convictions. These, we are told, constitute the bulwarks of a system that is too rotten to endure. "Religion is the opiate of the people," is the legend displayed upon the walls of a world capital. It must be done away with, is the confident mandate of those who attempt to deface and destroy those institutions that we hold to be indispensable to our life. Such a challenge should give a mighty impulse to our zeal and stir with courage and high resolve our finer convictions. At such a time as the present it were the part of folly to ignore the conditions that confront us or to seek to minimize their deep significance. To believe that somehow, some way, America, insulated by two great oceans, is utterly immune to the follies and fallacies of the old world betrays both ignorance and selfish indifference. A century of progress has so closely knit together human interests that proud isolation is quite impossible for us today. There are those who rest their case in the amazing strength and commercial supremacy of this country. They profess to believe that sound and economic and industrial conditions constitute the safeguards of our existing political and social order. The Christian Church and its allied instrumentalities they support with restrained and partial interest, regarding them as agencies that contribute to the general good of society. Their indispensableness is an open question, but they are here and they do a measurably whole some work. This quasi interest has contributed little to give the Church its proper place of power and influence as a factor in our corporate life. Either we recognize at their full value the teachings and principles of life laid down by Christ and give them their rightful place in our existing systems, or we accept, with all its implications, the philosophy that today is symbolized in Nietzsche's superman-the "man on horseback." The world is confronted with no new situation, it is one that has tested the vitality and permanence of other and older civilizations. When Edward Gibbons heard as he sat at the close of day surveying Rome, the ancient words: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted them of low degree," he saw as in a vision the causes that led to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. It was no illusion, but the clear disclosure of causes that produced this inevitable and logical result. Let us not deceive ourselves today. At the root of evils that at times provoke a revulsion of feeling over this entire country, resides a cold indifference to fundamental moral and spiritual principles that constitute the security of our peace and permanence. They are not fools or visionaries who declare that our finest and most wholesome institutions rest upon the foundation stones of the Christian faith. Bernard Shaw will hardly be charged with excess of Christian sentiment, and yet he said some time ago: "I am ready to admit that, after contemplating the world for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world's misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will, if He had undertaken the work of a practical modern statesman.” Supplementing this comes the statement of H. G. Wells: "Until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor, but all these things fall into place, and life falls into place, only with God-God who fights through men against blind force and night and nonexistence-who is the end, who is the meaning." More and more this conception of a living, vitalizing faith is coming to be reckoned with, as thoughtful men and women see the logical drift of world forces. The Christian Church as an institution has not, it may be said, been aggressive or statesmanlike enough. Its voice may have been too weak and its message devitalized. Surely its greatest leaders are only too conscious of its shortcomings and failures. The message of its prophets has at times sounded apologetic and insipid and its enterprise has been pressed with too great reserve and lack of faith. This can no longer be if it is to survive and do its large share in restoring peace and happiness to a distracted and confused world. Someone says: "This is a wistful age." Doubtless it is, but let it also be said, it is an age that demands the voice that speaks with the authority of a deep conviction and fears not the face of man. It is an age of big enterprises and it is arrested and challenged only by that which dares to do the large and adventuresome thing. Two Englishmen recently visiting this country observed that the biggest and most outstanding things they had seen in America were its railroad stations and its banks. To them these were mighty witnesses of America's else was inconsequential. Do these important agencies constitute the index to that which we believe is most fundamental to our life? We cannot think so. Beneath all the froth and foam of an age that has been charged with being altogether materialistic and largely superficial, there resides, we believe, a deep undercurrent of strong religious conviction. The hour calls for a more adequate and conspicuous expression of this conviction, and in no place is the urge greater than at the capital There stands our of the nation. great Capitol building, there converge and meet, not only the vast interests of the country itself, but of the world at large. In more recent years, Washington as a capital, has focussed the vision and the hopes of the nations of the world. Defective and unstatesmanlike as much of our legislative action may be, nevertheless to our people and to the peoples of the old world, Washington represents to their consciousness the highest hopes and We still aspirations of all men. cherish ideals and we are youthful enough to dream dreams of a better and happier world. The building at the capital of a great symbol of our faith has engaged the interest of the most thoughtful and conspicuous men in public life. They feel that somehow such a building would in itself make more definite and concrete the ideals and spiritual aspirations of our people. "Nothing could do more in this direction," said a distinguished leader, "than the erection It was of a great cathedral.” Robert Louis Stevenson who said: "Man was never so happily inspired as when he was building cathedrals.” Washington himself had such building in mind in planning the capital of the nation. Perhaps this great building might be erected through the generosity of the few, but it would not then represent the high purposes and ideals of our people generally. Big as the task is, I make my appeal to the people of the country as a whole. Occupied as we all are with enterprises that touch intimately pressing human needs, I feel that the building of this great temple is an expression, a venture if you will, of religious faith, that by its very daring must result in the strengthening and empowering of every religious cause over the country. We need, to use Stevenson's famous phrase, to "stab" ourselves "broad awake." We need to give adequate demonstration to our belief in that which, in our better moments, we hold to be basically related to our most sacred and cherished institutions. We build our splendid universities, art galleries and libraries on large lines, indeed the very vastness of them adds distinction to that which they represent. Shall the Church of God make apology for casting its appeal in terms commensurate with these great and valuable agencies? Too long has the Church played the role of a humble mendicant, apologizing for that which it represents. It has played a role out of keeping with the vital importance of the tasks committed to it. Its voice has been lost in the clamorings of institutions and agencies that have held first place in market place and forum. Either we build our civilization upon a living Christian faith or we build it upon some system of human philosophy that repeatedly has failed men in times of crisis. We have built our national capital on big lines, we have engaged the most gifted craftsmen to give to it beauty and endurance. The great dome of the Capitol is a symbol of our belief in the institutions we have set up. We seek now to give like beauty and distinction to that faith upon which our fathers builded this Republic. Writing of the supreme importance of this undertaking and viewing it from the standpoint of its practical value, the late Senator Edmonds said: "The capital of this great nation is necessarily the pivotal point of national religious, as well as political, progress on this continent. It is our opportunity to establish here our National Cathedral Foundation in this central sphere of influence. I do most earnestly hope that our brethren everywhere may be led to understand the very great importance of the work at Washington and help to the utmost of their abilities to carry it on. Yesterday has gone, tomorrow is always tomorrow, today is the time for action." The National Cathedral must be built; built as the witness to a nation's faith; built as the exponent of Americanism, an of Americanism, an Americanism that believes in God and takes its own part; built, great and enduring, to conserve the institutions that are vital to our life and to guarantee to us through the ages that are to come, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." W IF I WERE A MILLIONAIRE* By CARMEN SYLVA, Queen of Rumania, 1869-1916 E were sitting around our dinner table in our mountain castle of Sinaia, and the conversation had turned upon the multi-millionaires of America. Somebody said: "What would you do if you were a multi-millionaire?" The Princess was the first to answer, being the youngest. She said: "I would have as many flowers and as many horses as I want." An Artist-painter, Lecomte du Nouy, said, "I should make an arena in white marble, in which there would be games and sights for thousands and thousands, to make the people enjoy themselves." The Prince said: "I should give the last penny to sweep my country of all its diseases, and make it healthy." An Aide-de-camp said: "I should build ever so many model villages for the peasants." I was the last to answer, as the King said never a word. I said: "I should build a cathedral with chapels for every religion in it, and an arts school beside it." You can build ever so many houses, and misery will enter there; care will follow the inhabitants, anger and strife, and illness and death can't be kept away. There is only one peaceful house on earth, and that is God's house. You leave your pain at the door and lift your soul up and free it from what makes it heavy. The * Reprint from an old article. house of God is the people's real house, because there the poorest can be alone, which he so seldom is in his cottage, and the richest is nobody -nobody to envy, as he is nothing more than the poorest. The Romans have shown us where an arena leads after a certain time, and that amusing the people is not the best way of helping them. Flowers are lovely, but in the cruel winter time, if you haven't conservatories large enough, no thousands of people can enjoy them; whilst a cathedral, if it is large enough, like Saint Peter's in Rome, is warm in winter and cool in summer, and its air remains pure. There you can carry all your trouble and lay it down before the only One who understands, and go away quieter. Your drunken husband cannot reach you there; your sick child does not moan there; money seems so small, it does not seem to count; and if you are hungry, a beautiful organ will drive away even hunger for a few minutes. It is the only place in which everybody tries to be good, and lifts up his soul above the meanness of life. The arts school beside it would show all those who learn there to what heights they may reach, and what grandeur awaits them. They would become much better musicians, hearing the organ roll out the greatest masters' greatest thoughts every day; the paintings would draw their mind away from the dung-hills it is rather the fashion to paint nowadays. The high vault would bring them nearer to the heights they to introduce the Reformation! A big library would belong to the necessities of that arts school, for nobody can be a great artist without reading and learning a great deal; all that makes men better, and less selfish, would be united round my cathedral. I can't give food to one single town to satisfy it during one year; there would be still some unfed, and unclad, and out of work, which is the worst misery. But food for the soul I could give to many, to thousands and hundreds of thousands in all ages to come. Can you leave Westminster Abbey and not feel better, not feel yourself amongst the grandest of your nation? Can you leave a very grand concert hall without feeling as if you would embrace the whole world, and kneel to the composers, whose thoughts you have been allowed to understand? I spent one evening of my life alone in Westminster Abbey, beside the organ, and even before it, playing a few chords only, in the gathering dusk, when the statues began to look as if they were alive and moving, and I have felt better ever since. If I were a millionaire I should build a cathedral! I was in Saint Peter's Easter, and I saw that all those thousands of inattentive people who crowded it could not take away one atom of its grandeur and solemnity. If I were a millionaire I should build a cathedral! There my renowned ancestor was archbishop in the sixteenth century, and was Luther's friend and wanted If he had succeeded he would have averted the splitting of the churches and the Thirty Years' War. The grand cathedral of my home, the cathedral of Cologne, has been the solace of my stormy life, and from early childhood upward it has comforted me as no other good on this earth. When I come to the Rhine I always go to the Cathedral of Cologne, and enter the treasury only to have a look at the crosier of my great ancestor, Archbishop and Elector Hermann, with the Peacock of our house of Weir upon it. And Saint Isaak, in Petersburg, has its own solemn grandeur, though heavier and more massive, less artistic, perhaps, but when the wonderful Russian choirs begin to penetrate its vaults, one is lifted quite beyond earth and its miseries. I have never seen an Indian temple, but I am sure it must appeal to everything profound and great in human nature. SO My cathedral would be of white marble, like that of Milan, inside and out; not ornamented, much quieter than Milan, but with columns that would give the feeling of a beechwood. A beechwood must have been the origin of the Gothic style. The Saint Mark's Cathedral is perhaps the one that enters your soul most of all, when the sun gently touches the far-off columns till they seem lilac in all that gold; but I should always prefer an enormous height, and white marble with a firstrate organ, of course, and choirs like the Russian one, educated in the arts school beside the church. If I were a queen in a fairy tale I should do all that. should do all that. But the queens |