Article December 25, 1909 ISSUE

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from Frank M. Goodchild

[Harper's Weekly.]

So long as the dull and the ignorant, the suffering and the diseased, look up to great possessions, to comfortable surroundings and irresponsibility, and fancy that joy lives there, and that if they captured the means they would capture the prize, so long poor exiled joy can do no more than drop at odd seconds upon a quiescent frame of mind here and there. It cannot come to earth to dwell, to turn life into paradise, until it comes equally to all. It would seem that only spiritual gifts could be equal. Matter is unmanageable; it heaps itself up in spots, and draws away in others; it is eternal restless motion; it is the changing, floating unreality in which for the moment we are set. But the spirit is changeless, immovable, permeating all space. And at odd corners, here and there, through life, eyes are opened and the spirit joins the spirit, and joy is born.

[Advance.]

We talk of broad men. Paul was the broadest man that ever preached the gospel. His breadth reached from Jerusalem to the least and last hut of the heathen world. And he had depth and height, without which breadth is a swamp, a miasma of theological error and deception. He knew the deepest things in the belief of a human soul and the highest things in spiritual aspiration. To say Paul had more power over an audience than any other preacher would be an exaggeration. But he had more power over the ages than any other man of any time. He so preached that no man since his day has been able to preach the gospel of Christ without echoing the declarations of his great mind or the sentiment of his loving heart.

[Frank M. Goodchild in Examiner.]

In the wide universe there is not a square foot of space where sin can be committed and the punishment not be exacted. Science is as emphatic in teaching that as the Bible is. Huxley's dictum seems like an echo of the Bible verse that says God "will by no means clear the guilty." The great truth that is written everywhere is, that there sits on the throne of the universe a judge who forgets nothing and forgives nothing. If it were possible for God to treat sin as lightly as some preachers think He can, the whole universe would be disordered and the throne of heaven would topple to its fall. Our fathers were right when they insisted that mercy cannot be exercised at the expense of justice.

[New York Observer.]

What the world needs is Biblical teaching, not dreamy transcendentalism or petty poetizing. It is God's word, and not man's witticisms, that will settle life's questions as they ought to be settled. "Thus saith the Lord"! That is the uncompromising affirmation which alone can serve as a regulative principle for life. If this principle of procedure is surrendered, all is surrendered. While we keep the Bible the Bible keeps us, but if we give up the Book of books we yield our theologic citadel and lose our power of appeal with men.

[Interior.]

The world knows Jesus was brave—that he did not fear the face of man. It wants that courage now, and it hopes to find it in Christ's followers. Jesus would stand for the right, no matter what it cost. Amid the hesitations and fears and evasions of many who do not want righteousness enough to pay the price, the world realizes that free and fearless self-sacrifice, equal to the emergency, is going to be found only among such as Christ has touched with his spirit. Hence it waits for the church.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
December 25, 1909
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit