languages from our own, and yet when we gather in this convention, like the gathering at the day of Pentecost, we hear in our own tongue and together we speak one language, and that the language of Canaan.

We especially welcome our brethren from the British Isles. We are of one race; we speak one language; the same blood courses through our veins.

We are very sorry that he who first organized this work, Sir George Williams, is unable to be with us. We thank him for the message he sends us, and still more the fact that he himself is represented by his son, Mr. Howard Williams. I greet him as the son of a worthy sire.

Brethren, in closing, I desire to leave this thought with you. I believe God has upheavals in His kingdom of grace as much as He has in His kingdom of nature, and that sometimes in gatherings like this He comes by the power of His divine Spirit and touches the hearts of men here and there, many of them young men, and lifts them up to a higher spiritual plane, to remain there, returning to their homes with a broader view of the world's needs and with a stronger determination to do what they can to extend the Master's kingdom.

We stand to-night in the open door of the twentieth century, and as we look out before us we see its history all unwritten, and we ask ourselves the question: "Who is to write the history of this nation in the new century?" The five million young men in our American cities and the seven million young men in our rural districts and country towns are to write this history.

With this thought in view, shall we not go back to our homes, dear brethren, determined, by the blessing of God, to consecrate more of our time, of our talent, of our common sense, and of our money to the grand work in which we are engaged? So shall we hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world shall indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

AN ADDRESS OF WELCOME BY REV. A. H. PLUMB, D. D., FOR THE CHURCHES OF BOSTON AND VICINITY

The great strength of an army can hardly be said to be in the new recruits, with all their enthusiasm and promise; nor in the war-worn veterans covered with deserved honors; but rather in those trained battalions of young men in whom energy is at its height. The reason why the Young Men's Christian Associations should be welcomed here are precisely those three reasons given by the Apostle John for a greeting he once gave: "I have written unto you young men," he said, "because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one." Strong men, Bible

guided men, successful men, who have overcome the wicked one in many a high engagement. Such men are welcome everywhere.

The variety and the scope of your successes. entitle you to grateful recognition by all friends of righteousness. Here are college presidents who tell us that the brightest minds rise to their highest thinking when they can cry with Kepler, "I think thy thoughts after thee, O God," and add, "How precious are thy thoughts unto me." Here are railroad presidents to assure us that travel is safer and income larger when railroad men run their lives by the divine schedule. Here are men high in commercial life whose words and lives declare that rapacity is never sagacity, that fraud is always folly, that this is God's world and not Satan's. Innumerable young men seem to think this world is Satan's, and therefore multitudes of them sell their souls to the devil for gold and never get gold, or if they do, it is still worse for them, for, as Dr. Storrs once said of the gains of the liquor traffic with the feebler races, “Every dollar of it will burn a man's soul like a bit of flaming asphalt from the fiery pavement of hell."

Where has not the Young Men's Christian Association gone? In what department of life, in what land is its voice not heard? It follows the flag, and what it does for those who fight under that flag, let these strong men attest who here represent the army and navy, heroes who have won imperishable honor for themselves and for their land. Look merely at the distinguished names on your program. Are such men welcome to Boston? Any city on earth is honored and blest by their coming. We pastors have been announcing these names to our congregations for weeks. Both we and they want to get just as much good as possible from your presence here.

It is vastly invigorating to our moral tone to have an importation here, even for a single week, of a host of stalwart and successful leaders in various departments of the world's great affairs, men whom all the world knows are men of undeviating integrity and of religious principle, steadfast and firm, men who never swerve from their orbits under the allurements of whatever great temptation.

What is most needed for young men is to exalt Christian ideals. Prof. Fisher asks, "What is the best argument to lead a young man to believe in Christ"? And he answers, "The spectacle of a man believing in Christ." This is the spectacle your association endeavored to furnish everywhere; the winning, the contagious example of strong men who so earnestly believe in Christ that they are active and earnest in leading others to believe in Christ. That is why the churches of Christ welcome you here.

It is true that you have a wide and varied work. You train the body, you inform the mind, you guide the social instincts,

you fit for civic duties, but all this is dominated and accomplished by keeping supreme the one great aim-a life in personal union with Christ. Hear the Saviour pray for His disciples, "That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they may be one in us." Mark the reason why He thus prays: "That the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." Man a sinner, Christ a Saviour-to bring them together is the great business now going on in the earth. For this supreme effort these associations were formed. When you began, I was a young shipping merchant on Buffalo wharves. We had there an excellent Young Men's Literary Association. But that was not enough. And I know all the history of that conflict there and here as to whether your work should be on a strictly Christian and squarely evangelical basis or not. That question was settled, and settled right. And now fifty years have gone and all around the world we see the Young Men's Christian Associations holding up the cross of Christ. By that sign you conquer, for Christ crucified is the power of God, and the wisdom of God unto salvation.

A RESPONSE TO THE ADDRESSES OF WELCOME BY WILLIAM E. DODGE, PRESIDENT OF THE CONVENTION

On behalf of all the associations of the United States and Canada, and especially on behalf of the delegates here assembled, I want to thank these representatives of this great and famous Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and these representatives of Boston, for their kind and generous welcome, and for the delightful hospitality which has been extended to us in this ancient city.

Massachusetts Bay has been the birthplace of great ideals and the mother of American progress from our earliest history. All through the romance and the hardships of colonial life, in the stress of the Revolution, in our forming as a nation, in the great crisis of our Civil War, and in the marvelous material development since, Boston and Massachusetts have always been in the forefront of everything that was good and helpful. Their influence has been felt over our whole country, and wherever their sons and daughters have gone they have carried with them a pure atmosphere of patriotic fervor and a love for everything that is good. It is fitting that we should come here for our Jubilee festival, and I hope that we shall go away with a touch of the old Massachusetts fervor.

From one point of view we are bound to say that we ought not to have had the Jubilee here. Our friends in Canada were entitled to the honor. But by a most gracious and kindly courtesy they have waived that privilege, and have come here in large numbers to testify their love for us and their love for the work in which we are engaged together. We cannot say

too much in honor of our friends from the Dominion. They have done splendid work along all lines, and those of us who live on this side of the border give them to-day a hearty Christian welcome and a warm grasp of the hand.

We have also the great privilege of having with us to-night many distinguished representatives of foreign associations. Lord Kinnaird is here, who has been identified for so many years with everything that is good in Great Britain; who has taken so largely the place of that grand old man, Lord Shaftesbury; and the boys of the Young Men's Christian Association here will not think any the less of him because he is the president of the British Football Association. We also welcome again and again the son of our dear and venerated friend and founder, Sir George Williams. From France we have that distinguished senator and late minister of finance, Mr. Siegfried, who has stood, in that beautiful country which has always been our friend, for everything that is good and true. There are also friends from Scandanavia, from Germany, from Russia-I cannot go over the whole imposing list to-night-but I hope that we as a convention will have an opportunity of hearing from all these gentlemen who will tell us something of the work in their native lands.

There is something delightful to all of us in the feeling that in this religious work there are no national lines; we are all one in Christ, and the good time is coming when this world will be united as one in Him. A hundred years ago any one would have been thought insane who said that in Germany, made up of so many jarring, discordant states, and in Italy, composed of principalities and provinces that had been at bitter war with each other for centuries, the people would ever come together as they have now done, or would ever acknowledge in the united provinces a common fatherland. Some of you young men may live to see the time when the blessed influence and Spirit of Christ, so peaceful and so helpful, will bring all the nations together in hearty cooperation and accord.

The last century was the most wonderful one the world has ever seen; more intense progress, more wonderful movement, than in any other of the twenty centuries before. This is not the time to speak of all that wonderful progress, but among the blessed things of the last fifty years of that century was the discovery of the real value of young men, and what could be done to mold their lives, and to bring them to higher ideals, to loftier purposes, and to greater fruitfulness and usefulness. In old times the idea was that a boy should be let alone after he left school. It was hoped that he would turn out well; it seemed certain that some would be wrecked and go down; it was expected that some would be scarred and go through life maimed by the excesses and turmoil of youth; and it was hoped that a few would come out unscathed by the fire and become

helpful citizens. We have learned better things, brethren, and this Young Men's Christian Association, begun humbly and modestly, has moved on until everywhere it is understood that there are no persons in the world so easily touched and interested as young men. With all their assurance, self-confidence, and shyness, if you come to them as brother to brother, young man to young man, you can reach and help them. The original idea of the association in this country was that the young fellows coming to the cities lonely, with most uncomfortable lodgings, with small pay, and with nothing to delight or comfort them, should be reached by their brothers who lived in these cities; that a helping, friendly hand should be held out to them, and that they should be brought together in relations so delightful, homelike and social, that they could be held under kindly influence until their city habits were formed. I wonder if any of you Boston people, who are so fond of social economy, have ever studied out the difference between a young fellow who goes to the bad, who is a blot upon the community, a running sore of evil, a charge upon the police court and upon the prisons-the difference between a man of that kind and one who has the spirit of Christ and the spirit of true, cheery manhood in him, and who steps into his place to take the part of a citizen as he should? When all the young men of Boston, of New York, and of the other great cities of the world, understand their privileges and their civic duties, and what it means to be a citizen of the republic of Christ, there will be very little need of prisons, and police courts, and other similar restraints.

I cannot here go into that early history of the associations with which I was so familiar. I merely want you who are living in the better and more golden days of the association, to remember that we had pretty hard times in those early days. There was great contention among even good men as to whether such an association would be useful or not. The clergymen were fearful lest it might draw away young men from the churches, and men wanted to wait until they found whether it was going to be a success or not. But through all this the association fought its way. The American idea was not merely to touch the heart of a man and lead him to Christ, but it was to fill the place of a Christian home, to help him in his social life, and to promote his physical and intellectual growth. And our association buildings have been so arranged that in some part of them there would be something to meet these varied needs of every young man. Oh, how I wish that tonight we had with us in body, as I know we have in spirit, some of those dear fellows who wrought out this work so splendidly. We all remember Robert McBurney, who was to us in America what Mr. Williams has been in England-our father, our brother and our friend. What molding force he had! What