make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives.  An association merely of young men might be an association that had its energies put forth in every direction, but an association of Christian young men is an association 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 make a place where the atmosphere makes great ideals contagious.  That is the reason that I said, though I had forgotten that I said it, what is quoted on the outer page of the program—­that you can test a modern community by the degree of its interest in its Young Men’s Christian Association.  You can test whether it knows what road it wants to travel or not.  You can test whether it is deeply interested in the spiritual and essential prosperity of its rising generation.  I know of no test that can be more conclusively put to a community than that.