Article April 5, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Edgar Franklin Blanchard, Stephen S. Wise, W. E. Orchard

[Edgar Franklin Blanchard in Christian Work and Evangelist.]

All signs point to the rise of a new religious movement which will restore the church to its rightful place in the world. It must come; and the rise of such a religious movement would be the repetition of history. Judaism failed to fulfil the mission of the true church of God. The result was, that a new religious movement arose which gave the world a new ecclesiastical system. This was the early Christian church. The Christian church did not remain true to its mission; and the result was, that in the sixteenth century a religious movement arose which gave the world another new ecclesiastical system. This was Protestantism. And the failure of the church today to fulfil its fraternal mission is prophetic of the rise of another religious movement which will give the world another religious system. Prof. Adolph Harnack of Berlin, who is doubtless the greatest living authority on church history, says that neither Catholicism (the feudal system of organized religion) nor Protestantism (the loose individualistic system) is fulfilling the divine purpose of the church of God to man, and that "the nations are still waiting for a third kind of church as a foundation of their higher life." Many are the signs that point to the coming of this new church, and that it will be a religious brotherhood—a religious system organized on positive ethical and fraternal principles. Only such an institution can represent the spirit of the Founder of Christianity.

[Rabbi Stephen S. Wise as reported in New York Herald.]

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