Article February 11, 1905 Issue

From our Exchanges

with contributions from Lyman Abbott, Stephen A. Chase

We are so conscious that our own purposes are not always the noblest and the best, that we are very apt, in seeking to interpret the will of God, to assume that His purpose in these respects is a counterpart of our own. Some have not hesitated to attribute to God a caprice, and sometimes a malignity, that, if manifested in man, they would unequivocally condemn. They recognize that the use of power is one of the severest tests of manhood, but they find it difficult to believe that the employment of omnipotence is controlled by the finest and noblest moral dispositions.

Certainly one of the most wholesome things that we can do, as we enter upon the new period that opens with the year, is to emancipate ourselves from unwarranted and ignoble conceptions of the relation of God to men. There is a great deal of preaching about the divine love, but very often the main thought of that great revelation of God's nature is completely missed. It is assumed that the divine love is practically synonymous with an easy overlooking of sin, whereas the contrary is the truth. If the love of God means the highest and greatest things, it means that God constantly and energetically desires that men shall have the best things in the universe and be fit to have them. It means that the life of every one of us is encompassed by a spiritual atmosphere and influence that are working for the highest realization of every kind of good for us.
The Watchman.

As one surveys the world of religious belief and ritual, one naturally turns to the ancient faiths that preceded Christianity. The significant fact in connection with them is that they, too, like Christianity, are in a stage of unrest, of dissatisfaction with institutional forms, and are convinced of the inadequacy of the older forms of statement. Throughout Asia, in India, Japan, China, Persia, reform is the watchword with an ever-increasing minority of intelligent Buddhists, Brahmins, and Zoroastrains. The coming of Christianity has forced a reformation movement in all of the great ethnic faiths, that is leading them to make aggressive missionary efforts in their own behalf, to expressions of greater regard for the welfare of the masses, to hearty identification with the patriotism of the hour in all its phases—as in the Japan of to-day.
The Congregationalist.

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