splendid language, in which, with a nameless sense of exhilaration and free power, the preacher can sound and cry aloud the glory of the Gospel truth. He discovers with a kind of amazement that when in the broadest way he can realize the genius of the time he is in the best mood for preaching Christ to the time. Even the very latest science is approaching the reverential in its new temper toward the unrolling greatness of its vistas. The reverent silence of science in front of the newly apprehended vastness of its God is by crude religionists mistaken for skepticism. Science investigating Nature must at last come up to Jesus, who stands at the summit of Nature, integral with it, yet 'God manifest.' Philanthropy studying humanity must also at last come up to Jesus as the Christ-the sole Saviour of men. The age is thus coming to our Christ, and, carrying Christ in our heart, we, on our part, joyously run forth to meet the age. How to find in the age-how to make from the age-a new 'body of Christ' is our fascinating and absorbing errand. The effort to do this, to take what is most characteristic in modern life as a new and brilliant dialect in which to state afresh Christ and His ever-living truth-this effort, carried steadily through the years, produces in the preacher a certain habitual glow, an alert mental attitude and action, in which free intellect blends with spiritual chivalry, and which is the finest possible mood for preaching itself."

Doubtless this age, like all others, is a heterogeneous mixture of good and evil elements. But an increasing purpose fulfills itself increasingly through all the ages, and the twentieth century is, in all the elements which make for knowledge, power, and hope, a vast advance on all preceding centuries. Time sifts out the false and saves the true. To-day holds not less truth than yesterday, but more, and holds that truth more intelligently and firmly. The methods of the present age are the product of long progress, not of retrogression, and express the total wisdom of experimenting centuries. Our God is marching on, and humanity by the lift and lead of His Spirit sweeps forward. The minister who does not front in the direction of modern progress, and who does not feel in his face with keen delight the wind of its rapid movement, will be no leader of God's people. With due reverence for the transmitted wisdom of the past and holding fast to all its proven truth, the

minister, if he is to be a modern man and if he is to be efficient, must believe most of all in his own age and love it above all others; an enthusiastic believer in the life of his own time he must be, and in the richer and fruitfuller to-morrow which he and his competent contemporaries are to make. He must keep his mind abreast of new discoveries, ideas, tendencies, methods, arrangements, and perspectives, and be able to find in them fresh phases of one continuing divine kingdom forever advancing, while guarding himself against mere novelties which masquerade as truth. This faith must feel the prevailing will of God running like a dominant, harmonizing, and unifying rhythm under all the surface surge of change.

Let us not antagonize or distrust science or the scientific temper, but rather invite them in and bid them welcome to the freedom of the house. "Science leads us to Nature, and Nature leads us to the Son of Mary, and then stands silent before her Lord." If we are sure that Christianity is made of truth and fact we will greet as an ally the critical scientific temper which comes with drill, and chisel, and crucible, and biting acid, to test, confirm, and publish truth and fact. In Dr. Lyman's words, "Precisely as Christianity illustrated its versatile, masterful, and cosmopolitan genius by adopting the Greek language in the early centuries as its fit and facile organ of expression, in presence of the intellect of that time, so now the same Christianity adopts the scientific spirit, which is the Greek language of this modern time, as the equally appropriate and adapted mode of expression in addressing the mind of to-day."

Professor Henry Jones, of Glasgow, is correct in saying:

This age of faith in natural science is also an age which believes in God and in the immortal realities of the world of spirit. It is not skeptical of morals and religion. The speculations to which it listens with least patience are those that nullify religion or stultify ethical distinctions, and that regard honor and interest, virtue and vice, morality and expediency, as mere social artifices or conventional contrivances which have no root in the nature of things. Such genuinely atheistic conclusions might obtain some currency in the eighteenth century; but in our time they have ceased to interest any earnest intelligence. The moral and religious experience of the century just closed has been far too rich, the operation of spiritual convictions too powerful, the expansion of man's ethical horizon too obvious to give any plausibility to such skepticism, which now finds itself confronted by the unexpected resistance of a deeper spiritual experience. Religion for the present age is much less an affair of another world, morality is less a matter of

pleasant sensations, and God dwells both in nature and in the mind of man. Man's religious and moral interests have deepened pari passu with the growth of his intellectual possessions. The religion that can maintain itself only by limiting the uses of reason, and the reason that can make good its rights only by extinguishing religion, are being displaced by a better view of reason than that which represents it as a discursive and analytic power radically at enmity with the great unities of experience, and a better view of religion than that which makes it an exception to man's natural life, and finds no foothold for his spiritual interests except in the interstices of a broken natural world.

Speaking of the new science of sociology, with its already bulky literature, its direct study of human conditions, and disclosure of social laws, Dr. Lyman calls it one phase of applied Christianity, and says: "While many of the modern developments in this field are crude, many false, and some obnoxious and perilous to the State, yet beneath all else is a genuine renaissance of Christ's Christianity. Though the field of sociology is wild with warring and stormy voices, yet the deeper voice across the storm is calling back and on and up to Christ. I must think that if Christ were to speak now He would surprise us all by how much in the modern world He would approve. During nineteen centuries His Spirit has been working, and He would not disavow the results of that working. He is now standing at this latter day upon the earth. We must detect His smile on the time." The Bible, which outsells every other book and is more and more riveting the brain of the world fast to itself; the Church, which is more than ever the pillar and ground of the Truth; and the holy "Faith of our fathers," afloat on the face of the waters of this restless time, are all in the guardianship of God.

With a proper faith in his own time, and in the moving of the Spirit of God in this age as powerfully as in any former age, a man can sit serene above all discussions and contentions in a region which is unaffected by most of the cleavages of opinion. And the practical temper which is bent supremely and intensely with strenuous earnestness and passionate warmth, on the urgent business of rescuing men and uplifting society will see, and seize on what is good on either side or both sides of all current controversies. Up in a superior realm of vision he will see the uncleft "arch of the one sky above conservative and liberal." Down on the firm ground of busy practical everyday working sense, he will feel "the granite continuity of the

one world beneath the level to which the cleavage runs, and therefore he can be Christ's freeman and every honest man's brother in the tossing time." Not to know the mind of one's own time, to be ignorant of its characteristic and crescent movements, is disgraceful. To be unwilling to cross over and go round about in order to tell the towers of Truth and mark her bulwarks from new points of view and with the aid of new interpretations is cowardly and suicidal. Merely to denounce and resist the elements, currents, and spirit of the modern world is futile. If we conquer, our victory will come by utilizing those elements and controlling them into the service of the world's Saviour and Lord. To know our own time, to have faith in it, to love it, and to master it-this is our large duty and our splendid privilege. Let the minister of to-day be a modern man, standing fearlessly and faithfully with Christ in joyous confidence and at-home-ness "on the bright floor of the new age," and with the eager and expectant spirit of that warm-hearted and fresh-souled youthful veteran, Dr. Benjamin M. Adams, who, at near fourscore, said, "So long as a man lives on the line of discovery he can keep a young heart and remain an enthusiast."

At life's end it will give us joy if we can remember that we were never afraid, but kept a firm faith, saw God's hand through our lifetime, and through storm and darkness were able to perceive our divine Christ walking amid the tumult of the time and treading its rough waves level with his feet. Our joy will be like hers whose honor Count Gismond saved in Browning's glorious poem, and who tells us that, at first view of Gismond's face, she

Felt quite sure that God had set
Himself to Satan; who would spend
A moment's mistrust on the end?

And when Gismond with a mighty blow had stretched the false knight "prone as his lie upon the ground," when "the lie was dead and damned and Truth stood up instead," and when she was vindicated and safe forever under the strong shield of Gismond's arm, she says:

This glads me most, that I enjoyed

The heart of the joy, with my content
In watching Gismond unalloyed

By any doubt of the event.

THE ARENA.

THE REAL FOUNDER OF THE BOARD OF CHURCH EXTENSION.

THE Standard Dictionary defines "founder" as "one who founds, establishes, or endows; an originator, author, maker." There were forerunners of the Reformation, but in the thought of the world Martin Luther is clearly established as the founder of the great Reformation. There may have been forerunners of Church Extension in Methodism, but when the evidence is all in A. J. Kynett will still be regarded as the real founder of our Church Extension work. The recent article of Dr. George Adams in the Review seeks to establish that in no sense can Dr. Kynett be regarded as the founder of Church Extension. For more than a generation in the thought of the Church, of the members of the General Conference of 1864, and of the old Board of Bishops Dr. Kynett was regarded as the founder of Church Extension and his title thereto never challenged. I presume the testimony of Dr. Kynett would be regarded as of equal value with any that has been presented in favor of belated claimants. Fortunately, in a real sense it is in existence. Throughout his life Dr. Kynett kept an elaborate journal, and the following extracts taken verbatim from that journal, in my possession, I now think should be published. The first extract is dated Tuesday, May 27, 1856, when he was pastor at Dubuque, Iowa, and is as follows:

I called our principal members together for the purpose of consulting in reference to the supply of this station the coming year and making some arrangements to secure church property in this city and vicinity. The brethren passed a resolution requesting me to go to Indianapolis, the seat of the General Conference, and lay our wants before the bishop and presiding elder and do what I could toward securing a supply. Also to make some arrangements looking toward securing a loan of money to invest in property for church purposes. They also appointed a committee to prepare a plan for the organization of a Church Extension Society, agreeably to plan I suggested to them. [Italics mine.]

This establishes the fact that Church Extension was in his thought long before 1864. In speaking of this General Conference he writes in June, 1856:

This was the first General Conference I ever attended. I did not find them as orderly as I expected, but much of their want of order grew out of the great excitement on the slavery question. My business was somewhat embarrassed by Brother Dimmitt's absence. . . . I engaged three or four men to assist me in procuring a loan for the purpose of buying property for church purposes. This was all I could do toward effecting the objects for which I went.

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