[The Living Church]

Not to be neglected is the preparedness that lies in the quality of citizenship and the character of public opinion, in deepened popular convictions of right and justice between man and man and between nations; a steadfast stand against the devastating march of ignorance and greed and against their consequent evils; renewed loyalty to and reliance upon the family as the unit of society; the ending of the present rate of infant mortality; the conserving of child-life and adequate training of youth; the welding of these incoming folk of all kindreds and tongues into a worthy citizenship; the attainment of finer relations between man and man; the reconciliation of clashing classes and the reintegration of society through the realization of a truer social organism, by the people and for the people, bound together by the bonds of a real brotherhood, as the kingdom of God comes upon the earth. Here lie manifold tasks for Christian men and women, tasks wherein the church of the Son of man is to be not without interest and share, as an instrumentality of that kingdom of God.

[The Methodist Recorder]

Let us lift up our hearts. No power can wrest from the Almighty's hands the scepter. He is not an absentee deity. He watches and controls evermore the course of events upon the earth, swaying the opposition of men, never abandoning His program, even through the wrath of the rebellious working out the counsels of His own loving will. We must take long views. The ultimate victory may tarry, but it will come. A thousand years are with the Lord as one day, and one day as a thousand years. Just now the earth is trembling with the tramp of armies, but tomorrow upon the mountains will be the feet of those who bring the good tidings of peace. Evil may come uppermost for a while, but evil contains within itself the principle of destruction. All men may not be won for holiness, but unto Christ every knee shall bow. That is fixed and settled. All the apostles believed and declared that he who endured the "contradiction of sinners," and was "despised and rejected of men," had "sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool."

[The Jewish Chronicle]

Caleb, as we may interpret his name, was "all heart." He was an optimist. He would gladly have made all the others optimists too. He entertained no doubts about the conquest of the country. He does not even say, Let us go up and try to conquer it, but, "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." Opposed to him were nearly all the other spies, who took a gloomy view of things. They saw no bright light in the clouds. The atmosphere in which they lived was that of a foggy November day. They forgot that the sun was shining behind the clouds, and that by and by it would disperse them. They were men who talked things down, men of no expectation and no hope,—pessimists, in fact. Unhappily, the race of pessimists is not yet extinct. They are with us today,—men of melancholy who do not see anything bright and always predict failure.

[Rev. Joseph Fort Newton, D.Litt., in The Christian Commonwealth]

The passion of our day is a passion for life, for more life, fuller life, longer life. Too often men seek it in external things, in money, sport, and speed, in sensations, excitements, and costly luxuries. They seek it feverishly, almost fanatically, in everything that seems to them to promise what they have set their hearts upon and which they have agreed to call life. If it were given you to look into the hearts of men today, you would find that much of their restlessness is due to the fact that they have tried to find life and have failed. Nor will they be happy until they find a real and true life, and find it more abundantly.

We do not have to define life in order to live it. On the contrary, if we are ever to know what life is, even in a little way, it must be by living it with grace, zeal, and vigor.

[The Christian Register]

So far as truth is continually being brought to light by investigation and by thought, the dogmatist must turn his strength from defense of old bulwarks to exploration and enterprise. The great remedy of dogmatism is to set it to work. The prime corrective of confidence hardened into prejudice is a glimpse of fields yet untrodden. The type of the hero of truth is not the warrior, it is the explorer; and no explorer can be a dogmatist long at a time.

[Rev. Marion D. Shutter, D.D., in The Universalist Leader]

In spite of all that tends to obscure and confuse, men are beginning to see moral issues more clearly; that all issues are moral. Every commercial and industrial question is moral. Huge gains no longer blind us to the methods by which they were made. The philanthropy of the giver no longer sanctifies the rapacity of the gainer. In all the whirl and confusion, the dust and the uncertainty of the hour, the eclipse is passing from the ten commandments and the golden rule. Good ethics is good business. We are getting down to the bare foundations of the universe, and find that the stones are hewn from the quarries of Sinai. Other foundations can no man lay for any earthly structure.

[

The Christian

]

It is still true that if we will "let him [Jesus] . . . alone," unencumbered by our doctrine and dogma, unfettered by ritual and ceremony, undistorted by the false witness of life which denies faith, "all men will believe on him." Nothing is clearer than the fact that the world's quarrel is not with Christ, but with attempted human organization of his influence. Yet the tragedy, not only of today but of former days also, is that the church has not been able to leave Christ alone. This is the secret of her too obvious weakness. This is why she has so little spiritual grip upon the world. She has lost the apostolic spirit of "no man, save Jesus only," in her own life, and consequently in her message and witness.

[The Continent]

Influence is not achieved or cultivated by pretensions to either wisdom or piety. It is attained instead by living a clean, simple, unassuming life of hearty brotherhood among comrades whom one loves and wants to be loved by—living patiently and quietly and helpfully until the circle one lives with has come to trust alike his sincerity, his unselfishness, his discretion, and his sympathy. Then influence comes without need of seeking for it.

[The Church Family Newspaper]

It is the church's privilege and opportunity, as well as responsibility, to lead men to that God whom the Son of man came to reveal as the Father; to preach the gospel of spiritual and social redemption in all its wonderful fulness; to seek to win all who will to the true Christian brotherhood, and thereby hasten the answer to the oft-repeated prayer: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."