Article January 20, 1906 Issue

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with contributions from Frederic W. Perkins, C. T. Winchester

The primary purpose of Jesus Christ was not to expound a theology, but to upbuild a life. A church has made theological progress when it has come to realize the relatively subordinate position which any theology, however true, must take. Most men have some sort of a theology, but its influence on their lives will depend largely on how they get it. If one gets it primarily by an intellectual process, if it is chiefly a system of ideas about God and man and Christ and destiny, then one may have a flawless theology which has hardly speaking acquaintance with his spiritual life, just as one may know how a church is built without having any desire or purpose to build one. But if a man's theological ideas are primarily the attempt to voice his spiritual experience, to set forth truths involved in right living, if he holds them primarily not so much because they are intellectually true as because they are spiritually necessary, then his theology will profoundly influence his life.

Rev. Frederic W. Perkins.
The Universalist Leader.

It is not easy for men grounded in the metaphysics of a system that reaches back for hundreds of years, and is rooted in all the modes of their thinking, to understand how other men can cast it all away, and think in new terms, to new results. But if one were to observe closely the Christian earnestness of these apparent iconoclasts, and note how much more valuable seems to them the forms of truth they are building in place of those they have abandoned, and who declare that their work is not only no loss to faith but great gain, while the conservative would not believe this he would at least understand and respect the men who do believe it. The Homiletic Review.

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