“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.”