“Things are in the saddle
    And ride mankind.”

In recent years the cry has been rising for a simpler life.  It is a voice in the wilderness; in the din and clatter of our complex civilization it seems faint and far off, but it is making itself heard; it begins to be evident to all thoughtful people that we must somehow manage to get away from these entanglements of sense and live a freer life.  In these artificialities and extravagances the soul is enfeebled and belittled, and the national vigor is lost.  If we want to save our nation from decay we must learn to live a simpler life.  And this change will not be wrought out by evolutionary processes; it means revolution rather; not by violence, we may trust, but certainly by choice, by effort, by struggle and resistance we shall turn back these tides of materialism, and lead the current of our national life into safer channels.

We are not going to strip our lives bare of beauty, or to consign ourselves to the meagreness of the anchoretic regimen; we shall have beautiful homes and abundant pleasures; but we must learn to make our spiritual interests supreme, and not suffer our thought to be blurred and our faith enfeebled and our love stifled in the atmosphere of modern materialism.

Such, then, are some of the phases of that great work of social redemption which now confronts us.  Other aspects of the work, not less serious, might be presented, but these are some of the outstanding needs of modern society.  Certainly it is a tremendous work.  To reconcile hostile and suspicious races; to pacify industrial classes; to moralize business; to extirpate social vice; to purify politics; to simplify life;—­all this is an enterprise so vast that we may well be appalled by the thought of undertaking it.  But this, and nothing less than this, is the business which the church has in hand.  For which of these tasks is she not responsible?  From which of them would she dare ask to be excused?  To what other agency can she think of intrusting any of them?  Nay, this is her proper and peculiar work.  For this is she sent into the world.

In truth, the one thing that the church needs to-day is to envisage this task,—­to take in its tremendous dimensions; to comprehend the overpowering magnitude of the work that is expected of her.  It is this revelation that will rouse her.  Never before, in all her history, has such a disclosure of her responsibility been made to her.  And the enormity of the obligation will set her thinking.  It will dawn upon her after a little, that it is for just such tasks that she is called and commissioned; that the achievement of the impossible is the very thing that she is always expected to do; that the strength on which she leans is omnipotence; that she can do all things through Christ who strengthened her.  She will see and understand that her progress is not made by seeking the line of least resistance:  some such worldly wisdom as this has been her undoing.  She will learn that it is only when she undertakes the greatest things that she finds her resources equal to her needs.