RELIGION IN MODERN FICTION.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18479, 5 September 1925, Page 11

RELIGION IN MODERN FICTION.

(SrXCIALLT VnUTTEN- FOR "THE PRESS.') (By Rev. Charles Terry.) Henry James once said that there is no excitement which can compare with an intellectual one, and there are thousands of people who are finding this exhilaration of the mind by reading novels. For fiction, like all art, gives enjovment by enabling us to recognise nature in a semblance of it, and, if the nature is human nature, the play of passion, the strupgle of conscience, the encounter with destiny, it makes a universal appeal. Thackeray is found one day in tears. They ask him the cause of it, an 1 he says: "I have just killed Colonel Newcome." His own creation is such a worth of art, so true to nature, that lie has fallen in love with it. Dickens was implored not to let Little Nell die as her story progressed. She was looked on as a living person. The delight of the public, the intellectual excitement, lies in this recognition of ourselves as we might be in certain circumstances. Realism has at length defeated romanticism. Edmund Crosse and George Saintsburv both prophesied that realism would give way to romanticism. And it did. But only for a time. Stevenson declared, "I would not give one chapter of old Dumas for the whole boiling ol Zolas," but realism holds the held today. It is not necessarily unpleasant. It "need not be . one-sided. Religious aspiration and family love are as true to life as the dirt on a mall's boots and the love of man and wife growing stronger day by day for fort\ as the lower passion which sometimes draws young people together, llodern novelists desiring to depict human nature, cannot ignore the two powerful instincts of sex and religion. Sex can be overdone in literature, of course, as in psychology. Bernard Shaw long ago insisted that sex matters £ar less than the sex novelists would have us believe, and Anatolc France found that his obsession with the unpleasant made Zola untrue to life.

But the point is that they are not true to human nature as we know it. Life is not quite so occupied with such questions as the novelist pretends. There must be love stories. AV o could not have great fiction without them, but even love must have a context of other interests. It. is a primitive, .and' persistent instinct, but not only are there other kinds of love than that biv tween tho sexes, thero ar|e other kinds of emotion as strong as that of love. It is exactly the same with religion, It is impossible to leave it out of a true picturo of life, especially of introspective analytical life. But it is possible to give it too large a place. Perhaps Mr Compton Mackenzie in one or two of his religious novels has done this. It might bo said that Mr Raymond's "Tell England" and Sheila Kave-Smith's "Joanna Godden" aro both more true because in them religion takes the place that it usually does in the kind of lives of which the authors write. Many novelists seem to ignore

the subject of religion altogether, hut tho true artist seems unable to do this. Mr Galsworthy is not, wc would think, very interested in religion himself, but he knows that it would be impossible to depict middle class society truthfully ixnd omit altogether the clergy and religion. In "Tho Saint's Progress" there is a person who is very unworldly, distressed by the moral lapse of one daughter and the unbelief of another. In "The Island Pharisees" there is another parson who argues ably from the moral anrl religious side about the size of families. And in his last book, "The White Monkey," there is a young wife who is about to have a child and seeks some religions strength from a husband who is unable to give it to her. The creation nf Soames Forsyte could not have entirely omitted the religious factor from modern life. He is too observant and faithful in his art. The Wcssex novels of Thomas Ilardy mnst include the choir practice of the village church and the architecture of the cathedral town and the speculation of the peasantry on death in order to be true pictures of society. But Lnglish novelists who introduce religion into their books are at a disadvantage because of the many different forms of religion among us. The Russians and the French can speak of religion so as to 1m understood by all; their references are to the Catholic religion, Eastern or Western. There is one terminology recognised everywhere. Mot many years ago a number of literary Frenchmen who had been sceptical returned to the Faith of the Church about the same time. There was Francois C'oppee, who wrote poetry and short stories of great charm, Paul Bourget, one of the lirst, novelists of our time, and M. Huysmans. Their conversion had effects upon iheir work. Coppee wrote a meat beautiful book, which was translated into English under tho name of "Happy Suffering." Bourget gave us several novels of great power on religion in human life. "The Disciple" was the story of a'philosopher who taught his young pupil that the essence of life is sensation. He must have every kind of mental and physical sensation, register them all, ami experience to the full the savour of them. He must remember that there is no God. Tho disciple obeys the teaching and makes havoc, of his career. The philosopher in the end recognises the futility of his doctrine in the wasted life of his pupil, and in the last pages of the book is found upon his books before God, "E'Etape," by the same author, and "En Route," by Huysmans, tell the story of the progress of a soul from darkness to light. They are like theM-onfessions of St. Augustine brought up to modern times. These Continental writers bring the Catholic religion into their pictures of human life. In the case of tho French it is the Roman kind; in the ease, of the Russians the Orthodox. They know that they will have a largo public who will understand easily all their references. But it is only when they write of past ages that English writers can do this, they-, have in making their appeal to depart from realism and from modern life. Walter Scott wrote of the Middle Ages, and Charles Roade in "The, Cloister and the Hearth," and Maurice Hewlett in "Tho Forest Lover" did the same. Shorthouse in "John Inglcsant" wrote about a man who was as far as possible, both Anglican and Roman, a man trained by a Jesuit to be a mediator between the two Churches in the seventeenth century. But the English novelist to-day introducing religion as a fenjturo of our modern life has, generally speaking, to make a choice of one sort of religion and thereby run a danger of losing the sympathy of many readers anil limiting his public. Robert Hugh Benson wrote quite plainly as a Tinman Catholic to win sympathy for the Roman fold. His fine novels like propaganda. Mrs Humphrey Ward wrote on behalf of Unitarians. Her "Robert Elsmere," because destructive criticism of the faith -so constantly changes, is now' of little interest. The Protestant form of Christianity has many champions, ?is Hall Caine, Marie Corelli, Harold Begbie, and Joseph Hocking, and as Anglo-Oatholic.s have become more influential in English society, bo they are increasingly represented in our fictien. Charlotte Yonge was a child of the Tractarian movement whicli began under the auspices of Pusey, Keble, and Newman at Oxford in 1833. The proceeds of "The Daisy Chain" alone enabled her to build the church in Norfolk Island for the Melanesian 'Mission. Dr. Neale wrote several historical novels. These belonged to the romantics. In our own day Mabel Dear.iner and Miss Ivetts have written, as realists, descriptions of modern life frqm the Anglo-Catholic point of view. A "best seller" the year before last was written by Mr Raymond, called "Tell England." It described an Anglo-Catholic padre teaching the faith to two young officers on a troopship, hearing their confessions and inspiring their military courage. Mr Coiripton Mackenzie won his spurs with books in which the Anglo-Catholic, religion was but ;in interesting feature of modern life. Lately, as in tho "Altar Stairs," he seams to have lest his sense of proportion. If the Church has been set up in the world to teach religion and morals with Divine authority, shu cannot faithfully refuso to speak about liction. The Romau Church places books which it considers harnjful to its people on the Index Kxpurgatorius. It only does this for the guidance of its own floc.k. What though its action generally increases the circulation of the book which is put under its ban, as in the case of the novels of Anatole France; the Roman Church hp.,s done her dtfty by her own children —she has acted as a rriother to them. Uufc what of those who do not acknowledge its claims? Has the Stfite apy right of the same sort to be a guide to them in morals! It would appear that the censorship of the Press has little to justify it in this regard, however useful it May be in operation. Surely it would be well if all ministers of religion with enlightened sympathy were from time to time to advise their people on the proper use of fietion. ere they to do this they would be very generous of their approval of much at issues from the press, and only occasionally would thero be need for condemnation. All books which depicted human nature faithfully both in ?t ? ei }gth and its weakness as the ans Shq&espeare do would pass •muster, but fiction which made light ® faithfulness to the marriage bond, notion which not only depicted vice T excused it i would "be denounced. a S e of materialism when tho rich f, re at making more money and e PQor are harassed lest they lose the of what they have, in an aiffiety about the means of >• • "® men from the art of have^T! 10 ' P ain tmg, and literature -I I . for their existence. The i ■ between science and cul- „ 18 by niean3 at an end- Governro 9dy to subsidise the ties Si of our Univefsithan the classical, to cnnthpr Which will, increase wealth • "84 that whioh makes character, wardif f° r lukewarmness toloftipat 8 which cultivates the do em °tions a3 fine literature may he a due succession of kind to ß o L^ fcion wh ° teadi ma r tenmfaK about human nature, its whkh IT I its sins, and tho nemesis its aehia upon them, as well as Greek J an d triumphs. The eld Good fc&id, "Know thyselfall will help us, and it ia which, matters,