HAT a power the Church could haven7338 ¶1
W been through all the years and centuries—and what a power to-day—if it had built and stood soundly on this great central theme of the teaching of Jesus. It is sometimes a question whether the Church has not had a great part to play in obscuring the real life mission and teaching of Jesus. It is a question whether it has not been giving a stone in place of the bread for which such great multitudes have been eager.n7338 ¶2
We speak of the Church of Christ, forgetting that Jesus, the Christ, never had the slightest thing to do with the establishing of any kind ofachurch. He never had anything to do with, and he unquestionably never had any thought of institutionalising religion or any of his religious teachings. On the contrary, we find him continually speaking against the institutionalised systems he found in his day. Much that was orthodox in religion then he endeavoured to show the people related merely to externals, sometimes even to the degree of resulting in error, and therefore of the nature of stumbling blocks for those who would know the real fundamentals of the truly religious life.n7338 ¶3
So his whole life and teaching were against any established or institutionalised religiomn7338 ¶4
It is rather as Henry Drummond has said: “Christ sets his followers no tasks. He appoints no hours. He allots no sphere. He himself simply went about and did good. He did not stop to do some special thing which should be called religious. His life was his religion. . . . His pulpit was the hillside, his congregation a woman at a well.... We never think of him in connection with a Church. We cannot picture him in the garb of a priest or belonging to any of the classes who specialise religion. His service was of a universal human order.”n7338 ¶5
Undoubtedly the church with its magnificent opportunities should have a good and a thorough house-cleaning. There should be a throwing out of many used and now thoroughly worthless things. It is safe to say that it could easily get rid of at least three-quarters of the impedimenta that have come down with it through the ages. Much of it belongs ta other ages and much of it we have now entirely outgrown. To be effective it must be simplified—the same as one of the great secrets of effective living lies along the road of simplifying.n7338 ¶6
, Does any one who knows at all of the lifen7338 ¶7
_ of Jesus have any doubt that were he here today, many of the institutionalised things in the church that bears his name would seem to him as strange and grotesque and uncanny and as deplorable as were many of the things he found in the established church when he was here? Do we realise how thoroughly he would unquestionably condemn many of the things that his keen mind and his loving heart would find? Much of its bread is stale; it needs a new baking. A new day calls for new wine, and as Jesus said, it is foolish to attempt to put a new wine into old bottles. This is a new day: there is anew wine. Mankind is advancing and will rapidly leave the church behind unless it will drop its man-made theories, and rededicate itself to the simple and fundamental teachings of Jesus.n7338 ¶8
It should be a leader and not a follower in religious thought. But many splendid and earnest men in it have been and are earnestly working for this end. It is even now beginning to be vitalised by this great truth of Jesus’ life. It was that splendid thinker and gifted teacher of men, Frederick L. Hosmer, who wrote:n7338 ¶9
“Qur thought o’erflows each written scroll,n7338 ¶10
Our creeds, they rise and fall; The life of God within the soul Lives and outlasts them all.”n7338 ¶11
If believing on the name—the person—of Jesus, making some kind of public confession, and being baptised in his name, were necessary in some established scheme of salvation and redemption, then certainly God was very stupid, or slow, or lazy in connection with alln7338 ¶12