to the harmful
devices of the city.

But with the exception of a few boys' clubs and scout patrols, for whose
direction there is always a shameful shortage of willing and able lay
leadership, the church has not as yet grasped the problem; and this
remains true when one grants further the value of organized boys'
classes in the Sunday school and of the "socials" and parties of young
people's societies. To be sure, the Protestant church, expressing itself
through the Young Men's Christian Association, has laid hold of the more
respectable edge of the problem. But with few exceptions this work is
not as yet missionary, militant, or diffused to the communities of
greatest need. A few experiments are now being made, but probably the
Y.M.C.A., more than the individual church, is under the necessity of
treating the underlying economic evils with a very safe degree of
caution; and in both there is the ever-recurrent need of an unsparing
analysis of motive for the purpose of ascertaining which, after all, is
paramount--human welfare or institutional glory.

The tendency ever is to cultivate profitable and self-supporting fields
and sound business policies. But the case of thousands upon thousands of
boys living in localities that are socially impoverished, unfortunate,
and debasing constitutes a call to the missionary spirit and method. If
the impulse which is so ready and generous in the exportation of
religion and so wise in adaptation to the interests and abilities of the
foreign group could but lay hold of our most difficult communities with
like devotion and with scientific care there would be developed in due
time advanced and adequate methods, which in turn would take their
rightful place as a part of civic or educational administration.

As is illustrated in both education and philanthropy, the function of
the church in social development has been of this order, and the mistake
of short-sighted religious leaders has been to desert these children
when once they have found an abode within the civil structure. The
pastoral spirit of the new era claims again the entire parish, however
organized, and guards its children still. The pioneer is needed at home
just as he is needed abroad, and the pioneering agency must have the
same zeal and freedom in order to mark out the way of salvation for
hordes of wild city boys who are the menacing product of blind economic
haste.

[Illustration: WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH ME?]

The chur