Article January 27, 1917 Issue

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[Canon J. H. B. Masterman in The Church Family Newspaper]

Every age has its own golden image,—the popular idol of the moment,—and it is easy to persuade ourselves that we shall lose influence by dissociating ourselves from other men. The temptation to compromise is so strong that few of us are able to resist. Yet the secret of the failure of the church (in so far as it has failed) is really the unwillingness of Christian men to refuse to conform to the standards of the world. The Chaldeans were watching to see whether the three men would be true to their religion. They hated them because they were faithful, but they would have merely despised them if they had joined in the worship of the multitude. Better incur the hatred of men than betray the cause of God. The fact that these men held high office in the kingdom made it all the more important that they should show themselves faithful. They had much to lose; it was only more vital that they should make no compromise.

[The Jewish Chronicle] Already in the psalmist's time it was said that the name of God is praised from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. Since then centuries of enlightenment have rolled over the world. Yet the need of proclaiming the laws of righteousness which Abraham was the first to make known to a depraved world was never more urgent than it is today, when the ordered system of moral ideas built up by centuries of painful evolution seems to be falling into chaos, and men are flinging defiance at the distinctions between right and wrong which mankind have venerated for countless generations. Abraham feared not to shed the illumination of his genius on a benighted world. We, his descendants, the people who have seen a great light, have need of similar courage, when all around us is plunged in the depths of moral darkness.

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