One more step has been taken in mobilizing the forces of civilization to fight the everlasting fight and to exalt the no less everlasting ideal.

I remember many years ago to have been present at the service in celebration of the Greek Church's Easter Festival in the City of Jerusalem. I remember that when at twelve o'clock the supposedly holy fire made its appearance at the very center of the shrine there were ready runners stripped and prepared each with his candle, guarding carefully its top with its sacred, divine flame, to carry far away to the churches and the altars and the homes, not alone of Palestine, but to many parts of the distant world where the Greek Church ruled. As these men dashed away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre carrying this little bit of flame, not one but a hundred poor peasants came up close to put each his little candle where it could get something of this light and take it away to his own hearthstone and domestic shrine. We are building an altar with the everlasting fire. There will be hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of messengers, and runners and pilgrims to carry out this beneficent light, this guiding purpose, into the uttermost part of these United States and of the world.

We are neighbors in this splendid and inspiring task, and no neighbor, no ally, no friend could be more welcome than the splendid company of scholars who have come under the ægis of the Union Theological Seminary, bearing_the_great traditions that we heard so splendidly described by Dr. Briggs this afternoon, and taking their part in what is after all the one thing in this life most worth living for, their part in the pursuit of truth and the exaltation of the spiritual ideal.

MR. OGDEN:

Dr. Butler's remarks remind me that I was a little too economical of your time, and still further that I do not propose to occupy but a moment of it now.

I apologize in failing to refer to the location and the completeness of the plant, that so far as we can now judge, is perfect for the accommodation of Union Theological Seminary on Morningside Heights. Those of you who have not seen the buildings, I would advise to see them, and I am sure that if you will carefully preserve and refer to the souvenirs that have been distributed here this evening, and to the views presented there in the latter part of that souvenir, they will, I

am sure, awaken your interest. But you should see the buildings for yourself.

The next toast on our program is "The City."

Our honored guest and associate in religious work, the Bishop of New York, is down to respond to that toast, but he has confidentially communicated to me that he does not care to respond to that toast.

I am almost sure that he has forgotten a splendid speech that I heard him make a short time ago on the spirituality of the City of New York, a very wonderful speech, but however that may be, the subject that interests Bishop Greer is "The Union Theological Seminary and its Relation to Church Unity," and on that subject he prefers to speak to us.

THE Right Rev. David H. GREER:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

This is a formidable duty to which you have summoned me. Not because of the subject-I can easily get away from that as a preacher does from his text-but because of you, and I cannot get away from you: you distinguished people eminent in so many different vocations, college presidents, teachers, preachers, doctors, journalists, men of affairs, and yet over it all there seems to be a Presbyterian hue, and somehow strange as it may seem, I feel much at home, because I know you so well and I love you so much.

I feel honored with the invitation to your banquet and the privilege which it gives me of extending my sincere and cordial congratulations to you upon the formal and official opening of your splendid seminary buildings. Certainly they occupy a great coign of vantage, not only because of their physical site but because of their academic vicinage. Your proximity to Columbia University will give free and convenient opportunity to the students of the Seminary to avail themselves of the privileges of that great and growing university, over which our learned and brilliant friend, Dr. Butler, so admirably presides.

May I venture to suggest, lest some of you may not know it, that there is another neighbor there on that great eminence -the Cathedral of the Episcopal Church, now approaching one stage of its completion, and perhaps your proximity to that cathedral may have the tendency to divert some of the students of Union Seminary into the ministry of the Episcopal Church. And when that cathedral shall be opened for regu

lar and steady services, as it soon will be, some of your students may be so impressed with the character of its services that they will want to come to us, and if that is the case I am confident of two things: First, that as far as we are concerned they are welcome to come, and, second, as far as you are concerned, from what I have heard this afternoon, they are welcome to go if they want to go. We have no desire to devour them nor they to be devoured; certainly not in the way of which I recently heard when one evening last Summer I was called to the telephone by that imperative ring, and was told by the party at the other end of the wire that the cannibals had just eaten two missionaries, and wanted to know what I was going to do about it. There didn't seem anything then that I could do-it had been done. I can only say that if any of your bright and promising young men desire to come to us, we will try and take better care of them.

But Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, another coign of vantage you occupy. If I interpret aright Union Seminary, it is a great theological university and not simply another theological school. Your faculty, men of international reputation for scholarly equipment and attainment, have it for their aim, if I correctly interpret it, to train for the church at large, the church universal, the church catholic, of any and every name, a learned and competent ministry.

In many ways you have shown this breadth of purpose. I heard this afternoon of the number of representatives, I forget how many, from various denominations you have upon your Faculty and among your undergraduate body. One of your Faculty is a member, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, and I think he is not exactly what we call among us a "Low Churchman," with ultra-Protestant tendencies; he is nevertheless your honored senior professor. You are not warped, you are not biased, you are not prejudiced, you are not like the Congregational Minister of whom I heard preaching to an assembly, all Congregationalists, in England, take for his text, If any man refuses to hear the Church, let him." And then, still another coign of vantage you occupy: Your students are from everywhere, not of any particular type or school of thought or temperamental preference, and coming thus together into personal touch and contact, they are perhaps preparing the way by a better mutual understanding for that great union of Christendom and of all Christian forces, which is the desired consummation of the Christian world.

I remember two years ago, when I was present at the

Lambeth Conference in England, and appointed to be a member of the Committee on Reunion and Intercommunion, we were honored once with the presence of the great Congregational Divine, known on both sides of the water, the Reverend Doctor Horton. He told us very frankly and fraternally that the great objection to the Anglican Church, which had been in part responsible for the creation of the Congregational Church, was not the Episcopate, but because the Anglican Church was supposed to be lacking in vital piety and personal religion. And just across the table from him sat the dear old Bishop of Lincoln, now gone to his rest and reward, one of the holiest, humblest and devoutest men in all the kingdom. There they had been, those two great eminent Christian divines, living side by side almost, not quite understanding one another, working and living at cross purposes until they met across the table of a committee room.

If I had time, but I haven't, I would like to speak of that great movement which has recently been started, both in the Episcopal and the Congregational churches, for a conference with the whole Christian world concerning faith and order; not faith as an intellectual proposition, as a theological dogma, as an ecclesiastical tenet, but faith as a stupendous spiritual act, and when the whole Christian world can be lifted up to that first and can live in that first, then and only then shall we be prepared to consider such questions of order as then remain to be considered.

May you in your way, gentlemen, and we in ours, and others in theirs contribute each as each can to that great and desirable consummation.

MR. OGDEN :

When I was a little more active in the Presbyterian Church than I have been of late, I often longed for a real good bishop of the Episcopal sort, and as years lengthen, and as I know the Bishop of New York a longer time, I am sure that the desire on my part does not abate.

I desire to apologize to Dr. Alexander that I slipped over his name as the second speaker on the program this evening, but it was just a lapsus of some sort, and I leave it to the professors of Latin present to finish the sentence, and I now have the pleasure of introducing Dr. George Alexander, who is the nearest to a Presbyterian Bishop of any churchman of our persuasion that I know.

THE REVEREND GEORGE ALEXANDER:

Mr. President, Friends of Union Theological Seminary, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I appeal to you for sympathy. I thought I had obtained my discharge, and it is only a reprieve. I confess to a certain mild surprise that I have been asked to open my lips in this august assembly. The breach between Union Theological Seminary and myself has been steadily widening for a quarter of a century. When I came to New York, one of the attractions was that within a stone's throw of University Place Church stood Union Theological Seminary with Dr. Shedd and Dr. Shaff and others of their confrères. But my type of orthodoxy proved so repellant that within a year Union Seminary sheered off to a distance of three miles, and that has since been increased to six miles, and I assure you, Mr. Ogden, that it is very delightful to receive such a tribute in my declining years, and to have once more the sense of neighborliness and brotherliness.

It is one of the penalties of longevity that one is compelled to note the transition of material grandeurs and the instability of human hopes. I have seen Ichabod written upon the walls of the first home of Union Seminary, and the second home of Union Seminary, which I heard dedicated with prophecies that it would endure through the centuries, has already met with the fate so well described in that bit of Psalmody to which Dr. McKeever and I were inured in our callow days.

Dr. Ogden has referred to me as a Presbyterian. But I suppose it is due to the fact that I am a Presbyterian that I am permitted to sit in this company and respond to this toast. Perhaps I should regard my invitation to speak here to-night as indicating a lingering fondness on the part of Union Seminary for the ancestral home from which she departed nearly a generation ago.

Union Seminary rejoices in her academic freedom and rejoices in her emancipation from ecclesiastical formulas, rejoices in her privilege to enter into affiliations widely embracing other communions and reaching out into other lands, but after all, the most tender and intimate relation of human life is that which binds together mother and child. Union Seminary, after all, sprang from the bosom of the Presbyterian Church. It will be a sad day for both if the mother wholly disowns her child or the child ceases to revere her mother.

Our good Bishop has made a bid for the students of Union