The Christian Work and Evangelist]

There are two things that it is absolutely useless for us to worry about. First, the things that we cannot help. How utterly useless is worry when we cannot help the thing. And second, the thing that we can help. Worry only hinders us from helping. If you cannot help conditions, worry only makes it impossible for you to bear them; if you can help them, then by all means change the conditions and so banish the cause of your worry. We all go through the days carrying the worry, which in the beginning was a very small thing causing personal anxiety or solicitude; but it has steadily grown until the whole mind is darkened and the heart embittered; slowly but surely it becomes contagious, until it has darkened the lives of others in the same household; and by and by we awake to the realization that we are confirmed in the worry habit, of all habits the most injurious to human happiness and the highest development of character.

If we could but realize that not one in a hundred of the things about which we worry ever takes place if we could only sit down calmly and with common sense analyze our worries, and get back to the basis of fact that lies beneath the worry, we would smile at our folly and be ashamed of our weakness in allowing such trivial things, usually of our own imagining, to create such havoc in our lives.

[The Outlook]

The reunion of Christendom will not come in a generation. No one knows what form it will take when it does come; but one thing is clear, it can come only through union in the spirit. The increasing study of the personality and teachings of Christ have long been bringing Christian people nearer to one another; and every movement which looks toward this consummation ought to have the generous support of Christian people, by whatever name they call themselves. The forces of evil are organized like phalanxes; the forces of good, in the triumph of which alone lies the safety of the modern world, ought also to be organized; and the World Conference on Faith and Order, by its very comprehensiveness and the spirituality which has inspired it, ought greatly to strengthen the faith and inspire the energies of those who work for this fellowship of believers. Under some form, in some way, the followers of Christ must stand together in the great work of bringing the world to a knowledge of him.

[The Pacific Baptist]

God does not change, but men's conceptions of Him change and surely one would be a pessimist who did not believe that men's ideas of God grow truer and better. The great fundamental facts upon which science and philosophy are based do not change, but men's conceptions and interpretations of them do; and unless the reason which God has given us is in vain, those conceptions and interpretations must become better. System of theology are constantly changing. If the Holy Spirit is in the world, leading men into all the truth, surely our systems of theology must become truer. It is easy for a man to believe that he has a monopoly of the truth. It is easy for a man to mistake his conception of God for the only true God. It is common for one to mistake his interpretation of the Bible for the Word of God. It is easy for one to believe that his spiritual experiences are the only experiences possible for a Christian.

The man in our day who from the pulpit constantly says to his hearers in substance, Do not think—you will be lost if you do; the man who condemns all modern science and philosophy without explaining why, simply sneering at their conclusions as the figments of men's minds; the man who deifies a theological system without ever attempting to explain or justify it; the man who boasts that he knows nothing of the tendencies of the thinking minds of his generation, is a dangerous preacher. A few will follow him, but the majority of his hearers will smile and pity him. Such a man forgets that all theology is the result of men's thinking and interpretations of God's revealed truth. He forgets that the Bible itself is largely the result of good men's interpretation of the voice of God's Spirit within their souls.

God has revealed Himself in nature as well as in His Book. Men may misinterpret the one or the other, but if the two ever come into real conflict, it is easy to tell where the victory will be. The men who wrote the Bible knew nothing of natural science or pure philosophy.

[The Universalist Leader]

One of the chief sources of the weakness of the propaganda of Christianity today is the fact that even the church does not take seriously, and does not put into practise, some of the fundamental precepts on which Jesus built his new society. So long as we admit that Jesus is right in his primary ethical convictions, while at the same time we ignore those ethical precepts in our conduct, so long our discipleship with him will be apologetic and half-hearted. We should either find some practical way to conform our conduct to his rule, or we should out with it and repudiate that rule. The trouble with many of us is that we accept the rule as ideally true, and give it the lie by our whole attitude toward our fellow men. More than we need any more systematic theologies, we need a systematic study of the conduct of Jesus toward his fellow men, and a brave and honest effort to find out wherein he was really right or wrong when he laid down the law of service as his only standard for greatness.

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

We are very strongly urged by all the circumstances of the present day to a renewed consecration of ourselves to the service of Jesus Christ. We all know the signs of the times manifest round about us, — the indifference, the materialism, and the worldliness. But those things are not going to remain. In the very nature of the case they are perishable. The future lies with the spiritual, and the question is, What part are we going to play in building up this future? Are we simply going to be laggards, remaining behind with the stuff, or are we going to be in the front rank of the fighters? And the front rank of fighters today is not the people who get upon platforms and talk; it is the quiet people behind, who think and trust and pray; and we want more of these in our churches. There are plenty of good people about, but would God that all the Lord's people were prophets!

[The Christian World]

To make any success of life we must get our roots deep into it. If we are only deep enough rooted, we can grow tall without fear. We must have a self developed in us which, like the oak, knows, amid all the elements it meets, what to choose and assimilate, what to reject. With that in us we can move amid all the experiences, all the clash of opposition, knowing what elixirs they contain. Welcome every new experience, the new burden, even the new sorrow. Let them perform their dreadest function! Is it not to enrich the soul, to drive its roots deeper into the things everlasting? Blessed difficulties of life, which compel us to find our roots in God!