tale of baffled efforts and of disappointed hopes.

The Church--and by this word I here mean the organized body of both
clergymen and laymen--is meant to be the supreme spiritual leader of the
world. It is meant to possess vigor, decision, insight, hope, and
intellectual power. But before it can accomplish its high and holy work,
a great reconstruction must begin. To help in this reconstruction, to
aid in vivifying, coördinating, and ruling the varied processes of
organized religion, is your work and mine.

1. The Church must rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted
powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our
highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual
guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the
things that is a monumental astonishment to me, is that when we need
supplication, intercession, prayer for the averting of great personal or
national calamity, we flee to the Church, but we seldom think of the
Church when we need brains!

The Church should lead, and not follow, the great dreams of the world.
In the midst of our new national life we are sending all over the
country for the best-trained help and thought in every department of
government influence and control. Our problems of the day are
preëminently spiritual ones. Colonial control is not a question of
material ascendancy--it is a rule over the minds, hearts, and ideals of
men. Its moral significance is patent. We are called upon, not only to
import provisions, clothing, and household and industrial goods into our
new possessions; we are called upon to develop a higher sense of honor,
truth, honesty, and every-day morality. Scholars, working-men, business
men, farmers, and merchants are being consulted in regard to different