e armor of
exclusive sanctity that encases the church. Here, if anywhere, organized
church work for boys may be tolerated. Whenever it is, lights begin to
shine from the basement windows several evenings a week, a noisy
enthusiasm echoes through the ghostly spaces above, in a literal and
figurative sense cobwebs are brushed away. The stir is soon felt by the
whole church. A sense of usefulness and self-confidence begins to
possess the minds of the members. Things are doing; and the dignity and
desirability of having some part in an institution where things are
doing inspires the members and attracts non-members.

It will be a sad day for the pastor and the church when they agree to
delegate to any other institution all organized work for boys and
especially those features which the boys themselves most enjoy. The
ideal ministry to boyhood must not be centralized away from the church
nor taken altogether out of the hands of the pastor. There is no place
where the work can be done in a more personal way, and with less danger
of subordinating the interests of the individual boy to mammoth
institutional machinery and ambition, than in the church. The numerous
small groups in the multitude of churches afford unequaled opportunity
for intimate friendship, which was pre-eminently the method of Jesus,
and for the full play of a man's influence upon boy character.

The pastor who abdicates, and whose church is but a foraging ground for
other institutions which present a magnificent exhibit of social
service, may, indeed, be a good man, but he is canceling the charter of
the church of tomorrow. It is at best a close question as to how the
church will emerge from her present probation, and the pastor should be
wise enough to reckon with the estimate in which the community and the
boy hold him and the organization that he serves. And if he wants
business men of the future who will respect and support the church,
laboring men who will love and attend the church, professional men who
will believe in and serve an efficient church, he must get the boys who
are to be business men, wage-earners, and professional men, and he must
hold them.

If he is concerned that there should be strong, capable men to take up
the burden of church leadership in the future let him create such
leadership in his own spiritual image from the plastic idealism of
boyhood. Let the hero-worship age, without a word of compulsion or
advice, make its choice with