That is the Christian philosophy of giving, and if a man does not feel the force of these considerations I should be disposed to say he has not yet begun to be a Christian. * * * * * ADDRESS OF REV. DR. DENNEN. The topic of this closing service is not only of prime importance, but comes in its logical place. When your machinery is all educational, industrial and church-wise, the final and vital question is one of power to move it. The supreme motive power in your work is _spiritual life_. Life is force, something capable of originating or resisting power or motion. Physical life is that mysterious something no analysis can detect, no alembic reveal, no power resist; which swells the bud, opens the flower, sprouts the seed, ripens the harvest. Spiritual life, through another plane, is also a force, capable of originating or resisting power or motion. Its realm is the human soul, and draws nutriment from the soil, which that cunning chemist we call life builds up into strength and beauty. Spiritual vitality performs a similar structural function. Once made alive in Christ Jesus, the disciple seeks for spiritual aliment. 1. Now, spiritual life, like natural life, possesses _structural power_. It is a master builder. One main function of the vital principle in nature is to lay hold of inert matter and convert it into living organisms. The growing tree absorbs tons of carbon from the air. The local church, if a live one, takes up into her membership more or less of the outlying population, and from aliens converts them into fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of faith. The ability, then, of this noble Association, second to none in the land, to advance the kingdom of Christ in the several fields where it operates, will assuredly be conditioned upon the spirit and vigor of the churches and individuals behind it, will be determined, not so much by the amount of money it receives or the number of workers it puts into the field, as by the prayers and spiritual enthusiasm of its constituency. Carlyle once said: “The American Republic is going straight to the devil. No government can long exist that receives the refuse of all the rest of the world into its midst and makes citizens of them.” Our free institutions are to undergo a strain in the near future, I am sure, that has never yet been put upon them. Our American churches are also to be put to a similar strain. Nay, the pressure is already upon them. Are they equal to it? I believe so. We must, however, leaven the multitudes of the ignorant and unsaved with our Christianity, or they will leaven us with their illiteracy. Our ability to meet the emergency already upon us will depend, under God, upon our spiritual vitality.