From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Richard W. Boynton, Francis G. Peabody

In our orthodox exchanges we find evidences of an uneasy feeling concerning revivals. Judging by the past a revival of religion is now due. It ought to come, just as revival of business follows a period of stagnation. The revival of religion is due. The churches need it, business needs it, in social affairs it is needed, in the life of the republic it is demanded. There is a sore need felt everywhere of an increase of the impulses which may properly be described as religious. But the old-fashioned revival has suddenly become antiquated and impossible to intelligent men. A revival of religion is needed : it must come, and it will come, just as soon as the object of it is the increase of religion pure and undefiled as a motive in the common life of the people. It must be unsectarian, not dogmatic; and above all things it must be unselfish.

The Christian Register.

Man cannot remain forever satisfied with material progress, however great it may be, which, from its very nature, does not make him all he should be and knows he ought to be. Forces lie within the personality which wait to be touched into action by motives and purposes which are above all temporal and material incentives. Within this field God waits for the opportune season to make. His most effective appeals. The twentieth century is waiting for miracles of power in the spiritual to equal those in the material realm. There are large areas of undeveloped territory in the Christian man of to-day, and there are indications that Christian manhood will move out of the field of present struggle into the new domain of worthy endeavor, where it will awaken to a new conception of the undeveloped power resident in Christendom.

The Standard.

We estimate a man by what he is, or by what he has done. God estimates a man by what he desires to be and is striving to become. If one, in his heart of hearts, longs to be one with God, to honor God in his doing or not doing, and to serve God faithfully in serving others, even though that one be hindered or kept back and kept down by obstacles or opposers, God sees the mark at which he aims and the ideal to which he aspires, even though one's fellows note only that which has been already realized. We have indeed reason to be grateful that our judgment is with our ever-loving and our all-seeing Father, and not with our imperfect and short-sighted human fellows.

Sunday School Times.

There has been a great deal of effort in many places to swell the church roll, but little to purge it. Quality is of more account in God's sight than quantity. He calls for vine-pruning. Useless branches must be "lopped off." Discipline may be a "lost art" in our day, but many a church suffers greatly because it no longer exists. There is a growing need for its rediscovery.—Presbyterian.

Not in a single experience only, but daily, hourly, through life, is it true of every one of us that he is with the wild beasts and that the angels minister unto him. The beasts are our inherited or acquired, animal appetites and impulses, which are seeking to drag us down to their baser level; and the angels are our higher spiritual aspirations and resolves, which call to us to rise.—Rev. Richard W. Boynton.

Daily living of the Christ-life is the best testimony we can give of. the reality of our faith. We are not exempt from serving God on six days of the week because we are exempt from labor on the seventh. "Always abounding in the work of the Lord," is the apostolic rule of life.

The Examiner.

What simplifies life is to say something like this: "I do not pretend to know all about religion, or duty, or Christ; but I do propose to live along the line of life which I will call toward Christ. I propose to think less of what I may live by, and more of what I may live toward."

Francis G. Peabody.

"The atheism of to-day is not a denial of the existence of God, but indifference to the divine requirements," says The Religious Telescope.

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