The Quest

"Did your Saviour when upon earth wear cloth of silver and of gold?

"There is no redemption yet – neither for you nor for any of yours. The time is not come for the wearing of garments of gold.

"Mock not, nor slander. Your ostentation is a travesty of the Most High, and a defamation of your Saviour.

"Do you esteem the kingdom of God a trifle, that you array yourself and rejoice, while the world still lies in despair and in shackles?

"So plays a little girl with a doll, and calls herself a mother. She tosses and pets and prinks her little one, but it is all wood and paint and bran. And the real mother smiles – she who knows the anguish and the gladness.

"But you abandon the naked, living child for the bedizened doll. And the mother sheds tears of blood.

"Like peacocks, you strut through your marble churches, glittering in tinsel; but you let the kingdom of God lie like an uncleansed babe upon unclean linen – naked and languishing.

"And the Devil delights in your churches, your masses, and prayers and psalms – your treasure and fine linen; for the child lies naked at your back door, with the dogs, and it wails for its mother.

"Weep – as do I! Weep bitter tears – for that child is two thousand years old. And still it lies, unwashed and uncherished.

"Why do you vaunt your consecration, and prate of your Redeemer? Your Holy One still toils beneath His grievous cross, yet all your splendid churches have you built upon that heavy cross.

"You bear the mitre of Persians, and Egyptians, and the tabard of the Jews. And you also make use of the scourge wherewith the Jews did scourge Him.

"They bound and spat upon – they scourged and crucified and speared Him; but for two thousand years you have been roasting Him before a slow fire – before the fire of your lies and misrepresentations; of your treachery and arrogance; of your cruelties and perversions; of your pomp and oblations; of your transgressions, and of your attacks upon and strivings against the God who is Truth.

"You are commanded to serve your Father in spirit and in truth, and you have served Him with the letter and with lies.

"His prophets, who loved the truth better than their lives, you have burned at the stake, and have made them martyrs.

"Yet you have bent your proud neck to the world which you affect to despise. In the name of the Father you have burned and imprisoned sages; but at last you were forced to eat the bread of their wisdom, for the knife of the scornful was at your throat.

"The world you have disdained and denounced is wiser than you – more beautiful and even more holy.

"Black as the raven – black as the beetles, the moles, the creatures that live in the slime – black and vile, you burrow your secret way through the clear, bright world. But in your churches you enthrone yourselves and parade like kings – in violet and yellow and purple, and gold brocade.

"You were not commanded to found a kingdom solely for yourselves – a kingdom of the sacred and the elect in a world of the unholy and immature.

"You were commanded to spread abroad the kingdom of God over the whole earth – over all that weep and are oppressed.

"You were not commanded to despise the world and to forsake it, but you were commanded to hallow the world.

"You rend the world in twain, speaking of the sanctified and the unsanctified. Your Saviour lived among thieves, and died between murderers, nevertheless he promised them Paradise.

"Not until every man is sanctified, until every day is a holy day, and every house a House of God – not until then may you speak of redemption, and array yourself in white and gold.

"Woe unto you, forsakers of the world! Was not the world bestowed upon you by the Father as the noblest and most precious gift of the dearest of friends?

"How dare you despise it?

"Will you openly preserve the penny of your enemy, and reject the noblest gift of the Most High?

"Do you speak in the name of the Triune God? But you have smitten the Father's face – you have martyred the Son, and the Holy Ghost have you violated.

"You have been told that God is Truth. Yet you have striven against the truth with torture-tongs, with dungeons, and with burnings at the stake.

"You have made the Son of man an object of ridicule – a shield for lying and violence, a pretext for strife and bloodshed, a monstrous idol.

"And of all sins, the worst is the sin against the Holy Ghost – which is the bread that you eat, and the water wherein you swim.

"You shackle and restrain the Spirit. This is of all sins the worst, and this you know.

"Where God alone may reign – in the free human heart – there you establish yourselves with your laws and dogmas, your writings and your imageries.

"Think you, madman, that the wisdom of the Eternal can be comprised within the limits of written or printed pages?

"To Him your sacred books are as cobwebs and sweepings; for He lives and moves eternally, and book nor brain can compass Him. Like to flowing water, you are told, is the wisdom of God. Forever changing, forever the same, no finite word can picture His progressive wisdom.

"There is more of the Father's wisdom in the shy, faltering whisper of a poor heathen child, than in all your bulls and councils and decretals.

"Would you put a tube to the lips of the Father, that He may speak at your pleasure? Yet will He speak as seems best to Himself.

"Would you point with the finger and say to Him: 'Here! These shall speak in thy name, and to these shalt thou give wisdom, and these shalt thou inspire with understanding, and these shalt thou save, and these condemn!'

"But He will reply: 'There!' and will regard your pointings even as the lava of a volcano regards the guide-posts and little crosses on the slopes.

"But your opinions and your pride are avenged, for the world commands you as the hunter his hound, as the show-man his monkey. You pull the carriage of prince and monied man, and make grimaces before the powerful.

"They build you churches, and you say masses for them, although they be Satan himself.

"The world is sanctified without you, and you sanctify yourselves because of the world.

"That your Popes are not more dissolute, your prelates more prodigal, and your friars more slothful, is because the world has constrained you. But you have constrained the world to no purpose.

"You have set yourself against the usurer, but the world will practise usury, and you practise usury with the world. Thus are you the ape and the servant of the world.

"Where you have rivals, you show yourself discreet; but where you are without competitors, there as ever you corrupt the land.

"You follow after the world, as a captive shark follows a sailing ship. You turn and twist, but the world points out the way – not you.

"Like a kettle tied by mischievous boys to the tail of a dog, so do you rattle with hollow menaces behind the course of the world. You scare, but do not guide.

"Yes, you strive against the sanctifying of the world, for with your hands you would conceal the godlike fire of knowledge; but the flame bursts through your fingers, and consumes you.

"What have you done for the sheep committed to your care – for the poor and bereaved – for the oppressed and the disinherited?

"Submission you have taught them – ay – submission to Mammon. You have taught them to bow meekly to Satan.

"God's light – the light of knowledge – you have withheld from them. Woe be to you!

"You have taught them to beg, and to kiss the rod that smote them. You have cloaked the shame of alms-receiving, and have prated of honor in servitude.