It was with such ideas as these in my heart that I was ordained in February, 1904. Within two years there came an event which shook my life to its foundations, revolutionized my thought, and changed the whole character of my interest and work. I refer to what we have [7] learned to describe in our time as the social question. This question, of course, is nothing new. It has burned at the heart of life from the beginning, and at intervals has flamed forth like the eruption of a volcano, to the terror and glory of the world. Its latest phase, as we know it today in the religious field, made its appearance at about the time I entered the ministry. I recall that the book, which first revealed the fires so soon to burst upon us--Prof. Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question "--was published in 1903, the year before my ordination. I was not unprepared for what was coming. My deep-rooted reverence for Theodore Parker, the supreme prophet of applied Christianity in our time, and my enthusiastic study of his life, had revealed to me the meaning of socialized religion. But I had caught only the pure essence of its spirit; I had not thought to apply it to the social problems of today. Indeed, I was not aware of the existence of such problems. My whole approach to the question of truth and experience up to that time, had been along the lines of speculation in the field of theological, as contrasted with political or social, thought. In the second year of my ministry, however, I read Henry George's "Progress and Poverty"; then followed the writings of Henry D. Lloyd and Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch; then came the deep and prolonged plunge into the waters of socialism. For several years after I came to this church, I was in a state of intellectual and emotional upheaval impossible for me to describe. At last came a conviction which was a complete reversal of all my former ideas. I was as a man converted; I was as one who had seen a great light. Henceforth I was a social radical; and religion, pre-eminently not a testimony to theological truth but a crusade for social change. Of course, my interest in theology has persisted; but its place in my life has tended to become ever more subordinate to other and more directly practical interests. You know how the character of my preaching has changed since I first entered the Messiah pulpit. You know with what [8] waxing intensity of expression I have moved to the left of our various divisions on the social question. You do not know, hence I must tell you, how this intensity of radical conviction is destined to continue in the years that are now before us. For the war has accelerated the social crisis beyond all forecasting. In two years has transpired what fifty years could not have consummated under more normal conditions. Three great empires--Russia, Germany, Austria--and several newborn countries, like that of the Czecho-Slovaks, have been captured by the