practical before long. These dread twin-giants already make the mountain shake, and will eventually upheave it. The Spirit of Christ must go before, and make their action not violent but beneficent. The idea of universality was given by Imperial Rome. Whatever its faults, and they were many, for one great merit it earned the enthusiastic gratitude of mankind, even of the Christian Fathers. The Roman peace

endeared the Roman unity; and the grateful remembrance of it has never been wholly extinguished. The Empire, indeed, was a rule of force, and the Christian spirit failed to penetrate it so as to give it spiritual cohesion. Yet even the barbarians who overthrew it reverenced the fallen image, and in Charlemagne it seemed to arise once more. The Roman Church organisation attempted to create the desired spiritual unity; and for some five centuries the idea of one Church and one Empire floated before the mind of Europe. But it was an idea rather than a reality, at least as regarded the Empire; even as an idea it had the fatal fault of being dualistic, the spiritual power seeking not to penetrate but to rival and overtop the secular; and the Papal authority, never wholly supreme over the national churches, was for all practical purposes extinguished by the Reformation. The Universal Church needs to be built up on the foundation of the Christian nations, which has now been fairly laid. There has been indeed some attempt, by means of congresses and diplomacy, to recognise international obligations, and to avert the ravages of war 1. But behind these there has been hardly any

1

Bluntschli, Allgemeine Volkslehre,' b. i. c. 2. See Note XXIV.

spiritual conviction. The diplomatist has rarely escaped the imputation of hypocrisy, pretending to aim at the general good, but seeking always the material interests of his own nation at the expense of those of the rest. The phrase Balance of Power rings of war and rapacity rather than of spiritual brotherhood. We are oppressed by the weight of standing armies, which is fast growing intolerable. Yet the Christian spirit which might change this, though recognised by all serious writers on international law, has hardly yet gained any practical and determining power in international affairs. The Alabama Convention, and the attempts at maintaining the European concert which the last few years have witnessed, the commercial treaties, the international agreements for coinage and for posts, have shown that the spirit of universalism is rising. But the slightness of its results thus far has disheartened many of its well-wishers 1.

Yet the universal Church must stand out ever more distinctly before us as a vision and an image looming larger and nearer. Its members are the various nations of Christian Europe, which, though united, are never suppressed, but remain as living organisms. Its object is universal peace, and the carrying of Christian civilisation to its highest and most universal results. The media of its communion are the universal needs, such as commerce, correspondence, and the possessions of the various nations which it comprehends. Through

1 Woolsey's 'Introduction to the Study of International Law.' See Note XXIV, in which the views of Woolsey and Fiore on International Law are given, together with the passage from Bluntschli referred to at page 326.

the regulated use or exchange of these the nations edify one another, and these therefore become the Sacraments of its life and worship. Its organs and its ministries must be established by some kind of representatives, who will exercise that portion of authority with which the nations voluntarily part. Whatever their particular functions may be, they will be, by virtue of their beneficent mission, truly ministers of God and organs of the Divine Spirit.

When Western Europe becomes one great Church, the head or leading portion of the Church of humanity will be organised. It will then have the duty of assimilating by degrees the more backward nations to itself. Colonisation, commercial and other intercourse with the barbarous and savage races, the progressive effort to raise those races by the infusion among them of the spirit of Christian civilisation, will form the functions of the Church now become fully universal; and the longed for completion of this process is that which is expressed by the religious words, the building up of the Holy City, the establishment of the kingdom of God, the universal reign of Christ.

Two things must be added. First, the various circles of human society, the churches within the Church, such as we have described them, are permanent. They aid one another, and further the life of the whole. Secondly, the chief of these circles will always be the society for public worship, the inspiring power of the spiritual life of the whole. On the principle of Election which we have maintained, the elect body is that in which the Christian spirit of universalism is

most fully received and enforced, and the sources of the Christian life brought to view, in which the worship is direct, with only such sacramental media as are needed for the bare assertion of the relationship, and in which men join, not on the ground of any special qualification, but only as men related to God and to one another. If the Worshipping Body can imbue itself fully with the spirit of Christian universalism, it will be recognised as the guide and inspiring power of the whole. It will maintain its supreme position, not by any external power accorded to it, but by the influence which it legitimately wins, by the confidence which it inspires, by its power to impart and sustain the consciousness of Christ's redemption, by the enthusiasm with which it animates men, by the interpretation which it gives them of their present situation and their needs, by the inextinguishable gratitude awakened by its beneficence, and by its revelations to the universal Church of the way of the blessed life.

LECTURE VIII.

PRACTICAL STEPS TOWARDS THE IDEAL.

REVELATION XXi. 9. Come hither, and I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

In the last Lecture the attempt was made to sketch out the fulness of the universal Church, the condition of the redeemed humanity when fully or normally constituted. I propose in the present Lecture to compare with this the state of things in which we actually live, and to show how a direction may be given to human progress in conformity with the ideal which has been thus drawn out. We must start from the foundation of things as they are, and commence to build the bridge (not quite so long perhaps as our less hopeful moods would make it appear) which leads up from our present state to the ideal at which we aim. I need not say that, in a single Lecture, all that can be done is to give an indication of the direction in which the first steps should be taken in each department of social life. This may best be done by following the lines of the last Lecture, and applying the process successively to each of the circles or associations in which men are