Article December 14, 1899 Issue

From the Religious Press

with contributions from L. J. Dinsmore, W. H. Cline, Ian Maclaren

The Christian religion may be regarded as a simple machinery for securing the full power of the human affections as a social force. And herein it radically differs from all other religious movements of every kind and character. It is love in action. The old paganisms were utterly lacking in the working ideal. Buddha had vast compassion, but it little availed in the relief of human suffering that he should spend years in silent meditation under the sacred tree. The antiquities of Egypt are full of the majesty of the State Church; but the pyramids were erected at a cost of human life immensely great. Art and poetry combined to make old Greece a delight to the studious eye; but still the poets who sang so bravely, and the artists who hewed the deathless marble into immortal beauty were as cold and heartless as the gleaming marble itself. The splendid scholarship and divine art of the children of Hellas was as clear as their deep blue skies and cold as the snowcrowned summits of lofty Olympus. One thing it lacked, and lacking that it faded and perished in eighty brief and memorable years. The power of love as the central force in human society was lacking, and nothing else could answer. And Rome in her palmiest days was but a tender nurse to the passions and inhumanities of life.

It was not until Christ came and spoke his word that love was put to work in human society as the supreme motive of a high and holy life. Love became in his month the heart of religion. Heretofore it had been an incident, and temple worship and doctrine the main concern. The religion of Egypt was a philosophy; that of Greece a spectacular appeal to the beauty-loving eye and ear; that of Rome a cultivation of duty and devotion to the State. Jesus came, and the new sense of help to men arose. Nothing good that had gone before was denied, — it fell into its proper place and was numbered with the infinite resources of the kingdom of God for the uplift, redemption, and salvation of men.

Rev. L. J. Dinsmore.

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