[The Watchman-Examiner]

Historical criticism may rub off the rust of the sword of truth, but has it sharpened it? We study so much of the past movements of the church that we have little strength left for present endeavor. We watch the waters that have passed through the mill, but the waters that ran the mill of yesterday are of little use to us today. It is interesting to view the past with a telescope, but it is far more profitable to study present movements and conditions, and in the companionship of Christ to find the master keys that will unlock hearts, organizations, and movements now closed to the faith we represent.

It is not a key of gold, however skilfully wrought, that will unlock the door of the world to the spirit of Christ. The medieval church had it, but it could not open the door. The modern church has it, and perhaps realizes its value only too much; but many hearts remain still closed to the messenger of Christ. The early church had no key of gold, but during the first three centuries hardened hearts were unlocked, an empire trembled into a new vision, and Christians passed everywhere, preaching quietly but persistently, in life and in death, with a force that was irresistible, and the life of Christ went whithersoever it would. [The Universalist Leader]

The new theology which is breeding in the social consciousness of the world today is full of the romance and poetry of great anticipations. Under God it expects a new birth of spiritual liberty and a new birth of spiritual power in free men. The prophet of the new times will have the Columbus spirit. He will dream of the other side of the world, rich with the treasures of the mercy and the love of God. And he will sail forth upon the infinite sea, to endure all hardships, to trust to the winds of heaven and the waves of the great deep until his frail bark touches the farther shore. For at last and beyond all our Christian faith is the sum of all romance, of all poetry, of all imagination. It is the great adventure of the soul, searching land and sea, mountains and waste places, for the vision of God, for the New Jerusalem, for the river of life where the leaves of the trees on either side are for the healing of the nations. [The Continent]

No difference what the cause of it, whether harsh struggle for livelihood or covetous absorption in getting wealth, whether ignorance or indifference or sheer stolidity, a life is always tragic which is barren of fresh, stirring interest in the surrounding world. Yet that tragedy includes the vast majority of people, even amid the superior intelligence of favored America. Hosts of humanity live along on a dead level of their own grind of affairs, doing what they must to get along in the world, but with no sense of range and liberty in the glad free things of air and sky and light and life.

The man who passes by God's food for his spirit, can do nothing else than to resort to man-made stimulants for his nerves—or else lapse back to a clod of clay. And a great part of that food is the wonder and beauty that God has packed into His visible creation,—the appeal of flower and mountain, melting snow crystal and everlasting star, shine and shadow, to the sense of color and the love of light and the joy of knowledge with which He has meanwhile packed full the human soul.

If, however, a man, through false shame or sordid desire or because he has not battled courageously with depressing conditions, suffers that native response to be crushed out of him, he must expect to forfeit the inspiriting impetus for lofty living that his creator meant thus to endow him with. One may live all his life level with the ground if he will, but it can only be at the cost of the wealth with which God has filled the arch of sky over his head.

[John Reid Shannon, S.T.D., in Zion's Herald]

To be Christlike is to be godlike; to be godlike means oneness with God. Christianity's message is not what man is, but what he may become,—he may become like Christ, as the bulb like the lily. The essence of apostolic teaching is this: He that saith that he abideth in Christ ought himself also to walk even as Christ walked. Christ hath left us an example that we should follow in his steps. Because as Christ is, so are we in this world. Christ is the prophecy and promise of what man may be, as the oak tree of what the acorn may be. He makes proof of our nature, and finds it like the nature of our heavenly Father; for humanity and divinity are in substance one, as are sunbeams and the sun.

We share the human nature which, in Jesus, flowers out into beauty and goodness, into holiness and sinlessness. He is not endowed with a nature that removes him from the category of our human experiences; he is not separate from human beings; a partaker of our own flesh and blood, he lives his life under the same conditions and laws as other human life. He is as the human Master of the soul, as our Lord in humanity, because he is made like unto his brethren, having a nature essentially the same in kind as theirs.

[Dr. G. Campbell Morgan in The British Congregationalist]

All creeds of the Christian church that are systematic expressions of belief are to be numbered among the traditions of the Christian church,—sincere, wonderful, but human interpretations. In that moment when a number of men gathered together to formulate into definite expression the doctrines of the church, I am not saying they were doing ill work, but they were giving us traditions, human interpretations. So also there sprang up in process of time certain definitely declared forms of church polity, and there grew up set forms of church life differing from each other,—all tradition. Sometimes these traditions took the form of uniformity of dress, modes of common speech; and so the church of God today has a mass of tradition that has grown up, conflicting, contradictory, as great as were the traditions that had grown about the Hebrew religion in the time of Christ.

[Rev. W. E. Orchard, D.D., in The Christian Commonwealth]

The demand for beauty will perhaps be the crown, as it was the beginning of creative Christian power. Whatever life is, life must be beautiful. The soul must not be starved or degraded by being surrounded by ugliness. Beauty will be no luxury, no addition, no mere adornment of life, but life itself seeking expression. The Christian city of the future will surpass Athens at its best. It has already been described in glorious symbol, which is perhaps more literal than we have dared to think: its gates of pearl, its streets of gold, its walls of precious stones; the city itself a glorious temple of God, and the daily work of its citizens the praise of God and the Lamb. [The Christian World]

It is not by bowing to tradition that we shall reach the true life, but by using all that is best in it as material for our own spiritual realization and as nutriment for our own mind. In doing so, we shall not fail to establish points of contact with the Christians of all ages; we shall find that every generation of God's children has been warmed by the same love, upheld by the same power, and inspired by the one Spirit.