JESUS, YESTERDAY & TO-DAY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 71, 10 April 1937, Page 12

JESUS, YESTERDAY & TO-DAY

— W. E.

Maltby.

There are many tokens that Jesus I is again drawing the wondering eyes of men. Oue is to ,be found in the I extraordinary output of books about I Him. Another token is to be found in the fact that the average man has begun to distinguish between Christ I and Christianity, and to praise Christ I at the expense of the religion whieh 1 bears His name. All men speak well of Him now. * Tliis is good, though I eager advocates should not make too I mueh of it. It is a eheap thing to build the tombs of dead prophets. Once let it be understood that He Whom we call Lord is safely buried I nineteen centuries away, and there will I be no lack of monuments. But in so I far as tbis diserimination between I Christ and His Church means that the I signifieance of Jesus is challenging the | attention of men in a new way, there I is everything to be thankful for. And this is certainly true, both in Christian ! and in non-Christian countries. Someone, describing the changing attitude of Indians towards the Christian message and Christian missionaries, traced three stages. Pirst, they said, Christianity is not TBUE; then they gaid, Christianity is not NEW ; now they say, Christianity is not YOU. Something like the same progress may be observed nearer' home. Fragments of the teaching of Jesus are penetrating into unlikely quarters. Vexed with in. tractable soeial problems that will not solve OUE way, some have discovered that HIS way has never been tried, and some of His neglected Sayings are found to be surprisingly relevant to our condition. Outside the bounds of the Christian church, many are found ready to admit that He is the light of the world, if there is a light of the world, and that He has the clue to the meaning of life, if there is a meaning. Starving for want of a little goodwill and peace with it, the modern world is more disposed to listen to Him Who spoke of it, possessed it and promised it to men. All this is to the good, and it may be the prelude to a movement toward God, deeper and strohger than anytliing as yet discernible among us.