asticism. The fundamental error underlying
all other errors on this subject, was the idea of an absent Christ.
Notwithstanding the definite assertions of our Lord, "I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world" and "Where two or three
are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of
them"--notwithstanding these reassuring promises and the definite
statements of the apostles which represent Christ as the ever-living
and ever-acting head of the church, soon after the apostolic period
men lost the consciousness of the divine presence and began to think
and to act as if Christ were indeed absent and would not return again
for thousands of years. The presence of gigantic evils in the world
with no apparent available means of redressing them, the dead weight
of heathenism, and the disturbing influences of speculative Oriental
philosophies impressed upon the conscience of the world a despairing
pessimism. In the midst of this trial there was a revival of the
Platonic philosophy. The treatise of Plato that made the most profound
impression upon the religious thought of the second century was the
"Timaeus," wherein the Deity is pictured as withdrawn from the world
into a distant heaven separated from all creation because of the evil
with which matter is essentially connected. With God withdrawn from
the world and Christ absent on a long journey, what was man to do?
What was the hope of the world?

Here ecclesiasticism found its real opportunity. Here human authority
and government could be and was substituted for that spiritual
dominion of Christ which gave life, form, and character to his church
in primitive days. Here grew up that conception of the church as
identical with the hierarchy whose power and authority was handed
down by direct descent from the apostles and without whose priestly
mediation there was no hope of salvation. Here was introduced the
idea of world-wide centralization of administrative, legislative,
and judicial functions in a self-perpetuating human headship. What a
contrast! With Christ absent, the church an ark for the saving of the
world, the truth a mere deposit made to the church for safe keeping to
be handed down like a heirloom from generation to generation, and with
a self-perpetuating priestly corporation as master of the destinies of
the universe, we are prepared to understand the tyrannical rule of the
church of Hildebrand and Innocent III. Traced to its source, this evil
sys