is necessary and that you have already handed in the names of fifty." He said, "I have been preaching to my people for a number of years in this same church, and this visitation has taught me a lesson. I have been saying, 'Be good and do good,' and they have looked up at me and said in response by their looks, 'What is it to be good and what is it to do good?' Then I would look back at them and say, 'Look at this great crowd around our church and their children not in any Sunday-school; go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in.' This is the way I have been working. But the Visitation Committee comes along and says, 'On a particular afternoon between the hours of two and five o'clock we want thirty-five visitors from your church to go out and do a particular thing, which is practically only one thing that afternoon, and then we want them to come back with that one thing done and turn in their reports, and when they get back here we will begin a work at some other definite thing,' and the thing was so definite that it appealed to our business men and some of the choicest people in my church, whom I never dreamed I could draft into the work, volunteered to go out."

There are people in our churches who will do work if we give them specific things to do, not a lot of things all at once, but one thing at a time.

DR. DILLE: I wish we could have some light on the work of decision day.

REV. DR. TROXON: We have been observing the first Sunday in each month as Decision Day for two years. When we first began it we had as many as twenty children come up and take a stand for Christ. I know our method is not in accordance with the methods of the advanced Sunday-school teachers who do not think it is wise to present this matter of decision publicly to the children in the mass. We talk these things over at our Sunday-school board. We take up those members of the classes who are not Christians and have not yet taken a stand, and we say to their teachers: "Cannot you persuade those who are in your class that are not yet Christians to stand at the next Decision Day?" This custom has been very efficient in my church and Sunday-school. At the present time we do not have very many except in the older classes who have not already decided for Christ and they have made their decision in the Sunday-school. I usually make the presentation myself, and I take the subject-matter out of the Sunday-school lesson, and I say, "Those who want to make a decision for Christ, stand," and we usually have somebody stand, and I always ask them to come down front and either kneel or stand for

a word of prayer, and there I dedicate them to God. I tell them that it is not joining the church, but I put their names on a list and I give them to understand that the only step they can now take is to join the church.

REV. DR. BAKER: I meet with my teachers a number of weeks before we have Decision Day and we talk it over very clearly. I want them to steer clear of superficial work. I have them make a list out for me of those who are members of the church and those who are not, and I supply them with a card on which the names of the scholars will be signed and also a place for the name of the teacher. These cards are in duplicate, one they give to the teacher and one they take home. For several weeks the teachers talk with their scholars, and in the Sundayschool I talk in as plain and brotherly a way as I can and tell the story, and I do not ask for a public demonstration there, but the teachers talk to the scholars, and before the session is over we ask those who have signed these cards to present themselves with the teacher and let the pastor or the Sunday-school superintendent greet them, and through the week I go personally to the homes and get the cooperation of the parents, and I go around in the Sunday-school and sit down in this class and that class and it is arranged so I can have a little quiet talk with the scholars. In this way we avoid superficial work.

MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESSES

THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE

REV. WILLIAM RADER, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

When Napoleon drew his army up under the pyramids of Egypt he said: "Forty centuries look down upon us. Three hundred years lighted up by the English Bible look down upon us tonight. In the light of that lamp, let us reverently remember the men who wrung from other languages the Bible of the English-speaking world.

Caedmon, the monk; the venerable Bede; John Wycliffe, "Father of our later English prose, the morning star of the Reformation;" Tindale, characterized by Froude as "a man whose history is lost in his work, and his epitaph is the Reformation."

Let us remember the great Bibles between the age of Coverdale and King James, who in 1611 gave us the most precious memorial of any British king, known as the "King James Version" of the Bible. This Bible belongs to the people; it was as impertinent to monopolize it as it would be to fence in the sea, or claim the Alps for the benefit of a few. The great things belong to the people. The Bible was locked up in the Latin language, and great was the sacrifice of its liberation, but its freedom marked a new era in the history of mankind.

The English Bible lifted England to her rightful place among the great nations of Europe. From it her statesmen drew the law, her prophets their divine fire. For three centuries the English pulpit has been a throne of power, and the voices of her preachers have gone to the uttermost parts of the earth. It was the inspiration of style to the masters of English prose; Addison, Milton, Macaulay and Ruskin are colored by the majestic style of the Bible, while the poets from Chaucer to Kipling have been influenced in thought and expression.

It is a long step from King James to King George V. Today the venerable abbey, consecrated with its holy dead, quivers with the excitement of the magnificent spectacle of the ceremony of coronation, when the archbishop, representing the Church of the English Bible, crowns the King of England. That was a small England of James, but today it fulfills the noble apostrophe which our own American Webster pronounced: "The British Empire, whose morning drum-beat, rising with

the sun, and keeping company with the hours, encircles the earth with the unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."

America owes her Protestant principles and her democratic institu tions to the English Bible. Andrew Jackson said: "That Book is the rock upon which our Republic rests.'' General Grant called it "the sheet anchor to our liberties.''

Our later statesmen have caught the spirit of its power. William Jennings Bryan said: "No matter from what standpoint we view it, or by what standard we measure it, the Bible merits the title The Book of Books.'', Roosevelt recently spoke to more people on the Bible than

has any other living man.

It was a great day in the world's history when men of the Bible spoke to us in English; when Moses, without sacrificing his Jewish blood, addressed us in our own tongue; and when the tongue of the Prophets was translated into the vernacular. Greater still the hour when the people of the New Testament made themselves understood in a language common to our own lips and Jesus Christ was seen through English eyes.

Since then the Bible has been discovering us, and we believe it, as Coleridge says, "Because it finds us."

The lofty ideals which are now determining the destiny of the nations have been drawn from this English Bible: Liberty which comes by truth, brotherhood rooted in the fatherhood of God, righteousness, the union of both, and international peace, the last like fruit from the tree of life.

We rejoice in the prospects for universal peace, and as American citizens are called to follow President Taft in making a permanent peace treaty with Great Britain. It is America's answer to three hundred years of the Bible. "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."'

What then is our duty to the English Bible? I answer: Let us accept it as the permanent cause of our civilization, and not waste time in defending it. He who defends the Bible too willingly doubts it. It needs no defense after these years. Why prop up the sun with a stick of wood? It will not fall. The great masterpieces of Nature and Grace require no defense. Let us do the Bible and carry it into life,—into its politics and government, its storms and sorrows.

The Bible is to use, not to argue upon. Its true theology is found in its utility. It has the quality of endurance. "Though all things pass away, the Word of God shall endure forever and ever.

Its ultimate triumph has been pictured in the glowing imagery of the

Apocalypse of John: "And he was clothed in the vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God, and the armies which were in Heaven followed him upon white horses clothed in fine linen, white and clean; and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; and he hath on his vesture and on his forehead a name written, 'King of Kings and Lord of Lords.'''

THE BIBLE AND THE COMMON PEOPLE

DR. H. M. HAMILL, NASHVILLE, TENN.

It was a saying of Lincoln that "God must have greatly loved the common people, as he made so many of them." Whatever the measure or token of the Creator's love, his one divine Book, in content or intent, was chiefly meant for the common people. Especially was it designed to be the lamp unto their feet, and light unto their paths; their pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night. It was the common people to whom the Hebrew prophet came with burdened heart, declaring the word of the Lord, as it was this same common people who thronged the footsteps of Jesus and heard him gladly. In every age and land, the Bible has found an open heart of belief and an uplifted hand of defense among the plain people. Its steadfast friends throughout the centuries have come, not from the ranks of the aristocracy, but from a simple and cosmopolitan democracy. The noble company of martyrs whose blood has been the seed of the Church has rarely found recruits outside of the common people. If "The steps of kings and priests and statesmen and soldiers," as one has said, "go sounding down the stately corridors of the Bible,'' it is but an incident to the power and presence of the multitudes of lowly worshippers in the templed courts of the Old Testament, or the plain people of the New Testament who waved their palm branches and sang hosannas to the Son of David. I would not wilfully underestimate the contributions of great men to the cause of the Bible, nor draw invidious comparison between the friendship and favor of learned or lowly towards God's great book. Wise men from east and west have brought their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, and have given their purest and best in tribute to the honor and spread of the Bible. Great poets, like Milton and Shakespeare and Longfellow and Lanier, have found their inspiration in the Holy Scriptures. Great orators, like Burke and Webster, have received their afflatus from the matchless imagery and sonorous language of the English Bible. Great soldiers, like Wellington and Gordon and Grant and Lee, have paid tribute by word and deed to