[The Christian Work and Evangelist]

The modern world has crowded God out; it seldom names His name, for it is not thinking about Him—remember, we are speaking of the common consciousness, not of individuals. To speak about God in connection with every-day pursuits, is to run the risk of being accused of cant or bad form; but that fact alone shows where we are. It would be neither cant nor bad form if it were real to the great majority, if it were felt to be essential to all true living; but it is not, and that is just the danger of the situation.

To call this a materialistic age is hardly a full account of the matter, however. All ages are materialistic, more or less; it is only a question of degree. But, as a shrewd observer of the trend of things remarked the other day, people do not seem to know how to enjoy the benefits which increase of material wealth has brought within their reach. The soul is ignored; it is the flesh that is pampered. The leisure of the workers in all ranks of society has little about it that is spiritual; it is mostly of the nature of physical or mental excitement; it is an animal delight, whether it be golf, football, or the picture palace.

Once again, we are not condemning these tendencies of our time wholesale; we are only pointing out that they are a par with our other occupations in the thoroughness with which they ignore the deeper needs of the soul. It is not to be wondered at. Life is largely strain and worry for the great majority. We have made it so; we have made it artificial, fierce, exacting. There is no need for the rush, and wear and tear of brain and nerve; if we were not fools we should not have it, only we are afraid of what will happen if we stop, so on we go fighting for our own hand individually instead of getting together. Why in the world have we made life so artificial and complicated?

[Rev. Robert J. Dogan in Baltimore (Md.) News]

Vital relationship with God is the supreme good of all religion. All else in religious life is subsidiary to this one great fact. Church-membership is good, but unless it means vital connection with God it is as empty as a "tinkling cymbal;" it is the shadow without the substance; the theory without the fact. Too many people in this age live to speculate on a religious theory rather than to cultivate a religious life. They grope in the shadows of religion, rather than utilize the substance thereof.

Vital religion is taking strong hold on the public mind and heart. More and more the people of God are awakening to the fact that religion is not merely a speculative hypothesis or a theoretical code of sublime ethics, but a practical fact and a life-giving substance. So long as people live in the shadows of religious theories, so long will our services be insipid and our churches half filled with worshipers, and special appeals be made for church attendance; but when we move out of this shadow of religion into the real substance by entering into vital relation with God, there will no longer be a necessity for special days or questionable methods to induce church attendance, for all worshipers will count it a joy to enter the public sanctuary and devoutly "praise God, from whom all blessings flow."

[Western Christian Advocate]

The Christian life ought to be so lived that people would covet its joys and contentments. Christ said it was the "pearl of great price" for which men, properly appreciating it, would sell all they had that they might possess it. Theoretically we accept it as different, extra, apart, and something altogether to be desired. However, our presentation of it today is not embarrassing us by the great multitude rushing to possess it. Indeed the opposite seems to be true. Somehow people do not seem to think we have anything that is worth making a rush for. We stand in the market-place and pipe unto them, and they pass on, merely giving us a careless glance. Why is it we cannot present Christianity in that attractive manner which will compel men and women to cry out, "Oh, that I were a Christian"?

The Christian ought to live so gloriously that he would be the envy of the world; he ought to live so triumphantly that men would rate him as the most fortunate man on earth; he ought so to live that those seeing him would sicken of the life they live outside of Jesus Christ. Why do we not live a better life? We ought to know how to present the Christian life in such sublime proportions that men everywhere will be delighted with it. If we lived better, the world would love our Christianity more.

[The Christian World]

The Bible is not addressed primarily to the intellect: it is not specifically the food of the reason. It did not come from that side, nor is its appeal mainly there: one could speak easily of its poverty, of its omissions in that region. You find there no mathematics, no philosophy, no science, in the modern sense; and in its own special sphere it offers nothing in the way of logical demonstrations. It never tries to prove the existence of God or of the soul; it has no arguments on these points in the style of Plato or of Aristotle. It is throughout a book of the heart's reasons rather than those of the head; and we are now beginning to discover the meaning of all that.

The heart's reasons are incomparably, of all others, the strongest, the most convincing. It is there the grand affirmations lie; affirmations which, the moment we hear them, carry their own truth, their own conviction. When there is presented to us, as the Bible presents them, the law of love, "the beauty of holiness," the denial of self, the supremacy of duty, the call to uttermost service, to uttermost forgiveness; when all this is given us as constituting the one and only blessed life,—when all this opens to us, our weapons of mere logic fall to the ground. We feel here in the presence of life's final judgment, against which there is no appeal. If we try to go against it, to disprove it by a contrary experience, the proof only comes back upon us in a form more overwhelming,—the form of our own misery and defeat.

[The Advance]

One humble village gave the world Mary, Joseph, Jesus. Who knows what Nazareth has yet to give to the world? Nazareth still exists. If out of its life came into the life of the world such contributions to the betterment of mankind, who dare say that Nazareth has nothing more to contribute? And who dare say that Nazareth is the only place from which God can produce Christlike lives? Out of very humble places God has called His prophets. The Nazareths of history have been full of surprises for the world.

The world has need of its Nazareths. We never can be sure from which of them God will raise up some wonderful gift to men. We never are justified in coining a proverb by which we declare it impossible for God to give to men some wonderful and abiding gift, bestowed upon us as through some humble vehicle, some quiet and obscure locality, some little known and perhaps despised personality.