[Outlook.]

To us the resurrection of Christ seems the most wonderful event in history; a sudden vision of a great peak rising into perpetual sunshine, seen once by the eyes of men when, for a moment, the clouds parted. To us it is a miraculous occurrence which stands out solitary in the long record of time. To the heavenly guardians of the tomb it was only the manifestation to men of an event as universal as birth. To the Christ it was a passing incident for which he made preparation as quietly as for a night of sleep; to him the morning which shines for us with a glory beyond the reach of speech came as normally as other mornings have come since the beginning of time, and he rose and laid aside the garments in which he had slept as quietly as we put aside the clothes of the night and go forth to the work and joy of the day.

His whole life and teaching had predicted the issue of that experience with death; the inexhaustible tide of life which poured in upon the world with his coming could no more have been arrested by the change we call death than the sea rushing landward in a fathomless flood of many waters can be held back by a wall of sand. That tide swept through and past the barrier with the tremendous sweep of an elemental power for which obstacles do not exist. Concerned with the giving of life, charging the very borders of his garments with vitality, healing with a touch, calling back the dead with a word, death was for the Christ but a passing shadow on the landscape of the world. To men it was a dense and awful mystery; to him it was a momentary clouding of the sun, powerless to destroy or even to obscure. When he spoke of it, his voice had no deeper note than when he spoke of the toils and sorrows of the human state; his tones were far less grave than when he spoke of the sins that imperiled the soul. Being what he was, his resurrection was inevitable; every word and deed predicted it.

[Zion's Herald.]

We have given the Master so often the title, the "man of sorrows," that we have come to think of him as the suffering Saviour only. He deserves another title. He is the man for all sorrowing souls, he is the man for sorrows. We flee to some source of help in all our distresses; we seek to bring relief to others in their troubles. There is one supreme helper for us all; it is the living Christ. Jesus is the man for those who suffer now, because he went through the whole depth and range of sorrow during the sinless years that he lived on earth. There is no experience that can come to us that did not in some way come to him. Therefore he can bring us his comfort. He, too, has passed along our sorrowful way. Thus through his sorrows he became the perfect consoler. It is thus, also, that we are made ready for the ministry of consolation. Only when we have gone the Master's way can we help others with the Master's comfort. This is a hidden grace and a reserved benefit in all suffering. Comforted in our affliction, we know how to comfort those that are in sorrow by the very help that came to us. Jesus makes all his disciples also men for sorrow, ready with comfort.

[Rev. Edward S. Lewis is Western Christian Advocate.]

God chose His people Israel and inspired them. Out of their providential history came the record of the progressive manifestations of God to them and to the world. Rudimentary at first, and complicated with human ignorance and folly, it shone brighter and brighter through prophets and sages and warriors and poets and psalmists and patriots and martyrs, until it culminated in the supreme revelation, which was Christ himself, the Son of God and the light of the world; for him and in him and by him were all the preceding revelations. The traditions fade in his light. Literalism is shunned as poison, for "the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." The crudities of the earlier religious expression become clear as they are subordinated to the Master's perfect precepts. The frank recognition of the human element in the Bible renders the divine element luminous and resistless. When Christ is thus honored the theology that bears his name bears his character also. "No other honor could the witnessing Scriptures ask than this, that they be permitted to point to him who was born, that he might bear witness to the truth, and say, 'Hear ye him.' "

[Congregationalist and Christian World.]

There are not wanting tokens that business is to be less a matter of getting rich than of social service; that men who merely try to get money will not be in good repute tomorrow; that new standards of honesty and equity are being advanced and that business is to be transformed by sacrificial suggestions. There are sound reasons for believing that people are growing tired of living and thinking simply in terms of matter and force: the life of the spirit is coming into its own again; faith is assuming anew an empire which it had never really lost; attitudes of mind which are in reality deeply religious, characterize the best and most searching thought of the time. There are many signs that the world is beginning to weary of the sheer and crushing weight of armament; that we are beginning to count the cost of hostility; that policies of national exclusiveness are being discredited; that there is some day to be a truer fellowship of the nations; that suspicion and envy and isolation are not to be finally supreme, as between nations, any more than they are to be supreme as between individuals.

[Universalist Leader.]

We may say with absolute certainty that no sinful, evil-minded person was ever truly happy. We may also say with equal certainty that no pure-hearted, holy person was ever really unhappy. Hell itself could not engulf one single saint, nor heaven absorb a single soul of devilish desire. We speak in a figure, but the truth is final. The appeal of Christendom is still largely a mass of false promises and illusions. Certain things cannot be. He who promises another soul that joy and peace and happiness and heaven are to be had in any other way than by holiness of heart, is more than a blunderer. He is also a false prophet who will leave in outer darkness and doubt and distress those who follow him.

[J. Y. Montague in Standard.]

The right motive is found in a willingness to do God's will and to know His doctrines. This presupposes an open-mindedness to do and to be the thing required by the truth when it is discovered. Not simply one who hears and gives intellectual assent, but one who gives the truth new birth in thought and word and deed of godliness in character,—"eternal plasticity to the touch of God." Only in proportion as there is an intellectual grasp, as well as heart appreciation of basal truths, will the most precious and durable materials be used in building the superstructure of character.

[Christian Register.]

Instead of something fixed eternally, instead of truth revealed in its totality, truth is ever unfolding, and it is allowed that it ever will unfold for the upward looker. It is an essentially new fundamental principle. It is growth, and that every one has got to come to if he would save his soul. Salvation no longer consists in being transferred from one world to another, from a work world to a world of shiftless rest, without responsibility or care, but consists in a will to do the right and obey the true.