cumstances of reproducing it. So, within the vast organism of the Church of Humanity, which is the body of Christ, there exist many minor organisms, each bearing and reproducing the character of the whole, and the image of Him who formed it.

The individual is a microcosm. The single man is stamped with the image which is seen in larger proportions in humanity itself. In the redeemed man we have before us a little copy of the redeemed humanity, which is the Church. Look for a moment at the process of the redemptive work in him, and you see the character of it in the Church at large. The evil, the ruin from which we are redeemed, is best expressed by the word Selfishness, the narrowness of mind and heart which exalts the individual and his own circle of interests to the exclusion of all that is beyond him, of God and of humanity. The restoration consists in the 2 reverse process, the attaching of self to the larger unity, the losing of self, so far as this is possible to a moral being, in God and man, the self-forgetting, universal love. In the former state, the part is everything, the whole is lost; in the latter, self is subordinated to the supreme Unity and to those circles of life through which the supreme Unity is manifested to us. Self is subdued,

1 See Darwin's Provisional hypothesis of Pangenesis in his 'Changes of Plants and Animals under Domestication,' ch. xxvii. pt. 2.

2 I do not enter here upon the doctrine of the Atonement, but confine myself to the effects of the Atonement on human life; and I use the word Redemption in this sense, as is commonly done in Scripture (e. g. in the expression Waiting for the redemption of the body,' Rom. viii. 23). The Atonement, however, as selfsacrifice, is the heavenly counterpart of the earthly effect described in the text. This, as pointed out by Coleridge, 'Aids to Reflexion' (p. 244), seems to be the meaning of the 'earthly' and 'heavenly things' in John iii. 11-15.

This also is true

and God and Christ reign within us. spirituality of mind. A carnal mind is that which estimates men and things only in relation to self and selfish interests; a spiritual mind is that which estimates men and things, including itself, in their relations to the supreme unity, which is no other than God. And similarly, a spiritual energy is that which seeks to appropriate itself, and all men and all things within the range of its power, to God.

nect us.

There is a certain sphere over which our personality ranges, consisting partly of our own faculties of mind and body, partly of that portion of the human race with which we are personally connected, partly of outward nature, our possessions, or those things with which our tastes, dispositions, and circumstances conIn this sphere lies our work, our enjoyment, and our influence. The spiritual mind is shown in thinking of this whole sphere and its component parts, and in feeling about it, in its relation to God and Christ and the true interests of humanity. The spiritual energy is shown in working upon it, appropriating it, enjoying it, using it, with the design of consciously connecting it with God and with the interests of men, so that it may fulfil its functions as a part of the universal harmony. This is the process in which we are engaged, the more consciously the more we ourselves are swayed by the divine Spirit. It is never wholly absent from our thought or energy; but, on the other hand, it is never wholly complete and triumphant.

The Church is the society of those in whom this process is being accomplished, or who may hereafter

become subject to it, of those who are conscious or unconscious Christians; a twofold category which is absolutely universal, since all men necessarily sustain a relation to God and to their fellows, and all are subject, consciously or unconsciously, to this process of redemption. But, just as in the individual there is always a large part of his powers which as yet has felt feebly if at all this redeeming process, so in the universal society, which is the Church, there is always a large number of persons, and often whole spheres of human interest, which as yet have not been brought under the dominion of the saving principle. No circle of social life is wholly subject to universal, selfrenouncing love. We must, indeed, assert that this love shows itself in many different ways, not in one alone, that it is here a devotion to knowledge, there to beauty, or again an absorption in social life or in business. We are, to use an expression lately coined to express a stage in the history of religions, Henotheists, or Kathenotheists', still. We find the true faith and love coloured by special circumstances, and appearing as love of wife and children, of friends, of great and good men, of our country. But, however widely we may recognise its operation, we still see vast fields which it has yet to conquer.

What we have to trace, therefore, is the capacity of the various societies or unions formed amongst men for being the abodes of the Holy Spirit rather than

1 "

'Henotheism, that is, a belief and worship of those single objects, whether semi-tangible or intangible, in which man first suspected the presence of the invisible and the infinite.' Max Müller, Hibbert Lect. 260.

The

the fact that they have actually become so. Church and all its branches and circles are always growing into full existence. It is this which makes it so difficult to define the Church. It is this which makes any full definition of it such as has been offered here, namely, that the Church is the whole human race in all its modes of life inspired by the Spirit of Christ, though it is offered as an anticipation and a hope rather than a thing realised, seem to many exaggerated or absurd. But it is this also which makes any definition which stops short of this necessarily inadequate. It has been pointed out in the previous Lectures that from its first beginning the Church, though it was but a germ, was the germ of an universal society. But it has been also pointed out that this germ has been unequally developed, and, like a child. which has some of its organs defectively nourished, has thereby run great danger of its life. We have to show how it may regain its full vitality, and embrace and vivify all the various circles of human life.

There are seven such circles which we may trace out within the great circle of the complete humanity, which forms the eighth.

1. The organisation which exists for public worship, and which is often, but mistakenly, identified with the Church.

2. The family.

3. The society formed for the common pursuit of knowledge—the University, the School, and the Learned Society.

4. The fellowship in artistic pursuits.

5. Social intercourse.

6. The intercourse of business, professions, and trade. 7. The Nation.

To which we add as the eighth the Universal Society of Humanity. We have to point out how each of these realises, or rather ought, for the complete fulfilment of its object, to realise the Church-idea, that is, to be the embodiment or manifestation in social relations of the universal, self-renouncing love of Christ and of God.

1. The organisation which exists for the conduct of public worship, to which are joined Christian exhortation and works of beneficence, might be thought to be in no need of such a demonstration. Is not this organisation itself the Church? Is it not to this that we must apply all that is said of the Church as being the body and the bride of Christ? To this we must answer unhesitatingly in the negative. So little is it right to identify the Church with the system of public worship that it is possible to imagine a Christian Church entirely without it. Indeed, it may be maintained that this is the ideal of Christianity: there is no temple in the New Jerusalem'. If the presence of God could become all-pervading, formal worship would no longer be needed, or would at least undergo a great change. And further, as a matter of history, if we consider how constantly the system of public worship and teaching has been a narrowing and dividing influence, the parent of confusion, of quarrels, of persecutions, of wars, we shall entirely refuse to identify it with the Church itself. We may further observe

1 Rev. xxi. 22. See the views of Rothe quoted in Note XX.