which questions were frankly asked by the college men, and the general themes of the conference freely discussed. This was not arranged for on the program and had for that very reason a freshness and spontaneity which gave it peculiar value.

PRESIDENT CAPEN.

I am talking to Christian young men who admit that the Lord is the master of their lives.

I take it for granted that every Christian young man wishes to make his life count as much as possible in helping to bring in the Kingdom of God.

It is an age as never before of opportunity. The whole world is open and is throbbing with energy and life. There are great chances for usefulness and success in the material world, especially to educated young men. I do not think that we can over-estimate at the present time the value of the Christian layman. His business training fits him to do many things better than the professional man can possibly do them. He can enter some doors where the minister cannot enter. There are great opportunities also in other professions. Everywhere in our modern life the doors are wide open into which the earnest man can enter and make himself felt for good. In this multiplicity of claims Christ comes with his call to the ministry.

First, The gospel ministry is the greatest of the professions. It is the greatest because it is the place of power. On the average, the minister in each community is the man of most steady and commanding influence. He shapes public opinion, as a rule, more than anyone else. The minister at the present time has less authority than in the generations past, but he has more influence. It is the greatest because its results are the most permanent. The minister especially is building character. He is making and molding lives. We may go even further and say he is redeeming lives from sin and ignorance, and with God's help changing them to that which is true and noble both for the life that now is and that which is to come.

Second, The ministry has a claim upon us because it is the place of sacrifice. You remember the words of Mazzini that the highest call that comes to a young man is to "come and suffer."

It is that appeal that is ringing out now through our land, challenging so many in all our colleges to consecrate their lives. to the noblest service.

Third, The ministry here at home has a special claim, because the United States is in a peculiar sense a trustee for the whole world. We are experimenting in self-government on the largest possible scale. If America breaks down the greatest hope of the world is gone. Nothing can save our nation but Christianity. Certainly education will not do it, for a man may be almost an educated devil. The minister in the community is the man who holds it to the loftiest ideals. In the passion for wealth these ideals will be lost sight of without this life which is keeping itself in close touch with God and helps to keep others there also.

Fourth, The home field has a claim upon the minister because he is really teaching the whole world. By our own naturalization laws we are not living for ourselves or by ourselves; we throw the gates wide open and take these new men from across the sea into partnership and give them a share in the government. These immigrants touch their friends constantly in the home land. When, therefore, we touch these lives, we are practically reaching the whole world. It is a wide open world and things that are done here touch everywhere, and the American minister has the consciousness, therefore, that by molding society in his own field he is setting in motion influences that reach around the world.

Fifth, The minister in the home land is not only the leader in spiritual things, but the dynamic of civic righteousness. The peril of the United States is not from without but from within. Corruption and graft are everywhere. The minister as the leader of the moral forces in the community is necessarily a recognized power in this field. This influence is two-fold,- indirectly, because he preaches the moral truths which when followed make corruption impossible; directly, for in all our crises he is a leader and the spokesman.

Sixth, There is a claim of men for the home field as a necessary base of supplies for mission work abroad. The army in the field must have support at home, or it will be defeated. It is

universally recognized by those who are responsible for our foreign missionary societies that their greatest problems are not now in the foreign field, but here at home. We have too many pastors in our Churches who somehow seem to think that missions are an incident in the life of the Church. In reality the Church exists to be a missionary Church and the Church that does not recognize this has ceased to be one after Christ's model; it is only a religious club. Certainly it is true that the people in the pews are waiting to be led and they are waiting for the pastors to lead them. There have been no failures in foreign missions anywhere except in some of our Churches at home. We need pastors here at home who have a passion for missions. It is good generalship to strengthen ourselves at the weakest point. We are living in a material age. Our people as a whole love ease and luxury; we want everything for ourselves first and we need pastors, therefore, more than ever who will have the courage to preach in no uncertain terms upon stewardship.

And the minister has his greatest opportunity at home now among young people. He must lead them to see these great truths in their proper proportion while they are still young. If he waits until they go out into the world they will be lost in a great measure to such appeals. They will be caught in the whirl of worldliness and it will be forever too late.

Seventh, We have been dwelling upon work especially in the older parts of our country. Think of the claims and necessities of the new communities in the West. Here is the chance for molding towns and cities at the start. In such places a man can help shape not only his own community but the State. No one can overstate the importance of work in such new communities. It makes an infinite difference whether the minister or the saloon gets in its work first.

Never in all the history of the past has a human life counted for so much as today. It cannot live for itself but in our modern conditions it reaches everywhere.

You ought to remember that in a peculiar sense you are “ambassadors" of God. You represent him before the world. You are to be special students of his book. You are to be alone with him in your study more than others. You are to breathe a

higher atmosphere and you will be developed not only intellectually but spiritually because of these conditions. Be enthusiastic in your work. There is no chance whatever in this world now for any man who has not earnestness and enthusiasm. He might just as well move off the planet. Be single in your purpose. It is an age of the specialist and you must do as other men do in order to succeed and put your energy in at that point.

May I not, therefore, suggest as a final thought that into this high calling which so many of you are to enter, that you ought to be men of the highest honor? It is a painful fact often felt in the business world that some ministers have not as high a code of honor as men in other callings. While there is very much in the business world that is wrong and some men go astray, yet we ought to remember that where one does wrong of which we hear, there are thousands who do right of which we never hear. Think of the business that is done in our great cities wholly upon confidence. But how seldom is there any wrong here. A man who should be guilty of a breach of trust at this point would have his business forever ruined. The minister should have the highest code of honor. He should scorn to do a mean thing or a questionable thing, for back of the preacher is the man himself, and no words that you can ever speak will go any farther than your character will send them.

DR. HALSEY.

This is not an academic subject. You have already heard Dr. Capen on the necessity resting upon the home pastor, the necessity brought on by the logic of events. The echoes of the great national student conference are still ringing in our ears. Think of it! Three thousand accredited delegates from colleges,two thousand delegates not permitted to attend. That is an intellectual army, an army occupying strategic positions. Some of them will go to the foreign field, and will make themselves felt in the great foreign mission stations. The larger number of them are to remain here. They are to be in the Churches, some of them as pastors, many of them as active, energetic men and women. That is only one organization. I was present in the little back room of the Reformed Church in New York in 1902,

where were delegates from the Congregational, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Lutheran Churches, and they formed the Young People's Missionary Association. It required our combined efforts to get 175 delegates to the Silver Bay Conference that year, and we did an enormous amount of advertising and correspondence. Last year at Silver Bay the Young People's Missionary Association had six hundred delegates. The progress is marvelous.

During the year we have been holding missionary institutes all the way from Washington to Los Angeles, and these young people are actually doing things. They are young men and women, not ministers, not those who are to occupy prominent positions, but the layworkers, the ordinary men and women throughout the Church. I suppose during the last six months it has been my privilege to speak on missions one hundred times. I have never spoken but at the close from one to twenty-five persons have come up and said, "I am so interested in Africa. Couldn't you tell me a little about Liberia, or Lake Tchad?" or some other thing in which they were interested. That is what you have got to meet when you enter your pastorates.

The women are foremost in this matter. You have got to look out for the men in your congregations on the subject of missions. I am very doubtful whether I could rely upon even the pastors of many of these Churches. The women have organized a mission study course and have sold between two and three thousand text-books dealing with the subject of missions, many of them dry text-books, and yet they have sold and are being sold by the thousand. A friend of mine said to a distinguished gentleman the other day in my presence, "The fact is, that our denomination is being honeycombed with foreign missions." Think of it! I have heard of denominations being honeycombed with heresy and other things, but think of being honeycombed with foreign missions.

The pastor should be interested in missions, because it is the consummation of his ministry, a duty arising out of his obligation to serve the Church. I think I know approximately well a thousand churches in this country where I have spoken, and I say unhesitatingly in that entire thousand I do not know of a single