[James L. Snowden, D.D., in New York Observer.]

The greatest dreamer this world ever saw was Jesus. He was no local prophet or parochial schoolmaster, much less was he a mere visionary or fanatic, but he was the prophet of humanity and Saviour of the world, who saw sanely into the heart of time and eternity. He had a vision of redeemed humanity compared with which all human dreams of conquest and empire, education and art, democracy and socialism, are petty programs and futile schemes. He had a vision of a kingdom wide as the horizon, long as the centuries, lofty as the stars, white as the holiness and strong as the omnipotence of God. This vision is now winning its victory over the world. It has come down through the ages, unhinging empires and throwing the stream of the centuries into new channels, uprooting slavery, undermining political despotism and putting the people into power, giving liberty of thought, and unshackling religion and giving freedom of worship. It is stopping war, breaking down international barriers of prejudice, and drawing and binding the nations into universal peace and brotherhood. It is ever penetrating more deeply our Christian civilization and healing its sores and solving its problems, and it is sending its light and life out over the world to dissipate its ignorance and superstition, cure its sins, answer its cry for the Father, and build all its kingdoms into the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. This ideal is the grandest and noblest vision that can touch our eyes with light and kindle our minds and hearts with aspiration and enthusiasm. Men may regard it as a fine fancy or foolish fanaticism, but it has in it the omnipotence of God, the stars in their courses are fighting for it; it is even now overcoming the world, and this vision will come to its final and glorious victory when the redeemed return to the heavenly city with songs and everlasting joy. Let us now share in the vision that we may also triumph in the victory.

[Rev. Roland D. Sawyer in Christian Work and Evangelist.]

"No man knoweth ... the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." Jesus felt he was the truer interpreter of God than had been any other. He is the one sent from God. He is the humblest and lowest of men, yet he calmly makes these stupendous claims. Because he stands closer to God than others, he can show that God to men; and they can never find Him, save as in the way he points out. And the testimony of nearly two thousand years confirms what Jesus said that day. God is to be found only as Jesus showed us; there is no other method of approach than that which the Nazarene revealed to the world. And it was on the basis of this that Jesus went on in another verse to say, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;... and ye shall find rest." Jesus was right, and the seeking souls through the ages have found a safe resting place in him as their Master, Messiah, and Saviour.

[Harriet Russell Pease in Christian Register.]

The readiness to overlook and forget non-essentials of opinion and to cooperate with every one who is endeavoring in any way to improve the spiritual condition of the world, is the most hopeful, the most wide-spread aspect of our times. There are still left in our new world those who differ in creed and love to cherish their own, but more and more these and all lovers of righteousness are working in unison. In sectarian spheres, too, the emphasis is more and more being laid on doing the will of the Master rather than on naming his name or defining God's nature and man's estate. In this the church is surely following and working out Jesus' own teaching, "By their fruits ye shall know them." In its philosophical and in its practical expression, then, the trend of religious thought today seems to be in accord with the progress of the ages, toward simplicity amid complex conditions, toward unity in the midst of diversity, toward harmony of the human and the divine.

[Christian World.]

The present conflict between faith and unbelief, so bitter, so distressing to many of us, is really following the same law and toward the same end as that social, economic fight which is now making so terrific a clamor. If we consider the religious history of the last fifty years, we find it—for the western world at least—a fifty years of such doubt, such adverse criticism, such determined and flat denial as in no fifty years before of the history of Christendom. The literature of this vast negation fills whole libraries. We have read a good deal of it, and we find it the most optimistic of studies. It has been such a guide, such a leader, such an inspirer of faith. It has made faith twice as valuable as it was before, because twice as wise, twice as sure of itself. It found the religious faith of Christendom largely a child, and it has made it a man. It found it ignorant, attaching itself to falsities, to credulities, to beliefs contrary to fact and opposed to progress. It was a faith that confused religion with ecclesiasticism, and man's infantile conceptions with God's eternal truth. There was so much that was true in the denial, and the true denial has now become part of the affirmation.

[Watchman.]

Today the only religion that can appeal to the good judgment of people and satisfy their aspirations is vital, spiritual, moral, and practical religion. Formal, established religion, however supported by kings or priests, cannot meet the needs of many individuals, and all over Europe and in Russia the worshipers of God in spirit and in truth are springing up and spreading abroad. It is the Biblical standard of true religion and the larger bestowment of the spirit of God upon this age which have made these changes and will continue to make them. It is true that freedom and individuality produce great divergencies and give opportunity for all kinds of fads in religion, yet there is more genuine, earnest, active, practical missionary religion in the world today than ever; and the rulers of the world, especially where enlightened public sentiment prevails, are molded and impressed with a sense of responsibility to be religious themselves.

[Outlook.]

The punishment of sin begins the moment it is committed, and no man or woman ever escapes the full penalty. For the punishment is within, not without; its certain and most appalling form is not arrest, trial, and legal penalty, but the disintegration of the moral nature of the man or woman who has sinned.... To see a man slowly but surely die at heart, losing one by one the great faculties and qualities of his nature—moral sense, spiritual vision, integrity, honor, peace—is one of the heartbreaking experiences of life. So visibly dies the man who gives himself to any appetite, passion, or unlawful desire; to selfish ambition, to greed, to dishonesty, to any kind of lie.

[Universalist Leader.]

What we need more than brotherhood writ large in our creed is brotherhood lived large in a world where it is our duty not only to enthrone justice but to temper justice with love. Martineau said of the gospel of Jesus: "If man had said it all before, man had not lived it until now." The world is looking for the church that can so inspire men that they will live the gospel of Jesus Christ.