regations. It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that
she unfolded. Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in
her closing words: "But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the
other church in our town ain't done no better!"

The Church is our oldest and best organization. It has enough energy,
enough driving force, to better conditions for all if it could be
properly applied; but being an exceedingly respectable institution it
has been rather shy of changes, and so has found it hard to adapt
itself to new conditions. It has clung to shadows after the substance
has departed; and even holds to the old phraseology which belongs to a
day long dead. Stately and beautiful and meaningful phrases they were,
too, in their day, but now their fires are dead, their lights are out,
their "punch" has departed. They are as pale and sickly as the red
lanterns set to guard the spots of danger on the street at night and
carelessly left burning all the next day.

Every decade sees the people's problems change, but the Church goes on
with Balaam and Balak, with King Ahasuerus, and the two she-bears that
came out of the woods. I shudder when I think of how much time has
been spent in showing how Canaan was divided, and how little time is
spent on showing how the Dominion of Canada should be divided; of how
much time has been given to the man born blind, and how little to a
consideration of the causes and prevention of that blindness; of the
time spent on our Lord's miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and
how little time is spent on trying to find out his plans for feeding
the hungry ones of to-day, who, we are bold to believe, are just as
precious in his sight.

The human way is to shelve responsibility. The disciples came to
Christ when the afternoon began to grow into evening, and said, "These
people haven't anything to eat, send them away!" This is the human
attitude toward responsibility; that is why many a beggar gets a
quarter--and is told to "beat it"! In this manner are we able to
side-step responsibility. To-day's problems are apt to lead to
difficulties; it is safer to discuss problems of long ago than of the
present; for the present ones concern real people, and they may not
like it. Hush! Don't offend Deacon Bones; stick to Balaam--he's dead.

In some respects the Church resembles a coal furnace that has been
burning quite a while without being cleaned out. There form in the
bottom certain hard sub