FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from W. C. E. Newbolt

[The Advance]

There never has been a time when more was said about science in religion than now. And yet there never has been a time when there was so much in the sphere of religion which was so unscientific as at present. Nothing could be more unscientific than for professors in theological seminaries to be trying to teach young men religious truth and doctrine when they do not know what they believe themselves; but not a few of them are making the attempt. Nothing could be more unscientific in its line than for the seminaries to be training men to preach and at the same time filling their minds with doubts as to whether they have anything to preach, and yet they are doing it. Nothing could be more unscientific than for preachers to go on preaching when they do not know what they believe, and yet there are those who are doing it.

[The Christian Register.]

This mystic way is the search for God, the abiding, indwelling God. A great hunger of the heart, an intense loneliness, a longing for perfection, led men to enter upon a course of life they believed would lead them to the living spring and the place of rest. In the worst and wickedest periods God-consciousness has been alive in men, transmitted from one to another prepared to receive the truth. No, the central fact of religion has not died out. It may flame at any moment in some great soul and kindle the world to new spiritual life. Let us not be too critical of the religious emotions we have never experienced, though we are in good and regular standing in the church. Let us not reject a new pattern of love and faith and devotion because it comes not within the measure of our little yardstick.

[The Outlook.]

The words of Christ, like the truth they convey, lie in a region beyond philosophy, science, the processes of education. They express the finalities for which we strive; but we are so encumbered with machinery, tools, and processes that few of us pass through the methods and stages of culture to the lucid heaven of attainment where he lived and the language which he spoke. We have gone so far astray that we have made skepticism, which is by its very nature a passing mood, the test of intellectual achievement, instead of faith, which is the irradiation of character by truth.

[Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, M.A., in The Church Times.]

The sinless Saviour was plied in the desert with suggestions which appealed to body, soul, and spirit, and which left him as they found him, absolutely without sin. No, temptation comes to us because we are men, not because we are sinners. Temptation is an occasion out of which good may be evolved equally with evil. When we are tempted, we are tempted, we may say, to gain a spiritual advantage, as much as a spiritual harm. For a temptation which results in victory has left behind it not a stain, but a badge of honor.

[The Universalist Leader.]

To bring the whole human family to a state of willing obedience to the moral law, and thus into harmony with God the Father, is the end to which the efforts of all good men and women are directed. Now, the attainment of this end will not be realized without the energetic and persevering activity of good men and women in the work of substituting that which is true for that which is false in human thinking, and that which is pure and righteous for that which is evil and wicked in human action.

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September 26, 1908

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