The teaching and belief of those days was
nonsacerdotal and non-sacramental, and nothing but a superstitious
accretion overlaying the original truth can account for the spectacle
which vast portions of the Christian world now present, as indeed do
vast portions of the Buddhist world. The fate reserved for both these
great prophets seems to be identical, the submergence of their pure and
elevated ethical teaching beneath an accumulated mass of traditionary
and ceremonial law; but here in the West, at all events, there appears
to be a well-grounded hope that it is not altogether impossible to get
back to Christ and his pure and wholesome teaching. Prophets have
arisen in this past century who have far more influence than many
priests, and there may be "some standing here" who will witness the
close of the reign of the priest and the restoration of the dominion of
the prophet.

The priests and scribes sat in the chair of Moses in the days of
Christ, and that chair is overturned. No one knows where to look for
it. Now we have another priest who sits in Peter's chair, a third who
holds Augustine's seat, and a fourth and a fifth who can trace back
their priestly ancestry in unbroken line to some era of superstition
and decay. The same thing goes on in India and Ceylon, and in Thibet
you have the Grand Lamas, to whom successively is united, by a sort of
hypostatic union, the holy Spirit himself. Always and everywhere the
shadow of the priest, the mystical, magical dispenser of the favours of
heaven! We look to the days when religion shall be purified of such
conceptions, when no one shall venture to stand between a man and his
conscience, or claim to possess powers unattainable by other men, or
pretend that the favour of heaven can be purchased by any other means
than those indicated by the prophet of old and no less by the
conscience of mankind--a life in accordance with righteousness, that
is, a life in conformity with the moral law and the example of that
supreme among the prophets of the race--Jesus who was called the Christ.

[1] _Christian Institutions_, p. 193.

[2] See _Times_, 5th February, 1898.

[3] Quoted in Spencer's _Ecclesiastical Institutions_.

[4] The appointment of Aaron by Moses, the leader of the Hebrew people,
is the exact counterpart of the institution of the Flamens by Numa.

[5] Martineau, _Studies of Christianity_, p. 38.

[6] And, therefore, we note the inconsistency of the sacram