I reaffirm, as long as one man dead in sin can be transformed into a
living, active, aggressive Christian, the words of the Scripture are as
true to-day as when the angel said, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for
He shall save His people from their sins.” Nothing now known to science
can accomplish what happened to Mr. H. W. Kline that night; that is, as
Prof. James so pertinently says, “Conversion is the only means by which
a radically bad person can be changed into a radically good person.”
Harold Begbie, as a psychologist, says: “Whatever we may think of the
phenomenon itself, the fact stands clear and unassailable that by this
thing called conversion, men consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy,
become consciously right, superior and happy. It produces not a change
but a revolution. It creates a new personality.” We would say a new
creature in Christ Jesus.
The religion of Christ differs from all other religions. They take the
rich, the happy, the successful, as their expositors, but Christ takes
the broken, the sorrowful, the beaten in the race, and makes them the
rich, the successful and the happy expositors of His religion.
EMOTION IN RELIGION
Prof. H. W. Wynn, D.D., one of the great writers of the _Lutheran
Observer_, has these wise words concerning the elements of emotion in
religion:
“We have discovered that religion as a purely emotional experience may
have no religion in it at all, though kindled by the emotional stimuli
that religion commands. There is an emotional element in religion, of
course, deep, powerful, pervasive; and when you give way to it,
enveloping your whole being as in an atmosphere of flame. Those tender
feelings which enter so largely into the deeper currents of our domestic
and social life—love, pity, joy, hope, the striking of the glad hand,
comradeship locking arms under the same great banner to do deeds of
heroism in the same great cause—religion calls them all up, and fires
them all with a conquering zeal.
“But, manifestly, the zeal may burn out before the deeds of heroism have
been begun. We have learned to know that the same emotional fires may be
kindled when religion is not the theme. A great crowd, an orator of
fluent and persuasive speech, music filling the air with the imaginary
shouts of an “Io triumphe” come to stay—it matters very little what may
be the occasion that has called these people together, the emotional
part of their campaign has been achieved. But, whether in religion or in
politics, it would be stupidly unwise to conclude that the excitement
itself was the end to be attained—emotion being set down as the deed
itself; or, in some way, an assured equivalent of the deed.
“In all such cases fanaticism is the result, and fanaticism has never
been an aid, but always, in the long run, an embarrassment to any great
cause. Fanaticism stops with the excitement—absurdly confounds
excitement with the cause to be maintained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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