stick to his text and limit himself to an other-worldly and harmless faith. And yet the most urgent need in our industrial life is just that voice of the prophet to declare that men stand above merchandise and that the first rule for business is righteousness and not profit. And here are those who speak in the name of the state, who place above religion as above all else a patriotism which puts conscience second and calls out, "My country, right or wrong." The prophets of old rebuked iniquity though it sat upon the throne. Is the church to lose that high calling because power belongs now to president or prime minister, to congress or parliament, or even because it speaks with the voice of the political majority? But that means for the church interpretation and not merely declaration. It is not enough to speak the name of God; the church must show what the spirit of Christ as the revelation of God demands in all the varied life of our day.

And, finally, the church must continue in its task of service. That theme hardly needs elaboration, but the summons is vital. God has chosen that his kingdom should come through the service of men. And how great that service is we are just beginning to see. The time of easy optimism is gone. It will take all the resources of Christian devotion joined in such cooperation as has not yet been achieved to meet the need.

THE CONSUMMATION

There are some to whom this conception of a growing kingdom of God is unsatisfactory because it seems so vague. Premillennialism is so much more definite and assured. It sets a period. It declares that at a definite

time there will be a final and full consummation and then an absolute reign of righteousness and peace. We have seen the defects of this promise. Its appeal to an external and irresistible force is really a confession of bankruptcy; it is giving up the hope of a spiritual-moral triumph, for physical means can only establish physical results. Its limitations come from its source in the old Jewish conception: destroy the enemy and put the saints in power.

It is a clear gain that we have made, that we see what the rule of God in the world involves. When we have won men to an acceptance of Christ, the process is just begun. Who can look within his own life and not realize the greatness of the enterprise as man pursues the flying goal whose achievement is nothing less than the character that was in Jesus Christ? What, then, does it mean to make a Christian race, to mold all the complex life of our human kind in work and play and commerce and state and international relation until it becomes the instrument of the service of man and the expression of the spirit of Christ!

But we should not regard this as an endless task before which to stand disheartened. Rather it is the high calling of the race to which for centuries to come men may give their best thought and prayer and love and devotion. This is the real temple of God to which we are to look forward, this structure in which all the races shall yet be united in brotherhood, in which all classes shall cooperate in unity, in which each shall offer his gifts for all and in turn receive from the common wealth such riches as only the life of the whole can bring.

But what of progress? Are we going ahead at all?

Not so rapidly certainly as some men thought a few years ago, especially those who did not see that a swift increase in material possession and technical skill might simply cover an inner poverty. And yet the advance is clear. Follow it through the centuries. Watch the change that has taken place in government, the whole progress of democracy. Consider the difference in the status of woman and childhood. Note the disappearance of slavery and serfdom and the changed conditions of the workingman. And if we move thus by centuries, the same advance is evident in the forces of organized religion.

But what shall we say as we turn to our own disordered time, to the "collapse of civilization" in the World War and the turmoil that fills the industrial world to-day? Well, the World War was not a collapse of civilization; it was the collapse of a system of international relations that had too long controlled the leaders of the nationsthe pagan system of national selfishness, relying upon brute force with the aid of that intrigue which men called diplomacy. The first great step in any advance is a vision and an awakening. To many men of vision the outcome of the great war has been a bitter disappointment. We set forth noble ideals. With those that fought and those that toiled at home there was splendid devotion. Among the allied powers of the west there was a cooperation for a common end such as was never seen before. And then Versailles followed, and the same old selfish strife for national advantage with a treatment of the foe that showed little concern for the better world that was to be. But one gain has been made. The whole world has heard the ideals of a new order expressed

by far-seeing leaders like President Wilson and General Smuts. It has seen them received with enthusiasm by the multitudes, and reasserted by great organizations like the British Labor Party even when the leaders of their own government had in practice renounced them. Self-determination for peoples, an end to the mperialistic seizure and barter of lands and peoples, an end to secret diplomacy and selfish alliances and balances of power which are nothing but war in suspense, the cooperation of nations to displace the old isolation and selfishness, security and justice for the least of peoples as for the greatest-these were some of the ideals.

Turn to the world of industry, and back of its unrest you will find as one cause the liberation of other and similar ideals. Manhood is above material things, the supreme concern of government is not privilege but people, democracy belongs in industry and not merely in politics, the possession of the ballot cannot compensate for the failure of equal opportunity, the motive of service must displace the motive of gain and the method of cooperation must take the place of that of strifethese ideals too have found expression in these last years as never before. The leaders of the Western peoples raised the war cry of democracy in order to summon people to the standards in a great conflict. But it is easier to start men to thinking than to stop them; and men have been searching the broad meanings of democracy and carrying its ideals to other fields.

The ideals, it is quite true, seem many of them farther from realization than ever before. In international life the old men who are in power are following largely the old ways. In society a wave of reactionism marks one

extreme and an appeal to violence the other. But why be surprised at all this? Ideals were never achieved in a day, and it will take long generations to work these out. But the ideals have been set forth, and that is the first great step. In them is "the promise and potency" of the life that is to be. It is the spirit of Jesus in application to life's great questions that is working in these ideals. And they will never die. Institutions change slowly but the ferment of these truths will remain in the minds of the masses of men. They will not lose them even if some who enunciate them prove untrue. That is the great advance that has been made in these years toward a world that shall be more just, more kind, more brotherly; we have seen something of the real issue and of the ideals that must prevail. And not the least signal evidence on this point is the series of declarations on economic as on international questions that have come from the great Christian bodies of England and America, declarations as remarkable for their vision and courage as for their agreement.

But who can tell how much more swiftly the progress may come in the years ahead? There is one instrument of change to whose importance society, and especially the church, is just beginning to awaken. That is education. We know now that the world of to-morrow must first live in the minds of the children of to-day. Are we convinced that if we can put the ideal into the children of to-day, the world of to-morrow will be different? It surely is not necessary to say that “education" as here used does not mean communicating facts or imparting technical skill. It does mean the molding of mind and heart through ideals that are given oppor