" RELIGIO LAICI."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.") Si,—Will you allow me a small space for comment on Mr. Gainsford's letter in the Spectator of November 17th ? I shall not trouble you further, disliking controversy. By wresting a sentence in my letter of November 10th out of its context, and by substituting one word for another, he has certainly succeeded in making it meaningless,—fair enough perhaps as sarcasm, but not as argument. May I remind him that my original letter was only occasioned by a portion of your article of November 3rd, the text of which was that the laity, as a body, have lost touch of the truth that ethics (or conduct) are based upon dogma ? This, he declares, is impossible. But "right conduct" must be based upon something. If not dogma, is it utility? I presume so; as he says that religion rests on dogma, while ethics do not, and ridicules the idea of "conduct being based on thoughts which cannot be rigidly defined." But I believe that vast numbers of English laymen would. wholly repudiate the idea of utility being the source of right conduct, and would say that ethics do not rest upon dogma indeed, but only because human language is inadequate to express fully the contents of religious ideas, widened and deepened as they are by the sidelights of modern science and modern thought. Christian conduct is still based upon Christian beliefs ; but men's grasp and understanding of these beliefs grow with the growth of knowledge. I may add that Mr. Gainsford's own letter supplies a curious comment on my remark that definitions are too often inadequate ; for he quotes five definitions (his own included) of what religion is, each one of which rests on a different point of view, and, while possibly true enough for a working theory, fails manifestly to exhaust the subject. In conclusion, I would put it to Mr. Gainsford whether he con- ceives it possible for a finite being like man fully to grasp the infinite, much more to express it in the terms of a creed ; and I should like to refer him to a sermon preached before the University of Glasgow by the late Principal Caird on this very subject, "What is Religion ? "—I am, Sir, &c.,
A. M. CIIRTEIS.
Previous page
