[Churchman.]

The general convention resolved to seek the cooperation of the whole of Christendom in trying to answer the question, What are our relations to all other Christians in the conversion of the world? Our dependence upon the communions of Christendom is thus perfectly acknowledged. The unity of all Christians in Christ is proclaimed, and St. Paul's question, Is Christ divided? becomes the question of the age. And with it inevitably another question arises, If Christ is not divided, how can his discipled be divided? There is but one answer, and the Christian world is feeling and foreseeing what it must be. But it is not yet ready to commit itself by making that answer. Why? Primarily, because of the conviction that that answer must be given in terms of dogma. This, of course, cannot be done now. There is no possibility of its being done soon. To give the only answer, therefore, possible in the sight of God and man, would involve a statement false to conviction, because there is no universal dogmatic agreement. So long as dogma reigns supreme over life in the minds of Christians, the answer will wait, and the world will say with St. Paul that divided disciples witness to a divided Christ. But must dogma always reign? The religions of Christ is the religion of life. "I am the resurrection, and the life." Apostles and disciples preached the power of the resurrection,—not a theory, a philosophy, or a doctrine, but the power of the resurrection over the lives of men. The answer to the greatest question raised by the general convention must be made, and can only be made, as it always has been made, in terms of life.

[Charles A. Cook in Standard.]

While perhaps there is as large a measure of true and out-and-out Christianity to be found in this country as anywhere, there is a great and special need just now that here there should be manifested the highest type of Christianity possible, that in this country the exemplification of Christianity should reach its fullest conformity to its own high ideals. There is an imperative need just now that there should be exhibited in a nation-wide way a more pronounced and positive Christian living by all those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. This is needed for the sake of our own country and also for the sake of all the other nations, and especially for the sake of the great non-Christian nations. We need a more pronounced Christianity here in our own country in order thoroughly to arouse the great masses of our population from their religious in-difference. Multitudes do not care anything whatever about the things that pertain to their spiritual welfare, and they are indifferent because our Christianity, as a rule, is so weak, so neutralized in its spiritual forces, that it produces no deep and positive impression upon them. It is a most lamentable fact that men who are not Christians may mingle with many who claim to be and never discover from anything they say or do that they are. It is this fact, as much as anything, that is making men everywhere careless and indifferent to the things of God and eternal life.

[Dr. J. H. Jowett in Christian World.]

We live in very jostling times. We are pushed and hustled and elbowed on every side. The crowd is always about us, the heedless, careless, competing multitude. The quieting genius of privacy has been almost banished. We are greatly rushed, and we greatly need "the secret place." How prone we are to become hot and feverish, to lose the coolness of our judgments, to grow hasty and irritable in temper, and to have our passions heated like an oven! Modern life has become very inflamed. We are not only working at high speed, we are working with friction. It is not only the collision of man with man, of interest with interest, which generates this perilous heat, it is still more the collision within, the lack of smoothness in the inner life, the grinding of power against power, of conscience against will, of will against conscience, and of the entire being against the besieging presence of the eternal God. And thus our life is very heated, and therefore very wasteful, and we are in urgent need of some generous ministry which can adjust our bearings, reduce our friction, and make our spirits cool. Well, I think there is the statement of all we need in this glorious portal to this stately and venerable psalm: for our hustling, crowded life we are offered "the secret place:" for our heated and overwrought spirits we are offered "the shadow of the Almighty."

[Samuel Parkse Cadman, D.D., in Christian Work and Evangelist.]

People are not antagonistic to the gospel and to Jesus Christ, and the assumption that they are is not borne out by the facts. They have an interest in genuine religion which nothing can destroy. It is the warp and woof of their existence, no more to be cast away than the soul within them. They have shed some beliefs, they have lost faith in shibboleths they once lisped with reverence, and they have become alienated from a worldly, selfish, and carfty ecclesiasticism that has usurped Christianity, or a morbid and farcical religiosity which is made to do duty for it. But when all the churches have been converted to Christly fraternity the people will follow suit, and instead of the church saving the people, the people will in some instances save the church. Let us break down the barriers of caste and sect and place the best gifts of our ministry within the reach of all men surrounding us, and in living for them we shall live by them.

[Christian Register.]

The sings of a spiritual revival, apart from creeds and formal institutions, multiply on every hand, and they who have eyes to see and ears to hear know that we are living in a period of wonderful moral progress. The decay of institutions frightens timid souls, and, when a great ecclesiastical fabric goes down with a crash, it seems, to those who take superficial views of life, as if the end of all things good was at hand. But, just as an unspoiled naturalist, in spite of the terrible things that surround him, may live with delight amid natural scenes and objects, and think of this as a most beautiful world to live in, so it is possible for a sincere spirit to look behind the shams and shows and depravities of the time, and live in the currents of the divine life with even an ecstatic enjoyment of the wonders of the new dispensation.

[Dr. Orchard in Christian Commonwealth.]

There is no explanation of human nature which does not demand some kind of derivation from God, there is no explanation of the human spirit which does not involve infinity. God is the ultimate constituent of our personality. Most of us are still quite unaware of that. To make us aware was the work of Jesus. His teaching and his personality reveal that beneath his conscious life man is in touch with God. To seek conscious union with the true basis and goal of his life is the chief end of man. In this suggestion there meet in essence both the creedal affirmation and the reality on which the gospel depends.

Religion is not an act here and there. It is not a mere affair of churches and Sundays. Churches do not create religion. They are created by it. Men come together to worship because the need of fellowship in worship drives them together. To come in order to be worked upon by the man in the pulpit, to expect to have religion transplanted from his soul to theirs, is a mistake. There is no spontaneous generation in religion any more than in life. Both minister and people must have the germs of piety in themselves, the beginnings of the religious life, or nothing can come of their meeting together.