an interview
with an apostate cleric ...
... but flowed swiftly like a mountain stream: pale green where trees overhung
it but so clear that I could count the pebbles at the bottom. Close beside
me I saw another of the Bright People in conversation with a ghost. It
was that fat ghost with the cultured voice who had addressed me in the
bus, and it seemed to be wearing gaiters.
“My dear boy, I’m delighted to see you,” it was saying to the Spirit, who
was naked and almost blindingly white. “I was talking to your poor father
the other day and wondering where you were.”
“You didn’t bring him?” said the other.
“Well, no. He lives a long way from the bus, and, to be quite frank, he’s
been getting a little eccentric lately. A little difficult. Losing his
grip. He never was prepared to make any great efforts, you know. If you
remember, he used to go to sleep when you and I got talking seriously!
Ah, Dick, I shall never forget some of our talks. I expect you’ve changed
your views a bit since then. You became rather narrow-minded towards the
end of your life: but no doubt you’ve broadened out again.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that you weren’t quite right. Why,
my dear boy, you were coming to believe in a literal Heaven and Hell!”
“But wasn’t I right?”
“Oh, in a spiritual sense, to be sure. I still believe in them in that
way. I am still, my dear boy, looking for the Kingdom. But nothing superstitious
or mythological....”
“Excuse me. Where do you imagine you’ve been?”
“Ah, I see. You mean that the grey town with its continual hope of morning
(we must all live by hope, must we not?), with its field for indefinite
progress, is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we have eyes to see it? That
is a beautiful idea.”
“I didn’t mean that at all. Is it possible you don’t know where you’ve
been?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think we ever do give it a name. What
do you call it?”
“We call it Hell.”
“There is no need to be profane, my dear boy. I may not be very orthodox,
in your sense of that word, but I do feel that these matters ought to be
discussed simply, and seriously, and reverently.”
“Discuss Hell reverently? I meant what I said. You have been in
Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory.”
“Go on, my dear boy, go on. That is so like you. No doubt you’ll
tell me why, on your view, I was sent there. I’m not angry.”
“But don’t you know? You went there because you are an apostate.”
“Are you serious, Dick?”
“Perfectly.”
“This is worse than I expected. Do you really think people are penalised
for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that
those opinions were mistaken.”
“Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?”
“There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual
dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly
followed—they are not sins.”
“I know we used to talk that way. I did it too until the end of my life
when I became what you call narrow. It all turns on what are honest opinions.”
“Mine certainly were. They were not only honest but heroic. I asserted
them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend
itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected
it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every
risk.”
“What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came—popularity,
sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?”
“Dick, this is unworthy of you. What are you suggesting?”
“Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us
be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves
in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because
it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started
automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying
the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we
honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether
after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up
one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?”
“If this is meant to be a sketch of the genesis of liberal theology in
general, I reply that it is a mere libel. Do you suggest that men like...”
“I have nothing to do with any generality. Nor with any man but you and
me. Oh, as you love your own soul, remember. You know that you and I were
playing with loaded dice. We didn’t want the other to be true. We
were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of
the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears
and hopes.”
“I’m far from denying that young men may make mistakes. They may well be
influenced by current fashions of thought. But it’s not a question of how
the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions,
sincerely expressed.”
“Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting
every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point
where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous
man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies
about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment)
he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs
are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in
the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere,
and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.”
“You’ll be justifying the Inquisition in a moment!”
“Why? Because the Middle Ages erred in one direction, does it follow that
there is no error in the opposite direction?”
“Well, this is extremely interesting,” said the Episcopal Ghost. “It’s
a point of view. Certainly, it’s a point of view. In the meantime...”
“There is no meantime,” replied the other. “All that is over. We are not
playing now. I have been talking of the past (your past and mine) only
in order that you may turn from it forever. One wrench and the tooth will
be out. You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong. White as snow.
It’s all true, you know. He is in me, for you, with that power. And—I have
come a long journey to meet you. You have seen Hell: you are in sight of
Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?”
“I’m not sure that I’ve got the exact point you are trying to make,” said
the Ghost.
“I am not trying to make any point,” said the Spirit, “I am telling you
to repent and believe.”
“But my dear boy, I believe already. We may not be perfectly agreed, but
you have completely misjudged me if you do not realise that my religion
is a very real and a very precious thing to me.”
“Very well,” said the other, as if changing his plan. “Will you believe
in me?”
“In what sense?”
“Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your
feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you
come?”
“Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I
should require some assurances... I should want a guarantee that you are
taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness—and
scope for the talents that God has given me—and an atmosphere of free inquiry—in
short, all that one means by civilisation and—er—the spiritual life.”
“No,” said the other. “I can promise you none of these things. No sphere
of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents:
only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for
I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall
see the face of God.”
“Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For
me there is no such thing as a final answer. The free wind of inquiry must
always
continue to blow through the mind, must it not? ‘Prove all things’...to
travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
“If that were true, and known to be true, how could anyone travel hopefully?
There would be nothing to hope for.”
“But you must feel yourself that there is something stifling about the
idea of finality? Stagnation, my dear boy, what is more soul-destroying
than stagnation?”
“You think that, because hitherto you have experienced truth only with
the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey
and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched.”
“Well, really, you know, I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made
truth which puts an end to intellectual activity in the way you seem to
be describing. Will it leave me the free play of Mind, Dick? I must insist
on that, you know.”
“Free, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking. He is not free still
to be dry.” The Ghost seemed to think for a moment. “I can make nothing
of that idea,” it said.
“Listen!” said the White Spirit. “Once you were a child. Once you knew
what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because
you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that
child again: even now.”
“Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things.”
“You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.
What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to
do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation
has to do with marriage.”
“If we cannot be reverent, there is at least no need to be obscene. The
suggestion that I should return at my age to the mere factual inquisitiveness
of boyhood strikes me as preposterous, In any case, that question-and-answer
conception of thought only applies to matters of fact. Religious and speculative
questions are surely on a different level.”
“We know nothing of religion here: we think only of Christ. We know nothing
of speculation. Come and see. I will bring you to Eternal Fact, the Father
of all other facthood.”
“I should object very strongly to describing God as a ‘fact.’ The Supreme
Value would surely be a less inadequate description. It is hardly...”
“Do you not even believe that He exists?”
“Exists? What does Existence mean? You will keep on implying some
sort of static, ready-made reality which is, so to speak, ‘there,’ and
to which our minds have simply to conform. These great mysteries cannot
be approached in that way. If there were such a thing (there is no need
to interrupt, my dear boy) quite frankly, I should not be interested in
it. It would be of no religious significance. God, for me, is something
purely spiritual. The spirit of sweetness and light and tolerance—and,
er, service, Dick, service. We mustn’t forget that, you know.
“If the thirst of the Reason is really dead...’, said the Spirit, and then
stopped as though pondering. Then suddenly he said, “Can you, at least,
still desire happiness?”
“Happiness, my dear Dick” said the Ghost placidly, “happiness, as you will
come to see when you are older, lies in the path of duty. Which reminds
me.... Bless my soul, I’d nearly forgotten Of course I can’t come with
you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological
Society down there. Oh yes! there is plenty of intellectual Life. Not of
a very high quality, perhaps. One notices a certain lack of grip—a certain
confusion of mind. That is where I can be of some use to them. There are
even regrettable jealousies.... I don’t know why, but tempers seem less
controlled than they used to be. Still, one mustn’t expect too much of
human nature. I feel I can do a great work among them. But you’ve never
asked me what my paper is about! I’m taking the text about growing up to
the measure of the stature of Christ and working out an idea which I feel
sure you’ll be interested in. I’m going to point out how people always
forget that Jesus (here the Ghost bowed) was a comparatively young man
when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know,
if he’d lived. As he might have done, with a little more tact and patience.
I am going to ask my audience to consider what his mature views would have
been. A profoundly interesting question. What a different Christianity
we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature! I shall
end up by pointing out how this deepens the significance of the Crucifixion.
One feels for the first time what a disaster it was: what a tragic waste...
so much promise cut short. Oh, must you be going? Well, so must I. Goodbye,
my dear boy. It has been a great pleasure. Most stimulating and provocative.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”
The Ghost nodded its head and beamed on the Spirit with a bright clerical
smile—or with the best approach to it which such unsubstantial lips could
manage—and then turned away humming softly to itself “City of God, how
broad and far.”