Article March 15, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Arthur Henderson, A. W. Littlefield

[Watchman.]

Abram was the first great Protestant and Puritan. Religion in Chaldea had become, as religion tends to become under the crystallization of custom, a great system of temples, priests, and images, with all the paraphernalia of worship. Abram must have had a spiritual experience in which he found immediate access to God and entered into personal communion with "God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," which lifted him out of dependence upon priests and rites and means of grace. He gained direct access to God and obtained that elevation of spirit in which he became "the Friend of God." He was the first of those great men of God who have the vision and freedom and boldness to stand against "established religion" and become creators of new eras of religious life and power. Such men were Moses, Elijah, Samuel, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and above all the author of our faith himself. They knew God and they had immediate authority of spirit from Him.

Unless Abram had known God intimately and affectionately, he would not have cared to go out from the center of civilization; nor would he have been willing to sacrifice the security of a city house and the comforts of community life to enter upon the inconveniences of a tent in the wilderness with its noontide heat and midnight chills. But the presence of God made every place a home, and His altars made any spot of ground a sanctuary for worship. It is a saying that every Christian is a temple of God and may worship when and where he pleases. Abram's religion was of the free character which finds God at all times. He was never away from God. Whatever deprivations he felt as to his separation from men, he found ample compensation in his nearness to a great friend who said to him, "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." All who have entered into fellowship with God find in Him their sufficiency, so that they can dispense with human associations if necessary.

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