Article April 24, 1909 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from C. A. S. Dwight

[Christian Register.]

Out of our daily life has gone the meaning of primitive Christianity, and just as surely has departed the call of the Puritan. We are not now preparing for another world. The Calvinistic God is as dead as the god of Homer, and no amount of preaching, in one church, or in ten churches, can awaken him. We need a church to help us live, and not to help us die. We need a church that shall teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves, in the violent struggle of modern life. Shifting the ground to lectures on economics and on poetry does not meet the demand. Taking our of our sermons everything vigorous does not fill up the need. Man is yet alive to the same vast spiritual requirements. The business of the church is not to sprinkle him with water, nor is it to feed him with sweetened pap and bid him believe. We are in an age of vigorous thought; the common people are here. They cannot be satisfied with homilies on the saints or on the sacraments, or with mere fellowship, without any twang of quarreling. We must grapple with the problems of a higher manhood and stronger character.

[Universalist Leader.]

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