Ernest Hamlin Abbott has an article in a recent number of The Outlook on "The Revolt Against Convention," the tenth in his series on "Religious Life in America," in which he says: "I found in my fellow-traveler [commercial] a type of a great number of men, as I had met them and talked with them who find in the conventional forms of religious life and thought, little with which to sympathize and much with which to be irritated. Not that such men are uninterested in religion, nor even in the Church and its ministers. ... I found a generally prevalent habit of judging ministers and the Church, not by their conformity to conventional standards, but by their fruits.

"This does not mean that such men are greatly impressed by numbers. The rapid growth of Christian Science interests them, but does not even begin to persuade them of its value. Evidence, however, that Christian Science has affected for good the character of some one they know does more than interest them; it arouses in them a respect for that cult and opens the door to persuasion."

Rt. Rev. Alexander Mackay-Smith, D.D., S.T.D., says in The Church Standard: "Trace back each failure, each perversion of Christianity, and you will see lurking behind it, human indolence or pride, the wish to avoid exertion, or the desire to escape self humiliation. But that is not the fault of the Gospel. What wonder, then, that this sin of self-indulgence is the basis of every medicine which the quacks of this age are offering the world? What wonder that men turn eagerly from the Bible to those who tell them that by this or that remedy they can be saved without knowing or feeling it unpleasantly, and that education, or equality, or atheism, or better laws, or more science will cure them mechanically without agony or sacrifice? But the Bible says No! as in the miracle of the text, 'this kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.' There is no chloroform for moral evils. They can be cured only by a higher life entering in and casting them out, with rending of the man."

O. P. Gifford, D.D., says in The Watchman: "When the Gospel went into a Jewish community it was preached in a language that the Jews could understand, the same Gospel was preached in a Grecian community in a language they could understand, and in a Roman community it was preached in a language they could understand: language is not salvation, the truth saves: the form is not the Church, the Spirit is the Church. ... The Church of the future will believe in the Word of God; it will not be afraid of it, it will not be afraid of any higher criticism many things that are claimed for it; it will not believe a great many things that have been read into it, but it will believe it. ... The Church of the future will not have cataracts over her eyes; she will have a telescopic vision that will see as far as Christ sees."

The Christian Advocate asks: "Is there a thrill of moral power in the Churches which must be taken account of by the community? Are money and the means of attracting public attention which it supplies regarded as of greater importance to the success of a Church than its vital spiritual life? Are social attractions more sedulously cultivated and made a greater test in the contemplation of a preacher's power than his aggressive and self-denying piety and uncompromising efforts in leading the officebearers of the Church to ceaseless effort for the promotion of religion? Is the exceeding sinfulness of sin a subject which Christians wish to hear unqualifiedly and solemnly set forth?"

Religion may indeed be safely affirmed, as was argued in the editorial recently. "The Eternal Reality." Profounder mysterles than any of those which are associated with science are now uppermost in the scientific world. It is widely recognized that there is something beyond Law and Force in this universe—something which has not been as yet reached by any scientific analysis, It is this that men are seeking, and Revelation teaches that it can only be found in the conception of God—the everlasting Power that makes for righteousness, that is at the center and circumference of all being, verifying first, last, and all the time the profound conception of the old Bible in the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."—The Universalist Leader.

The Standard has this paragraph in an article by O. P. Gifford, D.D.: "The kingdom of heaven is within you; and so is the kingdom of hell. You need not go into the pit to bring it up. It is between the soles of thy feet and the crown of thy head for thee. An evil thought beheaded never becomes an evil deed. We measure men by actions; God measures men by thoughts, and God judges righteous judgment. Back of every evil deed lies the evil thought. Underneath the evil thoughts is the passionate desire; and that applies to all forms of evil,—to all sorts of appetites. The thought that is evil comes by spontaneous generation out of the nature of man."

To judge Christianity by false standards is by no means uncommon. The world's false standard is commonly to judge it by its professors and adherents. The truth is that every one of its adherents and professors must be judged by Christianity. One must have gained the measure of Christianity before he can judge its adherents, who are at best only partial representatives of it. Concrete Christianity is Christianity modified by the many elements of human life—and often defective and evil human life—which flow in the current of the professor's life.—The Examiner.

Rev. S. F. Zwemer, missionary to the Arabs, says: "It is a labor of love. I have written in my Bible the word 'Arabs' in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Put there the word 'native'—that Chinese woman or that Arab—and then read: 'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love for the Arabs, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. ... And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor in China, and though I give my body to be burned in China, and have not love for the Chinese, it profiteth me nothing.'"

"Are we going by push or momentum?" was the query put into a "question box" at a recent convention, the reference being to the progress of Christian work. This is not merely a pertinent, but a very suggestive, question for these days of readjustment. We might phrase it thus: How much of what we are as individuals, as Churches, as a nation, is due to the impulse that has come to us from the past?

New York Observer.

The obstacle that makes the faint heart sink may be only a trial of faith. The majority report of the spies that made Israel turn back from entering the Promised Land was not a divine direction. Caleb and Joshua had the mind of the Lord, and it was the duty of Israel, in spite of the giants, to go up and possess the land. When there seems to be a divine thwarting we are to take counsel of our courage and not of our fears.—The Watchman.

Thirty years ago in Japan the Scriptures were printed secretly, and copies were sent out only after dark. Those who were engaged upon this work did it at the risk of their lives. Now there is a printing company in Yokohama, issuing the Scriptures, not only in Japanese, but in Chinese, Thibetan, Korean, and two dialects of the Philippine Islands. Last year there were circulated in Japan alone over 138,000 copies.

Creed-thinkering is now one of the absorbing occupations of religious bodies. The very fact of the necessity of a new adjustment of doctrines supposed to be infallible, very truth of very truth, is a fatal confession of error in the original statement; and the result can never bring back faith and fervor to revamped forms of words that have served their day and should cease to be. The Christian Register.

The Christian Register says: "Few of our young readers can even faintly conceive the difference between the new time and the old that is shown in the appearance of Dr. Buckley, a Methodist, speaking as a fraternal delegate at the Presbyterian General Assembly. The Methodists departed as widely from Calvinism as did the Unitarians in the last century."

A gloomy Christian will never get on, and the man who seeks to win others for Christ, ought in his life and character to exhibit something of the peace of Christ. ... To serve God joyously is to help to purify and increase the good of the world.

R. J. Campbell.

The Standard says: "The man who lets other men find out his real worth through his kindly bearing and conduct will be accredited with a genuine humility. He is the man whom God honors and crowns with His approval and promotes in His kingdom."