In the press and stir of life we sometimes forget that the highest emotions of which we are capable are those of joy, praise, and prayer.  Joy is a heavenward uplift of life—­deep happiness of spirit.  Praise is an appreciation of the greatness and mercy of the Infinite.  Worship is the outpouring of the whole nature, an ascription of blessing, glory, honor, and power and majesty to God.  It flows from the religious imagination, and is the supreme offering of the intellectual as well as of the emotional life.

The Church is a body ministrant:  it has received the accolade of spiritual service.  It stands among the world’s forces, as one of giving, not of gain.  It holds within its scope both a teaching and a training power.  It is the school of the soul, the illuminator of the meaning and discipline of life.  Abelard is said to have attracted thirty thousand students to Paris by his teaching.  But the Church to-day calls into its assemblies fully one-third of the millions of the world.  They are held by its tenets, guided by its ideals, thrilled by its hopes, and set to its works of charity and mercy.  The highest philanthropy is but a scientific renewal and adaptation of work which has had its start, primarily, in the Christian Church.  Wealth is its vicegerent, and from the adherents to the Church fall largely the contributions to great philanthropic causes.

Take the work of Missions alone:  Has there ever before been a body which attempted to bring the whole world into its fellowship, to make known everywhere its ideals, and to share with all living a spiritual inheritance?  “The Evangelization of the World by this Generation” is one of the most sublime thoughts which has come to the race.

4.  There is a large amount of ability in the world which the Church needs, but which has not yet been thoroughly enlisted in church service.  Take business energy, executive ability.  It is a common saying, that business men are not interested in the Church, and do not work well in it.  Why?  Because there is not yet in the Church enough of the active and economic spirit to make a business man feel at home in it, or approve of its ways of work.

This weak spot in the Church, which business men mock at, or fret at, exactly reveals the work that is waiting for business men to do.  Business to-day takes intellectual grasp and insight—­promptness, energy, enterprise, and common-sense.  These qualities are needed at once in the conduct of the Church.

A second class greatly needed by the Church is the university-bred.  Many college graduates are church-members—­some are even active workers.  But until lately the universities as a whole have stood rather indifferently apart from the Church.  They have somewhat indulgently regarded it as one more historic institution for preserving myth and legend.  To them the Christ-life has meant little more than the Beowa-myth, the Arthur-saga, the Nibelungen cycle, the Homeric stories, the Thor-and-Odin tales!  Druids, fire-worshippers, moon-dancers, and Christian communicants have been comparatively studied, with a view to understanding the race-progress in rite and religious form.