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UNBELIEF:
ITS NATURE, CAUSE, AND CURE.
A DISCOURSE
GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL.
APRIL Zth, 1877.
BY
MONCURE
PRICE
D.
CONWAY.
TWOPENCE.
��UNBELIEF.
In the new magazine, the 11 Nineteenth Century, ’ a
new kind of article has been introduced. It is called
a modern “ Symposium.” A group of eminent men
Of various schools of belief set themselves to consider
whether, or how far, human -morality depends upon
religious belief. Most of the statements appear to me
remarkable for the elaboration with which they beat
about the heart of the problem without touching it.
The simple question is, whether the religious belief is a
revelation from without, or an evolution from within,
human nature. If Christianity, for instance, is a super
natural revelation it must have been given to make the
world better, and of course the world would lose
morally if belief in it should fail. On the other hand,
if Christianity be an evolution, a historic product of
human nature, the same force which created it will
work on as it disappears and bear us above it.
As to the plain proposition whether a man’s morality
is related to his belief, there is no question at all.
�2
The experience of mankind in every age and place is
that recorded in the Bible, “As a man thinketh in his
heart so is he.” But he must think it in his heart.
It must be a genuine conviction. The “ Symposium ”
would never have been written if this genuineness had
not departed from the popular faith in the theology
whose forms stand around us. “All that we are is
founded in our thought,” said Buddha. Our moral
systems are so because man so thought. He once
thought hanging the right punishment for theft, and
then men were hung for stealing. That once moral
law has become immoral because the underlying belief
has changed. Men still think hanging necessary to
prevent murder, and so long as they think so men will
be hung for murder. Man once thought men could be
made moral by threats of hell and promises of heaven;
he has found out that these threats and promises
easily disconnected themselves from morality, and even
encouraged immorality by persuading men that by
priestly conjuration they could pass from the worst life,
from the very scaffold, straight to the arms of Jesus.
Supernatural religion was of old the rival of
morality. Its wrath was poured out on those who
trusted in morality and good works. We have among
us two totally different and discordant religions. One
is for the glory and pacification of God; the other is
for the improvement of man and the culture of this
�3
world. One is a religion whose legitimate embodi
ment is in sacraments, ceremonies, mysterious creeds,
all related to man’s estate in another world. The
embodiment of the other is in social duties, charities,
law and order, equal justice, and the pursuit of happi
ness. If belief in either of these religions were to fail,
the institutions growing out of it would fail. If the
root of belief in the other-world religion were cut, its
foliage and fruit would wither—that is, sacraments,
supplications, mysterious dogmas, priests, bishops,
and a vast number of litigations and quarrels, whose
•cessation would hardly demoralise society however
deplored by the lawyers. If belief in the religion of
morality were uprooted, then the corresponding growths
would decay—love and truth, charity and sympathy,
justice and purity, all the social and civic duties.
Because the branches of these two trees mingle in
society they must not be supposed to have one root.
The priest and the moralist are both interested in the
preservation of peace and social order. The priest
cannot carry on his temple amid social chaos, and he
borrows the ethical system. The moralist finds man
kind selfish and passionate, so he borrows some of the
menaces of the priest to frighten people into obedi
ence. By this alliance our Society has been formed
in which morality is labelled Christian, and Christianity
is warranted moral.
�4
Nevertheless, it was never an alliance of equals.
Christianity at an early period gained the upper hand,
because it was believed to command the more terrible
sanctions of reward and punishment. Morality could
threaten or bribe a man for only the few years of life ;
but the binding and loosing of the priest extended
through endless ages. He could always look down on
kings and laws, and say to the people “ Fear not them
that at most can only kill the body; but fear us who
have power to cast both soul and body into hell for
ever.”
So Christianity became a throned ecclesiasticism :
the priest became supreme. He denied that morality
was any religion at all ; it was only a. policeman. He
would not deny it might be valuable if it supported
his ceremonies and authority, but if it claimed to be
the main thing, he made war against it.
So poor Morality had to make the best terms it
could; and it has gone on until now conceding that
Christianity was the main thing, itself a dependent;
prayer it agreed was more important than justice,
belief in the Trinity more essential to life than kind
ness, and theft a mere peccadillo compared with
confounding the substance or dividing the persons of
the godhead.
By this subordination the two as master and servant
managed to get on peaceably until now. But now—
�5
even in our own day—a tremendous break has oc
curred between them. And it came about in this way.
The progress of knowledge discovered and proved
that the fundamental dogmas of supernatural religion
are untrue,—the speculations and dreams of ancient,
ignorant tribes. This discovery has brought on a new
set of moral questions altogether. The servant has
been called suddenly to judge the character of his
master. Does his master speak the truth ? Certainly
he has not in the past. Will he in the future ? What'
and admit all his divine knowledge to have been a
pretence 1 Impossible. Then, says Morality, can I re
main moral and still support untruth ? Theology
suggests, Why not shut your eyes to this discovery of
untruth in your old master, or at least wink at it ? But
is that moral ? asks Morality, anxiously. Is there not
a morality beside that of conduct,—a morality for the
intellect ? If there are mental duties, then to assent
to a fiction is as immoral as adultery. To believe a
proposition aside from its truth, to believe it merely
because of some advantage, becomes intellectual pros
titution. The purity of the mind is bargained away.
It is vain now to claim the old authority of religion
over morality : it is a part of the new discovery that
there can be no authority but truth. So the system
which sits in the seat of a religion, but finds itself
opposed in the name of morality, has be$n compelled
�6
to try and save itself by claiming to be the very soul
and self of popular morality. Disbelieve, it says, if
you must, but keep quiet about it; for if the masses
come to disbelieve with you, they will break all
restraints. They hold what morality they have, only
because the priest has adopted morality, and told
them it is part of their means of escaping hell; but if
you take away all their prseternatural terrors, they will
not be restrained by mere considerations of public
good, or the beauty of virtue.
To this Morality, merely as a prudential thing, con
fidently replies : Admitting your old hopes and fears
still bind the ignorant, it is only the ignorant. You
leave the educated world suspended between the old
and the new; what is to keep the keepers—to lead the
leaders—to prevent the cultivated class from sinking
into mere hypocrisy, luxury, selfishness ? Nay, the obli
gations your superstition imposes on the ignorant must
become ever weaker even for them. The spread of
knowledge, which is inevitable, will mean the spread
of lawlessness. Every new schoolhouse we are build
ing must prove a centre to radiate recklessness. As
a mere practical policy your attempt to keep up the
delusions is itself a delusion.
But Morality has a higher answer than that. As
superstitious religion crumbles, Morality itself has
ascended to be a religion. From being servant it
�7
assumes to be master; it claims to be itself a faith, a
belief, and affirms that truth is to be maintained on
principle and apart from any possible overt acts. It
is not mere outward rule and law, but contains an
inward life which inspires it to believe in what it
affirms, and to religiously trust that the fruit of right
will never be wrong, whatever may be the appear
ances to the contrary.
This is the living faith of the present; it will be the
commanding faith of the future. Theologians call it
unbelief, but in no sense is it that. Its attitude to
wards the superstition which sometime superseded it
is that of disbelief; but there is a vast difference between
disbelief and unbelief. The unbeliever is one who has
not accepted a thing; the disbeliever has positively
rejected it. The unbeliever may not believe a thing
because he never heard of, or never examined
it, or does not wish to admit it; the disbeliever has
considered and denied. Consequently unbelief does
not imply that there is any belief at all in the mind.
Disbelief implies that a proposition has been rejected
because there is something already in the mind which
excludes it. Consequently a man cannot be a dis
believer of one thing without being a believer in some
other thing. But unbelief is a mere blank, passive
state of mind ; and it deserves some of the evil accent
it bears to the religious mind, because it is generally
�8.
the counterpart of a torpid indifference. He who
dfebelieves in science, he who believes in morality,
he who worships humanity, or adores reason, cannot
be called an unbeliever. He is a great believer. As
to the rest, no intelligent mind exists which does not
disbelieve something.
The Christian calls the man of science an infidel, or
unbeliever; the Mussulman calls the Christian an
infidel. Every religion is infidelity to other religions;
and while sectarians thus call each other by hard
names, all victims of idle words, the real enemy of all
religion, unbelief,—systematic indifference, cynical con
tempt for all high principles,—is sapping the strength
of every civilisation. No student of history can view
without concern the moral dangers which attend the
crumbling of any religion. We have before us the
fearful scenes which followed the decline of the gods
and goddesses of Rome in universal contempt and
unbelief: amid the fragments of their statues and the
blackened ruins of their temples stands Caligula
knocking off the head of Jupiter and setting his own
in its place, and Nero lighting up his orgies with
burning Christians for his torches. When Vespasian
came to rebuild the temples, repair the altars, and set
the gods back in their shrines, what he could not
bring back was belief in them. Titus tried the same.
Titus was strong enough to carry to the temple of
�9
Jerusalem the same desolation that Nero had brought
on Rome, but Titus was not strong enough to carry
into any mind the faith that had become a mythology.
And amid those ruins Belief never sprang up again
until called from its grave by the voice of a great soul,
whom the old moral world crucified because he an
nounced a new moral world——setting the religion of
simple purity and love against established superstition
and proud sacerdotalism.
There are not wanting prophets who remembering
these things—remembering too the terrors amid which
Romanism went down in France, Germany and
England—predict that the decay of dogmas m the
popular mind will be followed here too by the carni
val of rapine and lust. I hope not. But if we are.
saved it will be because the real believers of our time
—the disbelievers in superstition—have grown wise
enough to anticipate and forestall the danger. The
evil in those historic examples was" that moral princi
ples had not been cultivated in and for themselves.
The light suddenly blazed on a long bandaged eye
nnd inflamed it. The whole order of society had
been made to rest on gods and goddesses, and when
belief in them gave way the superstructure tumbled
down. Undoubtedly the like fate would befall us if
the people were still taught that the only motive to
be honest is to get to heaven; that self-restraint is
�IO
only a prudent investment in paradise; that any
crime may be outweighed by accepting the blood of
Christ. If popular morality has no root of its own,
if it is a mere graft on the decaying limb of a dying
trunk, then when the dead tree falls, down goes all that
was grafted on it.
But I would fain believe that such is not the case
with our public morality. It has crept into our courts
that a man may testify the truth without kissing the
Bible, and may minister justice without believing in
hell or heaven. It has made its way even into the
admissions of the priest that his church presents no
higher morality than the societies of those who reject
his morality. The noble lives of the great disbelievers,
who were yet the martyrs of their belief,—the Lyells
and Grotes, Mills and Channings, Mazzinis, Strausses,
Parkers, who sleep in honourable graves j the Emersons,
Huxleys, Darwins, Carlyles, Spencers, at whose feet
this living generation sits and learns not so much any
theory as the great moral lesson of courage and fidelity,
—these have not spoken to the world in vain. How
far it has penetrated into the popular mind that virtue,
kindness, truth and honesty, are independent of
religious phantasms—good and essential in themselves
—rooted in the honour of humanity;—this cannot
be estimated. Our sanguine hopes that we shall
escape the political Nemesis which has heretofore
�II
pursued legally established falsehood may be dis
appointed.
Assuredly we cannot escape the moral Nemesis.
Even now one phase of the decay of superstition is.,
upon us,—a phase which in previous ages was repre
sented in social ruin. It is the phase of mere unbelief.,
the general dropping out of belief of the old orthodoxy,
accompanied by an indifference to all religion, chiefly
shown in a pretence to believe what is not believed.
One hundred years ago when Soame Jenyns wrotehis hard dogmatic defence of Christianity, a certaim
clergyman wrote on it: “ Almost thou persuadest me
not to be a Christian.” Since then the dismal theology
of Soame Jenyns has run its course; it has sought m
nature signs of the vindictiveness of God; in heredi
tary disease proofs of God’s hatred of man for Adams,
sin; it has paraded human misery on earth as a happy
augury of endless misery hereafter. It so completed
in the real mind of this country the work Soame
Jenyns began in that old clergyman,—it has quite
persuaded men not to be Christians. Nobody can
see the gay, smiling, money-getting, eating and drinking
multitudes around us, from the merry-makers of Good
Friday—once funereal—to the clergyman with his old
port, and imagine that they believe in hell, or the
devil, that riches hinder heaven, and the world is all
accursed. But, alas, the departure of belief has left
�12
them in mere unbelief. One thing untrue as another,
they stick to that which is most convenient. They
make religion a mere minister to their social, political,
or even pecuniary advantages.
Now, because this phase of no-faith does not break
out in blood and riot, let us not imagine that it can
•exist without serious harm. A reign of terror were
hardly worse than a reign of chronic hypocrisy and
■selfishness. Real unbelief means heartlessness, and
it must lower the whole character of both individual
and national life. Maybe society can get along in
that way ; a colony of ants gets along ; but there can
be no grandeur in a country which has no faith, there
•can be no ascent of national genius where there is no
moral earnestness. Also a man may get along in one
way by cauterising conscience and burying enthusiasm.
When a shrewd fellow once defended his base occu
pation by saying, “I must live,” a wit replied, “ I don’t
see the necessity.” A man has indeed to justify his
right to consume and occupy a part of nature. A weed
has no right to soil and sunshine that might turn to
corn and wine. But what good thing can grow in
barren soil under a sunless roof?
Under no such murky atmosphere, shrouding every
star of ideality, can we raise our own minds and
hearts, or those of our children, to any high aims, or
■.secure beautiful characters. It can not be done by a
�i3
spurious devotionalism, the hectic spot of a dying
faith ; it can as little be done by cold-hearted absorp
tion in pleasures of life, which should be only its.
fringe. It is no true belief to have faith in the senses
and their satisfactions. Belief is that which trusts in
principles, recognises laws and obeys them, and what
soever it finds to be true, raises that to be the pole-star
of its progress. The man of unbelief is the mere or
ganism of external influences. When you have found
what is respectable in his neighbourhood—what is
strongest—the biggest church, the successful party,
you have found all there is of him. There is nothing
in him to build on. In the far West, among rough
adventurers, along the Mississippi, with all their oathsand vices, one often finds that after all they have
some principle j deep down there’s something they’ll
fight for, some point of honour they’ll die for. The
half-savage pilot who swears and drinks, and then
sinks with his boat to save the passengers; thatjnoted
gambler who at the late St. Louis’ fire lost his life in
saving others,—you can build that man into your
social wall. But you can do nothing with your smooth
polished gentleman who believes in nothing, and holds
himself ready to affirm or deny anything you please
so long as the mellifluous flow of his self-seeking
existence is undisturbed.
It should be recognised that the great ages have
�14
«always been ages of Belief, and though they have
uttered their mighty disbelief, they have never sunk
to the sunless gulf of Unbelief.
There are two etymologies of the word Belief,—
some derive it from the old German belieben to belove;
others making it be-leben,—to live by. But in either
■case it marks the height from which the ordinary use
■of the word has descended.
Whether belief was of old that which a man lives
by, or whether that a man loves, or beloves,—such
indeed must a true belief be to any man if it is to
:serve him or others. Eight hundred years ago two
great French theologians were teaching the world.
One Abelard, the other Anselm. Abelard said, Inteldige ut credas; Anselm replied, Crede ut iiitelligas.
The world turned from Abelard, who said “ Under
stand, that you may believe,” to follow Anselm, who
said “ Believe, that you may understand.” So putting
•out their eyes that they might see better, they groped
their way until, mad with disappointment in the thick
ening darkness, like blind Samson, they pulled down
■pillars of throne and temple in revolutionary wrath.
It is time now to remember the long-forgotten
motto of Abelard,—“ Understand, that you may be
lieve ! ” He only reaches his aim to whom his aim is
clear. You can only live by a belief when it has
■entered profoundly into both brain and heart. It is
�i5
something you are to believe, belove, live by. 1 ou shall
fall in love with it. Where that faith goes there will
you go, its people shall be your people, its God your
God. And if amid all the great events and causes of
our time you can find nothing that can so kindle your
enthusiasm, it is because you are the victim of that
organised Unreason which has set up a tyrant for men
to worship, and made the merit of belief consist in
the absurdity of the thing believed.
Wonderful, indeed, it would have been if after ages
of monster-worship and compulsory belief of the
incredible, the very organ of faith should not have
suffered atrophy in many. But let none rest content
with that mere despair—the suicide of faith—Unbelief.
Let every mind know that it is its nature to believe.
If a mind will only ascend from unbelief to disbelief,
if it will face the fact that the dogmas do not fill it
with conviction and joy, and ask itself why not; if it
will consider and think, it will intelligently disbelieve,
and that disbelief will be the other side of a belief.
An aged authoress once told me—“ I do not believe
in miracles because I believe in God.” If you do not
believe in jealous Jehovah it is because you believe in
supreme Love. If not in depravity, it is because you
believe in Man. Follow that earnest scepticism, and
it shall fall like a blossom before the fair fruitage of a.
larger faith.
��
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Unbelief : its nature, cause and cure : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, April 8th 1877
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 15 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1.
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[South Place Chapel]
Date
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[1877]
Identifier
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G3335
Subject
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Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Unbelief : its nature, cause and cure : a discourse given at South Place Chapel, April 8th 1877), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Belief and Doubt
Free Thought
Moral Philosophy
Morality
Morris Tracts