[Rev. T. W. Young as quoted in Detroit (Mich.) Times.]

Theology is man's idea of religion, not the thing itself. Old theologies should be smelted like ore and the good extracted to be applied to the needs of today. Do not assume from this that I belittle the old theologies—for arrogance that scoffs at the past is merely vanity; but, one cannot fail to see that people nowadays have little interest in dogma and that the authority of the church is no longer respected. As a divine institution it holds its own, but not as a temple of theology or a fount of ecclesiasticism. Men are anxious to make Jesus Christ king, aside from denominationalism. It is often necessary today to overthrow theology in order to save religion—theology changes, religion never. The Christianity of tomorrow will be lacking in dogmatism, for the public is impatient of the man who has only dogma to defend, but listens reverently to the man who has a truth to present. A gospel that is simple and practical will be the only one listened to in the future. The preacher of today must give up his obsolete phraseology and get down to the vernacular of the day if he is to gain and to hold the ear of the people. The Christianity of tomorrow will be scientific in its method, expression, and application.

[Ralph E. Flanders in Public.]

It is a great thing to be an insurgent. There is distinction in it. It takes no courage to be numbered among the soldiers of the "god of things as they are." And the worshipers of that god are on the losing side. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or for many years will we make substantial headway against their dull and stolid phalanx. But we are cheered by the thought that again and again in the world's history have they been thrown into wild rout, while precious ground was gained in the fight for the kingdom of God on the earth. It looks as though another pitched battle were in sight. Insurgency, the union of body and mind and spirit in the service of the world, is to be found elsewhere besides at Washington. The whole earth is stirring with the larger insurgency. In England, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Spain, China,—the whole world over,—a spirit of restlessness, of dissatisfaction with ancient evils, is stirring the souls of men. This thing is of God. He who fights it is allied with the powers of darkness. He who breathes it and lives it, for good or for ill, has for his support the almighty powers of love and truth.

[Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., in Christian Commonwealth.]

The very things that men fret, strive, and worry about are things which to Jesus would have been valueless in themselves. He would not have considered the position of a king any more important than that of a peasant; he would have looked at the quality of the soul that occupied the office. And, to go further, though he was glad to be loved, it is impossible to think of him as pretending to anything he was not: he had nothing to hide away; he was utterly simple and sincere. Above all, his solicitude was for mankind and not for himself; he was not thinking about himself; he saw the whole race as though it were himself and himself as though he belonged to the race. In doing all this he felt himself to be the instrument of the good will of the Father, and never for a moment did he make a bargain with life on any other terms. His soul was lifted so high above all considerations of self-interest that any pain he suffered had more to do with his failure to open men's eyes to their true condition than to any other cause. He cared supremely that God should be glorified in all human hearts and in the love of man to man. It was this he lived and died for.

[Rev. W. H. P. Faunce in Watchman.]

Americans need to see that the goal of life is not the achievement of what we call "success," but is the achievement of personal and social worth. Our country has been obsessed by the idea of success. We have as a nation made the soulless maxims of Poor Richard an appendix to our Bible, and have worshiped at the shrine of thrift rather than the altar of service. We have too frequently admired results regardless of methods, and have believed that a man is justified in choosing any road he will, provided he "gets there." Success has bulked large in books for children, it has been flaunted in the market-place, and been emblazoned on the walls of the school. Our energetic temperament, our inherited love of adventure, our Puritan individualism, and the boundless opportunities of a new continent, have all combined to make us exalt a crude and heartless success above all earthly dignities. It is time for us to reclaim the finer and higher ideals of personal worth which were once dominant in the life of the Republic, supplementing those earlier ideals with the later truth that personal worth is acquired in and through social service.

[Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to the Edinburgh Missionary Conference.]

Your conference represents the practical effort to apply the teachings of the gospel to what the epistle of Jude calls "the common salvation." An infinite amount of work remains to be done before we can regard ourselves as being even within measurable distance of the desired goal; an infinite amount at home in the dark places which too often closely surround the brightest centers of light, and an infinite amount abroad in those dark places of the earth where blackness is as yet unrelieved by any light. In missionary work, above all other kinds of Christian work, it is imperative to remember that a divided Christendom can only imperfectly bear witness to the essential unity of Christianity. I believe that without compromise of belief, without loss of the positive good contained in the recognition of diversities of gifts and differences of administration, the Christian churches may yet find a way to cordial cooperation and friendship as regards the great underlying essentials upon which, as a foundation, all Christian churches are built.

[British Congregationalist.]

The pure in heart see God; and it is the vision of God that determines life for the spiritual. Kindred souls constitute the true church. "Thou whited sepulcher" was our Lord's description of the religious life based only upon accepted standards and tradition, while divorced from soul realities. To confess a creed with the lip, and in the heart to have sympathies with conceptions which destroy that creed, is to be inwardly corrupt. We are bound to take up the cross of the Lord we obey, and follow him, if need be, to Calvary. By no other path shall we reach the throne of enduring influence and the heaven of peace. [Christian World.]

It remains, notwithstanding all the disastrous history of the past, that only in union with the spiritual life can the intellect obtain its freest and fullest play. The old Brahmins were right in making it a condition of the pursuit of philosophy that its aspirants should begin by subduing their passions and rigorously regulating their moral life. There are certain truths, and these the highest, that only open to the pure heart. You cannot see them with the mind till the soul gets there.

[Rev. Walter Walsh of Dundee in a church address.]

I believe that most nations, as well as individuals, want to do right; but in the past it has been difficult to do right and easy to do wrong in international disputes, because we had only the machinery of wrong-doing.