Article January 2, 1915 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from J. H. E., Frederick A. Bisbee

[The Christian Register]

It is strange to find the word "intercession" used to designate meetings held for the purpose of praying for peace. One is at a loss to know whether it denotes a misconception concerning Deity, or simply the perpetuation of words and phrases outgrown. The term denotes the belief that God is able to stop the war and will not do it unless there is special supplication on behalf of those who suffer therefrom. Surely no modern mind can believe in such a conception. It repudiates the love and wisdom of God, and harks back to the Deity whose favorable action might be secured by frenzied appeal. To pray for peace may express the normal desire of the individual, but to beg God to "intercede," postulates either a God outside the universe or careless of what happens within it. Is it not rather true that God is doing for peace all that human power and will permit, and that the only kind of intercession that has any unpagan significance is that with those men and women who have the power to will and achieve peace? Is it not true that God through all the centuries has been praying to man to bring about the realization of the Christ-song of peace and good will, and that the highest duty of man is to discover within himself the answer to that prayer? [J. H. E. in The Homiletic Review]

Salvation has been invited forth from its theological cloister out into the highways and byways of practical life, and given a broader name and application—conservation. We have slowly come to see that the true business of the world is salvation, not destruction; use, not abuse. From the little kingdom of the human body, with its microcosm of mental and spiritual forces, out the round world itself, the same law holds: normal use is life and health and growth; excess is waste, deterioration, death. What we have slowly learned in the small of personal life, we are now applying in the large to all human affairs. Conservation ought not to be narrowed down to a mere economy, but adopted as a commanding law of life for both the individual and the nation. The creator has made ample provision for the race. Nature's storehouses are full; her forces are unwasting. But she resents waste and destruction, and her inexorable laws exact the penalty to the last jot and tittle. [American Lutheran Survey]

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Special Announcements