Arizona republican., 1908-04-13
THE CHURCHES }
iiiIiiliii,IIlinuIHsIiiIIlIIIIIiiIiIMlIIIIlII
lContlnued from page 4D

| pdinIGilN SlruSSllnS lrNdluS tue IlSnl gaining in self control mastering raw material pcrfecting crafts. building states. shaping poetries and religions. 1t was not all dark. There were poets. i priests prophets, kings. philosophers working for the better day We must see that Aeschtus. PraXiteles. Confuc- l ious. Buddha. Moses. Isaiah 1T not equally and after the same manner, | are. nevertheless, builders cf the king dom of God. The Greek language, the Roman road. and the Jewish syna = sogue have always been regarded as pruVidcntial clements in the movement of humanity. We shall vet come to a similar appreciation of vast amount
 of human endeavor that lies back of the Christian era. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews saw a divine revelation in the words and works of the whole company of his race. Paul saw that the legalistic religion served to prepare men for the religion of
 grace. John saw that Moses rendered
 q vast service to man by his sighting
 of the moral order We shall yet come, We are steadily coming to larger and more generous generaliZations as
 the historian unfolds the pages of the
 past. and reads the story written on
 parchment, the rocks, the canvas, the
 marble. the institutional life of all the
 tribes of man.
 Yet having said this. let Us not agree
 with those who would level down and
 belittle the difference Christ has made.
 The difference he has made is vast.
 Suppose the Hebrew prophets did set
 forth high morality: they could not
 save Israel, much less humanity Sup
 pose an Isaiah did glimpse the Faith
 erland of God. he could not or did not
 at least make that truth commanding
 and liberating. Suppose Confucius did
 know something of the Golden Rule
 he could not make it effective in the
 lives of men. Suppose a certain grave
 dignity was manifest in the spirit of
 Socrates and that he stressed the mo-
 ral law, he could not save even Greece
 from puerilities of thought and the
 vanity of life. Spite Of the service of all the ten-talent princes the race was
 not freed The whole world still await cd some one. who speaking with au- thority should say the redeeming word.
 All Greeks as well as Hebrews awaited a Messiah. A fog was upon the minds Of the Senecas and the Ciceros. The will tn live was not there. The hope
 that puts song in the heart had not yet been born. The moral landscape
 was bleak and cold. The river of hu- man love lay locked in ice. The torch es of men flickered on but could not make the world radiant.
 How may We see the pre-eminence of Christ over all the worthies of this ancient world? Thus: IL was not un- til He came that the great thaw took place. His birth marks the great awakening of the race. All types of mind took up the problem of existence anew. after he had spoken his great words. The intellectual stimulus given the whole race by Jesus k q matter of historical record. Our whole civil ization witnesses to it. IL was with the coming of Christ that the soften ing of the human heart began that is still in process. At his word charities and phil3nthropies sprang up every where. Sympathy became factor in civilization 10 an extent never before known. 50 too came q new era of as- piration and work. Holtzman points out that Jesus far outsrips Plato and all the high servants of the race in giving advancement to the task of 
 All that past, with it's poetry. art. and holy cndeavor we call before Christ. E. C. We do not say before Moses. before Plato, before Cae- sar, before Shakespeare but before Christ because by His coming marked off d new day for all mankind. Before that there had been pencilings of light on the eastern sky prophecies of the coming day, but with Him the east grew gold and overfiowed the world l
 The Ages Since Christ.
 It is simply history that Christ die 1 what Moses and the prophets of all 1 -he races tried to do. but failed to do 1 Where they threw flickering flame le threw a flood of light. It is equal l y true. impartial history being the | witness. that his influence has been | he most potent force in human life | hese last nineteen hundred years. ! Many influences have been playing 1 lpCn the life of western civilization | turing the Christian era, yet as no | other force. even more than all other | orces combined, he has dominated | fife. He has been the determinative ! influence
 Take the great achievements of the | western races. the results realized in 1 hesc races. they get their impluse rom Christianity. There is the puri- ication of the people living in the i pounds of the Roman empire. That | vas the work of Christianity. Take | he disciplining of the Teutons. It was | pe Christian missionary that met | hose fierce people of the north as hey came out of their forests. Anglo E 'aXons have gone a long way from | he drunken piracy of those coarser ! lays. and they have covered the dis ancc because of the power of Christ l lpon them. Benjamin Kidd says that | II our western civilization our chief | sain these latter centuries has been in | humaner type of character. Here | -gain we may see the influence of Je- us
 We are wont to think of militarism. II ommercialism and organism as the | features of modern life II Ne seem 10 think that armies are in- Il ispensable. Yet any discerning per- fl on can see that the tendency at pres mt the world over is for nations more Il nd more to discard war as the sane + ray bt settling international differ uCps No war is n b1x-a . 6i,,ipicb II