[Rev. A. H. Moncur Sime in The Christian Commonwealth]

The Bible, through the examples it presents, through the history it traces, and through the eternal principles of conduct which it lays down, lifts the veil and shows us certain great verities. And these verities are accepted by us as verities because they commend themselves to our reason and conscience, and we know we are listening to the voice of truth, and that we are face to face with moral and spiritual facts. In order to increase the influence of the Bible we must get behind all theories of inspiration, behind all theological formulas, to the Book as the record of a life and experience which are of supreme value.

All history, it is true, is pervaded by the divine presence, and is full of spiritual instruction for all who have the hearing ear and the understanding heart, but no other to such an extent as that of the Hebrew people. The Bible differs from other sacred writings in the larger revelation it contains. "The Jews and the Christians saw more of God and His purposes than any other people, and therefore the Bible, which contains a record of what they saw, is superior to all other sacred writings." In the life story of Israel there are two outstanding facts: the moral idealism of Israel in its search for God, and the self-revelation of God in the consciousness of Israel. The primary value of the Bible is that it creates in us that same magnificent idealism and sends us in search of God, and it convinces us that God is searching for us and revealing Himself in us and our experience. [The Congregationalist and Christian World]

There are men to whom it has been given again and again to render the last full measure of devotion to holy and accepted causes, who through it all have walked in ever-increasing fulness of life and in ways seemingly remote from the bitterness of Golgotha. None the less they bore their crosses and were comrades of the Christ. Nay, they were prophets of what Christ meant cross-bearing should be in those diviner and ampler days which he died to make possible.

Most men who follow great causes to grave and consistent ends, find themselves, at least once, called to those roads of loneliness which lead across the slopes of the hill of crucifixion, or even to its crest. The world is not yet so constituted that we can be wholly true to the ideal without paying the price; yet even then the cross is not merely the lonely, tragic culmination of hostility between far-seeing love and shortsighted hate. Even then our crosses are the supreme tasks of our life, the great work of love and service to which we have long been committed. Whether on ways of light or hills of pain, to have served is to have borne the cross, to have been true to holy love is to have shared the secret of the Master. [The Universalist Leader]

What does the average man or woman really know about foreordination or free will as a theological dogma? Absolutely nothing. At best it is a guess. But this or that great philosophic-theological opinion or dogma happened along just as this or that soul was passing through a great experience, and the result was that whichever opinion or dogma happened to be associated with that experience, even by accident, became the lifelong religious belief of the convert.

It is in this haphazard way that ninety-nine out of every one hundred conventional believers get their theology. And when they get it they come to think of it as inseparable from their spiritual illumination. Therefore they assume that belief in their opinions is divine, and unbelief in them is devilish. We are not complaining. We are explaining why it is that in so many minds so much virtue attaches to belief and so much vice attaches to unbelief. In the last analysis one's opinions are in some way the result of one's experience. Often the connection is crude. Sometimes it is arbitrary. Often it is preposterous. But the truth remains that if we are going to change the opinion or the belief, we must begin with a change in experience. For the only beliefs, opinions, or convictions which are real in any soul are those which grow in some vital way out of what has been lived and felt.

[The Living Church]

The religion that is Christian cannot pass away, although men's views of it change daily. What has so felt the overwhelming power of change as religious belief? None today could hold the beliefs of our forefathers unless he were grossly ignorant; and few of us could hope to escape the fire and stake had we lived a hundred and fifty years ago and believed as we do about many things. The fundamentals are still the same, of course; but man has seldom bothered about fundamentals,—he has fought his sectarian battles too constantly to think much about the divine realities, or else he has insisted upon his own explanations of such truths as he has been able to accept. Along with his faith has grown up his theology, with the dogma his philosophy; and while the faith and the dogma are eternal, theologies and philosophies are temporal, the working tools of the hour.

[The Christian Register]

We get providence in life when we get clear and consistent ideals. We demonstrate providence in so far as we dominate our doing with the largest and truest measure of perfection. If our hold on the greatest is strong enough to control our use of the least in life, if we make all things according to some pattern on a mount, we are showing a divine will. There is no success in any part that is not connected with a great whole. It is only the love of God that makes all things work together for good, because no lesser love is competent for such wide endeavor. When that love is intimate and is put into all doing, a faith in providence is made. According as we see life whole are we likely to make our part of it correct and lifelike, and nothing but a religion is competent for such vision.

[The Advance]

The disciples kept together; they reminded each other of what Jesus had been to them, and what he still was. They silenced jealousies and discord in their own company; they waited for the message which was to equip them for larger service; they continued to tell one another and to tell the world the story of Jesus and his love, and they changed the history of the world. When we consider how many things they might have done and remember the simple thing which they actually did, and what a difference it made, we can but rejoice in their wisdom and steadfastness whereby the ambassadors of Christ carried his message to the ends of the earth.

[The Congregationalist and Christian World]

The eagerness with which large congregations are listening to ministers declaring themselves on the great themes of religion—God, Christ, Bible, sin, salvation, immortality—shows that the multitudes yearn, not for a nebulous hypothesis or a beautiful guess, but for solid, definite convictions, plainly stated. Surely we who have for years tested for ourselves the religion of Christ and seen its workings in the world, ought to be able to say modestly but firmly, "Christianity is no longer a question to be reopened every morning; I believe in it with all my heart."