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The modern world began with the Reformation in the sixteenth tury. Many Many contributory causes had been working toward it in the centuries which preceded; but when Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, his hammer blows sounded the death knell of medievalism. The old world of political tyranny, of deadening superstition, of mental stagnation and spiritual slavery was waning. The new world was born.

Protestantism is four centuries old, antedating the Pilgrims by a hundred years. It has been a chief factor in producing the modern world. It asserted the right of private judgbut, and set free the mind, long fettered and crippled. It declared the responsibility of men to God without the intervention of any intermediary, and set free the conscience. It gave the open Bible to all the world, and thus welcomed all men into the broad realm of truth. It inspired in men a passion for truth in place of tradition, confident that the truth would make them free.

These seed principles by their vitalizing power shattered the old order of things, and changed the whole aspect of human life. These ideals, expressed through various religious and social movements, prepared the way and supplied the force for the superb advances in thought and life which have given us the modern world.

Marvelous are the changes that have been wrought during the period. since this potent influence began its work.

Certain physical changes may be noted. To begin with, in the year 1500 Europe had a population of about one hundred million people. Five years ago that continent had over three hundred and twenty mil. lion people, having increased more than threefold. The recent devastating war swept away some millions of these, but there are still three times as many people on that continent as in Luther's day. A steadily increasing proportion have embraced these ideals which are the secret of modern progress.

When the Mayflower crossed the Atlantic the western hemisphere was comparatively a recent discovery. That New World which was to be the providential arena for the most remarkable advances of humanity. had not long been known. There were hardly any Anglo-Saxons on its shores. Today the United States, with more than a hundred million people, is the greatest Protestant nation in the world, while at the same time it gives absolute liberty to all religions within its borders.

Most of the Pilgrim company were born in the sixteenth century In that century Spain was the mistress of Europe, and the Latin race was the dominant power on that continent. The Anglo-Saxons numbered perhaps two or three millions on a little island in the North Atlantic ocean. Now Spain has been shorn of her strength, and the Latin race has lost its pre-eminence. But the AngloSaxon race belts the globe with its virile, aggressive hosts, controls Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, and other portions of the world, numbers more than a hundred million people (more than the population of all

Europe in Luther's Day) and rules over one-third of the world's sur face, and more than one quarter of its population. It molds and inspires other races in the countries where it is the dominant power. The AngloSaxon race is pre-eminently the Protestant race, wide-awake, progressive, practical and religious. The World-War has brought these kindred peoples into close fellowship and many are saying that in the solidarity of the Anglo-Saxons both sides of the sea and around the globe lies the hope of the world.

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Fifth, one of the narrowest and most intolerant of Emperors, swayed Europe from his throne in Spain. He was to be followed by the still more bigoted and cruel Philip, whose atrocities in the Netherlands destroyed a hundred thousand Protestants. Francis I. was on the throne of France, and the reign of Charles IX., with the horrible barbarity of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the corrupt and selfish careers of the Louises were yet to follow. Henry VIII. was the sovereign of our mother country, and the tightening grasp of the Stuarts, with their theory of the divine right of kings, was still

to come.

What a contrast does our modern world present! Today democracy is in the ascendant, and freedom is the world's ideal. The divine right of kings is ridiculed and denied, and more and more men are determined to have a "government of the people. by the peole, and for the people." The chain of republics in the two Ameri

cas, and their sister republics across the sea, have helped to republicanize Europe; so that several of its govern ments, though monarchical in form, are nearly as free as our own, and the people are the real ruling power. Our recent great war sent thrones and scepters to the screap heap, and helped to to democratize the whole world.

This gain in political freedom has gone forward hand in hand with a tremendous gain in religious liberty. Each has helped the other, and today religious despotism is as much out of date as tyranny in the state. Men's minds and consciences have been set free; they accept dictation from no one. They apply their own reason to the discovery of truth, and follow their own consciences in obeying it. This results in a stronger, intenser, and more practical religious life, fruiting in nobler character and larg er usefulness. Escaping from a dead formality and a narrowing superstition, men have found in religious liberty a larger life and a more inspiring faith.

As a result of this liberated life of the people, there has also been a wonderful growth in knowledge. Science. in the modern use of the term, was almost unknown three centuries ago. The scholars of Luther's day were so sure that the sun moved round the stationary earth that Galileo, almost a contemporary of the Pilgrim Fathers, received the anathema of the church for daring to assert the contrary. Electricity and steam were practically unknown forces. Harvey did not discover the circulation of the blood till the year before the Pil grim Fathers landed at Plymouth (1619). The law of gravitation as the power that binds the flashing worlds into great coherent systems was not known till Newton discovered it a hundred years later (1719). Vaccination as a preventive of disease, and anesthetics as a relief from pain, waited till the nineteneth century to be discovered. That great law of

development which shows us that God's great cosmic plan is one throughout the universe, and that the various forms of life on our earth have been derived from preceding and lower forms, was almost undreamed of till very recent years. The strides of knowledge, the development of the scientific spirit, the widely diffused intelligence, the growing treasures of literature, the application of discoveries and inventions to practical needs, resulting in devices for the wonderful enlargement of human power and the betterment of human welfare-these make our modern world a striking contrast to that of three centuries ago. We are happily delivered, too, from many of the superstitions that filled those former days with dread. Belief in witchcraft was almost universal in the England which the Pilgrims left. It came with some of the colonists to Massachusetts Bay. Signs and portents held the minds of many educated people in terror. Some people believed that certain diseases could be cured by the touch of the King. Life is more rational now, and we have escaped from the bondage of these superstitions.

In other respects, also, the world of today differs widely from that of

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former times. Its ethical standards are far higher. The imperative of conscience is more keenly felt, and there has grown up a social conscience and a national conscience, making men loyal to the right in their wider relations.

Men have discovered, too, that religion is not a mere matter of individual salvation from future disaster, but is the application of the principles and ideals of Christ to every day life, and the transformation of the world into a kingdom of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount is seen to be a practical program for daily conduct, and the Golden Rule the true solvent of most of our social problems.

Nor must we overlook the immense increase of the spirit of practical brotherhood exhibited in our modern world. This is shown in the multiplying philanthropies of our day, the hospitals, libraries, settlements, reform clubs, charity organizations, missionary societies, and other efforts for the betterment of the world. Life was never so rich, so full, so well worth living as now, with its freedom, its mastery over nature, its treasures of art, its clearer vision of God, and its privileges of fraternal service to man.

day off between corn planting and cultivating, and themselves to shingle the church. The women voted to bring a picnic dinner for the volunteers at noon time. Sixteen men were on hand by seven o'clock the next Saturday, with material, ready to begin work. Sixteen women and girls were there before noon, cooking a substantial lunch. Some of the girls helped put the old shingles under shelter for "kindling wood." The men finished with cheers a few minutes before six, and the women greeted them with hot coffee and