CONTENTS


PREFACE

1. THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION

2. HERESIES; OR THE THINGS THAT GOD IS NOT

3. THE LIKENESS OF GOD

4. THE RELIGION OF ATHEISTS

5. THE INVISIBLE KING

6. MODERN IDEAS OF SIN AND DAMNATION

7. THE IDEA OF A CHURCH

THE ENVOY




PREFACE


This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious
belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is
not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound
belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its
statements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the
expression of a faith different from and perhaps in several particulars
opposed to his own. The writer will be found to be sympathetic with
all sincere religious feeling. Nevertheless it is well to prepare the
prospective reader for statements that may jar harshly against deeply
rooted mental habits. It is well to warn him at the outset that the
departure from accepted beliefs is here no vague scepticism, but a quite
sharply defined objection to dogmas very widely revered. Let the writer
state the most probable occasion of trouble forthwith. An issue upon
which this book will be found particularly uncompromising is the dogma
of the Trinity. The writer is of opinion that the Council of Nicaea,
which forcibly crystallised the controversies of two centuries and
formulated the creed upon which all the existing Christian churches are
based, was one of the most disastrous and one of the least venerable of
all religious gatherings, and he holds that the Alexandrine speculations
which were then conclusively imposed upon Christianity merit only
disrespectful attention at the present time. There you have a chief
possibility of offence. He is quite unable to pretend any awe for what
he considers the spiritual monstrosities established by that undignified
gathering. He makes no attempt to be obscure or propitiatory in this
connection. He criticises the creeds explicitly and frankly, because he
believes it is particularly necessary to clear them out of the way of
those who are seeking religious consolation at this present time of
exceptional religious need. He does little to conceal his indignation at
the role played by these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing
the religious life of mankind. After this warning such readers from
among the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible
to storms of theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is an
ineffable mystery and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, read on
at their own risk. This is a religious book written by a believer,
but so far as their beliefs and religion go it may seem to them more
sceptical and more antagonistic than blank atheism. That the writer
cannot tell. He is not simply denying their God. He is declaring that
there is a living God, different altogether from that Triune God and
nearer to the heart of man. The spirit of this book is like that of a
missionary who would only too gladly overthrow and smash some Polynesian
divinity of shark's teeth and painted wood and mother-of-pearl. To the
writer such elaborations as "begotten of the Father before all worlds"
are no better than intellectual shark's teeth and oyster shells. His
purpose, like the purpose of that missionary, is not primarily to shock
and insult; but he is zealous to liberate, and he is impatient with a
reverence that stands between man and God. He gives this fair warning
and proceeds with his matter.

His matter is modern religion as he sees it. It is only incidentally and
because it is unavoidable that he attacks doctrinal Christianity.

In a previous book, "First and Last Things" (Constable and Co.), he has
stated his convictions upon certain general ideas of life and thought
as clearly as he could. All of philosophy, all of metaphysics that
is, seems to him to be a discussion of the relations of class and
individual. The antagonism of the Nominalist and the Realist, the
opposition of the One and the Many, the contrast of the Ideal and the
Actual, all these oppositions express a certain structural and essential
duality in the activity of the human mind. From an imperfect recognition
of that duality ensue great masses of misconception. That was the
substance of "First and Last Things." In this present book there is no
further attack on philosophical or metaphysical questions. Here we
work at a less fundamental level and deal with religious feeling and
religious ideas.