"So plays a little girl with a doll, and calls herself a mother. She tosses and pets and prinks her little one, but it is all wood and paint and bran. And the real mother smiles--she who knows the anguish and the gladness. "But you abandon the naked, living child for the bedizened doll. And the mother sheds tears of blood. "Like peacocks, you strut through your marble churches, glittering in tinsel; but you let the kingdom of God lie like an uncleansed babe upon unclean linen--naked and languishing. "And the Devil delights in your churches, your masses, and prayers and psalms--your treasure and fine linen; for the child lies naked at your back door, with the dogs, and it wails for its mother. "Weep--as do I! Weep bitter tears--for that child is two thousand years old. And still it lies, unwashed and uncherished. "Why do you vaunt your consecration, and prate of your Redeemer? Your Holy One still toils beneath His grievous cross, yet all your splendid churches have you built upon that heavy cross. "You bear the mitre of Persians, and Egyptians, and the tabard of the Jews. And you also make use of the scourge wherewith the Jews did scourge Him. "They bound and spat upon--they scourged and crucified and speared Him; but for two thousand years you have been roasting Him before a slow fire--before the fire of your lies and misrepresentations; of your treachery and arrogance; of your cruelties and perversions; of your pomp and oblations; of your transgressions, and of your attacks upon and strivings against the God who is Truth. "You are commanded to serve your Father in spirit and in truth, and you have served Him with the letter and with lies. "His prophets, who loved the truth better than their lives, you have burned at the stake, and have made them martyrs. "Yet you have bent your proud neck to the world which you affect to despise. In the name of the Father you have burned and imprisoned sages; but at last you were forced to eat the bread of their wisdom, for the knife of the scornful was at your throat. "The world you have disdained and denounced is wiser than you--more beautiful and even more holy. "Black as the raven--black as the beetles, the moles, the creatures that live in the slime--black and vile, you burrow your secret way through the clear, bright world. But in your churches you enthrone yourselves and parade like kings--in violet and yellow and purple, and gold brocade. "You were not commanded to found a kingdom solely for yourselves--a kingdom of the sacred and the elect in a world of the unholy and immature. "You were commanded to spread abroad the kingdom of God over the whole earth--over all that weep and are oppressed. "You were not commanded to despise the world and to forsake it, but you were commanded to hallow the world. "You rend the world in twain, speaking of the sanctified and the unsanctified. Your Saviour lived among thieves, and died between murderers, nevertheless he promised them Paradise.