Article June 23, 1906 Issue

From our Exchanges

with contributions from S. E. Keeble

The world waits for the ethical manifestation of the sons of God. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, in his sermon on "The Church of the Living God," says that the Church has something better to do than the solving of all the great social problems that like so many frogs came up out of the Nile of modern civilization to plague us; that the business of the Church is to set the human right. Exactly. But inasmuch as this Nile of modern civilization is a Christian Nile, and these froglike problems so many times spring out of the hearts of men supposedly already set right by the Church, we have a sure evidence, not that we have failed, but that we are not through with our task. To set the human heart right, that is the problem; but this will never be done by crushing the prophet function of the ministry in order to emphasize the evangelistic. The Church is filled with men and women who need ethical training and an enlarged conception of the meaning of Christianity. We are not to be always saving and never teaching; if so, we will never save. We are called to fight as well as to drill. Our superlative need now is a loftier ethical life in pulpit and pew, based on a clear understanding of the fact that character counts most both in heaven and on earth.—Western Christian Advocate.

There are not wanting signs, too, that the trend of men's practical energies, as well as their energies of thought and spirit, is changing. They are beginning to grow weary of their triumphs over matter and space in the victories of applied science, and still more weary of successfully "hunting the almighty dollar" and building up huge businesses and fortunes. "Vanity of vanities" begins to be the cry, and men long to strain their spirits to finer issues. Again, they realize that man cannot live by bread alone, still less by gold and gems, and that all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them do not suffice his God-worshipful inner spirit. He is turning from them to truth and goodness, beauty and virtue, love and service. Principles, ideas, virtues, and graces, possessed and embodied in character and civilization, begin again to be his quest. It behooves every Christian and every Methodist to be in the van of such a movement of the human spirit. Rev. S. E. Keeble.
Methodist (London) Recorder.

Do your work and do it well. No one else can ever do it for you, and the whole universe must await the doing of it by you. Think of it,—God is waiting for you to do that little duty you are just now shirking or reluctantly approaching in timidity. Sometimes we think we will let our own work go and try and manage that of some one else, or our presumption carries us to the point where we would manage even the affairs of God himself. Meanwhile the great universe must wait for us to get around to doing our own little part. It is a great deal easier to talk about international affairs than it is to saw wood in our own back yard. But most of us have a certain pile of wood to saw, andthe chances are that we will be kept at it until the job is done.—The Universalist Leader.

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