Articles

Every Bible student is familiar with the story of Naaman the leper, and as with all Bible narratives, it is not difficult to give this story a modern application. It will be remembered that Naaman, having been told of some wonderful cures wrought by Elisha, the prophet of God, took "ten changes of raiment" and went "with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

Men have always believed in a God. Most men have believed, and Christendom declares, that the supreme power is good.

Time and space play a far more important part in the garden of Eden story than is commonly credited to them. They are so customary and usual, a sort of daily event, so to speak, that they are accepted at their face value and without much, if any, question.

The invalid, in his earnest yet sometimes wavering endeavor to obtain surcease from sickness and distress, has sought out many inventions, but not one of them has relieved him from the hopeless task of looking to material effects as an explanation for a result wished for but not attained. Still it is easily believable that in turning to a possible method of cure one would be solicitous to avail himself of any reasonable means leading to this desirable end.

One of the marked characteristics of the man who is truly great is his right estimate of values. A rainbow is a beautiful thing; but a man may become so absorbed in admiring a rainbow as to let his automobile run into the ditch.

That "none of us liveth to himself," is a basic law of conduct that can be neither ignored nor reversed. The individual who runs counter to this fact by disregarding the welfare of his neighbor, is soon bound to be recalled to this phase of his personal responsibility.

How to be in the world and not of it is a question which has vexed the religious mind from time immemorial; in fact, it is hardly too much to say that the pathway of history is paved with a mosaic, much of it very beautiful, of shattered efforts to reconcile two apparently irreconcilable states of mind. In despair of finding any resting-place for the soles of their feet in the stress of ordinary affairs, men have been driven into the desert, into lunatic asylums, into all manner of extremes, as their times or temperaments dictated, in the desire to find some way of living the religious life.

One of the greatest mysteries in connection with the orthodox creeds is that of the Trinity. Upon this subject there has no doubt been an honest purpose to arrive at the distinction between demonstrable truth and mere human opinion on the part of Bible scholars, but this effort has nevertheless been fraught with much controversy.

To make the assertion that the limits to human accomplishment are imposed by ignorance of absolute law, is to raise at once the much debated question of what constitutes reality. Through many centuries the human mind has grappled with this problem, now scaling the heights of idealism, now falling back upon the plains of materialism, but never ceasing in its endeavor to attain the highlands of scientific knowledge.

Confronted in daily experience with doubts, fears, difficulties and failures, with no certain way of overcoming them and all shrouded in uncertainty; with chance and accident seemingly real, and the good we so much desire apparently dethroned on every side,—we sometimes wonder what is the purpose of an existence which seems devoid of certain good. This is a practical age, because things and theories are being judged by their usefulness, by the help they give in freeing us from the uncertainties and discomforts we experience in our search for good.