[The Universalist Leader]

One may have all that he wants and yet be far from possessing all that he needs. Deep in the heart of every human being abides the need of something that shall lift his life above the petty limitations of personal desires and aims, and endow it with a loftiness of purpose and a breadth of thought and feeling unknown to those whose only care is for themselves. We need the ambition not only to promote the welfare of those whose happiness is our special care, but in this and all permitted ways to render service to the world at large. We also need the conscious endeavor, through the integrity and kindness of our own life, to deserve the approval of our Father in heaven. Only those whose lives are ennobled and enriched with the joys which the fulfilment of such desires as these afford, are truly happy.

Those whose energies of heart and brain are devoted to interests larger than their own, have little time or inclination to think about themselves. You will not hear them complain that they are not appreciated and that the world has treated them meanly. Theirs is the blessedness of devotion to unselfish ideals; and how much or little of what is called personal enjoyment may go with it, is a trifling matter.

[The Christian Register]

It was a Chinese augur in the seventh century before Christ who, according to Professor Giles, said: "Natural phenomena do not bring with them either good fortune or bad fortune. These are brought about by men themselves." The saying sounds very modern, but what is more remarkable, the need of it is just as modern. After all the knowledge of the world and the course of events, all the dissemination of scientific principles, there are still as many people as ever, apparently, who assume that what happens to men is the disposition of a higher power. If the truth could be told when people indict Providence with their sorrows, it would go farther than all the labored explanations to clear the matter. If doctors could tell all they know of the reason for early death, for pain, for disease; if the minister could say candidly, "This man was taken away not by God's will, but by his neglect of the elementary laws of God's care, by his dissipation or self-indulgence" . . . religion would be spared a good many questions which its answers do not meet. Then the field of religion would be cleared for an unassailable faith.

[Rev. Britton D. Weiglein The Living Church]

The church of today will have to be constantly on her guard lest both pulpit and pew be exposed to the danger of unconsciously inhaling an atmosphere impregnated with elements which distort the vision and blur the perception of social transgressions. The interests in the church which are peculiarly exposed to this danger of subtle and adroit exploitation are a zeal for orthodoxy and a regard for propriety.

Too often, alas! when the modern preacher of the true prophetic order raises his voice in protest against entrenched wrongs and outrages against the God of justice and righteousness, he is unctuously advised to "preach the simple gospel," by those who seem oblivious to the call of the prophet of old and of our Lord and Master to "preach the gospel to the poor; . . . to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, . . . to set at liberty them that are bruised." Or else he is solemnly enjoined to point his periods and trim his words with punctilious precision and exacting nicety, lest they offend the sense of propriety cherished by some of his hearers. It has been well observed that in being too correct we may miss the truth. When a warden, while consulting Bishop Lawrence, expressed a fear of calling a rector with too pronounced social views, the bishop replied, "We may possibly get a rector of such correct and careful habits that he will reach no one. We must take some chances, break away from some conventionalities, and so move in among the people as to gain their interest."

[The Congregationalist and Christian World]

Doubtings and debates are quite natural in the circumstances of the war. They are natural also in the conditions of our ordinary lives, and have compelled a wholesome unwillingness to dogmatize, in America as well as in Great Britain. We are far less ready to limit the mercy of God in order to fit a formula of theological systems and the opinions of our forefathers. We are agreed, however, in believing that the experiences in this or any other world are one in the necessity of a communicated life from above, for any true and happy share in the divine experience which Christ came to reveal and impart. We shall do well if we concentrate, attention upon the need and necessity of this life from above, without dogmatizing upon invariable methods of God's working or limiting God to activity at fixed times in the experience of the soul.

[John Hunter, D.D., in The Homiletic Review]

What we see around us is not a world really redeemed, but only a world that is being redeemed. The actual redemption of humanity is coincident with its moral and spiritual progress, and can be accomplished only by the slow and constant operation of the spirit and power of God. But the divine power is no abstraction, and the divine spirit no wandering ghost. The unity of power is not God, nor man, in isolation. God in the world, reconciling it to Himself, means God and man working together; the divine power and spirit in human hearts and lives, permeating and quickening them as the infusion of a higher life. The atonement is still in process of completion. Into the Son's work, which is also the Father's, we are called to enter; called to hasten, by our life and labor, the time of the great reconciliation, when man's moral being shall be received into the unity of creation, and things in heaven and on earth shall be one, and God, that is good, be All-in-all.

[John C. Seegers in American Lutheran Survey]

The Reformation was a spiritual victory. It was a triumph within the soul. It was an inner experience before it was an historical fact. But spiritual triumphs affect the entire man; they are never confined to the soul; they are never isolated. And therefore the church was not the only beneficiary of this great conquest; every phase of human life felt the power of its divine impact. It emancipated the human mind. The fetters of a worn-out philosophy were shattered and an unrestrained, free inquiry and research became possible. It made illiteracy unnecessary, and if followed consistently, a godless literacy impossible. It pervaded the sphere of civil life.

[Zion's Herald]

The man who abides in Christ is perpetually at home; into the soul that has made its peace with God the Father, the Master mystically enters to sup—and stay. Amid the changes that are constantly occurring in this shifting and unsatisfying world, men need more and more to lay stress on the things that do abide.