Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1915 — PROGRESS GOES ON [ARTICLE]

PROGRESS GOES ON

'#r »ndi ■■• -■ -s#K got, .imtfr.* .jin a.‘a #4*;. . .... - jifi., m^V~ * • t4spNgf' Church Has Prospered Through the Ages, When All Men Spoke of “Failure." la the church disintegrating? la a theme that la pro’d and con'd a great deal in theae times. Failure is the word that is written big in these Jeremiads or aspersions, according to the spirit and motives of the writers. Failure is the best word in the entire history of Christendom. Chriatlanity in the days of St. Paul was to the Greeks foolishness. It was failure. The modern rationalist has the same estimate of .religion. Time and again in the progress of Christianity has it had its obituary read. History ha# proven that at every such time it was only; getting its girth for greater things, through fresh adaptations to the times in which it was working. By ; the dead things of its seeming defeats the church haa progressed in the direction of the widening truth and the expanding horizon of power and influence. They Who see failure for the church today confuse their ideas of the church invisible with the church in concrete form. It was a little girl who the other day remarked that the magnolias were throwing off their winter overcoats. And what a hurst of beauty and bloom came almost immediately! So the church discards its vestments of service, when outworn; its garments of dignity when these have become frayed. But the seamless vesture of the living Christ has never been discarded. This is the mystical element in religion, that which abides apart from time and change, that which is the hidden beauty and form and power and inspiration of faith, that which is quickening and vital, that which is divine and permanent This is the element in religion that has its quality of the eternal, it is Cod in human life and affairs. This never changes. i Light of Life and Truth. John Robinson, in dismissing his little flock upon its perilous voyage to the new world, which, after it had been made gave the voyagers title ever aftei to the designation of Pilgrim Fathers, exhorted them t to believe that God had ever more light to break forth from his Holy Word. This light is the light of life and the light of truth It is the mystical slfekinah ever growing at the altar of humanity in the temple of time. It is the revealing light of progressive civilization that when it discards dead forms, lives on in ever new and engaging aspects. So that, despite all the church shall go through of change and adaptation and all the world shall experience of revolution, the Son of Man will ever find faith Upon the earth.

✓ The failures of the church are at times painful and sometimes cataclysmic. But they are never indicar, tlve of the lessened power of religion In the lives of men, of the withdrawal of the ministry of mercy of Almighty God from mankind. As long as Jesus Christ symbolises the divine in human experience will his life and works add to the testimony of the common consciousness of mankind: “I know that my redeemer liveth.” Failures Need Not Worry. So, the church need not be worried by failures. If any branch or agency of it shall cease to employ its talents to good advantage they will be taken away and given to those who will so employ them. The workers die, toe organizations pass through changes ..radical or subtle, but the work and word of toe Almighty In the uplift of the race goes on forever. The church is not disintegrating, religion is not becoming decadent. In fact they whd have eyes to see, behold toe living ideals of faith as more potent than ever before, even though taking much more practical fashion —as the times demand. The practical ministry of the loaves and the fishes, when transformed by the touch of the divine quality of love, is magnified to meet the needs of all who hunger. The only failure that men are warned against is suggested in toe words, “Hold fast that thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”