Article October 19, 1912 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from W. E. Orchard, C. H. Brent

[Continent.]

Even the slow of sight have come to see that these are new times. The world is shaken out of its ancient ruts. The old order is changing. Nothing that has been is now taken for granted. This is the day of the interrogation point. Society everywhere is in a transition period, a state of flux. "Unrest" is the big word of the hour, the world around. The changes in "the changeless East" are scarcely more dramatic than the changes that are in progress in our own western world. And these processes are striking clear down to the deeps—they are stirrings of the fundamental human heart.

An astonishing aspect of present social conditions—astonshing only because we have somehow come to regard religion as a technical thing, carefully preserved within ecclesiastical boundaries and definitions—is that the manifest restlessness and outreach is essentially religious. We listen almost incredulous while we hear the great words of religion taken over into the vocabularies of the politicians and the social reformers. A political meeting nowadays bears many of the marks of a religious revival. Even the time-honored songs of Zion have become battle hymns of political parties. Without apology, because they have clearly perceived the deeper mood of mankind, campaign speakers make the direct religious appeal to the consciousness of the people. The basic spirituality of the twentieth century, and of all centuries, makes reply to the voice of religion, even though that voice comes from the political leader and not from the preacher. A far-visioned observation of our times perceives that there is something fundamentally akin to a renaissance of religion sweeping through the world.

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