Article August 16, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

W. E. Orchard

[Rev. W. E. Orchard, D.D., in The Christian Commonwealth.]

What does the message command to us here today? The building of a highway; a road by which the people may travel to a completer realization of the kingdom of God. The existing ways are plainly insufficient. The old well-worn ways of religion are deserted. Nothing can disguise the fact that the old paths are no longer frequented. Whether in matters of thought or practise, an enormous change has come over our age, and is ever more widely manifesting itself in the defection of vast masses of the people from the beliefs and the guidance which contented our fathers. This may be regarded as an apostasy from the one hope of the world, and strenuous efforts may be made, by repairing the roads and erecting new signposts, to attract pilgrims back again. But very few would be found willing to identify these ancient roadways with the way of life, while it is a matter of history that humanity never returns to walk again a way it has once forsaken.

It is a commonplace also, that the old roads are hopelessly divided. The unhappy divisions of religious bodies are a standing confusion to the people and a complete refutation of all reliability. If all these roads lead to the same place, then some of them cannot go very straight, and there must be great waste and useless competition in keeping up so many of them. No doubt there are those who declare that only one of these roads is the right one, while others will half-heartedly claim that a variety in roads is a thing in itself desirable. But religion is essentially unifying, and this diversity shows that the present ways are not constructed on purely religious principles.

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