The _mise-en-scene_ has changed immensely. The gospel
has been encased in theology, in ritual, in ecclesiastical authority,
in conventional forms of charity, like some small bone of a saint in a
gilded reliquary; but the relic for once is genuine, and the gospel
has been preserved by those thick incrustations. Many an isolated
fanatic or evangelical missionary in the slums shows a greater
resemblance to the apostles in his outer situation than the pope does;
but what mind-healer or revivalist nowadays preaches the doom of the
natural world and its vanity, or the reversal of animal values, or the
blessedness of poverty and chastity, or the inferiority of natural
human bonds, or a contempt for lay philosophy? Yet in his palace full
of pagan marbles the pope actually preaches all this. It is here, and
certainly not among the modernists, that the gospel is still believed.
Of course, it is open to any one to say that there is a nobler
religion possible without these trammels and this officialdom, that
there is a deeper philosophy than this supernaturalistic rationalism,
that there is a sweeter life than this legal piety. Perhaps: I think
the pagan Greeks, the Buddhists, the Mohammedans would have much to
say for themselves before the impartial tribunal of human nature and
reason.
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