Article March 7, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from F. W. Robertson

In an editorial on the "Falling off of Candidates for Orders" the (Episcopalian) Church Standard says: "In every great overflow of missionary zeal from the times of the Apostles until now, the economic element has counted for nothing. The men who carried Christianity to Gaul thought nothing of it. The Celts who carried Christianity to Scotland, who were the rea. Apostles of the Cross in England, and whose labors spread from Burgundy to Northern Germany—what did those men care for economic conditions? It is not a quite unthinkable hypothesis that our modern missions are failing to a very large extent because they are so, generally administered on economic rather than on spiritual principles. Let the Church once breathe the Spirit of Christ and nothing that she undertakes will fail for lack of men to do her work. When the Church grows cold, is it surprising that her men grow cold along with her, and that, before they seek the ministry, they want to know the economic conditions on which they are to accept it?"

The following is from a sermon published in the Homiletic Review: "As a result of our faith, we are to have perfect peace of mind, and heart, and conscience—a sweet inward feeling of rest. We are also to be of an irenic disposition, and to maintain peaceful and harmonious relations with our fellowmen. The nature of our work here is inclined to make us quarrelsome and combative, and we should be on our guard against this. There are some men with whom you can hardly quarrel if you try, because they are of a peaceable mind; there are other men with whom it is difficult to spend one evening in social intercourse without getting into a dispute, because they are pugnacious. Now the proper attitude of the Christian is a peaceable one, and unless we have attained that disposition the Spirit has not accomplished His perfect work in us."

The Congregationalist for February 9, publishes an article by the Rev. Dr. Beach, one of the leading clergymen of the denomination, on "The Progress of Faith." in which he says: "Christianity's God of a century ago was far off; the world, the universe, were his structures, arbitrarily made, and operated by him from without, as a locomotive is built and driven.... The God of a century ago was Ruler, Sovereign; He ruled with inexorable moral sanctions; so much sin, so much punishment. The God of the beginning of the twentieth century is Father, Brother, Friend: His authority is not less, but it is a reasonable authority. It is not only God's law but the law of human nature, rooted by Him in the human constitution, so that one does a kindness to himself when he obeys the law. Of all this love is the mainspring."

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