Article August 28, 1909 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

Prof. Williston Walker

Congregationalist and Christian World

The observer of changes in theology during the period under review must have been impressed with another fact, that these modifications of theologic interpretation have worked powerfully to foster the spirit of comradeship between the various flocks of our divided Christian heritage. Ecclesiastical barriers which were still strong twenty-five years ago have marvelously weakened. The lines of separation, once deemed so vital, are crumbling before the new sense of Christian brotherhood. We see the relatively non-essential nature of much that seemed of supreme importance to those who went before us. Any large degree of unity or even of federation between the far too multitudinous ecclesiastical organizations of New England is yet in the future; but he who has appreciated the changes in spirit one toward another between Christians of different denominational names, which the last quarter of a century has witnessed, can but feel confident that a mutual cooperation, far exceeding what was once deemed possible, is soon to be ours.

[H. Weinel in Hibbert Journal.]

The resolve to achieve a new world, a kingdom of God, is far too weak among us. I mean the aspiration after a world ruled by Truth. Love, and purity, in which all that is shameful in the political and social life of the present day shall be impossible; a world in which war and retaliation, dueling and revenge, prostitution and the exploitation of the unfortunate, and all that opposes the will of a God of Love, shall he no more. Only when this lofty ideal of Christianity shall he again preached in all seriousness, when God shall he again vitally felt as ever present and speaking to us—only when Christianity thus rejuvenated, in earnest and enthusiastic, again becomes powerful in our midst, will our generation appear to be inwardly not unworthy of the splendid age in which it outwardly lives.

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