That the risen Lord, in his third appearance to his disciples, should have concerned himself, not with admonitions as to their spiritual welfare, but with their immediate physical needs and necessities, is perhaps one of the most touching and significant scenes in his whole life. Although during his entire ministry Christ had often and repeatedly endeavored to impress upon his followers the value of the practical application of his teachings as expressed in helpfulness and service, it would seem that once again he would lay emphasis on a personal, material ministry. And how touchingly and how beautifully he brings this lesson home to his weary disciples, by himself ministering to their hunger, and with his own hands preparing the food for their simple meal.

      Time forbids us to trace, or even to mention, the cause, the growth and the final outcome of the great historic movements and reformations which from time to time have sprung up within the church. The inspiration, however, of all these great movements, whether expressed in effort to plant the cross on the tomb of the lowly Nazarene, or in a life of fasting and prayer spent apart from its fellows in holy contemplation of the crucified One, or as a protest against the evils which had grown up in the churchly organization itself, has been a struggle to realize, in one way or another, the simple teachings of the gospel and the ideals which Jesus presented.

      As a part of these great movements must be counted the one in which we as a people are identified. At a time when theological discussions and, dissensions were rife, when heated arguments and quarrels over minor points of doctrine occupied the time and thought of those who had been ordained to preach the gospel, and when, on the other hand, men of ability and large mind, disgusted by the petty dissensions and narrow teachings of those within the church had swung away from all religious associations and life into

MRS. H. R. COOLEY.

infidelity, Alexander Campbell had a vision of the transforming power of the primitive Evangel in all of its beauty and simplicity over the minds and hearts of men.

      To Alexander Campbell and his associates there came a great problem, a great duty, a great opportunity. Bravely and heroically they met and faced that problem; nobly and self-sacrificingly they grasped that opportunity, and we to-day are reaping the benefits of that heroic struggle.

      Of all the many and remarkable changes which the nineteenth century has witnessed, none is more marvelous than the rapid rise and growth of the city. The city has well been called the product of the newer civilization. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no large cities in America, and only six with a population of over eight thousand, and only four per cent. of the people lived in towns. To-day there are over six hundred such cities, while 34 per cent. of the people live in cities.

      As a result of this crowding of such a large proportion of the population into [57] the centers of trade and industry, all classes and conditions of people are being brought into much closer and more intimate relationships than formerly, and with these close relationships have come new and vexing problems, new and greater difficulties. That the city must soon be, or, rather, is already, the dominant factor in the life of the nation, there can be no doubt. The problem of the city, then, with its private vested interests and vast corporate wealth, with its fabulous unearned incomes in the hands of the few, with its residences of private individuals out-rivaling the palaces of kings and princes, on the one hand, and with its labor agitations, its pauperism, its distressing and degrading slums, breeding-places of vice, crime and disease, on the other, must become the problem of the state and the nation; but, above all, if we are to follow the social teachings of Jesus, the problem of the church. For as the city dominates the nation, so must the principles which Jesus taught dominate the life of the city, if our free institutions are to last. For we are beginning at length to realize that every part of society is in a measure dependent upon every other part, and that whatever affects one class, either to degrade or uplift, must in time necessarily affect all others.

      Perhaps no other city furnishes a more forcible example of the deplorable extremes in the lives of its people than New York, the greatest metropolis of our land. Like other cities of its kind, New York has its periods of financial and industrial elevations and depressions, its frenzied industries and fabulous wealth, its hopeless squalor, wretchedness, poverty and misery. In the slums of this, as of other great cities, the lives of children are sacrificed with as much abandonment and cruelty as in the worship of Moloch or by the bloody Herod.

      Less than two years ago there was held in New York an exhibition known is the congestion exhibit, portraying in a most startling and vivid manner the terrible conditions existing in the tenement districts. In this exhibit it was shown that eleven entire blocks in the more congested regions of the city have a density of twelve hundred to the acre. This means that if the whole of little Delaware were similarly crowded, it would contain the entire population of the world--black, white, yellow and red.

      Of the families exhibited, 18 per cent. were living in one room, while 34 per cent. were living in only two rooms. Furthermore, it was shown that there were 350,000 inside bedrooms without sunlight or fresh air. Altogether two million people in this city alone are living in tenements unfit for human habitation.

      In describing conditions which she found in the tenement districts of another of our great cities, a settlement worker says: "Rookeries perched on hillsides were swarming with men, women and children; entire families living in one room and accommodating boarders in the corner thereof. Cellar rooms were the abiding-places of families. Courts and alleys were fouled by bad drainage, and piles of rubbish were playgrounds for rickety, pale-faced, grimy children." Speaking further of the children with whom she came into almost daily contact, she says: "Not one child in ten comes to us from the river-bottom section without a blood or skin disease, usually of long standing. Not one in ten comes to us physically up to the normal for his or her age. Worse than that, few of them are up to the mental standard, and an increasing per cent. are imbecile." The conditions of the great numbers of disinherited, unprivileged workers in these cities are practically the same in all our great industrial centers. One-tenth of our American families hold more of the national wealth than the remaining nine-tenths. There are nearly two million children in our own country alone, under the age of fifteen years, engaged in manual labor unsuited to their years. In the civilized world, tuberculosis, which is a curable social disease, claims each year one million deaths. It is estimated that 25 per cent. of our entire population are living on the edge of destitution, while, because of the lack of sufficient nourishment and proper sanitary surroundings, fully ten million people are living below the line of physical efficiency.

      When the scribe came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first command of all?" his answer was, "Thou [58] shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these." And when questioned further as to "Who is my neighbor?" he illustrated by telling the parable of the good Samaritan, closing the conference by saying to the lawyer, "Go and do thou likewise." Here again Jesus places emphasis on personal ministry and service to humanity, not as an expression of humanitarianism, but as the highest expression of religion, as religion itself. The Levite going down to Jericho may have been active in various philanthropies, the priest may have preached and practiced large giving, but the good Samaritan loved the helpless, wounded man, and his compassion moved him, not to sentiment, but to deeds.

      It has been said that between a life which embodies those of its fellows and a life of religion, there is little difference. Alice Freeman Palmer, in leaving each week her fine home in the suburbs of Boston and journeying through the stifling heat to the narrow, crowded city streets that she might bring a little happiness and sunshine into the dreary lives of neglected children, was manifesting the highest type of religion.

      That the church is beginning to realize its duties and responsibilities toward all the large number of workers who, because of their misery and poverty and unending toil, are practically shut out from the higher moral and spiritual lives, is evidenced in many ways, in none more forcibly than in that remarkable Federal Council of Churches held last December, at which thirty-three denominations and eighteen million people were represented. I speak of it as remarkable because this body of thoughtful Christian people assembled together in convention had under discussion and consideration the relation and obligation of the church to the social and industrial world, or, in other words, the application of the religion of Jesus to the social life of to-day.

      Among the most noteworthy resolutions were the following: "That the church must stand for equal rights and complete justice to al men in all stations of life. For the abolition of child labor. For a living wage as the minimum in every industry and for the highest wage that oily industry can afford. For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human life."

      Among the other things it recommends that the church in general not only aim to socialize its message, but that it seek to establish closer relations with workingmen, so that the workers and the poor, vastly in the majority in the United States, may ever find the church as homelike as the union hall, and more congenial and wholesome than the saloon, the political club, or any other organization.

      The resolutions close with that passage from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

      May we not hope that the church of the coming century will strive to reach the standard set for her by these leaders in this noble body of resolutions? Nay, more, shall his church not lead in this forward movement and in the growth of social feeling and conscience, and, if so, must not this twentieth-century church be a church that does not fear to deal with social problems as religious problems? Must she not concern herself vitally, deeply with all the varied elements of city life, with sanitation, parks, playgrounds, the abolition of child labor, a living wage, and with all the other problems of the toiling, hopeless masses to whom, under present conditions, as Mr. Stelzle says, "there can be little meaning in the words fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man"?

      Suppose, for a moment, that Alexander Campbell with his great heart and mind should come to Pittsburg, or to any other of our large cities, after a hundred years. Would he not feel the [59] vital social and industrial problems of to-day? Would he not strive to meet them as he met the problems of his day? Could he to-day bring us a message, would he not say to us that as he applied religion to the questions of his time, so should we in the Spirit of Christ; apply his teaching to present-day conditions? Jesus Christ has identified himself with each individual of the multitudes of the victims of poverty and wretchedness, with every slum child, every ruined girl, every wasting consumptive, every outcast criminal. He says, "I was hungry, and ye gave no meat; naked, and ye clothed me not; I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me not. Inasmuch as ye did not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." In his own account of the judgment of men, he makes this the final test of religion. There come to us the faith and the hope that the followers of Jesus Christ will make the coming century more glorious than the past in the blessing and ministry to the common life, recognizing that this social service is not something that can be added to a true religious life, but that it is the center and heart of religion. In this humble service, how high, how united, how like the Master, his church will grow! It will hold fast to the full development of the individual into his likeness. It will add to this mission the social service to the humblest, weakest outcast, thus making its own life full and complete.

      It is this spirit which inspired our own Miss Graybiel to leave home and kindred that she might bring enlightenment and comfort to India's degraded, hopeless women, to her orphaned, outcast children. It is this spirit which inspired Jane Addams to go out from a home of luxury and ease to give her time, her strength, her means to the struggling, disinherited toilers in the darkness and despair of Chicago's slums. It is this spirit which inspires all his followers "who, in every call of human need, hear the voice of God summoning them to free his children from selfishness and woe."

[CCR 57-60]