OCR Text |
Show Religion a Stream That Gathers Force With the Progress of Humanity By DR, PERCY DEARMER, King's College, London. The world is not yet good enough for Christ. It never has been; few have really believed Him, though many have believed in Him. None has carried on His message untainted. Complete Christianity has seldom been taught, and never tried; it has been like a slender stream, trickling through a vast river bed, sometimes disappearing underground, but sometimes some-times rising and spreading to fertilize the country, as the waters gather in the hills. Could it have been otherwise? The greatness of Christ, His unap-proached unap-proached perfection, is but more clearly shown by th contrast between enrselves and Him. But the church is very young. It has lived a mere nineteen hundred years of human History; and the human race is a million years old, with many millions yet before it. We are only beginning; we still are the primitive church. And our hope is that we may now just be growing out of our petulant childhood. The religion of Christ is becoming more possible in the world because be-cause the veils that have hidden Him are melting away before the cleaD light of the knowledge which mankind has so laboriously acquired. From guesses and assumptions we have passed to an age of exact observation and intense devotion to truth. It may well be that the waters of that truth will flood the course so divinely planned, till it becomes the river of life for all humanity. |