From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Walter Rauschenbusch, S.D. McConnell

Thy present paralysis of the churches affects all Western Christendom, and only a cause co-terminous with modern civilization will explain it. Communities are affected in just the degree in which they are affected by the progress of civilization,—the backward countries and rural communities least, the industrial cities most. State churches and free churches alike feel the drag. It is not because the religious spirit has failed. It runs surprisingly strong, but it runs largely outside the churches. Neither is the trouble due to lack of piety in the ministry, for, on the whole, we are as good as our fathers. We are told that the Gospel has always met with indifference and hostility. But is this to-day a persecution for righteousness' sake, so that Jesus would call us blessed for enduring it, or is it a case where the salt is trodden under foot of men, because it has lost its saltness. The worst explanation is that which shrugs its shoulders and regards the present alienation of the people from the Church as a mysterious dispensation of Providence against which we are helpless. Effects do not happen without causes, and God's reign is a reign of law. In short, no small or local or passing cause will explain so large a fact as the present condition of the Church.

Walter Rauschenbusch.
The Independent.

The day of doom has dawned for the merely formal and heartless in devotion. Very slowly has the notion died that there is merit in act apart from motive, but from the ashes of this expiring superstition has sprung for some fortunate ones a new sense of the power and joy of a healthful, sincere, simple-hearted, religious devotion. The person who has once caught, for however brief an instant, the thrill of individual communion with God, or has felt the uplift, as of unseen wings, that bears a truly worshipful congregation into the freedom of the eternal, can never lose the conviction that in this experience he has found the native and inexhaustible meadow land of the soul. He may reach this altitude but seldom, but he knows that it is there and that prayer and praise are no puerile and passionless formalities, but real as life and love.

The Congregationalist and Christian World.

Life must be all of a piece wherever it is. There can be no change or interruption of the consciousness; there can be no such violent transformation at any stage as will leave one doubtful about his own identity. We may well believe that under infinitely better and more hopeful, because more enlightened, conditions we shall see better, know better, and be better than we are now. But the substance of the matter, so far as the life of the world to come is concerned, is that the prophecy is to be found in the distress of the soul at its own present. It is in this dissatisfaction with itself that it becomes convinced that its career is not complete.

S.D. McConnell, D.D., LL.D.
Homiletic Review.

Happiness, goodness, hope, confidence, and courage, are as contagious as disease. One good-hearted, vital man, full of faith, his face shining with the light of the future upon it, will glorify a whole community. One good, brave life has saved many a city; one noble, faithful soul has saved and often made many a church. After all, it is Sunshine that rules the world. Be of good cheer, is the message of the Master.—The Universalist Leader.

The Beatitudes reveal the true sources of happiness. It is and can be realized only when we are at one with God in His purposes of love and grace. It is sin that makes unhappiness; it is obedience to the law of Christ that makes true and lasting happiness.—The Examiner.

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