“Perhaps the most dismal fact of history is the failure of the great organized bodies of ecclesiasticism to understand the simple genius of Christ's religion. Whatever the best in the churches of all time may have thought of the life & religion of Christ, taken as a whole they have succeeded in leaving upon the mind of a large portion of the world an impression of Christianity which is the direct opposite of the reality. Down to the present hour almost whole nations in Europe live, worship, & die under the belief that Christ is an ecclesiastical Christ, religion the sum of all the churches' observances, & faith an adhesion to the churches' creeds. I do not apportion blame; I simply record the fact. In many places the churches have literally stolen Christ from the people; they have made the Son of Man the Priest of an Order; they have taken Christianity from the city & imprisoned it behind altar rails; they have withdrawn it from the national life & doled it out to the few who pay to keep the deception up. The ideal of the New Jerusalem was: no temple [Rev.21:22a], but a God-inhabited society. Are we not reversing this ideal in an age when ‘the church’ still means in so many mouths ‘the clergy,’ instead of meaning the Christian society, & when 9 men are striving to get men to go to church for one who is striving to make men realize that they themselves are the Church? Yet even with words so strong as these, the superstition reigns in all but unbroken power. And everywhere, still men are found confounding the spectacular services of a church, the vicarious religion of a priest, & the traditional belief in a creed, with the living religion of the Son of Man. I should tell the people that the great use of the church is to help men to do without it. Church services are ‘diets’ of worship--they are meals. All who are hungry can take them, & that regularly. But no workman is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them. As a channel of nourishment, as a stimulus to holy deeds, as a link with all holy lives, let all men use it, & to the utmost of their opportunity. But by all that they know of Christ or care for man, let them beware of mistaking its services for Christianity.”
The City Without a Church - by Henry Drummond
by Henry Drummond (assistant to D.L.Moody in the UK, 1893)
“Perhaps the most dismal fact of history is the failure of the great organized bodies of ecclesiasticism to understand the simple genius of Christ's religion. Whatever the best in the churches of all time may have thought of the life & religion of Christ, taken as a whole they have succeeded in leaving upon the mind of a large portion of the world an impression of Christianity which is the direct opposite of the reality. Down to the present hour almost whole nations in Europe live, worship, & die under the belief that Christ is an ecclesiastical Christ, religion the sum of all the churches' observances, & faith an adhesion to the churches' creeds. I do not apportion blame; I simply record the fact. In many places the churches have literally stolen Christ from the people; they have made the Son of Man the Priest of an Order; they have taken Christianity from the city & imprisoned it behind altar rails; they have withdrawn it from the national life & doled it out to the few who pay to keep the deception up. The ideal of the New Jerusalem was: no temple [Rev.21:22a], but a God-inhabited society. Are we not reversing this ideal in an age when ‘the church’ still means in so many mouths ‘the clergy,’ instead of meaning the Christian society, & when 9 men are striving to get men to go to church for one who is striving to make men realize that they themselves are the Church? Yet even with words so strong as these, the superstition reigns in all but unbroken power. And everywhere, still men are found confounding the spectacular services of a church, the vicarious religion of a priest, & the traditional belief in a creed, with the living religion of the Son of Man. I should tell the people that the great use of the church is to help men to do without it. Church services are ‘diets’ of worship--they are meals. All who are hungry can take them, & that regularly. But no workman is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them. As a channel of nourishment, as a stimulus to holy deeds, as a link with all holy lives, let all men use it, & to the utmost of their opportunity. But by all that they know of Christ or care for man, let them beware of mistaking its services for Christianity.”
“Perhaps the most dismal fact of history is the failure of the great organized bodies of ecclesiasticism to understand the simple genius of Christ's religion. Whatever the best in the churches of all time may have thought of the life & religion of Christ, taken as a whole they have succeeded in leaving upon the mind of a large portion of the world an impression of Christianity which is the direct opposite of the reality. Down to the present hour almost whole nations in Europe live, worship, & die under the belief that Christ is an ecclesiastical Christ, religion the sum of all the churches' observances, & faith an adhesion to the churches' creeds. I do not apportion blame; I simply record the fact. In many places the churches have literally stolen Christ from the people; they have made the Son of Man the Priest of an Order; they have taken Christianity from the city & imprisoned it behind altar rails; they have withdrawn it from the national life & doled it out to the few who pay to keep the deception up. The ideal of the New Jerusalem was: no temple [Rev.21:22a], but a God-inhabited society. Are we not reversing this ideal in an age when ‘the church’ still means in so many mouths ‘the clergy,’ instead of meaning the Christian society, & when 9 men are striving to get men to go to church for one who is striving to make men realize that they themselves are the Church? Yet even with words so strong as these, the superstition reigns in all but unbroken power. And everywhere, still men are found confounding the spectacular services of a church, the vicarious religion of a priest, & the traditional belief in a creed, with the living religion of the Son of Man. I should tell the people that the great use of the church is to help men to do without it. Church services are ‘diets’ of worship--they are meals. All who are hungry can take them, & that regularly. But no workman is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them. As a channel of nourishment, as a stimulus to holy deeds, as a link with all holy lives, let all men use it, & to the utmost of their opportunity. But by all that they know of Christ or care for man, let them beware of mistaking its services for Christianity.”
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