Article November 17, 1906 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Percy Dearmer, Alveric S. Francis

"An alliance of Christian churches," says Mr. Lloyd-George, "against drink and social injustice would dominate and direct the legislature. No influence, no monopoly could stand against it. Shall it therefore be said, by those who scoff at religion, that the Christian churches only put forth the whole of their sterngth when they fight each other? Half the enthusiasm and energy spent on both sides over the education controversy would raise myriads of the poor from the mire and of the needy from the dung-hill." We all recognize that this is true, and it is to be feared that we all share the feeling to which Mr. Lloyd-George himself confessed, and are not very hopeful that such an alliance will ever be brought about. Yet we have no right to shrink from an obvious duty because it is difficult, and because the fulfilment of it seems to be a long way off. It may not be so far as we sometimes suppose, and, indeed, there are signs all around us even now that a new spirit is growing up among the churches, and that they are impatient, as they never were before, with that miserable sectarian spirit which ties their hands and prevents them from doing the good that they would.—The British Congregationalist.

What, then, is the task of the theologian of to-day? Is it sacredly to preserve the theology of past ages, or to form a theology which shall be for to-day what those theologies were for the ages when they were formed? To see what is wrong both within and without the Church, to meet the failure of the age with Christ's message of redemption, teaching that this world is the footstool of God, where men are to live the life of simplicity and purity which was lived by Christ—this is the duty and the pleasure of the theologian of to-day. Attaining this, ministers, theologians, laymen, will do the work that awaits each as they journey along the path that leads to the light in which Jesus walked, and of which he is both the center and the sun.

The Christian Work and Evangelist.

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