Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the church is the great evangel of this salvation. The spirit saith to the church today, “Go ye into all the world and tell men to be free in the name of Jesus Christ." 2. The spirit saith to the churches, "Embody in yourself the social longings of the times." Jesus Christ went about doing good. He was not a socialist, He was a friend to man. The gospel which He proclaimed among men, was a social gospel. He came that men might have abundant life and He sought to teach it to them. His Sermon on the Mount, from introduction to conclusion, bristles with injunction of their program of daily living in recognition of obligation to their fellows and to God. He taught what was a man's duty to his neighbour, to his family, to the state, to business, to wealth, to the poor. He said, "Marriage is a divine institution; that money is a peril and a privilege." He urged to exercise charity of judgment, He said, "Judge no man." He set on foot the principle of brotherhood. He proclaimed the kingdom of God; this kingdom consisted of all those who had the rule of God in their hearts. He gave men to understand that to build a human society with God as the ruling factor and the principle of brotherhood as its expression was the great end of the church, here and now. The spirit saith to the churches today, "In yourself typify the principles of justice and neighbourliness. It is the church's great obligation to stand like a tribune before na tions, parliaments, congresses and to proclaim the necessity after this war of the establishment of a brotherly league among all nations. And to insist on mutual disarmament, save only for police duties. It is the church's rich privilege to lead the way in the understanding of the great causes of dispute between labourers and capitalists, and to insist that the man who works by the sweat of his brow, shall have a just and fair proportion of this world's good things. It is for the church to insist that Christ's little ones shall be taken out of the sweat shops and deafening factories. That was a touching little picture the other day of a man with a mop and a pail in a big business office after hours, who said, to the great captain of industry at the desk, "I have had a letter." "Yes," said the king of finance, "so have I," and then these two, the man of millions and the man with the mop and the pail, became comrades, in reading together the letters from their boys, who were serving as comrades in our armies beyond the seas. Comrades they were, and comrades may they ever be, but why should the man with the mop have so small a portion and the man behind the desk have all? Comrades they are in sacrifice, why should they not be comrades and sharers alike in the service of the world? 3. The spirit saith to the churches, "You shall be an educative force." It shall not suffice that you merely give to men impulse. You also must give to them direction. It is a sad fact that the church for a generation has been sending her sons and daughters to public schools without religion and to state universities, where all the stress was on the intellectual, and many professors were actually hostile to Christianity and to organized religion. Young people were educated out of their childhood's view of religion, and had nothing given in return. They were overflowing with a religious sense of service to the community and to the state, but had never been taught to understand that this very spirit of service is the genius of Christianity. One recently maintained that intellectualism had had its day. That with the dawning of this new era of democracy, the laying of our great stress would not be on the few research scholars and the coddling of the great universities, but rather would it be on the problem of giving right ideals to the millions of boys and girls, who pass through the ranks of the common schools, and never get beyond. It is peculiarly the duty of the church today to face this problem of educating the young with a right understanding of Christian principles and the Christian program. College young people ought to be given to understand that Christianity is simply the applied doctrine of loyalty which Professor Royce had been championing. The church must educate the boys and girls in the Bible, in Christian ideals, missionary biographies and in the problems of today from a Christian standpoint. The church as an educational force must lay her stress on the building up of real boyhood and girlhood, through boy scout organizations, boys' clubs, girls' clubs and gymnasium classes. The church as an educational agency, besides the regular Sunday services, should have open forums of discussion on week days, when experts, in various realms, could give lectures and addresses which would educate the people to a right understanding of the problems of the day. The church as an educational agency should have a well-trained teaching force for Sunday School, and there should be well-planned and well-attended mission study classes, with the tremendously interesting books which are now being prepared on the world of today, as the basis of instruction. Churches, through the Daily Vacation Bible Schools, have worked wonders by the gathering together of hundreds of children each day, giving them instruction in raffia work, common manual training and the Bible. The church as an educational agency, shall be enabled to give to the people a right understanding of community problems and social responsibility. The understanding of the viewpoint of the other man is an absolute essential to a happy bringing in of an age of democratic responsibility. Social justice cannot be achieved by the waving of a magician's wand. Anthony Trollope, in " The Warden," has demonstrated this. 4. The spirit saith to the churches, "If you would wield a telling force in the world today, you must be a united church." A divided church is a disgrace to Christendom. It is an economic waste, it is a Christian contradiction, it is contrary to the expressed prayer of the founder of the Church. His last prayer was that they all might be one, even as He was one with the Father. It is a happy augury that denominationalism does not play a very large part in America today, yet it still plays too large a part. There are 165 religious denominations in the United States. There are fifteen kinds of Baptists, twenty-one kinds of Lutherans, twelve kinds of Presbyterians, fifteen kinds of Methodists. There is one religious need, one religious aspiration; it is the desire to simplify and intensify man's religious aspirations with the Eternal Power. The world is in the melting pot. The church of today is charged with the solemn privilege of moulding the world of tomorrow. God grant that with the spiritual passion of the new evangelism, with social sympathy and compassion for the longings of the people, with educative plan and united front, the church of Christ shall make the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ. "Lead on, O King Eternal, The day of march has come; |