so it is easy to see why the advocates of evolution are stressing religious education with increasing insistence. For it is through the methods of religious education, according to Dr. Burton, that the lost are being
- led to adopt the principles of Jesus and to accept his leadership quietly and gradually.
This makes regeneration simply an added impulse in the direction in which men are imagined already to be going. It also has the effect of altogether reversing the emphasis in the work of the Church with the lost. According to Dr. Burton, it transfers it
- from the salvation of the individual, with emphasis upon rescue from future woe, to the creation of a human society dominated by the spirit of Jesus.
And Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, speaking of present-day missionary methods, says:
- Humanly determined programs are being substituted for dogmatic decrees in the work of the churches. This is genuine democracy. The missionary enterprise is rapidly being conceived as a democratic social program rather than as the rescue of a few individuals from the divine wrath. * * * Education is coming to be a primary means of accomplishing the missionary task.
Such a mission to the lost would be altogether unthinkable if men were believed to be spiritually dead. For dead men are helpless to adopt principles and strive after ideals. Dead men do not need education, they need life.
