Ecclesiastics have built up the Church into a colossal business trust which corners the Bread of Life and doles it to hungry mortals on terms of its own making. The Church is a wealthy corporation with immense property and privilege to safeguard and hold against all comers, and these temporal possessions engage its keenest thought and ceaseless activity. So it has important work to do other than saving the souls of men. To maintain its temporal authority in the world it has tampered with the teaching of Jesus Christ; by cunning craftiness of man the gospel has been twisted into theology, and the way of salvation shrouded behind a dense veil of ceremonial observances which the Church imposes on people and declares necessary to the saving of their souls. Much conflicting religious literature is issued annually by free-lances of the Press to explain the downright simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus; and these conflicting opinions add other stumbling-blocks in the way, for they baffle the brains of the gentle reader, beating up a thick dust of doubt around him that his faith is smothered in a cloud of perplexity which darkens the daylight of truth. The words of Jesus, when read and pondered over, prove religion to be a very simple matter. Yet this simplicity is its standing peril. So little human wisdom is needed to understand the words of Christ that we are apt to fear they do not mean what they say in plainest language--the language runs too easy for the majesty and importance and solemnity of the theme. We think there is an occult mystery lurking behind the honest homely phrases. Language so often bewilders simple-minded people that we are hard of belief when told we can find the way to heaven ourselves without the aid of a bishop’s pastoral staff to point it out. The difficulty is to convince the plain man that he understands the words of Jesus when he reads them, and that he feels his spirit touch the Spirit of the Saviour of his soul without a priest between to make the contact. The Church as a commercial organization would fall quickly into bankruptcy if the gospel in its naked plainness was believed in whole-heartedly.