[Rev. Fred Bennett Ford, as quoted in the Standard-Star, New Rochelle, New York]

Nobody grows old by living a certain number of years. They grow old by losing their ideals. It was something like that, I think, that the Master had in mind in what we call the parable of the sower. He says that some lovely things sprout and grow in the soil of our lives. For want of a more adequate name let us call them ideals.

Life can and does assault the ideals we have of ourselves, of our fellows, and of common life. Life will take our ideals away from us, and leave us old, if we let it!

Again and again, as a minister, I meet people who have put life in the prisoner's bar and are judging it by the evidence of one experience that has come to them. Life is bigger than your experience of it, or mine.

Don't think that the end has come, or that your ideal is in vain, because of few failures of your own, or of your friends, or of the society to which you belong. We can still lose many battles and still win the war. No failure is final until that failure which causes you to surrender your ideal.

The tragedy of our idealism is that we serve it so poorly that we lose it, and when we lose our ideals youth goes, and age comes; we then belong to only our yesterdays and not to tomorrow. We leave tomorrow to other men who keep their ideals and their youth.

[From the Ashington Collieries Magazine, Northumberland, England]

Hope is ever new, ever looking for improvement, ever reaching higher until it loses something of its selfish desire and begins to merge into that which is called faith and eventually reaches its culmination in charity — love.

[Arnold Sherring, in the Paisley Daily Express, Renfrewshire, Scotland]

Many people declare that the spirit of hope belongs to youth; it is characteristic of early ideals and enthusiasms; it is the young man's prerogative. Let the years pass; let time do its wearing work; let the world buffet the young idealist; let life lay its chilling hand upon him, and there will not be so much buoyancy and adventure and high spirit about him then. He will talk in another strain.

That is not the religious view of the matter. Hope is undoubtedly a characteristic of youth, but hope does not necessarily wane and vanish with the passing of the years. It grows in power; it increases in strength. Hope and youth are related, and youth is a characteristic of Christianity, and so carries hope with it. . . .

Hope strengthens as it grows, if it be deeply rooted in reality. One of Paul's sentences is, "Experience [worketh] hope." It slips into one of his letters so quietly that we are apt to pass it over without remarking its significance and suggestion. Call it a paradox, if you like; but it is one of the deep truths that a paradox often expresses. Experience there does not mean a record of one's failures, a chronicle of disappointments, a diary of mistakes; it means ripeness of character. It refers to one who has become a veteran in conflict. He has tested the strength of the enemy, and found that the enemy is not so strong as he is thought to be. He knows life; he understands his own heart; he is well versed in the human documents; he has read and studied and pondered; he has endured much; he is not a mere novice in the art of living; and it is this kind of man who knows and is ready to testify that experience worketh hope. . . .

Nobody would ever think that hope could come out of tribulations, unless he had experienced it. . . . Nothing is more astonishing than the abounding high spirits of the early church. It flourished on incessant persecution; it triumphed over perpetual obstacles. The man who has inward resources and knows how they may be replenished is a perpetual surprise.

It would be no development at all if hope faded away with the years. . . . The real triumph is when a man can look back over the tumultuous past, and forward into the shadows of the unknown, and know that the hope which animates him is the very growth of the divine in his heart. He has a grip of the quenchless things.

When John Wesley lay dying on the verge of ninety, he raised his feeble arm in token of victory and cried, "The best of all is, God is with us!" That was not the untried hope of the novice in life's strange lore; it was the developed hope of the veteran whom no uncertainty could shake, who knew that "God is on the field, when He is most invisible."

[President James B. Conant, of Harvard University, as quoted in the Boston Evening Transcript Massachusetts]

The western world is in a quandary. . . . Reason must triumph over unreason without being converted in its hour of victory to the very thing it would destroy. . . .

With either fear or hate as our counselors, we shall certainly fail. With clear heads and stout hearts we may succeed. And on our success or failure may depend not only the fate of humanity's experiment with free institutions, but the potency of man's belief in a life of reason — in short, what we now venture to designate as modern civilization.

[From the Adult Bible Class Monthly, Cincinnati, Ohio]

Humility is that rare quality which characterizes a really great soul — one that does not know from personal experience what it means to make a bluff or to appear to be what he is not. Sir Isaac Newton's name will shine as long as civilization lives. When he spoke of himself and frankly attempted to appraise his own work, which the world knows to be immortal, he said: "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a prettier shell or a smoother pebble than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

[Rev. S. Roth, in the Daily News-Times, Neenah, Wisconsin]

What do we want today? Life is here, God is here, friends are here. In fact, we really have more today than we know what to do with. Of course, there are the poor and needy, but that is not God's fault, but man's The problem is that of proper sharing and the proper use of our God-given talents in His service. Naturally we ask the question, "Why are things so?" When the sun shines so brightly, why should there be gloom? When the abundance of nature is so great, why is there need? When the human heart is able to become just as warm toward others as ever, why is there the constant fear of war? We believe there is an answer to all of these questions. . . .

We are not resigned to failure. We are resigned to Almighty God. But we need a persevering faith in Him and what He is able to make of us. Has our faith not been too easy a thing? Have we really experienced struggles and selfdenial and many other things that run cross-grained over human desires, and come out stronger than ever? Or, have we simply let the current carry us downstream and, like dead fish, quit battling against the current? If the latter be the case, there is need for repentance, there is need for revival of prayer, there is need for the will that displaces wishbone with backbone and says, "I will arise and go to my father" and say, "Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." If we really do this and mean it, we can count on Him to do all the rest.

[Rev. James Reid, D. D., in the British Weekly, London, England]

The power we most need is not physical at all. It is the power of the spirit; what we call moral power. It is, to put it simply, the power to be what we ought, and to do what is right. We all carry within us unrealized ideals. There are few people who have not somewhere in their hearts the picture of a finer self than they have been able to bring to birth. The way of Jesus was never clearer than it is today. . . .

This is precisely what is offered us in the New Testament. We must never forget that the gospel burst on the world as the offer of power. "The gospel of Christ," said Paul, "is the power of God unto salvation." In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus opened up an infinite source of moral power. The discoveries of steam and electricity made possible undreamed-of achievements on the physical plane. It was something as great that Jesus made possible on the plane of the Spirit.

The disciples, when Jesus left the world in his visible presence, were conscious of their need. They were going out to be his witnesses. They had to meet the challenge of evil and unbelief. How could they do it with their poor resources? That thought must have been in their minds as he launched them on the troubled sea alone. But this was his promise to them — [that they should] receive power. The promise was fulfilled.

[From the New Outlook, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

It is hard to remember that good results often come slowly, but that is part of the reassurance of the reassurance of the gospel. For all our impatience there is no magic to hasten the natural laws of the spiritual world. The seed grows slowly, and "not with observation." Development takes time, and we must wait for it. We can supply the conditions which encourage growth, but the harvest comes in its own time. . . .

Though our own contribution may seem small, the final results are out of all proportion to their beginnings. The smallest seed becomes a large herb and provides both shade and shelter. In times like this it is extremely necessary to remember that the small signs of promise which we see are not the final result which God will bring to pass. Moreover, our own contribution, pathetically inadequate though it may be, may achieve an importance which we could neither foresee nor understand. It is part of the mystery of God's dealing with men that He can use the weak things to accomplish His purposes. We may have done little enough, but if it has been honestly and faithfully done, it will serve its proper end. What that end will be we cannot say; it is "enough if something from our hands have power to live, and act, and serve the future hour."

[Rev. Chester E. Hodgson, in the Daily Journal, Elizabeth, New Jersey]

The only way to be brotherly is to be brotherly. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Yes.