From Our Exchanges

with contributions from William H. Bown

[The Methodist Times]

One of the greatest of our misfortunes is that we are prone to take the material world as the real and practically the whole world. All else we are tempted to think exists on sufferance, and may be thwarted, or even crushed, by the brute forces which have the mastery of events. Such a conception is equally irreligious and untrue. The secret of the universe is revealed in the ideals—spiritual, moral, and social—which come to light and life in the higher consciousness of men. These unfold the meaning, purpose, and resources of the divine order of things as material facts and laws never can. These ideals in which the world is founded and for which it exists are eternal in God, and come to their own through the history of man; they abide permanent and reigning.

[The Christian Work]

The world is today expanding religiously. Rarely has there been a time when men cried out more persistently after the noblest and best things in life. The world is not in the hands of the devil, as some are saying. It is still God's world. He rules. Let us never forget that. It is well for us to be in harmony with His plans. No sane man would think of fighting the laws of nature. He would be a fool who tried to stop "the stars in their courses." But for some reason some men believe that they have power successfully to oppose God in the spiritual world, forgetting that the spiritual world is God's world, as well as the physical world, and that God's laws prevail in the unseen world just as they do in the seen.

[Rev. William H. Bown in The Living Church]

There can be no real greatness of character when no difficulties have been encountered and no temptations overcome; and there can be no songs of triumph unless an enemy has been met and a contest fiercely waged. But this very condition is really a help to us, for we learn that life is a battle, and not a hymn. But in spite of this truth we are reminded that we need not expect to be preserved from the world's evil by our own exertions merely, but that we must earnestly seek for God's gracious and ready help. The moment that the spirit of self-reliance prompts us to feel that we may venture with impunity upon forbidden ground, the moment that we cease to look to the protecting care of God to hold us up, that moment we will be taught the sad and mortifying lesson of our own weakness.

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