ls,
that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous. The physical never could
prove the spiritual, which was the real and everlasting, which no
discovery in science or history can take from us. The Godship of Christ
rested upon no dogma, it was a conviction born into us with the new
birth. And it becomes an integral part of our personality, our very
being.

The secret, then, lay in a presentation of the divine message which would
convince and transform and electrify those who heard it to action--a
presentation of the message in terms which the age could grasp. That is
what Paul had done, he had drawn his figures boldly from the customs of
the life of his day, but a more or less intimate knowledge of these
ancient customs were necessary before modern men and women could
understand those figures and parallels. And the Church must awake
to her opportunities, to her perception of the Cause. . . .

What, then, was the function, the mission of the Church Universal? Once
she had laid claim to temporal power, believed herself to be the sole
agency of God on earth, had spoken ex cathedra on philosophy, history,
theology, and science, had undertaken to confer eternal bliss and to damn
forever. Her members, and even her priests, had gone from murder to
mass and from mass to murder, and she had engaged in cruel wars and
persecutions to curtail the liberties of mankind. Under that conception
religion was a form of insurance of the soul. Perhaps a common,
universal belief had been necessary in the dark ages before the sublime
idea of education for the masses had come; but the Church herself
--through ignorance--had opposed the growth of education, had set her
face sternly against the development of the individual, which Christ had
taught, the privilege of man to use the faculties of the intellect which
God had bestowed upon him. He himself, their rector, had advocated a
catholic acceptance, though much modified from the mediaeval acceptance,
--one that professed to go behind it to an earlier age. Yes, he must
admit with shame that he had been afraid to trust where God trusted, had
feared to confide the working out of the ultimate Truth of the minds of
the millions.

The Church had been monarchical in form, and some strove stubbornly
and blindly to keep her monarchical. Democracy in government was
outstripping her. Let them look around, to-day, and see what was
happening in the United States of America. A great movement was going on
to