WAS CHRIST A CHURCH MAN ?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3461, 13 October 1913, Page 3

WAS CHRIST A CHURCH MAN ?

AN AMERICAN VIEW. Dr. George A. Gordon, of Boston, calls attention an the Atlantic Monthly to the new spirit with which men are regarding the new insight which comes to the race as the years speed on. ’ f “The Christian Church, of whatever name, no longer appeals to religious Americans as a distinctly divine institution in the sense in which all essential human institutions are divine. The family, the State, the school, the universivy, and the organised trade of the nation are divine institutions; that is, they are essential expressions of the life of our people. The forms of these institutions may change; the institutions themselves are permanent necessities ot man’s life in this world. They have been wrough out by human beings, seeking, under the guidance of the eternal spirit, the juster and mightier organisation of existence. The church and other essential institutions rest, therefore, on the swue foundations. “The founder of Christianity was less of a churchman than any other religious teacher in the annals of history. He used synagogue, temple, human homes, mountain tops, desert places, the fields, and the sea as the scenes of his prophetic activity and worship. It would not be too much to say that his church was the cosmos, the lights thereof the sun, moon, and stars; the pictures on its walls the fires of morning and evening and the shadows of the moon; its altar the heart of man; its music the wispering winds; its organ the universe supporting his prophetic voice. ’