XVI. THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY

We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now

come to the Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE

to hold the field of Religion in the Western World is neither

probable nor desirable. It is true, as I have remarked already,

that there is a certain trouble about defining what we mean

by "Christianity" similar to that about the word "Civilization."

If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and

rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those

which commend themselves to the most modern and humane

and rational human mind and choose to call that resulting

(but rather small) body of belief and practice 'Christianity'

we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to hope (as we do

hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into

the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and

certainly not logical. It enables Christianity to pose as

an angel of light while at the same time keeping discreetly

out of sight all its own abominations and deeds of darkness.

The Church--which began its career by destroying, distorting

and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang;

whose bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each

other in their theological rancour "of wild beasts," which

encouraged the wicked folly of the Crusades--especially

the Children's Crusades--and the shameful murders of

the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which

burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor

'witches' and 'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a

generous word in favor or defence of the animals; which

in modern times has supported vivisection as against the

latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the poorer

classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its

various sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant,

have in these last days rushed forth to urge the nations to

slaughter each other with every diabolical device of Science,

and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism in defiance of the

principle of universal Brotherhood--such a Church can hardly

claim to have established the angelic character of its

mission among mankind! And if it be said--as it often

IS SAID: "Oh! but you must go back to the genuine article,

and the Church's real origin and one foundation in the

person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you

come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces:

namely, that as to the person of Jesus, there is

no CERTAINTY at all that he ever existed; and as to the teaching

credited to him, it is certain that that comes down from a

period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of what

may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as

in the case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that

it is useless to apply the word to some ideal state of affairs

or doctrine (an ideal by no means the same in all people's

minds, or in all localities and times), but that the only

reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each case to a

HISTORICAL PERIOD. In the case of Christianity the historical

period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can

hardly expect or wish that it should last much longer.

The very thorough and careful investigation of religious

origins which has been made during late years by a great

number of students and observers undoubtedly tends to show

that there has been something like a great World-religion

coming down the centuries from the remotest times and

gradually expanding and branching as it has come--that

is to say that the similarity (in ESSENCE though not always

in external detail) between the creeds and rituals of widely

sundered tribes and peoples is so great as to justify the view

--advanced in the present volume--that these creeds and

rituals are the necessary outgrowths of human psychology,

slowly evolving, and that consequently they have a common

origin and in their various forms a common expression. Of

this great World-religion, so coming down, Christianity

is undoubtedly a branch, and an important branch. But

there have been important branches before; and while

it may be true that Christianity emphasizes some points

which may have been overlooked or neglected in the Vedic

teachings or in Buddhism, or in the Persian and Egyptian

and Syrian cults, or in Mahommedanism, and so forth, it is also

equally true that Christianity has itself overlooked or neglected

valuable points in these religions. It has, in fact, the defects

of its qualities. If the World-religion is like a great tree, one

cannot expect or desire that all its branches should be directed

towards the same point of the compass.

Reinach, whose studies of religious origins are always

interesting and characterized by a certain Gallic grace

and nettete, though with a somewhat Jewish non-perception

of the mystic element in life, defines Religion as a combination

of animism and scruples. This is good in a way, because

it gives the two aspects of the subject: the inner,

animism, consisting of the sense of contact with more or

less intelligent beings moving in Nature; and the outer,

consisting in scruples or taboos. The one aspect shows

the feeling which INSPIRES religion, the other, the checks and

limitations which DEFINE it and give birth to ritual. But

like most anthropologists he (Reinach) is a little TOO

patronizing towards the "poor Indian with untutored

mind." He is sorry for people so foolish as to be animistic

in their outlook, and he is always careful to point out that

the scruples and taboos were quite senseless in their origin,

though occasionally (by accident) they turned out useful.

Yet--as I have said before--Animism is a perfectly sensible,

logical and NECESSARY attitude of the human mind. It is

a necessary attribute of man's psychical nature, by which

he projects into the great World around him the image

of his own mind. When that mind is in a very primitive,

inchoate, and fragmentary condition, the images so projected

are those of fragmentary intelligences ('spirits,'

gnomes, etc.--the age of magic); when the mind rises

to distinct consciousness of itself the reflections of it are

anthropomorphic 'gods'; when finally it reaches the

universal or cosmic state it perceives the presence of

a universal Being behind all phenomena--which Being is

indeed itself--"Himself to Himself." If you like you

may call the whole process by the name of Animism. It

is perfectly sensible throughout. The only proviso is

that you should also be sensible, and distinguish the different

stages in the process.

Jane Harrison makes considerable efforts to show that Religion

is primarily a reflection of the SOCIAL Conscience (see

Themis, pp. 482-92)--that is, that the sense in Man

of a "Power that makes for righteousness" outside (and

also inside) him is derived from his feeling of continuity

with the Tribe and his instinctive obedience to its

behests, confirmed by ages of collective habit and experience.

He cannot in fact sever the navel-string which connects

him with his tribal Mother, even though he

desires to do so. And no doubt this view of the origin

of Religion is perfectly correct. But it must be pointed

out that it does not by any means exclude the view that

religion derives also from an Animism by which man recognizes

in general Nature his foster-mother and feels himself

in closest touch with HER. Which may have come first, the

Social affiliation or the Nature affiliation, I leave to

the professors to determine. The term Animism may,

as far as I can see, be quite well applied to the social

affiliation, for the latter is evidently only a case in which

the individual projects his own degree of consciousness

into the human group around him instead of into the

animals or the trees, but it is a case of which the justice

is so obvious that the modern man can intellectually seize

and understand it, and consequently he does not tar it with

the 'animistic' brush.

And Miss Harrison, it must be noticed, does, in other passages

of the same book (see Themis, pp. 68, 69), admit

that Religion has its origin not only from unity with the

Tribe but from the sense of affiliation to Nature--the

sense of "a world of unseen power lying behind the visible

universe, a world which is the sphere, as will be seen, of

magical activity and the medium of mysticism. The

mystical element, the oneness and continuousness comes

out very clearly in the notion of Wakonda among the Sioux

Indians. . . . The Omahas regarded all animate and inanimate

forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common

life, which was continuous and similar to the will-power

they were conscious of in themselves. This mysterious

power in all things they called Wakonda, and through

it all things were related to man, and to each other. In the

idea of the continuity of life, a relation was maintained between

the seen and the unseen, the dead and the living, and

also between the fragment of anything and its entirety." Thus

our general position is confirmed, that Religion in

its origin has been INSPIRED by a deep instinctive conviction

or actual sense of continuity with a being or beings in the

world around, while it has derived its FORM and ritual by

slow degrees from a vast number of taboos, generated in

the first instance chiefly by superstitious fears, but gradually

with the growth of reason and observation becoming

simplified and rationalized into forms of use. On the one

side there has been the positive impulse--of mere animal

Desire and the animal urge of self-expression; on the

other there has been the negative force of Fear based

on ignorance--the latter continually carving, moulding and

shaping the former. According to this an organized study and

classification of taboos might yield some interesting results;

because indeed it would throw light on the earliest forms of

both religion and science. It would be seen that some taboos,

like those of CONTACT (say with a menstruous woman,

or a mother-in-law, or a lightning-struck tree) had an obvious

basis of observation, justifiable but very crude; while

others, like the taboo against harming an enemy who

had contracted blood-friendship with one of your own

tribe, or against giving decent burial to a murderer, were

equally rough and rude expressions or indications of the growing

moral sentiment of mankind. All the same there would

be left, in any case, a large residuum of taboos which could

only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of the

savage mind.

So much for the first origins of the World-religion;

and I think enough has been said in the various chapters

of this book to show that the same general process has obtained

throughout. Man, like the animals, began with

this deep, subconscious sense of unity with surrounding

Nature. When this became (in Man) fairly conscious, it led

to Magic and Totemism. More conscious, and it branched,

on the one hand, into figures of Gods and definite forms

of Creeds, on the other into elaborate Scientific Theories--

the latter based on a strong INTELLECTUAL belief in Unity, but

fervently denying any 'anthropomorphic' or 'animistic'

SENSE of that unity. Finally, it seems that we are

now on the edge of a further stage when the theories

and the creeds, scientific and religious, are on the verge of

collapsing, but in such a way as to leave the sense and the

perception of Unity--the real content of the whole

process--not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened

and illuminated. Meanwhile the taboos--of which there

remain some still, both religious and scientific--

have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves into a

reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.

I have said that out of this World-religion Christianity

really sprang. It is evident that the time has arrived when

it must either acknowledge its source and frankly endeavor

to affiliate itself to the same, or failing that must

perish. In the first case it will probably have to change its

name; in the second the question of its name 'will interest

it no more.'

With regard to the first of these alternatives, I might venture--

though with indifference--to make a few suggestions.

Why should we not have--instead of a Holy

Roman Church--a Holy HUMAN Church, rehabilitating the

ancient symbols and rituals, a Christianity (if you still

desire to call it so) frankly and gladly acknowledging

its own sources? This seems a reasonable and even feasible

proposition. If such a church wished to celebrate a Mass

or Communion or Eucharist it would have a great variety

of rites and customs of that kind to select from; those that

were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected

with the worship of strange gods need not be rejected or

condemned, but could still be commented on and explained

as approaches to the same idea--the idea of dedication

to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration in the partaking

of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the Crucifixion

or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such

celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that

has underlain such celebrations since the beginning of the

world could easily be disentangled and presented in concrete

form anew. In the light of such teaching expressions

like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be traced

to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding

the mass of rubbish, cant and humbug which has

collected round them they really do mean something and

represent the age-long instinct of Humanity feeling its way

towards a more extended revelation, a new order of being,

a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a

Church or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature

would have to be represented, every practice and

custom allowed for and its place accorded--the magical

and astronomical meanings, the rites connected with sun-worship,

or with sex, or with the worship of animals; the

consecration of corn and wine and other products of the

ground, initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it

claimed to be a World-religion) would have to be represented

and recognized. For they all have their long human origin

and descent in and through the pagan creeds, and they all

have penetrated into and become embodied to some degree

in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either

now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from

the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry

mankind one step forward in the path of evolution--or else it

must perish. There is no other alternative.[1]

[1] Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have

had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in

making it all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The

seed of Life was not in it.

Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient

ritual which has survived from the far Past and is still

celebrated, but with little intelligence or understanding, in

the Catholic Church of to-day, might be adopted in such

a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made eloquent

of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon

nearly 30 years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a

night-festival in a Hindu Temple--the great festival of

Taipusam, which takes place every year in January. Of

course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of

trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The

moon shone down above from among the fronds of tall coco-palms,

on a dense crowd of native worshipers--men and

a few women--the men for the most part clad in little

more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored

saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of

Siva and two other gods were carried in procession round

and round the temple--three or four times; nautch girls

danced before the images, musicians, blowing horns and huge

shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms, accompanied

them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with

flaming coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each

side, elated and excited with the sense of the present

divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole

thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Bacchanalian

procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus--and

especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly

intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and

the floating of the chief actors on a raft round a sacred

lake. And then came the final Act. Siva, or his image, very

weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was carried

into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and

placed on an altar with a curtain hanging in front. The

crowd followed with a rush; and then there was more music,

recital of hymns, and reading from sacred books.

From where we stood we could see the rite which was performed

behind the curtain. Two five-branched candlesticks

were lighted; and the manner of their lighting was

as follows. Each branch ended in a little cup, and in the

cups five pieces of camphor were placed, all approximately

equal in size. After offerings had been made, of fruit,

flowers and sandalwood, the five camphors in each candlestick

were lighted. As the camphor flames burned out the music

became more wild and exciting, and then at the moment of

their extinction the curtains were drawn aside and the

congregation outside suddenly beheld the god revealed

and in a blaze of light. This burning of camphor was,

like other things in the service, emblematic. The five

lights represent the five senses. Just as camphor consumes

itself and leaves no residue behind, so should the five senses,

being offered to the god, consume themselves and disappear.

When this is done, that happens in the soul which was now

figured in the ritual--the God is revealed in the

inner light.[1]

[1] For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see

Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.

We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil.

We hear of it in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and

Egyptian Mysteries. It had a mystically religious, and also

obviously sexual, signification. It occurs here and there in

the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some ancient

Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and

splendor hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the

Cathedral, at Seville the service of the Passion, carried

out on Good Friday with great solemnity and accompanied

with fine music, culminates on the Saturday morning--i.e.

in the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection--

in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon.

A rich velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At

the appropriate moment and as the very emotional strains

of voices and instruments reach their climax in the "Gloria

in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden burst of sound

(thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent asunder,

and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a

halo of glory.

There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the

High Altar every year, the very curious Dance of the Seises

(sixes), performed now by 16 instead of (as of old) by 12

boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a survival of

some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which

the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and

is celebrated during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the

Immaculate Conception, and the Carnival.

Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how

a Church aspiring to be a real Church of Humanity might

adopt and re-create the rituals of the past in the light of

a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty would be to

limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now

see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a

real joy to disentangle these and to expose the profound

solidarity of humanity and aspiration from the very dawn

of civilization down to the present day. Nor would

it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead

level of ceremonial in the matter. Different groups might

concentrate on different phases of religious thought and

practice. The only necessity would be that they should

approach the subject with a real love of Humanity in

their hearts and a real desire to come into touch with the deep

inner life and mystic growing-pains of the souls of men and

women in all ages. In this direction M. Loisy has done

noble and excellent work; but the dead weight and selfish

blinkerdom of the Catholic organization has hampered him

to that degree that he has been unable to get justice done

to his liberalizing designs--or, perhaps, even to reveal

the full extent of them. And the same difficulty will

remain. On the one hand no spiritual movement which

does not take up the attitude of a World-religion has now

in this age, any chance of success; on the other, all the

existing Churches--whether Roman Catholic, or Greek, or

Protestant or Secularist--whether Christian or Jewish or

Persian or Hindu--will in all probability adopt the same

blind and blinkered and selfish attitude as that described

above, and so disqualify themselves for the great role of

world-wide emancipation, which some religion at some time

will certainly have to play. It is the same difficulty which

is looming large in modern World-politics, where the local

selfishness and vainglorious "patriotisms" of the Nations are

sadly impeding and obstructing the development of that

sense of Internationalism and Brotherhood which is the

clearly indicated form of the future, and which alone can

give each nation deliverance from fear, and a promise of

growth, and the confident assurance of power.

I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous

attitude and confess itself a branch of the great

World-religion, anxious only to do honor to its source--

or else it must perish and pass away. There is no other

alternative. The hour of its Exodus has come. It may be,

of course, that neither the Christian Church nor any

branch of it, nor any other religious organization, will

step into the gap. It may be--but I do not think this is

likely--that the time of rites and ceremonies and formal

creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more

needed in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far

backwardness of the human masses, and their considerable

dependence yet on laws and forms and rituals. Still, if it

should prove that that age of dependence IS really approaching

its end, that would surely be a matter for congratulation.

It would mean that mankind was moving into a knowledge

of the REALITY which has underlain these outer shows--that

it was coming into the Third stage of its Consciousness.

Having found this there would be no need for it to dwell

any longer in the land of superstitions and formulae. It

would have come to the place of which these latter are only

the outlying indications.

It may, therefore, happen--and this quite independently

of the growth of a World-cult such as I have described, though

by no means in antagonism to it--that a religious philosophy

or Theosophy might develop and spread, similar to

the Gnonam of the Hindus or the Gnomsis of the pre-Christian

sects, which would become, first among individuals and

afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion

of--or perhaps one should say the religious approach to the

Third State. Books like the Upanishads of the Vedic

seers, and the Bhagavat Gita, though garbled and obscured

by priestly interferences and mystifications, do undoubtedly

represent and give expression to the highest

utterance of religious experience to be found anywhere

in the world. They are indeed the manuals of human

entrance into the cosmic state. But as I say, and as has

happened in the case of other sacred books, a vast deal of

rubbish has accreted round their essential teachings,

and has to be cleared away. To go into a serious explication

of the meaning of these books would be far too large an

affair, and would be foreign to the purpose of the present

volume; but I have in the Appendix below inserted two papers,

(on "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self") containing the

substance of lectures given on the above books. These papers

or lectures are couched in the very simplest language,

free from Sanskrit terms and the usual 'jargon of the

Schools,' and may, I hope, even on that account be of

use in familiarizing readers who are not specially

STUDENTS with the ideas and mental attitudes of the cosmic

state. Non-differentiation (Advaita[1]) is the root attitude of

the mind inculcated.

[1] The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety

of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged,

but to be "not two."

We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation

in the Past-non-differentiation from other members

of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit

or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar

sense of non-differentiation in the FUTURE--similar but more

extended more intelligent? Certainly this WILL arrive, in

its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the

bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing

of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos

in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth

have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction

and assimilation into the general body of rational thought

and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but

they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will

shake itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the

animals (as in the old rituals)[1] will be restored; the sense

of kinship with all the races of mankind will grow and

become consolidated; the sense of the defilement and impurity

of the human body will (with the adoption of a

generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body

itself will come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines

in which the gods may be worshiped and less as a mere

organ of trivial self-gratifications;[2] there will be no form

of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which

will be barred from the approach of Man or from the

intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in

certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a

citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own

city, so the emancipated human being on the completion of

his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with

the Freedom of the Universe.

[1] The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly

Callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.

[2] See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.