problem forced itself upon us with peculiar urgency. The Christian nations were to be held at their best, ancient peoples and civilizations were to be won, and the backward and disheartened races were to be comforted and quickened. Some of the special tasks like missions, were the sacred bequests of preceding generations. We could not abandon the responsibilities of which we had been put in trust. But other problems and opportunities were our own. How have we treated these? Have we shown insight, invention. sympathy, or have we been remiss at any one or all of these points? One of the most striking exhibitions of timely action on the part of this or any generation has been seen in the treatment of the younger life of the church. The movement which had its rise in this city, but which has found its way round the world, is an example at once of Christian insight, invention, and sympathy. It represents that rare combination of responsibility and freedom which insures the safe and happy guidance of childhood into the opening years of greater freedom and responsibility. And the spirit which has characterized this movement has marked the whole educational work of the generation. It is to be acknowledged with profound gratitude that the young men of the great Christian peoples are accessible to Christian ideals and Christian incentives. The stamp of infidelity and unbelief does not rest upon any of them. On the other hand, it is doubtful if the church of any generation has allowed so large a section of the various Christianized communities to fall out of its grasp and away from its influence as the church of this generation has allowed. The estrangement, if not alienation, of the labor population of the Christian nations is chargeable in no slight degree to the unfaith of the church. Its action in this regard has shown no marks of timeliness, but has been slow, uusympathetic, and unbelieving. And the result of it is the transmission to another generation of a work of recovery, to be wrought out only in patience, in sympathy, and in an enduring faith. The chief problem and opportunity of our time has grown out of the vast changes of population in our time, changes seen in the abandonment of old and the occupation of new localities, and especially in the concentration into cities. The occupation of new territory, whether in the States of this country or in the colonies of England, has been followed almost without exception by timely Christian effort. I do not know how the church could have been more alert or more successful in the care of its own children or in its treatment of the stranger within the land. The Christianity of our generation has not mastered the city. We have invaded it with the church and school and mission and charity, but the city itself, at least of this country, is in no sense a Christian or Christianized institution. Activity of every sort can be put to the credit of our generation. The one word which can express a patient, tireless, unrelenting faith cannot yet be uttered-mastery. The moral fate of every great city hangs in the balance every other year. The answer, then, to the question before us, which I have tried to relate not so much to statistics or to facts about which we might differ in the estimate, as to principles and qualities about which we can agree, is in no sense disheartening, but it does show us the way, I trust, to a deeper and more resolute faith. The intellectual attitude of our generation toward Christianity expressed in hospitality and courage can pass on into the love of God with all the mind. The moral power, of which so much has gone over into secondary and transient uses, can be recovered to ends which are first and everlasting. And the activities, which, though many, are insufficient, can be made to centre in the strength of a masterful faith. The subject itself I have put before you because, whatever may be our interest in the polity and doctrine of our communion, our concern is for the common Christianity. The question of our Lord reaches the whole Christian fellowship. It is a challenge to the heart of this generation of Christian believers. Happy for us if it can force the answer which a like challenge brought out of the heart of the great disciple of the human Christ, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee." If our loyalty be assured, and who may doubt it, we do not lose our place in the succession of faith. But happier far for us, and for those who may come after us, if it shall prove that our generation may yet be able to rise to the utterance of that greater disciple of the spiritual Christ, not seen in the flesh, "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings." No loyalty to Christ is complete which does not carry with it the faith which is determined to "know him." Men speak of the return of Christianity to the type of some past glory. They call again for the Puritan, for Augustine, for the primitive Christian. It is a vain cry. Christianity never returns upon itself. The ages which have brought us hither are not repeti tions of one another. The law of spiritual progress is closely akin to the law of material progress. Material progress assumes the inexhaustible power of nature. The world discovers some new Spiritual progress assumes the secret of its power, and moves on. inexhaustible power of Christianity. spirit of faith. Nothing new is possible to any man who does not believe in the unrevealed powers of nature or of Christianity as he believes in those which have been revealed. The practical future of Christianity depends upon this kind of faith. It is first the faith of the closet and of the study. I am not content that our generation should be known alone for its applied Christianity. May God grant unto us that we be known and remembered for our faith as well as for our works. May he give unto us yet the open vision. May he help us especially in the maintenance of our form of the Christian faith, that we be true to its lofty tradition that they who work must also watch, "watch for more light to break forth out of God's holy Word." ADDRESS BY THE RETIRING MODERATOR. HOW FAR OUR PREACHING OUGHT TO BE MODIFIED TO MEET THE CHANGED CONDITION OF THE TIMES. REV. F. A. NOBLE, D. D., CHICAGO, ILL. It admits of no question that in certain important respects the pulpit of to-day stands face to face with new conditions. Not all things are new; but many old things have passed away, and the attitude of thought toward spiritual, and especially toward supernatural, verities is not what it once was. The amount and kind of knowledge possessed by the people, the problems entertained and discussed by instructed and earnest minds, many of the ends aimed at and many of the methods employed in gaining the ends aimed at by those whose controlling purpose is the secure and universal establishment of the kingdom of righteousness in the world, differentiate the opening years of this New Century from all the years which have preceded it. Whether this change be for the better or the worse, whether it indicates progress or marks a backward movement, is not now in debate. What concerns us is the fact of it, and the fact is everywhere in evidence. As will be seen later on, we have still to encounter many of the difficulties and objections which Paul had to encounter, and we have still to emphasize the same fundamental ideas and needs on which he laid stress; but the atmosphere which he breathed, whether at Jerusalem or Athens or Rome, was not the atmosphere which a modern preacher has to breathe at Berlin and London and New York. Were Wesley and Edwards back again; were Dwight and Finney, instead of being great historic figures, still living personalities aflame with zeal for winning souls to the faith; were Payson once more in his old pulpit in Portland, speaking the words and doing the works and living the life which make his memory ever fragrant and one of the sacred and cherished treasures of the city, each and all of them would succeed abundantly, of course; but it would be in opposition to forms of error and to influences quite unlike those encountered in their day. The changes indicated lie in three directions. In other words, there are three facts of gravest import with which ministers of the gospel in common with all other teachers of religious truth must reckon. These three facts are Higher Criticism, The Theory of Evolution, and Christian Socialism. Higher Criticism is here to stay. The results of the diligent researches and honest investigations of modern scholarship are not to be set aside. Not a few absurd claims have been put forth and not a few fantastic conceits have been aired in the name of scientific study of the Word of God. But real and permanent advance has been registered through these recent studies in our knowledge of the books of the Bible. If the final word has not yet been spoken, as we may be certain it has not, earnest and reverest students are on the way to speaking it; and when the full disclosures are made it will be seen that the popular view of the sources of some of the Scriptures and of the way in which some of the Scriptures were selected and combined would have to be corrected. This correction will necessitate shifting both the form of statement and the ground of defence of the doctrine of inspiration. It will also limit the uses to which specific texts can be put. In the transfer of the trust of men from the old to the new conceptions of the manner in which God in some instances reached human souls with his revelations, there will be a measure of confusion and more or less of loss. Let us hope that in the end, however, there will issue a rational theory of inspiration, and one that will not fall to pieces under intelligent attempts to define it. When the church has once settled down upon a notion of the Bible which is in exact accord with all the facts entering into the history of the Bible and with the contents of the Bible, and with the purpose and spirit of the Bible, then workers in the church, ministerial and lay alike, will have an advantage in setting forth the truths and voicing the demands of the Bible which they never yet have possessed. Evolution is a widely accepted explanation of what we see about us in the various forms of matter and life. Few systems of thought, either in science or morals or philosophy or religion, have such firm grip on the minds of men competent to read and reflect as evolution. It does not matter that evolutionists are often dumb just where we want them to speak, or that they leave ugly gaps in their reasoning, and when asked for more light often answer with a significant shrug of the shoulders, or that some important assertions made by |