Article December 24, 1904 Issue

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Basil Wilberforce

There is a persistent tendency to confine religion to the church and its services. If God be in us He will manifest himself in our common, every-day life. If there is any point where the religious life of the average church member breaks down, it is just here. For many there is seemingly no conception of religion as something which controls conduct and speech in the home and the place of business. These are as quick to anger, as unforgiving, as tricky, as bitter in speech as if they did not profess to be disciples of Jesus Christ. No doubt these same persons get much comfort out of their religion, for they believe that they have been saved from future torment. What they need to perceive is that we cannot confine the results of the rescue work of Jesus Christ to the future life. If religion is to mean anything anywhere it must mean something here and now. The religion of the average church member needs to become more largely a present experience of God and of the possession of the mind of Christ.—The Standard.

One obvious consideration remains. Jesus is unceasingly saying, "Ephphatha" to every human soul. He is saying, "Be opened" to those dormant faculties of our spiritual nature which we have overlaid with the flesh. The circumstances of the daily life of each one of us provide the medium through which the call comes. But we are not automata, we are not machines; and constantly the sigh of the divine humanity is intensified by our miserable human perversity, which enables us to go on hardening ourselves year after year against the influence of the God within us.

Human goodness or character is like the beauty that you admire in a flower; it is from within and not from without. You cannot make a flower beautiful by paint and enamel; you cannot make a life beautiful by external moralities and austerities and the like,—the beauty that is on the flower was in the flower first.

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