[The Christian World]

The story of Moses dying in view of Canaan without entering it, is not just a piece of individual biography. It is our story, the story of the human heart. We are all of us marching forward toward a paradise more or less in view, a paradise we do not enter. We do not enter our paradise, because as we advance it becomes, by this splendid law of our being, always a better, a higher than the one we set out to secure. We remain unsatisfied with the earlier consummation because we find that the universe contains still better things. We reach our Jerusalem, as some of the Crusaders did, and find it not good enough. That dusty, ill-smelling city on its stony height, will that do? No; and were it a city of golden streets, of marble palaces, still it would not do. The soul leaps at once from the material to the immaterial, to a Jerusalem which is from above, which descends to us out of heaven from God. It is from the infinited expansibility of the human soul, its capacity for the highest there is, that springs its present non-content. And no promise of good that could have been written for us on the heavens were surely comparable, both for its largeness and its sureness, to the sublime hope that our non-content kindless within us.

Meanwhile, as we are thus drawn onward, drawn by the immense demand of the soul, let us not despise or undervalue the paradise we have already reached. Let us be happy in the happiness we have—the happiness that has this desire in it. Let us enjoy our incompleteness, and that because it is incomplete. Do not trouble about the sordidness of your conditions if the soul is not sordid. The great thing is that we are on a journey, the most wonderful journey that ever was. What is behind us is astonishing enough, but that is only a preparation for what is before us. "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come." Forever do we seek and seek; forever does our paradise recede as we advance; and for the reason that we are the children of the infinite, nothing less than the infinite, in its height and depth and fulness, can be our home.

[The Universalist Leader]

Mostly we are overburdened, not by the pack upon our back, but by the pack we had there yesterday and the pack we are going to have tomorrow. While we can easily bear the one burden of today, there are very few who can bear the three; and sometimes the same burden would not be hard to carry for just one day, but the thought of the days that have been and the days that are yet to be, robs us of hope. Here is the secret of most of our life's success or failure. We do not take our life as it comes. We can be sweet-tempered and kind and just for a little while, but the thought of keeping it up day after day and month after month and year after year, is what appals us. Yet we have only the present in which to do and speak and think, and there would be fewer overburdened minds and hands and hearts if we would only take things as they come. We can all be good for a day if we try hard enough, and we have only one day at a time; and living one day at a time best we can, will soon make a year of happiness.

[The Continent]

"What do ye more than others?" That question from Christ contains a whole volume of Christian ethics. In our Lord's time, just as today, multitudes regulated their conduct by the standard measurement, "All that's to be expected of an ordinary man." Then as now there prevailed a kind of set tradition as to what consistency demands of a religious person; anybody who kept abreast of that mark felt himself doing well enough, but Jesus always carried a prod to disturb the content of "well enough." He was everlastingly keying up character to a higher plane—the good to the better. The Master could not permit religious people to measure themserves by one another. He knew that meant self-righteousness. Instead, he insisted on having his followers read the measure of their obligations by the deeds of those who do not profess religion.

"What do ye more than others?" To please his Master the Christian disciple dare not stop with doing as well as is to be expected of the average man. He must do a great deal better than the average man dreams of; and as the man of the world improves, it is the business of the Christian to keep improving faster.

[Western Christian Advance]

The heart of the world has long been calling unto men in behalf of interests of brotherhood. The phrase has been sounded forth until it has become hackneyed. It falls upon the ear as a venerable sound signifying but a sentiment. It fails to arouse emotion, start thought, inflame imagination, and call being of man into action. We cannot understand why this is true. The doctrine of the fatherhood of God has sent a benign influence into human life, but its correlate, the brotherhood of man, remains a theory untired and unaccepted. Men are saying the church has sent the doctrine of fraternity and brotherhood into eclipse. On every hand are organizations calling to the church and her ministry for the reemphasis of the doctrine of brotherhood. She is beginning to listen. The path before her lies in semidarkness, but a new light breaks. She prepares herself and stands on the threshold of a new day.

[The Advance]

If Jesus were to come again, a great many excellent people would value his advent in proportion as he increased for them or their neighbors the visible supply of material comforts. But this is one of the minor values of the gospel. It is life itself that counts. Christ came to give life and give it abundantly. The life which he gives us is the abundant life. Every other form of life in comparison is meager and disappointing. Every from of life which depends primarily on the possession of things external is doomed to ultimate disappointment. The life that cannot wholly fail is that which has learned the secret which Jesus knew, taught, and lived. In him was life. In him is life. Slowly but surely the judgment of wise men comes into accord with the estimate of Jesus. A man's life consisteth not in lands or gold or bonds or stocks, but in love and righteous character.

[The Congregationalist and Christian World]

If God is not a reality to us, if Christ is not enthorned in our hearts, if our passion is not the conforming of the world to his standards, of what avail is all our machinery and all our platform talk? The churches of this country have no business in hand that compares in importance with that of making themselves more fit to be channels through which the grace and help of God may flow into needy and sinful lives and into the disordered and corrupt life of the world.

[The Christian Work and Evangelist]

The man who is hospitable to truth and ideals from whatever source, is the man who grows. The man who keesp open heart and mind, not the man who hedges himself about with walls and fences, is the man who grows great in culture, resource, and strength. The same is true of nations.