Article October 7, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from Lyman Abbott, W. H. P. Faunce

Every important doctrine ever held in any age or nation, and every form of worship, of sacrifice, or religious observance of any kind, has come in the demand to answer some question asked by the mind of man, or to supply the demand of some human longing and desire. And the thing that has come in response to human seeking has been some form of truth, some glimpse of the reality in which the human soul is to find its rest and peace. All the differences which separate the churches of Christendom to-day are differences in ability to see the truth, and differences in the forms in which the fragments of truth already attained to are made portable and fit for common uses. These differences are natural. They were inevitable. They are indications of praiseworthy efforts in the past to know more and do better than ever before. But the pause, the suspense of faith about the right path to take, and the plan of campaign against the sin and sorrow of the world, is due largely to the fact that, the time having come for the half-truths to go, they are not allowed to give place to the better thing which has been provided. — The Christian Register.

One can easily picture the scene which the evangelist's simple narrative describes: The crowd thronging Jesus; the leper's cry, "Unclean, unclean!" heard from a distance and drawing nearer; his peculiarly loathsome appearance — for Luke tells us he was "full of leprosy;" the crowd separating to let him pass; the leper, to the horror of all observers, making his way direct to the Master; and the Master, to their amazement, stooping down and touching him, while he says, "Be thou clean." Why this touch? Surely he might have healed without the touch — as he healed the ten of whom Luke gives account; as he healed the centurion's daughter without even coming into his house. I believe that this touch was the natural expression of Christ's sympathy; and incidentally is a rebuke of our panic in the presence of contagious diseases which so often dehumanizes us, and of our prejudices which make us forget the real man in our regard for his mere outward guise and circumstance.

Lyman Abbott.
The Outlook.

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