Consider some of our popular social maxims--‘Charity begins at home,’ ‘Take care of No. 1,’ ‘Competition is the life of trade,’ ‘Demand must govern supply,’ ‘Buy cheap and sell dear,’ etc. No one will deny that there is an element of truth in all these maxims; but their direct logical results, pushed to an extreme under the sole guidance of selfish interest, become diabolical. This is clearly illustrated by a remark once made to my own father by a Southern sugar-planter. He stated that he could raise slaves so cheaply that it was the most profitable plan to use them up in five or six years, and supply their place with fresh ones! The same necessity for the guiding influence of Christian conscientiousness is seen in the pursuit of science. The modern dicta, ‘Medicine has nothing to do with morality,’ ‘Knowledge is its own end and justification,’ are the maxims of heathen, not Christian philosophers. Indeed, many of those who now pursue scientific investigation willingly assent to this statement, having lost all knowledge of the value of true Christianity as the highest spiritual guide of our race. Accepting, then, the principle of Christian brotherhood as the necessary religious foundation and constant guide of any true organization, it is evident that all these weighty problems, now briefly indicated must be considered and solved by the ‘Church.’ A Church, in the true sense of the word, is a society of men and women who, accepting the Divine Mission of Christ, strive honestly to embody His teaching in daily life. As each age grows out of the life of the preceding age, so the practical incarnation of our Lord’s teaching varies in form from age to age. In 1882 the form which Christian life takes must necessarily vary from its form in 1800. Three generations of men have gained immensely in intellectual, scientific, and moral development. All the conditions under which human beings grow up have changed. What we now especially and urgently need from the ‘Church’ is aid in adapting the never-changing principle of Christian brotherhood to the ever-changing conditions of Nineteenth-Century life. We need sermons and conferences and earnest life in the Church; but the sermons must take up the Christian view of the relation of capital to labour, the Christian view of the relation of the sexes, the Christian protection and sound education of the young--in short, the whole conduct of life, from the cradle to the grave, in private and public. A certain inevitable hypocrisy is engendered by listening week after week to lofty theories which are never put into practice, or to impracticable suggestions. The soul grows callous when teaching demands one course of action and daily life enforces a quite opposite course. We need to learn in what way our actual life, public and private, can be guided by our Lord’s injunction of brotherhood instead of selfhood. Our Church Conferences should be the honest and eager