Article February 13, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Edward C. Mitchell, Leighton Williams, Henry Ward Beecher, F. W. Robertson, Henry B. Williams

The Pentecostal Gift. —The salient inference from the description of the outpouring of the Spirit, is that the Christian life belongs to a new dispensation.

Many of our ablest scientists who adopt the theory of evolution, at least as a working hypothesis, yet maintain that there are abysses between the inorganic and the organic; the organic and the sentient; and the sentient and the self-conscious which were bridged by the direct creative act of God. In other words, we cannot account for the self-conscious by forces originally resident in the inorganic; but all along life has been lifted to higher planes by the divine interposition. In spiritual things the "carnal man" does not become a "spiritual man" by the evolution of tendencies and forces resident in his nature. On the contrary, the spirit of God must endow him with new affinities and capacities in order that he may attain to the plane of spiritual life. Before Pentecost the disciples were men strong in the qualities of our common humanity. After the descent of the Spirit they entered a new realm of being. A Christian man is not simply one whose æsthetic and moral culture is well advanced; he is one whose soul has been touched by the life of God.

The Watchman.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

LITERATURE FOR DISTRIBUTION