From the Press

[Western Christian Advocate]

To-morrow will bring a new test of discipleship. The old method of judging a Christian man is passing. The old mold in which faith cast a man's soul has been broken. Another is replacing it. The old-time saint no longer appeals to us. Our fathers thought an eminently good man was one who withdrew from the world where men pass and repass, following the pursuits of life. ... Later they came to regard one who looked upon his body as evil and sought always to mortify its passions and appetites and spent much time in prayer and devotional exercises, until he became so spiritual that he made men think of prayer and Christ when he came into their presence; that man was regarded as a saint. Then later we began to think that a man was a Christian by judging what he refused to do. If a man refrained from doing certain things we concluded he was a Christian. ...

That conception was discovered recently in the trenches, and the practical minds of the boys saw it and smashed it at once. A Christian should be known, not by what he refuses to do, but by what he does. Ah, yes, that is it. Christ does not write "don't" over a man's life, but rather "do." ... In an effort to obey the law men ceased to be active. They withdrew themselves. They meditated. They prayed. They had great fear of the world lest it should contaminate their souls. They sought to walk with God by deserting their fellow men. That was not the picture our Lord Christ drew of the Christian life. Follow the Christ himself.

The new test of Christian discipleship comes by judging a man's action, not his inaction. When a man comes smiling, when he proves to be an optimist, when he displays faith in men and God's world, when he loves the company of his brothers, when he faints not at their wrongdoing, when he gives a kind word here and a helpful hand there, when he loves the broken man, the suffering man, endures the pest and the bore, does the patient thing, the considerate thing, when he shows courage in the face of peril, when he sacrifices himself because he believes in God, that man is a Christian. This is what men are demanding to-day. They are saying a Christian is distinguished from all other men not by what he refuses to do, but by what he does. The Christianity of the churches to-morrow must be the Christianity of Christ. Jesus was the prophet of the blind, the maimed, the halt, the leper, and all those who suffered from sickness and at the hand of society. In that he was different from all other men who had come from God. He did his work so distinctly that men have said ever since, He is not of the prophets, he is the Lord's anointed, the King of Israel, the very Son of God. Even so, Christianity among the many religions must distinguish and differentiate itself so widely by what it leads men to do that there will be none other like it.

[The Atchison (Kan.) Weekly Globe]

A lady has sent a communication to the Globe suggesting that the mayor issue a proclamation urging the people to bow their heads in prayer every noon. The people who know how to pray and believe in prayer should be religious enough to pray without a proclamation every day or two. The Globe does not mean to be disrespectful in this paragraph. It merely takes the stand that real Christians will do the right thing without any formal notice from the mayor, and all the proclamations in the world could not induce the other kind of people to pray every noon. This proclamation business can be overdone.

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