it is the logical and rational effect of a cause which the child himself has set in operation.

4. Religious instruction should consist of positive suggestions rather than negative commands. The individual experience of every one attests the truth of this principle. It has two aspects. One is the frank recognition of that curious trait of personality which rebels at commands and responds to suggestions. It tells us that character is produced not by laws, regulations, and statutes, but by quiet influence, loving suggestion, and individual guidance. It affirms that in character building, leading is better than driving, that desires are more potent than decrees. The other aspect asserts that the best way to train youth is not to emphasize evil by attacking it or attempting to suppress it, but by definitely replacing it by the open commendation of good. It would formulate its instruction positively, not negatively. Instead of saying "Lie not," it would say “Speak the truth"; instead of bemoaning evil, it would exalt the good. But this principle goes even farther. Instead of saying to the child, "Do not do this," it suggests some positive action of a totally different character. If one child in the home is unkind to another, the wise mother does not couch her suggestion in the form of a denunciation of the precise manifestation of the unkindness, but disregarding the specific deed, suggests an entirely new field of action. Every child is won by suggestion rather than by command, by positive rather than by negative guidance.

5. Finally, religious instruction will depend for its effectiveness upon the spirit and life of the teacher. What we teach is not so much the content of any given lesson as our own method of life. The scholar may speedily forget what we taught, but will never forget how we taught. We might formulate the most perfect system of ethics that could be conceived, we might present a most thoroughly graded system of lessons, we might have for instruction the brightest intellects that America produces, but our religious education would be useless and meaningless unless back of all our psychology and theology and criticism and methods there is a sympathetic human heart beating with patient love for the growing pupil. Not our knowledge, but our affection; not our course of study, but our interest; not our words, but our life, will determine the ultimate outcome of our effort to build character.

THE SUPREMACY OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE MODERN WORLD.

REV. WILLIAM HORACE DAY, D.D., LOS ANGELES, CAL.

Jesus Christ is King. He has crown rights in all humanity, but his lordship is not universally acknowledged. Even in Christendom many hearts refuse him sway and great peoples have not bowed the knee. Nothing less than world-wide supremacy will satisfy the King or content his hosts. Those of us who went up to Edinburgh and shared in the Missionary Cruise to the near East, went asking, "Is He increasingly victorious or gradually being vanquished?" The question of questions for all his followers concerns

"THE SUPREMACY OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE MODERN WORLD.”

The first impression produced by the Conference in Edinburgh and emphasized by conditions in the Levant, was of

I. Difficulty of the Task.

(a) Vast unoccupied areas are as yet untouched by missionary effort. The Commission on Carrying the Gospel to all Non-Christians in the World presented, as part of its report, a map upon which missionary centers were indicated by red dots. The dull monotony of large sections was entirely unrelieved by a single dash of red; over two hundred and fifty millions are entirely unprovided for.

(b) The difficulty of the task was still further emphasized in the disclosure of the incompleteness of result where missions are established. While Christendom has been making five million converts in Africa, Islam has made sixty million. In Jerusalem one sentimental soul keeps the teakettle boiling night and day because her Lord is to come again in Jerusalem and will need the cup of tea she is waiting to give Him. After visiting Oriental cities, seeing the Christian churches, schools,

hospitals, and publishing establishments, one could not avoid the depressing question, "What are these among so many?"

(c) Turning from the difficulties abroad, we find quite as serious ones at home. Most conspicuous is the disunion of the churches. How can we hope to have adequate response to the Great Commission when disciples of the same Master forget him in their selfish, jealous, and careless disregard of the larger interests of the Church? By these sectarian divisions the life at the center is so weakened that the tide of strength halts long before it reaches the high-water mark needed to flood the entire field.

(d) The weakening of religious faith at home, particularly among our educated classes, will inevitably destroy the motive for missions. In many lives it has already done so, and those of the finest training and character have lost sympathy because, as Professor Eucken has well said, "The main current of intellectual life runs for the most part counter to religion." The other day at Cairo I found, among books of many languages, a sixpenny copy of Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe.” Though the more thoughtful men of our time recognize in books of that sort a past phase of human thought, its sale at so distant a place is indication of the abiding vitality of the unbelief which feels it must deny the spiritual, and particularly the personality of God and the immortality of the soul. The decay of faith and disunion at home are by all odds the most serious of the difficulties in Jesus Christ's supremacy. The World Missionary Conference was the board of strategy of the Militant Church, unflinchingly attempting to paint things as they are. From the difficulties of the task let us turn to the

II. Possibilities of Success.

Over against each of the difficulties there appear other possibilities which give an earnest of final success.

(a) There is the rise of a new spiritual aspiration in modern intellectual life. For a generation men have tried to reach a synthesis of truth unillumined by Christ. They have found themselves baffled, agnostic, and to-day from Germany, Britain, and America, there comes a demand for something more intelligible, more satisfactory.

"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