Rev. Alvin D. Johnson in a Share-the-News Letter of the City Park Baptist Church Denver, Colorado

Excellence is a wonderful ideal and is something an individual enters into covenant with himself to accomplish. When this pledge is made to himself, it matters not how the winds are blowing, whether there is a great wave of acceptance or whether he has to go his lonely way. Excellence in his thinking is an offering he makes to God. Excellence in his working, his relationships with others he makes as offerings of gratitude.

The person who has excellence as his ideal is not in competition with others nor attempting to best them. He is working in harmony with the task, with God, with his best talents to get the most done in the least time and in the most orderly and significant fashion.

Quality before God is his goal. He works for His glory.

People on the whole are attracted not by noise and sensation, that is, not attracted so that they respond with their best to anything but quality, sincerity, excellence. People are not fooled by the glitter and the clamor. When the choice really has to be made they listen for the still small voice of wisdom and choose that which has excellence.

That which is done in secret shall be rewarded openly. So a person covenants with himself and his God ... I pledge my love and loyalty ... I pledge my life to do Thy will ... I pledge my best efforts ... I will strive for the ideal of excellence ... and make it an offering to my God.

So Isaiah said [to the Lord], "Here am I; send me." Jesus said, "Not my will, but thine, be done." Paul said, "Forgetting the things which are behind, ... I press on toward ... the prize" [Am. Stand. Ver.].

Lee H. Bristol, Jr. quoted in Printers' Ink New York, New York

"I believe right down to the soles of my feet that you and I have every right to challenge the old slogan that religion and business don't mix, because religion—to be religion at all—must be related to all of life." Lee H. Bristol. Jr., public relations director of Bristol-Myers products division expressed his feelings on that subject at the College of Business Administration, University of Florida.

"As I see it, we want to develop our spiritual life not because religion is some mystic tool for success. We want to develop our spiritual life not because we believe in an open season for hymn-singing in office halls. We want to grow spiritually, it seems to me, so that our lives can come closer to God's highest hopes for them. In doing so, we may see the same faces and places and situations, but see them all differently because of our relationship to God."

From an editorial in The Chronicle-Tribune Marion, Indiana

We live in a changing world. There is nothing permanent but God.

It is only the truth that endures. Everything that is false passes away. Error only leads to death.

It is evident, therefore, that if anyone is to attain eternal life, he must square himself with the truth. In other words, he must get right with God.

"God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life" [Am. Stand. Ver.].

At a serious crisis in the nation's affairs, someone said to Abraham Lincoln, "We trust, Sir, that God is on our side." Lincoln replied: "It is more important to know that we are on God's side."

God's purpose is always a righteous purpose and, ultimately, God's purpose must prevail.

The world is very slowly and very painfully coming to know that its progress is based upon adherence to the right. For many centuries the opinion prevailed that "might made right," but experience has proved this to be fallacious and misleading.

The religions of the world are simply expressions of the endeavors of mankind to attain a right relation with God. The eternal conflict between truth and error, however it originated and to whatever it may be due, has always confronted men and women with the only struggle worth while.

The battleground of every man is in his own heart. Instinctively he recognizes the fact that evil must be eradicated and righteousness enthroned. It is in the struggle to place himself in a right position that he realizes his need of God.

The Apostle Paul recognized this fact, for he found a "law in [his] members, warring against the law of [his] mind, and bringing [him] into captivity" to it. In the hopelessness of the struggle, from a human viewpoint, he cried out, "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" Then he exclaimed, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" [Am. Stand. Ver.].

If we would get right with God, it is in Jesus Christ that we find "the way, the truth, and the life."