[Congregationalist and Christian World.]

The secret secret of rest is a healed spirit, and spiritual rest is rooted in trust and surrender. Real rest works from the inside out. If God does not find us, we shall not find rest. The vacation which does not issue in deeper spiritual adjustments is no vacation at all. The processes by which this is obtained may be indirect; they must be none the less real. The real secret of the ministrations of the sea and the mountains, of quiet green spaces, yellow harvest-fields, and clear nights of stars, is just here. They insensibly lead our perturbed spirits into ampler and healing presences. The horizons of the sea call us from benumbing littlenesses to regions whose spaciousness is no unfit symbol of the tendernesses of the mercy of God. The patient strength of the mountains teaches us without words that there is a might against which the tumult of the tempest is in vain. Their remote and stainless summits carry weary eyes and hearts into altitudes to which the summits themselves offer only thresholds of approach. Green fields and quiet waters breathe the shepherding care of God, and the stars themselves, seen from horizon to horizon, declare not only the glory of God, but a serenity which puts to shame our earthborn born fretfulness. Surely all these are spiritual processes. We have yielded ourselves to the unchanging serenities and securities, and as we have let them bear us we have been healed. After the storm we can hear the birds once more carol their notes of praise; at the end of sorrow and tragedy hear faith reawaken and have the poet's song echoing in our hearts.

[Rev. Jonathan Edwards, Ph.D., in Christian Work and Evangelist.]

The Scriptures testify to the supremacy of the spiritual. The Bible is primarily a spiritual book. It WAS written by inspiration of God. Among its first declarations we find that the Spirit moved on the face of the waters. It reveals a spiritual Father, who must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. .We have in it record of unseen beings ascending and descending; of the spiritual eyes of Elisha's servant opened, giving him a vision of horses and chariots of fire on the mountain, teaching that great unseen forces may work in our favor when in God's service. The New Testament reveals the spiritual and eternal life. Christ came to give life, that is, the spiritual—and give it abundantly. His way and his truth are spiritual. His disciples and apostles were endowed with spiritual power to fit them for effective service. A vision of the spiritual was the source of the progress of the early church, that gave the apostles and others patience, hope, fortitude, and all sweet graces of character, making a handful of humble men and women, some of them slaves, all despised by haughty monarchs, more real in influence than Rome, the world's metropolis, and destined to overcome her political and military power.

[Living Church.]

What Jesus seemed to value in Nathanael was his candor, guilelessness, and openness of mind. He was an Israelite indeed, steeped in the lore of his fathers and in the traditions of his race, but eager to receive new light and glad to find his ideals embodied in a living truth. It is an attitude of mind, a temper of the heart, that is ever valuable in the deeplening of religious life and faith, too often lacking among the religious people of our own day. We are grown hypercritical, and the debilitating skepticism of the time finds its satisfaction in an increasing worldliness and irreligion. We need the readiness and expectancy that finds the Christ in the enthusiasms, the spontaneous faiths in good things that are so natural to our hearts when they are not distracted by the cares and pleasures of the world. We need the simplicity of soul that comes of quiet meditation and hopeful thought, willingness to enter more and more sincerely into the imitation of the Master, the open mind that knows, however sincere its present faith, there is yet for it to receive the light of the opening heaven.

[Rev. William P. Du Bose in Churchman.]

We want the spiritual art and science of a self-renewing and self-sustaining faith and hope and love. The Jesus who was transfigured upon the mount is he who is "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." The subject of conference in the transfiguration was the old story of the cross. They spoke his his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. "I determined," says St. Paul, "to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." If we cannot get high enough, often enough, to get and keep these truths illuminated and glorified in our minds and hearts and lives, we must be content to remain in the dark.

[Christian Register.]

Everywhere there is abroad a new and finer sense of spiritual realities. The letter is passing, and the spirit, of which the letter was merely a collection of fallen leaves, is beginning to manifest itself. The passage from the letter to the spirit of religion is the great achievement of the last half century. It is more momentous than the outburst of Protestantism nearly four hundred years ago, because it has a wider sweep and a deeper meaning. No lines are drawn, but a new republic has extended its borders to the ends of earth, and within it are included the wise, the good, and the far-seeing, the illuminated souls of every communion.

[British Congregationalist.]

If a man gets into the habit of contemplating his ideals without a corresponding effort to reach them, even his vision ceases to be true—even that which he has is taken away. Our activities feed our senses. In any high sense of seeing, hearing, feeling, apprehending, when we cease to do we are on the way to cease to know. When we no longer care to speak the truth, we are on the road to cease to see the truth. When we no more care to make anything beautiful, we have cut the nerve of our sense of the beautiful. We must be "doers of the word, and not hearers only," or we are going to cease to be even hearers.

[Charles W. Stevenson in New York Observer.]

Our religion is, or was until the last twenty-five years, one of fear. It is still too much one of rewards and punishments. We do right too often because it is the gateway to heaven. We do right too often because it is fellows, to live and leave an impress on the mass by right action and love for men, this is too thin for our diet. We want something for what we do. God must pay us wages, and we are striving to get an increase all the time. We do nothing save it is measured in dollars and cents.

[Advocate of Peace.]

With increasing frequency and power the great gatherings of the Christian church in all parts of the world are uttering their demand for the abolition of war and the establishment of a permanent system of judicial settlement of such international controversies as cannot be adjusted by direct negotiations or avoided altogether through the influence of a spirit of justice, friendliness, and mutual service.

[Tongues of Fire.]

To be good is to be often misunderstood. Sometimes we are actuated by passion, and think it zeal.

When you get filled with perfect love, you will have a poor memory for other people's faults.