idly and widely enough transmuted into results without the liberal use of money.

The workers in the various departments are all busy men, and this will necessarily continue to be the case. We do not trust work of this importance to novices, but to those who, through experience have shown their capacity for important work, and such people are of necessity busy. They can originate, direct and guide. The working out of detail is impossible to them. If the plans which they are fitted by ability, training and experience to originate and direct are to be made effective it will be necessary to employ secretarial aid, and for that money must be paid.

Also for the preparation of the printed material, which is suggested as the last sub-head in this discussion, money is needed, and in no small amounts. Only through the printed page can definiteness and permanency be given to the work of this Association, and certainly in no other way can it widely influence people. It seems to me that the imperative need of the Association just now is money in large amounts, and in my judgment the most important thing to do at this point is to take such steps as will result in a large increase of the funds of the Association. The work of the Association must of course be done through its departments, but it is the business of the whole Association to see to it that each department has funds for its work.

Perhaps a little account of the efforts of the Home Department during the past year will best illustrate from our standpoint this need of money. We started the year with the general plan of work outlined in the Proceedings of this Association, Vol. III. As is indicated at the beginning of this paper, our first problem became to secure a channel through which we might reach homes. By sending directly to individual homes we could reach but the smallest fraction. We must have some universal medium, and the one which suggested itself was naturally the press. The religious press we could probably have secured without great outlay of money, but we wished, particularly to reach the homes where no religious paper was taken. The plan which we at last evolved was a very large one, but one which many of us believe might be made most effective. We have been forced to give it up for the present because it involves the use of funds

which we did not possess, and saw no way to secure. It is this: That we secure one column a week, say in the Saturday or Sunday issue, of the most representative papers throughout the country; that is, papers published in the largest cities, north, south, east and west; that in these various papers we publish each week, under the name of the Home Department of the Religious Education Association, an article, the same in all, dealing with some phase of good moral or religious training. We would have various committees at work securing and preparing material; one for instance giving to parents information concerning the physical needs of their children and the conditions of normal and healthy growth. This committee could draw from the people who are interested in child study, many of whom are members of this Association. Another committee would set for itself the task of reducing to a simple and easily understood form the underlying philosophy of Froebel. This of course would need to be divested of the mysticism which belonged to the philosophy of Froebel's day and the sentimentalism which has been since his day read into his teachings, but with these things removed there is no one who so deeply recognized the spiritual needs of little children or so beautifully interprets them to those who have to do with children as Froebel. And certainly I know of no writer who so keenly brings home to parents a sense of their responsibility, not only to be conscientious but also to be intelligent in the training of their children.

Another committee could take up the question of direct religious instruction in the home, showing parents how to use the Bible intelligently and helpfully with their children, stimulating them to and directing them in a more intelligent study of the Word for themselves. It could also direct parents to the reading of books which would help them to understand the psychology of religious experience, so far as that field has been explored, and in many other ways could impress upon parents the importance of recognizing the spiritual nature and its needs, both in the home life and in the school education of their children.

The successful working of such a plan would require a large part of the time of some one person, that is an editor must be employed at a salary. Some contributions would very probably have to be paid for. Very many could be secured for the cause.

We have not presented the plan to the newspapers at all, as we could not make a definite proposition to them. But many papers are now securing matter of this sort because they recognize a demand for it, and are paying for it. I know of one syndicate of ten or twelve papers that are securing every week, from a woman widely known as interested in child-training, an article dealing with some phase of home life, which they print in each paper of the syndicate, and for which they pay.

I am convinced that the matter which we could offer would not only be accepted, but would soon show itself to have a market value possibly great enough to make the work self-supporting.

For the present, the Home Department is confining itself to work along the third line of this described plan. It is preparing what may be known as Sunday afternoons at home. The chairman of the department is selecting passages for responsive reading, also a set of proverbs for the children to learn, for children. love proverbs, and through them store up many seeds of truth. In addition he is choosing a few hymns, beautiful in both music and words, and a few simple and devout and spiritual prayers for the mother to use with her children.

Another member of the committee is selecting short passages of the Bible and of other literature, both prose and poetry, to be committed to memory; and a third member is making a collection of stories which shall have a spiritual significance, and which the mother can use in the teaching of spiritual truth to her children. Just how this material, when compiled, will be used, is not yet settled. That question will have to be met when the material is ready.

One suggestion occurs to me, or rather it has been made to me by the chairman of the Home Department. It is that a closer relationship be established between the general association and its several departments by a system of regular reports. Let the secretary of each department as often as once a quarter send to the general secretary a report of the work which his department is doing. This would act as a stimulus to the department, and would tend to unify the work of the Association.

Extension of the Religious Education

Association Through Guilds

An Address delivered at the Cleveland Conference

By REV. FRANKLIN D. ELMER

Pastor of the First Baptist Church, and President of the Winchester Guild
Winsted, Connecticut

Dynamite is hardly worth while for purposes of ornamentation. Its service is in the rock. Salt loses its savor in the bag. Yeast is for the lump. Our great conventions have made "good medicine," strong yeast, refined salt, powerful dynamite. This potential energy for its own preservation must be applied where it shall become kinetic. The guild idea is normal and necessary in the life plan of our association. Our field is the world, it is the community that appears ripe for the harvest. In towns, villages, cities, educational forces, religious forces and the public mind are found operative for our three-fold purpose. Our ideals are everywhere declared by leaders to be sane and wholesome.

Informed by the genius of President Harper, whose personality entered so largely into our beginnings as an organization, we exist not for pleasant contemplation of aesthetic and cultured superiority, an aristocracy of modern notions in the field of religious and moral education, but for service, missionary and pioneer. Our similarity in this respect to the great young people's movement, the 25th anniversary of which we recently celebrated, yields on further pressure a striking difference, for while Dr. Clark called into the vineyard groups of young Christians standing idle in the market place, President Harper, in his vision, stimulated to further effort and the acceptance of added responsibilities workers already overburdened in the noonday heat. It is the glory of Christian Endeavor that it trains for leadership the immature Christian seeking self-expression and culture. Our Association attracts the mature personality, casting about for a larger method and more usable material in the training of those under its care.

Probably no movement in the earlier years of its life has ever

radiated more widespread influence than ours. The sun has no local auxiliaries, yet his beams search through the streets of every town and hamlet. So our influence has gone into all sections of the land refracted it may be, but still potent. From this perspective we receive without alarm the report that at the present time only a comparatively few guilds are in existence, and that not all of these confess to full vigor. In the favored communities where our ideals have lodged and grown, the evidences of the more abundant life amply justify the guild idea and assure its unfolding future.

The story of the inception, rise and growth of the local association may be told from the experience of a typical community. The Winchester guild is located in a thriving manufacturing borough in the Litchfield hills of Connecticut. In a population of 9,000 are to be found the institutions of moral and religious culture of the best New England towns. There are good homes, churches, schools, libraries, publications. The village is pleasantly isolated by its surrounding hills, with easy access to great centers. There are the usual organizations of Christian comity, ministerial, Sunday school and young people's unions. Multiplicity of organization never seems desirable; it did not here. But something was needed to correlate all the other forces in the field of religious education, and to foster activities recognized by all as for the highest welfare of the community. Especially was there desire for cooperation in Bible study and in the moral and religious training of the young. Felicitous friendliness existed among the churches, but they were not joining hands in action. The Sunday schools, while without rivalry, were not planning together in teacher training. Sunday school and public libraries were not exchanging benefits. The Bible and public school teachers were without a common clearing house for the interchange of ideas and methods. There were no discords, but neither was there articulation. On the part of a number of the leaders there arose a feeling, scarcely expressed, but real, that more might be accomplished should these various forces align, and, with the poet's ship, "find" themselves as a unit of action. It is not strange, therefore, that the Religious Education Association had a direct appeal to those most clearly feeling this dissatisfaction and desiring a specific for the betterment of conditions already known to be good.