ings with a pathetic eagerness to learn, with humility, self-sacrifice, and openness of mind. But more significant in a way, even, than the spread of the institutes is the movement to establish permanent schools of training for Sunday-school workers. In New York and Boston, in Hartford and Chicago, such schools are now in operation. And efforts are being made to create them in other centers of education and public influence. A report is presented before this association regarding the place which the Sunday school holds in the theological seminaries throughout the country. Disappointing as the statistics in that valuable report may seem to some, deplorable as it is that so many thousands of ministers are being trained without any real and competent preparation for their work as educators of the young, it is good to know that ten years ago the facts would have appeared much less satisfactory. Progress is certain to be more rapid every year. The day is coming when it will be found to be as necessary that a minister should study the art of teaching as the art of preaching, and the organization and management of a Sunday school in the 20th century as the organization of the churches in the first century. Much is demanded of the ministry in our day of which former generations were quite innocent. The man who would stand in a pulpit must be for his people their chief living authority on Christianity. He must be trained to know the Gospel which he preaches and teaches not only as a personal experience, but also as a historical process and power. He must be ready to deal with the doubts and difficulties which fill the minds of all thoughtful and reading folk, and, at any rate, guide them to the sources of information. For this he needs the frankness and sincerity of the scientific spirit as well as the warmth and conviction of the Christian man. But he needs to be trained no less to manage the affairs of a living and often a complex institution. Of the varied machinery of a modern church, he must understand not only the outward form but the inward meaning, not only the social joints but the psychological and spiritual power. For all this it needs that the modern seminary develop its contact both with the world of scholarship and with that of concrete institutions and human interests. The signs are many and cheering that the training schools of our churches are striving for the most part to meet these multiplied demands. As we need a ministry more varied in its methods and its genius, we need ministerial schools more elastic, more adaptable, more rich in their resources. These facts are beginning to be understood, and in many directions movements are afoot which prove that the Church of Christ will not commit the unspeakable blunder, while pouring energy into every other kind of school, of leaving starved and pow

erless that kind on which, for its future greatness, it must continue to depend.

On the other hand, we must None of its functions is ever to less in spite of, the other powers

I cannot review the field of all our seventeen departments. But there remain two of which a few words ought to be said. The department of art and music exists because we recognize that art in all its forms is as real and as inevitable an expression of the human soul as science and religion. Art is not merely to be tolerated as a weakness but nourished as part of the very glory of man. Nor is art to be merely recognized when it is directly used to promote religious interests as in the decoration of churches and of the acts of worship. It has a realm of its own. It has functions and values of the utmost importance in the development of human experience. remember the unity of human nature. be cultivated for itself apart from, still and interests of life. It is as fatal to keep art in a fenced pen with the inscription over it, "Art for Art's sake," as it is to do that for science or religion, for statecraft or literature. The whole man is at stake in each and all of these modes of action and of delight. During the past year we have had abundant public discussion of the relations of the arts to morality. Chiefly has this concerned histrionic arts. Always a difficult subject, it must not be entered upon at any length here. But I think it is my duty to say that in the judgment of many persons who are by no means bigoted and narrow, even of many for whom dramatic art has a great attraction and value, some plays are being presented which sin against the unity of human nature. It will not do to say that they simply represent real sides of social life. There are sides of social life in our cities of excitement and passion which are fit only for the burning. To clothe these with the adventitious adornments of bewitching scenery and seductive music and realistic acting, is not to represent the truth, but a lie. It strips them of that hearty and healthy moral condemnation with which such scenes are covered in actual life. The moral quality is as much a part of the beauty or the ugliness of a scene or a drama as the color and the music in which it is clothed. I am making no plea for an art that shall misrepresent the stern realities or ignore the shameful elements of our mixed and struggling life. But I am speaking for all men and women of sound and healthy mind, when I declare that any form of art which arises from and excites prurient habits, any art which could only flow from the imagination of degenerate men and which tends to produce the awful tyrannies and curses of the degenerate imagination in others has no claim to be called art. It is as hostile to society as drunkenness, it is as deeply dangerous to the welfare of the nation as open murder

and rapine. I do not know whether to record real progress here or not. For the stage is one of the mightiest educators in the land. The years to come must show whether the events of the past two years will make those who are responsible more careful of the moral judgment of the people.

We have in our association one which we call the department of the press. Here I believe that the outlook is more cheering. Our great newspapers and other periodicals are almost uniformly edited by men not only of high education but of high purposes and ideals. And they are using their magnificent opportunity ofttimes with the very noblest spirit as well as with splendid ability. Some of them keep their news columns wonderfully clean, when you remember how constantly things are happening which are not clean. And they manage to do this without suppressing the news, without disguising the facts. Publicity is one of the great weapons of righteousness, and the newspapers and magazines have that weapon in their hands. We shall agree, probably, that in their editorial columns these men and women speak strongly and clearly, as a rule, for what they believe to be honorable and true and religious. Many of them give a large place to news of the religious world and seek to reflect in their columns the opinions of religious leaders. I recently read in the columns of one great daily newspaper a deliberately argued and really Christian answer to the question sent by a correspondent — What must I do to be saved? I recently read in the columns of another a careful but earnest plea for the better use of the weekly day of rest, something better than rushing for exciting amusements and reading miles of trash. The editor of the Wall Street Journal has recently astonished men by the boldness with which, in a series of articles, he insisted that the religious life of a people must deeply affect its whole business life. A business man, he said, would rather do business with a man who believes in immortality. The decadence of church attendance has its influence, he believes, on the stock market. A community which is nourished on religious ideals and motives must ultimately differ in an enormous degree from a community in whose transactions these ideals and motives have no place.

The newspaper man who cherishes his own honor has a hard place to-day. He is tempted to sell his opinions for a salary. He is tempted to print in exciting and depraving ways news that will increase his circulation. He is tempted to accept advertisements that are full of lies and shame, and to connect himself with forms of sport that are unmanly and depraved, in order to pay dividends to his owner. Let us hope that gradually he will work himself free of these unworthy connections,

unworthy of him and unworthy of his readers. Let us hope that some day he will cease to nourish the fearful curse of betting by means of the forms which he gives to his columns of sport. Let us hope that some day the splendid influence of his editorial columns will not be stained and poisoned by the contents of any other portion of his periodical.

Finally, the heart of man is full of eager passions and his brain of endless devices. Religion is not here to put a stay upon this inexhaustible energy of the generations. It is not here to stifle any pure intent in anything that is real. Nor has religion arisen, nor has the Gospel of Christ been sent to separate man from the world which God gave him. The kingdom of God is not an abstraction to which men can retire only by sacrificing or despising the real and deep driving relations in which they stand to nature and to one another. It is in the fulfilment of these relations, it is in the real conquest and the ideal usage of these facts that the kingship of God is to be proved and found. It is not the function of religious education, in that high and far-reaching vision of it which we cherish here, to show to the people of our day how they may escape from God to nature, nor how they may cut themselves off from the austere duties and the pure joys of life to find their God. Our task is at once more exacting and more noble than either of those. It consists of so knowing and loving God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, that all actual life shall be more clearly divine and all active human relations the fulfilment of His law, the acceptance of His grace. To this high end we do now once more commit ourselves solemnly, deliberately, and gladly, as members of the Religious Education Association, to the service of our country and the merciful guidance of our God.

WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN NATION?

WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH, D. D.

PROFESSOR ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ROCHESTER, N. Y.

What is a Christian nation? What qualities of national life must a nation possess to lay just claim to that great name of "Christian"?

Perhaps another question demands answer first. Is there any Christian nation? Is there a single one among the so-called Christian powers which is really actuated by Christian motives in its wars or its diplomacy? Is there a single one that honestly seeks to realize the ethical principles of Jesus in its economic institutions, or in its governmental attitude to the aristocracies on the one side or the peasants and factory workers on the other side? Is Russia a Christian nation? Or Spain, or Italy, or France? Or Germany, or England, or the United States? Or perhaps the Congo Free State?

Are we

But we might raise the same question about individuals. Christians? If we measure our soiled and ragged characters against the blazing purity of the Christian ideal, we have to avert our eyes with a pang of shame. Yet we do know, many of us, that we are treading past evil under foot and that in a growing measure the spirit of Jesus Christ is the controlling power that shapes our aims and decides our decisions. Luther said: Christianus non in esse sed in fieri. Christian character consists not in what you are, but in what you are coming to be. It is fair to apply the same method of judgment to the life of nations and to test them by the direction of their moral development, by the spiritual tendencies pervading them.

We must remember, too, that the application of Christian morality to public life is still in its rudimentary stages, both in theory and practice. We are only slowly gathering faith and courage to assert that Christianity is workable at all in public affairs and that there is saving grace in Christ for nations, as well as men. We have not yet seriously undertaken to preach repentance to nations, and so it is not strange that they have hardly started for the mourner's bench or raised their hands for prayer.

What constitutes a people a Christian nation? Not, surely, the name of God in the Constitution, nor daily prayer in the Senate, nor religious pomp at the coronation of its kings, or the oath on the Bible at the inauguration of its presidents, nor the maintenance of a State Church. These things do have religious value, but in the main they are