The record-union., 1897-05-09
IN RELIGIONS REALM.
From Various Religious
Newspapers.
The Religious Thought of the Day
as Expressed in the Sec
tartan Press.

'It is not easy to follow up all the
vagaries of controversialists, says the
Living Church" P. Ed of Chicago,
but sometimes it is instructive to do
so. The Pope laid down certain things
which he declared necessary to make
Anglican ordinations valid. These
things, he says, were deliberately
stricken out of the English Ordlnal at
the Reformation, and as that showed
that the doctrine contained in those
forms was rejected, doctrine necessary
to the truth of the priesthood, the Eng
lish Church has had no true priesthood
since that time. 1t would seem to be
sufficient answer to this to say that as
the Roman Church itself lacked those
forms for many centuries, and the ORR
entail Church has never adopted them,
it cannot be the fact that they are es-
sential, unless we are prepared to admit
that the truth of the priesthood perish
ed altogether from the world during the
earliest ages. The Pope himself has
said that if priests have not been right
ly made for long period, the defect
cannot be repaired by amending the
Ordinal at a later period. 1t would
seem that if this principle is sound the
fact that the forms of words which the
Pope considers essential were added
late in the Ordinal of his own church
would be fatal to it's own claims of
priesthood. The Archbishops in their
reply to the Pope have pressed this ar
gument home"
Being a Christian believer does not
depend upon the psychology of Jesus
Christ, which one adopts" remarks the
New York Outlook" "One may be-
lieve that Jesus Christ is God and man
mysteriously joined together, a dual
personality, in some acts showing forth
God, in others manifesting man. There
are in our judgment, fatal objections to
this, the medieval view of the Goldman,
but one may hold it and be Christian
believer. Or one may hold that Jesus
Christ was simply the divine spirit in a
human body, or the Second Person of
the Trinity in human body and sub
ject to the limitations of a fieShly Or
ganism. There are, in our judgment,
fatal objections to this view of the
Goldman; but one may hold it and be
a Christian believer Or one may be-
lieve that Jesus of Nazareth was so
filled with the Spirit of God that what
ever the man Jesus thought or said or
did reflected the inspiring, indwelling
presence of the Eternal Spirit of love
and truth. This is the simplest of the
three explanations, but it wins it's sim
plicity, it seems to US, by ignoring or
denying some transcendently important
transcendently important facts in the
history of Christianity; nevertheless,
one may hold this view of Christ as a
'God-filed man and be a Christian be-
lever. Or he may confess his inability
to form any perfect psychology of Jesus
Christ, and be content to see in him,
at once a transcendental manifestation
of the invisible and eternal God and a
perfect ideal of divinely begotten and
inspired humanity; and, despite his re-
fusal to formulate and phrase d perfect
and complete Christology, he will be a
Christian believer"
He who does not see God everywhere
cannot see him anywhere" says the
Christian Register" (Unit) of Boston.
IF God is not revealed in all things,
In the world of nature about, in the
Bibles of the nations, in the lives of
men Of all the ages, then is he revealed
nowhere To limit God to any partic-
ular book, to find him specially revealed
in one Bible, is to deny all real reve-
ation. God is present everywhere, and
in his fullness. 1t is we who lack Wis
ion. The timid attitude of those whose
minds are half open to the results of
the higher Bible criticism hinders them
in seeing how great is the revelation of
God in the Bible. The acceptance of
the results of the higher criticism, so
far as to say that Genesis is poem or
Jonah is a parable, and then turning
about and claiming these as special rev.
elations, blinds one to the real revela-
ton Of God in the struggles of the mind
to attain to a knowledge of him. 1t
is because of the common relationship
of all these struggles of all minds in all
the ages that any one of them has
worth. The real work of the higher
criticism is not to destroy the Bible or
to question it's revelation, but to com
pei us to see Bible revelation as one
with the full light Of God everywhere
The worth of our Bible is increased
when it takes its place as one of the
prismatic colors in the clear, white light
of God, which gathers into itself all
the other Bibles, each with its own
color
However insignificant may be the
part we play in creation, whatever may
be the riddles and mysteries of our ex-
istence, we still bear the image of God
in our nature, still feel that we have
higher destiny, life which reaches
out towards the illimitable," says the
New York observer (Pres). THAT
image cannot be SO deeply impressed
upon human nature, and yet fail to
lift it to a higher development. 'Ex-
cept a corn Of wheat fall into the
ground and die, it abideth alone, but
If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit
Amid all the debasement and ruin of
man this divine stamp remains as the
pledge of remedy. Religion is not mar
rowness, then, but breadth, the reali-
cation of the greatness of man, not Of
his insignificance. In this view the
highest culture and the widest knowl-
edge is stimulus, rather than a him
drance, to Christian faith. The diff
culties of science, instead of confusing
and dismaying the mind, only serve to
concentrate ii more firmly upon the
certainties of religion. Difficulties, as
Cardinal Newman said, do not consti-
tute doubt. The essential question is
whether God has revealed himself to
man; whether he has shown us how
the natural man can be transformed
into the spiritual man. If it can be