Article March 21, 1914 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Edward Glenfaun Spencer, W. E. Orchard

[Rev. Edward Glenfaun Spencer in The Christian Register]

What is the spirit of the time saying, to men, to nations, to institutions, to constitutions, to our much-vaunting Western civilization? Just what Jesus said to his own day and generation and to all succeeding time: Do not profess or protest or pretend. We shall not judge you so, but by what you prove to be. Produce, produce! Show us whether ye be food-bearing fig-trees or barren, hurtful thistles. Let us see your fruits!

Who that hath ears to hear will fail to distinguish in this challenge the voice of the divine-human spirit, awake, self-conscious, purposeful, and seeking in all existing forms and modes of life that which is as real, as vital, as permanent as itself? Who that hath the understanding heart will miss herein the accent of that wisdom engendered of disappointment, chastened by suffering, and apt at last to discern and swift to prefer the plain and artless true to the most alluringly bedizened false? This is the challenge of religion issuing out of the depths of our common human nature, where at last it is coming to its own. It has the clearness, the directness, the authority of that inmost center of reality, the attractive "pull" of which men feel when they yearn and turn toward God.

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