expression "compromise" is always regarded by certain elements of every party to be a word of ill omen, and fiery hearts abhor it as one that has no place in Christian controversy. But for those who live under constitutional governments and who love the "give and take" principle as of the very essence of Christian churchmanship, there is a willingness to believe in the educational value of proceeding from less to greater, trusting in the final goodness of Providence. They believe that those will be vindicated in the end, who at the present time take what the majority are willing to give, and prefer surrendering some detail of less importance in ideal measures rather than to die on the threshold of that which they cannot possibly obtain.

THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY.

The 125th Anniversary of the organization of the original Diocese of Pennsylvania is to be celebrated this year, and as we contemplate the history of our growth, the exclamation which rises to our lips is naturally the same which formed the first message sent by Professor. Samuel Morse over the first telegraph line constructed in the United States by the inventor, "What hath God wrought!" As we consider the fact that there are now four Dioceses in this State, and that a fifth might easily be added were the call for it but a little louder, we cannot but realize that Pennsylvania furnishes ideal ground for the growth of the Episcopal Church. We have drawn here from several elements favorable to an organization which loves the past, with all that the phrase suggests, and which stands for deliberate action and for the absence of everything which the expression "sensationalism" indicates. To the world at large the word "Americanism" means anything but slow and almost solemn decision as to ways and methods of action. But we are sufficiently bold to claim that our Church in particular stands for an "Americanism" whose peculiar danger is that it is apt to be too conservative and to linger too fondly over that

which has been consecrated by time. One extreme is always, and proverbially apt, to excite another, and in popular opinion, the Episcopal Church should always be on its guard against such a deification of our fathers' views as threatens our body politic from time to time with a certain sort of "dry rot." That quality, against whose assiduous approaches we should fight in every fibre of our being, is our "respectability." It is quite possible for a church to be too much identified with the settled and prosperous classes of society. It is possible, also, to have such a horror of "radicalism" as to recoil from every new proposition as being necessarily untrue. As we celebrate the 125th Anniversary of this Diocese let us be on our guard against that form of weakness which exaggerates the wisdom of the past, and the greatness of our fathers, in such a way as to paralyze in its effect upon us the splendid new impulses of thought and inspiration of which the life of America, in its beautiful present, is so overflowingly full. We must not let the teachings of those who have gone before us kill the great lessons of to-day.

"Age after age," says the great Phillips Brooks, in his sermon on "All Saints' Day," "the qualities of God have been taken up into the holy lives of men; and honoring this truth of the perpetuated grace and holiness of the continual church, we call those great religious men who stand out in the several ages high above all the rest, the Fathers. There are the fathers of Primitive Christianity, the fathers of the Reformation, the fathers of the English Church, the fathers of our own American Episcopacy. We hear much in these days about the Fathers and their authority. There are some men who would co-ordinate their teaching with that of the New Testament, with Christ's and the Apostles'. But if what we have said be true, is it not evident that however deeply we may reverence, however we may be illuminated by the sweet or splendid piety of those old men of God, there is no true presumption of any infallible wisdom, or any inspired knowledge in them, that should make either their views of truth, or their laws of church regulations, the necessary standard for our thought and action. Wise men, wonderful men, many of them most certainly were; and on the other hand many of them always, and almost all of them sometimes, wrote and talked puerilities and blunders, which are not strange when we con

sider the times in which they lived, but which compel us to believe that their reliableness as teachers must be tested by the ordinary laws by which we try all our teachers, and that they are to be believed only as they convince our reason, or conform to that higher authority of revelation which both they and we allow. From the substance of a doctrine down to the size of a diocese, or the color of a stole, men wrote the Fathers of Nice and Alexandria and Rome. Others will tell us that just in this shape the truth of justification must be always held because Luther or Calvin taught it so. The Prayer-book of the English Reformers, and its adaptation by the first bishops of our own church, is clothed, by some people, with almost superstitious sanctity, as if to alter any jot or tittle in it were a sacrilege. This is not well. These men were patterns for our piety, not tyrants of our thought or action. They made mistakes in ritual and government and doctrine. And the old times in which they lived asked of them shapes of outward Christian life and church organization, which the same live religion that made them create them orders us to change. It is only their holy temper that consecrates them to us. It is their godliness that makes them great. In that runs the true chain of sainthood, linking the ages together and making the eternal unity of the Church."

In such a spirit as this, as marked both by our legislation and the type of our parochial life, may God help us to keep the 125th Anniversary of our beloved Diocese.

SOCIAL DUTIES.

The intensity and complexity of modern life add greatly to the difficulty and the number of problems with which the Church has to deal. Especially is this true along social lines. In the words of a current writer on "Social Duties from the Christian Point of View" (Professor Charles R. Henderson) "The problems of this age are the most complex man ever faced, and the principles of life are tested under conditions which have been freshly created by the forces of modern progress."

Until very recently the Church in its larger, organized capacity, has omitted to place due, or any emphasis, for that matter, upon the social obligations imposed by the second commandment of our Blessed Lord. It is to the credit of

the Anglican Church that the first definite, organized effort to realize these obligations was made within its fold in the formation of the Christian Social Union. In England this body of Churchmen has been a potent influence. The American Christian Social Union, formed a few years after, has pointed the way, which other religious bodies have not been slow to follow, notably in the cases of the Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Federated Churches, but it has not as yet had so widespread an influence within the Church as its Anglican prototype.

Nevertheless we are beginning to see the influence of its persistent testimony and teaching in the official action of the Church through the Commission on the Relation of Labor and Capital of the General Convention, and through the lengthening list of diocesan committees and commissions on social problems and social welfare. Already the Dioceses of New York, Long Island, California, Chicago and Michigan have organized along these lines and we are persuaded that the time has come when such work should officially be undertaken in this Diocese.

While we are conscious of the fact that some of our own committees, already in existence, are doing somewhat similar work (for instance the recently established Committee of the Church Club on City Missions), this represents but one phase of the duties and activities of Churchmen, and moreover is the work of a single agency rather than of the Church itself.

It is a duty, which we should no longer shirk or evade, to study the social problems of this Diocese, and our obligation as Churchmen to them, and to that end we should follow the precedents already established by the General Convention and by the sister dioceses already enumerated.

AUXILIARIES OF THE DIOCESE.

As regards the Auxiliaries of the Diocese, let me say that the Juniors of the Woman's Auxiliary have a room in

the Church House where missionary information and leaflets may be obtained any morning. Miss Hubbard, their educational secretary, has held two Normal Mission Study Classes with an enrollment of 30 members representing 20 parishes. This means that 30 repetitions of this course are now being taught among the juniors in the Parishes. Fifty-nine parishes have one or more junior branches (but there ought to be a branch in every parish where there is a Woman's Auxiliary).

They gave last year for missions $2,440.09, and are raising this year an apportionment of $1,400.00. The boxes sent out last year were valued at $1,727.70. But the giving of money and the sending of boxes are of secondary importance, the real object being to train the children of the Church to be ready to take up their responsibility toward missions.

CHURCH LEAGUE,

At a meeting of the Church League for Work Among Colored People of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, held on January 11th of this year, the following resolutions were adopted:

1. "Resolved, That this League requests the Bishop Coadjutor to recommend in his address to the next Convention that the congregations of the Diocese shall make an offering annually for the work of the League, and to suggest a convenient date upon which such collection may be called for; said offering to be forwarded to the. Treasurer, Major Moses Veale."

2. "Resolved, That the Church League for Work among Colored People be and hereby is recognized as one of the benevolent institutions (p. 75) of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, and that it is earnestly commended to the sympathy and support of all in stimulating more adequate efforts to minister to the large and growing colored population in our midst."

I certainly endorse very heartily the resolution that this Church League shall be recognized as one of the benevolent institutions of the Diocese. It is aiding us to discharge one of the most important duties to which we are committed. The list of our colored parishes should be twice as great as