What is easy, for faith is
impossible for reflection. Such expressions as "Saved by the
blood of the Lamb" or "Baptised by His precious blood" fill their
souls with a gentle and sweet emotion, while upon a more
thoughtful mind they have a very different effect.
Apart from the apparent injustice of vicarious atonement, the
student is well aware that the whole of this sanguinary metaphor
is drawn really from the Pagan rites of Mithra, where the
neophyte was actually placed under a bull at the ceremony of the
TAUROBOLIUM, and was drenched, through a grating, with the blood
of the slaughtered animal. Such reminiscences of the more brutal
side of Paganism are not helpful to the thoughtful and sensitive
modern mind. But what is always fresh and always useful and
always beautiful, is the memory of the sweet Spirit who wandered
on the hillsides of Galilee; who gathered the children
around him; who met his friends in innocent good-fellowship; who
shrank from forms and ceremonies, craving always for the inner
meaning; who forgave the sinner; who championed the poor, and who
in every decision threw his weight upon the side of charity and
breadth of view. When to this character you add those wondrous
psychic powers already analysed, you do, indeed, find a supreme
character in the world's history who obviously stands nearer to
the Highest than any other. When one compares the general effect
of His teaching with that of the more rigid churches, one marvels
how in their dogmatism, their insistence upon forms, their
exclusiveness, their pomp and their intolerance, they could have
got so far away from the example of their Master, so that as one
looks upon Him and them, one feels that there is absolute deep
antagonism and that one cannot speak of the Church and Christ,
but only of the Church or Christ.
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