Modern Christianity is beautiful exceedingly, and he who admires not is
eyed batly and minded as the mole. "Sell all thou hast," said Christ and
"give to the poor." All--no less--in order "to be saved." The poor were
Christ's peculiar care. Ever for them and their privations, and
not greatly for their spiritual darkness, fell from his lips the
compassionate word, the mandate divine for their relief and cherishing.
Of foreign missions, of home missions, of mission schools, of church
buildings, of work among pagans _in partibus infidelium_, of work among
sailors, of communion table, of delegates to councils--of any of these
things he knew no more than the moon man. They were inventions of
others, as is the entire florid and flamboyant fabric of ecclesiasticism
that has been reared, stone by stone and century after century, upon his
simple life and works and words. "Founder," indeed! He founded nothing,
instituted nothing; Paul did all that Christ simply went about doing,
and being, good--admonishing the rich, whom he regarded as criminals,
comforting the luckless and uttering wisdom with that Oriental
indirection wherein our stupid ingenuity finds imaginary warrant for all
desiderated pranks and fads.