from outgrown ideas to needless sectarian divisions, which are no longer useful. They serve no purpose in enriching the spiritual life of men and in spreading the Kingdom of God. If the Master in person were here, he would visit on them the same treatment which he visited on the Sabbath and on the temple. And for all men of forward-looking spirit it means courage to perceive that the universe itself conspires against these unserviceable things. When any custom once useful loses its function, the very stars in heaven fight with us against that Sisera.

Alike the spirit of the Master, therefore, and the special call of our times urge on Christians the aspect of the Gospel which we have set ourselves to study. The passing generations have their various needs, and under the urgency of changing circumstances, the manifold aspects of the Christian faith, one by one, are lifted to the front. Now this truth is specially demanded, now that duty must be specially enforced. In our day, for the sake of the integrity of Christian character, the progress of the Christian Church, and the salvation of the world, we need a new hatred of uselessness in institutions and persons, and a new baptism of the spirit of sacrificial and effective service.

V

In particular, as Christians and churchmen we well may give thought to the necessary extension of the idea of Christian service with which our times manifestly face us. We are here not simply to save people out of the world but to save the world. A lamentable feud exists between the partisans of personal and social Christianity. I believe in personal Christianity, says one. I believe in preaching the Gospel of Jesus to individuals. The sole business of the Church is to proclaim the evangel of divine forgiveness and regeneration until those who accept it are soundly saved and inwardly transformed. On the other side another cries: I believe in social Christianity. I seek the application of the principles of Jesus to our economic and international order. I am a patriot for the Kingdom of God upon the earth, and only as our social wrongs are righted does that Kingdom come. So do the devotees of personal and social Christianity confront each other.

The dilemma, however, on which they impale themselves is false. The full truth, as so often happens, flies like a bird with two wings, and maimed in either by our partial thinking it flutters a crippled creature on the ground. The partisans of individual Christianity are right in this: the Christian Gospel seeks the redemption of personality. Men and women are the infinitely valuable children of God. Christianity ardently desires to save them from every enemy that cripples and enslaves them, to unfold their possibilities, to lead them out into spiritual triumph and abundant life. And the partisans of social Christianity are right in this: that you cannot really be in earnest about saving personality and still neglect the social life from which personality springs and by which it is tremendously affected. Those who plead for the personal evangel against social reformation contradict themselves.

To say that we have Christian love for children, while we are careless of the conditions of child labor that deaden and damn the souls of children before they are old enough to know their hapless plight; to say that we long to save men from the power of lust, when we placidly allow city officials to grow rich on the gains of lust, commercially organized and publicly flaunted; to say that we desire personality redeemed, while we passively let disease and poverty beat men in body and in soul, and unstirred see families live in hovels where all reticence and modesty are made impossible and vice grows rank; to say that we long to lead men into abundant life, while we hear unmoved of tens of thousands of men in one American corporation who work twelve hours a day, seven days a week; to say that we want Christ to triumph in the spirits of all men, while we let international relationships remain un-Christianized, with their inevitable issue in bitterness and hatred and all the ugly tempers that are the spawn of war-what is all this but sheer hypocrisy?

To be sure, some of the most thrilling stories of Christian victory concern folk touched to fine issues by Christ's Gospel, who came up out of the lowest conditions to spiritual triumph. So, though a plank thrown on the sward have but a single nail hole in it, some aspiring blade of grass will find it and come up from the obscurity and darkness underneath to rejoice in the splendor of the sun. But one who sees, with understanding eyes, that miracle of individual triumph, can

not be content. Consider all the dead and withered grass for which no way of escape was found! So blighting conditions lie across the lives of millions of folk today alike in heathendom and Christendom. Here and there some few break through to liberty. But the crushed multitudes-how can a disciple of Jesus think of them with equanimity? Men are not disembodied spirits. They are tremendously moved and molded by the environment in which they live. No one can hope to save the world without saving men; but neither can one hope to save men without saving the world. The two involve each other; they are one. The Church's best gift to mankind is redeemed personality; but redeemed personality's best gift to mankind is a better world, more fit to be a home for the family of God. He who is a partisan for either of these avenues of service against the other is a fair target for that newly discovered saying of our Lord: "Thou hearest with one ear, but the other thou hast closed."

Too long have many Christians been content with the ideal of negative unworldliness. The true antidote for worldliness is not unworldliness alone, but better-worldliness. Worldliness says, Indulge as you will in drink; unworldliness says, Be a teetotaler; better-worldliness says, The whole accursed liquor traffic can be stopped. Worldliness says, Salacious drama is a permissible delight; unworldliness says, The theater is utterly taboo; better-worldliness says, The recreation of the people must be redeemed to decency and worth. Worldliness says, Play politics according to the current rules of the game; unworldliness says, Eschew politics altogether; better-worldliness says, The State can be as Christian as a man and Christian men must make it so. Worldliness says, Business is a selfish conflict for revenue only; unworldliness says, Seek not to be rich; better-worldliness says, Business is an indispensable service to mankind, and if it be organized and fairly run for man's sake and not for money only, it can be made as Christian as a church. Worldliness says, When war comes, fight; unworldliness says, No Christian must ever fight at all; better-worldliness says, International anarchy is a relic of barbarism and if Christian folk will seriously set themselves to organize the good will of the world, it can be stopped. In a word, worldliness says, Let the world be; unworldliness says, Come out from the world; better-worldliness says, In God's name, save the world!

The great days of the Church come when that full scope of service is accepted as the Christian task. When Carey gives the Bible in translation to millions of people; when Livingstone throws wide the doorways of a new continent to civilization; when Paton lays the foundation of a new social order in the Hebrides; when Hamlin drives the opening wedge of Christian civilization into Constantinople-then come the great days of the Church. When of William Wilberforce's fight against the slave traffic it can be said: “The clergy to a man are favorable to the cause" and "the people have taken up the matter in the view of duty and religion, and do not inquire what any man or set of men think of it," then come great days to the Church. For great days never can come to the Church, except as she shares the spirit of her Lord, and her Lord's demand was not simply new men in an old world but a new world to house new men.

CHAPTER III

The Strong and the Weak

DAILY READINGS

We are to consider this week the problem created by human inequality. Where some are by nature and privilege more highly endowed than others, Christianity at once insists on the use of the superior strength in service. In our daily readings we shall endeavor to see the dangers associated with the possession of superior strength, if this Christian principle is not observed.

Third Week, First Day

Paul from his prison writes to his friends at Philippi as follows:

But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have revived your thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.-Phil. 4:10-13.

One half of that passage is not at all surprising. I know how to be abased; I know how to be hungry; I know how to be in want-how familiar that testimony is, from those who have learned from Christ faith, steadiness, and overcoming power in times of hardship! But the other half of the passage is decidedly unusual. "I know how to abound"; Paul writes as though that were a difficult affair. "I know how to be filled," he says, "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me." Paul evidently feels that dealing with abundance is quite as difficult as dealing with abasement. It is as though