It is interesting to notice what we may call the sovereignty of words, which hold us all in their power. Curious, too, is it to see how phrase passes on authority to phrase, expressing the changing need or ambition of the time. Occasionally, with words, as with the rulers of the nations, a dynasty will fall, and an alien race be raised to power. Epochs have their watchwords just as sects and parties have. "Catholicity" dominated the ecclesiastical world for many centuries, with good and evil results: it set forth a splendid ideal, but often exalted irreligious partisans to high positions and reduced to serfdom or treated as outcasts and heretics some of the truest disciples and noblest servants of the Lord. The word "Reformation" on its accession promised to be the saviour of the world. In truth, the secular historian says: "The Reformation saved

Europe." But "Reformation" did not quite live up to its reputation, or fulfil the promise of its coronation day.

      To members of this Conference, as to one and three-quarter millions of like faith in other parts of the world, it has seemed that "Restoration" is more worthy of our allegiance. It was the rediscovery of the claims of "Evangelisation" which enabled the Church at home to save itself by doing its duty to the Christ and to the world in darkness for which the Son of God died. To the help of "Evangelisation," as a kind of Consort, has come in more recent days "Efficiency," a ruler who has well proved his worth, being strong in counsel as he is strenuous in action, if occasionally

a little ruthless. Our chief fear for this modern sovereign is lest through over-work his days may be shortened. There is already an applicant for the throne when vacant, and, indeed, a rival for the supremacy. Concerning this, I wish to speak. His name is now upon the lips of very many. His authority appeals to high and low, the statesman and the theologian, the worldling and the Christian. His name is "Reconstruction."

      We cannot be in doubt where to begin our consideration of this theme. The thought of a world in conflict and in need is ever with us. It has been our recent experience to behold empires convulsed, a throne totter and fall, cabinets disrupted, industrial strife threaten or exist in many lands. There is war without and dissension within. We see the spilling of blood as if it were water, a prodigal waste of precious lives, the annihilation of towns, a vandalism which rejoices at the wanton destruction of the most precious works of art. We witness these, and pray that soon the destruction may cease and the days of Reconstruction come. A gloomy picture might be painted of the world to-day. But the saddest things can never be depicted. The blighted homes and broken hearts; the long-drawn-out agony of fathers and mothers fearful of the fate of loved ones; the sorrow which is theirs whose dear ones have made the supreme sacrifice, a sorrow which very many of our brethren today experience; the suffering and patient endurance of our brave soldiers and sailors in the war zone; the torture endured by the victims of the brutality and

lust of a nation which while it boasts in its "Kultur" seems to have sunk to such depths of shame as require for their explanation the apostolic words: "God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness"--these things cannot be depicted in adequate fashion.

      Our Empire is happily guiltless of such crimes, and free from such horrors. But it is not blameless. There are sins of omission and of commitment which call for our repentance. Have you read "Defeat? The Truth about the Betrayal of Britain"? If not, I counsel you to read its terrible indictment of the way in which we have let our greatest national foe, intemperance, wage its ceaseless warfare against our country. I cannot refrain from quoting a few sentences: "We [that is, the people of Britain] have spent 400 million, pounds since the war began in betraying those who are fighting for its." The War Savings Committee, after spending thousands of pounds in asking women not to wear veils or buy expensive laces, woke up five hundred mornings late to the fact that our people were spending half a million pounds a day on damaging the nation. It said so in a poster, and it said this also--that not only should we save this enormous sum of money by stopping drink, but the gain in national working capacity would be even greater. The loss of national working capacity, therefore, according to this Government Department, is more than equivalent to this drink bill. The drink bill since the war began is nearer 450 million pounds than 400 million, but let us call it 400 million pounds only. It is about one-tenth of the cost of the war so far--that is to say, for every sovereign we

have spent in fighting Germany, we have spent two shillings in fighting and weakening ourselves." Again: "There are two organisations in Britain that no man living will ever forget. One of them keeps men fit; it guards them from the great temptations this trade puts in their way. It is the Y.M.C.A. The other cares for men when they are sick and wounded; it touches with humanity this hideous carnage of men. It is the Red Cross. And drink is fighting both." This witness is true; and I need not do more than remind you, brethren, that the great "betrayal" has not been made in the Motherland alone.

      The sins and woes of the world make a thorough Reconstruction imperative. Yet is such possible? We have pessimists amongst the irreligious, and folk of fearful heart amongst the saints. We have those who are so impressed--and depressed--by the contemplation of the world's sin that their brightest thought now is that the horrors of the day are presages of the time when "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works therein shall be burned up."

      We think that there is no need for one to adopt such views as these. There are some more rational and more Christian thoughts.

      Personally, I have found a degree of comfort and inspiration in a war article by Dr. Saleeby, which appeared in "My Magazine." He referred to the apparently deliberate war made by our foe on art and architecture, and then proceeded to show how the greatest things in our heritage are beyond the reach of man's destruction. Here

is his message in brief:

      "Not the least iota of any of these things has the war destroyed:

      "Knowledge is unimpaired.

      "Not one scientific truth, not one power based upon such truth, is lost.

      "Not one tiniest fact ever observed and recorded about the tiniest sub-division of beetles or variety of chemical compound has been lost.

      "Not one fragment is touched of the invisible, which is the invaluable and the invulnerable.

      "No principle of duty, no law of kindness, no secret of service, no key to the hearts of men or the heart of Nature, is lost, or can be lost.

      "Not one architectural idea has been lost, or injured by a hair's breadth, for all the 'triumphs' of the German guns.

      "Not one line of poetry, not one lovely tune in all our precious legacy from the genius of the past, is injured in any way."

      This has been well described as "a heartening message." The essence of its thought has been expressed by the poet in the familiar lines:

      I love to think that not even bloody war can stay the onward march of the Kingdom of God, or permanently oppose the advent of the day of the Brotherhood of Man.

      Nor should we close our eyes to the signs of Reconstruction given in the very course of the war. All is not dark. The bravery, the devotion, the patriotism, the heroic self-sacrifice of the men who fight in the cause of liberty and right must surely be set on the credit side of our moral ledger. I was recently

      greatly struck by the report of the New Year address of that great Baptist leader and Grand Old Man of English Protestantism, Dr. John Clifford. He spoke of "The Spirit of Man in 1916,"--and he did not find that spirit all decadent! I quote a few sentences: "Never did conscience exert itself with more strength and success against wrongs than in this conflict. Never did the shock of wrong so astonish the spirit and fire the indignation of mankind. Never were more gigantic wrongs committed, and never were they assailed with such pluck and patience, high resolve, and unflagging determination." After telling how the sight of appalling wrongs fused our British Empire into one flame of white heat of fierce resistance, and how "our young men came

      from every corner of our Empire, from the far-flung provinces of Canada and New Zealand, from the towns and villages of Australia and Africa, from the wide-ranging regions of India, and the isles of the sea," the preacher went on: "Five millions of them came--came of their own free will, fired with the passion to suppress wrong and establish righteousness. I do not say that every soldier responded to the call of the King from that impulse. I know men act from mixed motives; but I sincerely believe that deeper than anything else was this passion for the right in the hosts of young men who left our Churches and Sunday Schools and Brotherhoods and Universities, and in hundreds of thousands besides. They held with Edmund Burke, that 'There is no evil comparable in its effect on the character of an individual or a nation to that of a craven submission to wrong.' Therefore, out they went with one accord to destroy

wrong, to fight for right, for an ideal, for a cause: the cause of their country, the cause of Humanity, the cause of God. How else will you explain the unique character of this host?"

      But there are loftier heights to which the Christian may climb. His faith is in the God who is still in His world of suffering. "The Lord reigns as King for ever." I do not see how any one who does not believe in a God of infinite love can to-day be an optimist; but how can one who is a believer despair? The "Hibbert Journal" was not the most likely place to find a plea for the "glorious audacity" of the postulate of divine love; but there Mrs. Catherine C. Osler recently wrote: "The glorious audacity of the astronomers who predicted--nay, demanded--the discovery of the planet Neptune, as alone able to account for certain celestial phenomena, finds a spiritual parallel in the demand of reason for a purpose in human destiny. Nothing less than Divine Love can justify or account for the stupendous problem of suffering: -

      Should we not remember, also, as Dr. H. Jowett has told us, that "this is not the first time that the world has been overrun with devilry and abomination"? "Think of the world in the time of the Apostle Paul. What a graveyard! It was a time of the most abounding riot of licence and of unrestricted passions--of satiety, of weariness,

of bleached and bloodless philosophy, and of dire disgust. What a graveyard! The grass was withering, the flowers were falling. But one man--pre-eminently one man, but with many comrades--went through that putrid Roman world just singing the word of sovereign grace."

      To-night it will be in order for us to think of a still higher Example. Nearly two thousand years ago there dawned the blackest day in the world's history. It was a Friday. Hell seemed to triumph when with contumely and scorn the Son of God was crucified, hounded to death by the religious leaders of the chosen people of the Most High. He who considers that death of shame, and who appreciates the reason why the world can speak of this day as "Good" Friday will count them both wise and happy who refuse to set limits to what the Father Almighty can do in the way of Reconstruction. We may not all rise to the heights of faith with Robert Louis Stevenson, that heroic soul who suffered much and yet believed. "In the harsh face of life," he wrote, "faith can read a bracing Gospel." And again: "The inherent tragedy of things works out from white to black and blacker; and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say that it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things; aye, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it." This may be too bold for us, but at least we can say with Whittier:

      Inevitably arising from the consideration of the War and Reconstruction is the thought of

      This subject has been engaging the attention of the friends and foes of Christianity. The Rationalist Press Association devoted the greater part of its 1917 Annual to the theme. The well known novelist, Arnold Bennett, in it dealt with the topic, "Religion after the War." Those familiar with the gentleman's views were not surprised to find that it was one of his fears that there would remain some religion after the war! "For myself," he writes, "I do not understand how religion and the open mind can go together." William Archer in the same periodical considered "Theology and the War." It was as consoling to us as it was charitable on his part to find him confessing that "there is no great practical harm in the belief that the world is directed by the will of God, so long as we clearly recognise that its good ends can be attained only through the active and enlightened co-operation of the will of man." The most remarkable feature of the Rationalist Annual was a symposium on the question, "Will Orthodox Christianity Survive the War?" The answer of course was an emphatic "No"--the intensity of their negative corresponding to the desire of the writers. But who could have expected unbelievers to have given any other reply? Their negative answer was as much a fore-gone conclusion as would be your affirmative reply to such a query as, Is Christianity superior to Rationalism?

      Christian leaders, too, are facing such questions just now. There is a certain

tenseness in the religious world, almost a feeling of anxiety, a conviction that there is need of Reconstruction. One of the best illustrations of this is found in Dr. R. F. Horton's volume, entitled "Reconstruction: A Help to Doubters." The author's reputation is a sufficient guarantee that there are some splendid things in the book. His aim may be given in his own words: "The design in the following pages is to assist those--they must be a great number today--who have awoke to the fact that the dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is untenable, and who, not knowing how to deal with an authority which seems to be questioned or even discredited, dismiss the Bible as useless, and surrender, at least theoretically, the Christian religion, which, they were taught to rested on the Bible as the inspired and infallible Word of God." Now, Horton thinks such people are wrong in their dismissal of Christianity, but he more than sympathises with them in their rejection of the Bible as the inspired and infallible word of God. He believes, however, that he has a criterion by which we may distinguish what is true in the Bible from what is false. This is it: We should get "so firm a hold of the Person," of Christ revealed in the Gospels, "and of his truth concerning the Father, and of his insistence on the two-fold Law, that we become able with some confidence to leave on one side elements which are shown to be accretions, or misunderstandings of the Person, whose picture is there preserved." But we may ask, Who is capable of the task of dividing the Gospels into what is true and what untrue? Horton speaks of being "able with Some confidence." It is not the "confidence," but the

"ability" of the critics to do this, which we doubt. How does the principle work out in actual practice? We have the spectacle of men applying their own subjective test to, the Scriptural record, more or less arbitrarily rejecting what seems to them to contradict that test, and scarcely two of them agree as to which part should be accepted and which rejected! It is not inappropriate here to apply the words of Wrede: "Every historian ends by retaining so much of the words that have come down to him as fits in with his own construction of the facts and his own conception of historical possibilities; the rest he rejects." Thus we have men brush aside the plainest of Bible commands or doctrines, deny the virgin birth, our Lord's miracles, the resurrection itself, the second coming of Christ, even His atoning death and His Divinity--and, if we give up our faith in the Bible as the inspired Word of God, who is to say these are all wrong? May I be pardoned for expressing the opinion that whatever Horton's view and criterion may lead to, it is not the Reconstruction of the Christian faith? We cannot have that in the absence of either the Christ of the Bible or the Bible of the Christ.

      The coming home of our men from the front is generally supposed to make a Reconstruction in our church life desirable and even imperative. It would be criminal folly for us not to realise that their home coming will be to us both a challenge and an opportunity. Christian Union looms up more largely, as a vital problem because of the war. The question recurs again and again, Where will the new denominational lines be drawn? We of course think they should be,

not re-drawn, but with-drawn. But while the day of union may be believed to be coming nearer, there is little evidence of its being imminent; and in the meantime men are asking where the new lines of demarcation will be. Will there be a great national church opposing small groups of Christian folk who cannot enter into such an ecclesiastical organisation? Will Rome receive an added influence and become a menace to the world? Shall we have on the one side Sacerdotalism, and on the other Evangelicalism? It is difficult to say. One is safer in saying where the new line ought to be drawn. I could profoundly wish it might be drawn between those on the one side who are true believers in the Divinity and Atonement of the Lord and in the Authority of the Scriptures, and those on the other side who will not give Him and His Word their rightful place. There are few if any religious bodies on earth which would not be changed if such a line of cleavage were made.

      Others are free to form their own opinion, but I have not seen proof that the great masses of men, the workers who are to-clay coming into their own, are opposed to Christ and His Gospel. They distrust Christians, and many of them have no time to spare for the Churches--but they chiefly are alienated from these because they think they are untrue to the teaching of the Working Man of Galilee. The church which can exemplify the faith and life of Christ and the Gospel will reach the workers. And if we can get the workers, then I have more hope of the Reconstruction of the Church and the world through them than I have of their salvability by means of German theology,

whether you get it direct from the now-discredited exponents of "Kultur," or second hand from British or American "advanced" thinkers. We require, then, neither a reconstructed Christ nor a reconstructed Bible, but a Reconstruction of our lives and preaching so that they, harmonise with these.

      "When the boys come home," they will need a Saviour, just as all of us need Him. The deepest longings of the human heart, the supreme need of men, will not be altered by this or any other war. Nor can the war provide any new means of satisfaction. The Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, must save; the Word which liveth and abideth forever must be a lamp to the feet of men and a light unto their path. No religious truth existing before the war will be false after it; no invention of man now masquerading as a Divine requirement will be true after it.

      The duty of the churches "when the boys come home" has been well put by Principal W. B. Selbie thus: "They must tune the pulpits, and by their vision of God, their deep sense of sin and need, their victorious faith and undaunted hope, bring home to the most indifferent something of the glory and passion of the Gospel. The deeper and more perplexing the need of the world, the greater is the opportunity for the churches to make plain to all that they have in the Gospel that which can more than answer it. But this they must do not merely by word of month. In plain language, they must practise what they, preach. There are ethical implications of the Gospel which must no longer be kept in the background. The time is come for the churches to take that kind of

action which will compel attention and vindicate their claim to be the guardians of the spiritual life of the nation. They must cease to live unto themselves, and devote their attention entirely to the service of God and man. To "seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness" must take the place of all denominational and ecclesiastical aims. The only concern of churches is to be good instruments in God's hands for the redemption of mankind."

      You will naturally expect me ere I close to refer to the important question of

      Clearly the word "Reconstruction" suits well the position for which we stand. We have often said we plead for Restoration, not merely for Reformation. I think that I have occasionally from the lips of our fathers in the Gospel heard a plea for "the rebuilding of the walls of Zion," which in the battles of the centuries or in times of an ecclesiastical Babylonian captivity had to some extent been broken down. We believe our fathers were right. We might almost dare to say that "Reconstruction" and "Our Plea" are synonymous terms. Our work of building, of construction and Reconstruction, will never be complete till the New Testament faith and life are found in all the earth; till the scattered host of the people of God constitute one body, united in one God and Lord and Spirit, holding one faith, one baptism and one hope; till the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ shine on every man for whom the Lord Jesus died.

      There are not wanting signs that a few who are connected with the Restoration

      Movement fear lest the plea will become in effectual or even obsolete unless it itself is

reconstructed. This is not the time to particularise, and still less is it a fitting occasion for argument. But now is the appropriate time, and the presidential chair is the quite appropriate place, for an emphatic statement of the belief of at least ninety nine out of every hundred of the members of Churches of Christ that the world needs in a superlative degree the faith once for all given to the saints, that the Scriptures are the revelation of the Living God, that the will of the Lord and the evangelisation of the world demand the union of all God's people on the basis revealed in the New Testament. Seeing that "our plea" is Christ,--His exaltation and pre-eminence in church life and doctrine, in creed and ordinance, we unhesitatingly declare that any imperfection is with the exponents of the plea, and not with the plea itself. Surely it is the case that we are in the presence of a great opportunity. The Christian world believes now in union, prays for union, works for union. The only thing it seems to lack is the knowledge that there is a divinely given basis of union. We shall be recreant if at such a time we be found unfaithful. The world needs our plea--not half of it merely, for a union simply (everybody besides now pleads for union), but the whole of it: for who in addition is pleading for union on the New Testament basis?

      It would be out of harmony with the whole purpose of this address were it to close with any semblance of a spirit of self-congratulation or complacency. There is a Reconstruction which all need, we as others. It is the Reconstruction of our selves. We should seek the transformed life. Did not God's apostle write of the need of the "renewing

of the Holy Spirit"--"the renewing of your mind"? That carries with it the thought of Reconstruction. In the lives of all there is room for more holiness, purer thoughts, nobler ideals, kinder words, more loving service. We cannot doubt that had professed Christians been true to Christ, united in the face of the common foe, living by the Spirit, there would have been no world conflict to-day. The war makes a demand on us for consecration and sacrifice. A recent writer has truly said that "side by side with increased material well-being there has developed an indifference to moral and spiritual sanctions which is one of the most disturbing features of our common life today. The note of strenuous earnestness is almost entirely lacking both from our speech and our activities. Soft living has induced an easy tolerance of laxity both in faith and practice. Selfishness has invaded practically every realm of life to an extent which would alarm us had we not gradually become accustomed to its yoke. All this the war has brought to light, just as heat brings out the writing of invisible ink. It has forced us to face unwelcome fact, and has challenged us to reconstruct life upon a worthier pattern. If we do not entirely mistake the call of these days, it is to a new self- denial."

      Can there be a better time for us to determine to show more fully the reconstructing power of Christ in our lives than this day on which we keep in special remembrance the death of the Lord of glory?

      Could there be a greater incentive to do this than is to be found in the knowledge that He who died the death of shame yet rose triumphant over death, and that we may

experience "the power of His resurrection"? Surely not. Then let us seek light and strength from Him to-day, so that we shall be enabled to be His faithful disciples, to walk the Via Dolorosa when for us also the path of obedience is the way of sorrow, to be willing with Him to seek the Crown, by way of the Cross.