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prayer service would be a "holy waiting," rather than a caricature upon the "social means of grace" which in some places passes for a prayer-meeting. The social life of the Church would be strangely modified. These new members of the Church, with their taste for good reading, would have, no social limitations upon them. You could not exhaust their conversational possibilities in a brief chat, nor satisfy their wholesome tastes with anything less than real wit and entertainment. Some new poem whose measure pleased, an article in a late magazine, or an old book which helped to form the taste or direct thought or educate to critical acumen would be the sure basis of a charming conversation. With such young people clownish pageants and .full-dress gymnastics would not pass for amusements. would result a practical and glorious revolution.

There

The Epworth League can and should be used to persuade fifty thousand additional Methodist young people to attend our Methodist colleges in the next five years. This opportunity is altogether distinct from that before the Chautauqua movement. The latter comes with its ameliorating culture to a great host who could not go to college; but here is an agency with which to bring the neighbouring college within the field of vision of every young member of the Church. Before the fires of youth are burned out, while the heart is still saying, "I will find a way or make one," the value of a college training, the ease with which it can be obtained, and the institutions where the college course can be most advantageously pursued should all be pointed out and dwelt upon. The alumni of our various colleges have no fairer field for rendering genuine assistance to their alma maters than in recommending persistently and enthusiastically the colleges of their love to the district conventions of the Epworth League. The Epworth League and the Methodist college have a common aim-that of promoting intelligent and vital piety. The time is fast coming when there will be an Epworth League college day in every State, and when the spiritual department of the Epworth League will be the peculiar form of religious organization in every Methodist college.

There is nothing to hinder the Epworth League from becoming a great school where the Bible shall be studied, not by fugitive passages, but connectedly, inductively, and reverently. The Epworth League conventions on many districts are already great training classes for Bible workers; and no field for. projecting new methods in Bible study is more inviting. Here is an opportunity to direct a whole generation of a great Church. It is to be hoped that they may come to the Bible rejecting all

traditional interpretation and read it for themselves. It is their right so to do. This opportunity is prophetic of great changes. It will clear away much theological debris. Faith will then become an actual entrance into fellowship with the life of Christ; the atonement, a sure motive for oneness with Christ, instead of a legal mystery outside of human use; the Gospel, always good news; conversion, a process of repenting, turning, pardon, and enlargement; sanctification, a life of sacrifice, with a consecration that is renewed every hour.

4. The social crisis presents even a greater opportunity. The requirements of Christianity will soon well-nigh reverse the whole order of Church procedure. The old methods have been wonderfully successful, are still so in many places, and are not in discredit anywhere. Neither are those who employ them. But the Church must adjust itself to new conditions. Only pleasure boats use the old methods of sail and oar propulsion. Commerce has betaken itself to the screw steamer. With or without the consent of the Church emphasis has been transferred from theology to sociology, from the first great commandment to the second, which is “like unto it." Coincident with the decay of what is called doctrinal preaching has come the international agitation of labour questions, a growing consciousness of oppression and wrong among the masses, and a threatening restlessness occassioned by it. The inevitable alienation of classes in our great manufacturing centres, the extortions of the strong, the greed of landlords, the horrors of tenement houses, imperfect sanitation, polluted water supplies, inequalities of police administration, legalized dram shops, poverty, and vice have made "our neighbour," and not God alone, the theme of the pulpit.

The Church is saying less and less about mercy and charity every year, and beginning to direct its thunders more against injustice. Hitherto it has devoted itself almost exclusively to the ranks of intelligence, culture, and orderly society. It has brought in its own children, baptized them, and won those whom easy love has suggested. Henceforth its efforts must be devoted to the outcast and to those who daily pay the penalty of their sin. It must discern in the publicans and sinners-" that outer fringe of society that has fallen away from its true order and is dragged along, a shame and a clog, hated and hating, redeemable by no force it knows"-the special field of Christly service. The great churches which the new generation is to build will not be located in the elegant suburbs, but in the down-town sections. There the Church must undertake and

provide hospitals, medical dispensaries, kindergartens, nightschools, employment bureaus, reading-rooms, gymnasia, bathrooms, Chinese schools-every form of applied Christianity. And this the Church must do, not to protect itself in its luxurious appointments from undesirable members, but to save itself from dissolution. It must be influenced by that tender and melting and most persuasive of all arguments-" for Jesus' sake."

Is it not then a providence that the Methodist Church has at this juncture a whole generation of young people organized and obedient? In the whole history of the Christian Church there can be found no greater opportunity than that before the Epworth League the opportunity to lead the Methodist Church, born in the streets of London and in the highways and hedges of old England, back to the masses from whom it is now slowly becoming alienated, that it may resume its leadership over that mighty throng who yearn in their misery for a Redeemer, and whose sin renders the statement of the doctrine of depravity unnecessary. These opportunities improved will be sufficient reason for the existence of the Epworth League.-Methodist Review.

ACROSTIC.

BY THE REV. G. O. HUESTIS.

TEEMING and sparkling with thoughts that are living,

Harnessing forces to elevate mind;

Everywhere treasures to truth-seekers giving;

Moving the veil from intellects blind.

Excellence fostering, character moulding,

Tincturing the soul with cosmetic art ;

Home-life ennobling, its blessings unfolding,

Odours refreshing, thy pages impart.

Delving in mines where rich treasures are hidden,

Interrogating to ascertain truth ;

Stopping in thought this side the forbidden,

Tracing sin's methods to capture our youth.

Meddling with knowledge, its limit exploring,
Artfully turning it all to account;
Grasping, and holding, where faith has a mooring,
Asking and drinking from Heaven's pure fount.
Zeal intertwined with pure love, and devotion,
Inward and outward, in comeliness dress,
Never backslide, but from ocean to ocean,
Everywhere travels, the people to bless.

AYLESFORD, N. S.

CLASS-MEETINGS AND HOW TO IMPROVE THEM.

BY THE REV. ADFRED ROEBUCK, B.D., F.R.G.S.

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THE idea embodied in the Methodist Class-meeting, though not the name, is found again and again in the New Testament. And even if it were of human origin only, surely an object so laudable as that aimed at in weekly fellowship, and bearing the seal of God's blessing, as this ordinance undoubtedly does, cannot but be in harmony with the spirit and aim of Jesus Christ. It secures for individual members education in practical Christianity, and development in Christian experience cannot but be sanctioned by "the Master of assemblies."

The Class-meeting was the outcome of a felt necessity in the early history of our Church, and was intended as auxiliary to the pastoral oversight of the Societies. The Leaders were looked upon as sub-pastors, and were expected to report special cases of lukewarmness, difficulty, or sickness to the minister, who through them was thus brought into instant touch with those who needed him most.

No one asserts that there can be no fellowship except in the Methodist Class-meeting; but we may as confidently declare there is no institution where the ideal is better realized than within our own communion, in this, one of our specific gatherings. Other Churches have coveted it, and not a few isolated ones have borne their testimony to its utility by imitation.

It will be well to consider the subject under two aspects: the man, and his methods.

I. The Man.-The Leader must not rely upon his social status or his intellectual qualifications, useful as they are in conjunction with essentials. The office will not sanctify the man nor efficiently cover his defects. He must be above everything else "a man of God," quick to know "what Israel ought to do." The knowledge of other hearts must come chiefly by self-examination ; for each man is the key to all. To know ourselves is to have gained a good understanding of others. Take, for instance the doctrines of repentance, faith, sanctification, the witness of the Spirit. These must be understood in some better way than by a definition; but if the explanations thrill with the glow of personal experience, as they will if they express stages of one's own growth in grace, then they will be "with power and with the Holy Ghost," or if the force and insidious arts of temptation are referred to, the specious and dangerous forms of doubt, what

counsel comes so forcibly to a distressed and doubting soul as that which falls from the lips of one who, ransacking the wellremembered diary of his own heart, can speak of victories in similar crises and dangers? If the Leader's self-knowledge is insufficient to meet the multiform experiences, the deficency may be supplied by the studies of the best biographies of good men and women, and, of course, by the careful and prayerful study of the Holy Scriptures.

Behind the Leader must be the sincere Christian, whose counsel corresponds with his conduct, whose practice illuminates and enforces his precepts, and whose strength springs out of a heart of purity. The poorest member should be made to feel equally welcome with the richest, and have equal courtesy shown him in the street as in the class-room. The man who has power with God will have most power with man; his success may not attract the public eye, but it will be seen and felt when every popular wind bag has collapsed.

Some Leaders, through constant failure, are evidently not intended for the duty. The officers of a church ought not to be swayed by sentiment when souls are at stake; the law of fitness should rule in the realm of religion, as in every other department of life. The duty of every Leader who cannot succeed in getting or keeping a class, after fair and full trial, is to resign.

We are in these days so afraid of being thought superstitious, that we are in danger of the opposite extreme, of lacking reverence and solemnity. If the Leader is to be what his name implies, then he must be at least a step in advance of his members, if not in intellect, in holiness. He can only lead, in so far as he himself has plodded forward in explorations of the "green pastures." The true Moses is the man who knows how to strike the veins of truth where the finest gold is and the deepest "wells of salvation" "; who knows the plentiful, common-looking white coriander seeds lying all around the desert path, and tells the hungry pilgrim it is manna. Such a Leader seldom lacks a following.

The chief essentials, then, in a Leader are knowledge of God's Word, acquaintance with human experience, a love of private prayer, and tender strength. If life is a constant vision of God, as Elijah's was and Paul's, then the requisite courage, tact, and skill will be present, so as to warn without harshness, avoiding on the one hand coldness, and weakness on the other.

II. Methods. No stereotyped rule should be permitted to fetter 、or make impossible holy originality in this or any other department of Christian work. There is no reason why a Class should be conducted according to any set plan or formal routine, where

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