this money is not given by the associations as corporations, but as a separate fund raised by members from the members, with a distinct appreciation of its value not only to the foreign work, but to the members having a part in it. It is an interesting fact that while scarcely a city association has had any appreciable success in the promotion of mission study classes, this practical demonstration of missionary spirit has become so marked.

VII. The determined emphasis on work for adolescent boys.

During the past few years the associations seem to be coming into their own in this regard. In theory, at least, the importance of this work and the fact that it is the line of least resistance have been appreciated for many years, but the realization of these ideas in actual work has come about largely within the last five years. In that time the number of boys mostly of the adolescent age in Bible classes has increased threefold, until in the season 1905-06 it reached the total of 16,434. From almost every quarter comes the statement of increasing emphasis on the work for boys. Of twenty-five city secretaries who answered my question, seventeen stated that great emphasis was being placed on such work, and many of these stated that it was emphasized more than any other phase. The fact that religious work for boys is not simply miniature men's work is also appreciated. Great emphasis is being laid on the power of example and the value of the association of young men and older boys of sterling Christian character with the younger boys in their sports and games.

An ever-increasing number of older boys is being used in the teaching of boys' Bible classes. A significant development has been the conferences of older boys held during summer months for training in such leadership.

The use of camps as a means of getting boys together under favorable conditions to exert a strong religious influence over them is on the increase. These camps have been one of our most successful agencies.

There has begun in some cities a system of extension work for boys, reaching them in their habitual groups and environment, and is probably the beginning of a system of reaching the boys of the city co-ordinate with the one that has been launched for reaching the men.

SUMMARY. In discussing these significant movements, we do not present them as entirely accomplished facts, but simply as the significant tendencies of the time. In other words, this study has been an effort to arrive at and express the thought that is in the minds of the men who are molding our religious work.

We have attempted also to present these observations, not necessarily

in the manner and sequence in which they would be arranged in one of our association reports, but rather as viewed from the standpoint of this Religious Education Association.

These, then, to repeat briefly, are the significant tendencies which we discern:

First. A larger conception of our field and responsibility, which is leading to a careful and systematic study of our fields and the planning of a system of work thereby, which is comprehensive and adequate to the needs of the community.

Second. The attempt to take advantage of the established and habitual grouping of men, that the field may be covered more thoroughly; that we may adapt our work more perfectly to the needs of the men; that religion may be a more practical thing to them; and that a helpful atmosphere may be created in their habitual environment.

Third. The co-ordination of the various features of our religious work - Bible study, cultural studies, lectures, and evangelistic meetings, training of teachers and workers, and service-into a unified system, and the attempt to secure continuity of training for each individual man until he becomes an efficient Christian.

Fourth. The training of a force of volunteer workers who will be efficient in service and adequate in numbers to accomplish the work undertaken.

Fifth. The greater appreciation of the direct value of our physical, educational, and social activities in character building, and the consequent planning of these activities to accomplish that end.

Sixth. Emphasis on the necessity of the expression of spiritual life in service as an essential part of religious training.

Seventh. The emphasis and larger concentration of our effort on that group of the male population which is in its formative period and peculiarly susceptible to religious influence-namely, the adolescent boy.

All of these points, we believe, are important from the educator's point of view, and the fact that these significant tendencies exist in our religious work is indicative of the influence of the religious educational idea upon our movement.

THE CONTENT OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE TO MEN OF

TO-DAY

GEORGE ALBERT COE, PÅ. D.

PROFESSOR NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

Though I did not choose or formulate this topic, I gladly accept the point of view that it implies, and also the limitations that it imposes upon this discussion. I am not required to discuss the methods of presenting the Gospel; I am not expected to say all that is true about that message or about the characteristics of the men of to-day; I am requested, rather, to formulate as well as I can the central practical idea of the Gospel, with especial reference to its bearing upon our twentieth-century life. The wording of the topic implies, further, that the Gospel needs to be re-examined in each new "to-day," in order to discover its point of most direct application under the circumstances then prevailing. Jesus said: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all the truth." I suppose that this progressive guidance into truth will go on age after age unto the end, and that the message of Jesus will never be formulated by any age in a manner adequate to display all its possible riches for the succeeding age. The navigator of a sailing vessel, though he forget not the harbor of his desire, does nevertheless change his course from time to time according to the state of wind, and current, and tide. His vessel moves now on one tack, now on another; now with topsails all set, now under bare poles; yet the purpose and the meaning of the voyage change not. One who should offer precisely the same Gospel message to children and to mature men and women; one who supposes that what was seen or could be seen a generation ago in the purpose of Jesus can express His full purpose for us; he who forbids us freshly to see with our own eyes, freely to appropriate through our own sense of need — he is like a sailing master who knows not how to tack or how to shift sail.

The elements of our problem are these: 1. What was real to Jesus, and what did He desire to make real in the world? What kind of world did He desire that this our world should become? 2. What kind of men are we, and what new needs, if any, are we developing? 3. What grounds of fellowship or of contact between these two? What special points of contact can we discover?

I shall assume without discussion that, in order to determine what

the Gospel message is, we must go back to Jesus Himself. We are often told that the religious consciousness of to-day is Christo-centric; that we are trying to break through all incrustations of custom, all complications of tradition and doctrine, to the simple, understandable, and commanding figure of the Man of Nazareth. What is the Gospel? we ask, and we answer: The Gospel is not a printed word, or a proposition of thought, or even a code of conduct; it is Jesus Himself, in whom the Word is made flesh.

But do we realize all the simplification and all the concentration of issues that this implies? Do we see, for instance, that it implies something simpler than the New Testament? To be Christo-centric is to penetrate behind the religion of Paul, and John, and Peter to its source in a person simpler and more human than any one of them. The New Testament presents us not so much an uncolored historical sketch as a set of impressions that Jesus made upon the minds of His disciples. In these Scriptures we behold how each one of several writers thought and felt toward Jesus; we discover what purposes Jesus inspired in them— purposes to preach, and write, and suffer. Jesus is everywhere revealed to us in these writings, yet the revelation is mediated by various personalities and various historical influences. This is true even of the synoptic gospels. These, too, are rather the outflowing of a great impulse on the part of their writers than a merely objective, matter-of-fact description of objective fact.

Our assured knowledge of the life of Jesus is lacking in details. We do not know, apparently we shall never find out, through what stages His religious life developed, especially how He became conscious of His Messianic mission. If it were possible for one of us to be transported backward through time so as to see Him with our own eyes and hear His very words, what impression would He make? No one can answer this question with any high degree of probability, and perhaps it is better that we cannot satisfy that kind of curiosity. For we are now obliged to concentrate our attention upon the most salient points. We cannot be lost in details or fail to see what is the main point. It is true that we do not see the whole landscape, but the summit of the mountain stands out in utter clearness above the clouds of historical uncertainty. Though we cannot construct a biography of Jesus' inner life, we can know what kind of man He was, and what kind of world He wants this to be. Though we cannot trace the development of His religious experience, we can know, in a general way, how, in the maturity of His powrs, he regarded God and man, and how He felt toward both.

Now, this assured knowledge of Jesus is of a kind that brings moral

and spiritual issues to a sharp focus. The record is adequate to enable us to choose for or against what Jesus was and what He wanted for the world. Nay, the record is so adequate at this point as to compel a choice. It is difficult to see how one can contemplate even the fragmentary biography that has come to us without realizing, dimly or clearly, that here one meets the ultimate issues of life. Now, I take it that what our age is trying to do when it cries, "Back to Jesus!" is to make vivid just this central, simple, and utterly intelligible issue. What, then, is the Gospel message as it stands incarnated in Jesus? One hesitates to reply, lest the simplicity of the answer should be taken for superficiality. Suppose, then, that we formulate the question in a slightly unusual way, so that, approaching from what is possibly an unaccustomed direction, we may escape the tyranny of habit. Suppose that we ask what Jesus found most real in life; what was His real world, and what was to Him His real self? The real world to Him was the kingdom of God, and His real self was just that of a particular member of the kingdom. Doubtless the kingdom was thus real to Him because He took it as His good, because He actively made it His world. Certainly, He did not passively accept the first impression that the world of His day must have made upon an observer. He did not rest in appearances. Certainly, Roman power in the state and Phariseeism in religion were obvious enough. Why were they not His real world? Because He would not have it so; because He had inner strength to condemn them, to disbelieve in them, to set Himself with all His might against the attitudes toward God and men for which they stood.

Your

He found His real world in just the way that we find ours. real world and mine is just the world that we take as our good, the world that we actively build and build ourselves into, because we will have it so. The real world is never a mere summary of scientific facts, never an object of merely dispassionate observation; it is rather that which is expressed in the reaction we ourselves make, and the "tang" of reality comes precisely in our feeling of actively participating in something. That which we take as worth while; the values that we react toward in conduct — these are our real world. The reality of a great painting is not the canvas and pigments of scientific analysis, but that something more which exists only as a value for persons who can appreciate paintings. To many men, certainly, great paintings are simply non-existent as works of art; they exist only as canvas and pigment, or as dollars which other persons are willing to pay. The commercial reality and the artistic reality of a painting arise in the same way, namely, because some one takes the thing that way, makes it such or such an object to him.