Article September 28, 1912 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Charles Howard Shim, A. G. Richards, J. Phillip Rogers

[Christian World.]

It is still the duty of the church, even at the cost of misunderstanding, to direct men's minds to the ultimate questions, but it will direct them with more power when it is free from the suspicion that it is simply cvading a present duty by its reference to ideal considerations. The suspicion can be best removed when the church is ordering its own household according to the standard of values which it preaches.

A new standard of values! A new estimate of the good things! New definitions and scales and measures! It is the business of the church in the present distress to preach these things with the power behind it of lives which are experiments in these things. It will be able to say then that any adjustment of material wealth, to have its value both for the rich and the poor of our present order, must carry along with it the acceptance of these new estimates. If the present values are preserved, if we still define wealth in the terms of material things, as we in the West have done for ages—then it is difficult to see how any adjustment can be permanently valuable or how it can be preserved. And the doubt which comes to us now is not a doubt lest we fail to create along with the legislation the new spirit without which it must largely fail.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS