The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age

by Salem Goldworth Bland

INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD-WELTER

INTRODUCTION

The Western nations to-day are like storm-tossed sailors who, after a desperate voyage, have reached land only to find it heaving with earthquakes. In almost every country involved in the great struggle, the war without has been succeeded by a war within.

Of this turmoil, industrial or political as it may be, two things can be said. One is, that no Western people is likely to escape it, and certainly not the peoples of this Continent. The other is, that even in its most confused and explosive forms it is a divine movement. Mistaken, sordid, violent, even cruel forms it may assume. Strange agencies it may utilize. None the less no student of history, no one, at least, who has any faith in the divine government of the world, can doubt that these great sweeping movements owe their power and prevalence to the good in them, not to the evil that is always mingled, to us at least, so perplexingly and distressingly with the good.

If this be so, no clearer duty can press upon all who wish to fight for God and not against Him than to try to discern the good factors that are at work and the direction in which they are moving. This duty is the more urgent since no one can tell when the clamor and the dust may make it very hard to discern either.

In Canada, particularly, is this duty of careful analysis especially pressing. In no Western country, probably, has there been less experience of internal turmoil, less anticipation of it, or less preparedness against it. The attitude of Canada to life hitherto might almost be described as the attitude of a healthy, well-cared-for boy of fifteen, full of energy, full of ambition, with plenty of fight in him but still more good nature, whose only problems are the problems of the campus and of pocket money.

And yet it is conceivable that in no Western country may the turmoil of the next few years take a more acute form than in Canada. The youthfulness of the Dominion, the recency and frailty of the ties that bind the scattered provinces, the deep divisions of race and language and religion which criss-cross Canada in every direction, the high percentage of the new Canadians that have come, and recently, from the countries with which Canada has been at war, the large numbers of men who have now returned from overseas and who for different reasons, some of them unpreventable, are naturally and inevitably finding it difficult to discover their places in the tasks of peace--these conditions bring it about that Canada is not only not safeguarded, but is peculiarly full of inflammable material.

It is true that Canada in population is only one of the small nations, but it would seem as if none of the greater nations, since ramshackle Austria-Hungary fell to pieces, faces so severe an internal strain.

But, after all, nations never find their soul except through hard tasks. God educates peoples as He educates individuals, by putting them in tight places. This little book is written in the faith that the task of finding the right solution of Canadian national problems is so high and hard that only the deepest and truest soul of the Canadian people can achieve it, but, also, in the faith that Canadians, by the blessing of God, will be found equal to the task; and the chief purpose of what follows will be to show what are the good and beneficial elements in the turmoil, and how, with the least of strife and confusion, all who have other than selfish aims may co-operate in the divine movement.