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THE KING’S 'BUSINESS at an expenditure that would feed several other babies for a year, is it any wonder that the poorer laboring classes are increasing in discontent and that many are planning for a social war which no civil war of the past will match in horror? Is it any wonder that a socialist writes in bitterness of soul: “A thousand babes go supperless to bed in order that one monster brat may puke on silk.” The rich with their idleness and display and mad waste of wealth and stuffing of their overfed and diseased bodies, are the real authors of the most desperate and dangerous forms of anarchy. churches to go into Christian Science told him that he thought thè reason why many people were leaving the orthodox churches was bécause they made every thing of the “historical” Christ and practically nothing of the “spiritual” Christ ; because they were laying emphasis on the Christ of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary and neglecting the Christ of the present, who is not only near but dwelling within His people. Is this remark worthy of the attention of the Church ? Is it possible that we have been dealing far too little with the spiritual Christ and His imminence with the sons of men ? Would it be advisable for us to leave the foundation truths, not forsaking them, but leaving them, as the builder leaves the foundation, to erect the spiritual superstructure, all the time realizing that the foundation is the principal thing, but not the whole thing? Is it possible that we have dwelt too long on what the writer to the Hebrews calls “the first principles of the doctrine of Christ,” and which he advises “leaving” in order that we may “go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance . . . of faith . . . of baptisms . . . of the resurrection of the dead, of eternal judgment?” Has the time come "for a reaction from “scholasticism” to “mysticism,” the real Christian mysticism which makes not less of the “historical,” but more of the “spiritual” Christ, always recognizing the absolute necessity of the historical facts of the Christian religion, in.order to the reception of its deeper spiritual truths? .Ought we not to lay mo|e emphasis in our preaching and téaching on the indwelling of Christ in the believer by His Holy Spirit, an indwelling which issues in a victorious life as the result of historical “Christ in you, the hope of glory?” Is it possible to make too much of the “historical” at the expense of the “spiritual” Christ ? A scholar and thinker remarked the other day that a very intelligent and religious man who had left one of the orthodox The Historical and the Spiritual Christ.
Many of the most thoughtful students of the present war fe$l that one of the disastrous results of the war will be the increase of the political power of the Roman Catholic Church. The war had its origin largely
Beware of Rome.
through Roman Catholic intrigues regarding Servia. At the opening of the war the British Government was induced to send an ambassador to the Vatican, contrary to the policy of that Government established by centuries of usage. One Vatican ambassador has recently resigned and the British Government has- sent another. While some of the English non-conformists have openly condemned this policy, the Church of England authorities seem to favor this step. It is said furthermore, that both Germany and Austria are putting forward proposals to revive the Papacy as a temporal power. All through
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