The enormous expansion of the denomination in recent years should not be the occasion for pride and self-exaltation but for a more sober realization of our responsibilities and opportunities. Mr. Gladstone remarked shortly before his death, when he was informed of the size of American fortunes, that a fortune of $100,000,000 would be a menace to the Republic. In his view, the possession of such vast power could not be safely entrusted to one person, no matter how well-meaning and patriotic. Since Mr. Gladstone’s time several American fortunes have been larger than a hundred million, and there are many corporations whose resources are practically wielded by one man, that control much greater capital. That more serious evils have not resulted from these vast aggregations of power is a tribute to the moral principles of those in positions to wield their power. But Mr. Gladstone’s warning is not unnecessary. The menace is always present.

There is significance in the fact that our Lord’s temptations at the outset of his career all turn on the use of power. No more subtle and powerful assault can be made on moral principle. This is precisely the temptation that confronts our denomination today. We may fail to recognize and respond to the responsibilities that our numbers and resources involve. The fact that we are entrusted with two or five talents may lead us to play the part of the man with one talent.

Let us now glance at some of the conditions for the realization of the superb opportunities that open before our denomination.

I.

The first of these is loyalty to our historic Baptist principles. I do not think that it is so difficult to describe what these are as some appear to think. In my view, the essential Baptist principle is clear-cut and definite. It centers about the response of the human soul to the revelation of God in Christ. In that vital central principle are involved religious liberty, the authority of the Scripture, the Deity of Christ, the evangelical theology, and the constitution of the church.

I am not unmindful that in the last three centuries the Baptists have stood for many different things. Their positions have necessarily been influenced by the issues of the times, by the current interpretations of the Scriptures, and by the spiritual vision of their leaders. But in the history one salient fact emerges, and that is that the stream of the Baptist movement has shown the power of running water to purify itself, and the denominational interpretation of the gospel has constantly been closer and closer to the New Testament and the mind of Christ.

It is amazing, when we come to think of it, from how many vagaries and fanaticisms we have been delivered. We have suffered from them. They still survive in some sections but, as a whole, the denomination has been delivered from them. Those early Swiss Baptists who gave us the Schleitheim Confession were not only extreme passivists, but they did not believe that the true Christian should hold office, bear arms, or have anything to do with affairs of State. Hubmaier opposed this, and his contention practically gained way. John Smyth maintained that the Scriptures should only be used in public in the original Greek and Hebrew, and then recited and not read from a book. Until almost our own time strict Baptists in England held themselves so aloof from the currents of English life and tradition that they were almost wholly alien to the political, social, and literary movement of the age. They adopted not the Puritanism of Milton, but of Praise God Barebones. In our own country there were many of those who founded Rhode Island who sympathized with the narrow views of Roger Williams’ first stage. In the Middle States and the South there were those who stood for the strictest observance of Biblical precedent, even to foot-washing and the "holy kiss.” At one time it looked as if a great section of the denomination would be riven apart by the hyper-Calvinists, who practically denied the place of means in the economy of grace, antagonized revivals and Sunday schools and all missionary enterprises. At another period Campbellism made such inroads upon denominational coherence that for a time it looked as if the work of a century was to be undone in a year. And there have been other movements and tendencies that probably are in your minds, which have been equally significant and disruptive, but the amazing thing is how the good ship has righted itself in every storm or, to change the figure, it is wonderful how by virtue of an inner coherence the body has resisted divisive tendencies. Our churches have shown a saving common sense. There has been a sound core that has never been corrupted or weakened. And while I speak subject to correction, I wish to express my deliberate conviction, as a student of history, that denominational coherence of unity never stood on a firmer basis than it does today. What James Russell Lowell says of democracy is true of us. "Democracy,” he says, "is like a raft. You can't sink, but your feet are always wet."

The reason for this inherent soundness and coherence, in my judgment, is to be found in our basal position of the supreme importance of the response of the human soul to the revelation of God in Christ; in other words, in our emphasis upon the regenerate life, which finds its formal expression in believer's baptism. That is the doctrine that has separated us from every other denomination, and our entire history and growth is an illuminated comment on its significance and worth in the Christian system.

Let me indicate how this central faith has worked out in practise. The Philadelphia Confession, which is our oldest and by far our most widely accepted creedal statement, and is the Presbyterian Westminster Confession modified so as to conform to the Baptist position regarding the Church and its relation to the State, contains an article on the Bible, of which my old teacher the great historian, Dr. Philip Schaff, used to say,

No other Protestant symbol has such a clear, judicious, concise and exhaustive statement of this fundamental article of Protestantism.

I presume that this article is familiar to all, but lest it should not be fresh in anyone’s memory let me quote a sentence or two. After enumerating the canonical books, it says:

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the Author therof; and, therefore, it is to be received because it is the Word of God.

We may be moved and induced by testimony of the Church to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet, notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

This is a most remarkable statement, "resting the authority of the Scripture,” as Doctor Schaff said, upon its own intrinsic excellence, and the internal testimony of the Spirit, rather than upon the external authority of the Church, however valuable this is as a continuous witness.

Baptists do not expect that the convincing evidence for the authority of the Scripture will be the result of argument about it; they do not believe that the true method of approach is that of seeking to enforce its claims; they hardly expect the unregenerate soul to accept them, but the Christian experience answers to the Scripture as the mirror answers to the face, and a center of certainty is begotten in the soul of man by the testimony of the Spirit. It is exceedingly interesting to observe how the experience of missionaries confirms this. They tell us that it is impossible to make an impression on the heathen mind by starting with a doctrine of inspiration, or by elaborating any external evidences, no matter how cogent they may be to the mind of the preacher. The process invariably follows the line of the response of the hearer to the truth, to which his own heart and life bear witness through conscience and the work of the Spirit. And just as our fathers who accepted this great Confession did not believe that the authority of the Scripture rested upon human arguments, however strong they might be, so they did not believe that its authority could be invalidated by arguments. The believer had the witness in himself.

This emphasis upon the regenerate life and upon Christian experience indicates the process by which all the great Christian doctrines are vindicated.

The method of Jesus in the training of the Twelve is exceedingly illuminating. Nothing can be clearer, unless we are to eliminate the sixteenth chapter of Matthew from the gospel record, than that Jesus said nothing to his disciples about his divinity until very shortly before his death. That conversation at Csesarea-Phillipi must be placed somewhere near the Crucifixion. For the space of some years he had been living with this chosen group. They had seen his manner of every-day life, they had witnessed his miracles, they had heard his parables. He had made no high claims about himself except to call himself the Son of man. He had just been living with them and letting that life make its natural impression. At last, as the shadows of the end were lengthening about him, and his own intuitive spirit discerned the Cross, he asked the question, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?” Their answer was ready: "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” And then came the intimate delicate query. If ever the lips of Jesus quivered it must have been when he asked that question. It was like the question that a man puts to the woman of his heart, when he must know how she regards him. Peter without hesitation responded, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, "You are a blessed man, Simon, son of Jonas, for it was my Father in heaven, not flesh and blood, that revealed this to you.” Goethe says that Jesus from his youth upward dares to equal himself with. God, nay, to declare that he is God; astounding his familiar friends and irritating the rest against him.(Carlyle, ” Goethe,” p. 88.)

That is exactly what Goethe might have done, but it is exactly what Jesus did not do. On the contrary, he lived a natural human life, as son and brother and neighbor, as laboring man and leader of a company of young men, his friends. How much more it meant to have these friends come slowly, almost imperceptibly, to the great conviction expressed by Peter in a flash of insight-come to it because they must, because no other view would explain what they felt about him, than to say this about him because they were echoing the opinion or conclusion of some one else! In the latter case it would probably be "saying,” and that would be all it signified. In the former instance the confession would spring out of the heart of personal conviction, reached through the paths of spiritual experience.

II

In the second place, our history has taught sometimes, through bitter experience, the nature and limitations of this Christian liberty. Our doctrine of religious liberty necessarily comes from our central principle. Force of any sort has no relation to convictions or to love. These inward persuasions cannot be brought about by any external pressure. They must come as the voluntary movement of the human soul, and if they are not voluntary they are unreal and hypocritical. The story of our maintenance of religious liberty on the Continent of Europe, in Great Britain, in this country, especially in New England and in Virginia, is one of the most heroic in the long annals of the triumph of the cause of human freedom. One is amazed as he studies the details of that long contest, unhappily not ended yet in some so-called Christian lands, at the fortitude, the strength of conviction, the readiness to sacrifice the most precious possessions and relations for the vindication of this sovereign right of the human spirit.

Our Baptist fathers were not generally acute philosophers or trained reasoners, but they were, never seduced by the assertion, that toleration and liberty were the same thing. Toleration is for me to say to you, "I will permit you to exercise this privilege.” Liberty is for you to say to me: "I do not want your permission, I will have none of it. I do not claim a privilege. I exercise a right which you have no title to give or to withhold.” Baptists have always stood for liberty, and they grounded their position on the fact that the acceptable worship and service of God must be unconstrained, voluntary, otherwise it was worthless.

The struggle is not over. One is disheartened at times by seeing how faint and partial the recognition of this principle is, even in our own country, under the pressure of circumstances and under the influences that are leading to the centralization and extension of the powers of government as an aftermath of the World War.

The direction in which we have sometimes erred has been a natural one. Our assertion of liberty has sometimes led to the exercise of an unethical and divisive independency. Sometimes it has almost been assumed that the hall-mark of a thorough-going Baptist was disagreement with some one else, and too often it has been not a disagreement with the doctrines and practises of other Christian communions, but a disagreement with those of the same household of faith. We need today, perhaps not so much as formerly, but still we need today clearer expositions in all our conventions and associations and local churches of the limitations of liberty as conceived by Baptists, liberty is not a unifying principle. You could not organize a ball club, or a literary circle, or a chamber of commerce on the idea that every member should do as he pleases, which is what too many mean by liberty. But that is not what Baptists have meant by religious liberty. They mean the right of each person to be free, uncoerced, in forming his religious associations, but having once chosen his affiliation, liberty is limited by the general position or genius of the body with which he unites. We part with some share of our liberty whenever we cooperate with others. It does not make much difference whether the relationship is that of marriage or a business partnership or a political affiliation or church-membership. The principle is the same in all. The unifying tie in all these relationships is not liberty, but the agreements of ideals, which constitute the reason for the existence of the organization. Some associations make the unifying principle, which in political parties we call "the platform,” and in ecclesiastical bodies "the creed” or "the covenant,” very narrow and stringent. Others make it loose and general, but always, even in the most liberal churches, there is some line which the members cannot overpass without being disfellowshiped.

No one, to my way of thinking, has expounded the true principle of human association and cooperation more adequately than Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia University, in his essay, "The Mind of the Many.” (“Democracy and Empire,” p. 49f.)

Professor Giddings gives St. Paul the credit of being the first to announce the true principle of social organization. It rested upon the fact of likemindedness:

Over and over again he forces this fact upon the attention of his readers and warns them to give heed to it. "Be of the same mind one toward another,” he says to the Romans; and in the same epistle he prays for them that they may be of the same mind, that with one accord and with one mouth they may glorify their God. The Corinthians he beseeches to "speak the same things,” to "have no divisions ” among them, that they may be "perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” And the Philippians he implores to "stand fast in one spirit, with one soul; to be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord.” ... So far as we know, neither Greek nor Jew, before Paul, ever singled out this principle as the all-essential fact to be remembered in the development of any plan of social organization.

Professor Giddings adds:

Speaking only for myself, I must say that after many years of persistent thought upon this question, I am fully persuaded that Paul was absolutely and profoundly right . . . What then is a society? Obviously, it is any number of like-minded individuals, who know and enjoy their like-mindedness, and are, therefore, able to work together for common ends . . . But as certainly as like-mindedness is the cause of social stability, so is unlike-mindedness the cause of social variation. Only as men differ and dare to differ from their fellows can the church or party adapt itself to new conditions. Mere variation is not necessarily progress, and there is no progress to be discovered in division or in disorganization. A progressive society must change without losing its identity. In a progressive society a certain Degree of unlike-mindedness coexists with a large measure of like-mindedness. Progress, in short, is the continuous harmonizing of a continually appearing unlikeness of feeling, thought and purpose with a vast central mass of established agreements.

I think we all recognize the justice of this exposition and its fidelity to the superb insight and discovery of St. Paul. This fits our denominational problem. It is to harmonize a vast central mass of established agreements with the variations and unlikenesses which are the secret of progress and advance. It is the ever-recurring contest between Conservatism and Progress. For the Conservatives to have their way would be to bring about social Nirvana. For the Progressives to have their way would be disruption and ruin. In a sense, every church, as well as the entire denomination, has to settle this problem for itself. What Conservatives everywhere need to realize and to act upon is that there are rights of dissent, and that to restrict them within the narrow limits too often drawn by the least competent, is to doom the organization to a hopeless alliance with dead past. On the other hand, the Progressives need to realize that there are limits to dissent, perhaps not easily definable in words, but nevertheless inherent in the genius of the organization, which cannot be transcended without peril to major interests.

Our denominational history is strewn with wrecks from failure to recognize these principles. We have grown and prospered in spite of these losses. Still, one cannot help thinking how much larger service we might have rendered if it had not been for these tragedies.

III

Another thing, it seems to me, a study of our history enforces, and that is the cleansing and enlightening power upon ourselves of propagating the Christian gospel, of evangelization, which means the proclamation of "the good news,” the missionary task at home and abroad in all the earth. The supreme duty of the Christian individual and of the Christian people is the bearing of witness. "Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you ” (Matt. 28:19) . These are the last recorded words of Jesus, as reported by Luke and by Matthew, and loyalty to them has been the secret of purity of doctrine, of spiritual agreements, and of triumphant enthusiasm. There have been many sermons, discussions, and volumes on missionary conquests, but comparatively little attention has been paid to the reaction of witness-bearing upon the inner life and the spiritual vision of those who have been loyal to the great commandments. Nothing ever did more for our denomination in England than the great insight and enterprise of William Carey, and in our own country it may be said that the message of Judson and Rice to the feeble and scattered Baptist churches of the Atlantic Coast really created the denomination. Then as the men of Boston and Virginia and Georgia began to respond to that moving appeal, the churches came to a denominational self-consciousness which has never yet been dissipated or seriously weakened. Even the terrific strain of the Civil War did not destroy it, and for many years a letter from a Baptist church has passed at its face value everywhere. It is as good in New Hampshire as in Texas, or Nova Scotia, or Saskatchewan. And today nothing is more certain to revive the inner life of a church, to cleanse its faith and to lift it into the realm of unity and peace than zealous enlistment in the work of carrying the gospel to others. It has been justly said that Wyclif was a rebel against the Church of his day, but he interpreted the nobler and more permanent convictions of Christendom when he maintained that "preaching was the best work a priest could do, better than praying or administering the sacraments.”

And we have always been in peril of a serious error when we have failed to see that the command of "the Great Commission,” as it is called, is simply the expression of the genius of the religion of Jesus. It is not an arbitrary order, such as might be given to a servant or a soldier, a direction that he is simply to obey without an inner response to its reasonableness and necessity. The story of the Duke of Wellington, who said that the missionary had but one task and that was to look at his "marching orders,” "the Great Commission,” and obey it, wholly misses the finer aspects of the Christian’s relationship to the gospel. "I call you no longer servants but friends, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth.” The man who has really caught the spirit of Christ, and been deeply moved by the gospel, realizing what it does for him, cannot help seeking to share his blessing with others. One of the great missionary texts of the New Testament is in the Epistle of James: "If a brother or sister be naked, and in lack of daily food, and one of you say unto him, ’Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled and ye give not them the things that are needful for the body; what doth it profit?” (James 2:15, 16.) Our times have greatly responded to these words taken literally, but too many of us have missed their finer and larger implications. We have failed to realize that there is a spiritual nakedness and starvation, and that these spiritual needs make their own mighty appeal to the Christian heart. The bare command of "the Great Commission ” may be sufficient for the legalist, but the Christian is not a legalist, and he realizes that witness-bearing unto all the earth, so far as we can reach, is duty and privilege wrought into the very genius of the Christian revelation.

Paul writes to the Galatians, "Who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified?” (Gal. 3:1.) What exactly did he mean? Those Galatian Christians had never seen Christ. They were not present at the crucifixion. It is clear that what was in his mind was that when Christ was preached to them for the first time the tragedy of redemption was enacted in their experience. Before they heard the gospel, it was as though Christ had never lived and died. But when they heard it they were brought into relation with it. Then, "Christ was openly set forth the crucified.” May we not dare reverently to draw the sublime inference from this declaration, and declare that when we are preaching the gospel we are doing what God did when he sent his Son into the world, for we are bringing men into relation with him. And the gift of God in the Cross of Christ is bestowed in the preaching of the gospel. Then the ultimate motive to evangelization becomes sympathy with God. We share his work; we enter into deep interior fellowship with his love and his purpose of grace. These are the reasons why the work of propagating the gospel reacts so profoundly upon the life of the Christian. It is not simply because we are obeying a command in doing this, though that has its own peculiar reward, but because in doing this we sympathize with the spiritual nakedness and hunger of those who do not have the gospel, and because we sympathize with the gracious purposes of God.

The history of our denomination amply illustrates the spiritual rewardfulness of the missionary enterprise. On the whole, it shows that the reaction upon our churches from propagating the gospel at home and abroad has been the principal factor in purifying our theology and emphasizing our profound agreements in the evangelical faith. The command of conscience is authoritative in the realm of action, just as the demand of reason is imperative in the realm of thought. And the harmony of the two is realized when the two obediences unite in,a common devotion.

IV

In the last place, our history demonstrates the importance of education, and especially of an educated ministry. Perhaps one of the bitterest conflicts ever waged in the denomination has centered about the need of an educated ministry. Both the Northern and Southern churches were profoundly agitated by it, and while the cause of education has won all along the line, there is skirmish fighting still going on, and there is still much to be done for a complete victory. Through monotheism was the great message of Israel, and though Jesus said that the first and great commandment is, "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:29f.), and though we declare, if we use the so-called Apostles’ Creed, "I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” though all these voices testify to monotheism, as a matter of fact many Christians are really polytheists; they do not believe that the God who gave us the revelation of the gospel is the God who made the sea, and whose hands fashioned the dry land, and they show that they do not by seeking to antagonize religion with science or science with religion. If one Deity made the world and another gave us the gospel, there may well be antagonism between the two realms, because the two gods do not agree, just as Homer tells us of the quarrels between the gods of Mt. Olympus. But if we believe in "One God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” the antagonism, if there be any, in the nature of the case, must be between our imperfect or false interpretations of the works and the word of God. The two revelations interpret one another, and the clearest vision of either is bound up in the amplest knowledge of the other. In a day when pure and applied science have made such enormous advances, so that every sane mind is bewildered with them, it is not open to religious men, if they are monotheists, to slur or disparage the teaching of science. Scientific men are by no means infallible, and theologians have not invariably been impeccable. The more the teacher of religion knows of modern science the better. A large mastery of it might enable him more adequately to use the method of Jesus, and to see in the falling sparrow the witness to law and purpose, as centuries later Newton saw them in the falling apple, and to see in the reddening sky at eventime a witness to the law and purpose that moves through human history. But without laboring the argument, it seems to me that we all admit that the preacher of the gospel should speak from a rich and ample and worthy inner life. When John Calvin organized his school at Geneva for the training of ministers, he brought thither the best teachers in Europe. No modern college president was ever more ambitious in organizing a faculty to secure the most competent instruction than was John Calvin. But Calvin soon woke up to the realization of another fact, and that was that an educated ministry demands an educated laity. His reasoning was this: We cannot have the Scriptures adequately expounded except by trained men. The Bible itself touches so many civilizations, embodies so many interests, impinges on life at so many points that it can only be justly interpreted by those of the best equipment, and only educated hearers can adequately respond to such unfoldings of divine truth. That was the logical basis of Calvin’s appeal and sacrifice in founding the famous university at Geneva, which still flourishes. There is no break in that logic. And it was this irrefutable line of reasoning, and not any vague theory of democracy, that planted the school beside the church on the bleak hills of Scotland, at Montauban and Nismes and La Rochelle, and wherever the Calvinists settled in France, in New England villages, on Western prairies, and in Southern counties.

We must have an educated ministry adequately to interpret the gospel, and an educated laity to respond to the gospel. The demand for education comes from the nature of the gospel itself. This is not to say that great results may not be brought about by the preaching of unlettered men. This is not to say that education can take the place of personal piety and the constant blessing of the Holy Spirit, but it is to say that if the preaching of the gospel means something more than the repetition of a formula, if it means the utterance of a living man who has responded with all his nature-heart and intellect and will-to the Christian revelation, we must have ministers and laymen who, like Moses and St. Paul, have brought the treasures of discipline and learning to the service of God. It is often said that men like Mr. Moody have wrought great results without the aid of the schools. That is true, and we rejoice in it. Mr. Moody was a great man and would have been great in any task for which he had any aptitude, but Mr. Moody showed what he thought of education in making the principal task of his later years the founding of the Northfield Schools.

No two men have ever exercised such a profound and far-reaching influence for good on American religious life as Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. In their light we still walk, and both were the product of the very best training the schools could afford. I sometimes feel, as I turn over the pages of the Bible, as I felt when I first entered Westminster Abbey. There in the great Minster you are surrounded by the memorials of the men who have made England great-generals and statesmen, orators and poets, viceroys and sea-captains, philanthropists and preachers of the gospel. The great of a mighty empire are remembered here. It is so with the Bible. How few insignificant, ordinary men are mentioned in its pages. Kings and prophets, statesmen and warriors, historians and poets, teachers and preachers crowd its pages. As you read those pages you walk with many of the great ones of the earth. Why, to understand Mr. Gladstone’s or Lloyd George’s career demands long study and superb training. To understand Moses or Isaiah or Jeremiah! Do you think that any one who can simply write and cipher is competent for that high task? And when we come to a comprehension and appreciation of the Supreme Personality of all ages, Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Saviour-! Who is sufficient for that mighty work? The best we can bring of knowledge and of training is far from enough.

It is one of the brightest signs of the times that throughout America, in the United States, North and South, and in Canada, there is a revived interest in education, and especially in training men for the exacting tasks of the Christian ministry.

It used to be said that the Baptists had a special mission to the middle and lower classes, and that perhaps they should not expect to reach the rich, the cultivated, and the highly placed. That assertion was an implication that we were charged with a partial gospel, and we were without a universal appeal.

The evolution of our history has refuted this position, and today not only in numbers but in wealth, in education, and in standing the members of our churches occupy no mean place. A fair proportion of the business leaders, the renowned scholars, lawyers, medical men, and statesmen of the day are Baptists. In the adaptation of our message to the manifold needs of human life, the Pauline, the Christian universality of our gospel has been triumphantly vindicated. Furthermore, in an age when democracy is prevalent, and the scientific spirit is everywhere demanding the verification of fundamental assumptions, our polity is in accord with the democratic temper, and our emphasis upon Christian experience affords a present witness to the gospel.

Certainly our lines have fallen upon a great opportunity. No denomination has a greater. And as we look at the pit from which we have been digged, may we not see in our trials and sufferings, in the misunderstandings and persecutions to which we have been subjected, a divine discipline and training for the largest service? But this service is not to be rendered by reliance upon our heroic past, or by our confidence in our present resources. There is a tendency in all Protestant churches to put an overweening trust in organization, in mechanism, and in creedal formulations. Am I wrong in thinking that the only hope for the triumph of vital Christianity in the earth is in the truth we affirm when we say, "I believe in the Holy Ghost.” There is no ground of hope for the Christian victory but in the living Christ, in whose hands are all the fortunes of this world and of the cosmos.

There are two ways of making a ship safe. You may anchor it by steel cables in a protected harbor, but she is not so safe there against a tempest as she is if you slip every cable and send her forth on the high seas, held only by the unseen but mighty bond between the compass needle and the pole star. Any steel cable may be broken. No driving wind or mighty seas can snap the tie between the needle and the star. And the pledge of the safety and the triumph of the cause of Christ is not in our mechanisms, however skilful, or in our Philadelphia or New Hampshire Confessions, however exact or Scriptural, but in the tie that binds Christ’s people to Him, the Living One, and in their loyalty to it.