We are not facing the future in blindness to these things. The curtain has been drawn back from their real nature that we might behold it. We know that the events of the future closely impend. The tomorrows are at our finger-tips. No dam can hold back the stream of destiny. It hurries along the years so rapidly that there is never too much time to prepare for the coming of whatever its current may sweep to our feet. The hand of prophecy never draws back the veil that we may look upon a lie. The Almighty does not trifle with us. The revelation of the Scriptures is of inevitable things. The events which they disclose are more certain than the course of the stars and planets. The sun may falter in its path, but the plans of God never do. One of the most serious and significant things the Scriptures disclose is the fact that the gates of the future are not far removed. They open directly before us. Even now our hands are upon them. Our feet are upon the threshold of the tomorrows. Objectively, this earthly existence is merely a rapid succession of events. The holidays to which we look forward with expectation, the meetings for which we can hardly wait, the partings that give us pain, the joys and the woes that make up life’s intermingling of sunshine and shadow, the birthdays that register our years, love, toil, death—all are things that “shortly come to pass.” The years hurry onward. Therefore, whatever one would do he must do quickly. Children and the Church (1922) The strength and membership of the Christian Church are great, but they are not what they should be. After all, the Church is only a comparatively small fraction of the sum total of human society. The plans of Jesus will not have been realized and the Kingdom of God will not have become an actual fact until the Church and the race are one. The Church is growing, but one of the evidences why there remains a great deal of ground to be possessed by the Kingdom is to be found in the fact that the race is growing more rapidly than the Church is. It is possible for an institution to be growing and yet losing ground if its problems are growing more rapidly than its power to meet them. Viewed alone, the reports on Church membership for any single year look somewhat encouraging. When one reflects, however, upon the growth of the race and the encroachments of paganism, the encouragement is diminished. The Church is supposed to represent a leavening force. It is quite proper to consider its mission in that light. A leavening force, however, must not remain such. Its work is to leaven the whole lump.