Article April 15, 1916 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Gordon L. Thompson, Donald B. Fraser

[The Christian Work]

The principal value of the Christian revelation is this,—that it really does put us in touch with what is beyond and above all sense-experience, all change and decay, all darkness and evil. It can and does unite us to the eternal now; in a manner of speaking it puts us in possession of that which will survive when this world and everything in it have vanished like clouds and shadows before the light of the morning. By its ability to do this the gospel of Jesus stands or falls. If people only understood better what it is and what it promises, they could not possibly view it with indifference. Christianity is not primarily a set of rules for good behavior; it is not a code of conduct; it is not merely good advice as to how to live.

We cannot put this too strongly, for it comes home to us with overwhelming force as we view it in relation to human nature. It is an offer of deliverance from the dominion of a lie, the lie of sin; it is the infusion of a new principle into our hearts in response to faith; it is the letting through of the love of God and the joy of heaven into our earthbound souls, the shattering of the dominion of a delusion, the delusion of materiality; it is a perpetual miracle, the miracle of the impartation of God's own life to the believer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mysterious as this sounds, it is the simple and literal truth; this is the secret of the vitality of the gospel in the world today as in every other day. Those who live by it come into possession ever more and more fully of something that is not of this world, a divine essence, a spiritual good, an unspeakable gladness, which is part of the real and indestructible eternal substance from which all goodness flows.

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