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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 3a

The Economic Value of the Gospel

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The Economic Value of the Gospel

Angus & Robertson Ltd. 89-95 Castlereagh Street, Sydney 1910

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The Economic Value of the Gospel

Throughout the course of my ministry I have often been painfully impressed by the persistence of that widespread misconception which supposes the chief end of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be the providing of a better estate in another world for those who confess Him here; and which assumes, to the utter preverting of the truth, that the gospel has no specific gift for the immediate needs of men—that it affords them no practical advantage in the struggle for existence—that it adds, at any rate, but little to the. means whereby they hope to attain success (that is, money, fame, position, power)—that, in short, it may be left out of consideration in estimating the forces which make for the prosperity of a people.

This misconception not only involves a very superficial appreciation of the gospel, but implies also intensely selfish notions about wealth and well-being. The true conception is clear, if men will but look for it.

We—and here I mean the Church in its comprehensive sense, that is, all who sincerely confess and follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour—to whom the Gospel has been committed as a sacred trust, know full well that the gospel call is a call to manhood, that the gospel power is the power of God unto manhood, and that the gospel ideal of manhood is Jesus Christ.

We affirm that the gospel is the mightiest of all factors essential to the true and lasting prosperity of both individuals and nations; and, consequently, that it is of the highest economic value.

Can we justify this assertion? Most certainly.

I.

We, who have received the gospel as an intimate personal message from Jesus Christ—who believe it, and rejoice in its truth, sweetness and power—find a passionate page 2 interest in speaking of Jesus Christ as wholly our Saviour. We put Him in the forefront. His personality is saving truth in its sublimest form. With utmost earnestness we exert ourselves to build up the young in the knowledge of Him; we would draw all men unto Him, so that they, being enlightened by the knowledge of Him and possessed by His Spirit, shall be changed into His likeness. Jesus Christ is the type of true manhood, the ideal man. This we joyously and vehemently declare; and we ask the child, the man, the patriarch, of every estate to listen to us with open ears and open hearts because we are speaking of the most fruitful reality one can have for this present world's present use.

Upon much that is of infinite value in the full presentation of the gospel I cannot here touch; but upon this part of it I want to lay weighty and loving emphasis—that we invite men to find in Jesus Christ the perfect response of human being to divine manifestation: reverence for authority; open, unalloyed trust; prompt and eager obedience; the sympathy of love; the courage and strength of a pure conscience; harmony of will; communion of spirit, and unity of purpose with the Divine. We ask men, further, to observe how Jesus Christ in His daily open intercourse with men exhibits, in sharply defined relief against the heartless selfishness of the world, His love of mankind, His love of mercy and of truth, His sympathy with man, His patience and tenderness, His sense of responsibility for brother and neighbour, His unwearied longing for their release from the bondage of sin, His faithful warnings and affectionate entreaties that they become men meet for fellowship with Himself, children of God in this world. He would have men united to Himself by faith and love, and all those personal forces which are active in the full surrender of being to being.

Thus to apprehend Jesus Christ is part of the urgent call of the gospel. By word and example we seek to enforce it; and we wrestle with God in prayer that His kingdom may come—a kingdom of men full of the grace and page 3 truth of Jesus Christ, of men who have put on Him as the very character of their being and their life.

Putting on Jesus Christ is adding to manhood's power. The more closely we approach Him in spirit, in temper, in virtue, in walk and conversation, the more abundantly we add to the fulness of our manhood. The ideal qualities of our manhood are all in Jesus Christ. He is the Son of Man; He is the peerless example of our humanity at its best. The spiritual qualities which we discern in Him are essential to true manhood; we must possess them if we are to be men in the highest sense.

Upon the spiritual resourses of our manhood depend our moral capacity and our usefulness in the responsible relationships of life. In ideal manhood there is also an ideal adaptation of our personal service to the calls of obligation. The test of manhood comes when we realise that each one of us is a trustee of the common good; that we have duties into the discharge of which we must put our most generous endeavours; that, as citizens and neighbours, as masters and servants, as toilers in the several spheres of industry, we must be faithful to ourselves, and also to the just claims of others; that we have grave responsibilities in the sanctity of the home, in the bonds of friendship, in the activities of the Church; responsibilities grave indeed, but also of noblest kind, which we must seek to fulfil with sustained earnestness. There must, be no doubt and no hesitation about this. The fitness of a man for the duties of citizenship, and for the special labours of his wonted vocation—his meetness also for the closer personal relationships of life—depend upon the qualities, physical, intellectual and spiritual, which are characteristic of his manhood.

By spiritual manhood we mean that manhood in which the love of man, the love of righteousness, honour and truth, the love of patience and forbearance, the love of all that is beautiful and pure, the love of burden-bearing and service, is the inspiration of life, the ruling passion strong for battle and fearless of death. Such is our ideal as men who know the gospel and love it. Our devotion to Jesus page 4 Christ constrains us and enables us to build ourselves up in His likeness, and also to draw others into fellowship with Him—a fellowship whose consummation is that holy and eternal brotherhood, the kingdom of God.

II.

The economic value of the gospel now looks us full in the face. It is the salvation of manhood for the wholesome life of to-day. "We are sadly familiar with the pernicious action of base aims and vicious habits upon the nature and faculties of man. Experience is a painful, but honest teacher. It is the fool that does not give heed. We all know men of physical vigour, high mental development and practical capacity, in whom low conceptions of honour, selfish passions, and mean ways impoverish their powers, and prejudice the service which they do render, as well as make impossible the work which, with such excellent endowment, they might have done for mankind. Not the strength of a giant, nor the intellect of the loftiest genius, can hold out against moral instability, against the desolating sweep of physical lust or the debasing tyranny of greed, malice, envy, and hatred.

On the other hand, it stands beyond the risk of challenge that spiritual qualities increase the practical value of man's physical and intellectual gifts. In spiritual manhood we have not only the conservation of power; we have also the enrichment and application of power. Take a man of normal health and average mental equipment; fill out his life with the commonplace motives and manners of selfishness: it needs not a prophet to tell the further story of his life. Take another man of like natural gifts, and complete his manhood with the aspirations of the spiritual ideal: his life will prove him to be a man who does honest work and wins respect. He is a man of worth and honour. His manhood is not dominated by lusts and desires, that poison and pillage the resources of nature and opportunity. It is inspired and strengthened by the fostering authority of a holy obligation to the God of His being.

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The end of the gospel is more than salvation from the corruption that is in the world by lust. It is the edification of the whole man in the truth and life which Jesus Christ has unfolded. "Yea, and for this very cause, adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue, and in virtue knowledge, and in knowledge self-control, and in self-control patience, and in patience godliness, and in godliness love of the brethren, and in love of the brethren love." Here, in homely words, we have the workaday garb and features of spiritual manhood. Is there unwholesome limitation here? Is there impoverishment? Is there aught but the buoyant assurance of comfort and power for the good of the individual and the community? The economic value of the gospel is in Christian manhood; and by the economic worth of Christian manhood must the Church justify her existence.

III.

Manhood is the gospel ideal of wealth, personal and national. The man sound in body, vigorous in mind, pure in heart, generous in purpose, loving in thought, active in labour, hopeful in spirit—that man is the standard unit in estimating the wealth of a people. Manhood is the supreme value; it is wealth of bodily health, wealth of intellect, wealth of love, wealth of diversity in gifts, wealth of adaptation, wealth of power to turn nature's treasures into a ready ministry of human progress. Manhood is the joy of the home, the strength of the State, the basis and substance of imperial power. The men who love righteousness and hate iniquity, who speak the truth and scorn falsehood, who live in charity and good-will, abhorring malice and evil-speaking, who think not merely of their own things, but also of the things of others, who find exhilaration in industry, who wrest from the physical world secrets which lighten human burdens and sweeten human conditions, who count not their lives dear to them if by sacrifice the sorrow of the world shall be turned into joy—such men are wealth in the noblest sense. The secret of wealth is not in the mine, or in the factory; not in the fruitful field, or in the page 6 counting-house; not in the laboratory, or in applied science; but in the pure and enlightened conscience—that is, in Christian manhood.

We are familiar with the notion that material possessions constitute wealth; and no doubt we are too often called upon to deplore the destruction or the wasteful use of the material resources of wealth. Sheep and cattle perish in droughts, or by floods; wheat-fields are bereft of crops; the pastures are burnt up; mines are wastefully worked, or let lie idle in the cruel grip of speculation—businesses are badly managed, or hurled into bankruptcy by the mysterious surprises of the money market; enterprises that promised well are brought to ruin by the sheer perversity of man; and when such disasters come nigh us and touch us with the stinging friction of personal interest, we promptly and with sympathetic vigour cry "Loss! loss! huge loss! And we have sorrowful apprehension of the misery, perchance widespread misery, which lies behind it all. This is natural, and distinctly human.

But we should have as prompt and as sympathetic an apprehension of the huger disasters which, as a people, we are suffering through the chronic waste of manhood. Of late years, it is true, we have advanced far in the better appreciation of the national importance of sane and capable human life. Child-life not only receives our pity, but has also safeguarding legislation and the protection of public sentiment. We are more intelligently and jealously careful about the health conditions of labour. Moreover, when we hear of catastrophes involving loss of life on land or sea, we are not slow in the expression of our desolation of feeling. We count as heroes those who risk their lives to save the life of others. All honour to the brave; and so be it for ever. But we have a long way to go yet before we shall have reached a just appreciation of the true value of human life, either from the strictly personal or the national standpoint; we are yet far from an intelligent and passionate recognition of the unmeasured waste of wealth whose tragedy moves with such painful eloquence under our eyes, in almost every moment of our working existence. Our page 7 reformatories, our prisons, our aslyums, ah! what painful lessons they mournfully teach us. What man of vital sensibility can regard without emotion the degradation and corruption of manhood through ignorance and vice, through evil environment, bad laws and bad customs, through wilful indulgence in selfish pleasure and other kinds of sin? Physical strength and bodily comfort, intellectual power and imaginative resource, moral sanity and spiritual beauty, all that constitutes the glory of man and provides joy in work, peace of home, fulness of inspiration, subtilty of invention, mutual confidence and brotherhood—all are lost to the national wealth through the degradation and depravity of manhood. What a portentious study! The gospel ideal bends over it—yes, broods over it, as the Saviour over Jerusalem, weepingly, but not without hope. For the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Its grand objective is man. Its divine purpose is to build him up into strong and virtuous being.

IV.

The gospel, therefore, is in vehement antagonism to every tyranny and to every custom, to every ordinance, and every practice, which harass or injure man, which hinder self-development through the exercise of that freedom whereby he has the opportunity of approving himself as a son of God. It opposes its full strength to ignorance and vice; it counts him an enemy to God and to his kind who consciously encourages, in knowledge of its baleful effects, anything which weakens or destroys the distinctive capacities of man.

It is against the octopus of the liquor traffic, whose debasing and death-dealing influences are a scandal to conscience and to common-sense, as well as a cruel burden to the human heart. We who love the gospel, and recreate our lives in the strength and refreshment of its truth, are under the most solemn and imperious obligation to use every honourable and instant means in order to deliver our fellow-beings from the curse of drunkenness and from page 8 the contributory causes; from a system of trading which encourages the vilest greed and sweeps into prison, asylum and cemetery a bigger wreckage of woe and ruin than any other destructive force known to us. Thank God, the gospel is for man, and against everything that hurts him.

It is against every system of money-making which robs the labourer of the just reward of his toil, which sets against his wasted body, his dwarfed mind, his shortened life, payment according to the iron law of wages. Where there are men living in the spirit of the gospel there can be no iron law of wages. We who follow Jesus Christ should be first—indeed, we must be first—to proclaim our detestation of any system which, glorying in itself as an effective and economical money-making machine, counts the health of manhood, the health of homehood, the health of nationhood, of less importance than solid dividends.

The gospel is against despotism of every kind; it is against the despotism of the unreasoning crowd which sets at nought law and order, and is cruel in its wrath; it is against anarchy, which sets on fire all the worst passions of man, which has never been and never will be the road-maker to peace and prosperity.

The gospel is against all those who take rent for unhealthy dwellings and for places where the worst vices are sheltered. What man who knows and loves the gospel could have a moment's peace, were his conscience testifying and saying, "You get your living out of houses where disease and sin are the paying tenants?" Nor should we who uphold the gospel as the supreme means of social salvation give a moment's respite to those who flout the gospel and live by the pollutions of their fellows. The gospel is against all who despise the sanctity of the person; and against every condition which makes birth into this world a curse and growth a futility.

V.

On the other hand, the gospel welcomes and encourages science, philosophy, poetry, art, commerce; every page 9 thinker, every worker, every institution, every system, everything which makes the body healthier, which invigorates and enriches the mind, which quickens and purifies the imagination, which enlarges and strengthens faith, hope, and love, adds zest, interest, and variety to life, and brings the sunshine of heaven into the bosoms and homes of all who live on earth.

Especially the gospel encourages education. Bring out of man all the power for good that is in him; declare how fearfully and wonderfully he is made; turn all his faculties to beneficent uses; increase the values of his nature; vindicate his right to call sun, moon, and stars his ministering servants; fit him to be master of every secret from the South Pole to the North Pole, from the central fire to the rounded seas. Thus the gospel speaks rejoicingly. For it is man, who has such wealth in his being, that the gospel would endue with the best of all knowledge—how to be lord of himself, and how to love his neighbour as a brother. It is because we love men and God's message to men that we rejoice so unfeignedly in modern paidology, and in the great advance which the science of teaching has made in our day. We mark with satisfaction the advantages which our children have in elementary and superior schools, which our young men and our young women have in our colleges and universities. Because we believe, with the gospel, that manhood is truest wealth, we hopefully anticipate the day when our people and our legislators will be so deeply convinced of the essential importance of educated manhood to the prosperity of the nation that the schools, colleges, and universities shall be made open and free to every young soul, from the A B C to the highest academic distinction. We look forward to that bright, good day, when the highway of knowledge will be as open and free as the beaten track which runs from the furthest home-stead to the capital of the Commonwealth.

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VI.

All this I have said by way of illustrating and emphasising the gospel conception of manhood as the wealth of our people. Manhood, not money, is the standard; distinctly not money. Just for the moment, think how gross the popular conception of wealth is. "This man has money, houses, lands, and other possessions. He is wealthy. Ah! would not Australia be a grand country if every man in it had such potency of wealth? If we were all rich we should all be happy." So many are foolish enough to talk in this fashion. They do not think, they do not realise, what a reeking desolation Australia would be if their dreams of riches could materialise. The money lust is a chief curse, if not the chief curse, of our time. The madness of a nightmare befouls the waking hours of the day. This money lust is a cruel demon. To it we rightly attribute the heartless abuses of the competitive system of commerce—abuses which grind the human being till he sweats blood. "Commerce is war," says one. "Business is robbery," says another. "I am after dividends all the time," says a third. Thus and thus men in their selfish madness speak. Business is business; and religion is outside of it; philanthropy is outside of it. But why stop here? Why not add, man-hood is outside of it?

One of the most evident outgrowths of the money lust is seen in the depraved sensuality of the over-rich. Through the apotheosis of wealth, corruptions of the basest sort eat the soul of good out of man. The sore-tried powers of invention fail in the quest of fresh pleasures and beguiling excitement, but the ponderous staleness of wealth remains—a woeful object. A marble mausoleum does not redeem an unprofitable life.

To the money lust we attribute the vile dishonesty which infests so many mines, factories, and business establishments. There you have inspectors, detectives, and searchers, check upon check, precaution upon precaution, watch upon watch, all to prevent the leakage caused by the page 11 borings of this canker-worm. Where money rules, dishonesty has a marketable value. And the cynic chuckles over the ancient insult to human integrity, that every man has his price.

It is the money-lust that gives vitality to the huge insanity of gambling, a vice which knows every nook and cranny of deceit, laughs at law, and defies the strictest scrutiny of the police.

It is the money-lust that makes home-life bankrupt, thus destroying a sacred institution which has in it the assured promise of the best and most abundant blessings for mankind.

And yet there are those who exalt silver and gold to the loftiest position as the standard of civilised prosperity—lucre and not manhood. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ resolutely stands by manhood.

Even if we consider material products as the main substance of national wealth, the perfecting of man's moral integrity would assure not less wealth, but more. The time and material now wasted through idleness, carelessness, inefficiency, and ignorance would be saved. Through equitable dealing the products of skill and labour, of expert knowledge and business facilities, would be more generously distributed. The comforts obtainable by money, instead of being crowded round the few in superfluity and dissipated in criminal wastefulness, would be shared by the many. Common-sense cannot fail to see that if those who handle capital, and those who are wage-earners or sharers in profit, were alike animated by the spirit of the gospel, the present demoralising agitations and conflicts must cease; the excess of riches here, and of poverty there, the gluttony of self-indulgence in high places, disease, bitterness of soul, and despair in obscure places, must come to an end.

VII.

Never was there more instant need for proclaiming the economic value of the gospel. Democracy is the power of to-day. It will be the greater power of to-morrow. page 12 And democracy is in deadly antagonism to privilege of birth and to privilege of wealth. The iron tongue of the warning bell is vibrant. This is the message we hear: "Democracy seeks economic salvation—that first. The relations between capital and labour are wholly unsatisfactory. The burden of guiltiness lies on the men who control capital. Capitalism is a bad machine, and out of date. It is worked by those whose common interest is but lust of profit; and this has made them unscrupulous. Meanwhile the masses pay, in sweat and blood, in ill-health and domestic misery, for the pride and grandeur and over-abundant wealth of the few. The balance is hard down on the side of those who engineer capital. It must be righted. Pair play is bonny play. Therefore, economic salvation is first, and everything else must take a lower place."

Very good; we understand this surge of angry protest. But what we utterly fail to understand is economic salvation without moral integrity. Legislation may create machinery; it cannot new-create men. The gospel can. Hence its value. New machinery, seemingly efficient, may be secured, but what about the men behind the machinery? An ideal system in the hands of incompetent men may be an even greater misfortune than a defective system in the hands of those who work primarily for their own interests. Given the ideal machinery, will it put an end to envy and strife, heart-burning and jealousy? Will it quench the fires of hatred, and turn the hot hearts of men into fountains of the living water of kindly brotherhood? If selfish gain is still to be the dominant motive, alas for the machinery, and alas for everybody! Unless uprightness and truth, loving kindness and good-will, permeate industrial and business life, not the best conceivable machinery can stay the inevitable doom. The law of righteousness is as imperious as the law of gravitation. Both laws are in the one God. Hence the earnest vehemency with which we urge manhood as the prime essential of economic salvation—the manhood which honours uprightness in thought, word, and deed, page 13 which bears the brother's burden, and loves out of the pure heart fervently. Hence it is that we insist upon the economic value of the gospel, which is the power of God

VIII.

Now, it may be quite justly remarked that all I have said is trite and commonplace. I certainly did not mean to say anything else; it is the commonplace that is of chief importance, and as a rule gets the least intensive regard. But I can imagine a ready protest of this sort: "We know well all you have told us; we have thought it out as closely as you, and with a more painful interest. Only the blind fail to see that moral integrity is indispensable to prosperous economic life. But we can attain moral integrity without the gospel."

This is not news; all the same, it would be interesting to learn how. You will tell us that, if bad conditions are rectified, men will come to themselves; that, if they are trusted, they will respond to the sympathetic pressure of responsibility. Be it so. We are as hopeful as you, but something more is needed. You will tell us of excellent men who, as friends, neighbours, and citizens, lead exemplary lives, who are faithful also in their domestic relationships, who order their conduct simply by the rational principles of morality, and confess not the authority of Jesus Christ, save as the example of lofty ethical being. We all know such men, or have heard of them. We reckon them a good asset in the substantial wealth of the community. Your rational morality, born and bred in the world of hard experience—your sublime ethical principles, so lustrously beautiful in the few instances of rare endowment, of such priceless worth to our race—we accept at full value. But it is not enough. You will tell us of the great value of enlightened education, of the powers of assimilation evoked by sympathetic or magnetic teachers, of the treasures of wisdom and the vital inspiration which are to be found in our choicest literature, of the refining influence of music and other page 14 forms of art; you will, perhaps, add something about the discipline of sport, and of social fellowship, and of public affairs. These, you say, are factors in building up manhood. No doubt they are, and valuable, too. But are they sufficient? We say, "No." It is beyond their power to reach the height of Christian manhood. Do not forget that the finest ethical principles you set before us are deftly cut from the vesture of our Lord Jesus Christ. You take a bit of the raiment and leave the Lord. We would be clothed with the Spirit; we would put on Christ Jesus and be found in His likeness. We stand for the full gospel, for the gospel life, and for the gospel power. What Jesus Christ teaches He teaches to men whom He would draw to Himself, and whom He would fill with the spirit of power, that they may live in the beauty and strength of His doctrine. We stand for spiritual manhood, which is moral manhood plus something much higher and much stronger.

IX.

Now comes the question—How are we to give demonstration of the power of the gospel to build up manhood as I have described? A present-day demonstration is demanded—proof before the eyes of living men. We are called upon to show that the gospel is indeed the power of God. It must be shown through us. From this our faith does not shrink.

Shall we then address ourselves to the perfecting of the organisation of our Church, so that the ministration of the gospel and the outspreading of population shall advance with equal step? Without doubt we must steadfastly aim at this, and send the glad tidings farther than the railway goes, and as far as the swift post carries the mail and spreads the news of the world.

It is essential that we insist upon an evangelical pulpit, laying it upon our ministers with loving insistence to set forth Jesus Christ, the Seeker and the Saviour of sinners, in full tenderness, in all the sweetness of the gospel spirit, and in all the simplicity of the gospel man- page 15 ner. The Word is for all men, but in a peculiar sense it is God's message to the stricken and the lonely and the hopeless. Such are eager for it, in the day of their visitation. Of this we had refreshing testimony in the ever-memorable mission of the brave and godly men who came to us from America to fulfil for a season in our land the call of their Master. The enthusiasm of the multitudes was an inspiration. And the spiritual results were not without rich encouragement to all of us, but especially to those preachers whose hearts, through stress of labour, had lost something of the old-time fire, and to others, too, in whom the breath of worldliness had blighted their once-hopeful energies.

Shall we prosecute with zeal and judicious expedition the enterprise to which we have already put our hands—the union of the Churches—in order to save a sinful waste of time and money, of brain and spiritual energy, and to constitute one mighty army, arrayed against the forces of evil? This work is of God. The gospel calls for it. We must not deny its voice.

Shall we give more earnest heed to the careful training of our ministers? There is but one answer. We want men of learning, cultured men of the best university quality, if we can get them; but always men of sense as well as of learning—men with enthusiasm for Christ and their work; men who are men, and who love men; whose personal character is one with their zeal and their message; who are themselves in large part the message: who know men and the wiles of human nature, as well as its better possibilities; who can unseal the human heart, and read what is written therein.

Shall we devote more attention to our Sabbath Schools and kindred institutions? There is nothing nearer to our hearts than that our youth shall be built up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, their Lord and their Saviour. Christian parents have a field here almost entirely their own. If they could be made to realise with more vivid feeling that the spiritual quality of home life is a mighty power in the making of Christian manhood, we should page 16 have a new spirit in the school, in the Bible class, in the congregation, and in the nation.

Shall we show our faith in the gospel truth that the world belongs to Jesus Christ by our generous devotion to Foreign Missions? God knows we do believe that the day is coming when every man shall bow to our Redeemer, and every tongue confess Him to the glory of God the Father. Let us show our faith by our works.

All these and many other things we must honestly strive to do, in order that the gospel be everywhere known in the fulness of its meaning, that men may judge of it, and God work through it. The full stature of Jesus Christ is our standard of manhood, the Spirit of God our power. We proclaim this; we believe it.

X.

There is yet more for us to do—the most important thing of all: we must ourselves be the demonstration of our doctrine that the gospel makes the best manhood. Here is the cross. We cannot escape it; nor would we. It is almost in vain that we appeal to the authority of the Word of God, or to the authority of the Church, or to the example of saints, or to the testimony of history. The world is impatient with us. The proof must be of to-day. And it must be in ourselves. This responsibility Jesus Christ has also put upon us. It is a burden and a glory. In our contact with men we have the divine opportunity. We know whom we have believed. We know that by faith Christ dwells in us. This means a new life, and a renewed manhood. Where is the life? Where is the manhood? Men must feel the life; must see the manhood—and in us. We do not shrink from the challenge. Our hope is in God. We trust in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Head of redeemed humanity. He will enable us, humbly we say it, to build up in ourselves a noble and worthy manhood, in whose evident qualities the claim of the gospel to be of the highest economic value shall be completely justified—a manhood whose page 17 physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual endowments shall make it the foundation and the ever-increasing substance and strength of the prosperity of our Common-wealth.

The treasuries of wisdom and knowledge contain no richer deposit than the gospel. We are eager to prove it. Therefore do we plead with those who call for present-day demonstration of the virtue of the gospel to give more diligent heed to the message of Jesus Christ, to put Him to the test, by taking Him whole-heartedly into their inmost life; to prove the gospel by the practice of it. Then should we have their generous help in creating upon the continent of Australia a Christian civilisation, that kingdom which is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. If we are loyal to the gospel, we shall exalt our nation in righteousness. If we build up our people in righteousness, we shall secure economic salvation; not otherwise.

W. C. Penfold & Co., Printers, 183 Pitt Street, Sydney.