[Rufus M. Jones, on "War and the Teaching of Jesus," in the Advocate of Peace]

It was his [Jesus'] purpose to create a society of persons liberated from their old nature by a fresh discovery of God, shrinking from sin and abhorring it, because they had found the divine meaning of life, throbbing with joy because a new world and new dimensions of being had opened out on their vision, living no longer by rivalry and competition, but living by love and its contagious power.

There is only one way to produce that kind of a society. It does not come by command. It cannot be created by act of legislature or by sovereign edict. No force of battalions can compel it. The only way to create a society like that is to begin by exhibiting it in a life that incarnates and embodies it. The only way to produce love as an operative force of life is to trust love completely—and to love regardless of all cost. The only way to reveal the nature of God as love, to carry it as a constructive force into the tissues of the social world, is to translate it into the vital stuff of actual life, to make it visible and vocal. The only way to break the drift of sin and the instinctive drive of selfishness is to kindle a new and higher passion and to set a new attraction at work. Just this Christ did and he did it in such a way that it comes to light not merely as the highest law of life for earth, but as the essential nature of the divine character as well.

Nature herself has a forceful way of driving into the consciousness of youthful learners her preferences in the matter of conduct, and she has a sphinx-like way of telling her children that the way of the transgressor is not only hard but impossible. Nature's method is tremendously effective, but it is slow and the lesson is often long delayed. Society does not wait for the slow sequences of natural processes. Parents and moral guardians anticipate results and, drawing from the experiences of the race, they apply artificial restraints and constraints and so save the learner many bitter lessons. But no wise guardian supposes that the work of moralizing can be carried very far by methods of force and constraint. Higher agencies must come into operation before the goal is reached. Remarkable results have already been attained in all educational work by the substitution of the moral and psychological appeal for the use of force, and still more impressive is the transformation that has been wrought in penal institutions by the introduction of higher agencies in the place of force, for correcting, reforming, and redeeming those who have gone seriously astray. The world has only begun to realize the immense effectiveness of love and consecration, even with the criminal class, and great results will follow the enlarged and improved application of them.

[From The Christian Science Monitor]

"Children can be used as a most potent factor of redemption, among irresponsible people who come under the jurisdiction of the state," said Robert L. Flemming, treasurer of the New Jersey State Board of Children's Guardians. Mr. Flemming is president of the Jersey City Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children and has a record of accomplishments in preventing the breaking up of families.

"Parents," said Mr. Flemming, "will make stupendous efforts to better themselves rather than relinquish their children. The almshouses of New Jersey have been purified and the number of people applying to them has been decreased greatly since we decreed that children whose parents were in an almshouse should become wards of a state board.

"We have proved beyond the slightest doubt that it is a fallacy to hold heredity responsible for a child's destiny. When we have taken them away from their parents early enough and put them in wholesome foster homes, our wards have grown into useful citizens. An important reason for our success is that New Jersey does not pay foster parents to care for a child. We work only with men and women desirous of caring for a state child because they want to help him."

[From the Reform Bulletin]

Hon. Roy A. Haynes, United States Prohibition Commisioner, recently said: "The good citizen is under obligation to society in the enforcement of the prohibition law, and is in a sense the guardian of all our laws. To me there is a great invisible government back of all the institutions of government. It is the spirit of America. It is our American idealism. It is our American militant righteousness. It is our progressive civilization; and there is something emanating from this invisible power to the hearts of all true Americans, an invisible influence that reaches each citizen and makes him a defender of all those laws which have to do with the welfare of our country and the well-being of our countrymen. To say that it is impossible for America to enforce a law is to do violence to American traditions and to underestimate the American spirit."

[From the Christian Intelligencer and Mission Field]

According to telegraphic information from Seattle, the imperial recognition of Sunday as a national day of rest throughout Japan has been announced. It is a result of the influence which Christianity is exercising to-day in a non-Christian nation. The Government has been for years officially committed to a partial recognition of the Sabbath. On that day imperial offices were closed, schools given a holiday, big banks did not open for business, and many persons ceased their labors.

Country laborers in Japan work long hours with no day of rest, while workers in cities usually keep one or two days out of each month. This class now does not know what to do with Sunday. As a result, motion picture theaters have sprung up with great rapidity in the small villages. These do a big business on Sunday, being the only way the masses know of using the God-given time. It is noted in newspapers that Christian churches are so few in the country districts that thousands have never seen one.

[From the Times-Union, Albany, N. Y.]

All must admire in Mrs. Eddy a woman of remarkable ability and of an intensity of faith that exerted a great influence upon the world. She has earned for herself a place in history as one of the great spiritual leaders of the world—one of the great chieftains who inspired mankind to turn from the material to the spiritual things of life; one of the benefactors of her race; one whose name will live on through the good she did.

[From "Religion without God," by Dr. George Jackson in the Manchester Guardian, as quoted in Public Opinion]

There is a tendency in the life of the church which is always with us—to suffer things that are not the first things to get into the first place. This tendency reveals itself in a hundred ways, and no small part of our trouble in combating it, is, that in almost all its varying forms, there is something in it that is good, which therefore the more easily hides from us the peril toward which it leads. ... It is at our peril that we try to live on less than the highest; it is at our peril that we put God anywhere but in the first place. God has set His church in the world that it may bear witness to Him. That is why it is here, that it may make Him real to man.

[From the Commercial, Buffalo, N. Y.]

There is great need to emphasize the truth that the Christian religion is a life—a life that involves what goes on outside the church doors as well as that which pertains to the prayer meeting. There is danger lest in our emphasis on "witnessing for Christ" and taking up "personal work" the young convert may fail to understand adequately that the "witness" is to be that of a clean, vigorous, righteous life as well as that of the lips, and that it is as truly "personal work" to demonstrate the power of Christ in the line of civic righteousness, honesty in business, purity in social relations, as it is to cultivate readiness to approach one's neighbor with the invitations of the gospel.

[Prof. Joseph Jastrow, University of Wisconsin Psychologist, in the New York Evening Mail]

The thrilling question is, are physical objects, as we know them, or think we do, facts that are valid in themselves? Are not they, also, simply things that we believe, expressed in objective form, according to the dictation of our five senses?

Perhaps we shall get proof some day about this matter. Our treacherous senses and our imperfect reasonings, our intuitions, we may be sure, lie frequently. Had we the courage to believe that they lie all the time, possibly we might begin to sense the truth. Who knows?

[Frederick Harrison in the Times, London, England]

Nothing can help us, nothing can save us, but a higher moral sense, a national creed of loyalty, discipline, unselfish devotion to duty—in a word, a more efficient religion. All forms of so-called "religion" hitherto have been phases of superhuman visions. What is wanted now is a religion of human duty—a new social catechism—Ten Commandments brought up to modern science and the conditions of modern civilization.

[Editorial, "A Small Voice for Prohibition," from the Chicago Evening Post]

A small, inconspicuous paragraph in the papers yesterday recorded some interesting observations on prohibition by the president of the Illinois Hotel Association. He said that hotel men, presumably members of his association, found their troubles much decreased by the absence of liquor, that decent guests were less disturbed by carousals, that the furniture lasted longer; in short, that life was easier for the profession which sees more of the seamy side than most of us normally run into. The hotel men ought to know

[From "The Month in World Affairs," by Lothrop Stoddard in the Century Magazine]

Here is, in truth, the lesson that we must learn: the basic unity of world affairs and the necessity of noting and thinking about the course of events in even the most distant regions. No matter how unrelated they may appear, closer scrutiny may reveal them intimately connected with our own future welfare.

[Rev. H. Howard in the Rochdale Observer]

Christian Science arose as a protest against the belief that suffering and disease were marks of God's anger. In denying the truth of that belief Christian Science was quite right.