p. 10 | The Trend of Religious Thought by J. O. CORLISS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 27, 1908

The Trend of Religious Thought

By J. O. CORLISS

J. O. CORLISS

He who reads the prevailing religious sentiment of the day can not fail to be impressed with the manifest wish for a united Christendom. It is not yet clear to many just how such union may be accomplished, but it seems evident that many leading minds are ready to adopt almost any policy to secure this desired end. The reasons given for this craving are not uniform, and not more than one or two writers on the subject have given any well-defined cause for agitating the question.

But the proposition becomes more and more a living issue as the days and weeks pass on. In a Baptist Union address by the president of the Victorian Union of Australia, delivered Nov. 19, 1907, and refused publication in the denominational paper, Mr. W. G. Stephens affirmed that the day is coming when there will be a universal church. The signs of the times, he thought, indicate such a movement. After stating that the ground of sectarian separation appears untenable, he said that Christian Endeavorers from every denomination are uniting in their work, as a hopeful sign of a union of the churches they represent. In closing, he summed up the result of a proper effort in this direction to be a world-wide union of all believers in Christ, and a consequent freedom from censorious thought regarding the tenets of others.

Whether a universal church obtains or not, it will not be a hard matter to bring about the freedom mentioned by Mr. Stephens. Observant people of advanced years readily admit that those holding well-defined views of Christian ethics are not so numerous as in former days. The situation in this respect was fairly well stated recently by Dr. Hunter, of Glasgow, when he said that “large numbers of people of to-day have all but given up the traditions of their forefathers.” This fact is, indeed, the underlying reason why a universal church is possible; so that instead of freedom from criticism of others’ religious convictions resulting from a universal church union, the present lack of religious consciousness is really the mainspring of the movement.

There is some speculation as to what this change of sentiment may lead to. It seems quite evident to some, however, that it must tend to open the eyes of the more thoughtful to the fact that the religious world is adrift, without chart, compass, or anchor. From this viewpoint, Rev. Newman Smyth, pastor of the first Congregational Church of New Haven, Conn., in a sermon delivered just before the last Christmas, and reported in the New York Evening Post of December 28, said:—

“Another age is at hand. The signs of it are written across the failure of this Protestant age. I am not saying that its failures in any direction are complete. They may be summed up in this judgment that the Protestant faith is losing mastery over the controlling forces of modern life. This is apparent to some extent in all the spheres of life. For one thing, Protestantism has lost the old authority of the church. It has lost it in its own families. . . . It is not merely that worldliness is coming in, but much religion is withdrawing itself from our churches.”

Among other failures of Protestantism seen by Dr. Smyth, he mentions that “Protestantism has lost power to give the people a good religious education,” and so the young are not attracted toward it. More than this, he affirms that “Protestantism has utterly lost the unity of the church.” In contrast with this state of things within Protestantism, Romanism is presented as holding authority in the family from birth to death, from baptism to extreme unction, thus regulating the religious thought of its followers from first to last. While the rope of Protestantism has, he says, on its human end, frayed out into many threads, so that no single strand is strong enough to hold together social mechanism, he represents the Roman Church as a strong cable, with one end bound to eternal power, and the other firmly fastened to the whole mechanism of human life, and so controlling the world.

Inasmuch as the church, as well as social machinery, needs unity of action in order to attain prosperity, Dr. Smyth thinks that this concord must come through the reconstruction of church life

by the development of Catholicism within the fold of Protestantism. The sign of such a speedy advent he sees in the “growth of a common Christian consciousness,” and of the recovery among men of one continuous Christian society. He explains this last expression to mean the “real apostolic succession, that of the one unbroken life through all the years of the Christian society which the Lord first gathered around himself.”

From all this it is easy to see the drift of Dr. Smyth’s mind regarding the logical outcome of the situation. After referring to the Modernist movement within the Catholic Church, he significantly remarks that such an occurrence has much in common with the present status of Protestantism. The suggestion is made that these two movements may soon “meet and match, and complete each other.”

But Dr. Smyth is not alone in this prediction. The last Bampton lecturer in St. Mary’s pulpit at Oxford most impressively said: “I see the signs of a new religious order, the greatest the world has ever known, drawn from all nations, and all classes, and, what seems stranger yet, from all churches.”

An evident crisis is at hand, which will doubtless develop a unity of action of all religionists for a definite fixed purpose. That purpose was fully revealed during the Dark Ages, when through the unity of the religious world under the papacy, war to the death was declared against the Bible and its adherents. But though Satan’s time was then, as ever, always ready, the time of God’s people was not then fully come. The ultimate wrath of the enemy of righteousness is reserved for the remnant of the woman’s seed, who remain loyal to God’s commandments.

As the terrible scenes of carnage enacted during the Dark Ages were brought about through an apostate but united church, so the time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, must come through the same agency. From the testimony of those whose own eyes are constantly scanning the religious horizon, we are informed that the first condition found in earlier persecutions—an apostate church—is already with us. The only other condition necessary to complete the equipment is a union of these divided sects, with a single purpose in view.

The query may arise, Can such a union be effected? The call to arms for this purpose has already been sounded, and one grand gathering looking to the federation of all sects has been auspiciously held. On one question alone they are to be agreed, that of a single weekly rest day. All other points of religious differences are to be waived in favor of that one which is to be the test of fellowship. But will Catholicism join hands in this? We shall see. One thing is certain: “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him [the beast], whose names are not written in the book of life.” Rev. 13:8. This includes the people of all nations, and all classes, except those loyal to God’s written requirements. The day is not far off when the culmination of these things will test every soul. There is but one way for any one to escape the fire of the furnace, and that is to walk by the side of the Son of Jehovah.

Mountain View, Cal.