ANOTHER element to be dealt with was that of religion. This was the more difficult inasmuch as, while its proctors claimed it as a science, and a progressive science, they hampered it with a tether-rope to its founders. To speak plainly, you were permitted, as I was, to career never so fast so your ways took you not outside the circle. When that not over distant circumference was reached the rope shortly reminded you—and sometimes violently if you went too headlong—that you were tethered to the centre and must by no means stray too far away. That centre was, I say, the Founder of the form of religion professed. It was much the same with Islam as with Buddha his system, and not much else with Christendom.
We had much ado therefore because the fair words of religionists made a very good show, and yet had the same effect in operation as those of the old rabbis at the period of Jesus our own Lord. In all cases we, looking into these matters somewhat narrowly and in detail, found that the error proceeded from one grand cause. I leave out the minor factors of greed of gold and of power, of that strange side-shoot of earnestness called fanaticism, of hypocrisy which generates so much blindness in those who think they are sincere. You may read of them all in our own Scriptures of the goodmen of Israel and of early mother Church, as those who fell victim to those same errors did also read them all down the ages. I say I leave all those aside and speak of the one cause fundamental.
We were all one grand army, we of the campaign to earth, and all we acted and interacted together. But we also had our departments of service whereon to concentrate our energy in principal. As I had lived in Christendom, to that system of religion I was allotted, and so of that I shall speak now.
The grand cause of error of which I speak is this:
Men spoke of the Christ as the Founder of their system. So. But the Christ of Whom they spoke was enthroned way back at the beginning of the Christian era, and from thence watched the progress of His Church. Whenever men asked what should they do in this case or in that, in order that they should not fail to co-ordinate their own acts with His will, the answer was, "Look backward to Him and learn of Him." And if any man inquired further where he would be able to find the will of the Christ expressed, the answer was that such expression would be found in a book, the book of the records of His acts and words. Naught but what was therein found was to be believed as His will, and on His will as therein expressed, the doings of Christendom were shaped.
And so it came to pass that Christendom became tied with a tether to a book. The Church truly was alive with the life of Him; His Spirit filled it up like the living coursing blood in a human body. But that life was being strangled and the body began to halt, and at last to go round more slowly in that circumscribed orbit.
Truly His words and acts recorded were a most precious heritage. They were meant to be a Shekinah to guide the Church through the wilderness of the ages. But, note you well, the Shekinah went before the Children of Jacob and led them. The Book of the New Covenant did not go before, but was enthroned behind. The light cast was true light, as from a beacon atop of a hill. But it lighted men from behind and threw their shadows before them. If they would look to the light they must turn their glance over their shoulders backward. Then they stumbled. It is not of orderly advance to be turning backward in order to see how to go forward.
That was the error men made. "He is our Captain," said they, "and He goes before us and we follow Him through death and Resurrection into His Heaven beyond." But for a sight of this Captain going before them they turned round and looked to their rear, which is not, I say, conducive to orderly advance, nor agreeable with reason.
So we began to take hold of the bolder sort and help them on. Jesus had pointed onward to the doing of greater works than He had done, and to His Presence which should lead men into the truth, not drive them from behind. So some men there were who, heeding this and understanding, made bold to move forward confident in this leading. They suffered of their fellow-men, but in the next generation, or next after that, the seed they had sown sprang up and bore its harvest.
So you will understand, my son, that the mistake men made was to hamper a living, moving Life with a Book. They regarded that Book not as what it was and is, wonderful, beautiful and mostly true, but as both infallible and also complete. But the Life of Christ has been continued in the world and is continued to-day. The few words and acts of Him in the Book of the four evangelists are not even as the source from which the river of Christendom flows. They are merely a few ripples on its broader tide to show what way it rides to the sea.
Men are beginning to see this now and to understand that if he spoke by His angels to good men of old, so does He speak to them to-day. These men go forward, glad of the beacon-light behind, but with greater gladness toward the more radiant light ahead. For there He is to-day, as He was when He went up to Salem that time. He roe: before you. Follow Him without fear. He promised He would lead you. Follow Him. He may not tarry on your hesitancy. Read what has been written of Him in the evangel. But read it while you march ahead. Do not turn back time and again to the shrine of Authority inquiring, as of the Delphian pythoness, "Shall I do this or that?" No. Bring the roll of those brief records along with you as you go forward on your journey. Unroll it on your pommel as you ride, for it is a good map for the present stage. If in some details obsolete, yet the grand contour of the country is well and boldly set out. There are other maps of later issue. Consult them also and add to the old one what details it lacks. But go forward all the time. And if some seek again to tether you brace your tendons and set your knees firm against your horse's flanks, and, urging forward, snap the rope with which they would bind you from behind. There be plenty, alas too plenty, who, not daring forward, have fallen behind, choked with the dust raised by those who have gone onward—erringly—choked and fallen by the wayside they be, and sunk into the slumber of death. You may do nothing for them, for still the Captain goes onward ahead and calls with brave and clarion voice for volunteers to lead the van. He shall not call in vain.
As to those others, well, there be all enough to company along with them. The dead shall bury the dead, and the dead past shall entomb them in its womb of night. But ahead the dawn is breaking. There be clouds upon its horizon truly, but the glad sun shall melt them into his rays— when he is at last quite fully risen. And in that day shall all men see how that, willing to bless His children every one, the Father has set but one only Sun in the midst of the firmament of His brightness. Men view that Sun at different angles according as the place of their habitation be to north or south of His heavenly path, and to some He is brighter and to others less bright. Yet He is the same Sun, and sole of His kind for earth's fair benediction.
Nor does He of Himself favour one people with more of His blessings and another people with less. He sheds His rays on all sides equally. It is the free will of the peoples which determines the ratio of their portion, each for each, in the election of the locality of their dwelling.
Read this parable aright, my son, and you shall see that if the Christ be Sun to one creed He must of necessity be Sun to all. For a Sun cannot be hid over all the surface of a world—except that world turn its face away from the Sun. Then He becomes hid truly, and yet, even so, but for a season.
