Articles

One of the most picturesque and significant movements of the middle ages was the crusades. They were picturesque because they were connected with the chivalry and piety of medieval Christianity.

The question, What is joy, and what is it to enjoy? is sometimes asked, and it can perhaps be most satisfactorily answered out of one's own experience. The mortal body without the aid of mortal mind could have no sense of pleasure; hence all joy must be mental.

Nineteen centuries ago Jesus came to earth, in evident fulfilment of the prophecies of a Saviour, given to the Jewish race. He proved himself to be "he that should come," by works of mighty power; nevertheless, when he imparted to the Jews a basic truth of his teaching, they cried out, uncomprehending, "He hath a devil.

The Scriptures abound in parallels. Not always are these readily seen even after their existence is intimated, and in most cases they are long unsuspected.

When the Saviour and husbandman of humanity, gifted as he was with foreknowledge and its correlative power of foretelling all things meet for human ears to hear, paused in the wheatfield, already white and ripe with vegetable richness, he spiritually admonished his Christian students, as he doubtless would the Christian Scientists in this day of harvest. How well he understood the temptations, the procrastinations, the dilatory and shuffling modes and methods of those who were destined to be enlightened when he said, "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

" No personal habit," says Huxley, "more surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind and unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority. " The full force of these words appeals at once to us, and the more one examines them the more does he become persuaded of their verity.

Mortals have to work for some hard taskmasters, but the worst of all employers is self. Self may be said to be in the moving picture business, and his pay, for those who work for him, is in pictures.

A skilful counterfeiter is sometimes capable of producing a bill or coin which closely imitates the lawful money issued by the government, but as soon as it gets into circulation the discovery of its falsity has become a mere question of time. Clumsier counterfeits are more numerous, and their detection is speedier.

Perhaps no passages in Scripture point more clearly to the fact of immortality or preexistence than do those to be found throughout the seventeenth chapter of John's gospel. By Christian people in general the term immortality has mostly been used as pertaining to life after death rather than to that eternality which covers what mortals call the past and the future.

A Careful study of human nature reveals an inherent disposition to descant upon the subject of evil and a disinclination to magnify the good, although we find in the Bible many admonitions to the contrary. Whence this abnormality so prevalent in the moral and religious world of today? Is it a God-given tendency? Is God in any way responsible for it? Is there any law of His to validate or sustain it? To those who were ready to hear the only logical answer to such queries Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.