This paper then goes either to the governing board of the church or the pastor and officers of the brigade who act upon it. If this action is favorable, the applicant takes his place in the ranks.

The organization is of a twofold character -spiritual and military. The members come together at an appointed hour under the leadership of the pastor, or some one who acts for him. Prayer opens the services and a subject previously assigned is studied. The learning of the books of the Bible is a good topic; or the history in outline of the denomination, or missionary or Biblical heroes. Sometimes the lesson in the Sunday-school is made an equivalent for this work, and the leader then directs his class as they study civics through the medium of a debating society. Following these exercises, which occupy about thirty minutes, comes the military drill. Besides the manual of arms and marching the cadets are put through an exercise in calisthenics, which is both interesting and healthful.

A uniform is generally worn, the khaki

being the most serviceable. Wooden or "dummy" guns are used, which have the regulation stock and bayonet but with a wooden barrel.

The routine of the armory is varied by attendance once or twice a year in uniform at a Sunday church service; an anniversary in a public place with a varied program and an address by some distinguished man; a week or two in camp during the summer; marching in public parades, and excursions to places of interest in or near to a large city.

An objection made to the brigade is that it creates a warlike spirit in the minds of the young which is foreign to the Christian ideal. My experience has been, on the other hand, that it makes for peace; through its influence the most obstreperous boys are subdued and made to grow into manly fellows. The members learn obedience, neatness in dress, and respect for authority; a high standard of morals is always before the young soldier; his body is made strong and his spiritnal nature enlisted under the banner of the Captain of his salvation.

By Charles M. Sheldon, D.D., Author "In His Steps," etc., Topeka, Kansas

It is a good thing for the people to have the minister take a vacation. They do not tire of him so soon if he goes away regularly. The more a man loves his work in the ministry the more exhausted he may become. Jesus grew weary and said to His disciples, "Come and rest a while." If Jesus needed rest, I think His example a better one to follow than that of a man like Russell Sage. I can do more real work in my parish in ten months than I can in twelve. The test of any habit, vacation" or other, is in its results. My own experience proves conclusively that my vacation habit helps me and my people to better service in the kingdom here on earth.

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By Joseph Newton Hallock, D.D., Editor of

Christian Work, New York City

I think that it is in the main correct that a pastor can do more work in ten months, taking a vacation of two months, than by working twelve months in a year consecutively. For instance, Dr. Cadman takes a two-months' vacation, and during the other

ten months nearly works himself to death. He undoubtedly does much more work and better work during these ten months than if he had not taken this rest during the sum

mer.

In taking a vacation myself I prefer the sea to the mountains; and for the reason that I get a stronger and fresher air, and perhaps I might say for another reason, that I was born on the shore of the ocean. Starr King oscillated for years between the sea and mountains, but finally took wholly to the mountains.

As to the advisability of a minister taking in summer assemblies and taking part in them during his vacation, with rare exceptions I think he should make his vacation a perfect rest for himself. Of course there may be exceptions to this, where he may be called upon to preach, and may be able to use his own material in such a way as not materially to detract from his vacation.

How long for the good of the church and his own good the vacation should extend is for the metropolitan pastor an important question. If the church is a large one, and he has no assistant, even three months in some cases would not be too much; but

where the church is not large, or where the pastor has one or two assistants, one or two months would be sufficient.

to

As to the care of city churches during the summer season: of course some one should be left to visit the sick and take charge of the funerals. This duty, however, would naturally devolve upon the assistant pastor where there is one. In cases where there is no assistant pastor, an arrangement could be made between pastors so that each would take care of the other's flock during his vacation. In regard to the question as whether services should be continued regularly and the church remain open during the summer months, I judge that in most cases it would be better that the church remained open and at least one service each Sunday be held during the summer season, tho there may be cases where nearly all of the people are away and even one service might not be advisable.

By A. F. Schauffler, D.D., Sec'y International

S. S. Committee, New York City The whole question of summer vacations depends largely upon the speed which the minister has to maintain during the major part of the year. The pastor of a large city congregation must keep up for ten months such a head of steam that he needs prolonged summer rest. It must be remembered that ministers have no Sundays in which to rest, and many of them can not take one rest day a week; hence the need of prolonged relaxation at some time in the year. There are doubtless advantages peculiar to the seashore, but personally I prefer the mountains, especially those of Switzerland, the air at 6,000 feet elevation is more tonic than can possibly be enjoyed lower down. The effect on a church of a minister's vacation may depend in part on whether he has an assistant; if he has, the work can go on without injury; but even if he has no assistant, the average man would break down soon if he worked twelve months in the year at great speed. This would be worse for the church than his taking a vacation. All our city mission pastorates take one month's vacation, and in every case a capable ordained man has charge of the church during their absence. A city pastor, who constantly meets with men and has large opportunities to attend lectures, does not need summer assemblies for his own benefit, and ought not to take part in them,

since by doing so he expends strength when he ought to be resting. Country clergymen, on the other hand, who mourn over their isolation, may be much profited by attending summer assemblies. It is impossible to say what the desirable length of vacations should be for the metropolitan pastor. Circumstances alter cases. In the city, there is no other season so favorable for vacations and its effect on the churches as the summer season.

By the Rev. Robert M. Aylsworth, Methodist Episcopal, Jersey City

I believe that the highest good both to the church and the minister is conserved by the annual vacation. The preparation of two sermons a week for the same congregation of weary, overwrought people, who are abreast the thought of the day and challenge the best there is in their pastor both of heart and head; the multifarious details of the numerous organizations of the twentieth-century church; the financial problems and responsibilities to be met; and, above all, the nervous exhaustion that falls to the lot of the man that loves his people and is devoted to their interests, as he shares their troubles, anxieties, and griefs, can be appreciated only by those who have passed through the experience. A prince of the American pulpit once said to a ministerial friend in Brooklyn that he consumed more nervous energy in one visit to a sick and suffering parishioner than in the preaching of two sermons. He is by no means alone in this experience. I am personally acquainted with ministers, some in obscure pulpits and others in the large metropolitan pulpits, who frequently approach their vacation almost in a state of collapse; and were it not for this period of relaxation would become nervous wrecks. The observing members of his congregation readily note the freshness, vigor, and enthusiasm of the pastor returning from his vacation and appreciate it.

The length of ministerial vacation can not be determined in an arbitrary manner; so many elements enter into it. With some ministers it is the habit to do the hardest studying of the year at this time. They are then undisturbed by the multifarious duties that are so exacting at home. They also take the opportunity to outline the course of their pulpit ministrations and the policy of their pastoral activity for the ensuing year. This is

all the more readily done when they are divested of their home church atmosphere and separated from its influence. It is at such a time that they are enabled to see the ruts into which they have fallen and plan to avoid them. Vacation with such men is not idling, and should not be curtailed. Again, complete suspension of all intellectual employment is positively essential to the highest usefulness of others.

A man may become weary in his work, but not of it. Our Lord himself illustrates this when he said to His disciples: "Come ye yourselves apart into the desert place and rest a while." A minister's work can not be confined to office hours, 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., and his responsibilities left behind him as he leaves for home. Those of us who know the responsibilities laid upon the pastors of to-day, especially in the city parish, realize that his hours are longer and his duties more exacting than those of professional men in public life.

That he should avail himself of the period when so large a number of his people are from home, and the orderly process of church work is necessarily suspended, to "rest a while" is but reasonable, tho this should never be the cause for closing his church, as pulpit supplies are always accessible to those who desire them.

By the Rev. J. S. McCormack, Presbyterian, Owatonna, Minnesota.

The time for the vacation and its duration are determined by the man and his work. This is especially true of the men in the ministry. The man in the country parish will probably not experience the physical need for the rest so keenly as will the man in the large city charge. In the country there are many interruptions which will take a man away from the confining exactions of the study and the nervous strain of newness that is demanded of the leader of a great city church. The city pastor under the constant nervous and mental tension of the city's strife and hurry is benefited by the peace and quiet of a period of retirement away from the centers of activity. The country brother, on the other hand, limited in means, buying few books, unaided by public libraries, is in need of the uplift and the broadened view that will come with the meeting of men and the considering of problems outside of his limited field of labor.

The vacation affords an opportunity for a change of experience. It is the sameness that makes a man long for a vacation. A man should take a pride in his work in order to do his best, and he can meet the difficult problems with energy and determination, and keep at it with surprising persistence, and then easily give up in despair before the endless routine and sameness day after day. Some time ago a college professor, one who adorned his profession and put his very being into his work if any man ever did, said to me: "There is one thing about the work of the ministry that I can not comprehend. How is it that you can remain in one church and face the same congregation year after year, up to thirty and forty years, as some do, and not become sick and tired of your work? Now, in my work there is the constant repetition of the same work year after year, and but for the long vacations and the new faces each year we would be compelled to give up in despair at the very monotony of the work." While I believe that the work of the ministry affords compensations for tired brains and nerves such as is not found in any other task to which men may devote themselves, yet the professor voiced the real need for a minister's vacation. In this work it is not so much the hard work or the vexatious annoyances as it is the constant repetition of the same task that makes men discontented. A change of short duration is the relief that gives strength and endurance to service in any occupation.

The vacation period will help a man to realize that he is a free and independent being. We must do away with the idea that a man is necessarily an idler and improvident because he may choose to spend a part of his time in ways that are not directly productive of dollars and cents. This is eminently true of the clergyman or the teacher. Anything that tends to make the clergyman a man strong and superior to the commercial considerations that enter into his profession will help him, through his work, to make others better and stronger in their work. For this reason I believe in the principle of the vacation, even tho we can not measure its value in the money market.

HARDNESS of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether, in the long run, it works more damage than softness of head.Theodore Roosevelt, in " The Roosevelt Doctrine."

gives to God shall receive good measure, pressed down and shaken together.

But the law works also on the retributive side. He who gives disobedience, receives penalty. The evil, not less than the good, have their reward. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. If he sows gluttony, he reaps pain and the deadness of palate. If he sows lies, he reaps dishonor. If he sows laziness and sloth, he reaps poverty and want. Bad men think they can plant thorns and later pluck grapes. But thistles do not ripen into a bunch of figs. What the man sows, that he reaps. Sometimes the law of penalty is written large in the story of a nation. Turn your eyes toward the Eastern sky. For a century it has been the policy of the autocracy and the nobles to hold back all knowledge from the peasants. Years ago, at the banquet at the World's Fair at Chicago, I heard the Russian Minister of Education say that a hundred and ten millions of his people were still to be reached by the schools. And even now, it is said that there are ninety millions out of one hundred and forty who can not read nor write. Men have been exiled to Siberia for daring to teach the peasants how to read. At that time the Government did not realize that the hour might come when they would give anything to have the peasant class able to read. Now comes a sudden emergency, as set forth in a London journal. A noble fled from his serfs, who were burning his buildings and devastating his vast estates. Arriving at the capital, he assembled the men of authority, and foretold a universal agrarian uprising; he said that the march of the Reds who marched from Lyons to Paris, burning and pillaging everything that was in their track, was to be repeated by a movement that would make Russia a vast desolation. But he had a plan. Who suffered after the French Revolution? Surely the peasants quite as much as the land-owners. What was to be done? Write the story of the French Revolution, and then let the Government publish it and distribute millions of copies among the peasants. That would show them the folly of destroying the land. Ah! but the noble has forgotten one thing. Sixty years ago, after the Persian Shah had visited the general post-office in London, he started a messenger that night across Europe, ordering the establishment of a post-office in every village of Persia. The next morning he chanced to remember that there was not a man in Persia that could read and no one that could write. And not other

Every universal law is best studied in concrete form. This law of increase in influence is best illustrated in the life of Christ. Jesus gave, pouring forth His treasure in unstinted tides, and the world in return hath given treasure back. For example, here is the mountain-at the voice of wind and rain and root it gives itself as food to the moss, and the moss in return gives beauty to the rock that fed it. Here is the soil; it gives itself to the roots of the tree, and in October the tree in return gives its leaves to make the soil still richer than before. The seed gives itself to the stalk of corn. The stalk ripens a thousand seeds, giving them back in return, until in a generation nature would return to that single grain, seed corn with which to sow the world. Not otherwise was it with Christ. He looked upon the poor and gave Himself to industry. He told no lies in His work, He made an honest yoke, an honest door. He rose above all His limitations. Never for one moment did He forget His fellows and spent all His treasure of mind and heart in service, giving and still giving to the common people. In return the common people hear Him gladly, and in an abandon of love give themselves back to Him. Jesus gave Himself to childhood and took the children in His arms and gave them His wisdom as a teacher, and to-day, in return, there are fifteen millions of children and youth who will linger over Christ's story, and give Him their songs and their love and their lives. Jesus gave Himself to Peter, in the hour of his recreancy, and Peter gave his years in return. Jesus gave Himself in affection to John, the beloved disciple, the youngest of the band, and John returned the treasure that is found in the greatest of all the gospels. How glorious Christ's life, its beauty, how wondrous! Because Jesus had given beauty to every phase of childhood and youth the artist, in return, gives the beauty of a nativity, gives the transfiguration, gives the majesty of a cathedral; in return for His cross gives the sweetness of the song, the solemnity of the Gloria, the penitence of the Miserere, until civilization itself is a great pouring forth of gifts, that men are measuring back to Him who gave Himself to them. "He, being rich, for our sakes made himself poor." And in return the whole world is to make Him rich with glorious offerings of mind and heart.