Christ’s Christianity is beautiful exceedingly, and he who admires
not is eyed batly and minded as the mole. “Sell all that 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 for their relief and
cherishing. Of foreign missions, of home missions, of mission schools,
of church building, 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 are
later inventions, 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
honestly but foolishly regarded as criminals, comforting the luckless
and uttering wisdom with that Oriental indirection wherein our stupid
ingenuity finds imaginary warrant for all our pranks and fads.