FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from H. T. Potten, H. Scott Holland

Those who are reckoning the growth or decay of their sects should consider whether the vital question is not which of them is getting most of the church-attending population, but whether the best part of the modern world is coming to church at all. Those who see the situation most clearly are troubled not so much about their denomination. as about the hold that the churches in general are keeping upon the thoughtful and responsible part of Christendom. "I am disposed to think," said the late Prof. A. B. Bruce of Glasgow, "that a great and steadily increasing portion of the moral worth of society lies outside the organized churches, not by godlessness, but rather by exceptional moral earnestness." Dr. Anderson, another Congregationalist, echoes: "It cannot be doubted that the churches have lost their hold upon two classes of every community. the cultured and the industrial. . . . This state of things is due simply to the fact that the theology of the churches has passed out of the living mind of to-day. The modern man is not living in the world in which that theology had its being. He is not opposed to it. He has no live interest in it." How like the day when the Master found the Church of his day dry and dead, and took his stand outside of it appealing to the souls of men!

The Christian Register.

If Christ had known only what is in the heart of man, he would have been the greatest of spiritual physicians but without the power to heal. But he knew the heart of God also. If there had been no unique revelation to him, he would still have been, by reason of his purity, his holiness, his union with and likeness to God, the most authoritative of all the interpreters of the spirit of the Father, with a gift of divination, a clearness of vision, born of his spiritual nearness to the Infinite. But he was more than a diviner of what is in the heart of man: he was so full of life himself that it followed from him in a healing stream, and the touch of it was health, peace, content. Long after he had vanished from the earth men and women in the last agonies of martyrdom looked up at the unseen Christ and died with smiles on their faces.—The Outlook.

If we had a truer, a Biblical and Christian conception of the divine love, we would be more loving. more tolerant, more long-suffering towards one another. The object of the divine revelation is not only to make us feel how much God loves us, and how great is that love, but to make us nobler in nature an purer in life, and unless it does this we miserably fail to realize the full grandeur and significance of our essential self. It is not enough for us to believe what the Scriptures say about the love of God; that belief must take shape in our lives, and prove its virtue by effecting such a transformation of character that it shall be a witness to the personal indwelling of the Love in which we believe

Rev. H. T. Potten.
The British Congregationalist.

Therefore, beloved, ask yourselves: "Is there any spot in my life where I cross a line and pass over into a region where I live by another moral code than that which God accepts? Where I take the world standard: a region in which Christ's own conscience is not allowed to act and where God is of no account? Is there any place in my life where I make reserves and concessions, and accept another service and wear another livery?"

Ah! if there is, then we may know why we are so weak and sickly in our walk with God. For we are at variance with ourselves: and a soul divided against itself is on the way to ruin.

Rev. H. Scott Holland. D.D.
The (London) Church Times.

God can speak freely to men only through man, and we shall find him best, outside our own experience, in the religious strivings and the faith of our fellow-men. For we can always say of the inward experiences of others, if not of their outward circumstances or their special call, "I, too, am a man, no other than they and of like value in God's sight. God has made me the same offers and promises and is calling me to the same sonship and communion." We are encouraged to seek God in our own experience even by the sins and follies of other men.

The Congregationalist.

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