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of the cities by the pastors in the months of July and August should be quieted. It is true that many of the well-to-do people of the cities are absent during these months; that the congregations at that season are apt to be thin, and that therefore it is the best time for the pastor to take his annual rest; but it is also true that the poor are always with us in the cities all summer long; that there is more sickness and mortality, especially among children, then than in any other part of the year, and that the need of pastoral care and sympathy is no less then than during other seasons. Some arrangement ought therefore to be made among the pastors, whereby a sufficient force should be in active service through the vacation season; and the people of each congregation should know to whom they might go for counsel and comfort in affliction. An arrangement of this nature could easily be made if the churches were statedly meeting for consultation about their work.

Doubtless such a conference of the churches would be tempted to undertake many things, but its wisdom would be demonstrated in attempting few things, and only those things in which there was entire agreement. The devices of power by which wills are arrayed against wills, and minorities are coerced by majorities, could never be employed in this assemblage; its usefulness would depend on the unanimity of its operations.

I was asked to speak on the necessity of co-operation in Christian work, but I could not enforce the necessity of co-operation without showing what I mean by co-operation; and the presentation of this simple plan has involved, at every step, an exhibition of the reasons which prove its necessity.

It is necessary for the churches of Christ in every community to confer together with respect to the work committed to them, because it is their common work, and no church has a right to make all its plans and carry on its enterprises without consultation with its partners and associates in the work.

It is necessary to consult, after this manner, in order to avoid collision and confusion.

It is necessary in order to secure the complete occupation of the field, and the reclamation of the neglected portions.

It is necessary because it is necessary for Christians to act like reasonable beings, and this lack of counsel and concert is a symptom of insanity.

There are, however, one or two special considerations which emphasize this necessity, to only one of which I will refer in closing.

The need of keeping the working classes within the reach, and the healing and comforting touch of the church is beginning to be urgent. There is no radical cure for our social disorders, and our industrial conflicts, but Christianity-the Christian gospel, the Christian law, the Christian life that incarnates both law and gospel. The masters need it as much as the men; both classes must take Christ's yoke and learn of him.

We are still able to reach the masters, but the men have been slipping away from us. This has been disputed; but the affirmations of the fact on this platform have been so strong that I need not spend any time in enforcing it. The fact that great numbers of these people are somewhat disaffected toward the churches is not to be denied, and this disaffection extends to the existing industrial régime, and even to the government of the country. Many of the working people think that the machinery of church and state is in the hands of the rich; that the working classes are being exploited for the benefit of those above them. Most of this discontent exists in a mild form as yet; but here and there the poison in the blood breaks out in an abscess, which you call anarchy. The anarchistic temper is only an exacerbation of a state of mind which in large classes may be said to be epidemic. Few of our people are tainted with theoretical anarchy, but it is the measure of discontent prevalent among them that makes anarchy possible.

Now, doubtless, the heroic treatment of overt anarchy is the right treatment. The law can do no other than throttle the man who conspires to throttle the law. But the conditions out of which anarchy springs will never be cured by the hangman; and your hangings, as you will find, are terribly dangerous operations, unless there goes along with them a vigilant, resolute, thorough-going, self-denying effort to get at the bottom of this social discontent, and cure it. The complaints of the workingmen are often unreasonable; even so, they must be quieted with reason and love, not with sneers or objurgations. They are not wholly unreasonable. The workingman, as Mr. Depew has said, has a grievance, and it behooves all men of good-will to try to understand it, and to help him remove it. This is the burden that is laid on the Christian

church to-day. If there is any more pressing duty, I do not know where to look for it. The church of Christ must put itself into sympathetic and helpful relations with the toiling classes. With the wealth it has accumulated, the culture it has gathered, the social prestige it has won, it must go out after these people, and make common cause with them, bearing their burdens with them, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.

The work that it is called to do for them must also be very largely institutional work-permanent work, no mere evangelistic raids through their territory. Into the neighborhoods where the working people live, the churches of Christ must go and stay. Of the sin of abandoning these neighborhoods they must first repent; then they must go back and do works meet for repentance. From every rich church in every great city, a colony of its elect disciples -wealthy, cultivated, earnest men, with their families-ought to go forth and plant itself in one of the neglected districts, building there, not a mission but a church, a Christian church, where the rich and the poor should worship together, owning the Lord, who is the maker of them all. This church should be the spiritual home of the people who establish it; they should have no other church relationship; their Sundays and many of their evenings should be spent in its service; it should be not only a preaching-place on Sundays, but the shelter of industrial schools for boys and girls on week days, and the meeting-place of clubs for workingmen, and guilds for workingwomen; it should become the center of all gracious and beautiful ministries for all that region. Through this dear and sacred fellowship these people of wealth and intelligence could put themselves in closest relation with the life about them; they could win the confidence of the toiling classes, and help them in bearing their burdens and solving their problems.

But this is work that cannot be done by hired men, neither by city missionaries, nor by theological students, nor by any other serviceable stipendiaries. It calls not merely nor mainly for your money, it calls for you. An incarnate Christianity is the only kind of Christianity that will convert these multitudes. What they want most is not chapels nor instructors, but friends. It is the helpful hand, and the appealing eye, and the cheery voice, and the gracious presence in their assemblies and in their homes, that will win their trust; these, and these alone, will convince them that the Christ of

Bethlehem and Nazareth was not a myth, but a Son of God and Saviour of men.

To do this work, as every man can see, there must needs be consultation and co-operation; the neglected districts must be subdivided, and each church must have a field of its own into which it can send its own colony of consecrated laborers, for which it shall be held responsible, and in which it shall be protected, by an organized and vigorous public opinion, from sectarian invasion and competition. If this Conference shall secure in all the cities of the land this measure of co-operation, its labor will not be in vain.

CHAIRMAN: I now have the great pleasure of introducing to the Conference the Rev. George E. Post, of Syria, who has done grand service in connection with the American Mission there, and who has a word of help, instruction and warning to us, in reference to the divisions of Christian work in that section of the world.

NECESSITY OF CO-OPERATION IN

CHRISTIAN WORK.

ADDRESS BY REV. GEORGE E. POST, M. D., OF BEIROUT.

The past of the Christian church has been an age of creeds; the present is an age of deeds. In the past we have been discovering what we were to believe concerning God. In the future, we are to find what duty God requires of man.

The past has been

an age of strife; the future is to be an age of Christian life. Two years ago I was standing on the top of a naked rock on the western shores of Asia. In front of me lay the remnant of an ancient port. To the left was a valley, with a few ruins of the fardistant past. On a hillside to the west was a vaulted chamber, said to have been the prison of the Apostle Paul. On the crest of a range of rocks overlooking this hill on which I stood, was a battlemented wall, and in the distance a stream crossing to and fro and emptying into another stream, and on the right a mass of broken stones, where once was the great Temple of Diana of the Ephesians-the Seventh Wonder of the world.

This feverish plain, these naked rocks, these few scattered stones, were all that remained of this Seventh Wonder of the world and the first of the seven churches of the Apocalypse. I then went through that country, and I found that everywhere the ancient Christian churches were represented by stone-heaps, mounds covered with grass, ancient tombs. I went on to Antioch, where Christians were first called by that holy name. I went on to Bethlehem, where Christ was born; to Nazareth, where he lived; to Jerusalem, where he suffered and died; and to the Mount of Olives, from which he ascended into heaven. I found all these countries, where the fathers of the Christian faith lived, where the Scriptures were given and from which the Word of Life spread out

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