that is, they are still applicable to our day; but they are not as important as they were, because the emphasis of life has shifted. Many old truths are now parochial, and we live in a tremendous age. Truth must fit the age or it is not altogether true. Men may take a point in doctrine that is true, but it still may not matter in the degree that it did once; and to make it as imperative as it was formerly is to force the conscience of men and to work over again some of the enormities of time. Hence we need to look for centrality in the doctrines that we accept or keep. This is not easy. Only a few have the historic or philosophic temper. Only a few feel the height of generalized principles and the elevation of character that comes from the acceptance of them. Most men prefer, as Byron said, "a calm and shallow station." But the devout man, who, because he is devout, is used to deep things, should be used to wide things too.

And last, we do well to rejoice in the truth that makes us free to do our work. Most men, I imagine, carry a bit of Saul's armor about with them in an age that makes it cumbrous and even dangerous. Why not accept the new age and find the weapons that will conquer it? Why not be free? The truth shall make you free, said one who was truth itself. As we have seen, there is a freedom of faith, when one moves out of Ur of the Chaldees and founds another country and another race; but there is a freedom of truth, when Ur has been measured, tested, known, and then made over again into a better city. There is a freedom of poetry and art, in which men shake themselves loose from this solid earth and its heavy eating; but there is a freedom of truth which moves in the midst of disproportion, and allows men to do their work with joy. The man who seeks truth has a right to the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth, the old and the new, the two worlds that yearn to be at one. And, for moments, the yearning is satisfied, so it is reported, when open minds and honest hearts set themselves to realize the life of God.

That is where we stand to-day, my brethren. May we be brave enough for the work that we have to do!

PRESIDENT WENDTE. - After listening to this admirable address you will be interested to read the book on religious subjects which our friend, Dr. Smart, has just published, which I trust he will forgive me for mentioning at this present moment.

During this week we have been dedicating a statue and listening to tributes to the memory of a great and good man, the most eminent citizen of Boston in his day, if not of the world Edward Everett Hale. It was my happy lot in the earlier days of my preparation for the ministry to be for a time an inmate of his household and to receive his counsels and his benediction. I remember on one occasion, after he had spoken to me of the best development of my immature powers, and how to apply them to the welfare of the larger community, he said to me, "Wendte, cultivate the art of extempore speech. Cultivate the art of thinking on your feet. Accept every invitation you receive. Go to the town meeting and make it an opportunity for yourself. Go to the school examination and address the children. When the fire-boys dedicate their new engine-house, go there and make a speech. In fact," he said, "Wendte, speak for anybody who is fool enough to ask you." [Laughter.]

That was a little bit of characteristic humor on the part of Mr. Hale. When I laid out these topics, and asked myself on whom I should call to speak on this subject of the social order and the duty we owe to it, I naturally thought of the successor of Dr. Hale in his pulpit, one who has inherited so much of his spirit and is continuing his ministry in the City of Boston. I should not apply directly to him the story I have told, but rather to myself, that he might not think it reckless in me, or foolish, to ask so busy a man as he is, and one who has so often responded in the most generous manner to my invitations, to come here and address us to-day. But he has been found willing to justify my recklessness. I present to you now with great pleasure my friend, Rev. Edward Cummings, minister of the South Congregational Church, Boston, who will address you on the social side of religion.

A PREDOMINANT EMPHASIS ON SOCIAL IDEALS

AND ENDEAVORS

REV. EDWARD CUMMINGS

I am greatly indebted to the presiding officer, not only for his kind introduction, but because he has been willing to give me the opportunity to tell to others the things uppermost in my own mind with regard to these religious problems. These speakers to-day are making specific contributions to the general topic, and my contribution is to be from the social side. It is perfectly natural that Mr. Wendte should think of me in connection with that side of the Programme, because I approached the work of the ministry and the problems of religion from the social and the sociological side. And if I had the training of young men for the ministry, and wanted to make it impossible that they should not be religious, and wanted to make them realize that the only life worth living is the religious life, I should not take them through the ancient curriculum of the divinity schools and teach them Hebrew, and the rest; but I should take them first of all to the great problems of social life; because there they would find out that the only rational life for individuals and for society is a life based upon great fundamental religious truths and ideals.

It was Plato who brought forward so beautifully the fundamental fact that there is no individual salvation. Plato said, as you remember, that the individual is society writ small; and that society is the individual writ large. The one is the microcosm, and the other is the macrocosm. And he shows that it really makes no difference whether you ask, What shall I do to be saved? or whether you ask, What shall society do to be saved? The small writing and the large writing are identical; - only it is a great advantage to have the large social writing to turn to, when you are in a hurry, when you are mad, when you are indignant about wrongs, when your

own personal prejudices and immediate interests are involved. At such times as these you need a microscope and considerable care if you think of trying to solve the problem by looking at your individual self, at the smaller writing. But if you put the problem, as Kant at a later day taught the world how to put it, in the large, you read the large writing first, and then you conform to that,

knowing that when the heat and confusion of the hour are over, you will find that if you read the large writing correctly and were loyal to that, you have also done the highest and best thing for your individual self.

That is a very old truth. Plato embodies that truth, you remember, in his picture of an ideal Republic, in which he shows that an ideal society is simply a great social family. And he carries the family analogy so far that he insists that all the children of the social family, no matter whether they belong to the golden, or to the silver, or to the iron families, of which society is composed, are absolutely entitled to the same equality of opportunity. He even goes so far as to say it would be a good thing I never quite know whether he is joking a bit or is in earnest about it if in the ideal community they would take the babes away from their mothers at a tender age and mix them all up, and keep them away long enough so that even the mother could not tell which babe was hers. Then each mother and each father would look upon all the children of that generation, and would say, That one may be my child, or this one may be my child; this is my girl, possibly, and this my boy: therefore the conditions in society must be good enough everywhere for my child; no child must live in any house that is not good enough for my child; no child must go to any school that is not good enough for my childlest perchance it should be my child. [Applause.] And in like manner, all the children would treat all the men and women as their own fathers and mothers.

Be it allegory or not, it embodies a great truth, upon the recognition of which the salvation of the world depends.

Moreover, Plato tells us another great truth. For he goes on to say that the first great industry of such a social family

is

what? A man said to me once, years ago: "I would like you to write an article for my magazine, on the leading industry of New England." I was an economist then. I suppose he thought I was going to write about cotton, or something of that kind. I said to him, "You mean education, I suppose?" "Oh," he said, “I never thought of that; I never thought of it. I suppose that is an important industry." Plato said that in such an ideal society the important industry, the first and most important, was education; and that no system of education was adequate until it provided equal opportunity for every child in the social family. Not that they should all be treated alike; but that equal opportunity should be given them to make the most of the different innate capacities that they had; that the golden child might have the golden opportunity might rise to the highest profession, might become a teacher, no matter whether that golden child was found in an iron family or in a silver family or in a golden one. It should be the great task, the great first industry, of such a society, to find out where the golden children are; to establish vocation bureaus. Imagine Plato saying that! That in effect is what he said Establish vocation bureaus; find out what the "calling" of each child is; find out whether children are gold, silver, or iron children; whether they ought to be educated as teachers, or whether they ought to be merchants, or mechanics, or something else; and give them the opportunity which will enable them to make the most of themselves, and thereby be of the most service to the community

Finally Plato went still further, and said another very important thing. Having taken care of these children, having brought them up, having made education our first great industry, choosing our best golden men and women for that work, so as to give to each an opportunity to make the most of the peculiar talents that he has, then we must say to them: You are not your own; you are bought with a great price; you belong to society; and when at the age of five-and-twenty you have completed your education and are ready to graduate from the schools and colleges, then for the next fifteen years you must go down into the — what we call slums. His allegory

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