heard from that prophetic teacher Bushnell, we were gathering it from this or that analogy, or being taught it by dear experience; now we are swept into conviction of it by the overwhelming evidence of growth as the unvarying divine method everywhere. We cannot, then, begin with life too young, keep at work too constantly, or continue too late. The discipline of Christian character must last from the cradle to the grave. The whole art for childhood is yet to be learned by the church. We are just beginning to see that the history of the race repeats itself in the single life. The child has his mythopæic and legendary era, his phase of animism and fetichism. All the childish wonder, fancy, awe, love of beauty, have yet to be utilized as it was in the divine kindergarten of early Israel. We must begin concretely, objectively, sensuously. Let our theology "empty itself" and "take the form of a servant "; practise economy of revelation as God did, and "suffer the little children to come to him" as they can.

Meantime we have to make the culture of temper, motive, unselfishness, service, accompany the growing sense of right, the insight of the divine. What a labor is this, remunerative and delightful to the last degree, but as delicate and difficult. Doubtless the larger part of this is best done in the home. But parents need help. They must look to the church for impulse and ideal, and, more than that, for co-operation and model, which the church must provide through something of apparatus and organization.

When we come to later ages, how important it is to liberalize as well as intensify; to deepen the faith and kindle the zeal even while we enlarge. the soul; to open the minds of people to the word of God from all sources, to Godward movements in all arts and among all peoples; and while in the midst of doing this to find scope and opportunity for the practice of Christian sentiment. The material is so boundless, the call so urgent, the fields so various, who is sufficient for these things?

The churches are not, but the church is. The resources and talents of the church are adequate for the labor laid upon her, but only when the total resources and talents of the entire church are found, and organized and applied. There is no urgency for organization in the new motive forces surging into the church like that.

Economy by specialization is the order of the day. Division of labor attained through consolidation is perhaps the most productive economic principle. No one artisan now manufactures an entire article. Each using machinery makes in higher perfection and at cheaper cost his single part. The peg in your shoe, the pivot in your watch, is the product of the skilled hand trained to that one labor. The school children of our towns are gathered at the centre and grouped and graded, under expert instruction. Industries, charities, reformatories, consolidate and classify. The forces which scattered in county prisons and almshouses do their work badly, combined under state supervision are able to classify and grade, changing demoralizing places of detention into homes of redemption and reformation. Only the church stands dumb and stolid, belated

and obstinate, unable to combine, broken into a myriad powerless fragments, disabled by the deep damnation" of individualism, — each church for itself, losing its life while struggling to save it. Until in her working creed the church repeats daily the article, I believe in the holy Catholic church," she will never see the kingdom of God. Each church exhausting its energies in the desperate effort for self-preservation must go on as now, content with the prayer, "Give us our daily bread," unable to rise to the larger petition, "Thy kingdom come." But the zeal and yearning and hope for that kingdom here on earth is just the new motive force moving in the world and in the church, and destined, please God, to redeem organization, — in one way by organizing not in selfish seclusion, but for united ministry.

Suppose we were to do this in any district or city, even so far as to get our Congregational churches, combining their gifts and powers in work, together, then what no one could do alone they could do in union. What an extension it would give to the capacities and services of the clergy. No man can be a specialist on every subject. Some few ministers come within a miss of it. Yet scarcely any one of us but what has special knowledge and special gifts in some line. Here and there some thoroughly educative, inspiring piece of work, is done, and all spent within the walls of one half-filled meeting house. There was a force for progress, for culture, which belonged to the whole church, and which ought to have gone out on its ministry perhaps through the sisterhood of neigh boring churches. If only they recognized that they were parts of a whole, and their ministers the faculty of religion in their town, then to each man, according to his measure of grace, might be assigned a field, or a form of work, or to each a topic in a series on kindred themes, and by a system of exchanges the whole constituency would be benefited by each contribution, and every man could feel that that whole town or region was his parish, and that in it he was not the minister of a church, but a minister of the church.

Or think of what might be accomplished for the training of the laity in their function, say of teaching! If for nothing else the churches adjacent should combine for normal classes so accredited, so equipped, so valuable to the teacher that he could not afford to lose it. The religious culture of very little children needs apparatus and expert ability. Many churches cannot furnish this at all, few can do it well, but together they might join their forces and their means in one Sundayschool kindergarten which would serve them all.

Again there is the higher musical and hymnological culture of congregations lying untouched, beyond the capacity, often beyond care or interest, of any single church. It is easy to see how a group, with agreement upon one book for their common use, one worthy type of tunes and noble hymns, classes for practice, and great gatherings for choral singing, might educate the devout taste and musical sense, of the whole community, purge the sanctuary of the unclean thing, and regenerate the musical part of our worship. These are but examples; the possibilities of

co-operation in teaching, testimony, service, charity, and the cure of souls are unlimited. The redeeming impulse of the new motive forces which touch organization everywhere press most urgently toward the realization of Christian unity through some form of organization.

Looking at the church actual and visible, often the heart droops. In her methods and even her aim, she is groping, stumbling, faulty, and futile. But when we turn to the new motive forces, hear the new calls to service, manifold, real, and productive; find again to-day the assurance, "Lo, I am with you alway," in the manifest presence of the Lord working with us in a multitude of co-operative forces; see clearly our method in the plan approved and employed by God from the foundation of the world: we are tempted to be reckless optimists. The new life must find new embodiment. The new motive forces will remodel, revitalize, and, therefore, redeem the machinery of the church.

ADDRESS1

BY REV. E. M. CHAPMAN.

Are the Present Standards of Ministerial Qualification Adequate? I state the question to you precisely as it was propounded to me. It has been so much discussed of late, that were it merely an academic question I should think it quite too threadbare for obtrusion here. But there are certain vital elements in it that serve to keep its interest alive, however much it may be bandied about from Congregational Club to Association, and from Association to General Conference. It relates to those standards which we set up to determine the fitness of men to serve their fellow men in the high capacity of religious leaders. These standards have to take into account the indefinable qualities of personality; the mysterious nature of human influence; the subtle but irresistible power of character, even when character seems almost bare of grace or adornment.

Furthermore, all standards whereby we are to measure the efficiency of a man must be set up with a full consciousness of God's ability to do his work by means of imperfect instruments; nay, of the necessity under which He finds himself, humanly speaking, of working with imperfect instruments if anything is ever to be accomplished in this world. And we must be prepared too, after we have done our best to measure men, to see ourselves once and again contradicted by the genius on the one hand, and put to confusion by the fool upon the other.

It becomes very evident, then, that such a question as this does not admit of a categorical answer. We cannot say yes or no, and so have done with it. We are forced to the admission that precisely the same standards applied to two equally well qualified men may conceivably lead us to a just conclusion in the one case, while they hopelessly befog us in another.

But that is no reason why we should abandon standards for the measurement of the fitness of men for service in the ministry; it is only another way of saying that no standards can be devised which will not require conscientious discrimination in their use.

Now this being all admitted, if any one should come before this reverend body and ask us to define the present standards of ministerial qualification in the Congregational churches, what should we say? What requirements beyond a common school education, a decent reputation for purity and honesty, and something that can be made to represent a call to preach, do we as churches and representatives of churches require of the youth who offers himself for licensure or ordination? To be sure some associations and some councils demand far more than this, and are even stiff-kneed enough to make it a condition of acceptance, but what does this amount to if, while these particular doors are guarded, others stand wide open? And are we not forced to admit further, that even in those bodies where genuine qualification is required, the application of the test too often depends upon the presence or absence of some half dozen members? The only searching inquisition which is likely to be made in the case of the ordinary candidate for license or ordination generally relates to his opinions, in very many cases callow and half formed opinions, with reference to those questions of doctrine that are most in dispute among the brethren themselves. All this is so perfectly well known, and has been the subject of such frequent comment, that I pass it by with this casual

reference.

Permit me now to remind you that this general laxity in respect of ministerial training seems to have grown upon us as the requirements which most occupations make upon those who propose to enter upon them have become more exacting. The lawyer who means to be something better than a pettifogger, and the medical student who looks forward to something higher than quackery, both find tremendous demands made upon them in the way of preparation. Their courses in law and medical school are creeping up from three to four and five years. The Worcester Polytechnic Institute, for instance, fitting young men for mechanical and scientific pursuits, has felt itself under obligation to make a similar increase in the scope of its curriculum. Many of its students come from homes where great sacrifice is demanded in order to provide the means of an education. They are looking forward to occupations in which, if anywhere, it would seem advisable that they shorten their course of theoretical training and begin, as the Gradgrinds are fond of saying, "to do something practical." England has tended to go upon this latter theory. Germany has emphasized the worth of the school. And to-day England is anxious because the trained men who have come out of the German technical schools threaten to wrest her industrial leadership away.

Now, what has been the tendency with respect to training for the ministry? Dr. Williston Walker, in his luminous address before the Congregational Club in Bostou, something more than a year ago, stated that in 1760, of the two hundred and fifty-cight Congregational ministers of Massa

chusetts only eleven had not been in college. At the same time there were one hundred and sixty-one pastors in Connecticut who were all college men but two, thirty-nine in New Hampshire and ten in Rhode Island, with but one man in each colony who lacked college training. To sum it all up in Dr. Walker's own words, less than five per cent of all the Congregational ministry of 1760 had missed the adequate training of the period in preparation for their office." ("Are Our Seminaries Maintaining the Quality of our Ministry?" By Prof. Williston Walker, page 5.)

Let us come down three quarters of a century and note the change. From 1875 to 1896 the deaths of 1,856 Congregational ministers were recorded. Their average term of service had been thirty-seven years, which would cause the dates of the beginning of their ministry to fall within the twenty-one years from 1838 to 1859. (I am pursuing Dr. Walker's statistical method here, but the figures are compiled afresh from the Year Book and brought down to the latest date.) Of these 1,856 men, 1,328 had enjoyed the advantages of a college course, while 528, or about twenty-eight per cent, had not. The figures respecting a seminary course almost exactly duplicate these, as 1,323 had studied in a theological seminary, while 533 had not.

To come down still further. The total number of students enrolled in our seminaries according to the last Year Book was 486, of whom 270 were college graduates, 38 had had a partial course, while 178 had not been in college at all. According to the same Year Book, there were, in 1896, 183 ordinations, while the seniors in the seminaries who may be taken to represent the average number of recruits which these institutions supply to the ranks of the ministry numbered 124. During the same year 122 ministers died, and the net gain in the number of Congregational churches was 64.

Now I have no time, nor is such a place as this the proper one, for the elaborate discussion of these statistics. They indicate, however, several very significant facts. In the first place it is perfectly evident that, as compared with a century ago, the churches lay comparatively little emphasis upon the best attainable training as a requisite for the pastoral office. In the second place, they indicate that in view of the disproportion between the increase in the ranks of the ministry from the seminaries, and the net increase in the number of churches, there is at least an apparent demand for men from other sources than the ordinarily recognized one, and an apparent excuse for the ordination of men with scanty academic training for the pastorates of the smaller churches.

And still further, these figures seem to indicate that a very considerable number of good men in our communion have been convinced that fitness for the ministry of the word is a variable thing. "If there are many churches and few students let us cut down our courses, let us lessen our requirements, let us welcome the man to ordination to-day whom we judged unfit yesterday," these men seem to say. "If there are churches there must be ministers; and if there are not trained men who desire to be ordained, let us license and ordain untrained ones."