Topic: Effort Towards Right [Professor Edward Roberts, in the Swansea and West Wales Guardian, Glamorganishire, Wales]

We do not think as much as we think we think. There has been too much disparagement of thinking. Consistent, constructive, and conscientious thinking; religion in its deeper concepts; ethics in its ideal of what is right and wrong, present to us ultimate truth. We want true thought—we have it in Jesus Christ.... The solution of our problem today lies in the production of better Christians.

[From the News-Press, Santa Barbara, California]

When we are "born of the Spirit," we shall be able to do the works of the Spirit, as Jesus promised and as he did; and as we grow in spiritual strength and understanding we shall be able to do the greater works, as he also promised. What the world now needs, and what religious people are looking for, is this spiritual birth—the real birth that shall be evidenced by spiritual understanding and power, and that shall open the true way that leads to human regeneration.

[From an Editorial in the Ashington Collieries Magazine, Northumberland, England]

Millions of people say and do things unquestioningly because parents, grandparents, pastors, and masters have said and done the same....

Do you challenge every thought which comes to you to determine its origin—to find out whether such thought is merely mass suggestion or an hereditary belief, or whether it is intelligent reflection?

And in those last words lies the meaning of true independence, for a man who opens his consciousness intelligently to light—who seeks persistently for truth—will be amazed at the measure, filled to overflowing, which will be handed to him.

But let him not think that he will be wafted straight into the kingdom of heaven as a result. He will have to win his way step by step. For the pride and prejudice of established usage will oppose him at every step. Enemies will spring up on all hands. Even his friends will doubt and desert him. He will plod through loneliness and be forced to learn the lesson of patience.

But he will have become freed from the crowd, and as he reaches the mental heights and begins to lose the mists the way will become brighter.

This, then, is what we understand by the phrase, Turning over a new leaf, and it may also explain some of the reasons for the countless wrecks which strew the pathway pursued by so many good resolutions in the past.

[Arthur Hedley, in the Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, Ohio]

Bad habits can only be expelled by forming good habits. By consistently practicing the right kind of habits we effectively conquer the wrong kind of habits. We can only get rid of negative habits by forming positive ones....

Our tomorrows depend on what we do with our todays. Begin this very moment to cultivate positive thoughts of love, trust, goodness, and translate them into action, and then tomorrow will be vastly different. I find so many people blaming their parents, their circumstances, for their failures, where they should blame their own foolish selves....

It is far better to be hopeful, trustful, and cheerful than to be mournful and fearful. It is far, far better to smile than to sigh....

Why always be anticipating evil? The future is unknown, it is in God's hands. While we can determine our future to a certain extent, yet it is also true that "we know not what shall be on the morrow." But we do know that all that God wills is for our good. Our highest welfare is His chief concern.

If we really believed this we should be less afraid of life and the future. This was the truth Jesus was ever trying to teach those who were so fearful of the morrow. God knew their real needs, and if they would but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then their heavenly Father would supply their material needs.

[From the Wayne County Mail, Ontario, New York]

Oh, the beauty of humility! How rare it is to find people possessing some gift, who do not boast of it and hold it up before others as a wonderful thing, which should be much talked of and noticed.

Every talent we have is a gift of God; we have nothing to do with it except to cultivate and take care of it, and to thank God for it. It is right that we should be aware of this especial favor to us, but not to be boastful and conceited over it.

[J. L. Newland, in the Frederick Leader, Oklahoma]

Do not despise the faithful plodder. The men and women who do the daily work of the world in patience and fidelity are its real heroes and heroines. Without them we should all suffer for the daily necessities of life. Without them there would be no solidarity to community life, no backbone to government.

It is well, therefore, not to grow weary in doing well the duties which fall to our hands. Many years ago Bonaventure wrote, "A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue." It is by cultivating such virtue that we become worthy of greater undertakings, as the Master illustrated in the parable of the talents.

There is romance of achievement in our daily lives, there is adventure in the commonplace, if we face our daily work with a cheerful fidelity and an intelligent effort to do well whatever we have to do. Always there is the discovery of new methods, the joy of a better job, the satisfaction of a day well spent, the consciousness of growth to cheer us on to higher ground.

[From the Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

Wherever Jesus went dullness disappeared. Some loved him with a love that was stronger than death. Others could not be happy till he was dead. But, just as in the first centuries his followers turned the world upside down, so today his character is the touchstone of human life.

Salt is also a savor to life. It changes the taste of all that it touches. This is true in a very special sense in our modern world. The greatest tragedy of our time is that so many people have lost the zest of life. Its meaning, its direction, its possibility are forgotten in the way that it made existence a joy to their forefathers....

Salt is a preventive. There is no greater enemy of decay. In these days of synthetic refrigeration and artificial ice we forget that, especially in the lands of the sun by the Mediterranean Sea where Jesus lived, salt was the only thing which men could use to prevent rottenness—and Christianity did that very thing. It saved all that was worth while in the old civilizations of Greece and Rome, and through the later centuries it performed the same service....

Christians should be the salt of their city. It is their business to see that their city is clean. It is the duty of Christians to make politics clean....

Jesus did not say "Sprinkle salt," but "Ye are the salt." "But if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."

[George Harlan McClung, as quoted in the Buffalo Evening News, New York]

There are some virtues that are all the better when they are twins. In fact some virtues, to be virtues at all, must go in clusters. A veteran of suffering and spiritual warfare once said to a novice, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." There is a careless content which certainly is no virtue.

Godliness was given first emphasis by Paul. It must be the forerunner of virtuous contentment. To hold content within the heart when wrong triumphs, when injustice stalks across the land, when wars spread around the world their abomination of desolation, when little children toil in hunger and rags—to sit indifferently by in complacent content—this is not virtuous, it is vicious.

But facing all the facts of life, its shadow and sunshine, and having done everything possible to right them and having faith to leave their ultimate solution in the hands of a higher power, then one should cultivate the spirit of contentment.

Contentment is a quality of the heart. The heart should always be superior to one's fortune. It depends not upon what one has but upon what one is.... Contentment is a quality of soul, not an acquiescence in either evil or poverty. Paul had this spiritual victory. Few men have done more for the true progress of the world, but he could say in spite of many sufferings, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

[Harry B. Miner, B. D., Ph. D., in the Christian World Pulpit, London, England]

Goodness, beauty, and truth, as revealed in Christian revelation and understood by the human intelligence, are so often in conflict with our instinctive life—they represent a higher life, which is achieved only by conflict with a lower life. And that higher life is not won by one victory; it is not a static condition supervening upon one religious emotion of ecstasy, and it is not the result of once having declared one's faith in things spiritual. It so often is maintained at the cost of perpetual warfare, and must be definitely known as a realizable thing. How easy in matters evil to float with the stream, to be lulled to sleep, and to think the consequent feeling of well-being a sign that matters are not too bad. How difficult to breast the stream, to keep up the activity necessary for maintaining one's position, and to think the ensuing sense of defeat, of partial failure, or of moral lassitude, an evidence that we are either incapable of arriving at our goal or that we are not doing that which is in accordance with our highest nature.

[Dr. Henry A. Christian, as quoted in the Post-Standard, Syracuse, New York]

Religion is not a matter of form but of simple faith.... I would say to all of you, and especially to you young men, have a religion of faith and belief; it will help you over many a hard place.