The Child of the Dawn Read online

  VI

  One day I said to Amroth, "What a comfort it is to find that there is noreligion here!"

  "I know what you mean," he said. "I think it is one of the things thatone wonders at most, to remember into how very small and narrow a thingreligion was made, and how much that was religious was never supposed tobe so."

  "Yes," I said, "as I think of it now, it seems to have been a gameplayed by a few players, a game with a great many rules."

  "Yes," he said, "it was a game often enough; but of course the mischiefof it was, that when it was most a game it most pretended to besomething else--to contain the secret of life and all knowledge."

  "I used to think," I said, "that religion was like a noble and generousboy with the lyrical heart of a poet, made by some sad chance into aking, surrounded by obsequious respect and pomp and etiquette, bound bya hundred ceremonious rules, forbidden to do this and that, taught tothink that his one duty was to be magnificently attired, to acquiregraceful arts of posture and courtesy, subtly and gently prevented fromobeying natural and simple impulses, made powerless--a crowned slave; sothat, instead of being the freest and sincerest thing in the world, itbecame the prisoner of respectability and convention, just a part of thesocial machine."

  "That was only one side of it," said Amroth. "It was often where it wasleast supposed to be."

  "Yes," I said, "as far as I resent anything now, I resent the conversionof so much religion from an inspiring force into a repressive force. Onelearnt as a child to think of it, not as a great moving flood of energyand joy, but as an awful power apart from life, rejoicing in pettyrestrictions, and mainly concerned with creating an unreal atmosphere ofnarrow piety, hostile to natural talk and laughter and freedom. God'said was invoked, in childhood, mostly when one was naughty anddisobedient, so that one grew to think of Him as grim, severe,irritable, anxious to interfere. What wonder that one lost all wish tomeet God and all natural desire to know Him! One thought of Him asimpossible to please except by behaving in a way in which it was notnatural to behave; and one thought of religion as a stern and dreadfulprocess going on somewhere, like a law-court or a prison, which one hadto keep clear of if one could. Yet I hardly see how, in the interests ofdiscipline, it could have been avoided. If only one could have begun atthe other end!"

  "Yes," said Amroth, "but that is because religion has fallen so muchinto the hands of the wrong people, and is grievously misrepresented.It has too often come to be identified, as you say, with human law, as apower which leaves one severely alone, if one behaves oneself, and whichpunishes harshly and mechanically if one outsteps the limit. It comesinto the world as a great joyful motive; and then it becomes identifiedwith respectability, and it is sad to think that it is simply from thefact that it has won the confidence of the world that it gains its awfulpower of silencing and oppressing. It becomes hostile to frankness andindependence, and puts a premium on caution and submissiveness; but thatis the misuse of it and the degradation of it; and religion is still themost pure and beautiful thing in the world for all that; the doctrineitself is fine and true in a way, if one can view it without impatience;it upholds the right things; it all makes for peace and order, and evenfor humility and just kindliness; it insists, or tries to insist, on thefact that property and position and material things do not matter, andthat quality and method do matter. Of course it is terribly distorted,and gets into the hands of the wrong people--the people who want to keepthings as they are. Now the Gospel, as it first came, was a perfectlybeautiful thing--the idea that one must act by tender impulse, that onemust always forgive, and forget, and love; that one must take a naturaljoy in the simplest things, find every one and everything interestingand delightful ... the perfectly natural, just, good-humoured,uncalculating life--that was the idea of it; and that one was not to besuperior to the hard facts of the world, not to try to put sorrow orpain out of sight, but to live eagerly and hopefully in them and throughthem; not to try to school oneself into hardness or indifference, but tolove lovable things, and not to condemn or despise the unlovable. Thatwas indeed a message out of the very heart of God. But of course all theacrid divisions and subdivisions of it come, not from itself, but fromthe material part of the world, that determines to traffic with thebeautiful secret, and make it serve its turn. But there are plenty oftrue souls within it all, true teachers, faithful learners--and theworld cannot do without it yet, though it is strangely fettered andbound. Indeed, men can never do without it, because the spiritual forceis there; it is full of poetry and mystery, that ageless brotherhood ofsaints and true-hearted disciples; but one has to learn that many thatclaim its powers have them not, while many who are outside allorganisations have the secret."

  "Yes," I said, "all that is true and good; it is the exclusive claim andnot the inclusive which one regrets. It is the voice which says, 'Acceptmy exact faith, or you have no part in the inheritance,' which is wrong.The real voice of religion is that which says, 'You are my brother andmy sister, though you know it not.' And if one says, 'We are all atfault, we are all far from the truth, but we live as best we can,looking for the larger hope and for the dawn of love,' that is thesecret. The sacrament of God is offered and eaten at many a social meal,and the Spirit of Love finds utterance in quiet words from smiling lips.One cannot teach by harsh precept, only by desirable example; and theworst of the correct profession of religion is that it is often littlemore than taking out a licence to disapprove."

  "Yes," said Amroth, "you are very near a great truth. The mistake wemake is like the mistake so often made on earth in matters of humangovernment--the opposing of the individual to the State, as if the Statewere something above and different to the individual--like the oldthought of the Spirit moving on the face of the waters. The individualis the State; and it is the same with the soul and God. God is not abovethe soul, seeing and judging, apart in isolation. The Spirit of God isthe spirit of humanity, the spirit of admiration, the spirit of love. Itmatters little what the soul admires and loves, whether it be a floweror a mountain, a face or a cause, a gem or a doctrine. It is thatwonderful power that the current of the soul has of setting towardssomething that is beautiful: the need to admire, to worship, to love. Aregiment of soldiers in the street, a procession of priests to asanctuary, a march of disordered women clamouring for their rights--ifthe idea thrills you, if it uplifts you, it matters nothing whetherother people dislike or despise or deride it--it is the voice of God foryou. We must advance from what is merely brilliant to what is true; andthough in the single life many a man seems to halt at a certain point,to have tied up his little packet of admirations once and for all, thereare other lives where he will pass on to further loves, his passiongrowing more intense and pure. We are not limited by our circle, by ourgeneration, by our age; and the things which youthful spirits aredivining and proclaiming as great and wonderful discoveries, are oftenbeing practised and done by silent and humble souls. It is not theconcise or impressive statement of a truth that matters, it is theintensity of the inner impulse towards what is high and true whichdifferentiates. The more we live by that, the less are we inclined toargue and dispute about it. The base, the impure desire is only theimperfect desire; if it is gratified, it reveals its imperfections, andthe soul knows that not there can it stay; but it must have faced andtested everything. If the soul, out of timidity and conventionality,says 'No' to its eager impulses, it halts upon its pilgrimage. Some ofthe most grievous and shameful lives on earth have been fruitful enoughin reality. The reason why we mourn and despond over them is, again,that we limit our hope to the single life. There is time for everything;we must not be impatient. We must despair of nothing and of no one; thetrue life consists not in what a man's reason approves or disapproves,not in what he does or says, but in what he sees. It is useless toexplain things to souls; they must experience them to apprehend them.The one treachery is to speak of mistakes as irreparable, and of sins asunforgivable. The sin against the Spirit is to doubt the Spirit, and thesin against life is not to use
it generously and freely; we are happiestif we love others well enough to give our life to them; but it is betterto use life for ourselves than not to use it at all."