The Warriors | Page 9

spiritual heights, and answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery, aspiration, and spiritual passion of the soul.
Science, no longer a dry assembling of facts and figures, is an increasing revelation of the imagination, the exactness, the thoroughness, and the great progressive plans of God. Evolution has become a spiritual formula. The scientist looks out over the earth and sky and sun and star. Against his little years are meted out vast prehistoric spans; against his mastery of a few forms of life, stands Life itself. Back of all, there looms up the great Figure of the Originator of life, and of the forms of life; the Maker and Ruler of them all. Each scientific fact helps exegesis and evidence. Each new aspiration after truth becomes a form of prayer.
Yes, the whole world is being subtly and powerfully drawn to the worship of the Christ. Never before was there so deep, genuine, and widespread a Revival of Religion. It has not come heralded with great outcries, with flame and wind, and revolution and upheaval; it has come as the great changes that are most permanent come, in stillness and strength. Throughout the world there is being turned to the service of religion the highest training, the most intellectual power. Wars are being wrought for freedom; the Church and the university are joining hands; the rich and the poor are drawing near together for mutual help and understanding; industry is growing to be, not only a crude force, brutal and disregarding, but a high ministry to human needs; the home is becoming more and more the guardian of faith and the shrine of peace; business houses are taking upon them a religious significance; commerce and trade are perceiving ethical duties. Armies are marching in the name of Jehovah, and a great poet has this one message: "Lest we forget!"
7. Jesus calls us by the future of the race. Life proceeds to life. Eternity is what is just before. Immortality is a native concept for the soul. Beyond this hampered half-existence, the soul demands life, freedom, growth, and power.
We stand between two worlds. Behind us is the engulfed Past, wherein generations vanish, as the wake of ships at sea. Before us is the Future, in the dawn-mist of hovering glory, and surprise. Looking out over eternity, that billowy expanse, do we not see rising, clear though shadowy, a vast Permanence, Completion, Realization, in which the soul of man shall have endless progress and delight? This is the Promise held out by all the ages, and the future toward which all the thoughts and dreams of man converge. It is glorious to be a living soul, and to know that this great race--life is yet to be!
At the threshold of each new century stands Jesus, star-encircled, with a voice above the ages and a crown above the spheres,--Jesus, saying, FOLLOW ME!

III. PROCESSIONAL: THE CHURCH OF GOD
[AURELIA]
_The Church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord; She is His new creation By water and the Word: From heaven He came and sought her To be His Holy Bride; With His own blood He bought her And for her life He died.
Though with a scornful wonder Men see her sore opprest, By schisms rent asunder, By heresies distrest; Yet saints their watch are keeping, Their cry goes up, "How long?" And soon the night of weeping Shall be the morn of song.
'Mid toil and tribulation, And tumult of her war, She waits the consummation Of peace for evermore; Till with the vision glorious Her longing eyes are blest, And the great Church victorious Shall be the Church at rest._
SAMUEL JOHN STONE
FIRST: RECONSTRUCTION
The subject that is being carefully considered by many thinking men and women to-day is this: the place and prospects of the Christian Church. All about us we hear the cry that the Church is declining, and may eventually pass away; that it does not gain new members in proportion to its need, nor hold the attention and allegiance of those already enrolled. Are these things true? If so, how may better things be brought to pass? To share in the civilization that has come from nineteen hundred years of the work of the Church, and to be unwilling to lift a pound's weight of the present burden, in