[Rev. Elmer W. Rinkel, in the Beacon,
Wichita, Kansas]

Jesus was always willing to do what he asks us to do. Too often we look upon the temptation experience as an incident revealing the humanity of Jesus, and showing him therefore as subject to temptations. We forget that immediately preceding the temptations he had received a definite call to be the "Son of God," and build the kingdom of God upon this earth. In answer to that call he retired into the wilderness to think through what he would have to do, and what it would cost him to achieve this great purpose. Three ways presented themselves to him.

First, the easy way of supplying the physical and material needs of people; feed, clothe, house them, and they will be your followers forever. "No," replied Jesus.... Three years later we see the results of this decision when he said, "Not my will, but thine, be done."

Second came the thought of self-glorification, of building the kingdom by doing spectacular things. If he could jump off the temple without being hurt, surely that would prove his divinity. Jesus rejected this idea.... In his thinking the kingdom must be built by men who trust God—men who, like Job, in the midst of calamities are able to say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Such devotions as this will keep the spirit of loyalty burning brightly in the hearts of men when everything has gone wrong, and enable them still to fight on to a victory over self, circumstances, and evil. It cost Jesus his popularity with the multitudes who followed him because of his miracles of healing. But it... proved that his way was true.

Third, he was tempted to use compromise with evil to build the kingdom. If he were not too exacting in his demands for allegiance, loyalty, purity of heart, and dislike for evil he could secure great numbers of followers, yes, even all the nations of the earth. Let people have their little misconducts, their pretendings of what they are not: after all you cannot expect too much of humans. Jesus refused this idea because the kingdom can be built only by persons who have a faith in a living God, know His purpose for their lives, and refuse to let anything hinder or distract from the success of that purpose. They are those who live untarnished lives, victors over half truths. Jesus could have escaped the crucifixion had he compromised. But there would have been no resurrection had he done so.

Let us sit down and consider whether we have the necessary devotion and determination to finish the Christian life we have started.... Jesus had considered what the cost would be, and was willing to pay the price to bring his life to a perfect completion.

[Editorial in the Boston (Massachusetts) Herald]

"Total" means precisely what it says. There is nothing partial about a total war. Nobody can go on living as if it did not exist. Nobody can expect immunity from its effects, or has any business to escape from all forms of the effort it entails.

It is not nearly enough to stand on one side and applaud or criticize, according to one's bent, the more fortunate, because the more active, participants in the fight. There are better ways to serve than that.

One of them—beyond all the organized opportunities for civil defense—is to wage an internal war against the destruction of things which total war may destroy. In Germany, there is every reason to believe science and the arts have suffered blows from which the recovery is destined to be long and doubtful. The scholar and the artist are in less crying and immediate need of support from noncombatants than the soldier and the sailor, but if the concerns of the mind and the spirit are forgotten, if the lights which the scholars and artists have kept burning are extinguished—such lights as those of learning, letters, music, and true religion—some of the very objects for which total war is fought will disappear.

The noncombatant has indeed his own important post of duty. While others are offering their lives for a country and its way of living, that country needs to be made more and more worthy of salvation. Of course there is less of obvious glory in devotion to work of this kind, but that does not make it less worth doing.

Take the very matters of democracy and freedom for which we tell ourselves, and truly, that we have gone totally to war. How actually and deeply does each one of us serve the cause of democracy, not with his lips, but with his life? How do we manifest a vital faith in the equality of opportunity for all, literally all, who are capable of seizing it—a faith that lies at the very core of democracy? Never was there more need to make sure that the four freedoms of our civil liberties are held inviolate.

Every society is the sum of the individuals who compose it. With us the leaders and their enrolled followers in many fields of danger and of toil have given, and will surely continue to give, abundant occasions for pride and confidence. Now it is for the disqualified to make some return at least approaching to equivalence. The total admits of no exceptions, no exemptions. For every one of us— Christian, Jew, pagan, what you will—who cannot take a direct part in defeating the forces of evil, there is one clear call to a vital job. This is to enlist in total war through private battle for that victory of the spirit which each one of us sees as part of... all free peoples.

A country fighting for its life through total victory must not forget that its true life is the life of the spirit.

[From the Bank Officials' Journal, Adelaide, South Australia]

Pleasure is only an experience; it is a fleeting incident in our lives, it is here one moment and gone the next, barely scratching the surface of our existence. It is not so with happiness, which is a state or attitude of mind often to be found in the most unlikely places.

Our attitude to our troubles will determine whether we shall know happiness or not. If we bend under the weight of our cares, if we drift with the tide and do not fight it, if we let the iron of bitterness and misery sear its way into our very souls, we are lost, and happiness is not for us. If we face our difficulties with courage and stand foursquare to conquer our fears, if we make our own decisions and do not weakly follow the urgings of others, our time of stress can be ennobling and pave the way to ultimate happiness; each of us becomes master of his destiny and captain of his soul.

There is no royal road to that deep and abiding happiness which, once glimpsed, ever haunts the memory. It brings with it contentment, the love of our fellow creatures, tolerance, kindliness, and sympathy. True happiness comes with sharing—it may be the sublime sharing of affections that comes only too rarely and casts a fragrance over our lives, it may be the sharing of sympathetic understanding, or it may be the sharing of our worldly goods with those who are hungry and needy where it is the heart and not the head that gives.

[Dr. Robert B. Stansell, in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Sentinel]

Paul and Silas, with their feet fast in the stocks, suffering in prison for their faith, at midnight broke into singing. They sang the Psalms sacred to Christians and Jews alike. These songs were a confession of faith, a pledge of allegiance and a challenge to the enemies of God. They sang till all the prisoners were aroused, and continued to sing till an earthquake leveled the prison walls to the ground and freed the prisoners. Is this New Testament incident a parable for our times? For it is literally true that the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humility, the spirit of tolerance and of good will is in chains. "St. Peter in chains" is a true symbol of our times. It is the midnight hour for human fellowship and brotherly love all over the world.

Will Christians sing the songs of love and good will and forgiveness in this hour? Will the church sing with the spirit and the understanding, until our prison walls fall and the spirit of man is set free?

[Rev. Eugene M. Bushong, in the Hartford
(Connecticut) Daily Courant]

Courage always grows out of confidence. The fear of a child is dissipated as soon as he places his hand in that of his father—because of his faith in him. Jesus frequently upbraided men for their fears. "Why are ye so fearful?" "Be not afraid." He taught that men should have faith in God.

This faith is not a mere intellectual acceptance of the fact that God exists, which he always took for granted. He calls upon men to trust God completely and to organize their whole lives upon the foundation of confidence in him.

The great obstacle to faith on the part of many is lack of knowledge. How can you trust a God you do not know? ... When you trust God, and depend upon Him for those things which are beyond your ability or understanding, your own powers are unhampered by needless anxieties.

Many are fearful today because they know, deep in their own hearts, that their own inner resources are not equal to the demands life may make upon them. The solution lies in drawing upon the strength of God, whose inexhaustible resources are available through faith.

[Bishop William T. Manning, in The New
York Times]

We pray today, as we face this stupendous moral and spiritual crisis for the world, for humanity and our own land, that aggression, cruelty, and wrong may be ended and that peace—not a false peace that is a surrender to the powers of evil, but a true and lasting peace of righteousness and justice—may be established for the good of all mankind.

Men who grow careless and neglectful about prayer to God soon find that God and Christ become unreal to them and their religion becomes vague and unreal. The Bible, to those who study its pages, will speak a divine message with a spiritual power that no other book will have.