Rev. Washington Gladden D. D. preached last night in Appleton Chapel on the doctrine of justification by faith.

There come times in the lives of all classes and races of men when they hear with perfect distinctness, the command "be ye perfect," It comes in the time of solitude when men are apt to be thinking of self and urges them to new endeavor. Moreover men are perfectly conscious that until they try to be better they have neglected the first essential to the truest type of life. Though the command is easy to hear it is often very difficult to obey. The strength of the passions is constantly at work to keep a man where he is or to make him worse. This is not the only thing. The great difficulty comes from the fact that the reformed must also be the reformer. It is a case of a man trying to lift himself, a case offering obvious difficulties.

the great trouble with a man's perfecting himself is the fact of self-consciousness. The man who aims directly at making himself perfect gets in his own way. Right here the law of indirectness begins to act. Almost all the truth comes to us indirectly. Eloquence of the highest sort expresses itself in figures of speech and poetry, especially, naturally clothes itself in metaphor. So it is with the man who seeks perfection. His seeking must be along an indirect line or it becomes mere selfishness.

The problem of justification by faith is to make a man right who is wrong. We have seen that a man cannot make himself right by a direct aim at right. The law of indirectness forces him to use power outside of himself and these powers he must find in some great personality From the example and relationship of this personality he can fill his soul with great aims, high aspirations and can become the embodiment of a great purpose with absolutely no room left for considation of self.

The personality which saves men is often the object of merely earthly love, the mother or father, but in extremity. souls need a greater personality than this The friendship of Christ furnishes the greatest power for making men approach perfection. In Christ men may lose themselves and feel that the command to be perfect is no longer hard to obey. We may justify ourselves by faith in a great Friend.

The choir sang the anthems "Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling" and "sow Lovely are the Messengers" from Mendelssohn's Oratorio "St. Paul." Mr. Merrill and Mr. Thomas sang the duet "Now we are Ambassadors," also from "St. Paul."