Article October 19, 1918 Issue

Deliverance from All Evil

CLAUDE M. SPAULDING

For some sixteen hundred years since the time of the primitive church, Christendom has stood for the saving from sin only, and has considered sickness and death as phases of God's government. To indicate a radical change in Christian teaching and practice, we may say that this change dates from 324 A. D., when the Emperor Constantine formally accepted Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. He endeavored to carry the Christian church into politics—a thing impossible of performance. He might have succeeded had he attempted the purification of politics, even as all thought must become purified and exalted under the influence of spiritual thinking, but with the attempt to use the church politically Christian healing was lost, and the centuries thereafter dragged on without the healing influence of spiritual understanding.

The Christian church has held fast to the theory that the grace of God through the understanding of Christ saves from sin. This was and is a solid foundation upon which to stand, because it is true and inspirational. Throughout the centuries Christian men and women have given influence and glory to their churches through toil, deprivation, and sacrifice, mindful of the Biblical promises of spiritual reward for the faithful. Upon the prayers and labors of saintly Christian has been reared the civilization of the world. Yet, though during the past sixteen hundred years the doctrine of salvation from sin has based the teaching and practice of the Christian church, and while such teaching has undoubtedly been a blessing to mankind, the world has not been delivered from sin.

The question is frequently put to theologians as to why greater blessings to mankind and a more general deliverance from sin have not followed the high hopes and loving labors of centuries. The question has particular point when we are in the midst of a world war in which professed Christian is contending against professed Christian. We are reminded that there are many Christians on either side in this war who are supposed to have been taught Christian rules for thought and conduct by the same spiritual teachers, and who have identical religious affiliations. Now that they are contending, brother against brother, the heads of their respective churches attempt to assume an attitude of neutrality. If the heads of the Christian churches to-day can consistently think neutrality in this war, and consistently refuse to declare for either side, then there are very serious reflections cast upon the value of Christian precept and practice. No true adherent of the church as Christ Jesus established it will, however, desist from teaching the letter, and in the spirit of the gospels which reveal the master Christian.

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