Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1917-11-02
MINISTER'S FACE A
NEW RESPONSIBILITY
Says Pittsburgh Leader at Method
Isl Banquet Here
In campAlsnto Raise 100000
Fund for Retiring Preachers


As "A part Of the nationwide campaign
of the Methodist Episcopal church TO
raise 500, O00, 600 for an endowment FUND
to aid its retired ministers, Troy Com
ference is energetcally pushing pro-,
gram to add 5000, 600 to its own lund
for this purpose, At present the re-
sources of the local conference permit
the 1856 beneiiciaries to receive only 40
per cent of the amount which the law
of the church maintains should pc
theirs In order to provide more ade'
Quately for the needs of its claimants q
campaign has been organized through,
out the entire conference, and WIN
reach its climax on Thanksgiving sun
day,
On Wednesday evening gathering
representing group OF some zen
churches met at a banquet IN the
Methodist church here, presided over
by Rev. G. NJ, Moody, and listened at
tentlvely to addresses by Rev. Martin
+. Cady,LD. d., of the Rock River Con
ference, Illinois, by the field secretary
for the endowment fund in Troy Con-
ference, by the district superintendent
Rev. b. Nj. Kent, d. d., and by Rev
Appleton Bash, d. d., of the Pitts
burgh Conference,
DR.. Bash delivered most forceful
address. He said in part:
IF we can succeed land we Will sue
coed, for we have more than ten mil
lions of the twenty millions) when we
have succeeded in raising twenty mil,
lion as an endowment fund for retired
Methodist preachers, it will stand as a
mighty monument to the teaching and
ministry of Jesus Christ.
"The church is tonight facing a great,
err responsibility and a greater peril
than ever before. All of you who are
interested in matters of education have
noted that the facilities for the educa-
ton of our youth have gone forward by
leaps and bounds the last ritteen to
twenty years. AT no time in fifty years
before has education made such strides
as il has made in the last fifteen or
twenty wears. There is no township,
hamlet, or village, in scarcely any state
in the United States where provision is
not made for public education at state
expense of our young people until they
have finished their high school course
and are practically prepared to enter
college The result is that the genera
ton that is now coming on the stage Of
action a.5 coming to an intelligence be-
yund TIE intelligence of their fathers
and mothers. These are to be the lead
ers of the nation in few years, the
generation upon whom VIII rest TINS
great responsibility of the church. In
the next generation we must have a
ministry superior to the ministry of to-
day, not only more intelligent, with a
wider and broader conception, but with
greater grasp Of the workings of the
| Almighty God In saying this have
no want of respect for the ministry of
today, tut the ministry of the coming
generation must climb until they stand
upon the very mountain top, above the
moral evils of this earth.
To-day we are in great world war
| do not care how fine his fibre, how
rue his morals, how refined his charac-
teri no man can deliberately 90 on kill
ling other men, seeing them fall IN the
trenches at his side and die there, and
came back the same man he went away,
One, two, or three million of such young
men will come back coarsened, careless
concern ng the things of civil life, their
moral IDEAS lowered, for the morals
and standards of Europe today are not
those of America. When they do come
back, they must be reconstructed, re-
Iidealized, and to put it in the old-fash-
toned way reconverted. We must set
the example for Europe here in this
After this war, there is bound to
come flowing into America stream of
immigration such as we have never
heard of in the past, low in morals. low
in ideals. Upon the church of Jesus
Christ will rest the responsibility to
Christianize these people. "