[Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, D.D., in The Christian Register.]

The glory of mankind is surely in the sense of expectation. We are yonder-minded beings. Our prerogative is the consciousness of things that eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor even the heart of man conceived. The interest of life lies more in what we want than in what we have; that has been the faith of every seer and the strength of every reformer. It has not been mere wilfulness, it has been the profoundest faith,—a faith that dared to think of human history not as a great flat plain on which men aimlessly wandered, always coming back to the dead camp-fires of preceding hosts, but rather as a shining mountain track up which men were to strive toward the possible heights of honor. Such ideals entering into the life of any nation or communion, stir the imaginative and the spiritual ardors of mankind and do more for human progress than all the knowledge, the science, the material gain that have ever been wrought out since the beginning of intelligence.

I know that these promptings of faith and hope are not ours to originate. That is the work of God in our hearts. It is ours to receive and to obey these promptings. The divine powers are ready for our acceptance, but they do not force themselves upon us. The Holy Spirit respects the reserve which is everywhere the law of spiritual intercourse. But like all living powers, faith is strengthened by its own acts, by the prayers which utter the hopes which God has quickened, and by the works which turn dream into reality. Our hearts' desires, our ideals, the faiths of the soul, are kept bright by the corresponding fulfilments of a life. He who takes it for his essential life to work out that which God works in him, will fill his soul and his world of opportunities with a divine dynamic. He who in patient endeavor seeks to overcome evil with good, to upbuild righteousness and truth, he who loves his friends and fellowships, his church, his country, for the sake of what is best and blessed in them, will never in any valley of the shadow of discouragement or failure lose sight of the fulfilment of the promises. He will ever press forward toward "the unwaning lights of the city of an eternal King." [The Living Church.]

In patience there is always the element of mercy, however unconscious one may be of the fact. We may illustrate what we mean by the life of an artist, a painter, or a poet. Too often genius is not recognized by the generation in which genius lives; and crude justice would seem to recommend the leaving of the stupid to their stupidity, to cease labor that is apparently vain, and to drift with the tide. Instead, however, the vision and the purpose of genius beget patience; and slight and contempt, poverty and hardship, ridicule and scorn, all things are endured willingly in order that genius may leave its gift with men, ultimately. The present generation or the future generations become matters of indifference so long as the gift be delivered; for man needs the gift, and man will some day receive it if we can be patient. This is the higher justice which we call mercy.

So has God used us. Behind all things lie God's love and man's need. God's love, manifested through the sending of His Son, was not received; nor can we say—God be merciful unto us!—that His love is yet received. The love was manifested, nevertheless; and the man Christ Jesus suffered willingly, was patient and merciful.

[Rev. James W. Lee as reported in The Constitution, Macon, Ga.]

Beauty is not for any one who has not the sense of beauty; righteousness is not for any one who does not belong to a righteous order; there can be no manifestation of love except to a loving heart. This means that no Christ appearing in the world could be anything for it unless He were already in it. The highest function of the historical Christ is to bring the potential Christ, which is in every man, which is every man's deeper self, to self-recognition. It is unto His own that Christ always comes. This is the great work of salvation. The majority of men are living in self-ignorance and therefore in ignorance of God. The Christ in you and the Christ in other men and the Christ in the heaven, are but different manifestations of one and the same universal, divine life. It is only when a man realizes this that he emerges from a state of selfishness, the state in which his own individual self is the center of everything, to that state of love whose center is everywhere. The discovery and surrender to the hidden Christ in himself is man's new birth. No man grows up into it. "Ye must be born again." The necessity for a new birth does not rest upon any inherent corruption in human nature. The new birth is the birth of a new consciousness. It is the emerging of the deeper self into consciousness, a new discovery of what our nature really is in its depth, and through that new discovery, finding for itself a new center of life.

[The Christian Work and Evangelist.]

Men are learning again to find God out-of-doors in our day, we think. Jesus prayed to Him on the mount of Olives, and communed with Him in the fields and by the sea. Today we are living out-of-doors more than ever, and the spirit that pervades the universe is becoming apprehended of our souls. We climb mountains and find God. We listen for Him in the quiet of the woods. We travel, and, if we have vision, see Him again in the old cities of Europe and the new and throbbing emporiums of our new world. Above all, as we journey, we find Him in all peoples. Even on the golf links, in the tennis court, in our tramping through the fields, and while sailing on the seas, if we have spiritual faculty, then the invigoration, the freedom, the blowing of cool winds, the salt spume flying in our faces, may be helpful refreshments from Him who is nature's soul. The songs of birds, the peace of evening, the glow of sunset skies,—we live with them more than we did, and find God there.

[The Advance.]

There were seven thousand in Israel all the knees of whom had not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth of whom had not kissed him. Where are the seven thousand? There are prophets who are struggling against hopeless odds, who might be saved from disheartening loneliness if some of the good people now in hiding would speak out; there are ministers ready to give up because they cannot find even seventy of the seven thousand. Let us not blame too severely the brave old prophet who thought that all God's plan depended on him; let us rather blame and exhort the men who should be standing by him to break their silence, to leave their timidity and selfishness and rally to assist the right. You may not know where all the seven thousand are, but if you can find one of them and bring him to the doing of his duty, you will do a good thing. Are you one of the seven thousand?

[The Congregationalist and Christian World.]

International conferences interpret the nations to each other. Provincialism is the mother of strife. We despise others because they seem to differ from us so greatly. When we come to know them, we find we are all alike in the abiding qualities of humanity. We differ only in our clothes, our skin, and our language. There is no nationality in souls, aspirations, or loves. To quote from a recent address to students by Mrs. Elmer Black: "We are citizens of the world today, not only of one city or country. All nations are our fatherland. Our neighbors are those who have like ambitions and ideals. All congenial souls belong to one great country. The things which unite us are greater than those which divide. Get down beneath the surface differences and we are one." This is the lesson international hospitality is fast teaching us.