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fession of faith showed an increase of six thousand over that of the year before. This was not a Day of Pentecost in every Congregational church, but it was a long and a sure step in the right direction. "Follow Me," the Master said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

THE TRAINING of LEADERS

In the third place the question of competent leadership is of primary importance in the growth of the Kingdom. You might almost say that in the last analysis the problem of the average church lies in the securing of the right sort of leader. Can the minister stand up on his two feet and preach? Can he preach in such a way that people will come to hear him? Can he enrich and strengthen the inner lives of Christians and win to Christ those who stand without? Can he organize and direct the Christian impulse thus developed in such forms of action as to make his church a power for good in the community life? Can he render in his personal contacts that subtle ministry to the souls of men which will bind them to him and to the cause he represents? If the man who above all others is responsible for the institution called "the Church," becomes that type of man, then the interests of Christ's Kingdom in that community will advance. The recruiting and training of competent leaders is therefore of great moment.

Some of us who are here as members of this Council are engaged in the task of theological education. We are conscious of our limitations. If we should chance to forget them for an hour some critic, friendly or otherwise, would be sure to recall us to a sense of our shortcomings.

We are trying to do our work as best we may, but we constantly crave the closer fellowship and the more effective coöperation of you who are pastors and parents. We call upon you here and now to send us from your altars and from your firesides the best you breed to be trained for the service of God in the Christian ministry. We have in our Divinity Schools an encouraging amount of splendid material in the student body, but we have not enough of that sort of material to really show you what we can do. We could upon occasion if we were hard put, make a silk purse

out of a sow's ear. It is one of the glories of our Christian religion that it does make silk purses out of sows' ears. But if you would only send us year by year a larger supply of the sort of material we crave, young men of sound health and commonsense, men of warm sympathies and with vigorous minds, men of genuine integrity and with spiritual enthusiasm, we would send you back such a supply of silk purses as would cause your hearts to rejoice.

We ought to have an abundant supply of the firstlings of the flock. The very title of the pastor's calling is an honor that never fades. In the common speech of men his vocation is, "The Ministry." The spirit of service is caught and held by great-souled men in every legitimate calling, but ours remains preeminently, The Ministry. What an honor to have one's vocation thus singled out for this high distinction!

And the need at this point is in itself a clarion call for young men of the highest type to enter the ministry. High rewards are being won by men at the bar and in medicine, in the work of education and by the engineer, in business and in all the trades. And into these callings strong men are going in such numbers that no cry of need comes back. Did you ever hear of a Bar Association taking steps to increase the number of lawyers? When you ride through the streets and see the doctors' signs, have you any fear that there will not be enough of them to take care of the sick? But from every branch of the church, and from every state in the Union there comes a cry for more young men of the right sort to be trained for that efficient spiritual leadership which the world so sorely needs.

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY OF THE MINISTRY

The opportunities were never so great. There is liberty of thought-in some branch of the Christian church every man with a message may find his chance to deliver it untrammeled. The people are waiting eagerly to have this literature of the Bible interpreted to them aright and made a power in their lives as it was a power in the life of generations now gone. There is a steady call for men who have some genuine knowledge of industrial conditions and who are able to indicate the way of advance in putting the Ser

mon on the Mount into practice. There is a constant demand for men who can uncover the deeper sources of motive and of stimulus, making righteousness seem everlastingly worth while. There is great need of men who know something of child life and the psychology of religious experience, who know how spiritual reactions can be secured and how they can best be utilized in character-building. What more do you want for the investment of the highest, finest, fullest measure of ability that God ever gives to an individual soul?

I am confident that the training given to young men for this service in all our Divinity Schools has become less technical and more vital. We are gradually recovering from that idolatrous reverence for a certain type of scholarship which has been an incubus upon our church life. We have had foisted upon us in the past a mass of destructive Biblical criticism and of strained religious interpretation which did not make men wise unto salvation nor furnish them thoroughly for any good work. We are all profoundly grateful for better methods of Bible study and for the immense contributions made to theological science by serious and thorough scholarship. But the contributions made by some of those specialists were so confusing, so lacking in consistency, so benumbing in their effect upon Christian devotion and so short-lived in their hold upon the intelligence or the conscience of Christendom as to rob them of any positive value in the development of religious life. On every side there is a strong reaction against that sort of theological learning.

The narrow-minded specialist may dig away industriously in his own little groove, not to say grave; he may patiently gather a mass of real and of alleged facts; but if he fails to see his facts in their wider, human relations, if he fails to interpret his facts in their bearing on human well-being, then he is not the man to be set for the training of young men who are to be prophets. He is possessed of information which filleth up rather than of knowledge which buildeth up. For several decades now Germany for example has had a group of philosophers preaching the gospel of force, the will to power, and openly deriding the Christian ethic. She has also had groups of theological professors busily engaged in telling the world that the statements of the New

Testament were for the most part false. And one of the results of that course of action can be seen at this hour in the lowered spiritual tone of an Empire.

THE MAIN OFFICE OF EDUCATION

The great main office of education is to make men alive. Alive at more points, alive on higher levels, alive in more interesting and useful ways! Alive all the way up, and all the way down, and all the way in! Alive in their hearts. with noble sentiments and moral enthusiasms as well as in their heads! Alive in their souls with some genuine personal grasp of the eternal verities as well as in their hands! The school that knows its business faces each generation saying, "I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. This know and thou shalt live." The school must show itself the willing and the competent servant of life at its best. This principle holds true everywhere but it has peculiar force when applied to those schools which train men to be preachers and pastors in the church of God. We crave your help in that hard task. When our Lord was here we read that on one occasion "he continued all night in prayer." At daybreak he chose twelve young men to be Apostles. They were to spend three years with him in mental discipline and in spiritual preparation for their work of religious leadership. There were only a dozen of them — it was not a large entering class—but one of the group bore the name of Peter and another permanently honored the name of John. They were all destined to sit on thrones of usefulness judging the tribes of Israel. When you enter the city of God you will find the names of those twelve Apostles written on the foundation stones.

He continued all night in prayer and then did that. Go thou and do likewise! Take upon your own prayerful heart afresh an added sense of obligation touching this vital interest. The selecting and the securing of the right sort of young men to be trained for spiritual leadership cannot be left to some stray breeze which may chance to blow where it listeth at Northfield or at Lake Geneva. It cannot be left to the unaided, unguided impulses of the boys themselves who see as yet through a glass darkly. It can only be

accomplished by the serious, tender concern and the high resolve of parents and pastors intent upon facing the best material they have toward that calling which is preëminently "The Ministry."

THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS IN RELIGION

The social emphasis in religion grows firmer year by year and more intelligent. There are two great commandments -on these hang all that the prophets have been able to say touching the interests of character. The first has to do mainly with the development of a perpendicular piety. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and strength." The second is like unto it—it has to do with the expression of that piety in those horizontal relations which make up our social life. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The generation to which we belong has taken this second command seriously and has endeavored to give expression to its broader implications.

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The word "social" is being overworked perhaps it had to be overworked at first to break up the fallow 'ground of a long-lying contented individualism. And the phrase is often used lightly and unadvisedly. But social service does not mean merely an extra hod of coal for the poor widow to help her through the winter, or another order of groceries for the family whose prayer for daily bread has not been answered by the existing industrial arrangements. The social emphasis in religion means the Christianizing of the entire social order. And the huge task of Christianizing our social order means the introduction of a more democratic spirit into the control of all those great industries. They exist primarily not to make money, nor to make things, but to make manhood and womanhood for all those whose lives are bound up with the enterprise. If they fail here, they fail utterly. The chief end of man according to the Catechism and according to our own consciences is not to make money, but to glorify God and to become fit to enjoy Him forever. And the rule of that more democratic spirit is imperative if these huge industries are to conserve and develop the human values at stake.

The idea of social Christianity means a much more equi

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