[Congregationalist and Christian World.]

Our greatest concern must be for the simple, the commonplace, the undramatic, the seemingly unheroic, and yet, as the world is ordered, the absolutely indispensable. There is no great cause which is not being halted in its onward sweep by the dearth of lesser fidelities. Men who would die for their country will not go to the polls, or if they do as much as that, they will not exercise themselves to affect the counsels of their parties, the making of slates, the policies and platforms. Our churches are halted not by the want of the great, but by the want of the small. We are told that the church has lost her power because she has ceased to be an heroic and sacrificial church. We must kindle again, it is declared, upon altars smothered by the commonplace the old fire of sacrificial devotion. All this is true enough, but there are perils in it. God does not always open the doors of the heroic for men, and when they begin to open them themselves without fitting call, we are likely to achieve not the heroic, but the mock-heroic. You cannot kindle the high and exceptional fires of life except upon high and exceptional occasions.

No, we are not to displace the commonplace, we are to exalt it. Our salvation lies in new conceptions of the significance of the simple—in a new vision of the value of the lesser service. The scientists themselves are discarding the cataclysmic and are exalting long-continued creative methods in which, by processes wholly akin to those which reign in our serene and ordered world, the mountains themselves were lifted and the beams of the chambers of God laid in the waters. True enough the kingdom of God has from time to time advanced with the tumult and movement of changing armies, but more often it has waited upon simple fidelities and widened with the extension of undramatic duties and unnoted qualities.

[Rt. Rev. C. P. Anderson, D.D., Bishop of Chicago, in Churchman.]

I have tried to point out that we are passing under conditions that seem more or less alarming; that they are not alarming to the man who knows church history and who has a strong abiding faith in God; that they are not alarming to the man who can see that somehow or other the religious and spiritual nature will always find an expression, and though there may be periods of depression, better days are sure to come. I have been trying to point out that we are passing through certain chaotic conditions, in order that I may emphasize the fact that those very conditions are a call to the church, to the whole church, to every member and every organization in the church, to make that great battle for God in the future so that Christianity in this country will mean all that it is intended to mean, so that we shall yet have a national Christian conscience, because a national conscience exercises a greater power than a sectarian conscience can possibly exercise. Sectarianism has never proved itself to be capable of thinking continentally. It never built a great Christian university, it never converted a single nation. The only church that ever captivated nations and created a national conscience and built great institutions of learning was the undivided church of centuries agone, and you and I have got to create that sort of atmosphere for the future. There is our venture, and we shall have that venture. We will work it out along the lines of our Christian education and the application of the principles of religion to our national and social and industrial life.

[Prin. W. B. Selbie, M.A., D.D., in British Congregationalist.]

The world outside will never be impressed, nor will the life of the church within be healthy and progressive, until there is a closer correspondence between Christian practice and profession. It is useless to point men to Jesus Christ while we ourselves are content to call him Lord, Lord, without doing the things that he says. Nor is it any use to preach to them the doctrine of the cross, unless the cross itself is passionately accepted by ourselves as the principle of the Christian life and service. So the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men must be brought down from the pulpit and the platform into the common working life of the church if they are ever to become saving doctrine for the mass of mankind. We shall need, too, to restore something of the old spirit of joy and pride in the gospel if we are to commend it to others with any great success. The eagerness and urgency of the message seem in these days to have been almost lost, and only a very real experience can restore them. The church that is possessed of saving truth and gives evidence of the same in the new and happy lives of her members will be at once evangelical and progressive.

[Watchman.]

The emphasis today should be laid upon present judgment which men are receiving in their character and experience. It is an age of psychological analysis, and if the effects of disobedience to the holy and perfect will of God are clearly seen, it will go far toward producing that sense of responsibility which will undermine careless pleasuring after the manner of Belshazzar. Conviction of sin is simply realization of things as they are, and enables a man to know himself and act with a clear view of the truth. When he learns that he is judged, he judges himself, and asks the help of God to gain clearer and fuller judgment and thereby seeks righteousness and avoids iniquity, preparing himself to meet the divine judgment of today and tomorrow.

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

There is no life is is not in some degree an expression of the eternal Word. What has been seen to be grandly and centrally true of Jesus is true also in some measure of the humblest thing that breathes in God's wide universe. But in a higher sense it is truer of man than of the lower creation; all life that comes to self-consciousness is a ray of the eternal wisdom, a spark from the eternal fire. The Word has been made flesh in you and me as well as in our Lord and Master; the difference between us and him is one not of kind of degree.

[Christian Register.]

All people interested in the life of the church will surely agree that a revival of religious interest is greatly to be desired. Expressions of hope for it and of determination to work for it abound on every hand. Many predict that it is coming soon. A goodly portion of the religious world begins to get into a state of mind not unlike that of the Jewish people just before the birth of Christ. Perhaps this mental state is in itself a kind of prophecy of some impending change.

[Harold Begbie in Public Opinion.]

More and more distinctly we perceive that the religion of Jesus Christ in its simplest form is the brotherhood of man—a brotherhood not ending in earthly advantage, but only as a way to the everlasting development of the indestructible self. ... Materialism is the enemy. Out of materialism can come nothing but ugly strife and severing discord.

[Grant Wallace in Los Angeles (Cal.) Tribune.]

Men's meager conceptions of truth often are at war with each other, but no two truths ever conflict. Every truth in the world dovetails into every other truth. Only errors and half truths are in conflict with any correct statement of life's verities.