[From the Los Angeles Times, California]

Rabbi E. F. Magnin preached at Temple B'nai B'rith on "The New Trend in Religion." He spoke in part as follows: "Churches and synagogues are gradually becoming more liberal. The trend is away from theology and toward a greater emphasis upon ethics and right living. The day will come when missionary societies will pay less attention to changing the religious labels of people and more toward making the world better. It makes little difference what creed a man espouses. Most people could not definitely explain the difference between their denomination and those of their neighbors. Theological terms only confuse them. There are good and bad among all groups, and they act according to their moral capacities and intelligence, rather than upon certain beliefs which are contained in catechisms. I have discovered that in all denominations the younger generation of ministers is stressing cooperation between all religious groups, kinder thoughts, better standards of living, and universal peace."

[From an article on "Contrasts of World Views" by H. Scharrelmann, in the Bremer Nachrichten (translation)]

We have to-day in Germany at least fifty different churches and sects which are seeking adherents. ... It becomes more and more the fashion for them to bombard each other with this and that "platform" and "viewpoint." ... It seems sometimes almost as if a new Babel of tongues in the spiritual realm had begun, and it is really no great exaggeration to say that the only subject one can talk on is the weather, if one does not wish to run the risk of getting into a dispute with others. To show how wide and deep the gulf between some of these movements already is, I will compare two extreme theories, two viewpoints, both of which have a large number of adherents in Germany. Naturally, I shall not take the side of either of these points of view here, but shall simply set forth the leading characteristics of both.

The atheist (to deal first with this viewpoint) ... thinks the world began with the forces of nature operating in matter. To him man is the acme of creation, at least upon this planet. He is, up till now, the last link of a long process of evolution, which began with the formation of simple protoplasm and which, on account of the fight for existence through countless ages, has worked up through the animal kingdom and emerged as the self-conscious, civilized man of the present day. The highly developed man of to-day is, of course, not the last form of development imaginable. ... Development itself is without a goal, for it is only a path. ... The existence of each individual begins with birth and ends with death. Beyond this the individual lives only in his descendants. These inherit good and bad characteristics from both their parents and their kind. ... The spiritual life of man is the natural product of his brain activity; an independent, spiritual life, apart from the body, does not exist. Therefore, all religious productions are appearances, which, as civilization progresses, mankind will recognize as more and more erroneous and untenable, and which must be resisted by them.

In contrast, let us consider some of the leading thoughts which support the Christian Science viewpoint: God is Life, Love, intelligence, Truth. ... He is omnipresent Principle. He is the creator of man, who is also perfect, like his heavenly Father. Sickness, sin, and death are unrealities, human illusions, just as, indeed, the sense world itself is unreal. God and His spiritual creation alone are real. He is all-embracing harmony, and only the "mortal mind of mankind" considers matter as real and endows it with life and intelligence; only our human sense considers matter as more real than the spiritual world. If, however, the character of each is recognized, all suffering will disappear. Christ [Jesus] proved this through his teaching and his works. He taught: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect;" "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive;" "These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." He promised his disciples that they should do even greater works than he if they kept the faith and were true to his teaching.

Mankind become sick and sainful, because they think that sin, disease, and death are real, and because they live in the errors of a sense world. Mankind think erroneously, and so they fear misfortune of all kinds. But whoever overcomes fear and begins to think rightly, overcomes sorrow, too. ... The human body also is only the thought of mortal mind; it does not exist in reality—just as the material world is only a human belief. Only he whose "eye," as Christ Jesus demanded, has become "single," and who consistently denies all evil and misfortune, who is pure in heart and sees God in all, and becomes conscious of God's living presence, attains painless, perfect, and eternal life.

I have tried to give merely a rough outline of the two extremes of thought. All other religions, other philosophies, range between these two extremes, which, naturally, are far apart in their practical results. The atheist strives to do good, as he understands it, for good's sake. He labors not only for himself and his own, but also for mankind. But his hands are bound on every side; too often he must postpone until to-morrow, or the day after, his best and purest endeavors, for all progress depends on development, and development takes time, sometimes a very long time. ... The Christian Scientist, however, will and must strive to come nearer to God, to understand Him better; hence, every increase in understanding must be put into practice; and only in so far as he does this, can he advance along the road of understanding. While the atheist remains more and more a theorist, the Christian Scientist becomes more and more a practical exponent.

[From an article by Henry Nelson Wieman, in the Century Magazine, New York, New York]

Religion is not merely a belief. It is a certainty. Belief falls short of certainty. But God, in the sense of that Something, ... which is of supreme value for all human living, is a certainty. This is so because some things have more value for the highest attainment of human life than others. ... To have religion we must have more than mere intellectual certainty that God exists. It is possible to have certainty without vision; and religion requires vision. A man must not only be certain; ... he must have vision. ... He must be not only intellectually persuaded but emotionally stirred; not only cognize the fact, but discern its value and catch its significance. He must so realize it that it wins his devotion and shapes his will. To have this appreciation, ... and thus to feel the stimulus of it, is to have what we call vision of it. Vision involves emotion, imagination, and conversion of the will in devoted self-surrender.

So we say the object of religious interest is not only an object of belief, it is an object of certain knowledge, because God is that Something which is of supreme value for all human living. When apprehension of this ... becomes a vital and reconstructive factor in human living, we have religion. To be religious is to be vividly cognizant and fully responsive to the fact that the universe contains something which is of more value than anything else, and to be stirred to joy and enthusiasm by that fact. ... Now there is nothing that can adequately give human beings a hint of the best that this universe has to offer save a human life so lived that there shimmers through it a loveliness so different from the grimy facts of daily life as to seem like a dream and yet be not a dream. ... Through Jesus, so we Christians believe, there shines more of the unexplored and mysterious goodness of this universe, and in him there is more promise of that unimaginable blessedness that may sometime flood the world, than in any other. Through him we make better contacts with that which lifts the values of human life to the highest level. Therefore we are Christians.

Jesus has been dawning on the world ... for two thousand years. Scarcely yet is he well above the horizon. Far indeed is he from the zenith. We do not yet receive from him all the light he has to give. Yet, thanks to two millenniums of thought and aspiration and research, there may be some to-day who know him better ... than he has been known since the first century A. D. ... Jesus still has much to give us that we have not yet been able to receive.

[From the West London Observer, England]

"The Conjecturally Damned" was the arresting subject of a striking address by the Rev. Will Hayes, of Chatham, to the Free Religious Movement at Lindsey Hall, Notting Hill Gate. "On every hand," said Mr. Hayes, "you will find little sects saying in so many words, 'We are the people.' The rest of humanity are carefully excluded and thought of as outsiders. All the rest are shut out. They are the conjecturally damned. From the ecclesiastical point of view, every single human being is damned by some one or other, which is, perhaps, why none of us care very much for the theological condemnation. Most religious people are much better than their creeds, and one of the most encouraging signs is the fact that human feeling is constantly triumphing over technical beliefs. Human feeling takes no note of theological boundaries. The religion of humanity puts up no dividing walls. The church of the future will not tolerate any conception of a God who shuts people out. There is an old Eastern saying, 'Paradise lies at the feet of mothers,' which is only another way of saying, 'Where Love is, God is.'"

[Rev. Warren S. Archibald, as quoted in the Boston Evening Transcript, Massachusetts]

Men get religion when they feel the need of it. When a man feels profoundly the need for God, then he moves toward God and nothing can stop him until he rests in God. Further, men travel nearer to God when their feeling of lowliness is deeply stirred. Those who walk humbly toward God are those who at last walk certainly with God. The man who is not at all self-sufficient is at last the man who is God-sufficient.

[Sir George Elliot, as quoted in the Star, Christchurch, New Zealand]

If industrial peace is to be secured at all it can be brought about only by both the employer and the employee making honest efforts to understand and follow the teaching of the Nazarene of nineteen centuries ago.