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ethics in this country affirms : " The infidelity of our century, and this is the only form of infidelity to be feared, is disbelief in the golden rule of conduct. If Christianity ever comes to exert a positive influence in the direction of the affairs of men, it will be through the persistent assertion on the part of the dis- ciples of Jesus that this rule is paramount, that it is universal in its application, and that every interest opposed to it is an un-Christian interest." ' Whenever this note of reality has actually been struck, Christianity has exerted this positive influence over the affairs of men. Francis of Assisi no sooner began to live the single-sighted, one life than from palace and hovel the people fol- lowed him back to the fold from which they had been widely estranged and long alienated. All the church bells of Christen- dom have scarcely arrested the fixed attention of so many earnest minds as the simplicity and single-heartedness of Tol- stoi's deep-toned consistency of life. The names of Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice are still not without power to hush the bitterest invective against the ministry and to modify the fiercest denunciation of the church which it has been my lot to hear in the most revolutionary circles to be found among Chicago's workingmen. Whatever earthly form this righteous social order may take will be "the kingdom of the Father," and whatever organization mobilizes the moral forces that bring it in will be the church of the Son of Man.
The free churches bear the sovereign insignia of being a part of that church by the part of that kingdom they have brought into the world. They have borne their cross in the day of their visitation, and have worn the crown of ministry to the many. Their church "without a bishop" reared these states "without a king." Their missions abroad have implanted over the wide world seed-thoughts and sentiments having in them the power of an endless life, which will yet burst through all barriers and bloom in the social regeneration of the world. Their associa- tion of homes, schools, and churches for the redemption of the
'Professor H. C. Adams, address: "Christianity as a Social Force." See vol- ume, Religious Thought at the University of Michigan (published 1893 by the Students' Christian Association), p. 55'
