[Rev. Henry Wilder Foote in The Christian Register]

We need to build in a larger faith in God. Man's marvelous increase in control over the forces of nature in the course of the last century, his unprecedented accumulation of wealth, has bred in us all a pagan belief in the importance of material possessions, a confidence that our security was to be found in the power which our hands could wield, a faith that wealth and comfort and freedom from irksome cares were our highest good.

It takes, perhaps, a stupendous catastrophe like this war to shatter those idols, to shake men into the realization that honor is more than life; that willingness to endure suffering is better than broken faith; that it is better to be just and true than to command the markets of the world; that the spirit of Christ is more lovely and admirable than the hammer of Thor; that the things which are seen are temporal, while the things which are unseen are eternal. The world which has awakened to that realization will be a more deeply religious world, more sensitive to the life of the spirit,—a world of greater faith, of greater generosity, of nobler ideals. And it will turn to its hard tasks of reconstruction upheld by the knowledge that it must build again, not by might, nor by power, but by the spirit of the Lord God.

[The Universalist Leader]

We are going to face great events in the next few years; the church is going to be tested as never before. Those preachers who are living on the fruits of former years and are being simply "practical," are going to find their bins exhausted; those who are joined to the sources of eternal life can face eternity with equanimity. We are not prepared to say, better a bad theology than no theology, but we have to admit that a bad theology can beat no theology out of sight, and we do say what we firmly believe, that we must have some theology if we would live and serve. Therefore the time has come when those who have a reasonable, rational, reverent, Scriptural, and especially a practical theology, should set it before the world, which is showing itself so hungry for some theology that it is conspicuously gnawing the dry bones of dead dogmas.

[The Christian Work]

Deity does not have to wait for the tolling of earthly bells before He can make Himself known. Celebrations of Christmas, past or future, should alike enforce the gracious ministries of Christ in the silent regions of the soul. There he does his lasting work in us; there he enables men and women to live the very life God sent us here to live. Every aspiration after that life, every attempt, however feeble, to respond to its supreme appeal, is met with closest, dearest fellowship, making us rich in the heavenly treasures of peace and good will. The aftermath of Christmas is an expanded being, than which nothing is more desirable; a being in which stand forth our Horeb, our Sinai, our Bethlehem; a being in which self-interpretation is governed by better motives and more laudable aims.

[Rev. Herbert W. Prince as reported in Chicago (Ill.) Examiner]

A new day is coming, and it is coming fast. It is the day when the traditions, theories, statements, ceremonies, rites, even the sacraments of the church, will go by the board unless they can prove themselves of fundamental worth to humanity. The age has already come when the historic churches have ceased to hold their people by virtue of their teaching. The church holds its members today partly by fear, partly by custom and habit, partly by individual personality. This will not last forever. Fear will some day be dissipated, custom and habit are already rapidly dying out, and personal attractiveness is very precarious and superficial.

Before the great days of enlightenment come, the church will pass through "the valley of the shadow of death." It is impossible to tell whether she will be reborn in the vital struggle. In any case, orthodoxy as we know it will utterly perish. The orthodoxy of the past and the present deserves to perish utterly, because it is an orthodoxy of terms and phrases and theories; it is not an orthodoxy of the spirit. But a better day will dawn. The people of that better day will recognize the infinite spirit of God in the person of Christ, because of the life he lived, the deeds he did, the words he uttered, the character he impressed on the world. The people of the coming day will call him "Master," because they will recognize in him the greatest teacher of mankind. They will find him to be the Son of God, not because of any theological utterance relating to his birth or his eternal coexistence with the Father, but because the truth of God flowed through him in complete filial obedience.

[The Christian Intelligencer]

Christianity must become a spiritual power throughout the world, rather than a mere formal expression of thought or faith. It has often been said since the war began that "Christianity has broken down." Christianity has not broken down; but the formalism which is tied up with certain methods of expression, or with certain creeds and rituals and organizations, this has truly proven unequal to the terrible strain put upon it by human jealousy and hatred and passion, and its restraints have been thrown off because they were formal and external and had no spiritual force or power to hold back the raging wrath of men.

One thing, therefore, to which the church of Christ and every true disciple of Jesus must bend all their energies, is the reestablishment in men's hearts and consciences of the spiritual rule of Jesus Christ as a controlling power over their hearts and lives and in their principles and practices.

[American Lutheran Survey]

Approval cannot well be withheld from the definition of Christian life which says that "it is infinite love in ordinary intercourse." It is true that Christianity is the most extraordinary element which could conceivably be introduced into our human order of affairs; but it is just as true that Christianity has no quarrel whatever with the ordinary. Its whole quarrel is with sin. There is nothing about Christianity which hinders it from adapting itself to the ordinary in our lives; and this is one of the strongest commendations of the Christian teaching and the Christian life.

[New-church Messenger]

The growth of a recognized spirituality, paramount and above the sensual and material, was never more evident than today. The puny efforts of selfish men to build a world of material and circumscribed conditions, independent of God, are coming to naught. Men everywhere, in innumerable ways, under the divine Providence are turning again to the Lord God the Saviour with hope and confidence.

[The Advance]

There are many humble people in the world who are less useful than they ought to be, because they despise themselves. They have no great talent and they know it, and they think they might as well bury the little that they have. Make no mistake; the soul that is alive and active is capable of achievements so great that God alone knows how much one man with God can do for the uplifting of the world.