For in those days, among religious folk, there was no doubt that God gave all things literally: the good things of this world as well as of the next. I remember a hymn I learnt at Sunday schooclass="underline"
I was to praise God that I was well fed and warmly clad, while others wore but filthy rags, and begged from door to door. God ordered all things, and was satisfied with them, presumably.
I remember the cold sweat that broke out over me one grey chill evening in the street, when suddenly I heard my own voice saying out aloud: “It isn't right of Him. It isn't just.”
After my mother's death, my prayers were few and far between—occasional cries for help such as a shipwrecked swimmer might fling out into the darkness without any real hope of response. I did not pray that she might live. I had prayed so hard that my father might live, spending whole nights upon my knees. Of what use? If it depended upon children's prayers, what loved father or mother would ever die? The thing was absurd. I was beginning to doubt the whole story. The more I thought about it, the more unbelievable it seemed to me.
As it had been presented to me—as to this day it is still taught to Youth—it was this. God the omniscient, the omnipotent creator of all things had made man in His own image, and had placed him in a garden, in the centre of which grew the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this particular tree man was forbidden to eat. Even as a child, I had never been able to understand what the tree was doing there. God had planted this garden Himself, had meant it for man's dwelling-place. It seemed to me it could have been put there for no other purpose than to be a perpetual temptation to poor Adam, to say nothing of Eve. To add to their difficulties, a serpent—which likewise God had made and placed in the garden—was allowed to come and talk to Eve and to persuade her. God must have known of this serpent and that it was very subtle. It seemed to me that God might, at least, have warned them. Man, evidently a simple soul, easily beguiled, listened to the cunning words of the serpent and ate of the forbidden fruit. God's astonishment on discovering that he had done so, I was never able to entirely credit.
For this one act of disobedience, Adam—and not only Adam but all his descendants, myself included—had been condemned by God to everlasting perdition. When I was older, Bishop Butler and other worthy writers, sought to point out to me how just and reasonable had been God's behaviour in this matter. But I was never able to see it. To me it seemed that Adam, and with him the entire human race, had been treated with undue severity, to say the very least of it. Indeed, God Himself, later on, must have felt that He had been too harsh. To put matters right, He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for our sins. By this means Adam and Eve's original transgression had been wiped out and mankind given another chance. Why God, who was all-powerful and could do anything, had not chosen some simpler and more human method was never explained to me; and the question I felt was too awful to be uttered aloud. Even as it was, not all mankind were to be saved, but only those who “believed.” If you didn't believe the story you were still to be damned.
As a child, my difficulty was that I was never quite sure whether I believed it or not. That I made every effort in my power to believe it, goes without saying. My not believing would break my mother's heart: that I knew. Added to which, it meant going to Hell. From many a fiery pulpit, I had heard vivid and detailed descriptions of Hell. The haunting horror of it was ever present to my mind. Face downwards on my pillow, I would repeat “I do believe,” over and over again: ending by screaming it out aloud, sometimes, in case God had not heard my smothered whisperings. For periods, I would be confident that I had conquered—that I really did believe: there could be no doubt about it. And then the fear would come to me that, after all, I was only pretending to believe; and that God saw through me and knew I didn't. I dared not open my mouth. To ask questions would be to confess my disbelief. I tried not to think about it. But the thoughts would come. It was the Devil tempting me, I told myself. But neither prayers nor fasting drove him away. And as the years passed by he became more persistent.
I could not understand God going about His work in this hole-and-corner way. All men were surely His children. Why had He revealed Himself only to the Jews, an insignificant tribe of wandering shepherds, leaving it to them to disseminate His message or not as they thought fit? As a matter of fact, they had made no attempt to do so. Regarding Him as their own property, they had done their best to keep Him to themselves. Even among the early Christians, it was fiercely debated whether Christ should be shared with the Gentiles or confined to the circumcised. The vast majority of mankind are to this day in ignorance of the Gospel upon which their salvation depends. Why had God made a secret of Himself? Why had He not spoken His commands in trumpet tones that all the world might hear?
Why did He not speak to me? If it really was the Devil that was whispering to me my doubts, why did not God speak also, and with a word dispel them? Why had reason been given me, if blind faith—the instinct of an animal—was all that was required of me? Why would not God speak? Or couldn't He?
Was there a God? This God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, what had I to do with Him? This God who made blunders and “repented” them: who “grieved” at the result of His own work—would destroy what He had made. This God of punishments and curses. This “jealous” God, so clamorous for His meed of praise and worship, His sacrifices and burnt offerings, His blood of lambs and goats. This God with a pretty taste in upholstery. This Designer of curtains and of candlesticks, so insistent on His shittim wood and gold. This God of battles. This God of vengeances and massacres. This God who kept a Hell for His own children. This God of blood and cruelty! This was not God. This was a creature man had made in his own image.
There were three subjects about which, when I was a young man, respectable folk were not supposed to talk: politics, sex, and religion. I remember how fervently my early editors would seek to impress upon me this convention. Round about me, must have been many, sharing my doubts and difficulties. We might have been of help to one another. But religion, especially—even in Bohemian circles—was strictly taboo. To be interested in it stamped a youngster as not only priggish but unEnglish. Books dealing with the subject from the free thinker's point of view I knew existed: but for such I had no use. The usual standard works in support of orthodox opinion I did read. I do not think it altogether my fault that, instead of removing, they had the effect of increasing my perplexities.
I passed through a period of much mental suffering. The beliefs of childhood cling close. One tears them loose at cost of pain. Gradually, I arrived at what Carlyle terms the centre of indifference. What did we know—what could we know? What were all the creeds but the jargon of a High Court affidavit, to be sworn before the nearest solicitor at a fee of eighteenpence? “I have been informed, and I believe.”
And, after all, what did it matter? Beliefs did not alter facts. There must be a God. The watch proclaims the watchmaker. The starry firmament above me proved that. Some time—somewhere, the Truth would be revealed to us. Meanwhile, what needed man other than the moral law within him? That was the only true religion. The voice of God Himself, speaking to us direct, requiring no interpreter. That, one could believe.