Article May 8, 1915 Issue

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with contributions from A. T. Bannister, J. E. Hinds

[Rev. A. T. Bannister, M.A., in The Christian Commonwealth]

The ministry of the church means piloting the teeming, many-sided life around us over an unknown sea to a land which God will show. And if we are to accomplish this mission, the ship must be piloted by prophets,—men "of hope and forward-looking mind," who will set their face to the future rather than to the past, who in the years immediately to come will count it the chiefest of their religious duties single-mindedly to work for peace between the nations, between the Christian sects, and between capital and labor; men who are prepared fearlessly to apply the principles of Christ to civie and industrial life; men who will never forget that religion cannot be separated from politics any more than the individual can be separated from society.

We have had, for the present, enough and to spare of individual Christianity; enough also of institutional Christianity. What we shall need after the war is international Christianity, civic Christianity, political Christianity, which is a very different thing from ecclesiastical politics. When the Christian churches cease from their internecine strife about antiquarian issues, and begin intelligently to direct the overmastering power of religion toward the creation of a righteous human society, the kingdom of God will not much longer delay its coming.

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