Kingsland W. - The True Church of Christ

249 Mr. Brodie Innes in his series of lucid articles on the exoteric and esoteric aspects of the Church, has, I think, succeeded in presenting the subject in a manner which invests it with a new interest. That interest, however, pertains principally to the ingenious and somewhat legal presentation of the subject, as also to the application which he makes of the doctrine of the seven principles. But for my own part, I fail to discover in Mr. Brodie Innes’ carefully prepared propositions and demonstrations, one single statement or argument which affects the practical aspect of the question, as to the influence of the Church upon the progress of humanity, its authority as a spiritual guide, or the position of hostility towards it which so many of us occupy.

Whatever the Church may be esoterically, whatever may be the Higher Self which endeavours to manifest through the organism known historically as the Christian Church, it is coming now to be recognised and freely maintained by thinkers and writers, both in and out of the Church, that in its present incarnation – commencing, if you so please, when “the Divine Spirit came into that body on the Day of Pentecost” – the Church has not merely been a dead failure as a reformative and regenerative element in humanity, but has been the most deadly and maleficent influence which could possibly be conceived of as a retarding agency in the spiritual and material progress of the race. It is quite possible that the esoteric Church may be capable of reincarnating, and leading a better life; but we have to deal now with an organism existing on the four lower planes, an organism which has been and is an expression of the Kamic principle in all its worst forms. And yet we are told now, that we must let this maleficent influence alone, that “it is absurd to revile or oppose it”. Can it indeed be true that the blood of all the reformers and martyrs who opposed themselves to the tyranny of the Church, and won thereby for us the freedom which we rejoice in to-day, was shed so nobly in the cause of truth, when “the only logical course would be [have been] to leave it, with as much kindliness as may be, to decompose when its Karma is [was] worn out”.

And if it be contended that the Inquisition and other equally devilish agencies which the Church has employed were never really authorised by the real Church, then let it be so; we fight the real evil by whatever name it has a right to call itself, and that evil was and is Ecclesiasticism, the Christian Church in its present incarnation.

W. Kingsland.

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