Article May 29, 1926 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from J. S. Bezzant, Frank Gunn Brainerd, Bradford Leavitt, Burris Jenkins, Arthur Corning White

[From an article by Rev. J. S. Bezzant, M. A., Vice-Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, in the Modern Churchman, Oxford, England]

The history of religion is the long story of man's desire to commune with God, in the conviction that it is possible to do so. Nor in the light of the phenomena provided by the moral and religious consciousness is there anything irrational in believing that man can be aware of a reality which transcends thought, even as his own life is much more than thought. ... For us, the fundamental importance of the New Testament is that it reveals a new conception of the nature of God and the effect of this upon the first generation of Christians. When we claim that Jesus reveals to us the nature of God supremely, we mean just this: that in so far as his life and ideals are not only understood and pondered intellectually, but are set as the practical guide of human conduct, we arrive at a richer and more worthy conception of the nature of God than this world elsewhere affords.

Accepting, then, the Christian revelation, we believe ... God ... to be of surpassing power and majesty, that His inmost nature is love. ... Jesus, in speaking of God, ... used the term "Father." ... This conviction dominated the whole outlook, life, and teaching of Jesus. For him, God was not, as on Sinai, a terror to evildoers, but the great inspirer to active good. This lies at the basis of his morality, which awakens in the heart the inward "Thou shalt" to replace the written "Thou shalt not." It was because he knew God as Love, and conceived it under the image of fatherhood, that he taught that the kingdom or rule of God was within the heart. He saved men by awakening within them the sense of their sonship to a divine Father.

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