Men and brethren, mark you well: It is not true that if the Church of our generation fails in its divinely appointed work, this work will be done by Socialism, or handed over to some other organization. No! God has made the redemption of mankind, which is essentially a spiritual, not a political, not a commercial, not a technical achievement, exclusively the prerogative of the Church. And if the Church defaults in discharging its commission, and thereby forfeits its charter, then what will happen? Will her work be done by some other agency? No. God will bring about a reformation of the Church, and set it to its appointed task? It will be a case of history repeating itself, the history of the first century, the history of the sixteenth century, adapted to the conditions of our present age.

What was the Reformation of the sixteenth century, to which we point back as our historical beginning? The shortest and simplest definition is this: It was a man plus a Book If you have ever seen a statue of the man without the Book in his hand, it was not he. You may turn the sentence around, if you prefer, and make it read-a Book plus a man. All the power of that gigantic movement was derived from the inspired Book. It was a laymen's movement to an immensely large extent. The clergy were against it, almost to the last one. It was a student volunteer movement, in a peculiar sense. The students of the universities rallied around the leader, and held up his hands. It was a Men and Religion Movement decidedly. And the power house of the whole enterprise was the Divine Book, or rather the Divine Spirit, through the Book, conveying the Divine Christ.

Whatever man has spiritual power has come by it honestly. There is no short cut to this grace.

It is communicated by certain specific appointed means. This is what makes each individual man a spiritual dyname. The message is effective when the messenger is an incarnation of it. And the impetus of the messenger comes from the Word. Even among those workers who are designated as "social workers" (and this is a fact which Socialism fails to take into account) fully 80 per cent., and in many cities 90 per cent., are communicant members of the Church. As social workers they get their incentive and strength from the Divine Spirit of power, through the Word and Sacraments.

The chief indictment against Rome is that

it is the one oniy form of religion in this nation which compels her people to live without access to the Bible. The one Book which they must let severely alone, is the one which the human soul most needs. In this regard, "Rome never changes." This is her own fatal boast, and it is pathetically true in the most vital of all respects. Here is our guarantee of Protestant permanence. Even if Rome should succeed in all her designs concerning this country, it will need only one solitary man, and a miner's son at that, standing in the presence of an imperial diet, by himself alone, with the Book in his hand, by the bent of his lone arm to shake the whole fabric to its foundations! What the Book did once, it can do again. But it can only do it (and here is where the other hemisphere swings into view), in these days, as it could only do it in those days, and as it can ever do it in any days, through the agency of a man. Without the man it will not be done. Here is where you come in, and I come in. We do not have to furnish the power, else we might well despair. But we do have to apply the power, which is furnished of God. This is the meaning of copartnership. That is a great phrase -"Laborers together with God." No power will apply itself. Even divine power will not, and therefore the Church. Reduced to its last analysis, so far as you are concerned, this means yourself, as an instrument to make God's power effective among men.

All that Hans Egede did (your Norwegian kinsman in the faith) was to apply the omnipotent Gospel to the benighted Esquimau race, living among the icebergs of the frozen North. Here was a helpless task, if mortal man ever attempted one. They said he was stark crazy for ever conceiving such an insane project. Yet what was the result? That God-forsaken tribe of Arctic Circle barbarians-poor, little, stunted, sawed-off creatures, scarce human, for whose uplift and enlightenment not a single effort had been made in all the course of their history-a nation than which none more stolid, or abject, or sunken, can be found in darkest Africa-became a Christian people, among whom there is this day not a policeman, not a jail, not a` poorhouse! Every man and woman of them can read and write. That sounds pretty close to Paradise, whereas it is pretty close to the North Pole! And this same divine lever can lift out of the slough of despond, out of the miry clay, every race of human kind on this

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footstool, no matter how far. gone in physical or spiritual degeneracy.

Is it not true that the application of such a Gospel, to such off-scouring of humanity as have lost every vestige of the original image of God, is "a man's job," in the highest and sublimest sense? Talk about an appeal to the heroic! Talk about a moral equivalent of war! This is a holy war for the deliverance of men and women and children by the hundreds of millions. As such, it calls for the sinews of war, and still more loudly for recruits for the army.

Women are not essentially more religious than men. This would be charging God with defective workmanship. It would mean His discriminating against one-half the creatures which He made in his own image, and His putting fervency of consecration out of the reach of masculine souls! How dare anybody insinuate a thing like that, in the face of such sublime examples of masculine consecration as we have on every page of missionary history? We believe in a masculine Christ. Not the pallid, anemic, melancholy man, with feminine ringlets-lacking every sign of robust, stalwart manliness-such as the medieval painters put on their canvas, but the reddestblooded, most virile, commanding, masculine personality that ever breathed this world's air. We believe He came to earth on the most masculine mission ever committed to a human being. Compare the far-reaching character and scope of His work for mankind, with the most ambitious schemes of this world's statesmen, and they sink into the paltriness of child's play. What He undertook to do was nothing less than to make of this whole race a radically new creation.

Now I submit to you this question: Ought a business of such colossal dimensions appeal to a red-blooded masculine man? Is there any good reason for the fact that there are at this moment three million more women and girls in the membership of the churches of this country than men and boys? What would you say to signalizing the present age by coining a new word to fit the emergency? You will not find it in the dictionary, but if we can get it into the ideal of the Christian Church of the twentieth century, we will be quite satisfied. It is the word "menhood." Not manhood, mark you, for that refers to individual character. Nor yet brotherhood, for that, too, refers to ourselves. This is a word to pertain to the Church as such. What about

the menhood of her Sunday schools, or her missionary societies? What about the menhood of the industrial establishments in our American cities? What about the menhood of the submerged districts? Nay, let us come closer home; what about the menhood of the Church's own membership? Is it not an appalling fact that only 20 per cent. of the men of the United States are in communicant touch with any Church?

This imperatively calls for increased lay activity. Christian men must get busy in doing personal work among men. A condition of things must prevail which will make it impossible for a preacher to say at the funeral of one of his typical male members, "this corpse has been a member of my Church for more than forty years." In times like these it ought to be impossible for any Church to label its laymen as baggage is labeled on a European steamship, "Not wanted on the voyage." It is precisely on the voyage that they are wanted. Even that familiar phrase, "he is one of the pastor's standbys," may be misleading, if it means that the man simply stands by, and looks on applaudingly, while the pastor does all the work of ingathering, and of planning every forward movement.

Tell me: Is it literally true for every man, in the spiritual as well as in the physical sense, that the output of exercise must correspond with the intake of food and nutriment, if the man is to be in vigorous health? We lament that the personal prayer habit is not as strong in the average man as it used to be. This is a most serious symptom, and can not but have a fatal termination unless it be remedied. When you want to breathe deep draughts of ozone, what do you do? Do you simply stand still and sniff the air, in an artificial manner? Even that may be better than nothing. Some persons practice that habit every morning after they rise from bed. But if you want to breathe deep and do it naturally, all you need is to exercise vigorously, and the deep breathing will take care of itself. Do you see the means of restoring the prayer habit? Prayer is not simply petition. It is the deep breathing of the soul. It is not simply exhaling fervent supplication, it is also inhaling spiritual oxygen, and it absolutely needs exercise to make it natural, and not artificial.

Do you understand why so much stress is heing laid on the Christian "forces" of our land? That word forces is very specific and needs to be underscored. What were the