SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT

CHRISTIANS say that only those who are naturally religious can understand religion, or, as Archdeacon Wilson puts it, "Spiritual truths must be spiritually discerned." This seems to amount to a claim that religious people possess an extra sense or faculty.

When a man talks about "spiritual discernment," he makes a tacit assertion which ought not to be allowed to pass unchallenged. What is that assertion or implication? It is the implication that there is a spiritual discernment which is distinct from mental discernment. What does that mean? It means that man has other means of understanding besides his reason.

This spiritual discernment is a metaphysical myth.

Man feels, sees, and reasons with his brain. His brain may be more emotional or less emotional, more acute or less acute; but to invent a faculty of reason distinct from reason, or to suggest that man can feel or think otherwise than with his brain, is to darken counsel with a multitude of words.

There is no ground for the assertion that a spiritual faculty exists apart from the reason. But the Christian first invents this faculty, and then tells us that by this faculty religion is to be judged.

Spiritual truths are to be spiritually discerned. What is a "spiritual truth"? It is neither more nor less than a mental idea. It is an idea originating in the brain, and it can only be "discerned," or judged, or understood, by an act of reason performed by the brain.

The word "spiritual," as used in this connection, is a mere affectation. It implies that the idea (which Arch

deacon Wilson calmly dubs a "truth") is so exalted, or so refined, that the reason is too gross to appreciate it.

John says: "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Thomas asks: "How do you know?" John says: "Because I feel it." Thomas answers: "But that is only a rhapsodical expression of a woman's reason: 'I know because I know.' You say your religion is true because you feel it is true. I might as well say it is not true because I feel that it is not true."

Then John becomes mystical. He says: "Spiritual truths must be spiritually discerned." Thomas, who believes that all truths, and all errors, must be tried by the reason, shrugs his shoulders irreverently, and departs.

Now, this mystical jargon has always been a favourite weapon of theologians, and it is a very effective weapon against weak-minded, or ignorant, or superstitious, or very emotional men.

We must deal with this deception sternly. We must deny that the human reason, which we know to be a fact, is inferior to a postulated "spiritual" faculty which has no existence. We must insist that to make the brain the slave of a brain-created idea is as foolish as to subordinate the substance to the shadow.

John declares that "God is love." Thomas asks him how he knows. John replies that it is a "spiritual truth," which must be "spiritually discerned." Thomas says: "It is not spiritual, and it is not true. It is a mere figment of the brain." John replies: "You are incapable of judging: you are spiritually blind." Thomas says: "My friend, you are incapable of reasoning: you are mentally halt and lame." John says Thomas is a "fellow of no delicacy."

I think there is much to be said in excuse for Thomas. I think it is rather cool of John to invent a faculty of "spiritual discernment," and then to tell Thomas that he (Thomas) does not possess that faculty.

That is how Archdeacon Wilson uses me. In a sermon at Rochdale he is reported to have spoken as follows:

As regards the first axiom, the archdeacon reaffirmed his declaration as to Mr. Blatchford's disqualification for such a controversy. Whether Mr. Blatchford recognised the fact or not, it was true that

there was a faculty among men which, in its developed state, was as distinct, as unequally distributed, as mysterious in its origin and in its distribution, as was the faculty for pure mathematics, for music, for metaphysics, or for research. They might call it the devotional or religious faculty. Just as there were men whose faculties of insight amounted to genius in other regions of mental activity, so there were spiritual geniuses, geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with God, and from this region these who had never developed the faculty were debarred. One who was not devotional, not humble, not gentle in his treatment of the beliefs of others, one who could lightly ridicule the elementary forms of belief which had corresponded to the lower stages of culture, past and present, was not likely to do good in a religious controversy.

Here is the tyranny of language, indeed! Here is a farrago of myths and symbols. "There is a faculty-we may call it the devotional or religious faculty-there are geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with God"!

Why, the good archdeacon talks of the "region in which man holds communion with God" as if he were talking of the telephone exchange. He talks of God as if he were talking of the Postmaster-General. He postulates a God, and he postulates a region, and he postulates a communication, and then talks about all these postulates as if they were facts. I protest against this mystical, transcendental rhetoric. It is not argument.

Who has seen God? Who has entered that "region"? Who has communicated with God?

There is in most men a desire, in some men a passion, for what is good. In some men this desire is weak, in others it is strong. In some it takes the form of devotion to "God," in others it takes the form of devotion to men. In some it is coloured by imagination, or distorted by a love of the marvellous; in others it is lighted by reason, and directed by love of truth. But whether a man devotes himself to God and to prayer, or devotes himself to man and to politics or science, he is actuated by the same impulse-by the desire for what is good.

John says: "I feel that there is a God, and I worship Him." Thomas says: "I do not know whether or not there is a God, and if there is, He does not need my adoration. But I know there are men in darkness, and women

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in trouble, and children in pain, and I know they do need my love and my help. I therefore will not pray; but I will work."

To him says John: "You are a fellow of no delicacy. You lack spiritual discernment. You are disqualified for the expression of any opinion on spiritual truths." This is what John calls "humility," and "gentle treatment of the beliefs of others." But Thomas calls it unconscious humour.

Really, Archdeacon Wilson's claim that only those possessing spiritual discernment can discern spiritual truths means no more than that those who cannot believe in religion do not believe in religion, or that a man whose reason tells him religion is not true is incapable of believing religion is true. But what he means it to mean is that a man whose reason rejects religion is unfit to criticise religion, and that only those who accept religion as true are qualified to express an opinion as to its truth. He might as well claim that the only person qualified to criticise the Tory Party is the person who has the faculty for discerning Tory truth.

My claim is that ideas relating to spiritual things must be weighed by the same faculties as ideas relating to material things. That is to say, man can only judge in religious matters as he judges in all other matters, by his reason.

I do not say that all men have the same kind or quantity of reason. What I say is, that a man with a good intellect is a better judge on religious matters than a man with an inferior intellect; and that by reason, and by reason alone, can truth of any kind be discerned.

The archdeacon speaks of spiritual geniuses, "geniuses in the region in which man holds communion with God." The Saints, for example. Well, if the Saints were geniuses in matters religious, the Saints ought to have been better judges of spiritual truth than other men. But was it so? The Saints believed in angels, and devils, and witches, and hell-fire, and Jonah, and the Flood; in demoniacal possession, in the working of miracles by the bones of dead martyrs; the Saints accepted David and Abraham and Moses as men after God's own heart.

Many of the most spiritually gifted Christians do not believe in these things any longer. The Saints, then, were mistaken. They were mistaken about these spiritual matters in which they are alleged to have been specially gifted.

We do not believe in sorcerers, in witches, in miracleworking relics, in devils, and eternal fire and brimstone. Why? Because science has killed those errors. What is science? It is reason applied to knowledge. The faculty of reason, then, has excelled this boasted faculty of spiritual discernment in its own religious sphere.

It would be easy to multiply examples.

Jeremy Taylor was one of the most brilliant and spiritual of our divines. But his spiritual perception, as evidenced in his works, was fearfully at fault. He believed in hell-fire, and in hell-fire for all outside the pale of the Christian Church. And he was afraid of God, and afraid of death.

Archdeacon Wilson denies to us this faculty of spiritual perception. Very well. But I have enough mental acuteness to see that the religion of Jeremy Taylor was cowardly, and gloomy, and untrue.

Luther and Wesley were spiritual geniuses. They both believed in witchcraft. Luther believed in burning heretics. Wesley said if we gave up belief in Witchcraft we must give up belief in the Bible. Luther and Wesley were mistaken: their spiritual discernment had led them wrong. Their superstition and cruelty were condemned by humanity and

common sense.

To me it appears that these men of "spiritual discernment" are really men of abnormally credulous and emotional natures: men too weak to face the facts.

We cannot allow the Christians to hold this position unchallenged. I regard the religious plane as a lower one than our own. I think the Christian idea of God is even now, after two thousand years of evolution, a very mean and weak one.

I cannot love nor revere a "Heavenly Father" whose children have to pray to Him for what they need, or for pardon for their sins. My children do not need to pray to me for food or forgiveness; and I am a mere earthly father.