Article January 16, 1904 Issue

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with contributions from Minot J. Savage

Evil begins in the heart. Before any one goes astray outwardly he departs from righteousness inwardly. The starting-point of every wicked life is in the thoughts of the mind and the desires of the heart. To repent of outward wickedness and continue to indulge evil thoughts would be to cut down the evil tree and leave the living root in the ground to sprout again and send up another tree like unto the former. In true repentance the evil must be overthrown, root and branch, and put away forever. Genuine repentance goes to the bottom of the heart. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts." Uncharitable thoughts, impure thoughts, vain thoughts, vain thoughts, unbelieving thoughts must be put away.
The Christian Advocate

Conversions which do not involve the quickening of moral sensibility, the elevation of moral standards, the purpose to embody all possible moral qualities, are conversions only in name. To profess is not necessarily to be born from above. The new life which begins with the entrance of Christ into the heart must be like Christ's life in intent and purpose. Unfortunately, many have fancied that the Christian life consists in assent to formal statements and the establishment of outward relations. It is an age-long fallacy. Jesus met it in the Scribes and Pharisees, Paul battled with it in the infant Church, it persists to this day. Nothing is so difficult of attainment as a right heart. It is hard to be pure, genuine, honest, forgiving, unselfish, to love our neighbors as ourselves. But these things are of the very essence of Christianity.— The Standard.

The religious life is not to be reached at a bound, nor does it come as the result of any immediate and sudden turn of the pathway. We need to put ourselves under positive training in order to come forward in the course of development into the higher life and into the spirit of that eminence which we look up to and aspire after. We need to begin to plant and water and cultivate and secure in our hearts and consciences and the promissory. We need to attend now and all the time to the taking of forward steps. We need, without further delay, to push on with our faces set toward the goal of unselfishness and holiness and love.
The Universalist Leader.

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