James H. Ecob, D.D., in an article on "Church Federation" The Christian Register, says:—

"I hope that some day a scholar will arise, large enough in learning, broad enough in vision, to give the world the true story of that most destructive of all heresies, the verbal inspiration of Scriptures. It has mothered more of the sins and abominations of history than all other heresies combined. When Protestantism arrived with its doctrine of the inalienable right of private judgment, a new and terrible weapon was placed in the hand of this arch heresy. At least a degree of safety lay in numbers when synods and councils turned to the record for a God-given word. But when every man, whatever his equipment in learning, or insight, could turn to an infallible book and get his "Thus saith the Lord' at first hand, it was like the letting out of waters. Private interpretation, personal idiosyncracies, vagaries, conceits, ambitions, cruelties, avariceries, slavery, intemperance, war, each with its proof-texts, set out to the conquest of the world. Each must do thus, and no otherwise; for did it not carry, as a banner, its divinely inspired word? It was philosophically inevitable, therefore, that, after the first great unifying impulse had somewhat abated. Protestantism must begin to divide. Nothing can arrest that process of division so long as that cause is operative; namely, the right of private judgment to exploit a verbally inspired Scripture. There lies the logic, and there is the tremendous underscoring of history. Protestantism has gone on dividing and subdividing till to-day we have the 'scandal of Christendom,'—hundreds of sects, sects of sects. . . . The Bible to-day is a unifier, not a divider, because intelligent men and women the world over are more and more demanding its ethical contents.

"The original cause of division, a verbally inspired book in the hands of private judgment, being historically vacated of meaning, its corollaries, as represented in the various sects, having gone to seed on the parent stem, what do we find to-day as the product of the evolutionary process? We find a group of denominations looking one another in the face and asking earnestly, even solemnly: What next? No adequate reason of being exists within ourselves. What has survived of our historic sect-life is chiefly 'corporate ambition.' We can accredit ourself to ourself as a body of religious men and women, but not as a body of denominationalists. Evolution has cut that ground from under our feet. We are too small-minded for our God. When we call Him Our Father, we are ashamed to look our historical selves in the face. Either we must become larger, or get some narrower name for Him. . . .

"If a thousand souls were hungering and thirsting after God, as by their constitution they must, you must give them the substance of faith. Faith is axiomatic to soulhunger. That which we know to be true by experience, that which is constitutionally actested by soul-peace and soul-health, that the world desperately needs; that the Church must give, or be put out of commission by both God and man. If you offer instead denominational whims and notions, for bread you have given a stone; for fish, a serpent.

"The world must have religion. The Church has religion to give; therefore, the Church must proceed at once to its business. Every man and woman ethically sensitive to cosmical weather knows that this is the condition. Select your religious man at random among the sects, speak to his heart, and his shibboleth rings true."

Henry S. Pritchett. LL.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaking before the Unitarian Festival in Tremont Temple, Boston, recently said:—

"Perhaps you will allow me to speak a moment concerning the attitude of students toward religion. There is a feeling, and perhaps a well-founded one, that a constantly diminishing number of young men in the student bodies are being drawn into the religious life; that, upon the whole, the influ ence of the Church upon the student body is not what it once was.

"I believe there was never a time when young men in institutions of learning were in more direct relation with truth itself than the young men whom one finds to-day in the colleges; but this relation is, in large measure, independent of Church relationship.

"If more among the great army of students are to be drawn by the Church into the spiritual life, they must be touched by leaders able to understand and appreciate the circumstances of their lives. Their training has been vastly different from that of the young men fifty, or even twenty-five years ago. They have little regard for traditions and small respect for vested authority. The whole trend of their intellectual life has led them to demand the where and how. They will be satisfied with no half-way explanation. On the other hand, they are reasonable, they are intellectually sincere, they have been trained to follow truth as no other generation of men have been trained to follow it. They will be quick to respond to the touch of spiritual truth and the knowledge of a spiritual life if only there is the leader to point the way. Leadership has to-day the same power it always had, but it has also the same requisites. The opportunity before the Christian Church was never greater; but that opportunity is less than ever a matter of authority and of organization, and more than ever a matter of leadership."

The intellectual and spiritual world has progressed infinitely during the last hundred years. The old conception of God nowhere, perhaps, is better shown than in the old hymns, one of which began:—

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood red banner streams afar,
Who follows in his train?

That is a thoroughly barbaric and soldier conception of God, and shows the savagery of man carried into his religion.

The superstructure of religion may be comprehended in the single word love; even self-sacrifice is good only so far as it is moved by, caused by, and represents love.

President Eliot.

How wonderful is the telephone! Speaking into a little tube, you converse with your friend a thousand miles away. Yet there are people using this marvelous instrument every day who scout the idea of a prayer reaching the ear of a present God. A savage who had never seen a telephone would doubtless disbelieve the story of the wonder, but would his disbelief alter the fact? Multitudes of people know by experience that God does hear and answer prayer. That other multitudes have not had such experience is no proof that prayer is a delusion.

The Examiner.

We would be wise if we so adjusted our relations with others that all our days we should be under the sway of the good, the worthy, the pure-hearted, the heavenly. Then as their friends we should seek ever to bring into the lives of others only the highest, the most uplifting and inspiring, the most wholesome and enriching influence. We should aim always so to live Christ that the Christ in us shall become the very breath of God to every one whose life we touch. If we do not we are living below our possibilities in the character and reach of our influence.—The Watchman.

The life of the Church, as of the believer, is divine—an inbreathing of God; heavenly in its nature and origin, heavenly in the source of its support and sustenance; heavenly in its strength to stand and withstand, heavenly in its power for work and service, heavenly in its principle of growth and increase, with nothing earthly about it save the poor human nature which is the object of its heavenly benefactions, the humble suppliant and recipient of the bounty of Him whose fulness filleth all in all.

F. D. Storey.

When one speaks the whole truth about any important phase of human life and sets it forth in fitting form, although unnoticed at first, it will gain power as it comes to the knowledge of men, and finally reach a commanding position where all take note of it. Like the rejected stone which becomes the head of the corner, it comes to honor; and then men imagine that it has always been an object of reverence as it now is.

The Christian Register.

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Phillips Brooks.

Neglect of one duty often renders us unile for another. God "is a rewarder," and one great principle on which He dispenses His rewards is this—through our faithfulness in one thing He bestows grace upon us to be faithful in another.—Ichabod Spencer.

The Church must pour itself out into streams of influence, rather than keep itself dammed up in an ecclesiastical pond, into which men may come for refreshment.

Rev. H. A. Blake.

There never has been a great and beautiful character which has not become so by filling well the ordinary and smaller offices appointed by God.—Bushnell.