of all things and yet they abound in all things. They are dishonoured and yet they are glorified in their dishonour. They are evil spoken of and yet they are vindicated. They are reviled and they bless; they are insulted and they respect. Doing good, they are punished as evildoers; being punished, they rejoice as if they were thereby quickened into life." Could there be a grander testimony to the giving of self in service?

It was this which produced that moral condition which Aristides sketches in his "Apology" at the beginning of the second century, where he speaks of the blameless life of the brotherhood and of their immense charity; of how where there is any amongst them poor and needy, and if they have no spare food they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food; and of their consequent heavenly gladness the peace of Christ, for he continues, "And surely the race of Christians is more blessed than all the men who are upon the face of the earth and there is something divine mingled with it."

The same has been the secret of life in even the most corrupt phases of the church's history. When we look at Romanism past and present, measuring the chasm between its dogmas and scientific truth, we often wonder at its long continued and fast hold upon the people. We need not, for its power has not been in these things. It is and has been in possessing within its fold multitudes of simple souls who have only a bowing acquaintance with dogma,

but whose life is in loving and in giving self in devoted service.

Many were the thousands of such souls during the age of darkness when learning fled from Europe and civilization was buried beneath the sleep that overtook men's intellects. While pope and bishop busied themselves in getting the best things of this world, not for the glory of Christ, but for the gratification of their own personal ambition,-then it was that not authoritative dogma, nor costly cathedral, nor impressive ritual kept alive the power of the church, but it was the effort in every activity of life to follow in the steps of Christ by the giving of self in service that made the Christian cause triumphant in the world. Such lives were found not only among the hermits who dwelt in the caves and cliffs of the mountains, but in the huts and hovels' of the tenants on landed estates, in massive castles that sheltered rough and rugged barons. Such lives were found not always in places that gave opportunity for large renown; they existed in countless numbers where least we suspect. They gave themselves, did their part, in keeping alive true Christ-giving. They gave to the world magnificent service; though no costly mausoleum marks their resting-place, they kept alive Christianity and found for themselves the peace of Christ.

Here and there we find men of unusual gifts and qualities standing out like beacon lights along the darkened pathway of ignorance and selfishness through which Christianity has travelled during

the centuries. Dark was that road and steep at the milestone of the thirteenth century. At that period there grew up in Italy's vale of Umbria in the midst of rich fields and woods and pleasant streams, a youth born to riches and splendour, to all the gaiety and luxury of a worldly life. Happy in disposition he entered with zest into all the pleasures which such an unburdened existence allowed him. But the time came when he realized truly all that Christ had done for him; his whole soul was filled with a passion for God. He left his father's housenot even a change of raiment did he take with him —and gave himself to a life of service; a service which would not even find for itself a home in the recognized channels of church work. But putting aside all the comforts and many of the necessaries of life he went about from place to place ever seeking to succour the unfortunate and to make men realize the power of the Christ life. Dwelling in a tumble-down hut, and with only such fragments and scraps of food for his nourishment as were given to him, he attracted others by his life of wonderful unselfishness and they, too, gave themselves to a like service. The little company grew and increased, ever keeping close to the Christ life of their leader, Francis of Assisi, until within a few years there were not only hundreds but hundreds of thousands of brown-robed men who were giving their very lives for the sake of helping those round about them. Whatever may have been the ascetic fanaticism of these mediæval men of God,

and whatever may have been the evils that later grew up in the great order of the Franciscans, which they founded, we cannot but recognize in them the practical realization of the ideal of giving self in service, which has ever been the genius of Christianity.

SERVICE THE SECRET OF LIFE TODAY

The spirit of Christ is being preserved today by this same giving of self in service. Nor does its expression necessitate a resting-place in secluded cloister. Rather is it found in such organizations as the Fillé de la Charité, which St. Vincent de Paul, another one of those perpetuators of the life which Christ brought to men, founded in the sixteenth century. It numbers today more than 30,000 in France and has for its rule: "The streets of the city, or the houses of the sick, shall be your cells; obedience your solitude; the fear of God your grating; a strict and holy modesty your only veil.”

The spirit of social service, loudly proclaimed "child of the twentieth century," is really the eternal child of Christianity, as much at home in the first Christian century and the fifteenth as in the twentieth. John Calvin at Geneva, cleaning up the streets, abolishing the filthy fish markets, establishing silk factories, introducing laws and governments for the benefit of all the people, exemplified it. John Wesley and Charles Whitfield brought to England a new age of Christian devotion only that the children of England, the poor of England, the

prisoners of England under John Howard and Hannah Moore might be ministered unto in a very practical sense.

Jane Addams, dwelling in the crowded slum of a great city, having herself appointed garbage inspector and moving in the heat of summer amidst fever smitten homes, and finding herself duplicated in multitudes of the choicest product of this generation, is the real flower of the devotion exemplified in Him who said, "Not as the world giveth, give I."

The church cannot always serve in institutional fashion, and perhaps in the vast majority of cases it were better that she should serve by cultivating those springs of Christ-love in her sons and daughters which shall inevitably send them forth to minister in practical sense, in all the avenues where there is a call to bind up the broken-hearted, to study the causes of poverty and disease, and to bring in the era of social justice and of brotherhood through all the world.

It is an evil thing for the humanitarian hearts of today to try to proclaim social service without the aid of the sympathetic voice of the church of Christ, and equally evil for the church to give all her attention to saving men's souls for the next world without trying to make a more wholesome and happy world for them to live in now. Social service is the daughter of Christianity. She cannot afford to cast off her venerable Mother, nor can the Mother ignore her child.

In the spirit of Him who said, "Not as the world