hooling was over. When Christ died on the
cross the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The Holy of
Holies was opened to everyone who would enter in faith. Christ's words
were remembered, "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this
mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.... But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God
is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth."

Shortly after, Paul took up the cry of liberty and declared all meats
clean, every day holy, all places sacred and every act acceptable to
God. The sacredness of times and places, a half-light necessary to the
education of the race, passed away before the full sun of spiritual
worship.

The essential spirituality of worship remained the possession of the
Church until it was slowly lost with the passing of the years. Then the
natural _legality_ of the fallen hearts of men began to introduce the
old distinctions. The Church came to observe again days and seasons and
times. Certain places were chosen and marked out as holy in a special
sense. Differences were observed between one and another day or place or
person, "The sacraments" were first two, then three, then four until
with the triumph of Romanism they were fixed at seven.

In all charity, and with no desire to reflect unkindly upon any
Christian, however misled, I would point out that the Roman Catholic
church represents today the sacred-secular heresy carried to its
logical conclusion. Its deadliest effect is the complete cleavage it
introduces between religion and life. Its teachers attempt to avoid this
snare by many footnotes and multitudinous explanations, but the mind's
instinct for logic is too strong. In practical living the cleavage is a
fact.

From this bondage reformers and puritans and mystics have labored to
free us. Today the trend in conservative circles is back toward that
bondage again. It is said that a horse after it has been led out of a
burning building will sometimes by a strange obstinacy break loose from
its rescuer and dash back into the building again to perish in the
flame. By some such stubborn tendency toward error Fundamentalism in our
day is moving back toward spiritual slavery. The observation of days and
times is becoming more and more prominent among us. "Lent" and "holy
week" and "good" Friday are