Article January 2, 1904 ISSUE

From our Exchanges

with contributions from F. E. Marble

We are not living on the past, eating up our spiritual partimony, beggars existing on the crusts left us by nobler ancestors. The world is better than it was in John Calvin's day. It is not growing worse. Its moral momentum is furnished by its Maker. His breath can make as His breath has made. By Him we are swept forward toward the light. We do need a restatement of the eternal verities. We do need a theology which is grounded on the Golden Rule. And we will get this in due season, if we faint not. Unhasting and unresting, the God of all flesh and all spirit is preparing the world for that day, out of whose richer experience, wider horizon, nobler growth another and grand formula of faith will come. And when it comes it will be no less vital and potent than the old, but it will be more beautiful and more merciful and more prophetic. But let us get things in their true order and relationship. The new formula of faith will not create the mood that creates it. Let us follow things to their true source. It is the life of God in the souls of men, it is the religious instinct of humanity, which casts upoward into life all formulas of faith, and furnishes the moral momentum of the world always, now, and evermore.

The Universalist Leader.

Of all the great matters before us to-day none compare in importance and interest to the fresh spiritual impulse coming to the Kingdom of God.

The imperative need of this is seen on every hand.... We long for a moral earthquake, a revival of religion, a new spiritual impulse to carry us on toward the realization of the kingdom.

This groping is toward a new social order, and the truth, long neglected, which fits into the condition, is that of the kingdom of God,—a kingdom in which truth, love of God expresses itself in love to man; a kingdom in which truth, love, and righteousness prevail; a kingdom that insures the future through the redemption of the present.

As to this kingdom, repentance and faith is the door of entrance. Love is its informing principle, and service the form of its expression.

The signs of its coming are seen in the change from destructive criticism to reconstructive faith, from materialism to idealism, from individualism to altruism, from division to unity, from a future heaven to a present kingdom. It is this that should fill our hearts with gratitude in this wonderful time.

Rev. F. E. Marble, Ph.d.
The Watchman.

The Bible is a literature as well adapted to the child mind as are any of the great classics, ancient or modern, and it surpasses them all, though they are all works of the imagination. But to treat it as a text-book on history, geology, astronomy, and other sciences, miraculously prepared many centuries in advance of the time when it could be understood, is to do violence to it and to any tenable theory of inspiration. The Bible is a library revealing the mind of God through prophets who had divine insight and used all forms of literature to make known what they saw. It should be taught to children as prophets spoke and wrote it.

The Congregationalist.

There are indications that Solomon saw the necessity of an inward renewal, but if he discerned the need of it, he does not appear to have experienced it. Of him it might be said, as Jesus said of another: "One thing thou lackest," but that one thing was everything, for it was that central spring of desire which binds the will to the performance of righteousness. The great message of Christianity is the possibility of choosing and receiving the gift that transforms life from within and makes the soul "a new creation."—The Watchman.

We may be all the time growing in spiritual capacity and power, but the larger achievements of the future are to be absolutely dependent upon our faithfulness now; and hence the small things of life now are as important in their place as the larger things are to be when we reach them.

New-Church Messenger.

Unhappiness is never excusable, because it is so easily overcome by making others happy.—The Examiner.

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