Article January 17, 1901 Issue

Religious Items

"What if we Believe in God?" is the significant title of part three of a serial article in the (Unitarian) Christian Register by Rev. C. F. Dole. A portion of one paragraph reads as follows: "The innermost secret of life is to love. We have said that God is love. Is it conceivable that it makes no practical difference whether or not we believe this? When we do not believe it, we are not half alive. When we see this it is as if the universe were behind, lifting us. It is as if an infinite Friend were at our side and holding our hands. We give ourselves to the motion of the sublime good-will; and we are in that instant alive, — complete men, sons of God. Did any one ever try this, and find it to fail? Ask yourselves at what times you have most completely lived, at what times you have best known peace, gladness, and the fulfilment of your being. Were not these the times when Good-will, or Love, had free course in you. and you only did what God bade you do?"

In an article on "Temptation" the Universalist Leader says: "We may feel assured that there are multitudes of men, for example, who pass daily and almost hourly by gilded and glittering saloons, to whom they are no temptation, in whom they excite no desire for strong drink, and on whom they impose no duty of resistance. They are passed by unnoticed, or with no other notice than that of sorrow and regret. They are no lures, but rather awaken a sense of repulsion, since in such men the appetite is in full accord with the moral sense. It is the subjective, or inner conditions that decide the matter and makes them superior to temptation."

The (Methodist) Christian Advocate says: "How difficult it is to keep self from having too prominent a part. Is it easy for the preacher to keep self out of his sermon? for the singer to keep self out of the song? for the worshiper to keep self out of the prayer? Nature clamors for self. While the spirit seeks after God and the good of others, the flesh still pushes self to the front. If we could only understand, and have courage to trust the philosophy of the gospel, we should have little trouble about self. The science of Christianity reverses nearly all the maxims of the world and all the wisdom of the sages."

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