are our shame and reproach; that our society is a society of broken homes and childless women; that the weak are crying for succour, and the sinner dying for want of pardon.

The eleventh lecture had for its subject "The Commercialized Church in the Commercialized State." The week before the composition and delivery of this lecture, the Honourable James G. Cutler, then mayor of the city of Rochester, addressed the Protestant clergy of the city. In the course of that address he told us that city was subject to an extra political power; this power was embodied in a system known as the "boss system," which system was maintained in the interests of the commercial element of the community. This commercialism dominated politics, and the reason of his telling this secret to the clergy was that he desired their assistance in the effort he was making to free the political government from this commercial domination.

But alas, the poor clergy were under the hand of this same sinister influence. The Church was even more commercialized than the State. The clergy were the hired men of the churches and the Protestant churches were in the grip of commercialism; they were supported by the commercial classes. The merchants were the chief officers of the churches, and woe betide that clergyman who dared to lift his voice against the system that prevailed in the world of business. A leading merchant told me that Jesus, if He were alive to-day, would teach the competitive system. If that were so, then the Jesus of to-day would have to contradict every word that the Jesus of history had spoken, for if the Jesus of history taught anything, it was the co-operative system as against the competitive.

This sermon lecture on "The Commercialized Church

in the Commercialized State" gave great offence to the commercial classes. My own people were not disturbed by it because I had taught them these fundamental principles of the Christian religion, which they had gladly received and which they practised so far as the present state of the world permitted.

CHAPTER XLIV

A WORD THAT WENT ROUND THE WORLD

T

HE evening of the eighteenth of February, 1905, was eventful in my own history and important to

the history of the world. On that evening I finished the twelfth in my series of lectures on religion and politics; the title of that lecture was "The Present State of the Churches." In his address to us, the mayor of Rochester had said that we, the clergy, could have any city government that we wished to have. In saying this, I presume the mayor looked upon the clergy as the custodians of the spiritual and moral interests of the community, and as these interests ought to be paramount, the clergy, as a matter of course, should control the lower political and commercial interests. There was a time when the clergy did this. Gregory the Great and Innocent III controlled the governments of Europe in the interests of the people of Europe; the Puritan clergy of New England dominated the political and mercantile elements in the interests of righteousness.

But alas, the clergy of the present day were not permitted to have any part or lot in the general affairs of mankind; they were expected to confine themselves strictly to religious matters, and the term "religion" was supposed to have reference only to the next world. It was the business of the clergy to preach salvation-salvation not from the ills afflicting mankind in this miserable world of ours, but a salvation from the wrath of God which was to be visited upon sinners in the fires of a future hell. The

clergy were debarred from the discussion of things of vital interest to the man of the street and the woman of the home. Not so long ago the clergy had been in control of the education of the people; they had been the presidents of colleges, the principals of academies, and largely the teaching-force of these institutions, but with the establishment of the public school system the divisions of Christendom had made it necessary to exclude the clergy from the teaching-office of this system. The public schools were not only non-sectarian so far as Christianity was concerned, they were open to every sect of Christians and to Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics. The colleges and private institutions had soon to follow the pattern of the public school and the clergy were no longer sought for as presidents and principals of educational institutions. This revolution in the educational policy of the country was disastrous to clerical influence. The reason for this was that the Church was no longer the moulding power of the community.

In seeking the cause for this downfall of the Church, I found it in the fact that the Church was no longer in harmony with its environment. To-day the world was democratic; the Church was imperial and aristocratic. The world was scientific; the Church was dogmatic. The world based its knowledge on observation and experiment; the Church rested upon what it called a "divine revelation" as interpreted by its own officers. The world was becoming increasingly socialistic, while the Church was based in privilege; the clergy were a privileged body in the Church. The bishops were a privileged class ruling the lower clergy. The Pope possessed the highest privilege of all: he was God on earth.

When I sat down to write out my sermon lecture on this subject, "The Present State of the Churches," I had no notion of how I should express my thought. I followed

my usual habit on the Saturday morning of the eighteenth of February, 1905: I went to my study soon after breakfast and broke into the subject, writing the introduction. I then went about my business, and came back to my study after supper and sat down at my desk and completed my work. As I remember, I did not take my pen from my paper except to dip it in the ink, until the last word was written. This intellectual edifice, which I thus built up, was already in my mind before I gave it outward existence. When it was completed, my mind was made known to myself and to the world. On finishing the task, I left my sheets in disorder on my desk and went home and to bed, sleeping soundly till I was wakened by the bell for the morning communion. I conducted the morning prayer, preached my sermon, celebrated what we Catholics called the High Mass, had my dinner, rested for an hour, then went back to my study, gathered my sheets together and arranged them for the evening reading. I did not so much as look them over. When I went up into the pulpit, my objective mind was as ignorant of the contents of that sermon lecture as anyone in my audience; it was the expression of my subjective mind. My objective mind listened to it with great interest, but was not sufficiently alert to take in the full import of what I was saying. I was declaring that the weakness of the Church lay in the fact that it was living in a past that had gone for ever and was oblivious of the present; that it was dogmatic in a scientific world, privileged in a socialistic world, and imperialistic in a democratic world. I challenged the Church to become scientific, democratic and socialistic. In dealing with the scientific element, I made use of the following words:

"In the light of scientific research, the Founder of Christianity, Jesus the son of Joseph, no longer stands apart from the common destiny of man in life and death, but He is in all things physical like as we are, born as we