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Serious Questions Propounded

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 18, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 11.

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Serious Questions Propounded

By K. C. R.

The following serious questions were propounded by Prof. Francis G. Peabody, in his presidential address to the Religious Educational Association, recently held in Chicago, and reported in the Weekly Inter-Ocean and Farmer of Feb. 12:—
“Where is the place for personal piety among these pressing demands for social service? The situation is certainly not without gravity when many circumstances of the time conspire to transform the Christian church into a charity bureau, or a lecture platform, or a recreation ground, or a medical clinic. Is the Christian church to teach an industrial revolution instead of a spiritual? Are the economists, sociologists, philanthropists, or revolutionists to represent all that is left of Christian faith? Are we to be so busy in doing good that we have no time to be good? Is the old issue between faith and works to be revived, and must another Paul preach again the vanity of unspiritualized conduct and the power of the risen life?”
The condition thus outlined by Professor Peabody contains elements of truth that should cause every minister of the gospel, and others who are laboring for the promotion of Christianity in the world, to pause and seriously ask themselves the question. Am I substituting good works for personal piety?
While we would not depreciate in the slightest degree the value of genuine “Christian help work,” yet it should be the fruit that proceeds from a consecrated life, instead of a substitute for real consecration and genuine piety.
The apostle Paul shows the utter worthlessness of the most excellent gifts without the love of God indwelling in the soul, when he says: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” 1 Cor. 13: 1-3.
K. C. R.