Rank, wealth, and all kinds of ostentation should be to you
pitiable--not enviable.
IS IT SO? Do you prefer poverty with a pure conscience to ill-gotten
riches? Would you rather be a faithful servant of Christ or a slave of
Mammon? Give the answer to your own soul,--but give it honestly--if you
can!
If you find, on close self-examination, that you love yourself, your
own importance, your position, your money, your household goods and
clothes, your place in what you call “society,” more than the steady
working for and following of Christ,--YOU ARE NOT A CHRISTIAN. That
being the case, be brave about it! Say what you are, and do not pretend
to be what you are not!
It ought to be quite easy for you to come to a clear understanding
with yourselves. Take down the New Testament and read it. Read it as
closely and carefully as you read your cheap newspapers, and with
as much eagerness to find out “news.” For news there is in it, and
of grave import. Not news affecting the things of this world, which
pass like a breath of wind and are no more,--but news which treats of
Eternal Facts, outlasting the creation and re-creation of countless
worlds. Read this book for yourselves, I say, rather than take it in
portions on Sundays only from your clergy,--and devote your earnest
attention to the simple precepts uttered by Christ Himself. If you
are a Christian, you believe Christ was an Incarnation of God,--then
does it not behove you to listen when God speaks? Or is it a matter
of indifference to you that the Maker and Upholder of millions of
universes should have condescended to come and teach you how to live?
If it is, then stand forth and let us see you! Do not attend places of
worship merely to be noticed by your neighbours. For,--apart from such
conduct being strictly forbidden by Christ,--you insult other persons
by your presence as a liar and hypocrite. This is what you may call a
“rude” statement; plain-speaking and truth-telling are always called
“rude.” You will find the utmost plain-speaking in the Gospels upon
which you profess to pin your faith. If you have any “fancy Ritualism”
lurking about you, you will discover that “forms” are not tolerated by
the Saviour of mankind.
“All their works they do for to be seen of men; they make broad their
phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments.”
“Shows” of religion are severely censured and condemned by Him whose
commands we assume to try and obey,--we can scarcely find even a peg
whereon to hang an excuse for our practice of praying in public, while
“vain repetitions” of prayer are expressly prohibited. We shall find
nothing in the New Testament to condone the “evening dress” services of
a certain West-end clergyman, who shall be nameless;--or to countenance
“dramatic” recitations from the steps of a Church chancel, by an
actress standing boldly there with her back to the Communion Table. I
repeat--Read the Four Gospels; they are very much mis-read in these
days, and even in the Churches are only gabbled. See if your private
and personal lives are in keeping with the commands there set down.
If not, cease to play Humbug with the Eternities;--they will avenge
themselves upon your hypocrisy in a way you dream not of! “Whosoever
excuses himself accuses himself.”
The true Christian faith has no dogma,--no form--no sect. It starts
with Christ as God-in-man, in an all-embracing love for God and His
whole Creation, with an explicit and clear understanding (as symbolized
so emphatically in the Crucifixion and Resurrection) that each
individual soul is an immortal germ of life, in process of eternal
development, to which each new “experience” of thought, whether on
this planet or others, adds larger powers, wider intelligence, and
intensified consciousness. There are no “isms” in this faith--no
bigotry, and no intolerance. It leaves no ground for discussion.
“This is my commandment,--That ye love one another as I have loved you.”
It is all there,--simple, straight, and pure--no more, no less than
this.
“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what
is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility. It is,
therefore, able to undertake all things, and it completes many things
and warrants them to take effect where he who does not love would faint
and lie down. Love is watchful, and, sleeping, slumbereth not. Though
weary, it is not tired; though alarmed, it is not confounded, but, as a
lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards, and securely
passes all.... Love is born of God and cannot rest but in God, above
all created things.”
Is OUR Gospel of modern life and society to-day one of love or hate? Do
we help each other more readily than we kick each other down? Are we
more eager to say kind things of each other or cruel? Do we prefer to
praise or to slander our neighbours? Is it not absolutely true that
“a cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they
run?” Can we leave anybody alone without covert or open detraction from
his or her merits? Even in the most ordinary, every-day life do we not
see people taking a malicious, insane delight in making their next-door
neighbours as uncomfortable as possible in every petty way they can?
These persons, by the way, are generally the class who go to Church
most regularly, and are constant Communicants. Do they not by their
profane attempt to assimilate the malignity of their dispositions with
the gospel of Christ, deserve to be considered as mere blasphemers of
the Faith?
Yet, as a matter of fact, it is much easier to love than to hate. Love
is the natural and native air of the immortal soul. “While we fulfil
the law of love in all our thoughts and actions, we cannot fail to
grow.” Hatred, discontent, envy, and pessimism cramp all the higher
faculties of the mind, and very often actually breed disease in the
body. To love all creation is to draw the responsive health and life of
creation into one’s own immortal cognizance. “Love easily loosens all
our bonds. There is no discomfort that will not yield to its sovereign
power.” But it must not be a selfish love. It must be that Love which
is the keynote of the Christian Faith--“Love one another as I have
loved you.”
It follows very plainly that if we truly loved one another there would
be no wars, no envyings, no racial hatreds, no over-reaching of our
brethren for either wealth, place, or power. There would be no such
hells as the Lancashire factories, for example, where, as Allen Clarke
graphically tells us,[1] “Amidst that sickening jerry-jumble of cheap
bricks and cheaper British industry, over a hundred thousand men,
women, and children toil and exist, sweating in the vast, hot, stuffy
mills and sweltering forges--going, when young, to the smut-surrounded
schools to improve their minds, and trying to commune with the living
God in the dreary, dead, besmirched churches and grimy puritanical
chapels; growing up stunted, breeding thoughtlessly, dying prematurely,
knowing not, nor dreaming, except for here and there a solitary one
cursed with keen sight and sensitive soul, of aught better and brighter
than this shrieking, steaming sphere of slime and sorrow.” Contrast
this picture with a crowded “supper night” at the Carlton or any other
fashionable Feeding-place of London, and then maintain, if you dare,
that the men and women who are responsible for two such differing sides
of life are “Christians.”
England is, I am told, at the present juncture in danger of becoming
“Romanized.” Priests and nuns of various “orders,” who have been thrust
out of France and Spain for intermeddling, are seeking refuge here,
in company with the organ-grinders and other folk who have been found
unnecessary in their own countries. From Paris official news was cabled
on September 11th as follows:--