Article January 16, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Stopford A. Brooke, Oliver Johnson, Hawthorne, John Richard Green, Gordon, Channing, H. W. Beecher, Arthur Helps

The Devotional Hour.—Everything that men fashion with their hands from the material which the natural world supplies expresses thought, will, purpose. Every sort of construction is the embodiment of an idea, or of several ideas, and conclusively witnesses to the fact that it is the product of intelligence. Looking upon the simplest and rudest creation thus brought forth, the observer instinctively and logically concludes that it did not shape itself, but assumed its particular form at the will of some person and for a special end. Men have produced many marvelous mechanisms, and as the years move on the number of these is constantly increasing. Turning from the ingenious contrivances of man to a consideration of the numberless objects of nature, their diversified forms and their manifold uses and adaptations, the mind quickly perceives that the latter are representatives of a power, intelligence, and skill infinitely superior to man's. On every hand the wonders of creation are displayed. From the smallest to the largest organisms on the earth there is exhibited an ingenuity and a wisdom which command the admiration and the wonder of even the greatest minds. And the further the survey is extended the more profoundly is the mind impressed by the marvels it contemplates. Then if the simplest as well as the most intricate creations of man testify to his work in them, his essential connection with them, do not the works that are greater than man's necessitate the conclusion that a being greater than man is their creator? No other rational deduction is warrantable. The earth and all it contains, man included, and the heavens with their numberless worlds and wondrous relations, we must believe are the works of Him whom we call God,—the good, the Father, It is our privilege to find Him with our minds and hearts, to commune with Him in His works and within our own souls; to love Him and be co-workers with Him in the higher advancement of ourselves and the world.—The Universalist Leader.

ALONE WITH GOD.—In the days of hurry and bustle we find ourselves face to face with a terrible danger, and it is this: no time to be alone with God. The world, in these last days, is running fast. We live in what is called the "age of progress," and, you know, we must keep pace with the times. So the world says. But this spirit of the world has not confined itself to the world. It is, alas! to be found among the saints of God. And what is the result? The result is, no time to be alone with God, and this is immediately followed by no inclination to be alone with God.

Let us turn to the pages of God's book. On seanning its precious pages we find that the men of God—God's mighty men— were those who had been in "the school of God," as it has been well said; and His school was simply this, "In the desert alone with Himself," It was there they got their teaching, Far removed from the din of the haunts of men—distant alike from human eye and ear —there they met alone with God; there they were equipped for the battle. And when the time came that they stood forth in public service for God. their faces were not ashamed.— nay, they had faces as lions; they were bold and fearless, yea, and victorious for God; for the battle had been won already in the desert with Him.

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