show an insolent disregard for international law and for the usages of what has been grimly called "civilized warfare." There has come an awful denial of the dictates of our common humanity by the slaughter of non-combatants in captured cities and in unfortified towns as well as by the drowning of women and children in the sinking of unarmed and unresisting merchant vessels on the high seas. All this done under official sanction, with the hearty approval of the public press, and with an amazing amount of popular acclaim has witnessed to the decay of a great national soul. While we sit here the Christians of Armenia, men, women, children, are being systematically and ruthlessly murdered by one of Germany's precious allies! Has any one heard a word officially uttered by the Government which has the power to stop all that? Has any one seen any official act looking toward the restraint of the Turk in his career of murder and rape?

Have we as representatives of one branch of the Holy Catholic Church anything to say to all that? Have we any duties to perform, duties more sharply defined and become more imperative by this moral crisis? Have we any reply to make to that synoptic gospel of force which has been resolutely preached with a drawn sword in these three brutal injunctions-first, Make up your mind what you want; second, Be sure that you have strength to take it; third, Go after it, even though that means hacking your way through those standards and sanctions hitherto esteemed divine. Have we any sure, clear word of hope and guidance for the heavy-hearted Christians who walk and work in the presence of all that and are sad?

I believe that we have something to say. With all that, we, as responsible citizens of the Kingdom of God, are vitally concerned. I am not here to undertake the impossible task of accurately assessing upon each of the warring nations its own just measure of blame for the state of affairs existing in July, 1914. The blame does not belong entirely to one country nor to two, nor to three. It would be in order to call for the reading of the "General Confession." We have all erred and strayed from the way. We have all followed too much the devices and desires of our own selfish hearts

instead of following the dictates of a higher ethic and of a finer statesmanship. And as a result of this moral disobedience the precious accumulations of decades and of centuries, accumulations material and artistic, educational and domestic, human and moral, are being burned up and shot to pieces in a titanic struggle which threatens the very fabric of our civilization.

The Lord is answering our folly and our wickedness out of the whirlwind. He has broken in upon that ignoble peace which over wide areas had come to mean only an undisturbed opportunity for the strong to exploit the infirmities of the weak and to please themselves. He that sitteth in the heavens has laughed at the fancied security of those who, having filled their barns with good things laid up for many years, were giving themselves over to luxury and to spiritual sloth. He who breaks the nations with a rod of iron is showing the costly and the deadly futility of suspicion and hatred as a basis of international life.

THE MORAL AWAKENING

It has been a terrible awakening to many. But the whole world knows tonight that life does not mean the mere feathering of one's nest as rapidly as may be and then giving all the remaining hours to thoughtless amusement. The vast material achievements of the Nineteenth Century showed that the world had learned how to make a living. Here at the beginning of the Twentieth Century these awful events are making plain the fact that it had not learned how to make a life. And in the face of this disaster it is for the churches to mobilize their forces anew, to direct their line of moral attack with more wisdom and to plan for victories which shall carry the banner of Christ far up the slopes.

"New occasions teach new duties." Since those peaceful days at Kansas City two years ago in the last National Council there has come if not a new Heaven, then a new and terrible earth. It has not descended out of Heaven from God. It is not adorned as a bride for her husband it is dressed in a coat of mail. But the coming of that new order has cleared the air. We are not today the bored witnesses of a listless contest between the commonplace vir

tues and the bourgeois vices. We are sternly summoned to a struggle where the lamb makes war with the beast. The middle-ground has vanished and it is Heaven against Hell. In the face of that crisis it is for every man and every church and every body of churches to line up and bring upon the field all the energy, wisdom and conscience they have to further those principles and ideals whose right it is to win.

CHRISTIAN UNITY

The moral bankruptcy in certain quarters and the challenge of a great spiritual crisis.consequent upon this war should bring at once a new and more effective formation of our religious forces. In the face of that vast need why not instantly and everywhere the sinking of petty sectarian prejudice and the taking of a long stride toward Christian unity! We have as yet made little headway in that direction. We have talked about it and about, and ever more came in by the same door we went out. We have passed resolutions like the sands of the sea for multitude and for uselessness. The hand of friendliness has been stretched out, but when the time came for action, some historic bit of ritual, or of polity, or of theological theory stood in the way and the hand was withdrawn. We have never really taken upon our hearts that fundamental duty suggested by Christ when He prayed that we might all be one. Not one in the monotony of a single form of liturgy, not one in the mechanism of a single form of polity, not one in a rigid identity of theological theory, but one in the unity of the spirit and in the bond of peace and in a growing righteousness of life.

We have indeed made some progress toward the knitting up of our Congregational forces into a closer fellowship. The adoption of the new Constitution at Kansas City, the election of a Secretary who should give his main strength to a ministry at large, which would serve as an added bond of unity, and the very acceptable services of that Secretary during these two years have all aided in bringing us together. The precious autonomy of the local church has not been disturbed. The flag of independence still floats from the stately tower of the Old South Church, Boston, and from the humbler meetinghouse of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. But

thousands of other churches, less abundantly endowed, have rejoiced in feeling themselves more truly members of the body of Christ.

We need have no fear of the concentration of power in the person of some autocratic Moderator or Secretary our own sense of humor, and his, would be sufficient enough to save us from any such absurd pretension. But we have suffered in the past from the feebleness which arises from an unnatural isolation of the necessary parts of a living organism. And the essence of what some of the bolder spirits among us have ventured to call "the new Congregationalism" is all contained in the purpose and the possibility of more effective teamwork.

MISSIONARY ACTIVITY

Let me speak first of all touching our duty in the matter of missionary service. When the war began men of vision were not saying, "Four months, or four years, and then the harvest." They were saying, "The fields are white-send forth reapers." The new mood of the far East, the more open mind of the Moslem world, the cry for spiritual help from that darkest of all the continents, all spoke of an opportunity unparalleled in history. The dramatic experiences of John R. Mott in Russia and in Turkey, in Korea and in China; the marvelous response to the evangelistic appeals of Sherwood Eddy throughout the Orient; the great ground swell of popular interest in higher things in all non-Christian lands; the fact that only fourteen years after the Boxer outbreak the Chinese Government allowed the erection of a tabernacle for Christian preaching in the Forbidden City, and officially welcomed to it world-renowned evangelists all this caused our hearts to leap. "Surely," we said, "surely the Kingdom of God is coming with power and great glory." Now lift up your eyes and look! With the irony of fate the strongest Christian nations of earth are taking each other by the throat. Some of them are fiercely chanting "the hymns of hate." Is this the song the angels sang that night in the upper air at Bethlehem? "Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth, good will toward men." Are these favored countries the chosen ambassadors of that

Prince of the four names - Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!

We know today what the Jew felt when the heathen cried, "Where now is thy God?" From great sections of the non-Christian world there comes the sound of mocking, sardonic laughter. "Physician, heal thyself. Cast the beam out of thine own eye, then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye." The present situation will call for a skill and a power in Apologetic which will make the work of Athanasius and of Calvin seem like child's play. We are not now confronted by an intellectual puzzle or by a clever dialectic. We are facing the apparent moral denial of the very tenets of our faith.

The courage of our missionaries in standing to their posts, not knowing what a day might bring, has been magnificent. Missionary service has received fresh honor and fresh lustre through the fine fidelity of those men and women who counted not their lives dear if they might finish the ministry they received of the Lord Jesus. The generous self-sacrifice of Christian people in lands already burdened to the breaking point, by the weight of war, has been beyond all praise. They have found money to give, and time to pray, and love to send to those who represent their own projected interest in the spiritual welfare of their needy fellows. The proclamation of a Holy War by the Sultan of Turkey fell flat. Moslem soldiers by the ten thousand are fighting side by side with their Christian allies in defense of democracy. All this is sublime and in the light of it there surely lies an added obligation at the door of this nation, the strongest, the richest, the freest, of all the neutral nations. What will the Judge of all the earth say to us if we come not up to the help of the Lord against the mighty in this time of stress?

THE PRESENT DUTY OF AMERICA

We must give money, millions of it, to sustain and further the cause of Christ. We must give our young men and maidens, the choicest we have, that the word of Christian interest may be made flesh on all the needy fields of earth. We must show a statesmanlike grasp of facts, of methods, and of policies having to do with the King's business abroad.