"Before Christ came, the Jewish religion had forbidden many evil things; it was a religion that a man could fulfil, I had almost said, in idleness; all he had to do was to pray and to sing psalms, and to refrain from things forbidden. Do not deceive yourselves; when Christ came, all was changed. The injunction was then laid upon us not to refrain from doing, but to do. At the last day He is to ask us not what sins we have avoided, but what righteousness we have done, what we have done for others, how we have helped good and hindered evil: what difference has it made to this world and to our country and our family and our friends, that we have lived. The man who has been only pious and not useful will stand with a long face on that great day, when Christ puts to him His questions. "But this is not all that we must learn: we must beware everywhere of the letter that kills, seek everywhere for the spirit that makes glad and strong. For example, these questions that we have just read are again only the letter. We must study what they mean, not what they are. We are told to visit them that are in prison. A good thing, but it were better if we could save them going there. We are told to visit the sick; it were better still, and we should so better have fulfilled the law, if we could have saved some of them from falling sick." _The Life of R. L. Stevenson_, GRAHAM BALFOUR. Pure Religion SEPTEMBER 18 "Righteousness in the Old Testament is not a theological, but an ethical word, and has to do not with a person's creed, but with a person's character." Dr. JOHN WATSON. "In those days men were working their passage to Heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, and the hundred and ten other commandments which they had manufactured out of them. Christ said, I will show you a more simple way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfil the whole law.... Love is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life." _The Greatest Thing in the World_, HENRY DRUMMOND. "Pure religion as taught by Jesus Christ is a life, a growth, a divine spirit within, coming out in love and sympathy, and helpfulness to our fellow-men." H. W. THOMAS. The Christian Law SEPTEMBER 19