52 Presidential Addresses 



lift that was vital to it the spiritual lift that made 

 in the end a great nation instead of merely a nation 

 of well-to-do people. We want well-to-do people, 

 but if they are only well-to-do people, they have 

 come far short of what we have a right to demand. 

 A giant work looms up before the churches in this 

 country, and it is work which the churches -must do. 

 Our civilization has progressed in many ways for 

 the right; in some ways it has gone wrong. The 

 tremendous sweep of our industrial development 

 has already brought us face to face on this continent 

 with many a problem which has puzzled for genera 

 tions the wisest people of the old world. With that 

 growth in the complexity of our civilization, of our 

 industrialism, has grown an increase in the effective 

 power alike of the forces that tell for good and of 

 the forces that tell for evil. The forces for evil, 

 as our great cities grow, become more concentrated, 

 more menacing to the community, and if the com 

 munity is to go forward and not back they must be 

 met and overcome by forces for good that have 

 grown in corresponding degree. More and more in 

 the future our churches must realize that we have a 

 right to expect that they shall take the lead in shap 

 ing those forces for good. 



I am not going to verge on the domain of the 

 ology, and still less of dogma. I do not think that 

 at the present time there will be any dissent from 

 the proposition that after all in this work-a-day 

 world we must largely judge men by their fruits; 

 that we can not accept a long succession of thistle 



