Article February 17, 1912 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Samuel McChord Crothers, Frederick Lynch

[Universalist Leader.]

The profoundest note of human experience in the Bible as well as in the soul is where one stands spiritually naked in the presence of the great "I Am." How our shut-in worship and our narrow round of spiritual exercises shrink when we compare them with the great moods of the makers of our sacred Book. It is not the details of the report of what happened in Chaldea or Midian or on Sinai that is the center of the story. Though every commandment of the Decalogue should suffer the mutations of the vicissitudes of time, as they have not, yet that interview of a great soul with the eternal God is one of the sublime epochs in the progress of the human spirit toward the light. And yet if the true atmosphere is preserved, even Moses never was familiar with the source of life. He was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth.

There is something in the life of Jesus that strikes a higher key of experience than the lofty awe of the ancient seer. There is no better name for this fine mood than familiarity with God. The soul of Jesus is at home in the world. He is no pilgrim in an alien land. He is no stranger amid the phenomena of life. There is in him a sense of intimacy and fellowship with the spirit of the universe. He does not peer out into the dark, wondering where the path leads. Wilderness and mountain have no terror for him. He walks abroad with a serene consciousness that this wonderful place where he lives is his Father's house. It has other rooms. It is filled with beautiful things. Here are uncaged birds and sun-kissed flowers and laughing children, but they all belong here and they belong to us. They are the gifts of a bounty that is infinite.

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