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with contributions from G. K. Newell

Prayer was the natural breathing of his soul. He was saturated with piety. But, so far from this involving him in an effort to produce specific, technical "conversion," after the manner of any and all types of this experience, in him the great reality of the spiritual life is dissociated from all these things. The aim of Jesus is infinitely profounder than all this conventional desire of revivalism. In him the spiritual life never ends in anything said or done at any stated time. It is not a set event, like repentance or conversion. It is the introduction of a new power into life. It is a germ, a seed cast into the soil. It is a new quality of experience which is a leaven, filling the soul, shining in the eyes running over, dropping like honey from the lips, imparted like the perfume of a rose to all the neighborhood. . . . There is a cry for "results" in most churches and in most people. And by results they mean things or converts they can count and tabulate. But we repeat that this is not the method of Jesus. His work is to breathe upon and in men this new life from above. He introduces into the soul a dynamic energy, a mighty, moulding, transforming energy, but he does not harness this to some formula.

The Universalist Leader.

Christianity was spread at the first, both by the Master and by his followers, not so much by great missionary organizations, nor by the persuasion of great preachers, as it was by the conversation and influence of lowly, humble, every-day working saints. It was the sense of brotherliness that introduced and spread the new religion. Hardly any book were written. They lived up to the new commandment that they love one another. It was such a new thing in human experience that it spread with marvelous rapidity where no apostle or preacher had ever gone. And the joy of it was the joy of the Lord. It exalted the depressed. It was a flush of divine life to those almost crushed. It reasserted the original thought of God that every man was capable of receiving and preaching that gospel that made even Jesus rejoice in the Holy Spirit.

Central Christian Advocate.

There is another aspect of prayer that follows the letter of this instruction, but it is none the less formal and unreal. It is when one seeks the undisturbed place of prayer in an attitude of mind which is made up for the occasion, as though a man must be sublimated into some other kind of a being when he prays. This is something quite apart from reverence or the spirit of worship; it is a conception of prayer which reasons thus: "Now I am about to engage in prayer, and I must put out of thought everything that concerns me and every interest I have in the world. I must be just as unlike my usual self as it is possible to become." Thus it happens that the man prays like a saint and lives quite unlike a saint. His prayer lacks reality. The real man is not there in the prayer closet!

Rev. G. K. Newell.
The New York Observer.

The real question before the American Church to-day is not so much, What is error? as How is error to be overcome? It can never be done by wholesale abuse of the scholars who seek to prove and test the foundations of religious belief. It can only be done by the overwhelming and irresistible might of the larger truth. The partial truth of the unorthodox must be met and overcome by the whole truth of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. Because heresy has been condemned, men will not cease to think.

The Churchman.

The greatest need of this age is the genuine Christian in the world—not the Christian in the cloister, nor wrapping his robes of righteousness about him in a manner of

"I am holier than thou," nor separating himself from men for the purpose of practising acts of self-mortification, but the Christian mingling with others and bearing well his part in the affairs of the world.—New Church Messenger.

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