now is hated:
its oriental deity decreeing fates, its use of force to destroy
unbelievers, its patriarchal polygamy, and its slave systems. All
these things, from which we now send missionaries to convert
Mohammedans, are in our Bible, but in the Bible they are not final.
They are ever being superseded. The revelation is progressive. The
idea of God grows from oriental kingship to compassionate fatherhood;
the use of force gives way to the appeals of love; polygamy is
displaced by monogamy; slavery never openly condemned, even when the
New Testament closes, is being underminded [Transcriber's note:
undermined?] by ideas which, like dynamite, in the end will blast to
pieces its foundations. We are continually running upon passages like
this: "It was said to them of old time, . . . but I say unto you;"
"God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by
divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days
spoken unto us in his Son;" "The times of ignorance therefore God
overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all everywhere
repent;" and over the doorway out of the New Testament into the
Christian centuries that followed is written this inscription: "The
spirit of truth . . . shall guide you into all the truth." In a word,
finality in the Koran is behind--it lies in the treasured concepts of
600 A. D.--but finality in the Bible is ahead. We are moving toward
it. It is too great for us yet to apprehend. Our best thoughts are
thrown out in its direction but they do not exhaust its meaning.

"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

Such is the exultant outlook of a Christian believer on a progressive
world. If, however, one is to have this exultant outlook, he must
deeply believe in the living God and in the guidance of his Spirit.
What irreligion means at this point is not fully understood by most
unbelieving folk because most unbelievers do not think through to a
conclusion the implications of their own skepticism. We may well be
thankful even in the name of religion for a few people like Bertrand
Russell. He is not only irreligious but he is intelligently
irreligious, and, what is more, he possesses the courage to say frankly
and fully what irreligion really means:

"That Man is the product of causes which have no prevision of the end
they