READING THE RIDDLE

An infinite number of years ago, when I was the chief weakness of a publisher's office, I remember that there was issued from that establishment a book of highly modern philosophy: a work of elaborate evolutionary explanation of everything and nothing; a work of the New Theology. It was called "The Great Problem Solved" or some such title. When this book had been out for a few days it began to promise an entirely unexpected success. Booksellers sent to ask about it, travellers came in and asked for it, even the ordinary public stood in a sort of knot outside the door, and sent in their bolder spirits to make inquiries.

Even to the publisher this popularity seemed remarkable; to me (who had dipped into the work, when I should have been otherwise employed) it appeared utterly incredible.

After some little time, however, when they had examined "The Great Problem Solved", the lesser problem was also solved. We found that people were buying it under the impression that it was a detective story. I do not blame them for their desire, and most certainly I do not blame them for their disappointment. It must have exasperated them, it would certainly infuriate me, to open a book expecting to find a cosy, kindly, human story about a murdered man found in a cupboard, and find instead a lot of dull, bad philosophy about the upward progress and the purer morality. I would rather read any detective book than that book. I would rather spend my time in finding out why a dead man was dead than in slowly comprehending why a certain philosopher had never been alive.

But this little incident has always stuck to me as a symbol of what is really wrong with modern popular religion. Why is a work of modern theology less startling, less arresting to the soul, than a work of silly police fiction? Why is a work of modern theology less startling, less arresting to the soul than a work of old theology? When those unfortunate clients bought "The Great Problem Solved", perhaps it was inevitable that they should feel slightly cooled and lowered in their vitality; perhaps no philosophical work can really be so good as a good detective story. But at any rate there need not have been such an absolute abyss between them. People need not have felt that they had paid for the most exciting kind of book and got the least exciting kind of book. It cannot be right that religion should be the dullest of subjects. There must be something wrong if the most important human business is also the least exciting. There must be something wrong if everything is not interesting.

A man called Smith goes out for a walk, and stops by a bookstall, where he sees a book called "The Great Problem Solved". If Smith finds that this book solves a problem in crime, he is entranced. If Smith finds that it solves a problem in chess, he is interested. If Smith finds that it solves the problem in the last issue of Answers, he is genuinely excited. But if Smith finds that it solves the problem of Smith, that it explains the stones under his feet, and the stars over his head, that it tells him suddenly why it really is that he likes chess or detective stories, or anything else; if I say, Smith finds that the book explains Smiththen we are told he finds it dull. It may be a democratic prejudice, but I do not believe this. I think that Smith likes modern chess problems more than modern philosophical problems for the very simple reason that they are better. I think he likes a modern detective story better than a modern religion simply because there are some good modern detective stories and no good modern religions. In short, he buys "The Great Problem Solved" as a police novel, because be knows that in a police novel, in some shape or form, the great problem will be solved. And he does not buy it as a book of modern philosophy, because he knows that in a book of modern philosophy, the great problem will certainly not be solved. This title as the title of a police romance is a sensation, but as the title of a metaphysical work it is a swindle. Those early friends of mine bought the book when they thought that it solved the mystery of Berkeley-square, but dropped it like hot bricks when they found that it professed only to solve the mystery of existence. But if those people had really believed for a moment that it did solve the mystery of existence they would not have dropped it like hot bricks. They would have walked over hot bricks for ten miles to find it.

That forgotten book may stand as a type of all the new theological literature. What is wrong with it is not that it professes to state the paradox of God, but that it professes to state the paradox of God as a truism. You may or may not be able to reveal the divine secret; but at least you cannot let it leak out. If ever it comes, it will be unmistakable, it will kill or cure. Judaism, with its dark sublimity, said that if a man saw God he would die. Christianity conjectures that (by an even more catastrophic fatality) if he sees God he will live for ever. But whatever happens will be something decisive and indubitable. A man after seeing God may die; but at least he will not be slightly unwell, and then have to take a little medicine and then have to call in a doctor. If any of us ever do read the riddle, we shall read it in brutal black and blazing white, exactly as we do read the riddle of some sixpenny mystery of murder. If we ever do find the solution, we shall know that it is the right solution.

This dark and drastic quality there has been certainly in all real religions. The ordinary detective story has one deep quality in common with Christianity; it brings home the crime in a quarter that is unsuspected. In any good detective story the last shall be first and the first shall be last. The judgment at the end of any silly sensational story is like the judgment at the end of the world; it is unexpected. As the sensational story always makes the apparently blameless banker, the seemingly spotless aristocrat, the author of the incomprehensible crime, so the author of Christianity told us that in the end the bolt would fall with a brutal novelty, and he that exalted himself would be abased.

The actual records of great religions are so terribly theatrical that Mr. Bernard Shaw recently said that the story of the Crucifixion in the Gospels was too dramatic to be true. This is sufficiently characteristic of the Fabian political philosophy, which has never lived in the heart of any heroic politics. The story of Danton and Robespierre (to take an accidental example) with its "speeches", "eternal daring", "If we do this our names are never forgotten among men", "The blood of Danton chokes you", "There is a God"shows what men do say. These things were said, and said suddenly, because the heart of man was high. When man is at his utmost he is in a state indescribable; he tells the truth or dies.

It is not in your lot or mine to live in a great or an ecstatic age. Men talk of the noise and unrest of our age; but I think that all that age is really very sleepy; all the wheels and the traffic send one to sleep. The shrieking pistons and the shattering hammers are one enormous and most soothing lullaby. But even in our quiet life I think we can feel the great fact that is the core of all religion. However quiet may be the skies, or however cool the meadows, we always feel that if we did know what they meant the meaning would be something mighty and shattering. About the weakest weed there is still a sensational difference between understanding and not understanding. We stare at a tree in an infinite leisure; but we know all the time that the real difference is between a stillness of mystery and an explosion of explanation. We know all the time that the question is whether it will always continue to be a tree or turn suddenly into something else.