Man in the church is not as lonesome as he used to be. Recent statistics show that 43 per cent. of the church membership in the United States is of the masculine sex. One-half of the members of the Roman Catholic Church are males, and 40 per cent. of the members of the Protestant churches. The Disciples of Christ may be proud of the fact that they stand near the top in this respect, having almost 45 per cent. of men and boys in our membership. When we remember that there are peculiar difficulties in the way of the religious life of men and boys in the business and social habits of to-day, we need not attribute to the defective nature of the male sex this small difference in its representation in our churches. The past decade has witnessed a large increase in the activities of men in the church and in the efforts of the church to reach and hold the boys, and to this fact is partly due the better showing of to-day.

      Jesus gave the world a new conception of character, in which the strength of man and the gentleness of woman, the courage of man and the patience of woman, the passion of man and the purity of woman, were united, combined in one life, and he himself lived that life and manifested that character. In him there is to be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, so far as the appropriation of the privilege of becoming a part of the church is concerned. But there is still place for the essential distinctions between man and woman when it comes to the peculiar functions of the members of the body of Christ.

      It is high time man should resume his divinely appointed place in the

W. F. RICHARDSON.

Christian society and accept his true responsibility. Let us sound the trumpet in the ears of all our brethren. Let us bring the sulky or sleepy Achilles from his tent and constrain him that is against this our holy cause. Let us call for the wisdom of Æneas, the courage of Ulysses, and the strength of Ajax, finding in their discretion and zeal the assurance of early victory.

      Why should not the men lead in all the different departments of the army of Jehovah? They come before their sisters in all the work of the world, in politics, in business, in education; why not in religion as well? Why should not the average man give at least as much attention to his home and his church as he does to his store, his shop, his bank, his club, his lodge, his labor union? With what mighty power would the church of God move forward if the manhood of the Christian world were consecrated, intelligently and earnestly [93] seeking the daily practice of the religion of Christ! What a marvelous transformation would be wrought in the family life of our country, now so seriously threatened in every quarter, if husbands, fathers and sons would but make their lives tell for the higher aims of Christ! The family needs also to call the hearts of our fathers back to their children that the Christ may be enthroned in our hearts. If the groves were God's first temple, the family was his first altar, the Father his first priest; and until this altar is rebuilt and this priesthood reinstated in its holy office, his temples, whether of primeval and unimproved forest or sculptured and frescoed marble, will not send up to heaven the full harmonies of the human harp. Christ needs fathers who will promote the old law, commanding their children and their households after them to keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice. The vision of Isaiah must be realized in the fathers of Christendom, who shall say to their households, "Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths." We must not change the exhortation of the pulpit, "Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath." Nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord, so as to assume the mothers' responsibilities for the neglected duties of their awaited lords.

      In the church, as in the home, man needs to recognize his responsibility. For the most part, he controls the money of the kingdom, and the kingdom holds him responsible for its use. It is to the shame of the churches that they lay upon the shoulders of the women in countless instances the yoke that should be placed upon the necks of the men.

      In pioneer days, when a neighbor's barn was to be raised, men gathered about the huge logs and lifted them into place to the tune, "He-o-he." When the Lord's money is to be raised, we have been calling the women together, and the rallying-cry has been, "She-oshe." Let us be men and do a man's work in a man's way! Ours is the only religion that has dared lift woman up beside man, to grant her equal privileges with him. All others, even Judaism, have kept her subjected and required man to exercise the rites, duties and religious obligations of the household. Shall we convert this glory of our faith into its shame by so neglecting the smallest obligations that belong to Christian men as representing our Master and impose upon our sisters a burden beyond their strength? The mission of the Brotherhood is one of agitation, education, inspiration and organization. The community must be aroused, the spirit of the willing energized, the workers organized, the half-bound freed. Already has its triumphant note been heard by those who have gone to see the vision of larger things. New life has been imparted to languishing churches, new interest awakened in our pulpits for world-wide evangelism, and new joy is springing up in homes where Christ had too long been an unrecognized or even unwelcome guest. Let us rally to this holy endeavor of the manhood of our churches; let us raise the cry of the early Crusaders, "God wills it." But ours is a nobler and wiser crusade than theirs, for we are seeking not to recover from the Turk the earthly sepulchre where once for three short days was left the lifeless body of our Lord, but ours is a loving attachment to the utmost exercise of his divinely given powers for the redemption of the whole wide world from sin and death. The Master needs the aid of every one of his disciples that he may sooner accomplish his purpose.

      When in his old age Antonio Stradivari continued to work in his shop, making his priceless Cremona violins, his friends expostulated with him, saying that he possessed ample wealth to satisfy every want; that he needed rest after his long and laborious life. He answered that the world still needed his violins, and God needed the world to have them, but that God could not make them without old Antonio.

      The world needs the church of our Lord Jesus Christ with all its sacred ministries of the brotherhood, but those it can not have, and not even God himself can give them, without the help of the man of his church. Let us not disappoint him. [94]

[CCR 93-94]