as natural when the Catholic clergy were the only educated
class in the community; is it justified today? Protestantism won the
allegiance of industrial communities when the young business class was
struggling to emancipate itself from the feudal system. It developed an
individualistic philosophy of ethics. Today society tends toward
solidaristic organization. How will that affect religion and its scheme of
duty? Thus religion, by its very virtues of loyalty and reverence, may
fall behind and lose its full social efficiency. It must be geared to the
big live issues of today if it is to manifest its full saving energies.

How does this problem of the efficiency of religion bear on the foreign
missionary movement? How will backward or stationary civilizations be
affected by the introduction of a modern and enthusiastic religion?

We may feel the defects of our church life at home, but there is no doubt
that the young men and women who go out from our colleges under religious
impulses, are felt as a virile and modernizing force when they settle to
their work in Turkey or Persia. Christian educational institutions and
medical missions have raised the intellectual and humane standards of
young China. Buddhism in Japan has felt the challenge of competition and
is readjusting its ethics and philosophy to connect with modern social
ideals. The historical effects of our religious colonization will not
mature for several generations, but they are bound to be very great. The
nations and races are drawing together. They need a monotheistic religion
as a spiritual basis for their sense of human unity. This is a big,
modern, social task. It makes its claim on men and women who have youth,
education, and spiritual power. Is the religious life of our colleges and
universities efficient enough to meet the need?

Here are the enormous tasks of international relations, which the Great
War has forced us to realize--the prevention of armed conflicts, the
elimination of the irritant causes of war, the protection of the small
nations which possess what the big nations covet, the freedom of the seas
as the common highway of God, fair and free interchange in commerce
without any effort to set up monopoly rights and the privilege of
extortionate gain, the creation of an institutional basis for a great
family of nations in days to come. These are some of the tasks which the
men and women who are now young must take on their mind and conscience fo