The man whose ideals of utility are starved and small is completely out of patience with public expenditure, or even private enterprise, intended to provide recreation and wholesome amusement for the people. To him the time spent at the feast at Cana and the wine supplied by miracle for the guests are painful mysteries. He applauds the purchase of coals for the poor, but play-grounds for the children are a woeful waste. He overlooks the many-sided nature of man, and forgets that recreation is as positive a need in its way as religion. If he only weighed this fact as he should, he would understand that he who provides wholesome pleasures for the people is filling as legitimate, though less important, a place in the world as the priest or the prophet.

Universities, supported by the public chest, are a constant source of vexation to the utilitarian who interprets usefulness in terms of physical comfort or material wealth. The profound philosophy that "man shall not live by bread alone" has no place in his conception of man's needs. It is of greater importance, in his judgment, that two blades of grass should grow where heretofore there was but one, than that a new thought should capture the mind and transform the life. Business

success is more desired, by those whose ideals of utility are dwarfed and inadequate, than mental vision. and activity. To provide means. whereby every man may eat bacon is a thing to be more desired than to read Bacon.

But if you would hear eloquence and invective you must hearken to your utilitarian when he speaks of churches and foreign missions. He has mentally resolved the mission

ary gifts and ecclesiastical expenditure of our Christian era into loaves of bread, and fuel, and suits of clothes, and his indignation is boundless at the waste which he decries. That man is a spirit, that you reduce him to an animal existence if you do not minister to that side of his being which is most like the Divine Creator, is something which the man of low conceptions of what is useful has yet to learn.

We must cultivate loftier and nobler views of utility if we would escape the temptation, to which materialism so constantly exposes us, to speak of lives as wasted, because they win few earthly prizes, or are shortened by devotion to some holy ideal. Success, as men count success, and utility are not to be mistaken one for the other. We are to remember the truth, often repeated, but not sufficiently emphasized, that it is our business to make a life, not a mere living. Browning teaches us this doctrine in his poem, 'A Grammarian's Funeral.'

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On the Ottawa River, early last winter, a brave, chaste, beautiful Christian life was given in the vain endeavour to save the life of a young maiden, who, while skating, broke through the ice. Did young Harper, of glorious memory, waste his life in surrendering it to rescue another, for whom, alas! he died in vain? No-a thousand times, no! His sacrifice was made a benediction to Ottawa greater than any material wealth which the richest man in the city could bestow upon it, even if he were to give all his goods to promote the temporal well-being of his fellow-citizens. In the new ideals of life, in the fresh and vivid interpretation of the message of the cross, in the emphasis laid upon the worth of Christian character and its natural expression in sacrifice, a contribution was made, in the dying of this young man, to the volume of Christian truth, the value of which cannot be stated in the language of commerce. Unless we are prepared

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to write waste over the Holy Sepulchre, we cannot call in question the utility of deeds of heroism, of lives shortened by Christ-like devotion to man, of beautiful lives prematurely ending on earth to begin careers of unceasing activity in heaven.

This is our self-evident lesson. Utility is indeed a true standard of values, but that we may employ it as we should we must purge our conceptions of utility from all low, carnal, narrow, selfish limitations. We must remember that use is not always, or perhaps often, determined by our temporal and apparent wants. We, the present age, the world we live in, are all related to a great purpose which embraces a universe and an eternity in its sweep, and what to us seems but idle show, or even worthless sacrifice, may be of the highest utility in the eyes of the all-wise Father of lights.

Ottawa.

HE vision splendid which filled the mind of Christ, as he pressed forward to his baptism of suffering, was that of a world lapt in the reign of universal law of righteousness; a city coming down from God out of heaven prepared for the beauty of holiness as a bride adorned for her husband. His vision was in concentrated splendour that which has haunted the minds of all of the great men of the world, whether they have wrought with the military, with material, with intellectual or spiritual force. Militarism has sought to unify the world under an Alexander, Caesar, and a Napoleon. Material force is grasping for the same end in Morgan. Cecil Rhodes, though dead, yet speaks with the power of the intellect as the voice that makes for unity. These men wrought as empire-builders; Christ as a worldbuilder. They must fail because nothing but the spiritual force of love can cement the various peoples and nations together. It is only the insight of love that can

a

66 See the vision of the world and all the wonders that shall be,

Till the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

This vision splendid has never faded from the leaders of the hosts of Christendom, notwithstanding that the clash of arms and the roar of battle thunder continue to make

* A paper read before the Congregational Ministers' Club, San Francisco, June 30th, 1902.

every lover of his fellows sad and disappointed.

But the disappointment will have some value if it bear in upon the disciples of the Son of Man the conviction that other strifes must be hushed before the flags of nations shall be furled in universal peace. The various divisions of the army of God must settle their differences and unify their purposes before they can consistently lift up their hands to stretch forth the wand of peace o'er all the nations.

I would be ashamed to be known as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ if I were not zealously seeking to answer the prayer of my Lord-a prayer most pathetic, offered in the immediate prospect of death, that all His disciples might be one. Opposition to this consummation so devoutly to be wished must surely be sin. To treat it sceptically or as an amiable fad is tó trifle with one of the dearest purposes of the heart of Christ; that purpose which is to be the complete vindication of his claim that he was the one sent from God.

An Invisible Unity Not
Enough.

Very good persons sometimes excuse their indifference to this issue by declaring that they believe in an invisible Church already invisibly united. But what is the Church? It is a number of persons called out from the mass, constituted a unit by the principle of faith in Christ, and manifesting their unity by partaking of the communion of the Lord's body and being edified together by the preaching of the truth as it is in Jesus. Now, can

baptism and the Lord's Supper be administered to or by an invisible Church? Can the word of God be preached to an invisible people? The truth is that the bond which unites may be invisible, but the unity of the Church must be so clearly manifest that the world. through it may know that Jesus is the one sent of God. We labour and travail to-day, expending tenfold more energy than would be quired if we presented a united front to the world. We have already come to the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn whose names are written in heaven; but this, we are persuaded, does not completely fulfil the purpose of Christ.

Development of Doctrine.

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Yet, while we most earnestly wish and pray to see a united Christendom, we have no hope of reaching it by inducing all Christians to think alike. Those who entertain such a hope would do well to study how the various creeds came into being. The early Christian Church was content that its members should hold the vital truths of Christ's teaching within their Christian consciousness. But heresy, so-called, soon arose which impeached the dignity of Christ and frustrated his method of salvation. The early fathers, seized with the conviction that there is an intimate connection between the head and the heart, between belief and practice, zealously defended their views. This could not be done, however, without morally defining what they themselves believed. Hence arose the first standards of doctrine. There was no desire on the part of the early creed-builders to imprison the intellect or enslave thought. They were animated solely by a purpose to give liberty to the truth by freeing it from the bandages of error that it might minister to the highest moral and

spiritual good of the people. St. John's gospel, written to withstand the Gnostics (the Christian Scientists of those early days), and St. Paul's controversial epistles were the first contribution to systematic theology. But human thought is subject to a very interesting law. It swings like the pendulum of a clock from extreme to extreme. The zealous fathers who succeeded the apostles struck the errors they attacked so hard that their recoil carried them into error in the opposite direction. Thus Thus a zigzag stream of thought has come down the centuries, gradually straightening out, we hope, but far from straight in several places yet. And many a preacher is in need of offering up the prayer

"Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,

And deal damnation round the land
On him I deem a foe."

A Universal Common Creed
Not Necessary.

It is evident to any one acquainted with the history of theological thought that the same creed for all points of doctrine' will never be adopted, and I believe it should never be attempted. It is treason to the human intellect to put upon it the trammel of a creed, and it is a reflection upon the insight of a Church that such a thing was ever thought of. It is a blunder that attains the proportions of a crime to regard creeds as tests of faith. Their pure and original intention was that they should be testimonies to the faith. It is both anti-Protestant and antiChristian to regard them in any other light. If there be anything essential to Protestantism, it is not simply the right but the duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures. If anything be fundamental to Christian teaching, it is, "If any man wills to do the will of God, he shall know the

teaching if it be of God." Do not let us, then, seek to put thought in a strait-jacket, nor look in that direction for Christian unity-nor unity in form of church government.

It seems equally unlikely that we shall reach unity in the form of church government. It is about as sure as anything can be that God did not forsake the Church after the second century. The believers in different forms of church government assert that at the end of the second century its genius was Episcopalian; but that does not settle the matter for all time. It is only assumption to say that God's Spirit guided the Church during the second century, and ceased to do so ever after. We do not now believe in an absentee God. It was formerly believed that God made the universe, then took His seat on the outside rim to watch it run down under the agency and direction of secondary causes. No thinking man believes that now.

"He up

holdeth all things by the word of his power." In him we live and move and have our being." God is ever acting in His universe, in history and in the Church. He is inspiring good men in moulding its government according to the demands of the times as He did during the second century. Since no special form of government is enjoined in the New Testament, it is idle to expect agreement upon this point unless it be brought about by the survival of the fittest as tested by the requirements of the future. Lay Emphasis on Essentials.

Yet surely we must do our utmost to produce unity. But how shall we approach the task wisely. and do permanent service in that behalf? Our first duty is to separate the more essential of the Bible from the less essential truths, and to place all possible enthusiasm upon the former. Narrow minds

elevate minor minds to a vital place. It is the work of the true disciple to show that the spiritual power and saving efficiency of truth are centred in the beliefs in which all

Christians agree. The work of selection does not imply that the intellectual camera is thrown out of focus so that some truths are blurred. Religious unity must not be purchased at the price of mental obliquity. Sound thinking must on no account be surrendered. We simply mean to imply that the truths which contribute to character are of immensely more value than those which affect the understanding only. As a revelation of God, how we feed upon such truths as God's love and God loved the world! As a revelation of duty to God, how important to be impressed that God is a Spirit and is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth! And that He is to be loved with all our hearts! How it broadens and intensifies our sense of social duty to read, "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ "! And, "Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." These passages are great electric arc lights lifted high and throwing their radiance far out over the whole extent of our sacred Book. The work of separating the essential is being pretty well done by ministers in most denominations, as they feel they dare not enter the pulpit without a burning message from their King.

Place First Things First.

The further duty of the Church, and one that seems to have been scarcely attempted, is to arrange the truths so extricated in their perspective, placing those of the highest moment in the foreground and shading them off into the distance in proportion as they lack importance. It does not take much theology to preach the gospel. An.