FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from P. Gavan Duffy, Edward B. Pollard

[The (London) Christian Life.]

We are living in an age of religious transition and ethical awakening, and we cannot help feeling that under some subtle influence the rising democracy of the day, better informed than the millions in any previous age, is thinking thoughts on the subject of institutionalized religion. The civilized peoples of the world, the masses included, seem to have simultaneously arisen in their might and made a demand for a reform of antiquated creeds and systems of faith. There has somehow arisen in their minds a vivid consciousness that the average theology does not harmonize with reason and common sense. They have ceased to believe in "plans of salvation" which are to give you a safe passport to heaven by some magical device which operates quite independently of your goodness or your badness. Their own hearts tell them that such "plans" are absurd and delusive. Religion is now, as it always has been, the paramount interest of humanity, and thoughtful observers have anticipated that the next great reformation of religion will spring from the lives of the people. The anticipation is being fulfilled; we are now at the beginning of the reformation.

[Rev. P. Gavan Duffy in The Churchman.]

It is quite beside the mark for any to fall back upon the stock cry of most Christian apologists, that the power of healing the sick was given to the Church only for a time, when signs and wonders were needed to convince and convert the people. The average Christian of to-day has long since come to the conclusion that that form of apology is simply one invented to cover the Church's faithlessness. . . . Never was there a time When. "signs and wonders" were more necessary in the Christian world than to-day. That the power to heal is with the Church is manifest to all who will see; and if only we had that essential—a corporate faith restored instead of faithlessness—that strange, mysterious, silent influence which is now a sort of pull one experiences rather than defines (the result of corporate faithlessness) in restricting the results of the faithful few, I verily believe we should have in its place an immense, immeasurable, spiritual force at work that would mean a speedy return of the day when the Church met and triumphed over physical as well as moral ills.

[Edward B. Pollard in The Standard.]

That there is much difference in the apprehension of truth from age to age; that truth appears in new forms and combinations; that light once undiscerned breaks new upon the consciousness of men, cannot be doubted except by one who simply closes his mind to all living influences.

To fight all change is to put one's self at issue with life. Arrested development, stagnation, mental and spiritual death would surely follow in the wake of this porcupine attitude of bristling antagonism to all which may differ from the accepted views of the past.

[The Examiner.]

Ministers who study their Bibles, not to find out how many Isaiahs there were, or who wrote the Gospel of John, but to bring forth things new and old for the edification of the saints and the conversion of sinners, will have no difficulty in believing it to be the Word of God, for they will discover the divine quality of it by the effect it produces upon the hearts and lives of men — their own included.

[The Universalist Leader.]

The more one seeks to do specific things for the improvement of the world near-by and the world at large, the greater is his increase in moral power and Christian stature.

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