Article June 28, 1919 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Samuel Zane Batten, Frank Crane, Maude Royden

[Samuel Zane Batten, D.D., in The Biblical World]

The churches must keep alive in men the hope of the kingdom of God and must inspire men to arise and seek that kingdom. Too often the churches have forgotten this, and so they have upheld the present order and have tried to keep things fixed. They have feared change; they have allowed great evils to remain unrebuked and unopposed because they feared to stir up antagonism. They have feared change when they should have feared the evils which made change imperative. And so again and again in times of social commotion the churches have taken sides with the forces of reaction against the people who were struggling for justice, whereas the churches are here to witness against the present social order and to arouse men to seek a kingdom that is to come. We stand for the present social order so far as it is just, and no farther. Is there injustice in society? Then the churches should know it and organize an opposition. Are governments and statesmen deceiving themselves and misleading the people by wrong policies? Then the churches must declare the right way and lead men into it. I know, of course, the hazard here; but the church that hesitates is lost. The prophet who fears to follow truth has sunk to the false prophet. The attempt to keep things fixed, to allow evils to pass unchallenged because we fear the confusion of destroying them, is itself contrary to Christianity and is the cause of disaster to men and nations.

[Dr. Frank Crane in The Bulletin, Philadelphia, Pa.]

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