The Kingdom of God is Within You; What is Art?

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Here, for example, is a characteristic expression of opinion in the American periodical, The Arena, for November, 1890, from an article entitled "New Basis of Church Life." Discussing the significance of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, the author, having no reason for obscuring its meaning as the ecclesiastics do, says: —

"Devout common sense must gradually come to look upon Christ as a philanthropic teacher, who, like every enthusiast who ever taught, went to an Utopian extreme in his own philosophy. Every great agitation for the betterment of the world has been led by men who beheld their own mission with such absorbing intensity that they could see little else. It is no reproach to Christ to say that he had the typical reformer's temperament; that his precepts cannot be literally accepted as a complete philosophy of life; and that men are to analyze them reverently, but, at the same time, in the spirit of ordinary truth-seeking criticism," etc.

"Christ did in fact preach absolute communism and anarchy; but," and so on. Christ would have been glad to have expressed Himself in more fitting terms, but He did not possess our critical faculty in the use of exact definitions, therefore we will set Him right. All He said concerning meekness, sacrifice, poverty, and of taking no thought for the morrow, were but haphazard utterances, because of His ignorance of scientific phraseology.