Article March 27, 1915 Issue

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with contributions from Washington Gladden

[Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., in The Christian Work]

Surely the old world is calling, with all its voices of horror and grief and agony, for some new idea on which to rebuild its shattered civilization. The old foundations of distrust and antipathy, on which it has been seeking to rest its structures of art and industry, are crumbling; some new principle must be discovered on which to found human relations. Is not the first word that Jesus spoke, the word that the world needs now to hear,—that all the people of all the nations have one Father and are all of one family? If that is the fact, the first thing they have to do is to come together and make a compact which shall recognize and express the fact.

It is an impressive circumstance that the thought of the whole world seems to be moving steadily and strongly in this direction. All my reading shows a great consensus of opinion gathering, that there can be no way out except some kind of league of peace. What would have been sneered at six months ago by the great majority as utterly utopian, begins to be recognized by a good share of the people who think, as the only possible cure for the world's woe. When the great ones of the earth get ready to make the principle of brotherhood the corner-stone of a universal commonwealth, it will perhaps be plain to all the world that Christianity is not a failure. And it may by that time be more evident that the church which bears the name of Jesus Christ can find no better foundation for its life and teaching than the gospel of the kingdom.

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