er in the history of the world
was Jesus of Nazareth so interesting and predominant. Between Buddha,
teaching the blessing of eternal sleep, and Christ, teaching the
blessing of eternal life, mankind has been long divided, but slowly,
surely, the influence of the Christ has overtaken that of the Buddha
until that portion of the world which has advanced most by process of
evolution from the primal state of man now worships at the shrine of
Christ and him risen from the dead, not at the sign of Buddha and total
oblivion.

The blessed birthright from God, the glory of heaven, the teaching and
example of the Prince of Peace--have been engulfed beneath oceans of
ignorance and superstition through two thousand years of embittered
controversy. During the dark ages coming down even to our own time the
very light of truth was shut out from the eyes and hearts and minds of
men. The blood of the martyrs we were assured in those early days
was the seed of the church. The blood of the martyrs was the blood of
man--weak, cruel, fallible man, who, whether he got his inspiration from
the Tiber or the Rhine, from Geneva, from Edinburgh or from Rome, did
equally the devil's work in God's name. None of the viceregents of
heaven, as they claimed to be, knew much or seemed to care much about
the word of the Gentle One of Bethlehem, whom they had adopted as their
titular divinity much as men in commerce adopt a trade-mark.

II

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 th