Article December 2, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from H. Symonds

The Rev. F.H. Rowley is reported in the Boston Transcript as saying :—

"Does it not all come back to that deeper truth of Jesus, that the real righteousness which shares the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven, is the righteousness of the filial and obedient heart? Not in rites and ceremonies, not in the acceptance of formulated statements, however correct they may be, not in belonging to this or that body of followers, shall I find the righteousness Jesus taught; but rather in the heart that gives God the service of a son, and that toward its human brother shows a brother's spirit. What is it that makes a man a Christian, the thing he believes about Christ, or the possession of the spirit of Christ? When in word and deed I find in any human heart the evidence of his presence and the mastery of his influence, I must feel the tie of a Christian brotherhood. To me Christ is the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, the word that was with God and that was God, the word that was made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and dwelt among us. I say it because to me the Christian name is something vastly larger and broader than the name of any single body of his followers. I say it because I hope I have learned to appreciate something of the meaning of those fine words of John Morley's in his life of Gladstone Gladstone : 'Tolerance means the reverence for all the possibilities of truth; it means acknowledgment that she dwells in diverse mansions, and wears vestures of many colors, and speaks in strange tongues; it means frank respect for freedom of indwelling conscience against mechanical forms and official conventions, social force; it means the charity that is greater even than faith and hope.' "

The Church needs a stronger note of authority in her ministry to men. It is not meant, of course, that the bigotry of mere opinion—which has sometimes made the Christian Church the most un-Christian institution in the world—is a quality which the Church should bring back. But the Church must be persuaded in her own mind, and must set herself to persuade men, that the absolute secret of life's government is given in the Christian gospel; that the gospel is not merely a better experiment than any other in dealing with the moral problem of human life, but the final word about it. This note rings not as it should in the Church's tones to-day. We have been thrown, in consequence of the many movements of thought for years, so much upon the defensive that we have become too apologetic. The Church has been called on, instead of claiming the world for her faith, to vindicate for her faith a claim to standing-room. But it must not go too far. The Church of to-day needs to recover something of the old stern, ringing prophet-tone; and when it proclaims its message it should be with clear preface and accompaniment of "Thus saith the Lord." —The (London) Christian Examiner.

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