said: "He lifted us through ten centuries of civilization in one fouryear's term.''

If we were to ask what were the greatest and most far-reaching acts of this man's life the answer would probably be his speech at Gettysburg, or the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation. But these events came after Bull Run, after Chancelorsville, after the slaughter at Antietam, when the nation staggered and the Union army seemed beaten at every turn; and when the gloom of night had settled over the great North; and when men in high places were denouncing the President, and some of the great northern newspapers were writing him down worse than a failure; and when the confidence of the North was strained well nigh to the breaking point. There was no Gettysburg, no speech and no Emancipation Proclamation to inspire confidence and hope. Years before, when a clerk in a country store, he had walked seven miles to return six cents due an old woman, the result of a mistake in making change, and the country knew it, and again, when the postoffice at New Salem, of which he was the keeper, had been closed, and an officer of the government came to demand of him $17.34, which the government had a right to assume had been stolen, Mr. Lincoln went to his trunk, opened it and fished out a cotton poke from a remote corner, and pouring the coin upon the table, said: "Here is your $17.34, Mr. Officer, I never spend anybody's money but my own." In the midst of the darkness and gloom of those unfortunate days the common people who had read these incidents again and again, said: "We don't know why our armies are beaten; we don't know why our great men are criticising the President, but we do know that Old Abe is honest."'

It is possible to see over a very large field through a very small crack in the fence, and these incidents in the early manhood of the life of Lincoln were the small cracks that permitted them to rightly measure the great life.

It will not be denied that too long the burden of the church rested upon the shoulders of the womanhood of the church. Men's clubs and brotherhoods are an effort to bring the manhood of the church up to the side of the womanhood in the labor and responsibility of conducting the church. For a long time the women represented in the missionary work of the Church the only department that had developed a systematic brand of missionary giving. The balance of the Church depended upon the special appeals from the pulpit to move them to a spirit of liberality. The present Men's Missionary movement that is sweeping over the country is an effort to bring the manhood of the Church up to the

standard of the womanhood of the Church in systematic missionary giv ing. For more than a quarter of a century the Woman's Christian Temperance Union practically stood alone in the systematic agitation of the liquor cause. Most of the Church had gone into a sort of inocuous desuetude on this issue, and some of the Church is still there, but seventeen years ago the Anti-Saloon League came into existence, interdenominational and omni-partisan, in an effort to organize and bring the manhood of the country up to the side of the womanhood of the country in a well-developed warfare against the home-wrecking liquor traffic.

Now, I can appreciate that when this big-footed, awkward-handed, one-gallosed youth came blundering into a well-ordered household, upsetting the furniture and scattering the bric-a-brac, it was not just what they had hoped it might be. Some even doubted if it were a legitimate member of the household at all. It was even called upon to prove its parentage in some quarters. They had prayed long and earnestly that God would wake the manhood of the country and send them to the rescue. It was a great shock to our sensitive nerves, when, after prolonged prayer and much scolding, God answered through a mentally unbalanced old woman yonder in Kansas. To her dying day she poured anathemas upon the Anti-Saloon League and on its methods, but we have freely forgiven her for all that; for with a fifty-cent hatchet she smashed her way into the conscience of a great commonwealth and compelled the nation to look at the inherent lawlessness of the liquor traffic.

This big-footed Anti-Saloon League youth came upon the scene as the result of prayer, but not exactly according to the formula of the prayer, but it is here, a little awkward at times, but tremendously in earnest. It is too full of the health of youth to be ill-natured. It is not hunting opportunities to quarrel, but opportunities to pound the liquor traffic. It thrives either by pounding or being pounded. The one gives it moral muscle, the other gives it moral character.

Talmadge once said: "An old villain is hard to reform. Is it not time we go out of the old villain business by teaching the children of the Republic to stay put?

I commend to you the Lincoln pledge, with its patriotic setting as especially fitting; and peculiarly so in the South country, where the great names of Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Gordon and Grady and Galloway can be added, but I commend to you every pledge of every church and every temperance society with or without a time limit, the same to be taken early and often. Physicians tell us that smallpox as

a disease is running out as a result of persistent vaccination. Isn't it about time to begin in dead earnest a nation-wide vaccination against villainy?

Without any noise or special announcement, 200 earnest men and women gathered in a San Francisco conference, for a plain and frank discussion of a topic which had made its way for the first time into an International Sunday-school Convention program. This matter has been shunned all too long by the home, the school, the press and the church. The recent and wonderful awakening on the purity question is prophetic of a better day, and God has thrust the Sunday-school into this work at the psychological moment. This quiet and unheralded conference led to action which no one may estimate.

History.

Mr. E. K. Warren introduced the subject by telling how five years ago he listened to a lecture which revealed such startling conditions, that he secured the lecturer for the State Sunday-school Convention, where 500 men were profoundly impressed with these revelations. The result was the conviction of the absolute necessity of a general education on sex matters. To aid in a proper enlightenment, Michigan or ganized the first Sunday-school Purity Department. During the four years timid workers have been encouraged, teachers have been led to

teach, pastors to preach, lectures have been given, literature distributed, and much personal work done. Michigan believes that God led in this new departure, that He is blessing these efforts, and that such efforts should be put forth in every State.

The Need.

Mr. E. K. Mohr, the Superintendent of the Michigan purity work, was then introduced and took charge of the conference. To show the need of such work the statements were made, that in purity we have the reform of reforms; that there is nothing which entails so much misery on the human race as the sin of impurity, and there is no happiness so great as the happiness of a pure heart in a clean body; that the teaching of the street and the playground is universal, uncontrollable, incorrect and degrading, and this teaching must be anticipated and neutralized by right teaching; also that the home, which is God's first and holiest school," is not ready and not willing to give the needed instruction, and so the Sunday-school must help in the work.

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A Large Place.

The following reasons were given indicating the place and the plan of such Sunday-school endeavor:

1. As purity is largely and essentially a moral question, the Sundayschool injecting into it the tremendous moral force of childhood and of religious education, marks an epoch in the fight for a white life.

2. As the text book of the Sunday-school places a strong emphasis on purity, the Bible teacher must "stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name. ""

3. Next to the home the Sunday-school comes nearest to our community life with a close, sympathethic, heart touch, and therefore occupies a strategic place in this teaching.

4. In every conflict between the dark and the light, between the wrong and the right, that side wins the victory, which wins the children. Childhood is the key to our problems and the Sunday-school has its hand on that key.

5. It is true now that "my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" but knowledge in itself will not save. The positive evil must be driven out by the positive good. The church has this winning message: The Evangel of a Savior will free the slave of vice. "And we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.''

6. Of necessity, our Sunday-school Purity Work must be educational