Article July 11, 1914 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from R. J. Campbell, G. Campbell Morgan, Inge

[The Continent]

There are countless voices challenging the church today to do this and that, to attack this evil and that problem, to minister to the needs of men on this line and on that. The church ought to respond. Jesus responded with a beautiful promptness and fulness to similar calls; he healed men's bodies, reunited families, fed the hungry. But there came times when he had to assert his main mission. He was not a wonder-worker, though he worked wonders. He was not a body healer, though he healed bodies. He was the messenger of a saving gospel that covered the whole need of men, a gospel that told of a loving Father and of an eternal life.

Effort is often made to edit the gospels so that this spiritual and eternal element can be omitted, and Jesus may be described as a social reformer, pure and simple; but this can be done only by violence. The church has the larger, more difficult, more trying task on hand,—the task of keeping alive the spiritual in man. And as in Jesus' day men did not think of him mainly in those terms, so in our day men do not think of the church's mission mainly in those terms. Ministers of the gospel are not sent into the world because the rank and file of men want to see Jesus, but because everywhere and all the time they need to see him. To them, as to him, there are no more delicious experiences than when men appear who do want to see him.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

From Our Exchanges

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access