FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Father Waggert, Frank C. Doan

[The Interior.]

Formerly religion appeared to be regarded by most Christians as simply an insurance against eternal punishment and as an assurance of eternal bliss. Their uppermost question was whether they would be found worthy of admission to heaven when they died. They continually sought to vivify one another's impressions of how glorious heaven would be, and for the most part sought to win sinners over from wickedness by painting to their eyes the horrors of hell.

But there were men in the church who saw that this was a very inadequate way of stating the religion of Christ. They saw that Jesus was earnestly concerned to have men live right in this present world for the sake of righteous society here and now, irrespective of any future life. They began, therefore, to preach very positively that religion is a preparation to live rather than a preparation to die, and gradually this view of religion took effect; gradually the minds of the masses of church people have been drawn away from the future with its rewards and punishments. The feeling is that we ought to do our duty now and leave the future to take care of itself.

[Father Waggert in The Churchman.]

It is the conflict between the men of purpose, the men who believe that human life, both in societies and individuals, has a large share of control over its own future and has got to exercise it, and the men who believe that human life in individuals and in masses is the inevitable result of the forces of heredity in combination with the forces of the environment. The great debate, the debate between men who believe in the inevitable and the men who believe in purpose; the men who say that war took place because it could not avoided, and the men who say that war over there shall not take place, because it shall be avoided. It is a wretched doctrine, the philosophy of the inevitable.

[Prof. Frank C. Doan in The Christian Register.]

We are often told that in an age of practical materialism, a practical atheism profoundly more devastating than a theoretical materialism or atheism has ever shown itself to be. And yet one who feels with sympathetic touch the pulse of this modern life will find that life is not dull and sluggish, but quiveringly alive to the deeper things of the Spirit, weary of all its practical materialism, sickened of all its sad atheism. The simple fact is, now as it ever has been, that men even in a period of desolating materialism are in countless cases concealing hearts that are longing for the eternal.

[The Universalist Leader.]

In the midst of these days of seeming spiritual leanness, when so many are complaining that there is no open vision and no vitality in religion, it is well to remember that so far as this is true the fault is with ourselves. The fountains of life are not dry. The laws of the Spirit do not change. The conditions of our awakening and refreshing are as they have always been. When we are ready for the great self-renunciation the result is sure.

[The Christian Register.]

Why should God consciousness be ours without some steps of initiation necessary to admission to all great experiences? We might not have seen the burning bush or heard the still, small voice, though bodily present on the mountains, because we were not thinking of God or loving Him, but filled with the worldly and selfish spirit which obscures vision.

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