If it would utterly discard
pomp and riches, if it would set its dignity at too high an estimate
for any wish to meddle in temporal or political affairs, if it would
firmly trample down all superstition, idolatry and bigotry, and 'use
no vain repetition as the heathen do'--to quote Christ's own words,-
-if in place of ancient dogma and incredible legendary lore, it
would open its doors to the marvels of science, the miracles and
magnificence daily displayed to us in the wonderful work of God's
Universe, then indeed it might obtain a lasting hold on mankind. It
might conquer Buddhism, and Christianize the whole earth. But--'If
thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness,'--and
while the Church remains double-sighted we are bound also to see
double. And so we listen with a complete and cynical atheism to the
conventional statement that 'one man alone' shall interpret Christ's
teaching to us of the Roman following,--and this man an old frail
teacher, whose bodily and intellectual powers are, in the course of
nature, steadily on the decline. Why we ask, must an aged man be
always elected to decide on the teaching of the ever-young and
deathless Christ?--to whom the burden of years was unknown, and
whose immortal spirit, cased for a while in clay, saw ever the rapt
vision of 'old things being made new'? In all other work but this of
religious faith, men in the prime of life are selected to lead,--men
of energy, thought, action, and endeavour,--but for the sublime and
difficult task of lifting the struggling human soul out of low
things to lofty, an old man, weak, and tottering on the verge of the
grave, is set before us as our 'infallible' teacher! There is
something appalling in the fact, that look where we may, no
profession holds out much chance of power or authority to any man
past sixty, but the Head of the Church may be so old that he can
hardly move one foot before the other, yet he is permitted to be
declared the representative of the ever-working, ever-helping, ever-
comforting Christ, who never knew what it was to be old! Enough,
however of this strange superstition which is only one of many in
the Church, and which are all the result of double or perverted
sight,--I come to the last part of the text which runs, 'If
therefore the light in thee be darkness how great is that darkness.
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