Article December 31, 1910 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from R. J. Campbell, Frank N. Riale, William P. Merrill

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

One cannot but notice that at certain turning-points in history, certain moments of great spiritual advance—times of exceptional spiritual quickening, when the sense of God is renewed, as it were, in the soul of any people, and some mightier religion, destined to influence profoundly the future of mankind, is born—there always appears some colossal personality, some specially endowed prophet or teacher, who is the means of starting the movement and believes himself to be the God-sent herald of a new order. ... Will God never come to the world again through an epoch-making master of men? Has the last crisis been passed, has the last word been spoken, and is there nothing more to follow? I should be sorry to think so. Signs are not wanting that the age in which we live is just about ready for some new spiritual stimulus, some fresh impetus from the unseen. In this respect the parallel between it and the old Græco-Roman civilization which it replaced is rather striking. In both we have the same extreme of luxury and poverty, class antagonism, the burden of militarism, and the seething discontent of the unprivileged. Perhaps these could be paralleled in almost any age, though it is indisputable that, feature by feature, the social life of the Roman empire in the time of Jesus bore more resemblance to our own than any period since. In religion and philosophy the parallel is still closer. Never were there so many competing cults and superstitions as then; there has been nothing like it in the long interval between that world and ours; Rome was the great center in which they all congregated, and the most fantastic systems of belief and practice were as sure of a hearing then as now, Yet the majority looked on in scorn or indifference; the cultured classes had ceased to take religion seriously; materialism and agnosticism—under other names—had as great a hold upon intelligent minds then as they are said to have now. How different were the succeeding centuries when the Christian church dominated every thing! Looking back we can see that that old pagan world was a tired world, a world without vision, a world in which spiritual forces had spent themselves and there seemed no hope of renewal. Yet just at that moment Jesus came; he came and went almost without the world knowing of his presence; but in that brief advent he communicated something to it which broke up the old order and created a new one which has risen to heights of which Rome never dreamed.

Are we about to witness such another advent? Do not the times seem ripe for it? Is not the falling away of the masses of the population from religious worship a sign of it? What is wanted is the impact of some new spiritual force, some tremendous dynamic from the supersensible world, not only to make civilization once more conscious of God, but to carry it upward to a new plane of spiritual achievement. And here let me mention a somewhat remarkable thing. It is that all over the world, and not only under Christian influences but in other religions also, the feeling is wide-spread that God will yet send a mighty one who will bind all the nations into one faith and brotherhood.

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