is the engine that moves the whole train. Divine power was not more conspicuous in the disciples than the human energy they put into their work. "This one thing I do," says Paul. They all had an eye single to the exaltation of the cross. They passed by many good things to do this chief thing. First, and continually, they won souls. It was their mission from their Master.

This purpose of converting souls and gathering them into the fold, is to be kept uppermost to the last. This is what the church is here for. There is no true success if this fails. The church will not fill its other functions fitly, if this leading one is lost sight of. Culture goes for nothing if there are no new-born souls to cultivate. There is little building up without living stones to build with. But if there is success in converting men, there will be life and movement throughout the church. It is what the church lives on, the joy of new-born souls.

There are four sources from which to draw: the family, the Sunday-school, church-goers unsaved, and the great outside world. To keep four streams flowing into the church from these, is back of everything. In order to do this, ministers must be men of God, masters of gospel methods, filled with its spirit, and untiring fishers of men.

To build a church is to take hold in God's name and build it. Every victory for Christ costs prayer

The

and toil and blood. It must be sweat through. The church will not grow in the chill air of this world, without somebody to love it, and yearn over it with watchful care, as the mother over the cradle. pastor must give days and nights to it, counting all things as gain which he can possibly do for it, whatever the loss to him. Men do this in business and make no moan over their sacrifices. Should Christ's disciples do less? The strength put into business in this age, if consecrated to saving men, would rapidly build powerful churches all over this land. Business men move mountains to rear their rolling-mills and grain-elevators and railways. The thunder of their captains fills the land. Ministers, with God overhead, often fail to move mole-hills. Much of their lack of progress is the sheer want of an enterprise and endeavor in keeping with the greatness of the object and reward. It never harms the religion of a church to let a living stream of honest business energy flow through. The religious life of a community would never lag behind the business life, if the same efforts were put forth in its behalf. We need work. I speak for St. James, the neglected saint of the New Testament. Men believe and pray, but fail to do. Though manna lies thick on the ground, God's people do not gather it. There is a soul to be saved at every Christian's elbow, yet the heart to do it is wanting. Some say the art is lost. Many of

the soldiers of the cross have called a halt in this brightest day of the Lord, and are taken up in mending the chariot of salvation, re-fashioning it after the wisdom of this world, putting on new attachments of human device, not satisfied with the divine model.

We get what we strive for. A minister may be a hard worker, yet his church decline because he does not put his best work into it, or does not put it in wisely. When the pastor is occupied with less than the highest, the church feels the loss. The social life, the educational interests, art circles, literary gatherings, lectures, concerts, public courtesies, and wide outside demands, all bid for the preacher's time, and he may give his left hand to them if he can. But to build the church of God calls for the full powers of a consecrated life. It may be good to be an accomplished scholar in curious learning, to be looking up subjects of unique interest, to be an effective writer, to have the oversight of schools, to lecture, and to lend a hand all round. Benefit comes of it, after its own kind. But it builds the church only remotely, and it often weakens it. It is not the prize which comes from drawing men into the fold; ministers lose unspeakably here. They are engaged in a thousand profitable things besides this, and neglect this, which is the very first work they are set to do. The general interests outside flourish, and their own proper work grows weak. They get what they live for, but

the churches dwindle. The minister is built up, but the church is built down, and the end is loss to the minister also. Men are built by what they build. Nothing so develops character as holding with all one's soul to the one great mission. To live among the miracles of the new birth, and the growth of the divine life, is to stand by the open gates of glory, and be filled and transfigured by the outshining of the mighty One.

Ministers justly seek to be widely useful for Christ, but there is no influence which one can exert, singlehanded, to be compared with the power which one can wield under God through a well-ordered church, instinct, and radiant with the life of its great Head. The priest's breath, when the silver trumpet was put to his lips, became a bugle blast in the ears of all Israel; so the church, built by the Spirit of God, is the pastor's trumpet, ringing the invitations and warnings of the Word in the ears of the world. What higher or holier ambition can any minister have than to compact a community of spiritual lives into one organic body, and lift it up as a pillar of testimony, bringing its whole weight to bear in vindication of righteousness and truth, or scathing evil with the lightning of its rebuke? What minister in the land, sincerely seeking to be useful, yet making the building of his church a secondary object, gains an influence equal to what it might have been had he

staked his soul in rearing a true church of the Redeemer?

It is common to say the power of the ministry is decaying. If a minister is regarded as one ordained to do everything under heaven while his church is simply an annex, it may be true. But when the minister as a man of God sent to declare the gospel of the new life sticks to his business, his power was never greater. On his own ground to-day he is invincible. This keeping the salvation of souls in the lead, in building the church, is the best way to edify those that are saved already. The warmth and earnestness of Christian living which brings in converts preserves them alive when won. The preaching which produces conversions quickens at the same time all the saints, and holds them in service. The con

stant incoming of new members has a healthy and happy effect on the church. The teachers teach better. The preacher preaches better. The prayermeetings have more life. The home altars blaze more brightly. The brethren are fired with greater ardor and zeal. The benevolence is stimulated. Not a department of the church but feels the blessed influence. The best way to train a church and keep it alive to every good work is to so order it that fresh rivers of regenerate life shall steadily flow into it.

Never was a greater error than to believe that conversions must come at a certain time, and then