the crossroads, the depot village, the roundhouse, the manufacturing town, the mining camp, the oil town-all these have as different and varying conditions as there are different towns, but in them are young men, who, even more than the young men of the cities, are making the life of America—they are making it morally, religiously, politically and socially. What are we to do with that factor in our national life, with that stern, strong, splendid stuff that lies back there in the country?

You say that the work is too difficult, that it is hard to reach out into all these country districts. Yet it is worth the doing, and the thing that we must use for the solving of this difficulty is the young men themselves. One of the greatest dangers in our American life to-day is not giving to the young people enough to do. We stand before the dangers of luxury and wealth and over and over again we are practically saying to the young men at our colleges, the young men in our country: "You don't need to work as your fathers worked; you don't need to do the thing that is heroic and splendid and strong." If that be true, we certainly shall eat the moral fiber out of the souls of the youth of America. I happen to be in one of those little colleges out on the frontier, and the thing that humbles me, and gives me enthusiasm and faith, is the young men who early every morning during the college year go out of our dormitories to do this and that to meet their college expenses. Those are the young men who want to go into the foreign missionary service, who seek in life the most difficult tasks.

The other day I received word from Washington: "We want some of your graduates for the Philippines." I wondered who would go, and who do you think did? Four of them-two of them sons of our home missionaries, young men who had fought their way through college, struggling to get a living, one of them the president of our Young Men's Christian Association. They were the ones who came into my office and said: "We want to go, and we want the hardest place." And when I put my hand on to their shoulders last Wednesday morning and said, "Boys, thank God you are going," I knew the stuff was in them to win a victory in the Philippines more splendid than any ten thousand soldiers can win there. Up and down the breadth of this land are hundreds of young men, if we can only harness them in God's harness, who will do this work and solve this the most difficult but the most important problem in America to-day.

But how shall it be done? First of all, we need to put behind the movement for the establishing of the county secretaries all the force, all the enthusiasm, all the helpfulness possible. I wish I had time to read to you the letters from the secretaries. May I read just one or two words from those who are situated in the districts where this work is being

done? One man, a school teacher, said: "I wish I could give you some faint idea of the differences this year from last in the lives of the young men whom you met here in the convention. One of our teachers said to me that she never in all her life taught in a school which had been so easy to govern as our school this year." That was the direct result of the work of that county secretary. Another man, from Minnesota, says: "I am happy to add my testimony to that of the pastor's in regard to the work done here the past year by the Young Men's Christian Association. It has so transformed the lives of our young men that they are a positive force for good instead of for evil. It has turned the faces of those boys who inevitably seek the small town high school from country homes toward the church instead of toward the poolroom. It has so individualized the lives of all it has touched as to make them responsible for the life about them. It is in my opinion the most important movement of the Christian efforts in this country." These county secretaries are pushing into these districts, into these villages, even on to these farms, and laying their hands upon these young men. They are pulling them away from the saloon and the pool-rooms; they are taking them from vice and are making not only Christians but Christian citizens of them. And in that movement lies one of the great forces for the saving of our country, not only religiously, but politically and socially. Back in the hearts of the young men of the West there is something that can be touched, a chord that can be struck, great moral purposes that can be roused, and a great religious movement that can be set on foot.

I should like to see established in the more important towns in these counties an association building. It cannot be built entirely by the county. Once more there comes to me those words: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," and somehow I think we have had in mind simply Africa and China and Japan and the islands of the sea. But "all the world" is anywhere. It is in New England, in the decadent town; it is in New York or in the wide West; and why should we not build our Christian club-houses and make them the center of these movements that are to reach out into all the land? Why should we not center here a great Christian impulse, a Christian movement, that shall gather these seven million of young men more and more into touch with Christ and the Christian church, so that from these towns shall not come back the report, "not one single young man in the churches"; "only two in the town of one thousand"; "only three in the town of one thousand two hundred."

I would make these association buildings the center of a movement that shall give the young men in these towns something to do. I would gather to them the young men them

selves and help them. I would send them out from these county buildings to do Christian work up and down the country. I would also make those buildings the center of a great deal of educational work, and perhaps introduce into them a great deal of work that primarily might not be called religious. The reason why so many of the young men in these country places are going wrong is because they have so little of interest to do. I would put into these buildings opportunities for industrial education so that their hands and brains may be trained, that they may feel they are securing something really practical.

The one thing that has come to me as I have been trying to reach the heart of this problem is the thought of the waste of power, physical power, intellectual power, moral power, spiritual power, in those young men in the country towns who are thronging the saloon, and throwing away their lives-young men, often with capacity for work, who can be used for the redemption of society, young men on the one hand so near to vice, and on the other to leadership. How can we save that waste? There is but one way. A purely intellectual movement will not do it. Something simply that creates a physical self-respect will not do it. It is the old story of the Christ and the cross; a religious impulse only that can do it.

Do you remember those words from the great English essayist, who always carried so much moral and religious power in the words he uttered? As I close I repeat them to you because he was speaking to the farmers of Northern England of this waste of life, of the necessity of serving and saving the young life of the country in England. He said: "Of all wastes, the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of human labor," and then he goes on, "If of a morning you go down into your dairy and you find that your youngest child has got down before you, and that he has poured out all the cream for the cat to lap up, you are sorry that the milk is wasted, and you scold your child. But if instead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with human life in them; and if instead of the cat to play with, the devil to play with, and you yourself the player; and if instead of leaving the golden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain you break it yourself into dust and pour out all the blood for the fiend to lap up, that is a waste and loss. But perhaps you say, 'to waste life is not to kill.' Nay, nay, is it not the little whistling bullets, our loved messengers from man to man, that have brought orders of sweet release e'er this, and we live at last together where we will be more welcome and more happy? But if you waste your life; if you stunt your powers; if you are less in God's world than God wants you to be, that is sevenfold, hundred fold, death."

THE INTERCOLLEGIATE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

LUTHER D. WISHARD

The year of the Golden Jubilee of the North American Young Men's Christian Associations is the year of the silver jubilee of the intercollegiate association movement. While another year will elapse before we shall celebrate our silver jubilee, inasmuch as the first public or intercollegiate meeting was held in June, 1877—indeed, it was held on the sixth day of June, 1877, the birthday of the London association-yet the meeting which prepared the way for the intercollegiate gathering was held in Princeton, December 10, 1876.

During that year Princeton college experienced the most extraordinary spiritual movement in its history. As a result of a series of meetings which were greatly aided, but were not started, by Mr. Moody, nearly one hundred men made a public confession of Jesus Christ. During these meetings much interest was expressed with reference to other colleges, and letters were written to them, telling of the work in progress in Princeton. Several visits were made to other colleges, and much prayer was offered for these institutions. In a perfectly natural way, therefore, some of the most striking features of the intercollegiate movement were utilized, namely, prayer, visitation and intercollegiate correspondence. When the Christian society in Princeton identified itself with the association movement and considered the possibility of uniting other colleges in an intercollegiate Christian movement, the college was prepared for the discussion. Intercollegiate movements, indeed, were the order of the day in oratory, in literary examinations, in athletics.

A very special incident had much to do with the intercollegiate movement, although it did not have all to do with it. Four men unexpectedly found themselves together in one of the college dormitories. One of those men was a widely known business man. He was in Princeton spending Sunday with his sons. In our conversation with him the idea was suggested that we draw the college together for conference as to practical methods in Christian work. The idea as outlined by him, in his sagacious, earnest, business-like way, took hold of the hearts of those college men.

An extensive correspondence was conducted during the next few months with two hundred colleges, and as a result twentyone colleges, in eleven states, embracing a membership in their Christian societies of perhaps not over one thousand or one thousand two hundred, through their delegates assembled at Louisville, Ky., inaugurated the intercollegiate movement. Two men present in that primary meeting of the intercollegiate

organization strikingly illustrated a warning given us by Mr. Dodge, at Princeton. One of the two talked louder and oftener on every question than any other member of the conference. He made propositions and outlined suggestions which if carried out would have revolutionized Christendom in a quarter of a century. Among other propositions was one that we

should secure at once one hundred thousand subscribers for the association paper, and he talked as though he would secure ten thousand subscribers himself. He kindled us with his enthusiasm, and then completely disappeared from history. We never heard of him again. When I visited the college from which he came there never had been a single bit of work organized through his instrumentality.

Another student present at Louisville was the youngest of all, a freshman that looked like a "prep." I do not remember that he talked at all, but I do remember how "Jim" Cowan, as we called him there, looked and acted. He is here to-night. I remember how his eyes kindled and how his face was flushed with an eager hope and a downright purpose, and how, without having made a single speech in that conference, excepting possibly to second somebody's motion, he went back to his state of Tennessee, and within three years brought it to the front of the intercollegiate movement and helped to bring fourteen colleges of the state into line with the Young Men's Christian Association.

I must allude to one other fact. I remember how, during the early years of the intercollegiate movement, when it was an experiment, Professor Patton, as he was known at that time, was interviewed by mail, and, although it took a good while to decipher the letter he wrote in response to a series of questions, it became apparent, before half of the letter had been interpreted into fair English, that his heart, as well as his head, was in this movement. He grasped its significance, bade it godspeed, and pledged his help in every way in promoting the movement. Then, too, he who for twenty years was one of Princeton's greatest presidents, our great President McCosh, during the early years of the movement stood by it. He corresponded with the president of every one of America's leading colleges, commending the movement and winning for it the confidence of many of our leading educators.

All that we claim in this silver jubilee year is the intercollegiate movement. A quiet work had been going on for years back by a quiet, earnest, devoted, prophetic man, Robert Weidensall, who saw before any one else saw, I think, the possibilities of this student movement, and whose article in the old Watchman kindled a fire in the heart of at least one man that never has died out, and never can. That article outlined the purpose, the magnitude, the opportunity presented, for a great movement among college men of North America. The move