Lures of Life

by Joseph Lucas

Theology is the great imposture planted on mankind as a substitute for the teachings of Jesus Christ. When one leaves the words of Christ and strays amongst the words of men, it is like a traveller switching off the main line whereon his destination lies and losing himself on a side-track. It is disaster to side-track on the journey of life. Keep to the words of Christ and you keep on the main line. The gospel as revealed in the teachings of Jesus is entirely free from the sacerdotal imperative which nowadays imposes priest and ritual in the path of spiritual worship and blocks the fair-way to God. Priests and rituals and creeds are non-essentials; they are only wrappings: they are not religion, nor the best part of it. We must distinguish between living, breathing Christianity and the man-made ecclesiastical garments which clothe it fashionably, because the difference between them is vital and far-reaching. True religion, however, is seldom found stripped of all temporary wrappings, but its spiritual vigour survives in spite of Church-made millinery which encumbers it and impedes its healthy growth. Strip the religion of Jesus Christ of its grave-clothes and put the pure gospel in her mouth, and never tidings could be told to weary, heavy-laden men to-day which would be hailed as half so welcome. The one thing needful to make this world an earthly paradise, delightful to dwell in, is for men to live face to face with God, without a screen of ritual or image or priestcraft obstructing the view of our Heavenly Father; it is the light of God's countenance that cheers the heart of man, and strengthens him to live a good life in all sincerity of purpose.

Ecclesiastics have built up the Church into a colossal business trust which corners the Bread of Life and doles it to hungry mortals on terms of its own making. The Church is a wealthy corporation with immense property and privilege to safeguard and hold against all comers, and these temporal possessions engage its keenest thought and ceaseless activity. So it has important work to do other than saving the souls of men. To maintain its temporal authority in the world it has tampered with the teaching of Jesus Christ; by cunning craftiness of man the gospel has been twisted into theology, and the way of salvation shrouded behind a dense veil of ceremonial observances which the Church imposes on people and declares necessary to the saving of their souls. Much conflicting religious literature is issued annually by free-lances of the Press to explain the downright simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus; and these conflicting opinions add other stumbling-blocks in the way, for they baffle the brains of the gentle reader, beating up a thick dust of doubt around him that his faith is smothered in a cloud of perplexity which darkens the daylight of truth.

The words of Jesus, when read and pondered over, prove religion to be a very simple matter. Yet this simplicity is its standing peril. So little human wisdom is needed to understand the words of Christ that we are apt to fear they do not mean what they say in plainest language--the language runs too easy for the majesty and importance and solemnity of the theme. We think there is an occult mystery lurking behind the honest homely phrases. Language so often bewilders simple-minded people that we are hard of belief when told we can find the way to heaven ourselves without the aid of a bishop's pastoral staff to point it out. The difficulty is to convince the plain man that he understands the words of Jesus when he reads them, and that he feels his spirit touch the Spirit of the Saviour of his soul without a priest between to make the contact. The Church as a commercial organization would fall quickly into bankruptcy if the gospel in its naked plainness was believed in whole-heartedly.

Very superior people tell us that the teachings of Jesus are only the beginning of God's revelation to man; they tell us that new revelations are constantly flowing in upon us through the sacred channel of the Church, and that the Church alone holds the key which deciphers these confidential messages despatched from mysterious sources for our edification. This is ecclesiastical bluff. The teachings of Jesus in the gospels suffice the spiritual needs of men through all time--time past, time present, and time to come. When God legislates once He legislates for aye, for truth is unchanging and cannot be improved on as the world grows older. No Divine after-thoughts will be added to the written word nor supplementary revelation supplied to guide men through the tangling maze of life. The Spirit of God is equal to all emergencies arising between now and the sundown of time. New-fallen light may illumine the written word in the forward quest of faith, for every age makes its own theology and coins new language to express old truths. The words of Christ are inexhaustible treasure locked in a deep mine, and in that mine lies many a lode of truth untapped by the diggers. The old gospel mine yields more and more treasure as the searchers strike deeper and deeper into its secret heart. The last nugget of truth has not yet been lifted from the treasure-house of God's Word.

Back to the words of Christ: this is the one hope of a truly good life--national or individual. If we forsake Christ and turn to the teachings of the Church for our spiritual well-being, we suffer for our folly in so doing. The real meaning of anything is to be found at its beginning not in its latest developments. As religious systems develop and grow old they grow corrupt, and on the earthly journey pick up error with truth, and the two mixed together look equally sacrosanct to the uninitiated, simple soul, and even the very elect are ofttimes deceived. Water is purest at the spring-head; the farther it flows from the fountain, the more contaminated it becomes. Back to Jesus Christ and His teachings in the gospels. His words are the very life and light of men.

Men often mistake the nature of religion through wrong teaching received in early years or no teaching received at all, thus giving the well-rooted weeds of error a long start to grow rampant in the human soil. Some people think religion is an isolated activity, like collecting old china, a hobby you can pursue, drop, and pick up again at leisure. Other people imagine it is the conventional badge of good society, giving tone to a life of fashionable respectability, like a carnation slipped into your buttonhole which adds a finishing touch to your evening dress. But they are not over careful, these conventional people, to apply its tenets in the privacy of their homes; religion is never enthroned as a domestic virtue. Lord Melbourne, the early Victorian Prime Minister, was one day coming from church in the country in a mighty fume. Finding a friend on the road, he unloaded: "It's too bad. I have always been a supporter of the Church, and I have always upheld the clergy. But it is really too bad to have to listen to a sermon like that we had this morning. Why, the preacher actually insisted upon applying religion to a man's private life!"

Their interior life is neither better nor worse for hitching on religion as a supplementary virtue. Such good people would never miss an opportunity of attending a missionary meeting at Caxton Hall or neglect an early morning service at the parish church, but the maid-of-all-work in the kitchen is not benefited by the religious fervour which perfumes her ladyship with the odour of sanctity.

Religion is a state of mind giving purpose and direction to the whole round of a man's activities. Religion is not like a red holly-berry in a tumbler of clear water, a hard, insoluble object, pretty enough seen through the crystal medium, but working no change in the water. Religion resembles a drop of cochineal falling into the water; it colours with rose hue the full contents of the tumbler; it tinges the whole character and conduct of a man; it permeates his thoughts and feelings and actions, changing the colour of his life for good and for ever. Religion works a change--a radical change--that is the point. It is not a question of drapery; it does not merely hang up a decoration here and there to improve appearances, leaving the secret chambers of the heart unclean. It makes a new man in Christ Jesus even out of the coarsest raw material to be found on the human market.

The Church as established in our midst to-day cannot work a social regeneration in the land, for it gives forth so little of the teaching of Christ to the people. The gold of truth it circulates is mixed with the dross of error of its own minting. It may bear the image and superscription of Christ on it and pass the world's counter as genuine metal, but it is counterfeit coin of the kingdom. The Church does not grip the people. It is a fashionable institution of conventional high-grade orthodoxy, but it is a thing apart from the people. Its clergy socially are a multitude of pleasant, amiable, guileless folk spread over the tennis-lawns and garden-parties of England on a summer's afternoon, mingling good-humouredly with their neighbours, but ecclesiastically they belt themselves in a compact phalanx of self-centred, intolerant men with a purpose in life, or by preference they are self-constituted "priests." They hold the Church as a close borough, consume its revenues, swear by its creed, and maintain its privileges. They are strong partisans; the same interest guides them which governs the business man in upholding his trade interests--the sacred rights of property. To defend their inherited rights they will fight doggedly, and surrender only in the last trench.

Outside the charmed enclosure of the Church the clergy esteem their Christian neighbours ecclesiastical inferiors, not to be consorted with on equal footing, and they leave the Almighty to take charge of outsiders here and hereafter. As a class long years of clerical assumption has sapped the humanness out of their nature, and only a priest is left in their skin.