This spirit is changing.  The most remarkable aspect of the intellectual life of to-day is the rise of faith in the universities.  Like the incoming of a great tidal wave at sea is the wave of spiritual insight and religious aspiration that is rolling over the colleges of our land.

The whole intellectual structure of the Church is approaching reconstruction—­its doctrines, creeds, tenets.  This reconstruction cannot possibly be effected by schools of theology alone.  At every point the theologian needs assistance from the man of science.  Philosophy, psychology, ethics, history, literature, sociology, language, natural science, and archaeology are all bound up in an old creed and must be looked into, ere a new statement can take form.  Their data must be known at first-hand.  Hence there is no intellectual specialty which may not be made invaluable to the Church.

Too often religion has been a matter of hearsay or dogma.  A bitter conflict has always raged between theology and the latest word of science.  The Church cannot afford to be without the scientific thinkers of the race.  The time has come when there is everywhere heard the call of Jesus to men of mind.

What work awaits the university man or woman?  It is to help free the Church from traditions and superstitions which scholarship cannot uphold.  It is to throw fresh vigor and intellectual vitality into the services of the Church.  It is to build up a hymnology which shall be noble and poetic in expression; it is to contribute a great religious literature to the world.  It is the work of educated men and women to add their insight, their zeal for truth, their scholarship, their training and ideals to the Christian community:  to sweep thought and practice out of ancient ruts, to clarify the spiritual vision of the world, and to present new aspects of truth and new goals of human endeavor!  Let Research join hands with Prayer.

A third class which the Church needs to-day is that of the working-man.  The hand of the working-man is the hand that has really moulded history.  Working-men lead a brave and self-sacrificing life.  From their toil come the necessaries and many of the comforts of the race.  The man of labor knows the root-problems of the industrial world.  While all his industry and skill, all his courage, heroism, and strong-armed life are so largely alienated from the Church, the Church is deprived of one of the fundamental sources of inspiration and growth.  The tree of progress can never grow, except it has labor-roots.  It is absolutely essential for the health of the Church that every form of human energy be represented.

Suppose that by some great revival a very large number of working men and women could suddenly be added to the membership of the Church.  What would happen?  Would there not be at once a return to more simplicity of life?  There are two currents at work always in society—­emulation and sympathy.  Rightly used, each is for the social good.  If all classes of men and women worked side by side in the Church, many great social differences would become adjusted.