A ray of heavenly light traversing human life, the message of Christ has
been broken into a thousand rainbow colors and carried in a thousand
directions. It is the historical task of Christianity to assume with
every succeeding age a fresh metamorphosis, and to be forever
spiritualizing more and more her understanding of the Christ and of
salvation.
I am astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which
still exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer's proclamation, "it
is the letter which killeth"--after his protest against a dead
symbolism. The new religion is so profound that it is not understood
even now, and would seem a blasphemy to the greater number of
Christians. The person of Christ is the center of it. Redemption,
eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, incarnation, 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
which is heretical, the church whose sight is troubled and her heart
timid. Whether we will or no, there is an esoteric doctrine, there is a
relative revelation; each man enters into God so much as God enters into
him, or as Angelus, [Footnote: Angelus Silesius, otherwise Johannes
Soheffler, the German seventeenth century hymn-writer, whose tender and
mystical verses have been popularized in England by Miss Winkworth's
translations in the _Lyra Germanica_.
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