Literature and Dogma

Things to Come. 7s. 6d.) THE many readers who found interest and stimulus in Mr. Murry's Life of Jesus will look "forward with eagerness to

the next stage in his exploration of those religious evidences and experiences which have so profound an attraction for

his truth-seeking mind. In Things to Come—a collection of separate essays connected by this one informing purpose— we get a series of descriptions, not always perfectly consistent yet mutually explanatory, of the position he has now reached ; and also of the metaphysical background required by his theological scheme. I hope Mr. Murry will not regard me

as impertinent if I venture to describe him, on the basis of his own confessions, as an Evangelical Pantheist ; with a peculiarly exalted opinion of the religious mission of great literature. The writer, he thinks, is the priest of the New Dispensation ; the business of literature is to " engage the depths within us," as Mr. Arthur Machen long ago and the

Abbe Bremond in his most recent work have tried to teach us. Neither of these writers, however, would go quite so far along this path as Mr. Murry ; who claims perfect identity between the spirit of great literature and the essential teachings of Jesus.

" Great literature came into existence in this country to satisfy the profound need of the human soul which had once been satisfied by the Christian religion, and was no longer satisfied by it. . . . A modem man will more quickly and more truly find what the Kingdom of Heaven means from Shakespeare than he will from the New Testament itself."

This will seem to many the pardonable extravagance of a mind trained to great literature, and thence adventuring

towards another level of truth. It is a view, as the modern man who reads philosophy will easily see, which requires in

religion at least a pronounced immanentism ; if not the pantheism which Mr. Murry rejects in his preface, but seems to accept in other parts of this book. The normal man, he thinks, finds his way to spiritual assurance through three movements : rebellion against orthodoxy, revolt from mechanism, and finally an advance to " some form of panthe- ism "—the phrase is his own. All will recognize in this an accurate description of the route which is followed by many pilgrim souls. In the fourth possible movement—a certain reconciliation with orthodoxy—Mr. Murry does not believe. Where it occurs, he thinks it is the result of world-weariness or regression ; and must imply either insincerity or weak- ness. The " pure " religious experience—in his view a very simple intuition of Reality, bringing with it a profound assur- ance of the order and harmony of the world--does not need the purple and fine linen which have been put upon it by the Creeds. Especially is it ruined for him by any attempt to accommodate it to the doctrine of a loving and personal God. " The conception of God the Father Almighty is belied by all human experience " ; and some of his most caustic

and effective passages are directed towards the fundamental inconsistencies of the piety which proclaims this doctrine

but never acts on it. The Neoplatonic One, the " bare pure Godhead " of Eckhart, Who is identical with " the inscrutable process of the Universe "–Mere is the majestic and unspoilt Reality which is apprehended in the fragmentary religious experienee of men.

Yet it is hard to believe that the rich variousness of the

By John Middleton Murry. (Jonathan Cape. spiritual life can be accommodated within the limits of this

exclusive mysticism, which stresses one aspect of reality at the expense of the rest. Indeed, we need only open the New Testament to realize that this theology is entirely incompatible

with that of Jesus. Although Mr. Murry's answer that Jesus " created the loving God for whom he died " is the occasion

of some beautiful and eloquent pages, it cannot be felt to be entirely satisfactory as an account of the experiences of

One Whom he holds the greatest of the human race. Many of the finest passages in the essay " Christ or Christianity," and yet more plainly the paper on the Parables of Jesus—

one of the most exquisite and suggestive treatments in modern literature of a subject which has tempted all the students, critics, and interpreters of Christianity from the most fantastio to the most prosaic—show that there are times when Mr.

Murry himself is not wholly satisfied by the stark majesty of the Higher Pantheism. Then intuition triumphs over consistency, and a more homely light and colour transfigure the spiritual scene. Unluckily, the facile antithesis between " Christ and Christianity," " Spirit and Church," which has become a commonplace with modern critics of institu- tional religion, is far too easily accepted by him. He appears here for a moment, oddly enough, as the unexpected champion of that Liberal Protestant point of view which is really so foreign to his ardent spirit. The essay " Christ or Christianity " thus becomes a strange mixture of lofty spiri- tuality and rather obvious theological invective. It contains passages of a haunting beauty, in which Mr. Murry makes a permanent addition to the literature of Christian experience, and the author and his " orthodox " opponents seem almost to be at one :

" If we are to have a religion it must be one that honestly accepts life, and squares ite beliefs to its acts. When it comes to accepting life, sooner or later you find yourself with the Cross in front of you. Of all tragedies this was the supreme. What do you make of it ? An honest man may say : ' Nothing but pain.' But if he is more honest still, he will say : ' No, not pain alone. It is like all great tragedies, only greater than they : there is some unspeakable beauty there.' And then he will go on : with this tragedy and this unspeakable beauty he will wrestle until he sees what was involved therein, and understands whet immortal issues were fought in Galilee and won on Golgotha."

Yet this same essay contains other passages which force upon us the suspicion that, like an earlier seeker for reality, Mr. Murry is " reproving the saints for thinking what they never thought," and judging theology by its crude embodi- ments in popular religion. His criticism of that which he takes to be Christian dogma is often bitter and ruthless ; but it ought to be read with attention by many whose feelings it will hurt. First, because it is the work of one for whom the Founder of Christianity is the object of a devotion beside which average pious feeling seems cool and dim. Secondly, because it brings into the limelight the hopeless contradictions between the official beliefs and actual practice of the Churches, and reveals more than one thin patch in the armour of faith. Mr. Murry's own vision of all that is meant by the life and death of Jesus is of a noble and most touching beauty. Per- haps there is less difference than he supposes between it and that other reading of the same august reality, which underlies the traditional symbolism of the creeds.

EVELYN UNDERHILL.