Article June 17, 1905 Issue

From our Exchanges

with contributions from Jenkin Lloyd Jones

The Churches are sick; the ministry is on the decline; but to rightly diagnose the case is to discover the remedy. In this decline I find inspiring encouragement. I am glad that young men and women shun the dogmatic spirit and distrust the professions menaced by it; I am glad that our colleges teach history so well that their students cannot bide the thought of miraculous interventions with the benignant order of special revelations and divine partialities; I am glad that the law of equity is so well understood, justice so well understood as a fundamental attribute of being, that the student refuses to believe in eternal torments as a reward of mortal sins, or an infinite beatitude being won through finite credulity or a lack-luster obedience to ecclesiastical traditions and mandates. I greatly rejoice that the community is getting so coherent, so conscious of a communal life, that it has lost relish for sectarian pretensions and all patience with creedal barriers. I am glad that life is assuming such significance everywhere and always that it grows indifferent to the special sanctities of particular dates and places.

All this is proof that out of this decadence must come the more adequate expression of religion. We see on every hand a ripening for this larger thing, a church based on the central and common needs of the community; a church that will abolish denominational and race consciousness, make Sabbatical the seven days in the week, Scriptural all high prophecy and lasting poesy, and companionable the widest reaches of society.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
The Outlook.

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