Article January 25, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

[Advance.]

Let us carefully note the fact that with all Christ's supernatural power he refused to use it in the interest of sudden achievements or easy victories. With all his intense love for men and zeal for human welfare he proposed no short road to great blessings. Not all the iniquities of the dreadful pagan empire or the entreaties of a chosen and suffering people could move him to change the state by a stroke of power. On the contrary, his doctrines were germs, his propositions processes, his favorite illustrations the field, the sower, the seed, the grain of mustard, the leaven. He was in the world to set nothing aside, but to fulfil, to fulfil all beginnings, all promises, all laws, even the laws of nature, the laws of development, the laws of the human mind and of human growth. He came in the fulness of time, and did nothing out of time or without time. We need to note this fact and feature of Christ's method the more carefully now because we are in danger of becoming impatient of its spiritual processes. Troubled humanity wants a quick and easy remedy. There is a strong yearning for a "presto change." The desire to have Christianity change the state and society at a stroke is almost as passionate and impatient today as it was when Christ healed disease with a touch, but refused to revolutionize society by the same short process. The world is as eager to cast out that word "fulfil" as the Jews were to cast out him who used it, while classes of men would like to see a kingdom of prosperity brought in without reference to the troublesome conditions which hedge about all good kingdoms.

Strike to the center of much of the agitation of the day and the core of it is nothing more or less than a demand for profit, prosperity, and comfort, without going through the prosy process of putting away wasteful vices and destructive habits and of cultivating careful economies and prudent forethought. So far as the laboring classes are turning their backs upon Christianity, it is for much the same reason that Israel rejected Christ, because it fails to give them a kingdom without repentance and faith. And over on the other side is another class who would like to have a secure state and a peaceful, pleasant kingdom, without casting out the devils of selfishness, avarice, pride, and wantonness, a kingdom which will make one half of society meek and submissive without making the other half humble, generous, or brotherly.

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