[From the Blackpool Mail, Lancashire, England]

How much has been accomplished by a word in season! Conversation is a powerful avenue of expression. Few human activities are more powerful in their effects than words. Many of the unwholesome forms of conversation are more or less apparent and easily avoided by thinkers, such as expressions of malice, the prophesying of evil, pessimism, a doleful attitude, and silly chatter; but however conscientiously we may avoid such topics of discussion, we are not well ordering our conversation so long as we include the subject of disease unnecessarily. In public places, in waiting rooms, street cars, busses, trains, wherever there is unrestricted conversing, may be heard much unattractive talk on this undesirable subject; and one may wonder at this morbid tendency, since it is well known that, aside from being wholly unprofitable, it often produces the fruits of sorrow and suffering from the seeds of fear it sows. Every conversation is an opportunity to do good and to be helpful. How pleasantly one remembers an hour spent with a wholesome friend! And helpful conversation may sparkle with wit and good humor; it need never be tedious or uninteresting. Our words may inspire and encourage others when we least realize it; and we should be careful always to sow acceptably in the expression of our thoughts.

[Dr. Edgar A. Lowther, as quoted in the Oakland Tribune, California]

The economic interests of life to-day dominate conversation. We are handicapped with an economic complex. It gets such a hold six days in the week that even for the seventh, set aside for worship and rest, the average man finds it almost impossible to turn his attention toward things invisible and eternal. Those who still walk the streets of the modern city in fellowship with God must give their witness to the joy and peace that bless their lives. The simple testimony of Christians in the modern world is sadly needed to combat the deluge of talk confined to business and amusement. The church needs propagandists who like Paul are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. ... A revival of the lost art of Christian conversation is needed in the home, the club, and wherever people trade and travel.

[From an article by Rev. H. D. Ranns, in the New Outlook, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

There is no sin in the whole category of sins to which we are all so liable, even the best of us, as this sin of judging others. Jesus knew well enough the need to give warning regarding this tendency, for, as he said himself, he knew what was in man. He knew that within men and women is a little imp of depreciation of others that loves to take too poor a view of others and that, alas, seems only too often to find food for unfortunate judgments in the actions of men. So in this wonderful Sermon on the Mount, the sermon of all sermons, ... Jesus takes us to task and says, "Judge not, that ye be not judged". ... The Gospel of Luke expands the text, "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven." The true idea of the teaching of Jesus is brought out by the expansion. It is not that Jesus would object to our fair and proper estimating of our fellows. That is often both necessary and inevitable. In any case of competing interests, in any selection of men and women for positions of power and influence, a certain amount of estimating must be done. It is then only weakness to forbear to take the most careful and accurate estimate of a person's worth and ability. Jesus recognizes that times will come when we shall have to take stock of each other. He gives us a rule to guide us in that estimate. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Men and women themselves provide the material for our judgment. By their own actions they judge themselves.

The factor about which our Lord would be anxious is the spirit and attitude we adopt toward others. ... The for thing for which Jesus had no place in his scheme of things was the censorious spirit, the spirit of captious criticism that seems unable to forbear to seize, or even to create, opportunity to condemn the actions of others. This spirit is the very opposite to fairness and forbearance. Jesus looks for the spirit in us all that allows for human frailty, as he did himself. He warns us against a readiness to condemn others, and declares that this sort of thing has a reflex action: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." ... Jesus knew that one of the most unfortunate traits of human nature is that men and women are oftenest ready to condemn in others the very failing to which they themselves are most prone. ... The commandment and admonishment to us all is, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

[From an article in the Boston Evening Transcript, Massachusetts]

The Arabs have a saying, quoted in the book "With Lawrence in Arabia," which tells us that "there is no one in the desert but God." "Men who live in the wilds know that they are in the hands of God," says John Buchan in "Mr. Standfast." It is the expression of a feeling which often comes to everyone of us in earth's great solitudes—on the sea as well as in the great waste spaces. Lindbergh must have known it in the sleet storm or the sunshine of his three thousand miles of solitude. We have felt it on the mountain tops. We have heard its echo in the nature songs of the great Hebrew singers. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." This sense of loneliness is the dawning of our need of God. ... The Arab, looking out across the bare desert sands, felt himself face to face with Him who holds the earth in the hollow of His hand.

The meaning of this sense of the divine Presence in our most solitary hours and in earth's most silent places is that we must go and come and act and rest with the confident or fearful expectation of finding God at every turn of our life's way. The Germans have, or used to have, a message of farewell that carried the same meaning. "Go with God," they tell you as you leave their door. Here is the same recognition of the Presence with an added wish that it may be made real and joyful to you in your own experience and by the consent of your own will. ... But the desert Arabs have another saying which carries on much further this poetic sense of the active and interested presence of God with men. It supplements the other saying and makes it applicable everywhere—in our hurried thoughts and crowded city streets, as well as under the open sky where lonely desert herdsmen, living with their flocks all night, studied and named the constellations. Put in the form of the proverbial question, it may run. "Are we not all the guests of God?" We must read that question in the light of the well-known desert hospitality. For surely, if we are the guests of God He will not mean anything less in His kindness toward us than the dweller in the horsehair tent means to the guests who come to him for hospitality.

The point of the saying, when you come to think about it, is in the good will of God toward men. It is the message of the angels at the advent time under a different figure and with a more intimate and personal application. ... Are we not all, in East and West, the guests of God, though we are often dwelling without the sense of His presence in a confused and seemingly empty house? And shall we not with grateful hearts accept His invitation and enjoy His hospitality while we endeavor to behave as is becoming in those whom He invites, protects, and sustains? ... To make the best of the hospitality of God, we must ourselves assume and fulfill the duties of a guest. Our acceptance of God's hospitality should carry with it something at least of the confidence, the obligations, and the enjoyments of a guest. To distrust the hospitality to which we are invited is a form of rudeness. To refuse conformance to the customary ways of the house where we are guests, is the conduct of a boor. To think that we are to gratify the housefather by declining to avail ourselves of the innocent pleasures which he has provided, without reason, purpose, or explanation, is to belittle our host's hospitable endeavors. We would not so treat any house or tent under whose care and shelter we might be staying. And why should we not remember in this house of life that we are all the guests of God? ... The thought that we are all the guests of God will throw a flood of light upon social relations as well as upon our own conduct from day to day. For we are all learners and progressors in the house of His hospitality. The Christian thought goes a long step farther. If we will have it so, we are not only all the guests of God, but also His dear children. And so we have rights and duties of hospitality in our own Father's house. The Host and Father of us all is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." And the whole family owes duties of hospitality of thought, and of conduct when we can, to all the invited guests of our Father. There is no room in that world which is the house and school of God, for enmity or jealousy or blind indifference toward any of the potential children of that joyful family.

[From the Journal of the American Dental Association, Chicago, Illinois]

If every individual would recognize the power of thought in its influence on character, he would be more careful of his thinking. That there is a definite and direct effect produced on the individual by every thought ... there can be no question. The reason we do not achieve our full measure of greatness is because we are hampered by the smallness of our thoughts. Every bad or unworthy thought puts a blight on our development; and the longer we harbor such a thought, the more we are handicapped in our normal growth. We cannot always prevent a bad thought from entering our mind, but we can resolutely put it aside the moment we recognize it. And this is our supreme duty. If we thought better of our fellow-men; if we compelled our minds to dwell on all their good qualities and overlooked their bad qualities, we would thereby grow in grace ourselves, and we would cultivate grace in others. Right thinking is a tonic not only to the mind but also to the body. Other things being equal, the man who thinks wholesome and generous and charitable thoughts is healthier and happier than the man who does not.

[Ditman Larsen, as quoted in the Morning Press, Santa Barbara, California]

As a man thinketh so is he. We need holy thoughts on which to live. We need the thoughts of God that our lives may be molded by His divine influence. He speaks to us through the Scriptures and in the sanctuary. Do we listen?