The Mt. Sterling advocate., 1922-01-19
METHODIST PASTOR SEES
EDUCATION AS RACE NEED

Iao@NttoW 10 UNSI W.T.
There are some conditions in our
midst that are destroying character
and making criminals faster than we
can save them, and the church must
creAte conditions that win cease to
produce those things, declared the
Rev. V. Ottmer Ward before the
congregation Of = the Centenary
Methodist Episcopal church Of Lex
ington recently.
If the church win awake to its op-
portunity in carrying out the pro-
gram of a true religious education,
the twentieth century viii make the
world into brotherhood, he assert
ed. Mr.. Ward spoke on the subject,
Stewardship and the Community"
"Jesus was the first great world
revolutionist," he said. "His mission
primarily was to save the world and
not to judge the world. Men have
judged humanity by such trivial
standards as the color Of his face,
by what creed or dogma he followed,
by politicals and narrow religious
standards. He defined the hereto
usually as one who does not agree
with him.
"Jesus did not lay very much stress
on q mans color, or race, or his
church relationship, but he did set
up as supreme and fundamental his
principles of democracy, love and
humanity. In the face of bad social
conditions and fixed and bigoted re-
! ligious ideas, Jesus came and upset
everything that had been considered
as fixed and eternal as the stars.
And in the face of these conditions,
Jesus was an optomist, and the cry
ing need of the day is not religious
leaders who will hurl anathemas at
those who do not agree with them,
but a new application of Christ's
revolutionary optimism.
"Not only individuals but society
must be saved.
"The church must create condi-
tions that will cease to produce
criminals. There are some condi-
tions in our own midst that are de-
stroying character faster than we
can save it. If Jesus taught any
thing, he taught the eternal worth
of every mans personality, and that
the rule Of life was love. Christian
ity as taught and lived by Jesus
Christ has never had fair chance
it has never been tried We have
carried over in our religious ideas
and practices too many heather
ideals, old Jewish conceptions of |
God, and have left Jesus out in the
cold.
1--WE have judged humanity, in
stead of saving it. From the war we
have secured new points of contact
with humanity, we have seen the re-
suits of selfshness and greed, we
must now choose between brother
hood or chaos. We must develop
sense of race unity. H. g. Wells, in
his Outline of History, says, There
can be no peace now but common
peace in all the world; no prosperity
but a general prosperity
eve must have an intensified pro-
gram of education in the principles
of the Kingdom, for as Wells puts it
again, Human history becomes more
and more a race between education
and catastrophe
Though much has been written
foohshly about the antagonism of
science and religion, there is indeed
no such antagonism. What all these
world religions declare by inspira-
tion and insight, history as it grows
clearer and science as it's range ex-
tends, display as a reasonable and
demonstrable fact that men form
one universal brotherhood, that they
spring from one common origin, that
their individual lives, their nations
and races interbreed and blend and
go on to merge at last in one com
mon human destiny upon this little
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