From our Exchanges

with contributions from Morgan Dix, Thomas Van Ness

Death is not in our case a natural event. We are not made to die. It is horribly unnatural that we should die. A reason is rendered why we must die; and then comes the Gospel. For men, death is the wages of sin. To deny this is to decide with the philosophers of this world and to contradict the words of Christ and his apostles, that man is physically and spiritually one. Think as you may of the old account in Genesis; make it legendary if you please, but the sense does not change. Man was not made to die. He was warned not to sin against God lest he should die. He would not hear the warning, but disobeyed, and he died as he had been told that he must, and surely would.

Morgan Dix, D.D.
The Homiletic Review.

The moral or spiritual elements that enter into human effort are the deep sources of final victory. They are brought into human experience in a very marked way when one lays hold of God who has eternal energy and is carrying forward all the movements of the world and human life to glorious moral victory. He who is doing God's work and gains the help of God himself feels within his soul the mighty divine impulse that sustains faith, hope, patience, courage, and other moral elements of character. Prayer secures and sustains these elements until a man overcomes all difficulties and obtains the original object of his desire.—The Watchman.

Man's need of finding a right relation to his fellow-men and to his God is creating a new sense of the need of God in Christ, and therefore there is an insistent demand for the fruits of the kingdom, for men who will rightly fulfil all their relations in every department of human experience. Only this one kind of fruit will meet the needs of mankind and satisfy the purpose of Him who made us, and so the tendency of all Christian Churches must be toward unity in the body of Christ.—The Churchman.

The Cumberland Presbyterian, quoting a passage from the Christian Register, speaks as follows, "We rejoice with our contemporary over the fact that a kindlier and truer Christian spirit seems to be abroad in the land. It is one of the encouraging signs of the times. One day, perhaps, Christians will learn that it is not by sword, nor by fist, nor by denunciation, but by love that the kingdom of God is to be advanced.

The larger view of Christianity is declaring that the Almighty is everywhere and always acting directly upon the earth for a righteous cause, because he is so acting at every moment, in an orderly and definite way,—a way which can be known of all men and relied upon. That way is called "law," and we say, "God's laws are unalterable and unchangeable."

Rev. Thomas Van Ness. The Christian Register.

The churches have discovered that religion is no longer man's method of changing the disposition of God, but God's method of improving the character of man, and consequently there is a shift in the direction of their activities. God does not need any amendment man can offer, but men have needs which religion alone can supply.—The Universalist Leader.

They who seek first of all to order their lives, to think, to feel, to act according to that which they know to be right and best, unconsciously glide into currents of power which set always toward the deeps where the tides are full and strong.—The Christian Register.

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