THE TRAINED LAYMAN 317 



righteousness. It is to the result rather than toward the doer that 

 we turn our critical gaze. The old Puritan layman was a religious 

 thinker of no mean capacity. While professing a profound reverence 

 for the clergy and confining his religious leadership to work directed 

 by them, he was an associate of constructive genius and broad 

 ability. His readiness to receive and carry responsibility set the 

 fashion for all later generations. At the same time the rapid devel- 

 opment of religious organizations, made necessary by the struggle to 

 maintain national ideals of righteousness amidst a rapidly growing 

 and widely spreading people, has forced us to utilize the layman and 

 to accord him the right and duty of self-directed, whole-souled par- 

 ticipation in the work assigned. 



Within the past half century, the unexampled growth of Sunday- 

 schools, of Young Men's Christian Associations, and of church activity 

 of every sort, has drawn largely upon the voluntary service of the 

 laity, both men and women, and caused them to be given recognition 

 as essential to the proper maintenance or development of such types 

 of religious achievement. No one could for a moment contemplate 

 an elimination from our available active religious forces of the laity. 



The extent and the significance of the share which the layman 

 takes to-day in religious achievement or instruction is made manifest 

 by the consideration of the accepted religious movements which 

 have come into being and attained their development through the 

 initiative and the care of the layman. 



It is beyond dispute that the Young Men's Christian Association 

 movement, now a little beyond the half-century mark, was due to 

 lay initiative. The unconscious founder of this potent factor in 

 the well-being and religious growth of the young men of our and 

 other lands was intent, of course, at the outset, upon forming no 

 more than a grouping of his fellows for mutual benefit of a religious 

 character. It developed with unexampled rapidity, because it met 

 an actual and persistent need. It became and has continued to be 

 a layman's movement. While affirming its unabated loyalty to the 

 Church and its standards, it uses the clergy as advisers or admits 

 them to membership on the same basis as other men. As between 

 a board of direction, composed of clergymen, and a board made up 

 from men of secular affairs, it would choose the latter. It has passed 

 from one country to another around the globe because of the natural 

 adaptation of this layman's work to the needs of the young men 

 everywhere. 



The Association movement of to-day is so complex that I may 

 well allude independently to movements which have grown up within 

 it. One of these is the federated religious work among the students 

 of our land and now of all lands. It is not easy to over-estimate 

 the solid value of this branch or offshoot of the parent organization. 



