may be relatively unknown to many in the community, he has opportunity to enlighten his own congregation upon the way of life not less often than once a week. Yet the ideas of church members concerning the significance of their membership, like the ideas of the general populace concerning the Christian religion, are partly vague and partly miscellaneous and unco-ordinated. That I am a church member means that I have been converted; that I believe the Christian doctrines; that I go to church; that I partake of the bread and grape juice of the communion; that I abstain from killing, stealing, lying, liquor, and fornication; that I am benevolent; that I pray, and use the other means of grace; that I support church enterprises with my money and my labor-is not this a fair inventory of current ideas as far as they are at all definite?

That these standards are not insignificant goes without saying. It is no slight thing to have in every community an organization and a voice that constantly speak for so much that is good. But we are not at all concerned at this moment with the question whether the church is worth while. Of course it is. Our sole concern is to know what ministers think about the function of the church, and to evaluate what we find. In the churches we behold a vast number of men; men who have responded to what they regard as the call of God; men to whom this means pursuing good and not evil. Here is potential spiritual energy so vast that if it were directed toward a definite objective it would be irresistible. Here are enormous investments of money, and even these represent but a fraction of what church members could give to any cause that was dearer to them than life. If church membership meant that there is such a cause, imagination can hardly picture the possible results. It is clear, however, that the ministry has not succeeded in impressing upon the laity that church membership has any such meaning as this. The natural inference is that the ministry itself does

not think in such terms. We must assume, of course, that our leaders might make the attempt to impress an ideal upon their followers, and yet fail. Certainly some ministers, in the aggregate a considerable number, have seen a vision, and have endeavored to communicate it. They have found in the gospel such big, inclusive conceptions, a revelation of such overwhelming needs, an experience of power so adequate for these needs, such a foretaste of a regenerated world, that they have said to their brethren, "Come, let us mass all our forces upon these great world-objectives." But the response from their brethren in the ministry has been so slight that there is not the least ground for supposing that the situation in the laity is due to unresponsiveness toward clerical leadership. No; the clerical profession as a whole has not espoused any such large and aggressive cause as vital to the meaning of church membership.'

But perhaps we ought not to seek an index of the ministry in the everyday, commonplace life of the churches. One might plausibly argue that, just as we did not perceive the heroic qualities of the holder of a Carnegie medal until he had an opportunity to risk his life to save that of a drowning person, so the religious vitality of the ministerial profession will fully demonstrate itself only in times of unusual moral stress and danger. Well, we have had opportunity to see what clergymen do in spiritual emergencies as well as in the common day. Was there ever a greater spiritual emergency, in fact, than that which the Great War precipitated? Here,

'The criticisms thus far made do not apply equally to the Protestant and the Catholic clergy. Every intelligent Catholic has definite and correct ideas as to what his priest stands for, and of the meaning of membership in the Catholic church. This gives the advantage of a unified and determined front, indeed, but the ulterior problem here concerns the ends prescribed by the hierarchy to the faithful. To save one's own soul by obeying an autocratic spiritual authority, and to contribute to the final and complete triumph of this autocracy-this conception of spiritual life, duty, and destiny makes the problem of the priest too simple. He can fulfil his essential functions by performing certain prescribed operations in his strictly official capacity (ex opere operato), and teaching certain doctrines and duties already strictly formulated. The problem of the Protestant minister goes many fathoms deeper than this.

surely, were issues sufficient to stimulate to the utmost whatever there was of conscience in men. Here were moral confusions to be cleared up; here were temptations as vast as empires to be met; here, if ever, the difference between the Kingdom of God and every other aim in life needed to be brought to the fore in men's thinking concerning the future of society. If ever in the history of man a "Thus saith the Lord" was needed, it was needed then. Yet the ministry in general had nothing distinctive to offer. Here and there a little group Quakers for instance-bore testimony by word and deed to something specific that they thought they had received from God. A few individuals paused to ask whither the spirit of Jesus would lead us in the world welter, and a few endeavored to weigh in Christian scales the principles upon which our contemporary society is so bunglingly organized. A few gestures of friendship were directed by ecclesiastical groups toward members of Christian communions in enemy countries. But the masses of the clergy took their cues concerning the great issues of the time from the same prompters to whom the worldlings who control our newspapers turned for guidance.

It is only fair to say that the clergy employed their faith in God and a future life so as to bring comfort to the suffering and the bereaved, and that many ministers, working among our soldiers and sailors, brought to multitudes of individuals strength to endure temptation and hardship. We do not undervalue such services if we point out that, on the other hand, the attitudes taken by the generality of ministers toward the major moral problems-problems that concern the meaning and ends of our organized life-were little if at all affected by religion. In all good works of mercy and help they labored as equals with those not of the faith. In speech and in print they supported, on the whole, just what nonChristians supported. It is not evident that their position on the great issues differed from that of plain secularistsapparently their religion had no contribution at this point.

Of course the ministers prayed, but into their prayers they poured the very desires that secularists and they had in common. Of course they searched the Scriptures, and there, to be sure, they found texts that fitted the spirit of the times! Can anyone show a plausible reason for believing that if the clergy as a whole, adopting an "interim ethics," had taken a vacation from their pulpits for the duration of the war, the mind of the church, as far as the main issues of the hour are concerned, would have been appreciably affected? Would not the newspapers have taken care of the consciences of church members as well as their spiritual shepherds did? I am amazed at myself for asking this question; all my training prompts me to reject the implications of it. But the evidence must decide, and the evidence does not show that our tragic moral emergency evoked from the clergy, except in a few instances, any guidance or inspiration that had a specifically Christian source or character. The clergy did count, and that splendidly, but it was not their religion that counted.

A similar lack of religious distinction meets us when we ask what attitudes the clergy take toward several ethical problems of our domestic policies and conduct. For example, what have our spiritual guides found in the Christian religion that bears upon the proper treatment of conscientious objectors? Only a bare handful of ministers seem to see that freedom of conscience and humane treatment of prisoners are religious issues at all! No one will claim that the course that events have taken has been influenced by our religion, which has remained, in the persons of its official representatives, acquiescent and aloof. I forget! One minister did propose that conscientious objectors should be deprived of the right to vote, and another wrote with a sneer of their sufferings. Perhaps, after all, the ministry had more influence than I have just now attributed to it. I am far from intending to approve or condemn, at present, the conduct of our government in

this matter; the whole point is that the clergy as a whole showed no positive sign that the matter interested them as Christians. Unless we assume that they are ignorant that the relation of human government to the conscience of the citizen is counted a great point in religious history and in the conception of modern civilization, we must conclude that the explanation of their attitude is to be sought in the realm of spiritual sensitiveness.

No Protestant who is informed on the history of his faith will deny that freedom of speech and of assemblage is a matter in which religion is deeply concerned. What, then, is the attitude of the clergy toward the suppression of freedom of speech and of assemblage in our country at the present moment? Since this suppression is effected not in spite of government, but by using the police power itself, we have before us all the elements of an issue which in other days provoked appeals to the will of God. But times have changed. The old problem is here, but those who speak for God are, with a few notable exceptions, silent. The events that are occurring under our eyes strike no religious chord, and church members are receiving their guidance in this tremendous issue almost exclusively from extra-ecclesiastical sources.'

The relation of the clergy to the ethical issues involved in our economic and industrial life is distinctly better. With some approach to unanimity they opposed the liquor traffic, and with complete unanimity they favor a rest day for workers, generally on humanitarian and not merely ecclesiastical grounds. Further, they have taken high ground, in the social creed of the churches and elsewhere, upon child labor, the labor of women, and other industrial problems. The interchurch investigation of labor conditions in the steel

In respect to issues such as these the failure of the Catholic clergy is more profound than that of the Protestant. For, (1) no one but the pope may assume prophetic functions in the church, and (2) the pope is so hedged about by traditions that must not be contradicted that even he becomes little more than a warder of the status quo. The inability of the head of the church to cope with the problem of the historical criticism of the Scriptures is typical.