Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/145

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UNDER MODERN CONDITIONS
129

associated and individual, to be made in the light of experience as it is interpreted by the Spirit of God.

Experience is a wide term; it gathers within itself all the accumulations of relevant knowledge, as well as the specific warnings and encouragements of history. When the Christian with the Gospel in hand aspires to learn his duty here and now, he must assuredly abandon the simple notion that he carries a set of sufficient oracles which can meet all the demands of the situation. He must never fall so far from the whole meaning of discipleship as to suppose that it gives him some short and easy way out of political and social difficulties. The Gospel does certainly give him the point of view from which all such difficulties must be regarded, and it assists his vision of duty by the precepts and example of Christ, but it leaves him as the rest of men to learn practical wisdom in the stern school of life.

If there be a discrepancy between the