Article July 17, 1915 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Walter Rauschenbusch, Wilberforce, David Hanson Christensen

[Zion's Herald]

Time was when we could say with those of old, "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." Not so today. There is little positive teaching of youth, as once there was,—at least, to no such extent as there should be. And this is in itself a result of our unbelief. That accent on the word "now" in the question, Do we believe in hell now? reveals the temper of the age. Belief is shifting, changing. There is no eternal verity; there is nothing settled! Such a condition is fatal. It makes for empty pews, sterile spiritual life, instability in faith. It makes for agnosticism in our religion and leaves the church emaciated and weak, impotent in the hour of great trial.

If the crisis through which the world is now passing shall serve to open our eyes to this fact, it will not have been in vain. With the foundations shaken beneath our feet and the skies dark with hate, there is no soul-satisfaction in the impersonal God of a cold science without faith, nor in the mere ministry of social helpfulness. Only one thing holds then, and that is the anchor within the veil, where the spiritual realities are to be found. What this age needs is a faith that can lead one to say, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."

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