Editorial October 23, 1915 Issue

The Heart of Things

John B. Willis

No one can think of the unprofitableness of most of the things which consume humanity's attention, and at the same time have some sense of the seriousness of the problems which we are called upon to solve in this life, without feeling that waste of time and opportunity assumes, with the many, the semblance of a crime. There is constant movement but no progress, much banqueting but no satisfaction of hunger, a great deal of talk but nothing worth while said.

The unspeakably lamentable world-conditions of today witness in an overwhelming way to the manifest weakness of the hold of Christian men and nations upon those ideals of integrity, unselfishness, and brotherhood which they profess to know. Superficiality may be said to be the all-inclusive sin of modern civilization. It has little moral assertion, its piety has succumbed to its passion; in a word, it has no anchorage in Truth and Love. This is the most discouraging fact of the hour,—that the boasted civilization of Christian believers and races should have proved to be so like a house that is built upon the sand. Past history and present international relations alike give painful proof that real progress cannot be achieved apart from a practical embrace of "the deep things of God." There is nothing more pitifully incongruous than a mature Christian man or nation which is a spiritual dwarf. Such a state speaks indisputably for the rule of those "pasteboard passions and desires" which, as Lowell has said, are

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