of enthusiasm and power in itself. Its certainty is like the certainty of those martyrs to whom it is tempted to go back. Only each day's freshness is sufficient for that day.

Every discerning person while deploring that one should so write, must recognize the glory and height of the standard that make the foregoing words beyond contradiction. They are relative to the heroism and devotion of Christ and to the best history has shown. The standard contemplated is relative to the equipment and resources of religion. When a martyr gives himself for the faith, and an apostle counts all things but loss for Christ, and a monk is poor all his days that others may be rich and that his soul may live; when a minister has for souls the passion others have for gold, and is his such amplitude of life that passing through fiery trials he is not burned, and through floods he is not overwhelmed, and falling into

great tribulations, he can yet count it joy — there is given some revealing of that exceeding glory, for the making which our faith is constituted, and Christ came, and the minister is called. Without this grand loyalty in mind, the words written here may seem an attack upon sacred interests and eminently worthy people—a criticism wanton and false. I have, however, conceived of religion as a grandeur of life and as Christliness, and affirm the entire deliberateness with which the words have been written.

I cannot, however, let all the foregoing stand without repeating that the words are not indiscriminately to apply. There are men and women in all our Churches, going in and out of our houses and shops, meeting us on the streets and in the market-place, whose lives are beyond the power of sorrow or of fear; whom faith in God has kept true and calm, and made achieving and full of good works. They are fountains of cheer and

peace; storms break against the rock upon which they have built, in vain. Having forsaken their all for goodness, they hunger for righteousness alone. They have labored to lay up treasures in good habits and right thoughts, and while they have used the world and the things of the world, they have loved only God. So they have not been hurried, nor confounded, nor put to shame; they are established, masterful, crowned. Their common heroism is the redemption of life.

There are people, too, in all our Churches who are effective instruments of justice and love; who will that the Kingdom of God be set up in the earth. They apply the law of Christ to their business, to their homes, and to public service; men with whose names it would be a kind of sacrilege to associate the thought of self; who serve their fellowmen; from whom other men catch the divine passion. They are beyond the trial of things, because they have built on Christ. They are

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rich, but they have learned how to abound they have lived simply and have loved. They are poor, but they have learned how to be abased they have lived contentedly and kept faith in God.

There are thousands of ministers, too, whom the foregoing words of sharpness cannot touch, and upon whose manner of life only Christ can sit in judgment. These are the glory and the power of God. Their souls are knit to God with a great passion, and a zeal for God eats them up. Only God knows the terrible crosses they have carried. They fear the face of no man, and forbear not to declare the whole counsel of God. By the very greatness of these, all others are brought into judgment. Where the gulf exists, by this comparison, it has appeared, not because the vain man's manner of life has been pulled down below the actual, but because the standard of Christ has been set up.

CHAPTER V

THE POWER TO CONSTRAIN OR LEAD

H

OWEVER the somewhat discredit of

the Church and its leadership has

come about, it is the minister's task

to gain for religion a place of reverence and authority, and to constrain men to adjust themselves to the spiritual possessions of the race. One may point out that there is lack of laymen with a real grasp of theology, who are impatient of the ordered thought which is to the minister so fundamental; one may blame these transition times; one may charge that the men of nerve and capacity have gone, not into the ministry, but into places paying great money; one may lament how strong is the spirit of the world. And one may deplore it all. But it is the minister's