From the Los Angeles Times we quote:

"In short, religion has decided to adopt the methods of big business and brilliant financial cooperation, whatever its other multitudinous differences may be. Our Christian pastors and masters tell us, vide the advertisements, that 'business associations, governments and the leaders of the great religious bodies have surveyed world conditions, and their verdicts all agree' that nothing but millions can buy salvation for a 'world torn with war'. And they are probably right, since that same world which we are told 'a great shaft of light has struck', boasts few humble carpenters and fishermen to renounce all worldly comforts —disciples to follow a possessionless Master today.

Those expensive advertisements teem with ironical truths. 'The least pretentious business concerns now train their sales forces: can the churches do less?' they demand. 'In America we must have Sunday School experts, Bible teachers, skilled fishers of men. How very far we have traveled from the simplicity of Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount, from that sublime doctrine, free and gratis for all who cared to take. 'The realization of humanity's need for Christ at this time has followed with sudden, blinding brilliance, not unlike that which came to Saul of Tarsus,' we are told. But Sauls of Tarsus seem to be peculiarly rare. Rather are they fosaking the ministry on all sides because of the meager worldly reward entailed. Nothing but millions can lure them back, or create new Sauls. Our modern Sauls don't

accrue without expert training and the promised reward of high salaries.

"Every item in those expensive advertisements is quite logical. One cannot take issue with a single assertion. They all rock of efficient promise, of indubit able statements as to conditions and needed reforms. And yet, somehow, they leave us with a feeling of irony that Christianity should have come to such a pass. Perhaps it is the glaring omission of exhortation to our spiritual duty—only our financial duty is emphasized. We are not asked to each and every one of us constitute ourselves a personal missionary without pay. We are not asked to examine the condition of our own souls, our own lives, our own spiritual practices; we are only exhorted to pay for the religious education of others, the religious improvement of others. There are numerous paragraphs beginning, 'Your money will,' etc., explaining just how much other people's service it will buy. There are paragraphs referring to our 'duty', but they all appertain to providing the money for other people's duties. In fact, there is a general impression of buying ourselves off from personal duties other than money and, as the advertisements themselves declare, 'It were folly to think that money alone could carry Christianity forward; the main problem has always been leaders. 'We must continue to send out men and women who will carry the Christ-life into their businesses, their recreations, and their homes. Send other people out—you seem not necessarily to be those people yourselves. 'Unless you falter, a generation of trained Christian leaders will make your children bless your name, is another form of exhortation—our faltering strictly taking the form of failing with the shekels.

'They will raise their hundred millions, . . . but

unless most of us take our Christianity more personally and individually, unless we recognize a few other requirements in ourselves besides furnishing the money, our deputed Christianity isn't going to do the world much good, and our financial credit won't cut much ice in heaven."

WALL STREET WITH A PIOUS FACE

Roger W. Babson, statistician-in-chief of Wall Street, in a letter dated January 27, 1920, and given limited circulation, says concerning the churches:

"The value of our investments depends not on the strength of our banks, but rather upon the strength of our churches. The underpaid preachers of the nation are the men upon whom we really are depending rather than the well-paid lawyers, bankers and brokers. The religion of the community is really the bulwark of our investments. And when we consider that only 15% of the people hold securities of any kind and less than 3% hold enough to pay an income tax, the importance of the churches becomes even more evident.

"For our own sakes, for our children's sakes, for the nations sake, let us business men get behind the churches and their preachers! Never mind if they are not perfect, never mind if their theology is out of date. This only means that were they efficient they would do very much more. "The safety of all we have is due to the churches, even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that we hold dear, let us from this very day give more time, money and thought to the churches of our city, for upon these the value of all we own ultimately depends!"

Again the money-changers are operating in the house of the Lord, and again seem appropriate the words of the Master: "It is written, My house is the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."—Luke 19:45, 46.

Of course "big business" will raise the required money because it thinks this necessary.

Do the people wish to trust their spiritual interests with a class of men whose god is gold?

Occasionally yet very rarely you will find some denominational minister who sees the subtlety of this movement and who has the courage to speak out. Dr. A. T. Peterson, an Illinois Baptist preacher, says: "It is a super-league of nations".

Dr. Conant, an evangelist, in a published discourse involving the Interchurch World Movement, says:

"Mergers are the order of the day in every time of human activity, and the latest and most menacing is the Interchurch World Movement. By this movement the whole Christian Church is being unconsciously merged into a great union church which will be headed by liberals [infidels, higher critics, evolutionists, opposers of the interests of both God and man]

"'This movement is shot through and through with fundamental error. Our Lord tells us that the mission of the church is to preach the gospel to every creature —just that and nothing more. But the leaders in this movement tell us that the mission of the church is to 'establish a civilization, Christian in spirit and in passion, throughout the world'. Those two conceptions will not mix any more than oil and water will.

"And by their social service program they are seeking to capture the functions of the state, and are thus uniting church and state."

GOSPEL AS A WITNESS

Jesus further stated as an evidence of the end of the world: "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto

all nations; and then shall the end come".-Matthew 24:14.

If the leaders of the Interchurch Word Movement claim that their purpose is the conversion of the world to Christianity, then we say to them that they are too late. They are not doing it the Lord's way. In the first place, they are not preaching the gospel of the kingdom. They frankly state they are ignoring the doctrinal truths of the gospel. In the second place, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom is not for the purpose of converting the whole world, but for taking out from the world "a people for his name". (Acts 15:14) And thirdly, this has already been done and we are at the end of the old order and the new is coming in.