The misuses which we have noticed suggest the right use of wealth. Its right use does not lie in indiscriminate alms-giving, in filling every outstretched hand and open mouth. So wealth might be made to disappear. Not so can it be rightly used. Nor does a right theory of the use of wealth lead to communistic views of property. If all the wealth of our land were equally divided, the share of each man, woman and child, if securely invested at five per cent., would yield but about forty dollars a year. If the principal sum were placed in the hands of each, it would soon be squandered, and inequalities of fortune would again be the inevitable outcome of differing degrees of industry and ability in different individuals.

WEALTH MUST BE USED TO PRODUCE NEW WEALTH-TO PRODUCE THE HIGHEST VALUES.

Wealth must be used for service according to its own laws. It must be used as capital; that is, as wealth employed in the production of new wealth, of new values. But in such use of wealth let us have a clear-eyed recognition of various kinds of value, and of degrees in values. And let us insist upon the steady, systematic preference of those values which are highest. Intelligence, morality, conscience, and will-power which is steadied and strengthened by conscience, have the highest economic values. Wealth used as to promote the prevalence of these qualities among a people is in the truest sense employed in the production of new wealth.

SO

Just as truly as teacher and preacher are under economic laws, and are bound to pay their debts and support their families, just so truly are business men under moral and spiritual law, and under obligation to win and use their wealth, and all their wealth, with a constant regard to the moral and spiritual welfare of their community and their race. No man is free to choose as to whether he or his property shall come under God's law of service. He is under that law by virtue of his birth, as he is in society and a member of the State, without his having been asked. He owes steady allegiance to that law of service, by virtue of the solidarity of God's universe of law. And though, in managing his property he may disregard this obligation, he can never escape it.

When Christian wealth, which is concentrated power of service, becomes really consecrated power of service in the hands of those who

use it, how rapidly we shall move forward in the solution of many of the knottiest problems of social reform !

Wealth, since it is "the usufruct of skill, intelligence and morality," is under obligation steadily to reproduce morality, intelligence and skill. "Redeem the time" that was withheld from God's work by you, while you were making money! Buy it back, by using this money conscientiously for God's work. If you have inherited wealth, let the time and labor involved in the rolling up of a fortune be evolved again, in days and years of active philanthropic and Christian work, done by workers whom your money supports in teaching, in preaching, and in mission-fields. What vast donations overdue to schools of applied industry, to institutions of learning and to Christian missions, this view suggests!

WEALTH PRODUCES THE HIGHEST VALUES, WHEN IT HELPS MEN TO

HELP THEMSELVES.

To educate men in the knowledge and use of their own powers, and to bring them under the sway of right principles and feelings, is the true way to make them help themselves. But in every community there is a mass of inefficiency, ignorance and vice, which the stronger and the better must help to elevate. The ignorance, misery and sin of the world is a terrible reality. It will not let thoughtful men sleep! It ought not to let rich men sleep, unless their wealth, which is power of service, is constantly doing something to relieve it. "It was never meant that man should be completely happy, while his fellows are in pain," says one of the truest of our social philosophers.

To make less this sum of ignorance and misery, the man of wealth has many wise ways open to him. To help to work out plans of successful co-operation or profit-sharing, opens a noble avenue for service. The moral effects of such experiments on employers and men are incalculably good.

"He is the rich man in whom the people are rich." There is a growing disposition on the part of rich men to recognize this truth by giving public parks, museums and libraries for the use of the people. There is a growing wish to make the life of our toiling men "richer with respect to soul, mind and body." But all attempts to do this throw us back always upon intellectual, moral and spiritual forces, as the means, through education, of raising the condition of men. Something may be done by way of pro

viding halls, books and apparatus for that process of self-education, in matters political, social and industrial, toward which discussions. in their own organizations so strongly impel our laboring-men. What a difference in power to produce values, between the dollar you spend to add to your dinner a dish of fruit out of its season, and the dollar you put into a good book upon the duties of citizenship, and place in the hands of an intelligent young workman in

one of the labor unions!

But even if wealth had supplied all the material appliances which men need for self-education and self-elevation, the question would remain, Have the men whom you wish to make self-helpful the desire to help themselves? The effort to answer this question will force us to consider such men as individuals; to come into relations with them one by one. To influence personalities strongly, is the great desideratum.

SUCH HELP IS STRONGEST WHEN THE STRONGEST PERSONALITY

TOUCHES MEN'S WILLS ONE BY ONE.

The mightiest educating power is a strong personality. The greatest work which Christian wealth can do for the world is to help to bring men, one by one, under the sway of that one Supreme Personality, the Lord Jesus Christ! The only hope for men is in a close personal relation with a Personal Saviour. Not in masses will men be lifted out of vice and sin. Society will be purified, institutions will be made better and kept better, only as men are drawn one by one to "Him who has been lifted up." The great social discontent of our time springs from the lack of a true center for each man's life, in Christ. The pitiable, blind yearnings of Socialism must touch the hearts of Christians, because they are the groping of men after that true brotherhood which men find only when they see the fatherhood of God. Christ is the "Desire of the Nations," though they know Him not. And in our time and in our land, the noblest use for wealth is, in promoting efforts to bring the gospel of Christ home to the hearts of the people and to bring the people home to Christ.

Since wealth has in it the noble possibility of being thus transmuted into spiritual power, how do Christians dare to use so much of it for lower purposes? If the "love of Christ constraineth us,” if we and all our possessions have been "bought with a price," the true view is, not "how much of my money ought I to use for the

Lord's work," but, rather, "all that I am and all that I have is my Lord's; how much of my Lord's substance ought I to use on my family and myself?"

The truth is that wealth is a mighty power, but an exceedingly dangerous power for him who uses and holds it. The Christian who is to withstand its temptations and to use it aright must constantly ask guidance from God. It is the "deceitfulness of riches" which makes Christians imagine that they can lightly set aside or ignore the emphatic warnings of God's Word regarding riches. Only the power and love of God can enable Christians safely to handle wealth. And when all is said, the giving of wealth for Christian work is not a mere business transaction. "They that trust in their wealth and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, or give to God a ransom for him." Only the power of the Holy Spirit can transmute money gifts into Christian influences which shall win souls to Christ.

66 AMERICA FOR CHRIST." "THE WORLD FOR CHRIST." The crisis in our national life calls most loudly for Christian work and Christian giving in home-fields. From heathen lands come such requests for Christian teachers and missionaries as appall our mission-boards. In our colleges are two thousand young men who say to the Church of America, "Send us; we are ready to go." Now that fields are open and laborers ready, shall we hold back our Lord's money, and keep these heralds of glad tidings from the work they are ready to do?

What an opportunity to use for the noblest ends that power, that concentrated life-effort, which is coined in wealth! You, Christian men of means, who feel that the strength of your life has gone into wealth-winning, yet who have felt your heart stirred by the devotion of a Livingstone or a Hannington or a Chamberlain, will you not use God's money entrusted to your management to educate and support such heroic workers for Christ?

"Defer not charities till death," says Bacon, "for certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's than his own." Use your wealth for Christ while you can yourself direct its use, while you can yourself see and enjoy the mighty moral and spiritual values which are produced from the

right use of wealth. The example of Christian men and women of property who go "at their own charges to mission fields, is inspiring; many will follow it!

Drawn together here by the power of Christian love, let us plan liberal things for the promotion of Christ's kingdom. Let us be ready to give to such Christian work as here devise, time and labor which shall bless the godless homes

about us.

we may

Let us give time and money joyously, for the love of Christ. Let us rejoice in the brotherly spirit which pervades a gathering of Christians such as this. And if we feel a joyous elation in the conviction that strong men, banded together for the service of God, with His blessing can accomplish much, let us welcome and not distrust that sense of social joy.

"God loveth a cheerful giver." Have you studied the precise import of the word translated cheerful? It came to me with wonderful force a few days since, as I was reading my Greek Testament. The word is "hilaron." There is no mistaking its import. God loves a whole-souled, "hilarious" giver-one who is not ashamed of the cause for which he gives-one who, with a strong, broyant, joyous confidence in the cause, in the men who are working with him for it, and, above all, in the God who directs the work, gives freely, heartily and with a swing! To the sense of duty from the law of Christian service, shall we not by God's help add this crowning grace of spontaneous, hearty, hilarious Christian giving of time and money for the cause of

our Master?

GENERAL DISCUSSION.

REV. ROBERT C. MATLACK, D. D., OF

PHILADELPHIA.

SECRETARY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL EDUCATION SOCIETY.

MR. PRESIDENT: I have come to this city deeply oppressed with a sense of my responsibility as a delegate to this Conference of Christian workers. My burden has become more and more heavy, as I have heard of the perils within and without by which the