I need not journey far

This dearest friend to see,
Companionship is always mine,

He makes his home with me.

I envy not the twelve,

Nearer to me is he;

The life he once lived here on earth

He lives again in me.

Ascended now to God,

My witness there to be,
His witness here, am I because
His spirit dwells in me.

O glorious Son of God,
Incarnate Deity,

I shall forever be with thee

Because thou art with me.

Other lines of his which breathe his spirit and shed light on the mystery of his beautiful and mighty ministry are these:

O Lord I pray
That for this day
I may not swerve
By foot or hand

From thy command.

Not to be served, but to serve.

This too I pray
That for this day
No love of ease
Nor pride prevent
My good intent

Not to be pleased, but to please.

And if I may

I'd have this day
Strength from above

To set my heart

In heavenly art

Not to be loved, but to love.

The passion for service and the lavish lovingness which were in him may be in all Christ's ministers. Without that spirit none can show himself a workman needing not to be ashamed. Few may have Maltbie Babcock's native gifts and personal graces, but all can stand as he stood, stretching out brotherly hands all the day long to all mankind, finding men wherever they were, and facing everyone whom he met with the habitual greeting, "What can I do for you? ?"

THE ARENA

PRESIDENT ELIOT TO METHODISTS

ON a November Monday morning in 1902 President Eliot of Harvard University addressed the Boston Methodist Preachers' Meeting. The address was of value as giving the view point of a scientific mind in relation to the church problems of the age. President Eliot, because of his position and eminent reputation as a thinker, was well received by his Methodist friends, and at the close of his address was tendered a vote of thanks. That his remarks provoked thought is evident from the following considerations, which may well interest every lover of our common Zion. The quotations here made are taken from the Boston Globe as giving verbatim utterances. In speaking of the influence of the church, as a whole, and the civilizing forces at work for the amelioration of mankind, President Eliot said:

"We educated Americans are face to face with the lamentable and extraordinary fact that the influence of the church as a whole among our people has visibly declined in our generation. Millions and millions of our people never go into a church at all, and therefore escape the beneficent influence of these religious institutions. As I weigh the forces that affect mankind, and look back upon the course of human history and the progress of Christianity, it seems to me the first and greatest civilizer is steady work. That is the way by which the race is lifted up out of barbarism into semicivilization, and into civilization. Labor, steady labor, is the great civilizer. The combining force of education is the second thing. It is important to consider that the great educational forces, which include the church, must proceed always by training to work, by influencing the young people to strenuous and continuous labor. Through work comes the uplifting influence."

This eminent authority in the educational world specified "work" as the "first and greatest civilizer." By work we may understand the systematic processes of activity expressive of human life and directed toward intelligent ends. It must be conceded that the motive power of toil proceeds from the human will. As to the incentive for the effort put forth, we must look to the impulses resident in the emotional nature. "Labor," therefore, is but the machine expression of spirit activity. It is granted that there cannot be any development or refinement of spirit without properly directed activity. But, while "labor" is the concomitant of spiritual growth, it is evident that it is not the inspiration of spiritual growth. Labor is the means to an end. The inspiration for toil must come from the incentives of that Life which is author of the life of man, and in which man exists. The contingent means by which a higher form of life may be realized is but a method. Labor is that method. But the method is not the inspiration. Hence it is not the refiner and cannot be the civilizer. The machine is not the spirit, although the spirit may be

within the machine. President Eliot recognized that the race has been "lifted up out of barbarism into semicivilization, and into civilization." He holds that "labor" has done it. In other words, the machine has done it. We have presented for our consideration the proposition of the method or machine producing itself and, as civilization advances and higher organic states of society ensue, the machine or method enlarging and refining itself as an ever accentuating cause to produce still loftier states of civilized life. It must be evident that the "method" and the "life," which makes known itself through its method of activity, are confused and coalesced by the distinguished gentleman. In the confusion the life is lost sight of, and the process only is left. This is the monumental blunder of the materialistic conception of evolution. It identifies both "cause" and "process," introducing the "cause" in the "process." But a given set of ordained means to an end cannot produce themselves; neither do they continue in their activity by their own power; much less are they capable of enlarging or refining themselves into inspirational causative agencies. We might just as well suppose that civilization advances by "labor," and attains thereby to increasing possessions of intellectual and moral life, as that the physical man may achieve maturity from infancy without the indwelling "ego," or spirit. Let "labor" be given its proper relation. It is not self-invoked. All extremes of "strenuosity" will not make it causative spirit life. It is simply that process of activity which is expressive of life.

There will be no lack of "labor" in a normal and well directed life. Such a life must act. The training is upon the life. It is expressed in beneficial forms of activity. If we were to take President Eliot's view, and eliminate the inspirational forces of spirit life from labor, the inevitable conclusion would be Edwin Markham's "Man with a Hoe," cursed by an absence of adequate spiritual life to inspire his toil:

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,

And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Such, indeed, is the concrete product which it is the mission of the church of Jesus Christ to redeem. Labor without an adequate inspiration in spiritual life is a curse. Only as the spirit of man is enabled to see the vision of his possibilities in a higher, nobler life, and only as he secures the power to attain unto that life, is labor a blessing. Then it assumes its divinely ordained relation as a means to an end. It is unnecessary to say that the vision of the God-Man, and the power of his Spirit, constitute the only adequate inspiration for systematic and unremitting toil. Only as a man is awakened into divine life, and secures the

power of that life, is he willing to put forth the effort and make the sacrifice essential to the unfolding of all his higher powers. It is only as this divine life is realized in human life, and is being realized in increasing ratio, that there is any progress whatever in civilization. God's Holy Spirit is the only civilizer in the universe. The progress of Christ's kingdom is the progress of civilization. Such progress is the process of redemption. The labor involved to achieve it is man's everlasting joy. Civilization is, then, no empty phrase, nor labor its own end, but a divinely ordained means to the end of a perfected individual and social life. Without such inspiration as is afforded through the church of Christ by the Holy Spirit labor becomes a badge of slavery; the legitimate purpose of labor, in giving liberation and exercise to the spirit of man, is perverted into a curse, and the toiling myriads of lashdriven masses, who have reared pyramids to tyrants, and hanging gardens and heathen temples, give their own irrefutable historic testimony. Only as labor has gone hand in hand with the Man of Galilee has the soul been able to cast aside its chains and rise into the dignity of its civilized worth. The calculation of the progress of civilization is the computation of the Spirit of Christ increasingly resident in the lives and institutions of men. Of course there must be activity in order to achieve the divine purpose "to which the whole creation moves." And the better we are able to imitate the processes of divine activity the more rapidly will our labor, thus systematized and harmonized to best express the divine life in man, bring forth its full fruition.

Everett, Washington.

WILLIAM W. SHENK.

MALTBIE D. BABCOCK'S LAST SERMON

THE BOOK Committee of. the Methodist Episcopal Church met in its annual session for 1901 in the city of New York. This is always an important gathering and has interests before it of the deepest moment to the church. This session following the General Conference of 1900, which was held in Chicago, was one of the most significant in the history of the church. Business interests of much importance required the careful and constant attention of the members day and night for four days. The session on Saturday evening had extended a little beyond the hour of midnight. This late hour of adjournment precluded the possibility of the members getting out of the city to spend Sunday and many of them were too weary to arise early enough to be ready for the morning services at accessible churches; but it was announced by some one that Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock, the popular pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, would, at the afternoon service on that Sabbath, preach his last sermon before going on a vacation to Southern Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. Some members of the committee were very anxious to hear him, and having learned that it was difficult to obtain seats went an hour early, hoping to be among the favored ones who would have this privilege. On reaching the door and meeting an usher we were informed that there were no vacant seats, and that all pew holders expected their seats to be

reserved for them until the beginning of the singing of the first hymn. We were disappointed sorely, but I ventured the suggestion to the usher that our party were not residents of the city, but one was from Rock Rapids, Iowa, another from Los Angeles, still another from Denver, and that if we were denied the privilege of hearing Dr. Babcock that day it was more than probable we would never have another opportunity. He was exceedingly courteous and gentlemanly, but replied that he had no choice and no other way was open before him than the one by which he was proceeding. So he quietly and deferentially dismissed us, saying, however, that if there was any room left after the music began he would be glad to give us seats; but that he doubted seriously whether there would be any vacant pews that day, as every pew holder would probably be in his place, as Dr. Babcock was exceedingly popular, and everyone would want to hear him in this last sermon before his departure for the Holy Land. We determined to wait and see whether it were possible to get a seat. In a few moments, however, the usher returned and asked us if we would be willing to take a seat in the choir loft, saying that though the roar of the organ when we were seated so close to it might be somewhat annoying there was room in that special place, and that they had recently changed from a chorus choir to a quartet. We accepted the proposition with gratitude and were soon seated in the most desirable place for seeing and hearing the great preacher. We had hardly gotten our place when a gentleman evidently of foreign birth followed us and took a seat next to myself. He proved to be an exceedingly interesting neighbor during the long wait which followed before the service began. He said: "I take it you're a stranger here or ye would not be up in this loft. I am not a mimber of this choich. I belong to another choich here in town, but I always steals off and gits down here ivery Sunday afthernoon if it is posshible. I am lyal to me own choich but I loike to hear this mon. Now, sir, if ye have come to hear an arator ye will be disappinted, for he has noon of the flashes of an arator. Indade, sir, he doosent same to think of himself. I do not coome here to be entertoined but he fades me. Soomehow I coome hungry and go awoly satisfied. I am stronger always afther I hear him. He's so simple that a poor old Scotchman loike meself can understhand ivery woid and somehow I go awoiy forgitting ivery ting except that I am a choild of the King meself, and that I just heard the message of me inheritance from one of his own children. I am glaad you are going to hear him, sir. Probably you'll not think much of the mon but you will think a dale more of his Master than you have iver done before, or I am more misthaken than I iver was in my loife." He ran on chatting about several things. After a little while the organ began and the assistant announced the first hymn. Before this moment nearly every seat had been taken, and instantly there was a great rush for the few vacant places. The house was filled; those who could not be seated had to retire. The introductory services were very simple, exceedingly appropriate, and helpfully impressive. After all the preliminaries were over the preacher anounced as his text, "For we are saved by hope." His voice can never be forgotten. It was unlike anything I had ever