[The Universalist Leader.]

The looking and the longing of souls in every age for the coming of Christ can find satisfaction if the eyes are open. But mostly we see and do not perceive; we hear and do not understand. Throughout the ages, those who have looked for the coming of his physical presence have looked in vain, and yet there has been no year in which he has not come, and never more fully than today, when through a thousand channels he is coming into the life of the hour. There are those who get impatient with the continual sounding of his name, because so many have made the calling of "Lord, Lord!" the burden and body of their religion. But who can look into the better life of the living and not see how more and more the Christ is coming into it? Those who in ignorance or independence omit him from their message, even those who in antagonism denounce him, but who give themselves in loyal service to the uplift of humanity, are opening the door through which he comes and manifests himself in the new relations among men. The writers of the gospels were simply translators of the life of Jesus to the people of their time, and the preachers and teachers and doers of good in all succeeding ages have been the translators of his spirit and character into the life of their own time. And one has but to read Christian history to become prophetic and see the time when "every knee shall bow," and "every tongue shall confess" that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of the Father.

[The Christian Intelligencer.]

Not for a long time, possibly for a century past, has there been such a radical change in the expression of religious and ethical thought as has been going on for twenty or twenty-five years past. Men have been thinking old truths along new lines and have been stating and restating even accepted facts in such a fashion as to awaken apprenhension in the minds of many to whom the unfamiliar phrasing does not convey the same thought as the former expressions. Applications of spiritual truth to practical life, especially those phases of life which call for physical or intellectual help and uplift, have taken forms wholly unfamiliar to those of older days. Thus the active religious thought of today, whether in its form of expression or application, is in sharp contrast with that of the past generation; and looking back upon the fervor and earnestness of those days many Christians brought up under the older régime are sorely troubled, and view these changes with as great dismay as the patriarch must have felt when from the window of the ark he beheld the fountains of the great deep broken up and all familiar nature vanish amid the angry billows of the flood. To such the words of Paul should brings consolation and renewed courage,—"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

[The Watchman.]

The Christian spirit in the heart of man and in the social sentiment is both a palliative and a cure of evil conditions and of envy. It makes a man content with his lot, and frees him from base envy of those who are in superior conditions to himself; it saves him from senseless revolt and dark and sinister deeds; it guards him from violence and crime; it also works in the community spirit to promote more even distribution of the advantages, opportunities, and privileges of life so that all may have an even chance. This process is going on today with increasing democracy and enlargement of rights. Envy should have less and less ground for manifestation. Until this process is completed every one needs the grace of Christ to keep him from envy and to purify his ambition, that it may covet the best things in the best spirit and not seek merely to pull down those who have gianed advancement through inheritance or superior qualities. It works from above to extend privileges, and from below to obtain them, all in Christian love. The cure of both pride and envy is love.

[The British Congregationalist.]

Few things in this life are more startling than the way in which it is possible to drift half consciously from the vital things while retaining the accidental and non-vital things. It is quite possible to have a decorous, well-ordered church life in which there is no thought of immediate reference of its doings to the mind and will of Christ. We do things because we were taught to do them, and it never occurs to us that all the original meaning may have gone out of them. It is surely, then, a hopeful sign that there is growing up a "divine discontent" with this state of things within the church itself. Earnest men are asking more and more persistently whether the church, as at present ordered, is able to give true expression to the life that should be in her.

[Zion's Herald.]

Moral and spiritual progress are purchased in the same way. He who knows the truth and is set free by it, must earn it by discipline, and sacrifice of temporary pleasures for permanent joy. The truth seems so clear and winsome when we see it in the earthly life of Jesus. When we attempt to repeat the motives of Jesus in our daily conduct, we discover the difference between possessing the truth in terms of an intellectual conviction or a fine emotion, and mastering the truth through devotion to its imperial demands. In order to make it effective we must earn it. Subjection and exercise are the price that must be paid for real ownership. We never know the full joy of being possessed by truth until we have earned it.

[The Christian Work and Evangelist.]

There is no reason in the world why churches holding orthodox and liberal theologies, liturgical and free forms of worship, episcopal and congregational forms of government, should not unite in saving little children from the hands of the despoilers, men and women from the grip of saloon and tyrant, the weak from the unscrupulous strong, government from the corrupt politicians, business from the unscrupulous men of greed, nations from reversal to paganism—no reason why they should not cooperate in rearing in America the beautiful city of God. Let us rejoice that at last they are doing this, and we are witnessing Christian unity at work.

[The Standard.]

No one rejoices more than we in the strong and fearless ethical emphasis of the modern pulpit, but we sometimes wonder if these denunciations in cold type do not of necessity leave out the very thing that makes such utterances have the prophetic note. What is their effect, not simply upon those involved in the sin denounced, but upon that vast mass of people who are neither guilty of the sin nor particularly interested in the church? Does it attract or repel? Is there danger that the public may look upon the modern preacher as "a common scold"?

[The Advance.]

There is no known process by which the soul can reach its spiritual heritage by passivity. We may not sit idly and await our transformation into the divine image by processes external to ourselves. If we are saved into our spiritual heritage it will be, first, because God has appointed us heirs of salvations, and ordained the means for our evolution into the liberty of the glory of the children of God; and secondly, because we respond to the act of God by a mighty effort of faith, by which we know and appropriate our divine heritage.