January 23

As the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so shall the Lord God cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations.

MEN need never despair of the future of religion. Humanity, as a great philosopher affirmed, is not destined permanently to inhabit ruins. A world which is forgetting God does not involve a God who is forgetting the world. The movement of new spiritual advance may arise from without, not from within the Church; as so many of the great restorative movements of the past generation, whose divine origin and guidance were unrecognised by the members of the organised Christian community. We may be confident that the time of frost and present cold will break up before the warmth of another spring. The Church, by neglect of its election and high calling, may prolong the misery and increase the confusion of time. But no human wilfulness or weakness can for ever delay the restitution of all things and the triumph of the end. A new dawn will one day illuminate the vastness and desolation of the city. Each solitary life of its millions, perishing, as it seems, unheeded and alone, is destined at last to find the purpose of its being in union with the Infinite, alike its origin and goal.

C. F. G. MASTER- MAN

THE GREAT HOPE