Article January 17, 1914 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from C. S. Mills

[Rev. C. S. Mills, D.D., in Hartford Seminary Record]

Now no intelligent student of the gospel can fail to see that the mind of the Master beheld a vision, the most glorious of which man has ever conceived. He called it the "kingdom of God," meaning sometimes the rule of God in the individual of soul, but that ideal social order where God in love and light shall rule in every heart, and men, reflecting the divine light and filled with the spirit of divine love, shall give themselves with abounding joy to serve one another. This divine plan for mankind, devised by his matchless wisdom, set forth preeminently in his teaching, illuminated with the splendor of his optimism, empowered by the gift of the Spirit, abides as the summary of his commands. However remote it may seem from the present-day attainment, it can never be classed as a Utopian dream, for Christ's seal is upon it. It is no momentary picture, to fade away in the heavens like the stars before the sun when a greater day of culture comes on, for it shines with the divine glory which can never be eclipsed; it cannot be swallowed up like the setting sun in the darkness of some night of human need, for God cannot be defeated. It abides, it compels, and it inspires. Beholding that glorious vision, the efficient minister will be obedient to it. He will lay out his course according to its light. Whenever he prays, "Thy kingdom come," he will remember the quality and dimensions of the kingdom for which he prays, and that no prayer is sincere which the suppliant does not himself seek to answer. [The Christian World]

Every week brings its new sport, its new fashion. There is an unparalleled cult of luxury. Our hotels, our steamships, our railway carriages, are full of new inventions in comfort. The world was never so well off. Would any one say that with all this there has been a commensurate increase in joyouness? Never since man began has the croak of the pessimist, the wail of the discontented, been so insistent. And the reason is not far to seek, for all this is simply to begin at the wrong end. The something added, that is of real consequence here, is a something added to ourselves, a something that comes not from without, but from within; or where it is from without, is from above us, and not in the things around us. It is in the development of character, in an increasing clarity of vision, in an insight that goes through the apparent down to life's bottom, fundamental values, that we reach the genuine satisfactions; that we learn to say, How good life is! To have cultivated in yourself the faculties of faith, of hope, and of charity; to have discovered the enduring joy of ordered industry; to have found the beauty of things simple and common; to have struck on the magnificent ideas that lurk behind the every-day facts,—all this may have made no great difference to your bankind account; it will have made all the difference to your appreciation of life. [The Christian Work and Evangelist]

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