CHRISTIANITY UPSIDE DOWN.

SEE, this merriment of parsons is very offensive." We may use Dr. Johnson's formula and say of Mr. Shaw's long- drawn-out preface to Androc2es and the Lion (Androc2es and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, Constable and Co., 8s.) " This theology of clowns is very offensive." It is also in the present instance not very intelligent, for nobody can be more thick-headed than your ultra-clever and absolutely self-sufficient man of letters when he gets upon the wrong tack. That Mr. Shaw is quite sincere in his admira- tion of a great deal of Christian teaching and Christian doctrine we do not doubt for a moment. Nor, again, though we cannot help being amused by the extreme seriousness, not to say pomposity, of Mr. Shaw's patronage of the Author of the Sermon on the Mount, do we wish to assert that his appreciation of Christianity is not from many points of view exceedingly valuable. He evidently is of opinion that if Christianity had not existed it would have had to be invented, so essential is it to the due ordination of human affairs. Further, we trust our readers will not imagine that we are in the least worried by Mr. Shaw's free and outspoken handling of even the most sacred facts of religion. He has a right to hold his own opinions and to state them clearly ; and though some people may think that he has no right to push them in a manner which will give pain to unlearned persons of what are called reverent minds, we cannot ourselves find any cause for complaint here. The matters of highest import deserve the most absolute sincerity not only of thought but of speech. Mr. Shaw would not have been himself, but posing as somebody else, if he had adopted anything but that cock- sure, " God-Almighty-to-a-blackbeetle " attitude which he adopts towards all subjects, in all places, at all times—from spelling to the supernatural. Our complaint of Mr. Shaw when he writes about religious subjects is that he appears not to have the slightest inkling of what true religion is. He takes it now as a system of ethics, now as a useful scheme for policing the community on the spiritual, or even on the physical, side. It does not seem to have occurred to him that all this is beside the mark, and that he has not in the least got in touch with Christianity in the essential and ultimate sense. No doubt he would tell us that he deals with Christianity as he finds it, as it is set forth and practised, not only by those who "profess and call themselves Christians," but by persons who are universally admitted to be good " samples " of the stock with which he is concerned. In fact, his answer would be a variant of Secures judicat orbis terrarum. We can hear him say that he is dealing with facts, and not with some sublimated abstraction. If that should be his plea, we may at any rate be allowed to say that his criticisms and admissions in regard to Christianity, though per as entertaining, are neither relevant nor important. He has not even remembered, if he ever knew, for his knowledge of verse is small, the poet's warning :—

" Let reason then at her own quarry fly, But how can finite grasp Tnfinity ?"

We can best express what we intend when we speak of his inability to comprehend the meaning of Christianity by resuming a /wee) ge from a review of Mr. Cornford's From Religion to Philosophy which appeared in these columns some four years ago :— " The religion of Christ is a state of being. It is a vision, nob a series of observances ; a mood of power, not a creed ; a quickening of the spirit, not a dogma or a doctrine. It is the way, the truth, and the life—a revelation, an inspiration, an opening of a window in the soul, a new sense, a road to a new heaven and a new earth. The Kingdom of God is within us. It is a light that lightens us from inside, not from outside. We gain this constant influence, this peculiar grace, not from the practice of special rites, but from contact with the Spirit of Christ, by learning His great language, by catching His clear accents, by letting His words sink into our hearts. The pearl of great price is ours, and will remain ours no matter what new secrets are wrung from Nature's reserves, no matter what the discoveries of the experts in the science of comparative religions. These are all worthy in themselves, all of good report, and it is childish to regard them as at enmity with Faith. They are not that, but merely beside the mark. The pure in heart, the sons of God, stand as before. No word of science can uncreate the children of the second birth. How well did he realize this who wrote that, though all the superficials and trappings of religion and of doctrine should pass away, love, the essence of the religion of Christ, should remain, and should be enough. It is because the religion of Christ is a state of being, and a state of being that allows communion with God on the one hand and gives the fruits of good life on the other, that naught can prevail against it, and that it need fear nothing from any increase of human wisdom. It is impossible that any new learning can ever injure it. The religion of Christ is a life to be lived, not a form to be practised. . . . Above and beyond, and withdrawn in the eternal ecstasy, and yet near and open to all mankind, dwells the divine Spirit of Christ in which all men may share, and by which in the truest and highest sense all the world shall be saved."

With so much of preface, and after expressing our regret that Mr. Shaw has missed his mark, or at any rate has not aimed at the right target, we will proceed to deal in detail with the preface to a play which is quite admirable from the dramatic point of view. For its ingenious topsy-turvy rendering of the spirit of the martyrs in

Imperial Rome we have nothing but praise. The most interesting thing in his preface is the application of Christianity, or let us say of the mechanical side of Christianity, to the organization of human soeiety. Christianity, which has hitherto been regarded as apply- ing primarily to the individual, Mr. Shaw applies primarily to the State. This point of view enables him to disregard almost entirely the side of the Christian religion which appeals to most men.' Men desire to be Christians because they desire to get into relation with a supernatural Power who will show them sympathy and deliver them from death. The persona ficta we call the State asks no supernatural sympathy, and when at rare intervals it fears death it has taken, up to the present, measures to protect itself irrespective of revelation. By thus eliminating from the Gospel the element of supernatural confidence, the strange sense, which lays hold of the man who gives ear to its words, that they are being said in secret to the hearer, Mr. Shaw is able to take them entirely out of the region of the sanctuary and turn them into some- thing like by-laws. " The Kingdom of God is without you," might be the text of his sermon. Although ho continually quotes Christ's great affirmation that it is within, he quotes it, we think, rather as cancelling the personality of God than as affirming the spiritual life of man. If we are to do his interpretation of the New Testament justice, however, we must not be offended because he brings the Holy Gospel into the Town Hall. Some of us, perhaps, will not be able to stifle a feeling analogous to that which causes us to wince when a Salvationist makes free with phrases hitherto sacred to us, and renders common by logical deductions words which we feel instinctively to belong to the region of poetry. There is a great deal to be said against the poetical method of exegesis, and a great deal in favour of the Salvationists and the Mr. Shama. Indeed, given the fact that he does not take interest in the Resurrection, and considers it something of an anticlimax to the Gospels and to human life, it is difficult to get away from many of his conclusions. It is, however, by no means easy to forgive Mr. Shaw his offensive references to the Christian hope of immortality, which has no meaning for him, and reminds him only of the ridiculous old harvest song " John Barleycorn." It is very difficult to find the real mind of the writer in this medley of religious and irreligious utterance. As we read we are constantly reminded of Hobbes's words "Though in a humour of bravado he would speak very strange and unbecoming things of God, yet in his study, in the dark, and in his retired thoughts he trembled before Him."

Mr. Shaw starts from the proposition that Christianity has never been tried, and he urges the State to try it. It is the plain duty of all States to aim at Utopia. Let the State turn round and proceed upon opposite lines, he advises, making that first which was last and that last which was first. But unless we alter radically the existing State machinery we cannot do this. Only by " complicated political devices " can Christianity be " made politically applicable." The objection that men cannot be made good by Act of Parliament he brushes aside. It is, he says, " the favorite defensive resort of the people who, consciously or subconsciously, are quite determined not to have their property meddled with by Jesus or any other reformer."

But what does Mr. Shaw take the Kingdom of Heaven to mean ? We must quote him at length if we are to give an adequate notion to our readers. Here is Mr. Shaw's interpretation of Christian morality :— " The doctrines in which Jesus Is thus confirmed are, roughly, the following : (1) The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the son of God ; and God is the son of man. God is a spirit, to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not an elderly gentleman to be bribed and begged from. We are members one of another; so that you cannot injure or help your neighbor without injuring or helping yourself. God is your father : you are here to do God's work; and you and your father are one. (2) Get rid of property by throwing it into the common stock. Dis- sociate your work entirely from money payments. If you let a child starve you are letting God starve. Get rid of all anxiety about to- morrow's dinner and clothes, because you cannot serve two masters : God and Mammon. (3) Get rid of judges and punishment and revenge. Love your neighbor as yourself, he being a part of yourself. And love

your enemies : they are your neighbors. (4) Get rid of your family entanglements. Every mother you meet is as much your mother as the woman who bore you. Every man you meet is as much your brother as the man'she bore after you. Dont waste your time at family funerals grieving for your relatives : attend to life, not to death : there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and better. In the kingdom of heaven, which, as aforesaid, is within you, there is no marriage noir giving in marriage, because you cannot devote your life to two divinities God and the person you are married to."

These are very interesting propositions, says Mr. Shaw ; and so they are. How much they belong to " the kingdom " and how much to Mr. Shaw's Utopia we leave our readers to judge. St. Paul and the very earliest critics of the Gospel " did not so learn Christ," but against this argument Mr. Shaw is forearmed. St. Paul did his best to cancel Christ, he considers. Most men admit nowadays that the writers of the Epistles added such alloy to the " good news " as should make it usable as current moral coin in the Western world, but not so much as materially to alter the worth of the gold. This, however, is far from Mr. Shaw's view. It was Christ, not the Disciples, Who was, he declares, " practicaL" His view of money, for one thing, is, in Mr. Shaw's argument, the only one which will work. We must give men incomes to enable thorn to live, to take off them the anxiety of the morrow, and we must drop the notion

of desert altogether. The only good of the present unfair system is, he maintains, that by it a few people are enabled to live a free life. He hopes to see the mass as free from the fear of starvation as from the fear of wolves.

As to marriage, all adventurous spirits in all ages and all religions have kicked against family ties, he affirms. As to the present penal system, 4‘ we have been judging and punishing ever since Jesus told us not to," and all we have accomplished is to add " the misery of punishment to the misery of crime." Mr. Shaw is always most witty when least reasonable. He does not suggest any alternative to a penal system. He dwells upon the unanswerable fact that we do not know the limits of free will:—

"There are people, some of them possessing considerable powers of mind and body, who can no more restrain the fury into which a trifling mishap throws them than a dog can restrain himself from snapping if he is suddenly and painfully pinched. People fling knives and lighted paraffin lamps at one another in a dispute over a dinner-table. Men who have suffered several lung sentences of penal servitude for murderous assaults will, the very day after they are released, seize their wives and cast them under draya at an irritating word. We have not only people who cannot resist an opportunity of stealing for the sake of satisfying their wants, but even people who have a specific mania for stealing, and do it when they are in no need of the things they steaL Burglary fascinates some men as tailoring fascinates some boys."

True, punishment would appear now and then to restrain. There is, he admits, "a narrow margin of moral malingerers who can be made to behave themselves by the fear of consequences."

Apart from all this special pleading, the reader as he turns the

pages of this strange preface will come across some remarkable pieces of Christian apology. Christ has, Mr. Shaw says, got a " curious grip of our souls." That expression is rather in his Salvationist manner ; but read the following :— " He told us what we have to do ; and we have had to find the way to do it. Moat of us are still, as most were in his own time, extremely recalcitrant, and are being forced along that way by painful pressure of circumstances, protesting at every step that nothing will inditee us to go ; that it is a ridiculous way, a disgraceful way, a socialistio way, an atheistic' way, an immoral way, and that the vanguard ought to be ashamed of themselves and must be made to turn back at owe. But they find that they have to follow the vanguard all the same if their lives are to be worth living."

This is surely a very fine passage.

Is it practical, Mr. Shaw's ideal I There is another question to be answered before we consider this : Is the Christian ideal practical ? And still another question: Is its practicability beside the mark ? It is not a pollee system Its greatest advocates have not claimed that for it. This reflection is, we think, the first that any thoughtful reader must make when he comes to the end of the preface. The second is a less serious one. The preface is not worthy of the play. If Mr. Shaw would only be

content, like Shakespeare, to hold up the mirror I Will he ever be less determined to posture and to hurt, ever take his own advice not to judge and not to punish ? The real trouble with Mr. Shaw IN

that he cannot remember so to be an agnostic as not to forget he is a gentleman, and this is particularly evident when he is dealing with the Founder of the Christian religion. Mr. Shaw will smile at our simplicity, but in truth Dekker has by anticipation explained to us why Mr. Shaw cannot understand even the first word of undogmatized Christianity :— " The beet of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer— A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed.

We are most anxious not to seem unkind and offensive to Mr. Shaw, for, like all satirists. wielders of invective, and profeesore of the ungentle art of "plain speaking," he is in controversy very sensitive. Those, however, who read Mr. Shaw's preface cannot fail to see that the qualities enumerated by Dekker are wanting in this theological controversialist. But how strange is the power of the dramatist. Androcles could never have written the preface. He would, we may be sure, have felt that it wasn't kind to the lions. Androcles was a gentleman—" the first to thank and the last to complain." There is not a trace in him of Mr. Shaw's waspishness.