Article November 21, 1903 Issue

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with contributions from J. Brierly

Rev. John White Chadwick says in The Christian Register, "We read of Jesus, in the New Testament, that, as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered. The story is a brief epitome of a universal law. Every man's face is being daily, hourly, altered by his prayers, by the desire which he allows himself, by the thoughts which he permits himself to cherish, by the dominant passions of his life. There is many a face that is now hateful and repellent which might have been beautiful and attractive but for some secret shame, some tolerated fault, some fatal tendency of thought or will, some fond adultery of the heart. And it is not only the sensuous and sensual vices that insure such penalties. Greed and vanity and pride all twitch the mask aside and show the actual man; or, to use a juster figure, all etch and mould in the man's plastic countenance, stamping their image and their superscription upon that with infallible accuracy."

The great facts of the New Testament do not change, but the philosophies that co-ordinate and interpret them shift from period to period. Above all the outlook of normal human minds upon the universe, the weltanschauung, with which ultimately religion must reckon, varies with the advance of human knowledge. Edwards understood perfectly the outlook of his own age, what is more, he sympathized with it and appealed to it as a ground of reasoning. A preacher who to-day should seek to present many of the Christian doctrines in the forms Edwards adopted, instead of arousing men to a religious life would puzzle them where he did not repel them. They would utterly fail to understand his point of view. They would be unresponsive to him, not simply because their hearts would be wicked, but because their minds would be confused.—Watchman.

In Mr. Lane's interesting account of the new pastor of the City Temple, London, in last week's Examiner, he speaks of Mr. Campbell's frequent use of the phrase, "Let us get back to first principles." If all denominations of Christians would act in accordance with that rule, what a transformation in certain present-day practices there would be! But would it not be a happy thing if we could all shake off the accretions of the centuries, and "get back to the first principles" of church order as set forth in the New Testament? It would be difficult, no doubt, to drop traditional theories and interpretations; but would it not be well to do so?

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