Where would this nation be without the ideals that our religion presents to us? Where would our young men be as they grow up, without the ideals that lead them on to large development and to great achievement? Bring before me two young men with equal ability and with equal training, and with equal opportunity, and let me look into their hearts as they begin life's work, and if I see there a great difference in their ideals I can measure with some accuracy the future of those boys. If one has a high ideal, if one has learned that conception of life that Christ brought to us, if he goes out glorying in his strength, that he may put his broader shoulders under heavier loads, proud of his education only because it gives him a larger capacity for service, I care not where he locates he cannot live in any community for twenty-five years an honest, industrious, helpful life without becoming a tower of strength to every righteous cause and respected by all who know him. If the other young man, instead of having such an ideal, is worldly and only anxious to have a good time, for the satisfaction of the demands of the body, or contribution to its delights, if this is all he thinks of, it doesn't take a prophet to see at the end of twenty-five years a wasted life, a life that has not been satisfactory to himself, a life that has been a disappointment to those about him, a life that grows worse as he grows older. It is the difference that an ideal makes upon a life; it is the difference between

success and failure; the difference between a noble life and an ignoble career. But, my friends, government needs the Christian ideal in the departments of government. We need it in politics, -where more than in politics? What would the politics of this country be if it was conducted upon the basis of Christian ideals? It would not mean that we would all agree about every question; it would mean that our battles would be fought between men; that each one would respect the other's right to opinion, instead of quarreling and antagonizing each other, we would reason together, both anxious that the truth should prevail whether it brought us victory or defeat. And, my friends, never have we needed the strength of Christian ideals in a nation more than we need them now, and this Movement, I believe, has contributed largely to it. We need that moral courage which Christianity imbues in the lives of men. A man cannot look ahead and measure the consequences of his act, but he can see where to take the next step, and he can do what he believes is right and trust the future to the hands of God, "Who doeth all things well." This nation is blessed of the heavenly Father with natural resources unsurpassed. We have inherited from ages past all of our riches and all of our wealth. We have great factors entering into our nation's progress, but I believe no factor can be compared with the value of religion as a directing force in human life, and I will close by paraphrasing the lan

guage of Holy Writ: We have education in this country, the best system, I believe, in the world; we have government in this country, the best form, I believe, ever conceived by the mind of man, and yet, my friends, "education may plant, government water, but God must give the in

crease."

THE CHURCH

BISHOP WILLIAM F. ANDERSON

Methodist Episcopal Church.

There is a very inspiring picture of the early church given to us in the New Testament record, "And the Lord added to the church daily such as were being saved." I would that every church of Jesus Christ everywhere might realize that ideal. I do not suppose it is necessary for me to stop to make an argument to the effect that the effect that every church ought to be a growing institution. A man arose in one of the conferences over which I was presiding awhile ago, and speaking with great confidence, as though the oracle of God, he said, "The Church of God ought to be the most conservative of all the institutions upon the face of the earth." I felt like stopping the conference and asking that benighted brother where in the name of reason he had come upon a heresy like that. Conservative of all that is valuable and important, certainly. But, conservative in its spirit as it strives with every institution for the liberty and the rights of man and domination of the modern world-in that sense the Church of God, instead of being the most conservative, ought to be the most progressive institution on the face of God's earth. That celebrated Englishman, Sir Alfred Russell Wallace, in an article on "Science and Immortality,"

turns aside from the main drift of his argument to discuss another point. He writes from the point of view of an Englishman, one profoundly interested in the welfare of the English church. He pleads for reform in the English church, the result of which shall be that the things which have become incidental shall be allowed to pass into the background, while those things which are fundamental to the present and vital to the future, shall receive every emphasis. Pleading for this he goes on to say: "A reformed church is an engine of progress." It seems to me that is what every true branch of the Church of God ought to be, literally, an engine of progress relating itself to everything that is vital to the welfare of humanity and becoming in more senses than one, the champion of the rights of all men, and so become literally and indeed an engine of progress.

I suppose there never has been a time in the commercial life of the world when so much has been said as today of the by-products in various lines of manufacture. Indeed, I think it is not too much to say that it has been reserved for the men of this generation to discover the possibility of the by-products as the means of swelling the dividends of great corporations. We have not anything to say in criticism of that. Conservation of all our resources is certainly a movement in the right direction. There are certain things that flow out of our church life which may be likened to by-products, such as the edu