Editorial September 4, 1915 Issue

"What doth the Lord require"

John B. Willis

Much is being said these days by those who would call themselves non-religious, of the essentials of true religion. The much-preached-to have become the preachers, and professed Christian are brought to bar and inquired of with a pertinent directness that brooks no evasion. With no small show of contempt the bulk of the so-called thinking and unthinking world has brushed aside creeds and confessions, all the paraphernalia of ritual and tradition, and demanded an accounting of Christian stewardship in terms of practical efficiency. Another interesting aspect of the situation is the further fact that this call for genuine, good Samaritan Christianity is entirely at-one with the divine requirement presented in the Lord's "controversy with his people" as declared by the prophets and supremely emphasized in the life and teaching of the great Wayshower.

Reminded of the loving patience and goodness with which the Lord had borne their backslidings, Micah represents Israel as crying out in sorrow and contrition, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God?" And this answer for all men and all time is given: "He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" In other words, we are informed that God will take care of the human problem if we but have the grace to be humble and Christian toward our brother man.

Over against this simple divine requirement let us note the growing conviction among men that, as Stopford Brooke has said, "there is nothing in the whole world at present of so grave and awful necessity as the doing of civic justice." The greatest social movement of history, a movement whose surges are beating today, and ofttimes thunderously, upon the threshold of every nation and every religious institution, makes essentially the same demand as that voiced by the ancient seer, namely, that professed Christian shall measure up to the standard of fraternal responsibility which Christ Jesus glorified in his life and reaffirmed for each one of us when he said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

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