even that task, we believe, cannot be accomplished if we neglect the intellectual basis of our faith. False ideas are responsible even for the physical evils in the world; the machinery of the world's business will not perform its task if we neglect the soul of man; the best of engines will not run if it is not producing a spark.
THUS we maintain that far from being inimical to social progress, "Fundamentalism" (in the broad, popular sense of the word) is the only means of checking the spiritual decadence of our age. Some men are satisfied with the thought of the time when the physical conditions of life will so be improved by the advance of science that there shall be no poverty and no disease, and when vain aspirations will so be conquered by reason that death will lose its terrors and men will be able to part from their loved ones without a pang. But would such a rule of reason represent an advance over the present state of mankind? For our part, we think not. The deadening of spiritual aspirations and the abolition of individual liberty may bring about a diminution of pain, but they will also bring about the destruction of all that makes life worth while. We do not for one moment discourage the relief of distress and the improvement of the physical condition of the race; indeed these things have obtained their real impetus from the "Fundamentalism" of the past. But if these things prove to be all, then mankind will have sunk to the level of the beasts.
The process of decadence has been going on apace, and it is high time to seek a way of rescue if mankind is to be saved from the abyss. Such a way of rescue is provided by the Christian religion, with its supernatural origin and supernatural power. It is a great mistake to represent us who are adherents of historic Christianity as though we were clinging desperately to the past merely because it is old, and as though we had no message of hope. On the contrary, our eyes are turned eagerly to the future. We are seeking no mere continuation of spiritual conditions that now exist but an outburst of new power; we are looking for a mighty revival of the Christian religion which like the Reformation of the sixteenth century will bring light and liberty to mankind. When such a revival comes, it will destroy no fine or unselfish or noble thing; it will hasten and not hinder the relief of the physical distresses of men and the improvement of conditions in this world. But it will do far more than all that. It will also descend into the depths—those depths into which utilitarianism can never enter and will again bring mankind into the glorious liberty of communion with the living God.
PETERSBURG?, PLUS (Continued from page 409) more than 25 years. While his working funds increased only about 25 per cent, service contacts of the board of health in new ways increased 1,000 per cent, he reports, in the first year of the health center. It is all but impossible today to tell where the city health service stops and voluntary efforts begin; the citizen who needs help turns in at the inviting doorway and gets what he needs, often without knowing the source. The united effort of public and privvate agencies has 'borne fruit: (Continued on page 430)
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