756 him, thinking he would be interested ih hearing about the dances and parties that had been going on. He wrote back telling her never to mention these things again, saying that if he ever came home, he intended to live a different sort of a life. He died at the front. When face to face with the reality of death, the one need is courage. Men may have it through Christ. “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Sevenths Hope for the future. This awful unrighteousness, cruelty and tyranny tends to make some give up religion. But the collapse today is not of religion but of civilization. As some one has said, “Christianity has not failed: it has never been tried.” We can civilize without Christianizing. There is no such word as “christianiz ing.” It is a word to be avoided. The word we need is REGENERATION, or renovation. There never has been a Christian nation and there never will be in this dispensation. I happened to hear B. Fay Mills ■rtrhen he asked to be taken back into the Presbyterian church. He said that before the, war, he lived on the Pacific coast/ All things were going on so well and so smoothly, he thought the kingdom was at hand. When the world war came, these ideas were knocked out of his head, and he came to the con clusion that this is a lost world. He might have, had that thought before, nevertheless it was a fine testimony of the essential truth of the Gospel. This is a lost world. Its hope is in the com ing of Christ. The reign of peace will come only with the coming of the Prince of Peace. The prospects of bet terment in human nature are not in sight. We should concentrate our attention on the coming of Christ and do all we can to hasten that day. I rejoice in all that makes for bet terment in society,,and let us have all
THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S we can get, but being introduced into a new environment never can save men’s souls. You may clip the wings of an eagle, and it will rob it of its power to fly, but it doesn’t change the eagle’s nature. Nothing of social bet terment in the world can take the place of individual regeneration. The Chris- tion alone has the right to be optomis- tic in the true sense of the word. Look ing to the Throne, he becomes an optomist, not by shutting his eyes to the facts, but by looking to Him who is God over all. Let us as preachers and teachers believe these seven fundamentals as never before, and with that deepening belief, let us proclaim them as never before. Let us have fewer merely pat riotic sermons. That is failing entirely in the most important duty of the pres ent time. It seems to have been a mercy to some preachers that the war has come to give them something to talk about, for I do not know what they would have done otherwise. But what people need in this day of strain and stress, is SOMETHING FOR THE HEART, the great realities of the Gospel in which patriotism becomes a power and a blessing. COMMON DAYS One of the chief dangers of life is trusting to great occasions. We think that conspicuous events, striking exper iences, exalted moments, have most to do with our character and capacity. We are wrong. Common days, monot onous hours, wearisome paths, plain old tools and everyday clothes, tell the real story. Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the New Year. The vision may dawn, the dream may waken, the heart leap with new inspiration on some moun- taifl top, but the test, the triumph, is at the foot of the mountain, on the level plain.—Maltbie D. Babcock.
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