It was knock-down and drag-out theology, the ruthless machinery of
organized churchism—the rank materialism of things temporal—not the
teachings of Christ and the spirit of the Christian religion—which so
long filled the world with blood and tears.
I have often in talking with intelligent Jews expressed a wonder that
they should stigmatize the most illustrious Jew as an impostor, saying
to them: “What matters it whether Jesus was of divine or human
parentage—a human being or an immortal spirit? He was a Jew: a
glorious, unoffending Jew, done to death by a mob of hoodlums in
Jerusalem. Why should not you and I call him Master and kneel together
in love and pity at his feet?”
Never have I received any satisfying answer. Partyism—churchism—will
ever stick to its fetish. Too many churches—or, shall I say, church
fabrics—breeding controversy where there should be agreement, each sect
and subdivision fighting phantoms of its fancy. In the city that once
proclaimed itself eternal there is war between the Quirinal and the
Vatican, the government of Italy and the papal hierarchy. In France the
government of the republic and the Church of Rome are at daggers-drawn.
Before the world-war England and Germany—each claiming to be
Protestant—were looking on askance, irresolute, not as to which side
might be right and which wrong, but on which side “is my bread to be
buttered?” In America, where it was said by the witty Frenchmen we have
fifty religions and only one soup, there are people who think we should
begin to organize to stop the threatened coming of the Pope, and such
like! “O Liberty,” cried Madame Roland, “how many crimes are committed
in thy name!” “O Churchism,” may I not say, “how much nonsense is
trolled off in thy name!”
I would think twice before trusting the wisest and best of men with
absolute power; but I would trust never any body of men—never any
Sanhedrim, consistory, church congress or party convention—with
absolute power. Honest men are often led to do or to assent, in
association, what they would disdain upon their conscience and
responsibility as individuals. _En masse_ extremism generally prevails,
and extremism is always wrong; it is the more wrong and the more
dangerous because it is rarely wanting for plausible sophistries,
furnishing congenial and convincing argument to the mind of the
unthinking for whatever it has to propose.