power, and, for my part, I want a man who can pray with power, not only in the public worship of the congregation, but in the private hour of need.

As to the preaching, we do not want a professional orator or a mere sermonizer, giving us essays and lectures, however brilliant or learned, but in the perfectly apt phrase, a man with a message," a message from God. If he has not this it matters little what else he has, and if he has this, everything else will be added to him. As an average layman I believe I represent the common sentiment of men of affairs in desiring from the pulpit, not occasionally but constantly, a message to the heart rather than a message to the head. Every Sunday we go to church needing not so much instruction as inspiration, whether by means of admonition or invitation. We need the solemn call to repentance, the assurance of a waiting forgiveness, and promise of power against ever-besetting temptation. We want comfort, encouragement, strengthening. We want the worries and perplexities, the disappointments with ourselves and with others, exorcised by the love which brings peace. Now that laymen are generally as well-educated as the minister and frequently read very much in the same general lines, while they may be entertained by the average sermon they are certainly not edified, in the good old sense of that word. The men, and for that matter the women and children, who come into church ought to be made to feel the presence of God, his personal interest in them, and his present and instant purpose to give them just what they most need. Sermons that practically preach doubt and even sermons addressed to doubters, who are always comparatively few in number in any congregation, can do no good to the great majority of those who hear them. What is wanted is the voice of the divine authority, through the mouthpiece, saying Repent," or "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or Go in peace. If a man says, "I have no message from God; I get up my sermons as I would prepare an oration, by hard work with my books and my own thoughts,"

he really ought not to be a minister. The ambassador of Christ has of course a message from his King, which is after all also his credentials. And practically, he is not received unless that is the case. It is still true in scores of churches, as it was when Milton wrote his lines, that

"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." But that is a great weakness and misfortune of the church. It is pathetic to see men and women, often without knowing definitely what is the matter, starving away under such shepherds. Human nature is the one constant factor in human affairs. It is exactly the same as in the time of our Lord upon earth and it needs just the same treatment. Wealth and rank and all the other accidents of life only cover from the common view the human heart, restless and discontented, conscious of wrong-doing, desirous of better things, filled with the divine hunger, which can only be satisfied by the divine food.

The minister must also be the friend of his people individually. There is no cant in the use of the words beloved' or "brethren," if the minister is really a loving brother and is accepted as such. And he will be accepted as brother and as father, if he has in himself the love of the Father, the love of the Elder Brother. Then in the home he will not be shut out of the real personal life in the category of the ordinary and perfunctory visitor, but will be able in time of joy or in time of sorrow to be a friend of friends, and the true representative of Him who came to minister and to give His life. Without doubt it is in such intimate ministries that every minister worthy of the name is most useful. And everyone of us remembers rather such ministries than any sermons in our gratitude for what ministers have done for us personally.

I have old-fashioned notions, and therefore I do not think ministers should be expected to do anything more than to be preacher and pastor and also, in a sense, priest in prayer. I think the minister should not be required to be the organizer of the activities of the church or the manager of its financial

affairs. In a Presbyterian church the elders ought to relieve him of the former function and the trustees of the latter. Because of the neglect of this principle our Presbyterian laymen are far more active in religious and philanthropic enterprises outside of their own churches than within them. In the Young Men's Christian Association, and in every similar undertaking, Presbyterian laymen and for that matter the laymen of all other churches, have given themselves more than in their own denominational work. Much is now being done to remind them of their obligations and duties to their churches, and it is to be hoped that there may soon be an end of the bad practice of imposing upon our ministers burdens which prevent them from properly performing their true functions and which they never should have had to carry. In this very hurried outline I have left rough edges which there is not time to file away, and have very imperfectly expressed my convictions. But this will not matter if any man looking for his lifework can be reminded by what I have said that the vocation of the minister is the first in the world, and that it calls for the strongest, finest and best equipped of men.

Now that we have once more learned the old lesson, that the greatest of all is the servant, and that to stand at once as the minister of God and the servant of the servants of God is nobler and more satisfactory than to be a world-famous ruler or scientist, or multi-millionaire, there ought to be an irresistible attraction in the Christian ministry to knightly young men who love difficulties, court hardships, want the lasting rewards and are loyal to ideals. Washington, D. C.

THE PLACE OF THEOLOGY IN THE LIFE OF THE MODERN CHURCH.

I have been asked by the editors of the AUBURN SEMINARY RECORD to write a few words upon the place of theology in the modern church. If the question had been asked a dozen years ago, many would have told us that the answer could be given in fewer words than it would take to ask the question. Understanding by theology, systematic theology, the discipline that has to do with the formulation of doctrine as such, we should have been assured that, whatever may have been true of the church of the past, there was no place for such a study in the church of the present.

There were two quarters from which the claim of theology to a place in the life of the modern church was called in question. On the one hand, the scientific and historical spirit was reclaiming for its own wide reaches of territory in which theology had hitherto reigned supreme. On the other hand, the practical interest had become impatient of dogmas incapable of verification in experience, and without practical bearing on life, and was clamoring for the substitution of work for faith as the true bond of Christian union. The temper of thoughtful men was well illustrated by a remark made to the writer by a professor of philosophy in one of our leading institutions. Speaking of my own department, he said: "I can see no independent place for systematic theology in the curriculum of the future. Between the philosophy of religion, basing itself upon an inductive study of the beliefs of all the greater religions, and the history of doctrine, reproducing in detail the specific form which these doctrines have taken in Christianity, I can see no middle ground. Either your science must move forward into a philosophy of religion, or it must degenerate into a mere dogmatics, of purely traditional and historical interest."

There are not a few today who would still make this position their own. Yet I think I am not mistaken in detecting

signs of a definite and growing reaction. In the first impulse given to the literary study of the Bible by the newer scientific method many men, who had found the older theology arid and uninviting, turned eagerly into the new fields, and it was freely prophesied that the result of modern biblical study would be a freshening and revivifying of the religious life which would render the old dogmatic methods forever obsolete. Freshening and revivifying there certainly has been; but, as the historical method has gained increasing sway, and the first novelty has worn off, people are beginning to ask themselves whether, indeed, the result of the change has been wholly gain. It is, no doubt, a good thing to know what Isaiah and Amos and Peter and Paul thought about religion; to enter into their world of thought, to see things with their eyes, to learn that much which men have regarded as of the eternal essence of religion is but the temporary framework and scaffolding of thought. But how does this help us tc answer the deeper questions which keep forever rising within us? In the new world into which I have been born, and amid the new environment in which I stand, what is true for me today? How can any merely historical or critical study furnish an answer to this question?

The same sense of incompleteness haunts us when we turn to the practical interest which has so largely engrossed the energies of the church during the last two decades. While we rejoice in the increase in our benevolent activities, in our wider social outlook, in the settlements, the brotherhoods and organizations of one kind and another that are multiplying about us, a doubt sometimes arises as to the end which all this activity is designed to serve. Are we sure, as we yield ourselves to the current which is setting so strongly, that we see clearly the goal to which it is bearing us?

There is a moving paragraph in the autobiography of John Stuart Mill, in which he describes how, in the full flush of his reforming activity, there came upon him a sudden depression of spirit. It occurred to me," he writes, to put the ques