But all mere mechanism will be unavailing unless the Christian citizen learns that it is his business to spend his time and his money as a pledged member of the civic corporation. The public business is his business, and he must attend to it. The interests of the home, the State and the Church are bound up together; no one of them can be preserved without the others. The man who is too busy, too thrifty, or too cowardly to attend to his political duties is an infidel to his domestic and his religious obligations. The business man can doubtless make more money if he keep out of politics. The lover of ease and good society can gratify his tastes by shunning the caucus and the convention, but the man of honor who accepts the protection of a free government must do something more than pay the taxes that he is not shrewd enough to evade, he must be a citizen.

Into the functions of his citizenship and into his relations to civic life the Christian man must go with the voice of Sinai in his ears, and with a sense of doom for himself and for society unless the moral law be made the basis of social activities. It is useless to denounce the wickedness of bribe-takers so long as bribe-givers are regarded as entitled, not only to the high name of Christian, but even to the name of gentleman. It is no uncommon thing in private circles to hear men of high character in personal affairs explain how they thwarted this or that economic iniquity by the purchase of this or that man. And men who would not personally conduct the negotiations contribute largely to funds when they know that they are to be used for corrupt purposes. The same men, after having done what was needed to debauch the weak, will attend public meetings to applaud biting denunciations of official corruption. The public conscience must be quickened to recognize that the bribe-giver, because he is rich and strong, is worse than the bribe-taker, because the latter is poor and weak. There is no law under which we can live so bad, and there is no economic condition so fatal, that we can afford to thwart the threatened evil by polluting the sources of public and private virtue. To those who are not moved by the suggestion of the wickedness of wrong methods to secure right ends, there is left the further consideration of the folly of such methods. The evils grow by what they feed on; the price of security becomes greater and greater; the greed of rascals in office or in power becomes, year by year, more enormous; so that at last such methods cause more troubles than they cure. Every form of blackmail depends upon the weakness of the person

assaulted. It means at last his ruin, whether the blackmailer be a scoundrel in private life or a member of a city council, or a block of depraved voters. Not alone the only right way, but also the only wise way, is to refuse to be frightened into corruption, as you would refuse to be bullied by blackmmail. Until municipal office ceases to be made profitable by corruption from respectable citizens, it is idle to hope for better city government.

I am of those who believe that good government in our cities is possible, because the interests of the vast majority of the people are on that side of the question. What is wanted is proper leadership that shall be at once intelligent and active. We are far beyond the time when it is worth while to urge the good citizen to go to the polls and vote. If he does no more than that, the voting is scarcely worth while. Unfortunately, the children of this world are still wiser than the children of light. They know that the mechanism of representative government can only be controlled by managing it all the way through. In putting up men for office, they want an available man as well as a serviceable man. They study human nature, the currents of popular feeling, and, long before the Christian citizen knows that an election is to be held, they have formed their plans to capture the election. The Christian citizen must learn how to control primaries, how to reach apathetic masses of men, how to organize victory. Citizenship is not a personal obligation; it is a social process. When it is found that for the office of mayor, for example, the voter must choose between two men, who are each unfit, of what avail for the good man to swell with pride because he has voted for the one whom he thinks least objectionable? It ought to be possible to nominate a candidate by petition; but even that is not enough, for the final victory will be to the side that is best managed and best organized. A local politician once said to me: "Oh yes, we may be beaten this time, but we can stand it, for we are in politics all the time; it is our business. But these folks only get mad once in a while." What seems to be wanted in politics is good men who can "stay mad" all the time.

But the Christian citizen, if he is to succeed, must learn that in practical affairs it is impossible to secure the millennium at once. The world is not ready for a millennium, and would not know what to do with it. He must follow the lines of least resistance in his reforms, and make each campaign upon the most effective lines. It is useless to have a splendid invoice of first-class reforms, and no voters behind them. The question for a campaigner is not what

would I do with an ideal city, but what can I do with the kind of voters there are in the town I want to control. There must be a satisfactory answer to such a question for the Christian in politics. The devil in politics is pleased with nothing quite so much as the impracticable saint in politics, who has a firm grip on his ideals and no grip on the people. The development of the perfect government must be by progressive steps, and what step may be taken now must be settled in every place by the local conditions. I have never understood the mathematics of those who say that half an evil is greater than a whole evil, nor the ethics of those critics who never accomplish anything themselves, and yet seek to obstruct the workers who, holding as high a view of what is perfect as they do, have sense enough to take what they can get in an imperfect world.

The relation of the church, the organization for worship, to the present discussion, must be carefully weighed. The church must inspire men with a sense of moral values, and with courage and conscience to seek to realize them in all their activities. The church must insist upon lofty and even impracticable standards for private and public conduct. Men must there be taught to see the difference between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. This view makes it unwise for the church as such to seek leadership in the details of government. The pulpit may well discuss such moral phases of public questions as the minister has time and ability to master, but the pulpit should express itself with reserve upon such questions of policy as fairly divide good men. If the minister feels that he has knowledge and ability for special leadership in any special reform, he should usually seek to find that field of usefulness outside the church, and at other times than those of worship. The church, as such, should not be organized for politics, not even for municipal politics.

But after this is said, the church has still a duty in the field of municipal work that she scarcely has come to understand, and which she is very far from filling. She divides with the school and the press the great work of educating the people for life. As her message is of the highest value, so her failure brings the severest loss. All forces are at work to unify the population of the cities. Transactions of business, the whole complex of economic life, the fellowship of the market place, bring common pursuits and common purposes into the lives of the people. The schools take the young from various homes and of diverse parentage, and more or less per

fectly impress upon them an American image and superscription. The press brings the fact and thought of the hour to bear upon the problem, and furnishes food for conversation, and enlightenment for deeds. But the church must take this population and vitalize it with her imperial message, and make it one in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. The city problem for the churches is chiefly spiritual. It is well that the schools be assisted in education, that the civic forces be aided in charity; but the great work of the church is to arouse men to a sense of sin, and quicken them into repentance. But this involves a very different sense of responsibility than now obtains both among pastors and congregations. Every one will admit that the churches exist for the people and not the people for the churches, but we are in need of some logical applications of that principle. When it is understood and really believed, the benevolent societies will not aid in planting churches in certain localities because they can there easily become self-supporting, but churches will be planted and maintained where they are believed to be most useful. The measure of a successful church will not be the comfort of its congregation, the salary of its minister, or the membership upon its rolls. Is it too much to say that American Christianity needs at this moment a decay of ecclesiasticism, that it may have a revival of religion? The unity of the city must be a new note in our practical religious activities. There must be statesmanship enough to see the problem in its wholeness, and, as no man liveth to himself, so must it be seen that no Christian church can live to itself. When the time comes that all Christian forces in a single denomination can study the problem of a city, and ask what is our joint responsibility, it will be a new and better day. But when the whole Christian force of any city can federate to work and not to waste, it will be a day of social and religious reconstruction.

It may be recognized, then, that the Christian citizen must look upon his church life in a broader way in order to do his duty to society. Instead of feeling that if there is money to pay the bills, if the minister is satisfactory, if the music is good, and if the membership is increasing, that is all that is necessary, he must look upon these things as only the condition and beginning of the obligation of the church to the community. It is the duty of the church to seek and to save that which is lost.

But as the Christian man does not make the church the theatre of his business or of his family duties, neither should he make it the organ of his political obligations. He must also take up the

civic burden, and seek to realize his Christian manhood according to his opportunity in the domain of political affairs. We have special reason for being quickened to a sense of obligation in the momentous problems that are now before the American people. The question of anarchy is a municipal question. It is in the uncleansed slums of the cities that moral pestilence breeds. The criminal anarchist must meet his punishment, and every effort must be made to prevent his crime. But what is it in our cities that furnishes nutriment to this hated growth? Why do germs of foreign hate for law, begotten under despotisms, thrive in the environment of American cities, and grow to malignant stature?

Governments themselves share the responsibility for the existence of anarchy. If a government is inefficient, and fails to perform its normal functions of protection and guidance, it falls into contempt. If a government is unequal in its operation, and rights guaranteed to one class of citizens are denied to another class, it arouses hate. If the officers of a government are purchasable, and the hands that would administer law are unclean, the very foundations of the State rot. Officers of the law, loud in their zeal for public order, and eager to put down violence, are seeking to murder their own offspring, for it is from their union with vice that crime is born.

With these duties, these opportunities, and these dangers before us, the problem must be grappled and its solution secured; and let not doubt or despair feed upon our hearts. That Providence that has been over us in all the years is still the Lord of Hosts and the God of Battles. There will be born a new and wiser Puritanism, that will not be content to seek the cleansing of the human heart alone, but will see that it is the duty of the Christian citizen to seek the cleansing of the city where he lives. The slums will not be dealt with by lonely workers seeking to snatch single brands from the burning, but tides of municipal power will seek to extinguish the flames. The municipal state will not be simply a question of tax rates and low budgets, but it will be an organ for the highest social life. It will mean books and beauty, as well as safety and sidewalks. It will be the orderly expression of the common life, no longer common indeed, but transfigured with the glory of the sons of God. As individual commercialism must be made a slave instead of a master to reach the results of character and conduct, so when the New Jerusalem rests on the sod of earth its gold will be for service beneath our feet, and even its precious jewels will be walls of defence and gates of praise.