[Painted Windows by Harold Begbie]@TWC D-Link bookPainted Windows CHAPTER VI 14/21
Her mission, as she receives it, is to preach to people who are unwilling and suffering victims of sin, or who are tortured by theological indecision, that Christ is a Power, a Power that works miracles, a Power that can change the habits of a lifetime, perhaps the very tissues of a poisoned body, and can give both peace and guidance to the soul that is dragged this way and that. One may be pardoned for remarking that this is a rather unusual form of preaching in any of the respectable churches.
Christianity as a unique power in the world, a power which transfigures human life, which tears habitude up by the roots, and which gives new strength to the will, new eyes to the soul, and a new reality to the understanding; this, strange to say, is an unusual, perhaps an unpopular subject of clerical discourse.
It is Miss Royden's insistent contribution to modern theology. She tells me that so far as her own experience goes, humanity does not seem to be troubled by intellectual doubts.
She is inclined to think that it is even sick of such discussions, and is apt to describe them roughly and impatiently as "mere talk." Humanity, as she sees it, is immersed in the incessant struggle of moral evolution. There is an empiricism of religion which is worth attention.
It challenges the sceptic to explain both the conversion of the sinner and the beauty of the saint.
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