Sir Conan Doyle Replies to Rev. James Cosh
Sir Conan Doyle Replies to Rev. James Cosh is a letter published in The Daily Mail (Brisbane) on 14 january 1921.
Sir Conan Doyle Replies to Rev. James Cosh
(To the Editor.)
Sir, — I understand that Mr. Cosh was present at my lecture, but I fear that I was not fortunate enough to make my views clear to him. Among those views I held that the present degenerate state of Christianity was due to the eternal and uncharitable quarrels caused by some ecclesiastics defining with absolute precision things which are really so stupendous that the human intellect is presumptuous in claiming to fully understand them. It is this theological habit, whether Roman Catholic or Puritan, which has led to incessant wrangling, to religious wars, and to all those other effects which have made the religions of to-day the very opposite to the real Christ spirit. If Mr. Cosh and I unite in humbly endeavouring to imitate the life of Christ we shall be useful members of the human race, but if we set to work to raise fresh discussions by theological definitions we shall be back in the mediaeval state of religious hatreds. My views are that every creed which produces spirituality is good for the particular type to which it appeals, and that the attempt to prove one section right and every other wrong is to take a narrow view of the greatness of the Creator. Therefore I cannot be led into a contest of texts and definitions. As to the prayer of the Presbyterian that I might never arrive safely in Australia, I quite realise that it was an individual effort, and that the whole Church is not to be held responsible for what I truly described as a "rotten prayer." The incident occurred in Melbourne, and it in now forgotten and forgiven as far as I am concerned, so that Mr. Cosh's intervention is hardly necessary. I thank him and his congregation for the more charitable prayers which he describes.
- Yours, etc.,
- Arthur Conan Doyle.
- Bellevue Hotel, January 13, 1921.
