimental purity is not incompatible with corruption of life. He wishes to warn the innocent without enlightening their innocence, to lift the veil sufficiently to show their sin to the guilty, and yet to teach them by delicacy and not bring a railing accusation which would probably only harden instead of converting.

It is gravely necessary to realize how difficult the priest’s task is, but at the same time it is extraordinary how little organized condemnation of the evil exists. No one can accurately measure or gauge the influence exercised by clergy in private conversations and admonitions, and this is doubtless considerable. But it is sporadic and not systematic, there is too much timidity and hesitation, and while the enemy is well organized and equipped we are without a plan of campaign and have no regular army in the field.

The Prayer-book, in the Marriage Service, tells us explicitly, “First it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of His Holy Name.” Here we have the voice of the Church speaking plainly enough, and both it and the authority of Scripture are unanimous in clear expression or unmistakable implication. The Christian attitude has been admirably summed up in Father Black’s pamphlet, to which I acknowledged my indebtedness in the preface of my book First it was Ordained, and from which strong, lucid, and outspoken statement I quote a few sentences: —

“Of this systematic wickedness, unfaithfulness is the natural consequence in many cases. Logically there is nothing but a sense of commercial honesty to keep a woman who has lost the reverence of marriage to one man. The obligation has no hold on her higher nature, and when passion or convenience press the balance there is no sufficient reason why she should be very scrupulous.

“If women treat themselves, and are treated by their husbands as mere animals, all idea of chivalry is at an end; and this, no doubt, is in a measure the ground for a license of speech and action in even our public amusements, contrary not only to the ethos of Christianity, but to the principles of a civilization worthy of the name.

“Women who interfere with the natural end of marriage – the bearing of children – are wives in name, in reality prostitutes. Men who require or encourage such acts are corrupters, not husbands. When I said in my sermon that trifling with God’s laws of marriage was a horrible sin, I was thinking chiefly of the woman’s side of the matter.

“True manliness is, however, no less to be desired than true womanliness. In the words of Lord Tennyson —

“‘Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,’ the man should find in himself and display to his wife. Philosophy and religion are in accord here. St. John writes to young men, ‘because ye are strong and have overcome the wicked one.’ Professor Huxley, ‘that man has had a liberal education who has been so trained that his body is the ready servant of his will; whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned to love all beauty and to hate all vileness, to respect others as himself.’ To me that judgment seems a manly one which pronounces the corruption of a wife by a husband a viler thing than the gratification of lust in the common stews. This latter less deeply degrading to society or injurious to the nation at large.

“But you and I, my dear sir, are Christians; and our concern is with Christian marriage. Here, as in everything else, the truth of Christ will deliver men from mistakes. Christian marriage in common with all other Christian things has in it the law of self-denial and self-conquest. Such is the Apostolic view of it; thus it is to be ‘in the Lord,’ and only ‘in the Lord’ is it permitted to the Christian.

“Holy Scripture is of course everywhere clear as to the end of marriage, and God’s condemnation express against the perversion of it, ‘the Lord slew him.’ St. Paul wills ‘that women marry and bear children.’”

Is not this plain speaking? and could it be bettered as an expression of a militant Christian’s hatred and horror of what is debasing and foul? – I think not. We are not all given the power of feeling the intense loathing for a very generally committed sin which is manifested here. A life in the world and of the world induces a tolerance which is very often laziness and cowardice. We are not to hate the sinner, of course, but only the sin, but which of us cares to inveigh against the vice of a friend? Savonarola was not a popular parson, though Santa Maria del Fiore was always crowded when he was in the pulpit. We ought to be thankful for such bludgeon-sturdy words as these which show us the carrion-passions which war against the soul in their true light.

I know, you know, most men know, how extraordinarily easy it is to become familiar with our vices so that in a short time they become no vices at all, but just little pleasant failings which we share with some of the best fellows in the world. And all becomes dim and misty in the shadowy thoroughfares of thought, while it is only now and then – perhaps never at all – that some bugle-breeze blows over us and sounds réveillée to the sleeping soul.

If we are sensualists, though we don’t realize it, we always live as though we were immortal; immortal in the sense that we shall never die and once more be born. Yet it is a strange truth in life that the man or woman who is converted to a clean life from sins of the body, has often more power than any one else to warn and exhort against sensuality. It is the man from whose eye the mote and beam has been removed who can speak most convincingly of the horrors of the dark. “Experto crede!” he calls out to mankind, and out of the uncleanness is brought forth meat. Let us see what Aurelius Augustinus – that old Father of the Church we call Saint Augustine – has to say of this danger and sin which we are considering. We all know what the Saint’s early life was like, what was the life of a young man at a Pagan University in the fourth century. From his eighteenth year until he was thirty-two the Saint whom we revere lived in open vice at Carthage. On Easter Eve, April 387, he was baptized, and tradition tells us that then the massive harmony of the Te Deum was composed. No theologian has influenced the mind of Christendom more greatly than this man, not only by his writings, but by the spectacle we find in them of the fervour and devotion of his inner life. Remember that he knew all the bitter knowledge of lust, and hear how he writes of those who would prevent conception: —

“Quia etsi non causa propagandæ prolis concumbitur, non tamen hujus libidinis causa propagationi prolis obsistitur sive voto malo, sive opere malo. Nam quid hoc faciunt quamvis vocentur conjuges, non sunt, nec ullam nuptiarum retinent veritatem, sed honestum nomen velandæ turpitudini obtendunt.”

And of those who use drugs to prevent the birth of children, he further says: —

“Aliquando eo usque pervenit hæc libidinosa crudelitas, vel libido crudelis, ut etiam sterilitatis venena procuret.

“Prorsus si ambo tales sunt, conjuges non sunt, et si ab initio tales fuerunt, non sibi per connubium, sed per stuprum potius convenerunt. Si autem non ambo sunt tales audeo dicere aut illa est quodam mode meretrix mariti, aut ille adulter uxoris.”

What is to be done? What is the duty of Christians, and how shall they combat this evil? Unless it is to spread and spread till every part of our natural life is infected, something must be done. The Neo-Malthusians are not only teaching married people how to avoid the responsibilities of marriage, but they are teaching unmarried people to do so as well. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of, as more than one clergyman has pointed out. If fear of consequences is removed chastity becomes more than ever threatened. If there is the wish and inclination to sin, and that wish is only not gratified because inconvenient results may lead to discovery, it is true that the moral value of people in such a case is small. But a general recognition of the fact that it is easy to sin will have incalculable influence for harm on those who are as yet on the border-line between the claims of self-gratification and control. Public sentiment becomes lax and unstrung. Simultaneously with the decline of the birth-rate the newspapers show every day that the old ideal, the sacred English ideal of the family is departing. Our greatest living novelist says openly, “Certainly one day the conditions of marriage will be changed. Marriage will be allowed for a certain period, say ten years.” In many parts of America, where the President is ceaselessly urging his countrymen to denounce and give up Neo-Malthusian practices, the home has already disappeared. From a large collection of information and statistics I take only one example, quoted in a leading English newspaper. There is no need for a single word of comment, save that I do not vouch for the truth of the newspaper report which, in its very appearance, proves my point.

“Mrs. Le Page, a New York lady who has just married her eighth husband, crystallizes her experience in life.

“Five of her seven former husbands are still alive, and they have just sent messages of encouragement to the new incumbent. The other two have died.

“Mrs. Le Page’s maiden name was Mary Johnson, and she was the daughter of a Connecticut farmer. She was only fourteen, but well grown for her age, when she contracted a runaway marriage with a seventeen-year-old Danbury clerk named William Wakeman. In accordance with the American practice of hyphenating family names, she became Mrs. William Johnson-Wakeman. It was a happy marriage for three days, and then her family interfered, and the marriage was annulled.

“Two years later, while in a New York elevated train, she made the acquaintance of Mr. Harry Saunders, a rich contractor’s son and a commercial traveller. After two days’ courtship she became Mrs. Henry Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders, and lived in perfect happiness, accompanying her husband on his travels for three years, until he died.

“Shortly afterwards the lady married a railroad man, and was happy as Mrs. Joseph Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers, until he was killed in an accident. She next married a Jersey grocer, but the bonds being severed in the Divorce Court, she married a hotel-keeper, becoming Mrs. John Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley.

“Being once more disappointed, she was again freed by the Divorce Court, and continued her search for the ideal husband, whom she thought she had found when she became Mrs. Thomas Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Lindley-Godfrey. But John Godfrey compared unfavourably with his predecessors, and the Divorce Court restored her freedom. On the following day she became Mrs. Wilbury-Johnson-Wakeman-Saunders-Powers-Godfrey-Gay- (she says that the name too well described his character, as she shortly proved to the satisfaction of the Divorce Court) Crowther. This husband soon revealed his true character, and she had no difficulty in regaining her maiden liberty.

“Mrs. Benjamin (many hyphens) Le Page believes that her husband, who is English born, and has made considerable money in this country, is the long-sought ideal, but if he does not prove so – she is only thirty-nine, and there is still plenty of time to continue the search. She says that she had long wished to marry an Englishman, having been favourably impressed by what she had heard of their high qualities as husbands. She intends giving the experiment a thorough trial. So far, it has proved satisfactory, but she says that it is impossible to form a correct judgment of any man until she has been married for two or three weeks.

“Marriage, she says, is such a lottery, but it is the blessed state which it is ordained every woman shall occupy. Her life’s mission is to find a pre-ordained mate, and she would not be deterred as many women, by a first failure, but should try and try again until successful.

“‘My experience,’ she says, ‘is that women make a mistake in waiting for a man to do all the wooing. When I was young and inexperienced I fell into that error, and consequently I had several disappointments. But when I was thirty I realized that a woman’s duty – well, right – was to do the wooing.’”

Again I ask what is to be done to influence public opinion, to rouse Christians in the same way that the National Conscience has been roused upon the Drink question?

An enormous amount of good can be done by the personal efforts and example of those in a position to influence others – pastors, doctors, Christian layworkers. Yet is it an impossible hope that some day a league or confraternity to fight the battle may be started? Are there no people of sufficient weight and importance in the world’s eye to come forward and do this, no folk whose place will secure them a hearing, whose convictions will interest and convert others?

Eighteen months ago I published, in my book First it was Ordained, the sketch of an organized society on definite lines. In the course of the tale the founder of this league writes to an official in the Census Office who is alarmed at the decline of the birth-rate, and outlines the lines on which the society is to be started.

With some necessary elisions this is the letter: —

“You will see, therefore, that though there has been, and doubtless will continue to be, a great deal of windy talk on these matters, there is no organized body of men and women, no league, no union, either religious or political or both, which is devoted to dealing with the question, to rousing the national conscience and fighting the Neo-Malthusians tooth and nail.

“Wifehood – which generally means motherhood – is the predominant profession of women all over the world. The future of the world, and of course of any state in it, rests upon the quality and the quantity of its children. A prominent sociologist has just written, ‘If the conditions under which the profession of motherhood is exercised are silly and rotten, our fleets, our armies, do no more than guard a thing that dies. In Great Britain, now, I think they are more or less silly and rotten.’ Let us admit that this writer is correct. He does no more than voice conclusions at which even the most superficial student of the census returns must have arrived.

“What is to be done, then? How are we who are Christians and love our Lord, citizens who love our country, to fight the present conditions?

“That is what a band of people, including those I have mentioned, are discussing. They have arrived at a definite conclusion.

“A great league is to be formed of English men and women. Great names will be at the head of it, it is to be national. I have already pointed out to you that even the revelations of the census have not stirred the ordinary person. His patriotism has not been roused, and, you may be certain – as I am certain – that no question of national expediency on this point will stir the ordinary person, who is either indifferent or actually engaged in helping England’s decadence by the restriction of his own family. A league started on the grounds of expediency and the common good alone would be an egregious failure.

“Utilitarianism never fired a great moral movement yet. It never will; because, before a man becomes a national utilitarian, he must get over personal utilitarianism. And in this case of the restriction of family, the degradation of marriage, personal utilitarianism is directly opposed to national welfare, and the personal wins.

“We must come back to the one Power and Force over the hearts and minds of men and women. We must come back to religion.

“Here is the Church’s great opportunity. There has never, perhaps, in the whole history of the Church in England been such a chance given to her. Our crusade must be a crusade made in the light of the Incarnation, under the auspices of God the Holy Ghost —the Lord and Giver of Life.

“Do you begin to see what I mean, what we hope for? The part of the Holy Spirit’s work, which we recite in the Creed, has been largely forgotten. Lord and Giver of Life! We are about to revive the recognition and memory of the fact. We are going to use this cardinal point of Christian belief as our watchword and battle-cry.

“The gradual decline of literal belief in the Incarnation, the growth of a Protestantism which is on its way towards Unitarianism, the spread of Unitarian doctrines under other names, among the varied sects of dissent, have meant that an appalling disregard of life as the gift of God, its Author, has come among us. It is because you and I believe that Jesus was God as well as man that we insist upon the sacredness of human life.

“To-day, the loss of thousands of lives in a battle is printed as a piece of casual news. There is no particular sense of horror in the minds of any one. Murders are committed every day in momentary bursts of passion over trifles. Suicides increase, not only when some long-continued misery may seem to give a shadow of excuse, but when there has been some trivial disappointment. And so, leaving out a hundred other instances, one comes down to the truth of which every priest, every doctor, and every nurse is aware, the frustration of God’s intention of childbirth – the reason for the terrible disclosures which you and your colleagues have given to the world in your census returns.

“Our league will be, therefore, a great Church League. We shall invite every English man and woman to join it, who believes that Christ was God. This is the only way in which we can make such a society do its work and accomplish its end. Directly we begin to allow the political altruist who has no definite belief in Christianity to join us, so surely our influence and opportunity will begin to decline. Compromise is no use whatever. We shall be bitterly assailed, and for a time we shall not seem to make much headway. I say seem, and for this reason: people who belong to us will not advertise their membership. The press, which is not interested, as a whole, in religious affairs, will not understand our aims, nor will it be – so I imagine – in sympathy with them. And any movement that has for its object, as this will have, the improvement of sexual morality, will be fought by the methods of ridicule and contempt. But this will be but surface, and in time the influence of our work will not only be felt, but seen. The wizards of figures will be at work once more.”

Is this a dream and impracticable? It is for the great middle classes of England to answer during the coming years. The middle classes really rule. They do not command public opinion, but they do what is more than that – they persuade it. They represent more than the remaining classes the austerity and also the Christianity of the United Kingdom and the Dominions beyond the seas.

The question rests with them, and there are many who still hope and believe they will be faithful to their trust who are convinced – “Dabit Deus his quoque Finem.”

III

THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD