Article September 29, 1923 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Salem Bland, Sparks W. Melton

[From Scribner's Magazine, New York, N. Y., quoted in the Literary Digest, New York, N. Y., March 10, 1923]

Professor Charles Foster Kent, Woolsey professor of Biblical history and literature at Yale University, says that Protestant unity "is surely coming. ... We have been passing through a strenuous period of readjustment. ... We can rejoice that it is over and that an era of reconstruction has begun." Already, we are told, "a new spirit is stirring in the hearts of religious teachers, as they turn to subjects, if not more important, at least spiritually more inspiring. ... The Author of their faith placed the entire stress not on declarations but on demonstrations, on life and deeds, not on creeds.... The youth of to-day must live in the twentieth century, and their faith and their development should be the first concern of the church. Scolding and prodding will not compel the twentieth century to go back into the shell of the eighteenth, even could that shell be restored.... Protestantism, as the great prophetic movement of Christianity, is to-day confronted by stupendous tasks and responsibilities which can only be met with united front and in the spirit of him who found his life by losing it. His many-sided teachings contain the fundamentals on which all his followers can safely and securely take their stand, content to differ regarding the debatable questions of intellectual belief.... In the language of yesterday, many of them [the sects] need the experience of a sound conversion that will lead them to forget their bickering, their man-made creeds, their petty rivalries, their pathetic trust in mere organization, and inspire them to try the bold experiment of finding their life by losing it in the service of mankind. Too often they have followed wrong impulses or clung too tenaciously to institutions long outgrown; but they are usually ready to learn from their mistakes. They are still responsive to the voice of the real prophet and, therefore, ever open to new truth. They are eager to satisfy men's deepest religious needs. There are unmistakable indications that they are passing through a great transitional period out of which will emerge a more unified, a more spiritual, and a more truly prophetic Protestantism."

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