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Problems of Humanity - Chapter V - The Problem of the Churches
III. The Essential Truths There are certain keynotes - embodying the future of religion - which should govern the thinking of enlightened churchmen of all faiths at this time. They are appropriate to both the East and the West. These are: World Religion - Revelation - Recognition. They will not be accepted by the narrow-minded Christian or believer of any faith. The day is dawning when all religions win be regarded as emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will inevitably emerge. Then there will be neither Christian nor heathen, neither Jew nor Gentile, but simply one great body of believers, gathered out of all the current religions. They will accept the same truths, not as theological concepts but as essential to spiritual living; they will stand together on the same platform of brotherhood and of human relations; they will recognize divine sonship and will seek unitedly to cooperate with the divine Plan, as it is revealed to them by the spiritual leaders of the race, and as it indicates to them the next step to be taken on the Path of Approach to God. Such a world religion is no idle dream but something which is definitely forming today. A second emerging guide to the spiritual life is the hope of revelation. Never before has man's need been greater and never has the surety of revelation been more certain; never has the spirit of man been more invocative of divine aid than it is today and, therefore, never before has a greater revelation been on its way. What that revelation will be, we cannot know. The revelation [141] of the nature of God has been a slow unfolding process, paralleled by the evolutionary growth of the human consciousness. It is not for us to define or limit it with our concrete thinking but to prepare for it, to unfold our intuitive perception and to live in expectation of the revealing light. A world religion, an expected revelation and then the development of the habit of spiritual recognition! It is the task of the churches to teach men to unfold this latent power of recognition - recognition of the beauty of divinity in all forms, recognition of that which is coming and of what an old Hindu seer has spoken of as the "raincloud of knowable things" which hovers over humanity, ready to precipitate the wonders which God holds in store for those who know the meaning of love. It is along these three lines that the work of the churches should, in the future, be directed; the carrying forward of this task would truly restore the churches and obliterate all the failures of the past. In these three attitudes there are certain basic truths which the churches can present to men everywhere - truths which are uniform in all the world religions:
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