FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Washington Gladden, R. J. Campbell, Harold Begbie, Pemberton Hale Cressey

[Washington Gladden in Continent.]

The arguments which are intended to prove that peace is visionary and impossible are largely inspired by human rapacity and greed. And, strangely enough, the predatory classed have always been permitted to set the standards of thought and conduct, so that the ruling ideas of Christian society have hardly included the conception of social peace and good will as attainable under present conditions. We have not considered the promise of the angels as having application to the existing state of society. We have supposed that business must be carried on and politics conducted under the law of conflict—of strife and struggle—by matching wits against wits and wills against wills; by contending for advantage and mastery. And we have been quite content for the most part to have business and politics go on in that way; we have assumed that that was the right way—for business and politics. It now begins to appear that this partial, half–way, one–sided interpretation of the promise of Christmas has been a pernicious and paralyzing error. In the minds of a great many people the question is arising, "What right have we to put the fulfilment of this promise so far away? Who has authorized us to say that peace on earth and good will among men are no to be looked for until the millennium? What is the reason why they should not be looked for here and now? Is there anything that hinders their coming except the selfishness of men? Would they not come at once if men believed in them and desired them?"

Granted that the rapacious and the cunning and the greedy do not desire them, and therefore, of course, do not believe in them, has not the time come when we should no longer permit the rapacious and the greedy and the cunning to tell us what we ought to believe in and wish for? We are not all beasts and birds of prey; we are men and women. we want to be friends; to live together peaceably and helpfully; and this, as we understand it, is just what Christmas means. The song of the angels signifies this. What is it but the deadliest and most damning unbelief that puts the fulfilment of such a promise a thousand years away? Let us claim it now, and have it now. Nothing is needed to bring it but faith in it. As soon as men begin to believe that it can be, it will be. And there is nothing in the world to hinder any of us from beginning to believe what the angels said, and beginning to act as if it were true. It is a fact, no doubt, that a great many of our neighbors do not believe that it is true and do not intend to act as if it were, but I do not know that that is any reason why those of us who do believe in it, and are sure that it is the only right way to live, should hesitate about living up to our own convictions.

[Rev. R. J. Campbell in Christian Commonwealth.]

Christ is always coming. He comes in that opening of the soul to God called conversion or the new birth, which to many people is just as real and definite as any external event within their range of experience. He comes in the spiritual deepening effected by sorrow, in the mortal crises whereby we rise to greater heights of power and self–knowledge, in the sweet ministry of love, in the blessed sympathies of spiritual fellowship with other human beings, in the grandeur of self–renunciation, and in the joy that floods the soul in hours of special vision and insight; in fact, every spiritual gain in our individual experience is a true coming of Christ. He comes, too, on the larger scale of the destinies of nations and the evolution of human society as a whole. Nothing has ever been truer than the prophecy that Christ would come to put an end to the dispensation in which the Christian church was born. Remember, it is nowhere stated in the Gospels, in so many words, that the Master's second coming would be the end of the world. Such a rendering of the prophecy is incorrect; it is the end of the age that is spoken of, not the end of the world. On the contrary, it was supposed that the world would make a fresh start therefrom, and nothing is clearer from a scrutiny of all the apocalyptic passages in the New Testament than that a blissful reign of Christ was looked forward to on earth, but a transformed earth, an earth spiritualized and made glorious by an invasion of heaven. This consummation has not yet been reached; it is indeed very far off, but there have been successive crises in the world's history which have represented stages on the road toward it.

[Harold Begbie in Christian World.]

The need of the present hour, for the preachers of Christianity, is a return to the missionary spirit of their great forerunners, the apostles and martyrs. And there is one way, bright with hope and glad with promise, which the philosophers of the churches must seek before they can hope to capture the magic and enthusiasm of the missionary spirit. It is the way of observation which follows the great highroads of civilization and pursues the thousand deviations of those roads to their darkest windings. Let the preacher forsake his books of theology and go upon this way, and everywhere he will see the power of Christ. For the Christ whom he deems is neglected by men, and the religion which he fears is losing its hold upon the loyalty and affection of mankind, are everywhere at work in the social organism, are everywhere leavening humanity and saving the soul of the world. Without any rich or powerful organization without method of procedure of elaborate definition of belief, without conscious knowledge that they are the salt of the earth, exactly as Christ himself foretold, men and women are doing the will of God.

[Outlook.]

The dawn of the new era of morally efficient religion appears in the rise of the new evangelism that is patterned after Jesus' proclamation of it at Nazareth as the mission of the Spirit of God: "To preach the gospel to the poor; ... to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." Of such religion there can be no cheapening so long as its root is watered, as Jesus watered it, in constant communion with God.

[Rev. Pemberton Hale Cressey in Christian Register.]

It is when we refuse to take our little worlds too seriously, that we catch a glimpse of a larger world. As long as we are overpowered by what is, we are not likely to discover what may be. What is tragedy in a small sphere shades off into comedy in a larger one ... and blessed is he who suspects that the world is larger than it seems. We tuck away our vexations and disappointments into the corner where they belong. and throw up the western windows.

[New–Church Messenger.]

What society needs most is love toward the neighbor and love for the Word and the Lord. It is for the church as a church to explain the Word, and to inspire with the love of man and of the Lord. These are the things that are primary and most. From these the church is a church.

[Christian World.]

A new movement, deep down in the soul of the millions, a single new thought there—the thought which is coming—and without trampings or trumpetings all the walls of the world's despot Jerichos will lie prone upon the ground.

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December 17, 1910

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