THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
“What career shall we choose for our son?” have said
many stupid parents; “he is mentally and bodily weak, and
he is without a spark of courage :—we will make a priest of
him, so that he may ‘live by the altar.’” They have not
understood that the altar is not a manger for slothful animals.
Look at the unworthy priests, contemplate these pretended
servants of the altar! What do they say to your heart, these
obese or cadaverous men with the lack-lustre eyes, and pinched
or gaping mouths ??
Hear them talk: what does it teach you, their disagreeable
and monotonous noise?
They pray as they sleep, and they sacrifice as they eat.
They are machines full of bread, meat and wine, and of
senseless words.
And when they plume themselves, like the oyster in the
sun, on being without thought and without love, one says
that they have peace of soul!
They have the peace of the brute. For man, that of the
tomb is better: these are the priests of folly and ignorance,
these are the ministers of Antichrist.
The true priest of Christ is a man who lives, suffers, loves
and fights for justice. He does not dispute, he does not
reprove; he sends out pardon, intelligence and love.
The true Christian is a stranger to the sectarian spirit;
he is all things to all men, and looks on all men as the
children of a common father, who means to save them all.
The whole cult has for him only a sense of sweetness and of
1 Actual priests. Levi’s ideal priest, of whom ‘bad’ is an impossible
epithet, is not to be looked for in the Church. He is in that ‘Church’ which is
also Ark, Rose, Font, Altar, Cup, and the rest. He is that Word of Truth
which is ‘established’ by two witnesses.—O. M.
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