Article July 8, 1911 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Marion D. Shutter, R. J. Campbell, Francis Brown

[Churchman.]

Because spiritual leadership is now written without capital letters and without the directive guidance of some imposing personal power, even where it is not rejected it is apt to be viewed with apathy or a mild wonderment that such tremendous summons to mankind should be heard in such insignificant tones. The apostolic maxim, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," is being acted upon in a way that is bound sooner or later to shake the foundations of traditional Christian thought and practice.

Such self-searchings will have a stirring influence, for they are not the outcome of the pessimism that paralyzes and discourages. What is needed, and what is being prepared for, is the more thorough realization of the doctrine of the brotherhood of man and its full reinterpretation to a society whose moral fervor demands a program of action on certain definite principles. Such moral fervor is both the direct and indirect result of the incarnation. Christianity started as a progressive religion, ever advancing, even at the expense of being called hazardous and reckless. Caution has been overemphasized, as if it marked the Christian temperament. But there is nothing of this temperament in the Bible. Whenever and wherever, too, the church was doing its work, it was not fearful of innovation and did not hesitate to be revolutionary in a real sense. There are hosts of questions at this present moment in economic and political life, which cannot be solved in a Christian sense unless organized Christianity acts together to force a solution. Its solution is bound to antagonize many of the existing elements in society. There is no way except by the adoption of a positive program to lessen the amount of poverty and misery in the world and to do away with injustice and inhumanity. With a program made clear and intelligible, and promoted by the willingness of the church to learn the best way to reach the people through its services, the query why people do not go to church would lose much of its significance. But even so the positive question still persists, What is the meaning of church-going to the average man?

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