A Religious contemporary, The Examiner, in a recent issue, says, "The measure of any propounded system of theology is its capacity to arouse the highest emotions and prompt to the noblest action. The impatience of the common man with theology arises from the fact that so much of it seems useless for the purposes of life. It awakens no emotion. It prompts to no endeavor."
There is a great deal of truth in this statement, and the writer of it might have specified many instances wherein modern theology is "useless for the purposes of life." Jesus said, "Heal the sick;" theology says, Be reconciled to your affliction; it is God's will. Jesus raised the dead; theology teaches that God is the author of death. Paul, "an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God," called death an enemy; theology teaches that death is the friend through whose good offices men are ushered into paradise. Theology leaves mankind to depend upon material remedies for relief from sickness: James, "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," said, "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up."
Is it surprising that the theology which ignores this healing gospel, or declares that it has been obsolete for almost nineteen hundred years, should arouse "the impatience of the common man," and that it should seem to him "useless for the purposes of life"?
