Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/332

318 will follow on this earth will be the rule of God; not a democracy, the rule of the people, but a theocracy, the rule of God, the kingdom of heaven on earth.

"O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for Thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth.

"Let the people praise Thee, O God ; let all the people praise Thee.

"Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God even our own God, shall bless us.

"God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him."

Now, that is the Word. We have read it in beginning in many lands a long series of missions, which, with my good wife, I have held, stretching over nearly twenty years since I stepped out of organized ecclesiastical life and consecrated myself afresh to God. And now this conference may, in the providence of God, be the preliminary step in my returning to organized ecclesiastical work. I want God to be greatly glorified. It means more to me than it means to anyone here, for in forming the Christian Catholic Church I take a responsibility which, unless God gives me that grace which I believe he will give, will only end in adding one more to the injurious and distressing divisions of Christendom, and that may God forbid!

I never had any ambition to be the originator, the head, or the heart of a petty organization that should be just one more of the innumerable divisions of Christendom. But I have felt, with a great, broad, catholic sympathy which God gave me from the beginning, and which God has broadened and widened and deepened throughout all the years, that I wanted, if ever I should return to organized church life, to get back to its primitive conditions, where the church should be catholic, universal, all-embracing, in embracing all who were in communion with God by repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

After discussing the apostolic office and power, he adds:

Paul was above all others the great organizing apostle of the church. He possessed in splendid power that great gift, not merely of preaching the gospel and of praying with the sick, and of calling men into fellowship with God; but he possessed that splendid gift of organizing the church into a thoroughly compact form, so that it might do a thousand fold more good than it could as a disorganized mass; and I pray God tonight that some of that great grace which rested so mightily upon him will rest upon me. I want it, I need it; and unless God gives it to me, I cannot be of any use.

I have felt that the organization of the church demanded the maturest powers, and I may have reached the maturest power I ever can reach on earth in one sense; that is to say, I hope to be wiser and better, but I may have reached the strongest period in my physical life. I trust that I shall be spiritually more powerful, but I do not think I can ever expect to be stronger physically than I am now. I do not very well see how I could put more hours into the day, because I put in nineteen hours out of the twenty-four on the