faith in a living and present Christ. Unlike the early church it is unable to confine the expressions of that faith to its immediate community, but finds outlet and effectiveness in innumerable organizations distinct from its own. Among its members are many types of mind, radical and conservative, and they express their faith in different ways. In the socialist local some find an outlet as others find it in boys' clubs. There are those for whom Socialism is too conservative and who are found dreaming the Syndicalist dream and pleading for liberty of speech for the I.W.W. The constructive policy of the Women's Trade Union movement appeals to one, while the ameliorative work of the Girls' Friendly Society commands the loyalty of another.

There are those who believe in woman suffrage and those who oppose the giving of votes to women. Playgrounds and politics, business and family, charity and social justice, individual relief and social revolution, parish-house activities and community effort are 'outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace' of a manysided modern Church. What it calls 'social service' is a new expression of religious life, an attempt to relate many different types of minds to the larger community of city, nation, and world. It believes in a better world and sets out, inspired by its faith in a present Christ, efficient though unseen, to produce it, by evolution or by revolution.

Professor Harnack says that historical Protestantism was the restoration of the Gospel which Catholicism had lost among alien accretions, such as holy water, the Pope on his throne, St. Anne. The Church of the Reformation under the leading of the Spirit restored as much of the Gospel as it could appreciate in the light of the

needs and the knowledge which it had. In the light of our needs and new knowledge of the gospels, Protestants and Modernist Catholics are restoring a part of the Gospel which was hidden from our fathers. A little phrase, long overlooked in scripture, stands forth with new meaning like a window on which the setting sun shines. It is 'The Gospel of the Kingdom.' What is the good news? The end of the world, in the first century; the creatorhood of God, in the Nicene age; the Church, in medieval times; salvation by faith only, in the sixteenth century; forgiveness of sins, in recent times. Each of these in its time and place has been the Gospel.

Our modern age is about to give a new answer. The Kingdom of God is that social order which it is the will of God to have prevail upon the earth. It is a society of individual wills, knit into one corporate will, which resembles more and more the Will of the Father. It is an organization of humanity which is according to the plan of the Creator. The scene of its triumph is not the clouds but this earth. "Thy Kingdom come on earth.' As the ideal social order, it is always here in part and yet is always coming. In so far as the ideal has been partially realized, in the family and in the political democracy, the kingdom is here; in so far as it has yet to be worked out, in industrial life and elsewhere, it is still to come. John the Baptist announced that the Kingdom of God was imminent. Jesus declared that it was here among men, growing up as a seed, at work in society like leaven, destined in time to fill the whole earth.

When the church universal awakes from its mediæval and sixteenth-century dreams to the realization of the Gospel of the Kingdom, and consecrates itself to preaching it, there will be such a Day of the Lord as super

naturalists never expected nor hath it entered into the heads of Catholics and Protestants to conceive. Men and women are groping for it, hungry and thirsty for something, they know not just what; expecting the Church to give it and cursing the Church because it disappoints them; turning to panaceas which promise more abundant life and yet leave them unfed. Verily Christ is again moved to compassion because of the multitude who are as sheep without a shepherd; and because those who in his name claim to be pastors are unable to discern the signs of the times.

What the Church needs to-day is a restoration of the Gospel of the King

dom, with the same revolutionary vigor and life with which the Protestant Reformation witnessed the rediscovery of the Gospel of the individual soul. It is in the will and purpose of God, as manifested in the teaching and the life of Jesus, that humanity is to find the abundant life. In the midst of life, speaking like thunder in the discontent of the age, illuminating like the sun in the science and scholarship of to-day, going before and behind, as a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, is God. To make his voice articulate and his way plain for every man and woman, is the high calling and the supreme mission of the Church.

THE young man who greeted me cheerfully in the lobby of the hotel in Warburton, my native town, and who handed me a card setting forth the hours of service at St. John's Church, evidently assumed that I was a commercial traveler. I was in no wise offended by his mistake, as I sincerely admire the heralds of prosperity and sit with them at meat whenever possible. I am a neurologist by profession, but write occasionally, and was engaged just then in gathering material for a magazine article on occupational diseases. A friend in the Department of Labor had suggested Warburton as a likely hunting ground, as children employed there in a match-factory were constantly being poisoned, and a paint

go there now,' he answered, politely ignoring my uncalled-for irony. 'Men who never went to church before: the men who do things in Warburton. Our minister's the best preacher in the diocese. His subject this morning is "The Prodigal Son.""

I felt guiltily that the topic might have been chosen providentially to mark my return; and it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to see Warburton in its best bib and tucker. However, having planned to spend the morning in the slum which the town had acquired with its prosperity, — and the slum of the small city has little to learn from Whitechapel, I hardened my heart against the young solicitor, in spite of his unobtrusive and courteous manner of extending the invitation.

'You represent a saint's church,' I remarked, glancing at the card. 'I travel a good deal and I have n't found a church specially designed for sinners like me. I'm uncomfortable among the saints. I'm not quarreling with your church or its name, but I've long had a feeling that our church nomenclature needs revision. Still, that's a personal matter. You've done your duty by me; and I'd be glad to come if I had n't another engagement.'

The pages of a Chicago morning newspaper that lay across my knees probably persuaded him that I was lying. However, after a moment's hesitation he sat down beside me on the long leathern bench.

absorbed my attention that I had passed it with only a glance. It came back to me indistinctly that it was a white wooden structure, and that boards were nailed across its pillared portico as though to shut out the public while repairs were making.

'Saints excluded, sinners only need apply?'

He nodded, and looked at me queerly, as though, now that I had broached the matter, he meditated telling me more. It was ten o'clock and half a dozen church bells clanged importunately as a background for Adeste Fideles from St. John's chimes.

""The Church for Honest Sinners" might suit you, only it's closedclosed for good, I guess,' he remarked, again scrutinizing me closely.

He played nervously with a pack of cards like the one with which he had introduced himself. Other men, quite as indubitably transients as I, were lounging down from breakfast, hugging their newspapers, or seeking the barber-shop with large leisure-enforcing cigars clenched in their teeth. Something in my attitude toward the church for which he was seeking worshipers seemed to arrest him. He was a handsome, clear-eyed, wholesomelooking young fellow, whose life had doubtless been well sheltered from evil; there was something refreshingly naïve about him. I liked his straightforward way of appealing to strangers; a bank-teller, perhaps, or maybe a clerk in the office of one of the manufacturing companies whose indifference to the welfare of their laborers I had come to investigate. Not the most grateful of tasks, this of passing church advertisements about in hotel lobbies on Sunday mornings. It requires courage, true manliness. My heart warmed to him as I saw a number of men eyeing us from the cigarstand, evidently amused that the

'Well,' he smiled, 'the idea of sin is n't exactly popular, is it? And besides everybody is n't wicked; we can't assume that; there are plenty of good people. There's good in all men,' he added, as though quoting.

'I can't quarrel with that. But how about this Church for Honest Sinners? Tell me the story.'

'Well, it's a queer sort of story, and as you're a stranger and I'm not likely to meet you again, I'll tell you all I know. It was built by a woman.' He crossed his legs and looked at the clock. 'She was rich as riches go in a town like this. And she was different from other people. She was left a widow with about a hundred thousand dollars, and she set apart half of it to use in helping other people. She would n't do it through societies or churches; she did it all herself. She was n't very religious, not the way we use the word, not the usual sort of religious woman that works on guilds and gets up oyster suppers. She was n't above asking the factory hands to her house now and then, and was always helping the under dog. She was splendid,

the finest woman that ever lived; but of course people thought her queer.' 'Such people are generally considered eccentric,' I commented.

"The business men disliked her because they said she was spoiling the poor people and putting bad notions into their heads.'

'I dare say they did! I can see that a woman like that would be criticized.'

"Then when they tore down old St. John's and began building the new church, she said she'd build a church after her own ideas. She spent twentyfive thousand dollars building that church you noticed in Water Street and called it the Church for Honest Sinners. She meant to put a minister in who had some of her ideas about religion, but right there came her first blow. As her church was n't tied up to any of the denominations she could n't find a man willing to take the job; but I suppose the real trouble was that nobody wanted to mix up with a scheme like that; it was too radical - did n't seem exactly respectable. It's easy, I suppose, when there's a big whooping crowd-Billy Sunday and that sort of thing — and the air is full of emotionalism, to get people to the mourners' bench to confess that they 're miserable sinners. But you can see for yourself that it takes nerve to walk into the door of a church that 's for sinners only seems sort o' foolish!

'I should n't be telling you about this if I hadn't seen that you had the same idea the builder of that church had: that there's too much of the saint business and general smugness about our churches, and that one that frankly set out to welcome sinners would play, so to speak, to capacity. You might think that all the Cains, Judases, and Magdalens would feel that here at last was a door of Christian hope flung open for them. But it won't work that way-at least it did n't in this case. I suppose there are people in this town right now, all dressed up to go to church, who've broken all the ten commandments without feel

ing they were sinners; and of course the churches can't go after sin the way they used to, with hell and brimstone; the people won't have it. You 've been thinking that a church set apart for sinners would appeal to people who've done wrong and are sorry about it, but it does n't; and that's why that church on Water Street's boarded up, not for repairs as you imagined, but because only one person has ever crossed the threshold. It was the idea of the woman who built it that the door should stand open all the time, night and day; and the minister, if she could have found one to take the job, would have been on the lookout to help the people who went there.'

have her ideas- and without ever knowing her! She lived on the corner below the church, where she could watch the door. She watched it for about two years, day and night, without ever seeing a soul go in, and people thought that she'd lost her mind. And then, one Sunday morning when the whole town whole town all her old friends and neighbors -were bound for church, she came out of her house alone and walked straight down to that church for sinners she had built, and in at the door.

-

'You see,' he said, rising quickly, as though recalling his obligations to St. John's Men's League, 'she was the finest woman in town, the best and noblest woman that ever lived! They found her at noon lying dead in the church. The failure of her plan broke her heart; and that made it pretty hard hard for her family everybody.'

He was fingering his cards nervously; and I did not question the sincerity of the emotion his face betrayed.

'It is possible,' I suggested, 'that she had grown morbid over some sin of her own, and had been hoping that others would avail themselves of the hospitality of a church that was frankly open to sinners. It might have made it easier for her.'

He smiled with his childlike innocence and faith.

'Not only not possible,' he caught me up, with quick dignity; 'but incredible! She was my mother.'