*

#BOOK SEVEN#

#The Church of the Social Revolution#

They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--
Infidel hordes that believe not in man;
Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,
But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.
They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,
They have buried him deep under steel and stone--
But we come leading the great Crusade
To give our Comrade back to his own.

Waddell.

* * * * *

#Christ and Caesar#

In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are
told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto
him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for
that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If
thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we
know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really
meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with
"temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and
died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three
centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his
proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common,
except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted
catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.

But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for
he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for
him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church.
He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the
Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman
Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than
the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the
new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the
greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious
for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off
laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus
three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.
How complete and swift was his success you may judge from the fact
that fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian compelled to
pass an edict limiting the donations o