Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/69

pagan Rome engrafted on the conversion and repentance of the Jew, Peter, who, in the time of trial, "knew not the Man." Curiously enough, it is just the "Man," the real typical Christ, the pure, strong God-in-humanity who is still "not known" in the Roman Catholic ritual. There are prayers to the "Sacred Heart" and to other physical attributes of Jesus,—just as in old Rome there were prayers to the physical attributes of the various deities, but of the perfect "Man," as seen in Christ's dauntless love of truth and exposure of shams, His scourging of the thieves out of the holy temple, His grand indifference to the world's malice and hatred, and His conquest over death and the grave,—of these things we are given no clear or helpful image. Nevertheless, it is the "Man" we most need,—the "Man" who came to us to teach us how to live;—the brother, the friend, the close sympathizer,—the great Creator of all life mingling Himself with His human creation in a beautiful, tender, loving, wise and all-pitiful Spirit, wherein is no hate, no revenge, and no intolerance! This is the Christ;—this is His Christianity. Romanism, on the contrary, allows plenty of space for those who want to hate as well as to love, and it is as helpful or as useless as any of the thousand and one dogmas built up around Christ, dogmas which include bad passions as well as divine aspirations. The danger of such a creed gaining too much ground in England, the land where our forefathers fought against it and trampled it out with their own blood and tears, is not because it is a particular form of religious Faith, but because it is an intolerant system of secret Government. This has been