Article January 14, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from J. J. Dunlop, R. J. Campbell

[Churchman.]

The surest foundation for a sane optimism in our day is to be found in the fact that Christians and non-Christians are combining to force organized but divided Christianity to face the supreme test of a world fellowship in Christ. Christmas is a world festival of a world religion. Are those who profess the religion and claim the festival manifesting a world church? This, and this alone, is the witness to which we were and forever are committed.

Universal fellowship in Christ is Christianity, and nothing else is. St. Paul's words are a revelation from above, but they are also so perfect a revelation of what is in man that we understand and believe. There is no escape. Knowledge, power, sacrifice, and all the rest are powerless, empty, and meaningless without the binding and eternal law of fellowship—love, that love which is the fulfilment of all relations, the perfect expression of our religion, which cannot be acquired or maintained by an individual but presupposes and exists only in the family of God. Christianity is a relation. It cannot exist in isolation. The character of a Christian is in his relation to God and man, not in himself, nor even in his relation to God or to man, but to God and man. The at-one-ment is in the God-man. Is this the witness of Christendom today?

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