[Rev. W. Harvey-Jellie, A.M., D.B., in The Homiletic Review]

Let us bear clearly in mind the fact that there is a very definite distinction between praying and uttering audible requests. Prayer does not consist in an attitude of devotion, the bowed head, the bent knee, and the uttering of words and expression of thoughts which are pious in tone and beautiful in phrase. These may often be valuable accessories of prayer, but they do not constitute prayer, and are not even essential to it. No one ever taught more clearly than Jesus of Nazareth that wordiness and prayer are often so different as to be antagonistic. "When ye pray," said he, "use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." Such wordiness is a mockery and a sinful waste of time in the sight of the Almighty. Yet we still find men who regard it as prayer. We have many who will "lead in public prayer" without ever praying. The beautifully worded compositions of our great and ancient liturgies and prayer-books repeated by many a thousand lips which never express a true heart-appeal to God. No Sabbath ever wears toward evening without a multitude of vain repetitions uttered under the ignorant superstition that they are prayers which Jehovah deigns to hear.

No! We must get behind the form, behind the mere indifferent vehicle of expression, if we would discover the reality of prayer. It must be remembered that true prayer is the heartfelt, trustful utterance of felt needs, with heart and life and mind behind them, into the ear of an omnipotent hearer. This is the sense in which I am asserting that all men must and do pray.

[The Christian Register]

If there is one lesson that we need to learn more than all others in civic and national life, it is that real reform is of the center, and not of the circumference. In other words, the source of social righteousness is found in the individual citizen, and not in the collective citizenship. While the culmination is necessarily of the mass, the forces that make the culmination possible are always to be found in the aspirations and efforts of the individual. Life is ever more powerful than law. Legislation is powerless to work beneficent results unless the life of the individual and average citizen backs it up and is worthy of it. Always, law lags behind life. If it runs ahead, it falls to the ground, being without support. Where the law is the result of the imperative demand of righteous life, it becomes a factor in real progress, or better, it registers in terms of the social will what has been determined by the individual unit.

[The Congregationalist and Christian World]

Serious days, indeed, are these for the church,—the one institution that claims to represent Christianity. Because of that claim, because it is bound to serve Christ's ideals, it should not resent the words of those who say it is on trial. We do not disown the past of Christianity when we apply drastic tests to the religion of our time and summon believers to rise to the challenge of the hour. We simply declare that the emphasis has been misplaced and that the woe and welter of Europe are due in part to this wrong emphasis. It has been put upon creed, ritual, organization, outward form and ceremony and conformity, and too little on the Christian life—the life with Christ—itself.

When young or older people come into the church, they need to understand that pleasing emotional reactions are not the main concern, or even intellectual assent to certain doctrines, but a will firmly set to do the things Jesus wants done. Will you strive in his companionship and for his sake to be pure and humble, meek and merciful, patient and brave, forgiving and loving? Do you intend to think and live as Jesus did, to care less for material good than for spiritual attainments, to go to the furthest limit of love, forgiveness, and ministration to others? Questions of this type must be faced today, not only by those who seek to join the church, but by the millions already within its fold.

God be thanked that the church has never lacked Christians of the finest type. But there have not been enough of them, and their impact upon the world has not been sufficiently powerful to shape the practices of society and to control the policies of nations. But they have kept alive the ideals of Jesus, and we may hope that from the cockpits of Europe to the coal mines of Colorado the beauty and power of that kind of a life is appealing to all classes of men as never before. In its actual embodiment in thousands of lives who will now for perhaps the first time catch the vision, lies the hope of Christianity and of humanity.

[The Advance]

Thankfulness is a habit. The thankful man is the man who is in the habit of considering; the thankless man is the man who rushes on, so eager to secure the next thing in sight that he fails to remember to be grateful for that which already has come to him. We need to cultivate thankfulness toward each other. We are too much disposed to take the kindnesses of our fellow men for granted. We accept without acknowledgment a thousand favors which cost somebody something, when both they and we would be the richer for a word of thanks.

Thankfulness to God is a habit,—a habit which too many men forget. God has filled life with a thousand joys. They spring from every sense; they blossom about us in the flowers; they play about us in the breezes; they smile upon us in the glory of the sunlight. All human comfort and hope springs from the blessing of Almighty God. It ill becomes us children to snatch our food from a Father's hand and snarl as we eat of His bounty. Men have been given minds capable of knowing the will of God in order that they may freely share the Father's joy in the good world which He has made and in the hopes which He has caused to abound in human life.

[Rev. W. E. Orchard, D.D., in The Christian Commonwealth]

Progress is to be measured by what deepens contact with God, quickens imagination, lifts life to a higher level. Not that which denies the past, not that which can only live by cutting itself off from the past, but that which takes up, carries on, and reinterprets the past, is true progress. Reformation rather then revolution is the great religious word; and we must always remember that if we are too occupied with expression at any time, we shall get carried out to the circumference of things. The letter killeth, even when it is a very good letter, if ever it is made all. Before we attempt to restate or reexpress relign, we need to be certain that we know the secret, that we understand what we are talking about; and this may be measured by the width of sympathy which we can find with all real religious life everywhere.

[The Universalist Leader]

Blessed is he or she, however great or noble or consecrated, who, over the hill, somewhere beyond the maddening crowd, knows a spot where the gentle mother heart of the world will brood and bless. Twice blessed are they who walk the silent, solitary places of life with a sense of the near presence and the eternal care of God. This is the meat which they eat, that most of us know not of.