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The primary question with relation to the Christian religion which is before us as individuals for consideration, is not how much of this or that sectarian creed we can subscribe to, but solely and alone whether we shall follow that one life which lived not for self but for all men, not merely for his own time but for all time, whether we shall attempt to coordinate our activities under some eternal principle, whether we shall seek to make our life count for an onward step in the great world processes, or whether, on the other hand, we shall allow life to flicker away in self-contradictory activities, possibly storing up evil that our successors must painfully counteract. Whatever else conversion may mean to us it must ever mean preeminently a "new birth" into the civitas Dei, into the world, not of the now and the here, but of the Eternal and the Absolute. When the highest aspiration of our souls may find expression in the prayer, "Thy will, O Lord, be done by me! if so be that my life may count in the fulfillment of thine eternal purposes;" only then, I insist, can our life, taking its place in the life eternal, be thoroughly organized or thoroughly wholesome.

Raymond Dodge