"Our little systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be."

Many a man is becoming convinced that knowledge that puffeth up, when untransformed by love that buildeth up, is futile. He finds the scientific materialism which fails to discern that life must be born from above is a hopeless and shallow thing. Professor Münsterberg has voiced the new aspiration in some such words as these: "Our time is tired of mere naturalism and skepticism; throughout our life a new wave is rising, a new longing, a new feeling, a new certainty." Haeckel and men of his type represent a spent force; as was declared by a brilliant Briton, the essential trend of modern science is not atheistic, but theistic. This change is being registered with a special clearness among our students. Not long ago, at a great university in the Middle West, Mr. Mott spoke to four thousand students, following forty group meetings held in the fraternity and boarding houses. At the close, a number of professors and one hundred and sixty students professed desire to become sincere disciples of Jesus Christ. Even more significant than the number was the representative character of many who declared themselves. A keen observer tells us, "The whole attitude of the university toward the Christian life is changed."

(b) There is the passion for unity in the Church at home. Over against the disgrace of sectarianism, there is seen to-day, rising out of the heart of the Church, a new and exceedingly practical form of unity; nothing was more thrilling during the great days in the Scotch capital than this fact. From the significant utterance of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the opening day, - "Fellow-workers in the Church Militant," to the closing declaration, "We thank God for the longing after unity which is one of our deepest desires to-day," the impression deepened that " a great step had been taken to a fuller unity among the reformed churches." After three hundred years, a united Protestantism intelligently and resolutely faced the vast unfinished task, sharing in a catholicity not of isolation but of comprehension.

(c) There is the strategic nature of the work begun abroad. When we turn from the indications of abounding vitality in the life of the Church at home, we find, in spite of the difficulties

abroad, earnest of final success. Notwithstanding the large areas of the map, the monotony of which is unrelieved by the red dots of missionary beginning, those very maps assure final triumph. The red dots are massed at the gateways of political and commercial life. In spite of all that sectarian folly has done, the finest generalship has been manifested in the placing of these stations. The student of missions will find ample assurance of victory, because the beginnings effectively command the approaches to the future.

(d) There is new life in the decadent churches. He who makes his first journey to the near East finds that all his reading has failed to make him realize the number and variety of the churches still surviving the flooding of the land by Islam, which began thirteen hundred years ago. When American missionaries were first sent, it was with the purpose not to compete, not to destroy, but rather to revive these historic communions. They have planted only such Protestant churches as seemed imperatively needed to keep pure and vital the precious seed against the day of free sowing. That day has come, and their faith and patience are beginning to find justification. In a city in Western Asia Minor, after visiting the mission plant and listening to the reports of the Western Turkey Mission, the members of the Cruise attended a meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association in which all forms of Christianity in that city have united. The auditorium of the high school was packed to overflowing. The archimandrite of the Gregorian Church bore his testimony to the value of the American missionaries to the educational, philanthropic, and religious life of that city, and then uttered these significant words: "If a clergyman of my church had said such things as these thirty years ago, he would have been severely persecuted; but those conditions have passed away."

(e) There is the certain promise of success in recent events outside the sphere of religion. The new developments in Turkish life, quite apart from the direct concerns of religion, are not the least significant. At Adana, from the top of a school building the eye could sweep over a mass of ruin not less appalling than that which I saw as I tramped over the débris-filled streets of smoking San Francisco when earthquake and fire had done their worst; not less complete than in earthquake-smitten

Sicilian Messina. Many visitors came to greet us in the schoolroom. It was an interesting picture as these guests paused for a moment on the outside stairway to allow the American traveler to make a photograph of them, the governor of the province, the ecclesiastical representatives of a half dozen different kinds of Christianity, in addition to various representative Moslem and Christian laymen. I began to appreciate the significance of the governor's earnest words when we had been presented to him in his palace earlier in the day. He described the situation and outlined his policy for the industrial and social reconstruction of the community. I am sure he was far from appreciating the progress of Jesus Christ's practical supremacy in the situation he disclosed. He was unwittingly giving us the account of his own search for a foundation upon which to build the new solidarity, by which many faiths and races must be united before he could hope to see a civic life in which the old hatred, intolerance, and massacre should forever be impossible. He had not been able to find such foundations in the persons of any one of these jealous, contentious, ecclesiastical sectaries, for they represented a spirit that was the antithesis of that of Him whom they thought to serve; still less could he find it in his own Islam, with its fierce, unreasoning religious bigotry and coercion by the sword. There was but one man in that provincial capital whom all sorts of Christians trusted, whom Moslem and Jew believed in — it was the man who most fully represented the spirit of the Christ. The chief dependence of that forceful Moslem governor in the exacting task of establishing the necessary social unity was upon the representative of the free and evangelical Christianity of America, the Reverend William Chambers, whom we shall always remember as the hero of Adana. At Edinburgh and in the Levant there came a new certainty that we hasten toward the glorious hour when, " at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow."

III. The Determining Factor.

The undertaking is a partnership between God and man. The success of our human share depends upon individual ability to make and sustain entire personal loyalty to the King's

business to seeking first his kingdom, and make self-interest second. It depends upon us. We can if we will.

(a) The wealth of the world is ours. It is in the hands of the missionary nations. Nay, more than that, it appears to have been distributed in the providence of God in proportion to that interest. The nations which have developed the most conspicuous commercial initiative are those which have been most conspicuous as missionary nations.

(b) The trained manhood is ours. The new movement in the intellectual world has come for such a time as this, and tends to make men and women ready for the finest acts of self-devotion in the cause of that spiritual idealism for which Jesus lived and died. But the modern world will not be led to acknowledge our Lord's supremacy unless the devotion of the modern church be equal to this hour. The part which our own church has is far greater than the number of our communicants would lead us to expect. Our leadership during the hundred years of the life of the American Board has far exceeded either our wealth or our numerical standing. If the Congregational Church is to do her part, it will not be because leaders amongst us speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but because, searchingly and completely, all of us reassert a singleness of purpose to subordinate all things to the making of humanity blessed by making Jesus Christ supreme.

A young engineer, after eight years of successful professional life, sat in a Young People's meeting when the leader had asked all to rise who had made a complete surrender to the service of Christ. In college he had become a Christian and had been active in many forms of religious work ever since, but he was convinced that he was keeping back part of the price. He could not rise with the others, but went out to meet the question alone Will I or will I not make my life one of entire selfdevotion? As a result of that recommitment, he has just finished an additional course of training in college and the seminary, and goes out as the missionary pastor of our church to do educational work in China. The determining factor is personal. It is perilous to know, it is perilous to feel as we have been privileged to do for the past ten days, unless there results adequate action by the will. If we, a few hundreds, center our wills, the entire church we represent can and will devote itself

to this unfinished task. Beside the graves where lie our Adana martyrs, in the quiet quadrangle of the Girls' School, there came to me Dr. R. F. Horton's solemn words of prophecy: 66 The process seems slow, but God is not too slow. The hand that has given us our gospel and our Christ, that hand will give us the world for our hire "