Rev. George C. Lorimer says in The watch man in an article on "Church Attendance:"

"This problem means more than how to bring people to church on Sunday. When they are there, what then? When Easter comes the sanctuaries are crowded, and it is conceivable that attractions might be devised which would induce thousands to fill the now poorly attended services. But when they have been brought together in those vast numbers, what then? Have the masses been 'reached' by this simple process? No; the problem we are considering comprehends more than the mere enlargement of congregations, and contemplates the ennobling of character, the transformation of the soul, the purification of conscience, the exaltation of motives, the regeneration of life.

"Not for conventional observance of a duty, not for diversion, not for social recognition, not for smug sanctimonious salf-ex-ultation, ought the millions to seek the house of God, but for the joy of experiencing the enthusiasm of righteousness and the inspiration to high endeavor that comes from a deep sense of God's Fatherhood or human brotherhood. And were we who officiate so endowed with spiritual genius that we could make what we call 'divine service,' and which is now too often lacking in warmth, intellectual force, and spiritual power, a real and heavenly agency for getting at the better nature of man and imparting to him the joys that rise from the wells of religious feeling, we should never lack for congregations, would never need to be urged to return again.

"The mass of our fellow-beings are not indifferent to what opens to them the wonders of existence and braces them for more earnest efforts for the right; and if they are not anxious to go to church it must be, in part, at least, that we who are in the pulpit have lost the sacred art of meeting their legitimate longings."

If Christianity has any message to men it is to their inner life—to the realm of thought and feeling and volition. It seeks to cleanse and invigorate the human soul. Speaking in one of the most miserable lands of any age, Jesus said: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest to your souls."

Familiar as this truth is, it is precisely the one that, under various sorts of pressure, the churches of the present time are in danger of neglecting. In our day the multiplication of material luxury, and the possibility that any given man may achieve great wealth have made the ideal of success in life the unlimited command of money. That is popularly conceived as of great good.

Unless we greatly mistake, the preaching and methods of Church work that will most effectively reach men to-day center about man's relation to God. The first and great commandment is first because it is primary. In no age or mood of thought is it secondary. And in a time like this its primacy is tran scendent.

The Churches are becoming responsive to the truth at which we hint. Evangelism rather than sociology is the watchword of the awakening Church. The movement in the staid and rigid Presbyterian Church is very significant. The keynote of our anniversary meetings last month at Buffalo was evangelism. And evangelism means the Church is about to address itself with new insight and devotion to impressing upon men's minds those truths that have to do with the inner life, with immortality, with responsibility to God, and with the possibility of fellowship with Him through the grace of the Gospel. That is the only appeal that is vital enough and strong enough to transform the love of the world into the love of God.—The Watchman.

Rev. E. M. Chapman says in the Congregationalist and Christian World:—

"Has the Christian life of Vermont as embodied in the Churches which we represent the comfort and efficiency which saved life ought to have? Do we find anxious and sorry people coming to the Church and saying: 'You have something which I lacksomething that gives you peace and power and joy amid the restlessness and impotence and sorrow of this world. The world never seems to catch you unaware and at disadvantage. You seem ever adequate to the day's needs; always armed against the day's threat. Share your secret with me—break to me the bread of your wholesome life. Tell me what to do to be saved'?

"To ask that question is to answer it. No, we say, we do not see this happening. Our corporate Christian life makes no such impress as this upon the world about us. It neither convicts nor encourages men as it ought. And yet! and yet! When sober second thought comes we may make some claim for it. Some men are helped and saved. Some hearts are cleansed and cheered. Some impress upon the heedlessness and selfishness of the world's life is made. The confession to which we are forced is one of inadequacy rather than apostasy.

"The Church of to-day is in the Way of Salvation certainly enough. But by no means so for along that way—by no means so winsome and compelling and authoritative in its appeal to men who are out of the Way as it should be."

A hopeful outlook for the harmonious relations of religion and science, of the religious life and the intellectual life, was the burden of the message which the Rav. Reginald John Campbell brought to an academic audience of men and women that crowded the convocation tent on the University of Chicago campus.

"Science to-day," declared Mr. Campbell, "has reversed the idea of materialism. Materialism as a speculation has gone by the board, and the face of the times has changed. There never was a more hopeful outlook for the harmonious relation of science, philosophy, and religion than now. Lord Kelvin, the leading scientist in Great Britain, believes that the time has come when science cannot deny the idea of God. The only question between science and religion is, 'How much shall be read into that idea?' It is not the fact of God, but the connotation of the term that science and religion have to agree on. . .

"Religious orthodoxy to-day is not fashionable," he continued. "The fashionable attitude of mind is that of suspended judgment, or agnosticism. I hold no quarrel against agnosticism. there is a place for a certain amount of it, even within the borders of Christianity. No man can say that he knows all about God. I take it that agnosticism is the result of the habit of mind engendered by the inductive method of modern science."

The Chicago Tribune.

The Rev. R. J. Campbell in The Watchmansay's; "There is a somewhat different mood observable in the younger ministry of the evangelical Churches. The intellectual sermon per se, itself a reaction against an unintellectual type of Gospel preaching, is giving way to a more spiritual form of address, which without ceasing to be thoughtful, appeals to the spiritual instincts of the hearer and quickens the moral sense. with comparatively few exceptions, congregations do not ask either for scientific lectures, or literary theses in the place of sermons. They do not seek ornate and pompous discourses on the one hand, or conventional platitudes on the other; but they hunger for something strong and deep and true, suggestive of heaven and holiness, and the living, loving Christ. The more direct and simple the style, and the more rich and real the spiritual experience of the preacher, the more the people welcome the message. They crave the note of certainty."

Dr. Adams. at a recent installation, said: "We may preach the brotherhood of man with all our eloquence and all our eloquence and all our sense of justice, right, and charity; but we cannot give it feet to run, nor wings to fly, till we have mated it with a deep and vital sense of the fatherhood of God. we have, to change the figure, a splendid motor, but we have no power by which to make it move, till we have geared it to the religious impulse, the unfailing, abundant, ample power of the love of God, and the desire to do His well. This 'piety' which we rate so lightly to-day, is, after all, the only motive-power which will ever regenerate our society."

There are two phases of life that are being talked about a good deal at present—the "simple life" and the "strenuous life." But the simple life which blandly ignores all care and trouble, all evil and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous, and the strenuous life which does everything with set jaws and clenched firsts and fierce efforts soon gets to be strained and violent, a prolonged nervous spasm. There is a golden mean between the two, a life that has strength and simplicity, courage and calm, power and peace, and that is the life of the man who strives to over come evil with good.

Dr. Van Dyke of Princeton.

A soldier who should go into battle with a doubt in his mind whether his sword was of tempered steel or only a tin imitation of it would be apt to lose courage as the enemy came sweeping toward him. In the same sad predicament is the preacher who is not sure whether the sword he bears is of divine origin or a blade of human manufacture. How can he fight with courage when he doubts the quality of his weapon.

The Examiner.