76 . STJATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



serve the common interests at the cost of personal ease and gain or of 

 class and institutional aggrandizement. Without this social self-denial 

 no patriotic, philanthropic or progressive organization of a community 

 can succeed or survive. It is the very soul of the body politic, without 

 which it is dead while it lives. It is the dynamic of progress without which 

 the community is powerless to make any real advancement toward higher 

 ideals. For the generation of this social power and for putting each 

 citizen in possession of it the community rightfully looks to the church 

 more than to any other agency. The school should inspire the children 

 with this spirit, but the church only can carry on and out the cultivation 

 of self-denial among people of all ages and classes. The sign under which 

 it claims to live and work and by which it has ever conquered, is the 

 cross. Only by raising up cross-bearers in social and civic self-denial, 

 will it win from the state and society its crown. Only by yielding this 

 service as its most fundamental obligation to the community, can it 

 expect the popular recognition of its right to be and its room to work. 



DUTY OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 



Imperious to the interests of both church and community is the 

 religious imposition of the duty and privileges of self-sacrifice in public 

 service upon every conscience and heart. To impart this power of self- 

 denial the church must be mastered by it herself. To give it she must 

 not only have it but exemplify it. Upon a much farther-sighted view of 

 non-sectarian policy and of inter-denominational comity and co-operation, 

 will depend not only the importance of the church in the life of the com- 

 munity but also the moral and financial support which the church may 

 expect from the people. It is sure to become more of a question whether 

 the churches can survive if they do not sacrifice self interest in saving 

 the life of the people, than whether the people's social life can be saved 

 without the church. Christ's words are as true of His churches as of 

 His disciples, that the church which "will save" its life shall lose it and 

 the church which is willing to lose its institutional or denominational life 

 for Christ's sake and the people's may "find it." With the passion of love 

 for the church, consistent with his larger loyalty to the kingdom. Doctor 

 William R. Huntington plead before the convention of the Protestant 

 Episcopal church the demand which the organization of the world makes 

 for the co-operative unity of the churches. He said : "Four great questions 

 confront the American people at this solemn hour when they are passing 

 from an old century to a new. These questions are: the sancity of the 

 family, the training of youth to good citizenship and good character, 

 the purification of the municipal life of our great cities and the relation 

 of capital and labor. But towering above them all as a snow mountain 

 towers over the more conspicuous but less important foothills that 

 cluster about its base, rises the question of every American citizen who is 

 a believer in the religion of Jesus Christ, how may we correlate and 

 unite and consolidate the religious forces of the republic? Those other 

 questions are in a measure independent of one another, whereas the 

 question of the correlation of the religious forces of the republic touches 

 every one of them intimately, vitally. Our whole attitude toward the 

 unity question depends upon our notion of what the church to which we 

 are attached, is really like. One view is that each church is a little 



