church does not need to defend the Bible, but to circulate it and teach it. The Bible, once given access to a human intelligence, commands assent to its essential truths and can be trusted under the immediate workings of the Holy Spirit to convert sinners. The Christian once realizing that he must pass on the gospel message, and once familiarized with that message by study of God's word becomes a giver, a missionary, a good citizen, a "neighbor" under Christ's definition.

But he also realizes, almost immediately, the barriers to world-evangelization erected by

any denomination, and is under God's Spirit to be deemed the element of strength in our Churches to-day.

OUR WEAKNESS.

With what elements of weakness must it deal? What things obstruct its free working? What great evils must it overcome?

First and foremost is the inertia of other individual Christians, each at ease in Zion, willing, with Job, to be saved by the skin of his teeth. This type will tell you the minister is paid to preach the gospel and that as for him, since God has so ordered his life that he has a family to support, he

the old lines of denominational division and the over-churching of some communities and the consequent neglect of others. And so he sees the necessity and advantage of a spirit of comity. Making due allowance for the effectiveness of appeal made by some difference in methods of service, he welcomes and forwards a federation of all branches of the true Vine in order to fruitbearing. This must result in a more intelligent effort to evangelize the world.

This individualistic, Bible-grounded, giving and missionary spirit is not confined to

must first attend to business. If he is pressed too hard for gifts or service he "hires" another preacher who has tact enough not to worry him. He administers a cup of cold water to every forward movement and contributes no wear and tear to the furniture in the prayer-meeting room or Bible class. The contagion of the spirit with a passion for souls, or the preaching of the man who preaches "as if he could not help it" must, some day and soon, penetrate these pachydermatous souls, who will then realize that they too must "redeem

the time" they have lost or wasted.

A scale higher is the man who has "glimmerings," but who thinks that giving is a complete substitute for service.

As to the evils the awakened church and its soul-winning members must meet and overcome, we can mention but a few. Gehazi, the grafter, served the prophet of the Lord for what there was in it. The scandals involving use or diversion of moneys have recently revealed all over the country a standard of ethics of appalling laxity professed by men formerly held in high esteem, and not a few members of the Christian Churches. Christ's gospel is the only true ethics. Its spirit carried into any domain of life is the solvent of the labor question, the divorce question, the liquor question, not to mention matters of national and international policy.

Intrenched behind the forms of law, the grafter, the rebater, the favored recipient of purchased or inherited political or business favor have caused our young men to forget God's law of labor, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."

But the Christian individualist is abroad in the land. He is taking public office. His voice is heard in legislatures, in Congress, from the White House. He appreciates the awful problem presented by a million immigrants or by a Mormon hierarchy, or by the unchurched thousands within walking distance of his own place of worship.

Again the disuse of family prayers in Christian homes is a danger. It results in vacant seats at midweek prayer meetings and this dessicates spirituality until worship is a mere social observance, which is not allowed to check the current of worldly thought and planning.

A re-vival must, from its very etymology, involve a new life in Christians who have lost the blessedness they knew when first they loved the Lord.

When re-awakened to the full sense of their relation to Christ they must bear fruit; they must do personal work; giving will be a matter of course, but supplementary to doing.

If every member of the Christian Churches were to become, or re-become a Christian today, the preachers would cease to be the chief propagators of the gospel message. Every Christian would be a soul-winner.

God's people would be "volunteers in the day of His power." "Know thou the Lord" would be an instinctive, natural and unresented topic of conversation.

But the Christian of to-day is traveling under the personally conducted management of Mr. Worldly Wiseman. He allows social usage to fetter his fellowship. He thinks personal work inconsistent with good breeding where he has had no introduction to the one to be reached; or if he knows him he fears to speak to him of his soul's welfare lest he hear the rejoinder, "Physician, heal thyself."

The American Church needs a revival of appreciation of fundamentals in Christian living,-sin-Christ's atonement. These create soul hunger that can be appeased only by the daily Bible and prayer in the closet, and at the family altar. The Christian who realizes his spiritual imperfectness is the more likely to be vigilant, and a source of help to the Church.

It is a mistake to test the life of a church or a denomination by the figures in the column of benevolence. Watch the column of additions on confession of faith. It is the church's barometer.

One must look to organized labor for the expression of workingmen with reference to the standard of life among their class. Even though all workingmen are not in the trades unions, it is nevertheless true that practically every artisan and every laborer is at heart in sympathy with his brothers who are making the fight for better social conditions, because they also will receive the benefits which come through the efforts of the trades union and other workingmen's societies. Therefore, their standard of ethics, their ideals of the higher life, their hopes and their aspirations are identical with those of organized labor.

The ethical value of trades unionism is not always understood by the outsider. To him these organizations of workingmen are arbitrary societies whose chief function is to make trouble. Undoubtedly there is only too much truth in that conception. It must not be forgotten, however, that the trades unions are powerful factors in the cause of temperance, in the abolition of child labor, in the doing away of unsanitary conditions in home and shop, and in the education of the immigrant, who is frequently touched for good by practically no other agency. The moral education which comes to the active trades unionist is of great value to the mass of toilers.

But there is another side of the problem which cannot be forgotten. Whatever may be the material progress of workingmen, it is often without the finer development which can come only as the result of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

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I need hardly indicate the curse of improvement which is purely ethical in its nature. How often it results in a pessimism which takes out of life the sweetness and the joy which seems to belong only to the Christian. It leaves the way open to every social, economic and religious vagary pre

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sented by educated, half-educated or uneducated leaders.

That is the great danger which confronts the American workingman. He is being improved morally but there are only too many teachers who would lead him into the fogs of doubt and into the shipwreck of despair. Workingmen were never more approach

We

able than they are to-day. We cannot afford to halt in our campaign, nor must we appear to be half-hearted in our endeavors. need not stop to apologize. Christ has given us a very clear message. Let us deliver it, even though it be with fear and trembling, to the men who are really hungering for that message.

overtake the growth of opportunity.

Think of the Indians now and look back to what they were in their primitive state. The most superficially informed will agree with me that the present is better than the past and the future is to brighten because of the spiritual enlightenment that has come from the earliest day up to this. To-day they are calling, “Come over and help us"; it is a sign of strength and not of weakness. That is, they now desire to be strengthened where they know that they are weak. Think of what they are doing for themselves and then take no great credit to ourselves for what we are doing for them. They are beginning to have a thirst and hunger after righteousness. Nearly three hundred thousand riginal Americans are in deep spiritual po erty and we must speedily reach them.

Think of th waste places in every stateeast as well as west-that are spiritually barren. Some western presbyterial areas in territory rival eastern synods. Some of them contain camps of one kind or another, and centers in congested districts and in country crossroads nearly destitute of the gospel of Christ. In many places north, east, south and west, material prosperity has far outstripped the spiritual life. Indeed the success of the first has created the greater need for the second. Our mission

Think of Porto Rico and Cuba on the south and Alaska on the north. Over all floats the gospel banner and yet when we catalogue the strategic points, difficulties encountered, immediate results, future possibilities, the growing importance of the fields from every standpoint, we can only pray with deeper earnestness that the spiritual life may keep step with the ever rising tide of material prosperity. It must. God must have His way and America's spiritual need supplied or the other forces, good in their place, will be

-"the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute And, ever widening, slowly silence all."

Think of the Freedmen. Never will that problem be solved until these men from slavery freed are free men indeed, through that spiritual power that comes only from the King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Think of the Mexicans, the power of the mission school and the growth of their Protestant faith; and we can more earnestly press forward to claim greater spiritual power for the many who are only beginning to walk by faith.

Think of our kinsfolk of the Covenanters, the mountaineers. Results already achieved and the number of unreached fields, the one contrasted with the other, will send us to our knees. Give them spiritual food and their awakened lives will show great transformation. These fields are white for the harvest, and so near us.