in a section of a great city that has been described as a city wilderness, but we have a vigorous, though young, improvement society for that district and I am in it heart and soul. If your community hasn't an organization of that sort, make one, unless your neighborhood cannot be improved, in which case it ought to be translated at once. The mere social contact of otherwise diverse elements in such an organization is alone worth all it costs. Such contact with life is invaluable in moulding the natures of young men and women.

Temperance work in both its political and personal aspects affords another wide-open door for social service in almost every community. On the political side you can work either for no-license and prohibition or for a strict enforcement of the liquor laws. On the personal side you can work for total abstinence and join in the rescue of the drunkard. The evil of the saloon will never be done away with until more people learn by direct observation its devilish ways.

There are the sick and the needy and the unfortunate in private homes and in public institutions who need the helping hand, the sympathetic word, the fragrant flower. I do not mean just those of your own church; that is family service. I mean whoever is most needy; that is social service. Neither do I mean a call in which you minister to the spiritual need specifically. I mean those to whom you carry, so to speak, a cup of cold water, as to one in need, without thought of administering religious instruction.

Are you near a sea-port or other great water-way or in the vicinity of an army barracks? Right there is a great opportunity for social service, in a multitude of ways that will suggest themselves to any eager mind.

How about the men and women in jails and prisons and almshouses? I have a neighbor who is literally squandering his life away, his money, his time, his

strength, in a passionate devotion to the "down-andout" class, as he calls them. He goes to the jails and talks to the men like a brother. They come to him when they are released and he goes hungry himself to give them a meal and nearly runs his legs off to find work for them. And he does it for absolutely nothing nothing but the love of it. That is SOCIAL SERVICE, written in capital letters.

Now, perhaps you are saying: can young people do all these things? Let me say to you that thousands of them are doing it to-day. They have been given the motive and have learned the methods in the Christian Endeavor movement which to-day has its branches among the sailors and the soldiers, in the army and the navy, in the jails and prisons, down in the rescue missions as well as in sixty-odd thousand church centres scattered all over the globe in every country where the missionaries of the cross have penetrated.

And what would you say concerning the labor unions? It is true that the working men have largely turned a deaf ear to the church. Shall we then turn blind eyes toward them? Can we afford to forget all about them because they have not taken kindly to our mode of church? Shall not the abominations of child-labor stir us to action? Shall not insufficient wages or wretched hygienic conditions move us to pity, even if our meats are not endangered? How can we feel these things or do righteously by them, unless we know the facts? Cannot our young men and women eager for social service keep us in touch at first hand with these situations? Or must we wait for an explosion with danger to our own comfort or health before we become really interested and concerned?

The United Society of Christian Endeavor has recently organized a Patriot's League which affords another magnificent opportunity for all young men and

women of the higher type of ability, whether Christian Endeavorers or not. It is the purpose of this league to develop in every community a band of young people who will devote themselves to a definite and practical study of citizenship, and at the same time hold themselves in readiness for prompt and vigorous action whenever opportunities present themselves. There is an almost limitless field of work in this direction alone.

Has that great flood of immigration, the greatest movement of the people known in history, come to your doors as yet? Not only are some of our great cities being transformed by this new tide of life, but many a country town also is being inundated. These people are of every race and creed. Is our duty done when we have sought to win them to our own special sect? Is there not given us here an immense field for social service?

In New York City there is a Sunday evening meeting for these people at Cooper Union which interests alike all races and creeds. It deals with fundamental, moral, and spiritual truths that appeal to every sincere and honest heart. We are about to start a similiar series of Sunday evening meetings in Boston. Only by seeking to serve these people will we ever understand them. Close contact with them in personal ways is a great eradicator of prejudices. This is another very wideopen door of social service for our young people to enter.

Although there are many other channels for social service open to young people I will take time to mention but one more. This way is so simple and so comprehensive that I wonder it had not been tried before. But in so far as I know it is of recent origin. Briefly, it is this:

A men's Bible class in the Calvary Baptist Church of Albany gave the young people's society in that church a dollar a week for city missionary and phil

anthropic work, provided only, that a different member of the society should each week take that dollar, and himself, or herself, search out some needy child in the city and minister to it and report back to the society how the money had been used. I doubt if Solomon himself could have devised a diviner way of spending a dollar bill. It is more than twice blessed for it not only brings a blessing to that men's Bible class, to the child who receives the help, and to the young people's society that listens to the report each week, but it also gives the members of that society an individual and ideal training in social service. It would be easy to point out in detail the advantages of such a training to any young person, for the more you consider the plan the richer it appears in possibilities. Under this training the young missionary learns to recognize need and to minister to it wherever she finds it without thought of any returning benefit to her or her society or church. Surely in thus giving "a cup of cold water to one of his little ones" they were honoring the Lord of life.

THE CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF PERSONAL AND COMMUNITY HYGIENE

GEORGE J. FISHER, M. D.

SECRETARY PHYSICAL WORK, INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE,
Y. M. C. A., NEW YORK

Ruskin has said that man's chief concern is to know himself and the existing state of things in which he finds himself; to be happy in himself and in the existing state of things in which he finds himself, and to change himself and the existing state of things in which he finds himself.

If we will accept Ruskin's definition of life and inject into it the Christian motive we find a very good

definition of what it means to be a Christian man in

this age.

The Christian religion involves at least three things: to know God and worship him with personal adoration and praise; to live a victorious, self-conquered life by overcoming all sin and weakness, and to promote righteousness and goodwill among men.

In other words it involves a life of subjection to God, a life of mastery over self, a life of service to men. A man is a complete well-rounded Christian only as he assumes these three relationships. He cannot be faithful in any one and neglect the others. In answer to those who lived this latter kind of religion Jesus answered: "I never knew you."

Now, this three-fold relation is not through some specific, specialized, supernatural way, but through normal and natural ways. It is not only supernatural but natural. It does not involve the consecration of some of life's energies, but all of them.

With reference to mastery over self, this is not purely psychological but physiological as well. Religion is not a part of a man's self but all of himself. All the physical processes of life are involved as well as the psychical.

While man is eternally spiritual he is at least temporarily physical. He is fundamentally and primarily spiritual-his real world is the thought world, the spiritual world, but his mental life and his spiritual life are expressed by means of physical processes. Just as the human being evolves from an infinitesimal cell of physical matter into a living soul, so the spiritual and mental processes develop from the purely physical into the psychic. A man's mental and spiritual processes are constantly colored by the character of his physiological functioning and are constantly modified by his physical states.