These things have "a deeper significance than our
pensive theologies have dared to find in them. . . . They belong not to the
fringe of Christianity but to its essence." Christ loved the world.
His religion, which has come to stand for repression founded on an
almost angry distrust of human nature, is in fact "the most encouraging,
the most joyous, the least repressive, and the least forbidding of all
the religions of the world." It does not fear the world, it masters it.
It does not seek to escape from life, it develops a truer and more
abundant life. It places itself at the head of evolution.
There are points on its path where it enters the shadows and even
descends into hell, for it is a religion of redemption, the religion of
the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, but "the end of it all is a
resurrection and not a burial, a festival and not a funeral, an ascent
into the heights and not a lingering in the depths."
Nowhere else is the genius of the Christian Religion so poignantly
revealed than in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which begins in
the minor key and gradually rises to the major, until it culminates
in a great merry-making, to the surprise of the Elder Son, who
thinks the majesty of the moral law will be compromised by the
music and dancing, and has to be reminded that these joyous sounds
are the keynotes of the spiritual world.
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