Article September 29, 1906 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from H. Scott Holland, Lyman Abbott, Fannie E. Austin

This is the truth that we must seize—that we are answerable for the judgments which our conscience gives. We cannot indeed help what it pronounces; for its pronouncements are the inevitable outcome of our moral and spiritual conditions at the moment; but we are judged by that which we so pronounce, just because we are responsible for being in that particular moral and spiritual condition. If we are blind, we cannot help giving wrong judgments and heading for the ditch. But why are we blind? That is what we have to answer for. Do we ask ourselves this question with real quivering anxiety? Do we go back upon our sturdy Anglo-Saxon assurance in our own honesty of purpose, and tremblingly search into that purpose itself to see whether it is adequate and enlightened and true to the Divine reality? A purpose may be so honest and yet be so fatuous, so stupid, so blinded, so obstinate, so selfish, so cruel, so fatal, so false. And so it comes about that we walk on blindly into the ditch, perfectly satisfied with the absolute sincerity with which we go wrong.

Rev. H. Scott Holland, D.D.
The (London) Church Times.

Jesus knew that the only way in which the good tidings of the kingdom could be spread abroad was through personal witness-bearing on the part of those acknowledging its sovereignty; therefore he commanded his disciples throughout all time to display both their doctrines and their deeds so clearly that men might see in this human exhibition the realization upon earth of his kingdom and love. The moment, however, that the individual follower of the Master begins an attempt to realize this command to let the light shine, he is brought face to face with the difficulties and the dignity of his effort; and he learns that the work to which he has set himself is so difficult that he can only hope to do it through the gift of grace and strength from God himself. Then he becomes humble. He realizes the feebleness of his own power and the insignificance of his own personality. The contradiction which seems to inhere in self-assertion and self-forgetfulness has disappeared in the practical effort to realize the commandment to let the light shine.—Zion's Herald.

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