The Tragedy of The Questing Spirit

In 1947, in the wake of World War II, Coward McCann Publishers released a 700-page book called The Questing Spirit: Religion in the Literature of Our Time. All during the war, editors Halford E. Luccock and Frances Brentano gathered their examples of stories, plays, essays, and poems in the hope, which must often have seemed dim to them, that the War would end. This book is now virtually extinct. For the first few hundred pages, which I read to induce sleep, a little bit each night, I thought its extinction deserved. I was going to give it to the library, which might then recycle it, since it is falling apart. Indeed, many of the entries are merely devotional, even pieces by such recognized writers as E. M. Forster and Saki. I kept hoping for something that was actually a quest for understanding.

But a few passages stuck out. Lloyd Douglas (author of The Robe) referred to the world as “not fit to live in, much less die for.” L. P. Jacks wrote that humans were “ill adapted for living an easy life, but well adapted for living a difficult one.” And there was another story about shepherds that ran off to greet the birth of the Messiah, except one, who would not leave his sheep. He explained that he was a savior to those hundred sheep he stayed to protect. One particularly thought-provoking story was Peter’s Difficulty, by Frank Harris. Peter, guarding the gates of heaven, was worried that someone was helping deformed people sneak into heaven. Upon investigating, Peter found that it was the Virgin Mary who was doing it.

Some authors lived through the same spiritual angst that I had experienced. The loss of fundamentalist religious doctrine left me angry because God ought to exist. I wanted, and want, God to exist. But fundamentalism demanded that I believe all good people are going to hell if they did not accept the narrow Christian doctrines that I held. Even in the midst of fundamentalism, I never believed this. One author who shared my anger was the famous historian Will Durant. He wrote a letter (presumably to God, though he left it blank). He wrote, “Every invention strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; every new mechanism displaces men, and multiplies the horrors of war.” Human life, he said, was a “fitful pullulation.” Perhaps foreseeing Deep Ecology, Durant wrote that humans were “a planetary eczema.”

Some particularly striking entries were:

• The Dawn of Peace, a poem by Alfred Noyes about how peace was coming like the dawn; what was once a vain dream is now an unstoppable reality: “Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them, or thrust the dawn back for one hour.” I think that before he died, Noyes was sorely disappointed.
• Vachel Lindsay exactly reflected what I believe today in his poem The Unpardonable Sin. “This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: This is the sin no purging can atone: To send forth rapine in the name of Christ, To set the face, and make the heart a stone.” This is what I would like to say to the warlike Trump-worshipers 72 years later!
• John Galsworthy wrote a poem, Wonder, that made a similar point. “If God is thrilled by a battle cry...If God laughs when the guns thunder...Then, bewildered, I but wonder God of Love can love such things!” He ended the poem, “Merciless God, goodbye!”
• Perhaps most striking was a poem by Sara Henderson Hay, The Shape God Wears, in which different animals described what God is like, in their images, and then the human tells them they are all wrong: God is actually in man’s image. A forgotten masterpiece.

The editors must have hoped that their quest would have some effect on the world. It did not. But even if the rest of the world has forgotten this book, I will remember it, even if for just the dozen or so pages that stood out.