Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jesus
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jesus is an article written by H. Cutner published in The Freethinker on 4 april 1920.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jesus
We think we shall always have a soft corner in our heart for the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The author of Rodney Stone and the White Company long ago secured the affections of all lovers of fine romance, and we are glad to pay our humble tribute to his genius. So, we trust he will forgive us for expressing our great regret that he should have left the splendid field in which he shone so brightly and entered another — in which his success, at least, can be questioned. No doubt Sir Arthur thinks he has a tremendous mission to accomplish, the regeneration of the whole world in the light of psychic discoveries. No doubt he feels it necessary to "do his bit" in bringing home to mankind the "sense of sin." That he should see behind the war a purpose — an "inner" reason — "to shake mankind loose from gossip and pink teas" would be laughable were it not that we have also read the various reasons for the war emanating from such heroes, as the Bishop of London and Father Vaughan, and we cannot laugh much more. Sir Arthur's contempt for Materialism is well expressed in The New Revelation, and he exults hugely at the chance Spiritualism gives him to wipe the poor benighted Materialist off the face of the earth. Naturally he attributes all the faults and failings of the Germans to their "organised Materialism," though it can be proved up to the hilt that Germany was probably more deeply religious taken altogether than even the Russians, and that is saying a good deal. Of course, Sir Arthur can retort that what we may call religion he would not, and to that we have every right to reply that what he may call Materialism we would not, and this only shows the utter folly of using such highly controvertible terms without distinctly defining them.
We have no intention of following Sir Arthur in the delightfully vague description of the spiritual world, as it has been revealed to him, and described to us in the Vital Message. Rather do we wish to examine briefly his attitude towards Jesus. Like all religious enthusiasts, he at once endows the Christian Deity with all his own beliefs as to what religion — true religion — is, or should be. It is an old phenomenon. Every time a religious reformer has a new message — or thinks he has a new message — he puts all the faults of Christianity on to the Church — that is, the Church he belongs to as a rule — and screams "get back to Jesus." To the Christian Socialist, Jesus is the greatest Socialist. To the Christian Scientist, Jesus is the greatest Healer that ever lived. To the Theosophist, Jesus is the greatest Incarnation that has ever appeared. To the Christian Labour Leader, Jesus is, of course, the greatest Labour Leader. (I am not at all certain that He was not put forward as the greatest Slave-Owner by the South, before the American Civil War.) It is not surprising, therefore, to find Sir Arthur claiming Jesus as the "greatest exponent" of psychic power "who has ever appeared upon earth." Anything less than this might have given the crown to D. D. Home, whom Sir Arthur venerates nearly as much. Of course, in addition to His psychic powers, Jesus is also the greatest "everything else" unless one insists too much on the "literal" interpretation of any of his teaching with which Sir Arthur does not exactly agree. For, indeed, a more delicious example of hedging it would be impossible to give than those portions of his book purporting to prove that Jesus is the greatest religious Teacher who ever trod this earth. In one place he tells us that the "Sermon on the Mount was more than many miracles," and in another place he tells us that "We were meant to use our reasons and brains in adapting His teaching to the conditions of our altered lives and times." Of course! Isn't that exactly what Freethinkers have always taught? Use our reasons and brains! Why, that is exactly what distinguishes us from Christians of all denominations, and makes us reject the greater part of the teaching of Christ as superstitious and absurd.
Over and over again we find Sir Arthur believing the most absurd stories about Jesus on the most doubtful evidence. To the Rationalist the story of raising Lazarus from the grave "by far the most wonderful of all Christ's miracles," is just as ridiculous as the Apocryphal story of making mud birds fly or dead saints kicking their heels about in their opened graves, politely waiting for Christ to rise before getting out themselves. Will Sir Arthur tell us whether we are not justified in rejecting these stories if "we use our reasons and brains?" What is it that guides Sir Arthur in accepting the nonsense about Jesus being "levitated" over the lake and rejecting the puerile superstitions of the Infancy of Jesus?
One could multiply the instances of the most childish credulity shown by Sir Arthur in accepting practically the whole of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, but there is really no need. He fulminates against the old Testament Deity, and with that we have no quarrel. We do not mind his borrowing the thunder of Paine and Bradlaugh, but surely he must be aware that that is precisely the conception of God that Jesus must have had. And there is one thing clear (which Ingersoll pointed out) — that bad as the punishments were that Jehovah meted out to those whom He hated, these punishments never went beyond this earth. It was left to Jesus and the New Testament to promulgate the frightful doctrine of Eternal Punishment. What has Sir Arthur done as his share in eradicating this horrible dogma? Is not he doing his best to perpetuate it?
There is nothing in this world so thoroughly uncertain as the so-called teaching of Christ. Literally thousands of books in every civilised language have been written to tell us what He "really" meant. And the blunt truth is that nobody knows what He taught, or what He meant by what He is supposed to have taught. At one moment He was cursing fig trees and Pharisees, at another moment He was asking pity for the widow and the orphan or the woman taken in adultery. But the idea that His teaching, one way or the other, even though interpreted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is going to do away with wars and poverty and misery and disease and make this world a veritable paradise to live in, is simply the childish dreaming of people who have no conception of history, sociology or economics. Let me quote the late Bishop Magee:—
- That it is not possible for the State to carry out in all relations literally all the precepts of Christ, and that a State which attempted this would not exist a week...... If there really be a person who maintains this, I cannot argue with him. His proper place is in a lunatic asylum, and the only person called on to discuss this question with him would be his medical attendant.
No amount of hedging can get away from these emphatic words, and the sooner the teaching of Jesus is relegated to the limbo of the past, as an interesting literary relic, the sooner we can, as Voltaire said, "cultiver notre jardin."
H. Cutner.
