Article November 4, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from W. F. Adeney, L. O. Williams, Joseph Bennett, Ozora S. Davis

[Christian World.]

One conspicuous temptation of our time is a religions temptation. The immense, one may say the revolutionary, movement of modern thought, has produced among average people two attitudes on the question of religion. On the one side we find simple souls who seek safety in a rigid conservatism; in th close shutting of their eyes to all discoveries, all researches which seem to militate against the traditional views. They fear that if they give up one thing they must give up all. As Eucken puts it, "They believe the impossible in order to preserve the necessary." This auttitude can have only one future. It will die with this generation. It will die as surely as the pre-Copernican astronomy has died, killed by the sheer weight of facts. But there is another widely spreading attitude, and much worse. It is that of giving up religion because some dogmas supposed to belong to it have fallen into disrepute. That this position is infinitely more stupid than the other, as stupid as denying the stars because we have a new astronomy, as ceasing to build on the rocks because we have a new geology, is to thinking minds sufficiently evident. But we have today to deal with a great mass of unthinking minds, and the results of this new temper are seen everywhere in a shrinkage in the sense of life's higher values. Men are taking low views of themselves and of the universe they live in. Their sky has closed in; they are shut out from the high lights, and fight like rats in a cellar for the goods they can find there. The world of today is tempted, as almost never before, to fling away its pearl of price, its living bread, and to perish for want of it. Against this vast temptation there is only one remedy. It lies in that refinding of God for ourselves and our neighbor; in that rediscovery of the spiritual values; in that resurrection of the living gospel from the tomb in which convention and superstition have immured it, which is today the one task of the church and the one hope of mankind.

[Prin. W. F. Adeney, M.A., D.D., in British Congregationalist.]

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