Article April 18, 1914 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from W. Duxbury Woods, John S. Bunting

[The Universalist Leader]

We want to save society, so that through it the individuals, all individuals, can be saved. Others want to save the individual, so that society may be made over into the kingdom of heaven. That is, the ultimate goal is the same, but people are approaching it from different sides. The Outlook now comes out with the proposition that "society will never become thoroughly sound and sweet except by the moralization of its members. There must be a change of the heart of society before it will bring forth fruits meet for repentance. The right spirit is a thousand times more searching, exacting, and effective than the most rigid regulation. The prophetic function in the church is to declare steadily the will of God; and the will of God is written, not on tablets of stone, but on the heart and in the conscience of men." This is all true, and simply introduces another word. We have had "socializing the individual," and "spiritualizing the individual," and now "moralizing the individual;" and they all mean the same thing. They all stand for salvation, enlarged beyond its old meaning. Today the effort is to save the individual, not apart from other men, but as a part of other men; the word is enlarged, the individual is saved only as he is spiritualized, moralized, socialized. But the point of contact through which this larger work is done is the heart, is the conscience, is the soul of the man. The way to do the work of the day is to get the man. But that is not all. Still further, the Outlook says: "By all means let the outward reform be carried forward with zeal and courage; but it must be accompanied by the inward reform, which makes conscience a light to a man's feet and fills him with the spirit of Christ, and which imposes few laws, but sheds warmth and light on the whole world."

[The Congregationalist and Christian World]

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