For theory and practice,
speculation and life, cannot be separated. We cannot begin to
explain Jesus until we know how men and women are transformed by
the love of Christ constraining them.
Those to whom religion is external and worship formal are of
necessity pretentious or arid in speaking of such matters as the
Person of Christ or the value of creeds.
We do not affirm that the Lord's Person and work have been central
in Christianity in the past. There is much to be said for the view
that they were, from the end of the second century to the close of
the Middle Ages, concealed beneath alien ideas derived from the
mystery religions; that the Reformation was the hammer which broke
the husk within which, under God's providence, the kernel had been
preserved during the decline and eclipse of European civilisation.
. . . as religion grows in richness and purity, Jesus comes to His
own.
Reason and intuition combine to justify the belief that our Lord
had a right understanding of what man can become.
We say that man is not only a part of the evolutionary process. His
highest attributes must serve to show its purpose. They reveal the
nature and the end of God's plan.
. . . as man develops in the way predestined by God, he will
continually approach the standard set by Jesus.
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