Article March 18, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from Washington Gladden

Spiritual authority of the Christian ministry was the theme upon which Dr. Lyman Abbott spoke to the Congregationalist ministers of Boston recently. He said, "If we are to do our work as it should be done, we must speak with authority; but of late there has been a sense of dread lest we assume this prerogative to too extreme a point. The result has been that we have gone to quite the other extreme. We have had to meet so many of those changing conditions of life which are sweeping men away from the Church, that it is high time we possessed some secret so that we may speak with authority. When the prophets came to speak they did not play with their subject; they spoke with authority; and so did Jesus, and Paul no less so. Where, then, did they get this authority? Not from the Bible, for that book was not then written; not from the Church, for that did not exist—at least, when Moses spoke. Christ did not get it from the Church, for the Church excommunicated him, and the Jewish Church turned out Paul. Neither did this authority come from reason, for there is nothing of the argumentative in the Old Testament. It was not derived from miracles, for there are those in the New Testament who did not perform miracles. Neither did it rest on fulfilled prophecy." But Dr. Abbott finds the authority in spiritual experience, which is primary in the individual; it cannot be borrowed, but it can be reinforced. We are not more impressed by his sources of authority than by the practical necessity of it. No one can thoughtfully observe the religious conditions of to-day and not be made to pause by the wondrous power even of assumed authority. Multitudes are following unworthy leadership because of the authority of the voice speaking; multitudes are deserting worthy leaders because they have lost the note of authority. The ministry that comes before the world with a positive, an assertive, a confident message shall not want for a following.—The Universalist Leader.

Henry S. Prichett, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the recent Religious Education Association in Boston said.—

The education of the conscience of mankind is not a matter of ethics, but of religion, not a matter of moral distinctions and of rules of life, but a matter of spiritual development in a new environment; not a matter of high ethical appreciation, but a matter of the divine life in the individual human soul. If men are to be led through the wilderness of freedom into the promised land of a higher religious conscience and a deeper service, it will come only through religious leadership, through one capable of dealing with the conditions of the day and of the age—the age of reason and freedom.

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