I hurried through my work, dusted off the desk, locked the typewriter,
and at two o’clock mounted my bicycle, went straight out Seneca street,
over the iron bridge, on out the plank road, past Wendlings, through
Springbrook, and stopped then for the first time, and standing on
a rising slope of ground, I looked around in every direction. The
dandelions seemed to cover the earth as with a carpet, and great masses
of white hawthorn-trees in bridal array decked the landscape. The trees
were bursting into leaf, and through the silence there came the drowsy
hum of insects, and away off in the distance I could just detect the
tinkle of a cowbell. To the left, two miles away, I saw a dense wood
which seemed to transform the hill on which it stood into a great green
mound.
“Yes, that surely is the place,” I said. I followed the plank road a
mile further, then turned into a road which seemed like two paths side
by side, as a line of green sward filled the centre of the roadway. I
came to the wood, let down the bars, and back in the clearing was the
log house, and out under the spreading branches of a great oak sat The
Man. He smiled the same sweet smile and motioned me to a seat beside
him, and together we sat in silence. The calm and rest seemed complete.
“Let us sit here under the trees,” said The Man, “and I will explain
several things which you must understand before I make known the higher
truths which you are to give to mankind.
“Perhaps you have wondered why I do not go out into the world and teach
face to face; and my reason, friend, for not doing this, is because I
must needs disguise myself, if I go among the people. They would not
comprehend me, but would shout, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ as they
did in the days of old. If I should go into the city and teach as the
Master did, can you imagine the headlines in the Sunday papers? I
would have followers of course, but even they would misunderstand me
and quarrel among themselves about who should be the greatest in the
Kingdom of Heaven. Many of them would fall down and worship me, and
when I passed out of their sight there would be an ever-increasing
number who would deify me, confounding my personality with that of a
God, while the power I possess is possible for all men. They would
say I was not a man but a ‘supreme being.’ On my metaphor they would
construct a system of theology, and would use my words as a fence to
hedge in and limit truth, instead of accepting my principles as a
broad base on which they might build a tower to touch the skies.
“A modern prophet has said, ‘I am astonished at the incredible amount
of Judaism and formalism which still exists nineteen centuries after
the Redeemer’s proclamation.’ ‘It is the letter that killeth,’ after
his protest against the use of a dead symbolism.
“The new religion, which is the old, is so profound that it is not
understood even now, and is a blasphemy to the greater number of
professing Christians. The person of Christ is the centre of it.
Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, judgment,
Satan, heaven and hell--all these beliefs have been so materialized and
coarsened that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle
of things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted.
Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered. It is
the Church that is heretical; the Church it is whose soul is troubled
and whose heart is timid. Whether we will or no there is an esoteric
doctrine--there is a direct revelation, ‘Each man enters into God so
much as God enters into him.’
“They would call me a heretic, and you must remember the heretic is
one with faith plus. I do not limit faith to this and that, but extend
it to all things. Not only is Sunday holy, but all time is holy. The
chancel is no more sacred than the pew. The world is God’s and all,
everything is sacred to His use--our needs are His use.
“They would literalize my tropes to suit their own prejudices, and
still insisting I was a god, distort my meaning in order to give a show
of reason to their own wrong acts. This has been done over and over, as
history tells you.
“Osiris, Thor, Memnon, Jupiter, Apollo, Gautama, and many others I
could name of whom you know, were strong and brave men who lived
on earth and bestowed great benefits on mankind; but ignorant and
headstrong people, not content that these great men should live out
their simple lives--for the great are simple, and pass for what they
are--destroyed to a certain extent their good influence by affirming
them to be not men at all; and to prove their statements, as untruthful
people ever do strain heaven and earth to prove their allegations,
they invented many stories and plans, such as that the great man was
born in a ‘_miraculous_’ way--as if the natural birth was not miracle
enough!--there being at the time a most erroneous idea that the act
of vitalization was vicious and wrong, and this barbaric idea still
remains with us to a certain extent.
“You remember in olden time priests (men who were believed to be in
direct communication with Deity) were supposed to have power to grant
absolution--that is, to forgive sin--and these granted indulgences;
that is, leave for the person to perform certain sinful acts, and
by paying a certain sum to the priests no punishment was inflicted
upon the sinner. The physical relations of the sexes were supposed
by these heathen to be sinful (and indeed they certainly are under
wrong conditions!) where the symbolic meaning is lost sight of, but
like other sacraments, most holy when performed in right spirit,
as symbolizing a perfect union of spirit, a complete giving up and
surrender of _soul to soul_; and many men now, having stood with a
woman before a priest and made certain promises, and having paid this
priest a sum of money, believe that they have certain rights over
this woman; and some women, I am sorry to say, believe too that it
is their duty to submit to a loveless embrace thus desecrating the
body, which is the temple of the Most High. And as it is a law of God
that sin cannot go unpunished, you see the almost endless misery this
transgression entails.
“Sin can only be wiped out with suffering. No community, scarcely a
house is free from this taint; and yet up to to-day, no public teacher
(we need teachers not preachers), has lifted his voice or used pen to
right this wrong which men and women in their blindness have pulled
down on themselves; but in fact men have been continually fixed in
the wrong by the encouragement given to marriages of expediency and
a multitude of unavowable motives, all of which are supposed to be
consecrated by the religious ceremony.”