own standards, write their own agreements. There is no prescription about it, and never has been. It has always been recognized that goals selected by the workers are more likely to be reached than goals selected for them.

To emphasize this liberty, and show that no set form is required or even desired, the United Society of Christian Endeavor has now added to the pledge in common use the original pledge out of which it grew, and two other pledges, one of them exceedingly simple and brief, and the other adding promises relating to liberal giving, personal evangelism, patriotism, and world-wide Christian brotherhood.

Again, the ideal religious society for young people will not only set up standards, which is very easy, but it will hold the young folks to them, which is very hard. The Christian Endeavor society—once again to draw upon my own experience — has two principal ways of maintaining adherence to its standards. They are the consecration meeting and the lookout committee.

Some do not like the name of the consecration meeting; 157 of my thousand pastors do not. They say that it tends to make too common that very sacred thing, consecration. Very well, change the name. it a purpose meeting, an affirmation meeting, a ratification meeting, a review meeting, an outlook meeting, an experience meeting, a spur meeting, a balance-sheet meeting, a reminder meeting, call it what you please.

Others think that such a meeting becomes monotonous and meaningless when held monthly. Very well, then hold it bi-monthly, or tri-monthly, or at whatever interval experience proves most profitable. The ideal society wants the best.

No one in the world has less need than I have to be told of the failures to keep the pledge, of the tendency of consecration meetings to grow meaningless and of lookout committees to grow careless and utterly inefficient. I see it all, and it would be very easy to grow discouraged did I not see also the other side of the picture. I am not claiming any automatic perfection for these two devices of the consecration meeting and the lookout committee. If any one can invent a better and a surer way of accomplishing these ends, it will be adopted with eager gratitude. I am only asserting that, if standards are to be set up at all for young people, and their assent to them in any form is to be obtained, the ideal society will provide also in some shape for reminders of those purposes, reviews of progress, and oversight and mutual encouragement.

The ideal religious society for young people must have an ideal

pastor. The society can set up its standards, and can provide for reminder meetings of the young people and reminder committees of the young people to endeavor to hold the young folks true to those standards. It can do that, but it cannot provide in its constitution and bylaws for a loving, patient, sympathetic, courageous, stimulating, and wise pastor. It can and does say much about the young people's duty to their pastors and their churches; it cannot with propriety, in the presence of the young people, say much about the duty of pastor and church to the young people. That must be discussed, if at all, in gatherings like the present.

Young people are young; their purpose as yet is flabby, their will unstable. If it is seldom that the older church prayer meeting can long retain its freshness and vitality without the pastor, how much more is he needed by the young people's meeting! If the church committees grow lax without his stimulus and guidance, how much more the young people's committees! If the church socials need his presence, so much the more do the young people's socials. If the older church prayer meeting would suffer from his frequent absence, so much more the young people's prayer meeting. The mothers' meeting, the women's missionary society, the Sunday school, all feel the neglect of the pastor less than the young people's society, because they are all controlled and guided by mature Christians, while the young people's society is an organization of immature Christians being trained, and sadly in need of a head for the training school.

The ideal religious society for young people must be surrounded and upheld by the ideal church. I do not mean merely a church that loves young people and is in sympathy with young life; I should hesitate to call an organization a Christian church of which that could not be said. But if the young people's society is a training school for the church, the church must incorporate and utilize the young people after they are trained.

I confess that the matter of the older members has always been a troublesome point in our Young People's Societies of Christian Endeavor. There is everywhere a tendency to remain in the society too long. In many places the questions are impatiently asked, "What is the use of Christian Endeavor? Has the society really had any effect upon our mature church prayer meeting, our mature church life?"

I wish to say with all possible emphasis that no church has a right to expect benefit, as a church, from its young people's society, that has not in operation a well-devised, systematic mode of incorporating and utilizing the products of the society's training. A former questionaire

of mine shows that practically all our churches are absolutely devoid of such plans.

Take the matter of practical activities. In the young people's society there are many committees and offices. In many societies every member is given some office or placed on some committee. Every one is set to doing something. In the older church, on the contrary, there are few committees and offices, and these are filled from a small circle of "leading" members. I have never yet heard of a church — I say it with genuine sorrow where any serious and systematic effort was made to discover the abilities of every member and provide every member with work.

In the early days of the Christian Endeavor movement, when the society was expanding so wonderfully, there was much fear that what was sought by its aggressive leaders was to "Endeavorize the Church," as it was called. That fear has been allayed. I have not heard it even mentioned for several years. But in a certain proper sense the Church must be Endeavorized and you may transform the word to fit other societies before it can get the greatest possible good from the young people's society. The methods used among young people are seldom likely to be useful among the elders. I would be the first to deprecate any transference into the older church of the Christian Endeavor pledge, consecration meeting, lookout committee, and so on. What I am pleading for, and what I do consider essential for ideal results from even the ideal young people's religious society, is this, that the church keep in close touch with it, know what its methods are, know what sort of product it will turn out, expect that product, and prepare itself to receive it as soon as it is formed, and incorporate it in its own activities. It will require planning planning in the wholesale, planning for individuals. It may require a little rearrangement of church machinery.

The ideal religious society for young people must be in ideal relations to other young people's societies. This ideal relation is found, I think, in our Christian Endeavor unions - local, state, national, and worldwide. Pardon me if I speak frankly my own mind, leaving the point to be debated by others.

I would not say a word against the undoubted right, nay, the sacred duty, of every denomination to care for its young people in the way thinks most advantageous for them and for the cause of Christ. I have many friends among the leaders of the strictly denominational young people's organizations, and I hope to have many more, for they are godly men, men well worth knowing and loving. But, for all that, there is no more reason for the multiplication of names and organizations

for our young people's societies than for our Sunday schools, our Y. M. C. A's, or our temperance work. My one thousand pastors, from 36 denominations, are practically a unit here. Every reason, of economy, of simplicity, of effectiveness, and of brotherhood, would urge union and co-operation instead of the present division.

Pardon the excess of eagerness of one who has come to love this cause above his life, who sees in it vast possibilities for good as yet undeveloped, who is anxious that all good men shall spring to help it on.

For it is the cause of the youth of the world. In it is wrapped up the highest hope of the world. If the young are trained for Christ, and rightly trained, every problem that vexes the world will be solved, every wrong that harasses the world will be remedied, every sorrow that bows the world down will be removed. It is the cause of the world, but it is even more the cause of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that young man ever young though the Ancient of Days, who set the child in the midst, and made child-nature the passport into His Kingdom. In His name and in His spirit let us study this matter. Let us seek His ideals and strive to embody them. Let us be taught of Him, that we may teach His children. And let us never be satisfied till in their expanding aims, till in their growing powers, till in their splendid zeal and shining hopes, all His youth are His.

DISCUSSION

REV. HARRIE R. CHAMBERLIN

ASSOCIATE PASTOR, LAKE AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH, ROCHESTER, N. Y.

So many organizations have come to speedy extinction because of the activity in them of what we might call the beavers. The beaver, you know, has a mania for building dams. Wherever you put him he immediately goes about that single enterprise. In the same way there have been many organizations of great promise whose leaders have dammed up at the start all their possibilities of adaptation to different conditions. The carefully imposed program and polity have really been their ruin. Even the life of the Church has sometimes been chilled by the grasp of the dead hand of its own past. As Dr. Theodore Munger once said, "A stationary church in a moving world means fatality for both."

The need of constant adaptation, the fact that only a growing organization can keep pace with a growing world, must be remembered by every wise pastor. I believe the best way to meet the problem of the "age-limit of the society" in a church of any size is to make a new society of each succeeding social group. The pastor will study the

capacities and needs of each group of boys and girls as they come to high school age and carefully adapt to it a new organization. At first he will keep a firm hand upon its activities, gradually he will train its leaders, and then wisely letting it grow out of his direct control will begin again with the younger boys and girls.

There is the problem of the definite place of the society in a wellrounded conception of the work of the Church. The Christian Church has a threefold life, and into every part the young Christian is to enter. He must be brought to share the worship of the Church. The young Christian must also be brought to share in the great intellectual and moral heritage of the Church. This is the purpose of the Sunday school, to make the Bible, our treasury of truth and inspiration, the personal possession of each member. Third, he must be trained to share actively in the enterprise of the Church. As a training-school for Christian workers, the West Point of the Church, the young people's society finds its place and object.

We may note also that in the Uniform Series of Topics only two forms of the larger work of the Church (missions and temperance), have yet gained a sure place. All of these things on which emphasis has thus been laid are of great importance, but they fall into place and are seen in their true significance only when they are included as parts of the whole enterprise, the bringing in of the Kingdom of God.

When we keep this definite object of our young people's society clearly before us the meaning of work there becomes plain. The first thing in which the young Christian must be trained is witness bearing. This is almost fundamental in the growth of the personal Christian life and is the first essential to the spread of the Gospel throughout the world.

Next to this is the opportunity afforded by the young people's meeting for the frank discussion of problems of the personal life. Many such problems are deeply serious for the young Christian, and in helping to their solution the pastor can be of the truest help. Through the varied activities of the "committees" is given ample training in sympathetic ministries and what we may call the housekeeping of modern church life. Last, the young people's society is the natural place for the young Christian to be trained to comprehend and to find a place in the larger task that has been set the church of Christ- the work of the world-wide redemption of human life.

A course of study for young people's societies covering, like courses of Sunday-school lessons, a period of years and presenting in some adequate way the great business of the Church in the world would meet a real need. Such a course should have a historical section to present