live, with appropriate clothing, with medical skill, with opportunity for useful self-expression.
The world starves, suffers, endures.
Shall we ask in bitterness if the great aim of Christians the world over is—or has been—to feed them, or give them ample opportunity to provide themselves with food, to see that they are clothed and given abundant opportunity for useful self-expression? Myriads of Christians do have such a desire, but profit is the great end of life for most people—even nominal Christians—profit too often at the expense of others. We produce goods for scarcity in order to make prices high. We seek to extend our markets all over the world for the sake of private profit. Why do nominal Christians seek to continue conditions which mean universal misery? It would seem that anyone with any degree of the spirit of Jesus would seek to make a better world and live only to serve mankind. Have ecclesiasticism and ritualism and piety been emphasized rather than the universal welfare of the nations? What would Jesus do in this situation?
Let us have ecclesiasticism, but realize that in itself it is not Christianity, merely a form. Let us have piety, but such as leads to unto selfish sharing with others. Let us read the Bible for the sake of learning the will of God in order that we may better serve and love. Brotherhood is what this old world needs, and will have in spite of man's hardness of heart and cruelty. True religion is the casting out of the selfish spirit and the development under God of the unselfish spirit. Swedenborg puts it in this way: "Heaven and heavenly joy first begin in man when regard for self dies in the uses we perform," The unselfish life of service to all others from the love of God in our hearts is the true Christian religion. It is the religion of Jesus for this New Age.
THE END
