William Elliot Griffis, D. D., has an article in a recent issue of The Boston Transcript under the title "Is Christianity Deelining?" in which occurs this paragraph: "In reality this is a religious age. Though labels may be re-written or transferred, the trend of things is nearness to the divine Founder, and this is increasingly manifest—whether those to whom tradition is hallowed like it or not—by the removal of many courses of intermediaries between the men of to-day and the Son of Man. To those who see the reality of things, there is transformation indeed, but it is of the tree not of the cloud, that is, normal and beautiful evolution. Those who realize that all true progress in Christianity consists in a deeper insight and closer apprehension of the original ideas of the Master, will not be cast down but cheered. So much is certain, that when the Church lives more like her Master and goes forth seeking to save, when she more clearly apprehends the truth which he lived before he taught it, when she substitutes the simplicity of his teaching for the vast accumulations which have been deposited upon it, when she stands for righteousness and for righteousness only, there will be nothing to mourn over either in the phenomenon or the leavening. There are not two gospels but only one. Between those who seek worldly culture and selfish gain on the one hand, and there who are on fire for God in self-denial there will always be contention. Yet although renunciation and sacrifice will ever form part of true religion, yet self-culture and the wholeness of life are equal factors in the one undivided scheme of eternal evolution. The Church which has the widest outlook, and which most fully ministers to the needs and service of the human soul will never lack for members. Only as the good news of God is made convincingly clear and the Church becomes more like her seeking. healing, and saving Founder, can the decline in Church membership both as to quality and quantity be arrested. There is no other patent medicine or prescription of the faculty that can heal her disease."

God is not afraid of a miracle. From mission lands comes abundant and trustworthy testimony of incidents which admit of no other interpretation than that of direct supernatural interference. The biographies of Sehwartz of Paton of Mackay of Uganda, of Livingstone. of Carey. of half a hundred others should be sufficient to convince even the most sceptical that wonders, physical and material wonders, are still a recognized agency of God for the furtherance of His kingdom among peoples to whom such a mode of revelation is fitting and effective. Dr. Pierson has brought together in a little work, called "Miracles of Missions," and in his new "Acts of the Apostles" an incontrovertible array of facts to show that God is not above using demonstrations to sense where such demonstrations will accomplish what the demonstration to reason would not accomplish. If these phenomena fail to square with text-book theories of the way in which the universe is ordered. allowance must be made. even in behalf of the wisest, for partial knowledge. There may still be some things in heaven and earth not dreamed of in our philosophy.— This Christian Adrocate.

It is a pleasing but often a deceiving occupation to dwell upon the similarity of our doctrines to those held in primitive days: for doctrine means little save in so far as it is the outgrowth of life and is itself worked over into new and progressive life; and the average of present-day Christianity, or let us say of present-day Baptist Christianity to be specific, is hardly nineteen centuries ahead of that of the Churches that Peter and Paul served. They had, indeed, grave sins and gross weaknesses which are exceptional today: but they had great graces and a high level of endurance and heroism which can scarcely be matched in our time: hence we turn our minds more upon Christianity as a life which is mainly concerned with every-day problems met in the light of the kingdom of heaven, and less upon Christian as a theory which one is to accept or to reject. That is the same thing as saying that what we want is to let the Spirit of God guide our daily living, as the early Christians and the saints of all ages have been willing to do, and found blessedness therein.—The Standard.

The most important elements of Christian life are deeper than creeds or church governments. They are the life of God in human souls,—the real family life owning God as Father, and all Christians as brethren. Such life is not fed on dogmas, but on the bread which came down from heaven, and gives life unto the world. This life reaches deeper than controversies and rests in calmness like the heart of the ocean in spite of the storms which sweep and whip its surface. This is the life which the great Christian writers lived. This is the life needing and deserving to be cultured. It is the life which is hidden with Christ in God, and which will be manifested when Christ is manifested in glory. The apprehension and realization of this life demands open-mindedness to all truth, and open-heartedness to the Holy Spirit, the illuminator. leader, and sanctifier of men.—The Examiner.

This paragraph appears in The Standard in an article by W. E. Glanville, ph. D.: "Nothing comes by prayer unless we are fitted to receive it. Nothing comes by prayer that is manifestly unjust and wrong. Nothing comes by prayer that is indited in a selfish or malicious spirit. The mercy seat is not a cheap bargain counter. Prayer does not mean a series of mercenary petitions, but it means hungering and thirsting after righteousness; it means the self-devotion of our will to sympathy and harmony with the Father's will. It means fellowship with the unseen resulting in spiritual cleansing. spiritual strength, and increasing Christlikeness of heart and life."

It is certain that a gospel which only proclaims amelioration of social conditions, and ignores the need of the uncleansed heart, will have only temporary success. The cry which men utter when they know themselves is, "Create in me a clean heart." That means something more than and different from food and shelter, juster relations between employers and employed. the cultivation of aesthetic and social instincts. The uncleansed and insatiable heart cannot be satisfied with money or with anything in this world that money can buy.

The Congregationalist and Christian World.

Rev. Alexander McLaren says in The Examiner: "After all, nothing persuades like that accent of conviction. The sturdy blind man in John's Gospel took his stand on an impregnable rock when he refused to be tempted into argument and stuck by experience—'one thing I know. that whereas I was blind, now I see.' He might have talked till he was hoarse about evidences, and been as brilliant and eloquent as you please, and not made half so deep a dint in the Pharisees' minds as he did by that simple utterance."

O. P. Gifford, D.D., writes in The Standard "A man never knows how mean he is until he tries to be good. nor how wicked he is until he tries to be righteous, nor how weak he is until he tries to be strong. And the very power of truth and the power of the Spirit of Life, that stirs and quickens a man to the depths of his being, seems to loosen within him forms of sin, and nourish within him evil imaginations,—and the struggle begins with the new life."

The Watchman has this significant paragraph: "One of the best signs of the times is the deepening conviction. finding expression in many ways, that the Christian Churches are not doing all they might to advance the Kingdom of God. That conviction is almost certain to become the seed of new spiritual discoveries."

A theology in harmony can be preached. A theology out of harmony cannot be preached. A true theology is the most practical thing in the world: a false, though it stand upon the books with official sanction, is not practical, and the less it is preached the more pleased are preachers and hearers.

The Unversalist Leader.

If the most vigorous minds of the age sometimes turn aside from the Church and despise the creeds, it does not follow that the creeds are true and the Church is right, and that they who reject them are found fighting against God.—The Christian Register.

The Spirit of God is the bringer of joy, but the spirit of man is the transmitter of cheer for other men. Make yourselves good conductors of the joy of God. if you pretend to love your friends.—I. O. R.

Any one can drift; but it takes prayer, religious principle, earnestness of purpose, constant watching, to resist the evil of this world, to struggle against the tide.—ANON.

A man who does not know how to learn from his mistakes turns the best schoolmaster out of his life.

Henry Ward Beecher.

The saint is a man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.—FELIX ADLER.