complicated issues. Right along the line Quakerism ranks itself on this side. The Society of Friends, as I read its history, has stood for an idealism which is well in advance of the current practice. In the holding of our Meetings for Worship we have stood for the absolute ideal; many of our Christian brethren admit it in theory, but regard it as quite outside the sphere of practical religion. The same seems to be true as regards the Sacraments, Oaths, and so forth. The idealist is needed as much to-day as ever he was. The moral reforms, to the achievement of which Friends have contributed so much, have been attained by men who dared to be regarded as utterly impracticable, as mere dreamers and visionaries. When slavery, for example, was knit into the very fabric of Society, when its abolition seemed certain to lead to an industrial cataclysm, Friends were not wanting who boldly said, “Whatever happens, we must liberate the slave;” and in the end the visionary was right and the practical common-sense man was wrong; and the simple secret of it all was that the visionary saw God first and his fellow-men in the light of God’s will for them. No less has it been true in business affairs that Friends have maintained the strictest standard of integrity in the face of opposition and probable loss. They recognized a higher obligation which must be obeyed whatever the consequence which faced them. And in the strength of that idealism they won their way to the respect and confidence of their fellows. In the end they were often found to be the more practical in spite of (or was it because of?) _their unreasoning idealism_. “It was in this focussing upon moral effort that the Quakers differed most from the other sects of the Commonwealth period. Their ‘views’ were not novel or original. Every one of their peculiar views had already been proclaimed by some individual or by some religious party. What was new was the fixing of their ideas into one living truth, which was henceforth _to be done_, was to be put into life and made to march.”[7] [Footnote 7: W. C. Braithwaite’s “Beginnings of Quakerism,” p. xliii.] And to-day, if the Society is true to its past it will not lose the chance of standing on the same side for the ideal, the Christian and the only final solution of these complex problems. The _Church needs a body of men and women who will dare to be fools, unpractical, dreamers, in following the Light and who will act up to their ideals._ VII.