FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from J. B., J. B. Silcox

[The British Congregationalist.]

In his address from the chair of the Union, Mr. Compton Rickett certainly chose a live subject to deal with. If the New Theology controversy has done nothing else, it has at least aroused a keen interest and made people think on some of the deepest themes. Our chairman took a bold plunge when he reviewed the situation from the standpoint of the mere layman and the man in the street. We owe him our thanks for having done so, for if there is one thing that the pulpit needs just now, it is to know what the pew is thinking about. As Mr. Rickett says, though surely the picture is overdrawn: "The world listens at our church doors, and furtively peers through the windows, pursued by the idea that a rushing mighty wind may perchance be heard, or the glow of pentecostal fire be seen. When it discovers that the mystic Hinterland is as dark to the Church as to the world itself, the world will cease to trouble about the halffilled temples of the Faith. She has her own ethical systems, and prefers her own gatherings for mutual improvement. She cares little about a Church that shakes hands with her over a pleasant Sunday afternoon and has no story of spiritual mystery. We cannot affect surprise if into this theological vacuum wild theories and strange doctrines should rush. The Church of to-day has created the void which, sooner or later, must be filled."

["J. B." in The Christian World, London.]

Our own soul, in its solitary journey, if faithful to the highest in it, becomes ever more conscious of a Divine leading. Its transitions are progresses, successive disclosures of the revelation that goes on within. The outer universe, opening to us at every turn its new exhaustless energies, reveals itself as symbol and faint expression of a diviner universe behind. More sure do we become, as the years pass, that our intellect is fed from a higher intellect, that our heart draws its inspiration from a greater heart. As surely as our bodily eye opens to us a visible world of matter and force, so surely does the soul's eye reveal one whose powers are higher. As surely as holiness is greater than gravitation, so surely is the kingdom of holiness the real and enduring kingdom. Our greatest knowledge is our knowledge of values. The highest in us points to the highest without us. Science knows that God is Power; the soul knows that God is Love.

[The Universalist Leader.]

Perhaps the profoundest failure of Christianity as a world religion is its inability to curb racial passions and prejudices, and to prevent wars of conquest. The vision of international arbitration is a splendid one. The burden it would lift from the nations of the world, the end it would make of browbeating and intimidation on the part of the great Powers, are things that are worth trying for. The case against war to-day is vast in its indictment, unanswerable in its argument, prophetic in the spirit of its indignation. But in the mean while there is a kind of argument sometimes heard to-day from the minds of social reformers that is an unfair indictment of those who are not quite so radical in this matter as some impetuous people would wish. [Rev. J. B. Silcox, D.D., in The Advance.]

What this old world needs is not so much the exposure of error as the positive presentation of truth. The best way to defend the gospel is to preach it. Many people are content with a negative sort of goodness. They are more anxious to avoid sin than to acquire holiness. They are more watchful against doing wrong than zealous in doing right. They are so afraid of making a mistake that they never make anything.

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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TEXT-BOOK

August 24, 1907

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