The Test of a Fine Character

1902

The test of a fine character is attention to the minutiae of conduct — to do the little commonplace service of love, the cheerful word, the cup of cold water, when rendered not grudgingly or of necessity. — Friend.


Vacant Churches

We have a distressing way of talking about "vacant" pulpits and "vacant" churches. It is an unfortunate part of our overemphasis of the place of a minister in our various systems of church polity, it is of a piece with the talk about "Dr. Blank's church." A church is not vacant until the Holy Spirit has left it. As long as through humble hearts there is evidence of the divine indwelling a church is great and rich. A log cabin with a simple hearted layman's prayer and exposition of the word of God may rise to the dignity and glory of a temple, while a gorgeous architectural pile with a superb organ and an intellectually gifted preacher may be "vacant" indeed. — Congregationalist.


The Main Battlefield

The main battlefield is the one which moves about with us, go where we will — ourselves. So dingy and inglorious oftentimes that we would like to flee it altogether and lose ourselves in some great campaign which should keep us from over being reminded of it again! Great things have sometimes been done by men who never won the battle of their own natures, but they are the standing incongruity and puzzle of the moral world. When the thing we want to do has outrun the thing we want to be, our thought about life has ceased to be real and moral and essential, and God and men will forgive us all the delay that is necessary in order for us to go back into that battlefield of our own souls. — Sunday School Times.