seeks to enlist all its members in the service of "the good cause of the world." This is service and the highest kind of service.
The reason why the church is so successful in instilling the spirit of service is not far to seek. It demands loyalty, not to an abstract idea or to a vague cause, but to a Person. Now the child (and not only the child) naturally tends to personify its ideals. While an ideal in the abstract has no meaning for it, a person excites its interest, claims its respect, and influences its actions. Hence the child is readily attracted to such an ideal figure as Jesus, and willingly takes up an attitude of personal loyalty to him. Jesus appeals to the child as a real person, whose ideal character is framed in a setting of common incidents and familiar situations. This person, the child is taught, claims from it loyal service, which need not be given in any special calling, but may be rendered in performing the duties of any worthy occupation. For the world is the scene of a great struggle between the forces of evil and the powers of good; and on this field no post is secular.
In the past, the church has deserved well of the world for the loyal service it has animated; and to-day more than ever before we need to learn the lesson it has to teach. Such ideals as those of "humanitarianism" or "social service," noble as they are, have conspicuously failed, when divorced from religion, to elicit any considerable wealth of loyal service. The church, with all its weaknesses and faults, still enjoys a unique power, and sustains a unique responsibility as the institution which, above
