The Ever-Dying
The Decline of Religion. By Cecil P. Martin. (Allen and Unwin. Jos. 6d.)
TEN or fifteen years ago Professor H. G. Wood published a book with the title Why Mr. Bertrand Russell is Not a Christian. Roughly seventeen centuries earlier a similar work was given to the world by the great Father of the Church, Origen. About 578 A.D. a final refutation of Christianity had been made by a Greek of high culture, with a Roman name, Celsus; and fifty years later it was worth Origen's while to deal with that " True Word " as Celsus called it. The curious thing was to compare what Origen and Professor Wood had to handle; and one was impressed with the superiority of Celsus as controversialist, who wrote with Greek culture behind him, with an immense personal " punch," and a moving appeal for the saving of civilisation from the Germans. So early was it demonstrated that Christianity must perish. No, earlier! for Tacitus, about- Rio A.D., added a note to his Annals to explain to posterity what Christianity had been.
But religion is declining in earnest today. It always is. Any- thing that most of us would call religion had practically gone from Europe by 15oo. (" Practically," by the way, a great scholar once said, means "not "). The eighteenth century saw reformed religion practically doomed. But things are worse today. Of course they are—" the curse never fell upon our nation till now," says Shylock, and adds (a touch of Shakespeare's genius), "I never felt it till now "—which proves it.
Professor C. P. Martin, of McGill University, takes this decline as the subject of his vigorous book. An anatomist himself, and conversant from his youth with teachers of science, he is im- pressed, as most people must be who associate with them, with the unanimity of their indifference to religion, and (he does not mince matters) with the flimsiness of their grounds for this, and (it is plain to see) with their general incompeter.ce to form a valid judgement of a matter which they do not trouble to study or to understand. He writes very frankly, and, it may be said, very lucidly and intelligibly. He has this advantage over many in his own and kindred departments, that he knows the English language and can handle it.
He traces the decline of religion mainly to three sources- " the phenomenal rise and progress of modern science "; a wide- spread feeling that the Christian religion involves " a lot of sham and make-believe," and is infected by a bad spirit which he and others would call " ecclesiasticism "; and, thirdly, the real difficulty, very widely felt, that the existence of pain and evil in the world must mean that God does not exist, or does not count.
Put alongside of these factors one or two things more. What do the names of Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson recall? A belief that the common man is pretty right as he stands—the actual belief that underlies all American life. What candidate for the Presidency could tell the American elector that he is not competent to assess the spiritual value of Jesus Christ? Educa- tion in America is under the dominance of the newspaper, and the bookshop is much too frequently sought in the drug store. The crudity of the college student is only less astonishing than that of his professor, a specialist without outlook or insight, " deep versed in (text) books and shallow in himself "; are they to judge of religion? And in measure we are faced with the same situation. If we do not believe so much in Rousseau and Jefferson, there has been a sudden inundation of schools all over the world in the last fifty years, by teachers of science, hurried products of the same kind of mass production as keeps Woolworth's going. The fundamental weakness of every scientific department is the absence of philosophy, the uncon- sciousness that you never get a real view of the world till you get a whole view ; and there is little left to explain; or, if you think there is, you may add, the insistence of labour and the lower middle classes on the material side of life.
The part or the whole? When you look at it quietly, the real source to which you must trace sin and bad manners, false philosophy and the decline of religion, is the unfocussing of the part against the whole. The Romans hated to see the great Pompey scratch his head with one finger ; it was underbred, it called too much attention to the finger, it was a failure to reckon with people's instincts. So Professor Martin suggests that the pure chemist (let us say) misses the whole world that Wordsworth found (see the Tintem poem), and misses, through deliberate inattention, the character of Christ, and His effect in human society in giving it sweetness and courage and hope, and an explanation (or at least a clue to understanding) of pain. For the most significant thing about pain is that Christ chose it. Dr. Martin arraigns the arrogance of the ecclesiastic, lay or professional, and of the so-called " man of science " (an odd name, by the way, for anybody), and he suggests that there is the same explanation for it in both—that man dreads and fears nothing so much as uncertainty. Long ago we were told that fear of consequences does not lead to truth ; and that is his central position, a challenge to both sides to face facts.
There is much else in the book, and, as said above, it can be read; but readers may perhaps already guess that it is a book to read, written by a man, and a candid and pleasant man.
T. R. GLOVER.
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