Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1914 — Back to the Bible [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Back to the Bible

Application of the Scriptures to the World Today aa Seoa by Eminent Men it Various Walka ol Life

(Copyright, 1914. by Joseph a Bow lee) THE GOSPEL OP PROGRESS.

(By ARCHBISHOP JOHN IRELAND.)

"Its constructive ideas (the Bible’s) are as far above those of the, other books of religion as the heavens are above the earth. Washington Gladden. 1

The divine purpose in the creation and the preservation of the universe

is man. We become God-like in act when we work for man. God, indeed, must ever be the supreme end of our willing and our doing. Direct homage to due to the majesty of God, and this homage God demands from us. But be demands also that we for his sake serve our fellow-men, and the first commandment of the law makes religion to consist

In the service of God and in the service of man. Christianity, the historic manifestation of the Eternal Mind, makes work for humanity a fundamental principle of religion. “Amen, amen, I say to you: as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did It to me.’’ ,

And working for man is not the hopeless task that pessimists proclaim it to be. Progress is the law of God’s creation. The Creator has bestowed upon us faculties capable of expansion and it'is His will that we summon into action their latent forces. He has subjected to us the earth, and it is His will that we take possession of it, and assert our dominion over its every part. Powers that lie dormant find no favor in the eyes of God. Progress is the continuity of creation; to arrest it, thrpugh malice or Indolence, is a crime against Creator and creature. Christ’s gospel is a gospel of progress. It announces that all things should be put to profit and made to increase; the talent that 1b j wrapped in a napkin but draws down upon its possessor the Master’s P*. ' , History is witness that under Christ’s touch humanity was Impelled into r moral and spiritual progress with such might that centuries do not still the sublime vibration. The pessimist who stands idly by uttering words of discouragement, does not read lesson in the brightness of the morning sun, and in the richness of the autumn fruitage; nor does he read in his Bible the divine lesson of mercy and grace. There will always be sin and suffering, misery and death. But evil may be lessened, and good may be increased, and this is progress. I shall never believe that good must necessarily yield to evil, and I shall never cease to put my hope in the divinely ordered progress of humanity.