Article October 31, 1903 Issue

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We have come to see that the only sufficient test of the reality of one's Christian life is what he does, his moral character. As a matter of fact, men are not built in watertight compartments, though apparently that ingenious theory is somewhat generally held. It is impossible for people to be religious on Sunday and unscrupulous on Monday. The conduct on Monday vitiates the professions of the day before. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous. ... He that committeth sin is of the Evil One." A belief that does not register itself in conduct is hardly worth talking about, no matter how much the possessor of it feels or rejoices.

The difficulty in applying this standard results from the difficulty of determining whether a man as the result of his belief is improving in righteousness. We can decide easily enough whether he conforms to a certain conventional standard of right doing set by the community and the churches. But that is not the point. The point is: is his Christian faith making him a better man than he was? The comparison must always be between the man himself at different stages of his spiritual career, and not between the man and other men who may have had less or more to contend with.—The Watchman.

We use this instance simply as "a case" by which we may point out the great truth which so many men lose sight of, that it lies within the measure of no man's life, experience, or thought, to draw a line around a single or a million human beings, around a white man or a black race, and say, "thus far and no farther shalt thou go forever." Tomorrow, like yesterday, is a long day. God is there with His infinite patience. Over all the arching skies of coming centuries, as over the timeless hereafter, is written in letters big with the wisdom and the love of God, "Let not him who enters here abandon hope." And, whatever else the man may be who obliterates from the human or race soul of the world this hope, he has lost his grip on that promise which is as old as Eden and as fresh as the voice of the spirit which calls us to battle with ignorance and lust and despair, and fills us with the unconquerable conviction that we shall win.—The Universalist Leader.

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