[Ernest F. Champness, in the Christian Advocate, San Francisco, California]

Prayer is part of the great adventure of life. It is useless for men to urge that such an attitude (the attitude of the one who prays) is superstitious, or that it is merely a relic of the past. To those who have felt the power and healing of prayer, the peace of prayer, such accusations seem to be the result of spiritual ignorance. It is like a man with no appreciation of color saying that a picture by Turner is little more than a daub of paint, or a man with no sense of music criticizing Beethoven. On this subject there is, and must be, a real gap in formal thought between the man who prays and one who does not. It is a gap which no argument can, or ought, to bridge. One thing only can make a man truly believe in prayer, and that is prayer itself.

[The Rev. H. J. Trueman, in a paper read before the Hertfordshire Branch of the Churchmen's Union, as quoted in the Modern Churchman, Oxford, England]

Oman ... dogmatizes, "Prayer is not bombarding God for acts of omnipotence which, otherwise, He might withhold." But we come to the heart of the matter in Dean Inge's solemn reminder, "Prayer ... is the elevation of the mind to God, and we cannot pray unless we believe that the mind is capable of being so elevated;" but he adds in another place: "Prayer naturally, spontaneously, issues in action. Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer." ... J. M. Thompson says, "The believer in prayer ... feels that God has taken his poor superstitious idea of prayer and educated it: that the asking for definite things has more and more given way to the habit of putting one's self entirely in God's hands and seeking only to know and to love: that prayer is, in fact, personal communion with God." ... Dr. Fosdick has written, "There is no book to compare with the Bible in the realm of religion. Most of the books we read are like the rainwater that fell last night, a superficial matter, soon running off. But the Bible is a whole sea—the accumulated spiritual gains of ages—and to know it and to love it, and to go down beside it and dip into it, to feel its vast expanse, the currents that run through it, and the tides that lift it, is one of the choicest and most rewarding spiritual privileges that we enjoy." ... Our president has said: "We shall serve our church and our country best if we perform, day by day and hour by hour, those humble and simple acts of self-dedication which will build up in us that Mind 'which was also in Christ Jesus,' ... for self-consecration is the effectual way by which we can serve God in our generation. This is the way in which the torch has been handed on by the long succession of runners since the gospel of Christ came into the world."

[From the Christian Herald, New York, New York]

True Christianity makes the face to shine, and he, or she, whose heart is "right with God," and who walks with Christ, should be a light to others, to guide them to share the same radiant confidence and trust. We recall an aged Christian who was for many years a mission worker in Brooklyn. All who knew him will remember his smiling, shining face. He was a man who took to God in prayer all the difficult problems that came to him. Many things happened in his experience that seemed little less than miracles to those who did not understand. But those who knew the pastor best, realized that it was his faith that led to the solution of many a hard problem, that won back many a wanderer to home and parents, and that it was his simple, earnest prayers that gave confidence and courage and kindled faith in hearts that were in deep trouble. His faith, reflected in his shining face and his reassuring smile, won many a victory over sin. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." This sets forth, in a single sentence, the confidence that should animate the heart that is fixed in faith in His service. The Christianity which Jesus taught, far from depressing any life, should illuminate it.

[From the Evening Transcript, Boston, Massachusetts]

Rev. John McDowell, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of National Missions, recently delivered seven lectures in Northfield on "The Essentials of Christian Experience." In the course of these lectures he said: "Christ never proposed that men should discuss his gospel. He invited men to live it and to know it through the reality of its transforming power. We ought to discern the real strength of Christianity and revive the ancient passion for Christianity as a personal experience in which Christ, of course, is the center and source of it all. He is the distinction of our religion, the guaranty of its triumph. Faith may languish, creeds may be changed, churches may be dissolved, society may be shattered, but one cannot imagine the time when Christ will not be the fair image of perfection, or the circumstances wherein he will not be loved. He can never be superseded; he can never be exceeded. Religions will come and go, the passing shapes of an eternal instinct, but Christ will remain the standard of conscience, the satisfaction of the heart, and the outstanding experience of the soul. No thoughtful man will be satisfied with a merely external religion, for true religion claims the soul; and in our best moments we realize that it ought to be an inner and impelling force, dominating and unifying our powers and making us active in all that is good. Christianity, in fact, is nothing if it is not everything, and it is everything only when it is a spirit which, living within, influences the whole life of man and translates itself into a commanding experience."

[From Christian Work, New York, New York]

Man is not truly trusting in God, if he is not also engaged in doing good. The trust is for living, for the life of thought, of action, and of endurance. A life of trust is necessary for the proper working of the mind. If we are to think, we must trust that the universe is thinkable; if we try to find truth, we must trust that it can be found, we must believe that there is such a thing as the truth of the universe on which our minds may lay hold. ... This kind of faith will sometimes issue in what appears to be a revolt against religious belief. But this is only because it is a larger faith than the faith expressed in that particular religious belief. ... Many of these who have broken with old beliefs in the last fifty years would never have done so but for the faith that truth is greater than creeds. ...

When our age comes to take its place in the perspective of time, I believe it will appear as an age of faith, an age in which faith broke the boundaries of the narrower creeds and commanded a larger view of God's work. For the present, no doubt, faith is often unassociated with theological terms; but it is truly religious in its nature all the same. You see it in the scientific world. It would not be too much to say that faith is the moving spring of science. Without it no discovery would ever be made. No inquiry would persist but for the faith that something might be discovered. At bottom this is a religious faith. To set mind at work upon the universe implies a faith that the universe itself is an expression of Mind. Not only so, but a good deal of the best scientific work has implied a faith in the goodness as well as the intelligibility of things. ...

This faith that great things can be done for the race is growing; it is a feature of our time, as it never was before. Great problems are being tackled. We do not stand stunned before the enormous difficulties of our social problems; we believe they are solvable. We do not despair of the solution of international problems. We should gain much by recognizing the faith and the trust which are at work as distinctly religious: and the faith and the trust themselves would grow clearer, and be enhanced in power to their possessors if they also recognized their distinctly religious character. When the power not ourselves that makes for righteousness takes on personal character, becomes our Father, the world is warmer, and more loving and more intimate. At the least, the trust we want is that there is, in the nature of things, a power that will back us in every genuine effort we make to do good. At the best, we know that this power is God. ...

The brute forces of the world have assailed in vain the men of faith, because they drew their power from the stronger force of Spirit. We cannot ignore the vast volume of human experience that testifies to the value of waiting upon God, of prayer, of putting one's self in the attitude to receive, of taking in what God has to give. The secret of this is the secret of strong and enduring life. On the other hand, there are those who have a sort of indolent trust in God, content to leave Him to do everything. That is an unreal trust. The true trust in God must express itself in work; the true work of life must be rooted in trust and sustained by it. No work is good enough to be done unless we can turn to God for strength and power to do it; and no good is too great to attempt in the power which faith brings. We cannot face the moral demands of life except in the power of religion. ... Trusting in the Lord means trusting that, as soon as one begins to cut a channel for the good in one's own individual life, the waters of the eternal ocean will flow in. Trusting in the Lord means that one's individual effort will have its place in the universal life of goodness.

[From the Advertiser, Warwick, New York]

The man who is willing to face facts, and can see the need of improvement and works to bring it about, is the one who does good in the world. The man who looks only on the evil of the day as a sign of decadence is hopeless and useless. It is the constant striving for betterment that will bring the betterment; and there is always need to face facts to bring this about. The man who points out evils as things to be corrected, is doing the world a service. The man who points out evils to stir up strife and envy is the one who does damage. Look the world's facts in the face, and then strive to cure envy and strife, and you are doing your little part to bring about a betterment of conditions. The world is getting better all the while, and will continue on that path so long as we do not become too well satisfied with it as it is, and do not point out evils only to gloat over them or to stir the baser passions of the individual or the mass of people.

[From the Tripoli Tattler, Milwaukee, Wisconsin]

Not that which in any way holds men back, or which confines them, but that which helps them to move, and to move forward and upward; nor that in us or of us which carries men we love up higher, but that which makes the climb possible, makes it quicker and easier and happier—that is friendship!