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LONDON:
CARTER & WILLIAMS, Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue,
Camomile-street, E.C,
�The Causes of Irreligion.
A Sermon,
PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
SEPTEMBER 5, 1875, BY THE
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY.
Jeremiah, IX., 1. 2., “Oh that my head were waters and
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night
for the slain of the daughter of my people.
Oh that I
had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that
I might leave my people and go from them....................... for
they lend their tongues like their bow for lies, they are not
valiant for the truth upon earth..................... and they
know not me saith the Lord
E
W are met together once more, my friends, to worship
God in such simplicity and truth as we are capable
of, and to pursue the great work which binds us in
one heart and soul—the redemption and preservation of true
Religion.
Religion has well-nigh become a by-word and a reproach
in this age of boasted enlightenment. The record of its past
has made good men weep, and wise men scoff. The. con-:
temptible triviality of the questions it has raised has often
found a fearful contrast in the storms of fierce passion which
have raged over them and the rivers of blood in which they
have issued.
While philosophers had no alternative but to cast aside
with derision the absurd assumptions of theologians ; while
moralists and philanthropists have mourned over the obstacles
to human welfare and progress everywhere set in their path
by Christian dogmas ; the various champions of conflicting
Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's
Hall, every Sunday morning, or from the Author (by post), Camden
House, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny postage a halfpenny.
�■
creeds have been doing their worst, unconsciously, to under
mine all reverence for religion, to alienate the hearts of men
from the very thought of God, and to foster the vices and
follies which Religion is supposed to condemn.
With many it is quite a question whether religion is not
the greatest blunder man has ever committed since the world
began. With others, it has ceased to be a question at all
and has become a settled conviction. Go into any mixed
society and you will find types of at least three prevailing
modes of thought about religion. One is partisanship,
another indifference, a third denunciation. You have the
dogmatic sectarian, believing himself and the rest of his sect
or party to be the prime favourites of Heaven ; another who
makes his boast of being utterly worldly and irreligious, and
can afford to do so seeing so many around him to keep him
countenance ; and a third who never loses an opportunity of
scoffing at religion and laying at its door every foul act which
comes to the surface. These three are common types. The
first is the strongest numerically ; the second socially; the
third intellectually.
Now there is an obvious cause tor each of these three modes
of thought upon religion; and it might be well to point it
out for the benefit of those who ought to be most interested
in the maintenance of religion. We will begin with the first
class, the dogmatic sectarian. What is it that makes him
what he is ? Simply an entirely false notion of religion
itself. Nearly all the teaching of Christendom has been to
the effect that man is saved or. damned according to his belief,
and not according to his life. And even where the ideas of
salvation and damnation have been kept in abeyance and
worthier motives have been substituted, there has been the
same false notion at the root, viz : that God is pleased or dis
pleased with us according as we think truly or think falsely
respecting Him. I am not one, as you well know, to hold
loosely in my regard the value of true opinions on any sub
ject, much less in matters pertaining to religion. We all of
us, by our readiness to encounter suffering in the mainten
ance of our opinions, testify to the importance of believing
and proclaiming what is, to our minds, true. But one and
all deny with our whole hearts the notion that to hold right
�3
beliefs is praiseworthy, or to hold wrong beliefs blameworthy;
that our opinions can make any possible difference to the
favour or disfavour of God ; still less that on such a slender
thread can hang our immortal destiny for bliss or woe. Men
can only believe as they may be persuaded; according to the
cogency of the arguments before them, or, what is much
more common, according to the tendency of their own minds
coupled with their early training or surrounding associations.
The Christian Missionary in vain confronts the Mussulman
and shaking the Bible at him says, “ You reject God’s word,”
for the Mussulman with equal right ’can shake the Koran at
the Christian and say, “ You are rejecting God’s word.”
To believe or accept any book or body of doctrine, or any
illustrious individual as a Divine teacher, is itself an involun
tary act of the mind and cannot deserve praise or blame.
God is no more disobeyed or dishonoured by a man refusing
to acknowledge the Divine authority of the Bible, of Jesus
or of the Church, than He is dishonoured by another man
accepting as Divine the authority of the Koran and of
Mahomet. But we need not pursue these common-places.
It is more to our purpose to observe what inevitable conse
quences of conduct, feeling, attitude must follow upon believ
ing that our creed or religious opinion secures our salvation
from perdition, or in any way merits the favour of God. The
first and most obvious effect of this is to set the holders of
different creeds at war with each other. They cannot help
it. Their very differences, small at first, perhaps, become
magnified and raised into essentials of salvation. Kindhearted men on either side try to convert each other, each
truly fearing that the other is going to hell. Hard-hearted
men will add hatred to this conviction and resort to violence
as in the days of the Inquisition, or to other milder means of
coercion as the state of civilization will permit.
Next, there comes an over-culture of the sentiment of
pride, which soon breeds arrogance and unlawful ambition.
Those who believe themselves to be the repositories of God’s
truth would fain conquer the world, and if they cannot force
all men to believe with them, the effort is made at least to
force them into outward conformity. And there, in the per
son of Pius the ninth, we see the embodiment of this principle
�4
and the action in which it finally issues. Nothing can be
more logical or more practically consistent. The Pope simply
acts, or tries to act, so far as his crippled liberties will allow
him, up to his convictions that he is God’s vicar on the earth
and the sole repository of Divine truth. But in looking at
the Roman Pontiff, every dogmatic sectarian ought to see
the reflection of wrhat he himself would be if he could. The
principle of Rome and that of all her rebel children is the
same. The difference is only such as exists between a hen
and her chickens. The nature is identical, and, if suffered to
develope, each sect would become an imperial ecclesiasticism
like that which is governed from the Vatican.
Another result of attaching undue value to opinion is the
development of dogma from what was originally perhaps
simple and reasonable to what is complex metaphysical or
absurd. The Jews,
who did not at first hold this foolish
idea of being saved for their creed, never wanted any other
God but Jehovah, nor sought to define Him in riddles of
speech or to depict Him in any similitude until they caught
the infection from those who thought more of creed and wor
ship than of duty and love. But this dire necessity of con
ceiving rightly about God on pain of His everlasting
displeasure set men groping in the thick darkness among
mysteries of their own contriving. Nothing but metaphysical
definition would satisfy them. The native trustfulness of
heart towards the Good Spirit was gone, and in its place came
fear and trembling, and speculation; and, like drowning men
catching at straws, they invented first one and then another
god to keep company with the Supreme, and around every
fresh name were clustered webs and mazes of ever-deepening
perplexity, every item and detail of which must be held
faithfully and kept whole and undefiled, or “ without doubt
they should perish everlastingly.”
It would be impossible to believe unless the facts were un
disputed, that our Christian forefathers fought and wrangled,
and finally ruptured Christendom over the question whether
or not the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son as well as
from the Father. The celebrated filioque dispute has never
been settled to this day, and it is more incredible still that
any one in the whole of Christendom should be found
�5
sufficiently antiquated to care a straw for the clause in
question.
But the Church of Rome (and the Church of England too)
damns to everlasting fire all who reject this diminutive
dogma. According to us and Rome, the whole Eastern
Church is under sentence of endless perdition, because she
rejects the statement of the double procession, and for good
reasons known to herself will not have fiilioque in her Nicene
Creed. 'The recent conference at Rome with the best inten
tions has nevertheless brought back the smile of contempt
to the faces of impartial spectators ofthe Churches’ squabbles.
If the voice of God out of Heaven could reach the solemn
meditators over this infinitesimal problem, saying, “ What
doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to do justly and
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” those
men whose minds and hearts are worthy of better themes
would quietly let that double procession fall under their
table, would let go one by one all the silly inventions which
led up to it and gave to it its grand but fictitious notoriety,
and would disband and go home impressed with the really
vital and tremendous questions on which the welfare of so
many millions of mankind is now hanging. They would say
in their quickened souls “While we have been mooning
over the procession of the Holy Ghost and the filioque, God
Himself is being eclipsed—the lamp of faith is dying out for
want of the oil of gladness, and the world is hastening into
the night of despair. While we were seeking for new
Shibboleths, and torturing language to call white black and
to affirm and deny the same proposition with one breath, the
voice of j oy and peace in believing is fading, fading away ;
and when men and women in their sadness call on us for
comfort, for one word to strengthen their failing faith, we
shall be dumb with astonishment and there will be no voice
nor any to answer.”
But why all this wanton waste of time, and toil and brain ?
Because they and the whole aggregate of Churches have been
taught to believe that on their believing rightly down to the
minutest dogma depend all their hopes of salvation. Hence
and hence only has arisen this scrupulousness about questions
inherently contemptible. Hence has come the utter neglect
�6
of the really important questions, the first and most necessary
foundations of all true religion ; and hence has sprung the
contempt into which religion has been plunged, and the still
wider indifference to it which has fallen like the sleep of
death over the most influential people in our land.
And I think they will bear me out if I speak apologeti
cally for them on this theme. They would most likely
say :—“We do not hate religion because it is good ; for
though we are mirthfully disposed and detest puritanism
and asceticism, we are men at heart. and have an eye for
what is pure and lovely quite as clear as yours. We should
not despise religion if the professors and teachers of religion
were only to talk a little sense and not treat us as if we
were babies. We should not despise it if the preachers were
to make some attempt to draw the line between what may
reasonably be inferred and what is too incredible to be
swallowed. We should not despise religion if it was more
natural and appealed to our common sense and better feel
ings, instead of giving us patent absurdities like the
Athanasian Creed, immoral and revolting dogmas like those
of the atonement and everlasting fire ; if they did not go
on asserting that ‘ it .the resurrection of Jesus as recorded in
the gospels be not true, then all that Christianity teaches is
a falsehood,’ or thatf if the gospels are not all true then Jesus
must have been an impostor and other foolish talk of the
same kind. We should not despise religion if men and
women—especially the clergy—did not quarrel over it so
much and manifest such bitterness, jealousy, -animosity, and
slander towards each other. We should not despise it, if
the poor preachers had a chance of speaking their honest
minds ; but if we go to church the parson must say what
he is bidden to say by the 39 Articles ; and if we go into a
chapel the minister must say only what he is bidden to say
by the congregation. We see, therefore, the whole system
made systematically insincere, and hollow; and without
reckoning the wearisome monotony of second-hand doctrines
repeated from Sunday to Sunday all the year round, we are
fairly disheartened by the conviction that the preachers are
all gagged and muzzled, and whether they believe what
they teach or not, we have no means of discovering. Finally,
�4
we despise religion because we are for ever being told that
it is wicked not to believe this, that, or the other ; and no
matter what we do or how we live we shall be damned if we
do not believe in the blood of Christ or submit ourselves to
the dictates of the church. We know better than that.
We have the sense to discern the malignity and injustice of
such an arrangement, even if our consciences did not tell
us that we shall be sure to have to pay the full penalty—
no more and no less than our sins deserve. We despise
religion too because they tell us not to use our reason ; that
it is impious to doubt or question any of their assertions or
the still more incredible assertions in their Bibles and
Prayer-books. We know that must be wrong, for if there
be a God and He has given us reason, without which we
cannot move one step in the discovery of what is right and
true, He must wish us to use our reasons in searching after
Him and in the discovery of His will; and that religion
carries its own condemnation which says it is wrong or
dangerous to think for oneself. This is why we despise
religion and will no more of it till the preachers talk sense
and are permitted freely to say what they really believe.”
Such, I believe is the testimony of the indifferent. In
some, indifference has been pushed to the extreme of active
hostility ; but the alienating cause is the same in either
case. These reflections, loose and fragmentory as they are,
should lead us to hope that true religion consistent with
common sense, with duty and with cheerfulness, is yet
possible to those who have been alienated by what bears the
sacred name of religion in our day. Men and women clo
love that which is good, are ready to believe that which is
true, are thankful to embrace hopes for the future which do
not outrage the intellect or demoralize the heart.
If there be a God in Heaven—and when I say “ if,” I do
not falter one moment in my grateful trust in Him—then
surely He will continue to draw to Himself the hearts of the
gentle and aspiring, the hearts -of the weary and careworn,
the hearts of the tempted and the enchained, the hearts of
the weak and the hearts of the strong; the young, the
prime, and the aged, those who toil and those who rest, the
sick and the dying. If God loves, He needs us as much as
�we need Him, or we should never have been here at all. If
He is as good as He is wise, He will not alter the hard path of
our lives to suit our discontent, however justifiable, nor sur
render into our childish, short-sighted control, the guidance
of our lives and destiny.
True religion must live, in spite of false religion, indiffer
ence, or hostility,—or this world will be turned into hell;
might will overcome right; aud every soul which survives
the catastrophe will in weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth cry out like Lucifer in his fall “ Evil be thou my
good.”
D. WILLIAMS & CO,, Printers, 14. Bisliopsgate Avenue, Camomile Street, E.G,
�
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Victorian Blogging
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The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875
Creator
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Voysey, Charles [1828-1912]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm
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D. Williams & Co.
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[1875]
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G3390
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The causes of irreligion. A sermon preached at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, September 5, 1875), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Subject
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Religion
Atheism
Belief and Doubt
Religion