The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a bad custom? What is an abuse? They are social standards which are out of harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic, the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is a right conception. No man could break up every idol in the Sandwich Islands. But a man went about implanting a spiritual idea of God, and the idols disappeared. Hence the work of the reformer is deep and heart-searching work. It means constant study of the spiritual needs of the age, continual insight into the material forces which are moulding the age-images, money, conquest, or whatever they may be. He wishes to maintain a spiritual hold on civilization itself, so to transform the ideal within a man, a community, a nation, in regard to custom, observance, belief, that the outer rite shall follow. To reform is not to rush through the slums, and then preach a sensational sermon about bad places in the slums, of which most people never knew before! To reform is to know something of the conditions which produce the slums--it is not to scatter the slum-people broadcast elsewhere in the town; it is not alone to give them baths, playgrounds, circulating libraries of books and pictures, dancing-parties, and social clubs. To reform the slums is to set up a new ideal of God, and of righteous conduct in the heart of the slum-dwellers. One must know something of the slow processes of social change, of social assimilation, growth, and stability, to have an intellectual perception of the problem, as well as a spiritual one. One does not make an ill-fed child strong by stuffing five pounds of oatmeal down its throat! The reformer must not only be a man of energy, he must be a man of patience. Great reforms come slowly. As man has advanced, idleness, indolence, brutality, tyranny, drunkenness, cant, and social scorn are gradually being cast out. But behind these simple words lie hid centuries of strife and endeavor, and limitless darkenings of human hope.