We are accustomed to think of the day of beginnings as the day of small things, and yet lusterless indeed must be the vision of the man who, looking over this magnificent assemblage this afternoon, does not feel that there is nothing small about the first annual Convention of the Brotherhood of Disciples of Christ. Here you are, clean-visaged, strong-souled, stout-hearted men, and he who looks with seeing eye need not be told that you represent no particular class. Every walk of life is here.

      A few weeks ago, when Senator Oliver, Mr. Clark, General Secretary Warren and others called upon President Taft, inviting him to be present at this Convention (and his absence is one of our regrets to-day), the Chief Executive remarked with ready perspicacity, "What but the church could have united you men!" On this platform this afternoon are represented still more widely sundered interests, and in the audience before me, stretching away right and left and back, tier upon tier, thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, there are to be found represented almost every occupation and state of being in our great republic. What but the call of Christ could have brought us together?

      If we have never before caught the vision of the power that lies in this movement, we catch it now. If we have never before felt the purifying presence of the Spirit of God, sitting like tongues of flame in enabling power upon the brows of men, we feel it now. We are one with the unity of his church; we are mighty with the might of God; we are masculine with the manliness of Christ.

      Twelve months ago, in New Orleans, the International Convention appointed a committee of seven men, with power to act, instructing them to proceed to the organization of the men of the Disciples of Christ. This was all--"with power to act!" That committee acted. It organized within two weeks, by the election of a president, R. A. Long, of the Long-Bell Lumber Company, one of the largest captains of industry in the Southwest; F. J. Bannister, a business man of Kansas City, treasurer, and P. C. Macfarlane, a minister from California, general secretary. The Brotherhood movement in every church in this [80] country has been studied. The men of our own church have been studied. A model constitution has been prepared, and is now providing plans for the enlisting not of a few, but of all the men of all the churches in all the work of the church.

      Thousands upon thousands of these constitutions have been furnished to

P. C. MACFARLANE.

the churches. The general secretary has traveled forty thousand miles, has spoken in all the principal States and cities of the United States, and his voice has been heard upon the platform of nearly every important State convention among us in this Centennial year. A name has been chosen for the organization, and although in use but nine months, it is now familiar to all of us--"The Brotherhood of the Disciples of Christ"--signifying a fraternity of men enlisted as students of Jesus Christ to learn from him lessons of true brotherliness. The name of the movement was contributed by S. M. Perkins, of Davenport, Ia. A Brotherhood emblem has also been devised, the creation of the brain of A. N. Daniels, a San Francisco business man. It consists of the star of Bethlehem and the cross of Golgotha, mounted upon a field of blood, with the letters "B" and "D" clinging to either arm of the cross, and the whole surrounded by the letter "C," the initial of the most sacred name for our Redeemer. The colors upon the emblem are red, signifying human life, and gold, signifying consecration. There you have, then, in the emblem, the red-blooded men of America, consecrating themselves to working out the eternal principles of brotherhood under the tutelage of our great Elder Brother, Jesus Christ.

      The Brotherhood of Disciples of Christ is a straight, unblinking appeal to Christian men to recognize Jesus Christ as an elder brother and to enter into a fraternity which shall realize for its members the privilege of service to which Christ called men. The motto of the organization is, "A Man's Work in a Man's Way." This involves a recognition of the essential manliness of Christ Jesus as the incarnate God. He was also the incarnate man.

      He represents the highest ideals of manhood. No philosopher reasoned as he reasoned. No physician healed as he healed. No general ever led as he led. No emperor ever ruled as he ruled. No soldier ever endured as he endured. There was nothing effeminate in Jesus Christ. He was a man. Manly in his regard for his mother; manly in his affection for his friends; manly in his devotion to duty; manly in his simplicity; manly in the quiet efficiency and directness with which he discharged every obligation that came to him; manly in the way he suffered, and manly in the way he endured; manly in his humility, for, be it known, humility is manliness.

      Now, Jesus Christ was a man. He did "a man's work in a man's way," and we assume as the motto of our Brotherhood and the motto of our magazine, yea, and that of every enterprise to which the Brotherhood of Disciples of Christ shall set itself, this small handful of words, "A Man's Work in a Man's Way."

      Jenkin Lloyd-Jones, of Chicago, says that the basis of ward and precinct political activity must be transferred from the corner saloon to the corner church. Josiah Strong, of New York City, pointing to the open sores in the social life of New York City, and asking for a healing ointment, declares that the gospel of Christ fits to the situation as the ocean fits to the shore. The church is the center; out from this Christian influences must flow. To do all these things requires men. Big men, strong men, true men, active men, persistent, energetic men, with the determination of a Grant, with the vision of a Hill, with the capacity of a Harriman, with the composing genius of a Morgan, with the fatalistic devotion to duty of a Garibaldi, who, summoning his few [81] and feeble adherents before him for the last campaign, promised them no luxuries and no spoils and no glory--only hardship, wounds and suffering, and at last a patriot's grave.

      It is to a service like this that the Brotherhood of Disciples calls men to-day. Only those men are wanted who are willing to spend and be spent for the sake of their brothers. Obviously, it is not a challenge to mollycoddles; it is not a parade of tin soldiers. We want to carry the message of God's love to every darkened mind of heathendom within this generation. We want to drive out the saloon from every town and hamlet; we want to banish the brewery from the list of commercial assets; we want to enact pure food laws and health regulations that will save the lives of one hundred thousand babies in our cities annually; we want to lift the heavy yoke of toil from the backs of children; we want to pierce the gloom that shrouds the toilers in our sweatshops with at least a ray of refreshing hope.

      We want to make uniform the divorce laws of this country, so as to make the court a bulwark and not a menace to the peace and the joy of domestic life. We want to give the Bible the place in the public schools and in the public and private life of men to which its intrinsic worth and revealing power entitle it. We want to put the study of it in our Bible schools upon a worthy and creditable and appealing basis, so that it will be impossible for men to grow up in any community without knowing it, and to know without appreciating it.

      The Brotherhood of Disciples will seek to look after the physical needs of its members with the same thoroughness and efficiency as a lodge or labor union. It assumes a responsibility for the social life of men, making it an axiom that the man of the church is entitled to as good a time as the man of the world. It will insist upon the man's responsibility for the boy. No church will be allowed to sit down in self-satisfaction while it fails to make provision for the hours of recreation and for the development of its boy life along natural lines of physical growth and in harmony with the best pedagogical ideas of the time.

      The object of this movement is the organization of the men of every church just as much, as a matter of fact, as we now organize the women or the children, and to place these organized men squarely behind every activity of the church, behind the minister, behind the evangelist, behind the Bible school, behind the missionary at home and the missionary abroad.

      In closing, may I voice, for a moment, the significance which this movement is to have in America? The great religious communion with which it is connected saw its beginning on American soil; its best blood to-day pulses in the heart of American life. The men in this organization are American men. The local Brotherhoods have established themselves on every frontier. The oldest Brotherhood organization among us is in Virginia. Its history runs back for thirty-eight years in the church life of the city of Richmond, and the Brotherhood impulse beginning there in the Seventh Street Church lies behind every one of our six churches in that city. Everywhere--East, North, South and West--the Brotherhoods are at work. Seattle, Portland and Tacoma have flourishing Brotherhood organizations. In San Francisco, when our churches were rallying from the crumbling walls that fire and earthquake strewed over the heart of the city, the stalwart souls of Brotherhood men were among the first to assist in bringing our churches out of chaos into order and hopefulness. Southern California, the great Southwest, the mountain plateau, the Mississippi Valley--everywhere men are rallying at the call of the Brotherhood to higher standards of efficiency, and in the great metropolis of the New World, through whose open gates come trooping one million foreign-born citizens every year, the light that streams from the glowing finger-tips of Batholdi's statue falls across the building where a Brotherhood organization of the Disciples of Christ is teaching annually scores of Poles and Russians the English language, American institutions and the great Christian principle that [82] God hath made of one blood every race and kindred of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.

      The time has come for hand-to-hand fighting. The Brotherhood movement has brought the men of our church in its first year into close quarters with the enemy. The conflict is on. It can never end until victory has come; until manhood has been won for Jesus Christ.

[CCR 80-83]