[Rev. Livingston L. Taylor in Christian Work and Evangelist.]

Thirty-five years ago the thought of the world, judged by its outstanding thinkers, was materialistic. A magnificent protest was maintained in behalf of man's spiritual nature, but the language of that protest seems to us now like a strange tongue. For the thought of the world today, judged by its outstanding representatives, is distinctly spiritual, and the protest in behalf of the soul, which so many found it difficult to take seriously a generation ago, has given place to a well-nigh universal quest. There will be very little dissent from any such estimate of the present situation as I have just cited. Men know in their hearts that no civilization, not even the civilization of the twentieth century, can give us what we want.

The life of the world must be built up from within, transformed by the renewing of the mind. The life that is more than meat must be reckoned with. "A spark disturbs our clod." Civilizations are meant to be outgrown and reshaped from within. There is a living God. Nothing is final so long as there is one sin, one wrong, one tear. To believe, as Professor Nash puts it, in "the possible stored up in God," is to be at war with things as they are, and yet at peace (if you will allow the paradox), at peace with God, at peace with ourselves—yes, at peace with the world. For those who know God are willing to wait on Him, and to be of good courage, and to do their part in their little day.

[Hartford (Conn.) Seminary Record.]

Thought about God is theology. Convictions about God are what give real solidity to life. The most alarming thing about many phases of modern interpretations of life is that they try to treat it as if God were not to be reckoned with; to consider that life has compacted significance with God left out of it. This Jesus never did. He saw life whole and square and solid, just because he placed love to God in indissoluble association with love to neighbor; because he saw that peace and quietness on the part of man in his association with his fellows rested on the fact that the heavenly Father cares for His children and for all His children. It is in this sense of the assurance that God is to be thought of, and to be reckoned with, in all firm conviction in respect to the whole field of human reality, that there is room for the theological dogmatist in every-day life. It is not his place to demand intellectual assent to his "dogma" on the basis of the authority of councils. Nor is it his desire to supplant the richness and versatility of the life of the esthetic and moral feelings by the pallid monotony of a life lived on the flat plain of a juiceless intellectualism. But he will assert, and the every-day man is more and more asserting it, that life is not to be realized in its strength and richness, unless the intimacy and reality of God's relation to it is incorporated as one of its constant elements,—an element potent all through individual and social concerns.

[Christian Register.]

The act which is spontaneous from the heart is the one which will do the most good to him who tries to help his fellow. The thought which is for another will be the best thought for the thinker, and the sacrifice which is made for mankind will best ennoble the individual making it. When the vicarious atonement is no more in the world, man will rise to the position of being his own arbiter.

So it is that with rewards and punishments gone from the world, with the man acting in his own behalf, there will appear a better way than if he does the righteous thing only as he is compelled. Compulsory morality, like compulsory religion, is of no good in the development of the man after he has attained to the point of perceiving the true human relations.

[Universalist Leader.]

The needs of the present, the needs of the modern man are being tremendously emphasized today. The old supplies will not do. We are living in a new world, we are a new people. We have new points of view, new conceptions of truth, new ideals toward which we bend. New forces enter in to complicate life. A new universe surrounds us. All this is true, and men are saying we must have something new from the churches, which is also true, but it must still be religion. It is religion, with that rare and invaluable quality of adaptability which enables it to supply every human need at any time, in any place, under any conditions. The needs of the present and the modern man call for something new in the way of inspiration, instruction, and activity, but still call for religion, and for the religion which finds its new as it did its old expression through the Christian church.

[Watchman.]

However small the cause that is established in God's name, it has a positive character like that of leaven in the meal. The truth of God's word has life, inspiration, judgment, and cannot be ignored or contemned. It makes the conscience uneasy and stirs the heart with hope. Old ecclesiastical systems and governments that are committed to established religions recognize at once, when the truth of Christ comes into action, that it is something to be reckoned with. Our Lord himself was marked as dangerous to the priestly system that had fastened upon Judaism. All truth is dangerous to ignorance and error, and Christian truth has the same positive character. To set forth the truth is like presenting a sword which has a point and a cutting edge. Men are afraid of it in an active hand.

[Lyman Abbott in Outlook.]

I believe not only that God exists, but that He is the inspirer of a life which we do not create, but which is given. I believe that our invisible commander, the unknown I am, is ever sending to His children a message from Himself, by the voices of the poets and prophets, by the vision of the artists and the musicians, by the heroic deeds of noble men and the pure lives of devout women, by the great achievements of the great leaders, by the humble lives of self-denying fathers and mothers, by the innocence of the little children, and most of all by the voice that speaks to us and the vision that is given to us in the hours of our silent communion with Him.

[Rev. Frederick B. Pullan in Christian Intelligencer.]

It is yet the conviction of Christian thinking that to discern the mind of Jesus is to learn the will of God. The testimony of Jesus is the final word. Whatever the revealing Spirit has made known or will make known must be in accord with the things of Jesus already known. Christian thinking still regards the New Testament literature as the Spirit's method of embodying and expressing the things of Jesus. The truth concerning that socialized preserver and propagator of the influence of Jesus, called the church, is to be sought for in the New Testament. There, if anywhere, the mind of Jesus and the will of God concerning it can be found.

[Christian World.]

The religion of the future will be a religion which holds as its first principle the freedom of every man to test to the utmost the truth or falsehood of all that is taught him. For just as an engineer is not made by a book of mechanics, or by saying "yes" to all its propositions, but by his own comprehension and mental assent to its proofs, so is a man made religious only to the extent to which his own mind and soul in the exercise of their fullest freedom have yielded assent to the truth offered him.