[American Lutheran Survey]

"Having food and raiment let us be therewith content." The adjuration of the apostle needs to be repeated again and again. If we would be content, satisfied, and happy in this life, we must be satisfied with daily bread. The Lord has taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." He points us to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, that we may learn from them contentment. Discontent is the destroyer of happiness, and results from our lack of satisfaction with the daily provision for life. Greed, avarice, covetousness, and a long train of sinful desires, grow like weeds in the heart which has not learned the lesson of contentment with food and raiment. God would have His children care free and happy.

The contentment of which the apostle speaks is more than a philosophy. It is not based on selfish considerations; it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. As such it is of divine origin and nurture. It springs from a living faith in God's loving care and providence. This contentment should be the sign-manual of every Christian. It helps him to mental poise and equilibrium. It steadies his purpose and gives sanity to his judgments. It renders him helpful and comforting to his fellow men, who thus learn from him the secret of a happy life.

[Rev. James Mudge, D.D., in The Christian Intelligencer]

It is sufficiently clear that the root idea of religion is a yearning of the spirit of man for the spirit of God, a recognition of the relation of man to the invisible, an adoration and imitation of the highest object of which man can conceive. Reverence and worship are essential parts of it. It implies love and loyalty to God, surrender or submission to a higher power, to a personal, supernatural being on whom we are dependent and to whom we are responsible. The truest, best, most genuine religion, while including all moral duties, is something more, for it consists partly in doing all those duties from a higher motive, the desire to please God (not from expediency alone, or a sense of honor, and a feeling of benevolence or good nature), partly in the doing of certain other duties which have no connection with our fellow men. It involves the affections and emotions as morality does not. It is a larger, holier, more beautiful and enjoyable thing, reaching the inmost recesses of our being and lifting us into communion with the infinite personality. It is the perfume and the poetry, the melody and the mirth of conduct, while morality is the prose.

[The Outlook]

The sayings of Jesus are interpretations of the spirit of life, and he who fails to look through these luminous windows to the spirit within, falls into the same mistake as the disciples who, when their Master warned them against the leaven of the Pharisees, thought it was because they had forgotten to bring bread with them. He who blindly follows the sayings of the Master does not follow them at all. Blindness is no better for the soul than for the body. "The letter killeth," says Paul. The literalist by his reverence for the letter kills the spirit.

[George Rowland Dodson, Ph.D., in The Christian Register]

A religion that unquestioningly accepts authority and complies with traditional forms is natural to children, but a thoughtful religion is the only religion possible for thoughtful men. Theology, which is simply religion grown thoughtful, which is the result of man's effort to understand his life of aspiration and faith, is therefore as indispensable as it is inevitable. The wide-spread prejudice against theology is chiefly due to two misunderstandings. It is not perceived that no theology can be final, that as the spiritual life develops it will be constantly interpreted in new and more adequate ways, so that ancient interpretations gradually cease to be satisfactory and come to have only an historical interest. We may reject in whole or in part the theologies of former generations, but we cannot do without a theology of our own; and when we pass through the period of revolt we also find that we cannot think successfully in isolation, that although we must assuredly do our own thinking, it will be most fruitful and free from mistakes when it is done in the light of other men's thoughts.

[The Universalist Leader]

The point of the whole matter is that the church, making an appeal for integrity of life, must itself stand for integrity; it cannot profess one thing and preach another; it cannot suffer old views to fall from sight while still holding them as official standards. But more than this, no church can in this day "gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." It is not possible to win to a loving Father and find a vindictive God. It is not possible to proclaim total depravity and appeal to universal brotherhood.

Today the world is moved as never before by the conception of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and any theology which violates this conception must submit to amendment and adjustment. Here in this conception is the key to every movement for human uplift, here the motive to every service, here the source of the splendid spirit of brotherhood, here the solution of every problem of evil, personal, social, economic, international.

[Alfred Williams Anthony in The Standard]

The spiritual life certainly must be a life of growth. In it no man can properly say, "I have apprehended;" he must still "reach forth" unto the things which are before. He has not comprehended all truth; he has not acquired all virtue; he has not assimilated all the excellences of the divine pattern; he has not yet attained unto perfection. Perfection must still be his goal. Any doctrine of sanctification which permits stagnation, or mere marking time, lacks vindication in Scripture and experience.... Spirituality must be vital, acquisitive, in a state of growth, a process rather than a product.

[Mary E. Woolley in The Christian Work]

To have a part in the world's work is not simply or chiefly to discover new applications of natural forces, to promote industry, to develop material resources; it is concerned also with the discovery of intellectual and spiritual forces and their application to daily living, with the promotion of earnest purposes and high ideals, with the development of the resources of the mind and of the heart. The really vital things come within the teacher's province. Society can exist without great wealth, enlarged industries, invention, discovery; it cannot long stand without integrity, honor, truth, purity, idealism.

[Canon J. G. Adderley in The Christian Commonwealth]

We cannot live by looking at truth, even in a new way. We have got to live it and help others to live it in a new way. The life of the church has never really been due to mere creedal acceptance. It has always been that men have found in their creed something by which they lived. Often they have talked as if they lived by intellectual belief, but they did not really do so.