ation meant to put its shoulders under
the world and lift it, so that other men may feel that they have
companions in bearing the weight and heat of the day; that other men may
know that there are those who care for them, who would go into places of
difficulty and danger to rescue them, who regard themselves as their
brother's keeper.

And, then, I am glad that it is an association. Every word of its title
means an element of strength. Young men are strong. Christian young men
are the strongest kind of young men, and when they associate themselves
together they have the incomparable strength of organization. The Young
Men's Christian Association once excited, perhaps it is not too much to
say, the hostility of the organized churches of the Christian world,
because the movement looked as if it were so non-sectarian, as if it
were so outside the ecclesiastical field, that perhaps it was an effort
to draw young men away from the churches and to substitute this
organization for the great bodies of Christian people who joined
themselves in the Christian denominations. But after a while it appeared
that it was a great instrumentality that belonged to all the churches;
that it was a common instrument for sending the light of Christianity
out into the world in its most practical form, drawing young men who
were strangers into places where they could have companionship that
stimulated them and suggestions that kept them straight and occupations
that amused them without vicious practice; and then, by surrounding
themselves with an atmosphere of purity and of simplicity of life, catch
something of a glimpse of the great ideal which Christ lifted when He
was elevated upon the cross.

I remember hearing a very wise man say once, a man grown old in the
service of a great church, that he had never taught his son religion
dogmatically at any time; that he and the boy's mother had agreed that
if the atmosphere of that home did not make a Christian of the boy,
nothing that they could say would make a Christian of him. They knew
that Christianity was catching, and if they did not have it, it would
not be communicated. If they did have it, it would penetrate while the
boy slept, almost; while he was unconscious of the sweet influences that
were about him, while he reckoned nothing of instruction, but merely
breathed into his lungs the wholesome air of a Christian home. That is
the principle of the Young Men's Christian Association--to mak