The Mind of To-Day and The World as it is 9

It will be observed that I take as historic records the statements of the Bible. This I do in the face of the efforts of many of the clergy in a number of the churches to make me see in the Old Testament chiefly a collection of myths, and in the New… a series of compilations by irresponsible hands, of doubtful date and authority, leaving, in the case of our Lord, only a substratum which can be relied on as biographical.

As an instance of what I mean, I quote the following: A few weeks ago I happened to mention to the distinguished head of one of the most important theological schools of one of the largest denominations in the country, our Lord’s turning the water into wine. “I’ve no idea that He ever did anything of the kind,” were the words with which he dismissed the subject, which I did not take up again. I am not arguing here against his point of view. I merely state that I do not share it, and for these two main reasons:

First, because the so-called Higher Criticism on which it is based is a purely evanescent phase of man’s learning, likely to be rejected to-morrow by those who accept it to-day, as has been the case with other such phases;

Secondly, because I feel sure that, with the mastery of matter to which we have already attained, the future development of our race will justify these seeming “miracles,” and make them as natural and commonplace as telegraphy and telephony.

I speak only for myself… when I say that the more I can feel around me the atmosphere of omnipotence, the less I am aware of fear. It is a matter of course that the one should exclude the other. The sense of being myself, in a measure, the inheritor of omnipotence, as an heir of God and a co-heir with Christ, becomes, therefore, one to cultivate. This I can do only in proportion as I see that my Standard and Example cultivated it before me. In my capacity as a son of God, I take as applying to myself the words reported by St. John:

While sayings like these, of which there are many in the New Testament, apply doubtless, in the first place, to Him who best exemplifies the Sonship of God, they must apply, in the second place, I suppose, to all who exemplify that Sonship to any degree whatever. Man is the Son of God; and it is worth noting that He who is specially termed the Son of God is also specially termed the Son of Man. “Dear friends,” St. John writes, elsewhere, “we are now God’s children, but what we are to be in the future has not been fully revealed to us.” I take it, therefore, as no presumption on my part to emphasize in my daily thought my place as a co-heir with Christ, feeling that not only is God’s almightiness exercised on my behalf, but that as much of it as I know how to use is placed in my hands.

TO BE CONTINUED….

PHOTO CREDIT : TIM WILDSMITH