them, not only to hold aloof from the pleasures of life even when they are innocent, but to look on many of its most serious interests, such as science or politics, as secular and profane. In consequence of this, Christianity has been deprived of a large part of its proper influence. It has been assumed that human society must be left to run out its selfish and doomed career, and that it is at best a scaffolding, inside of which another society, the Church or kingdom of God, is to grow up, while the existing society, instead of being transformed, must eventually dwindle and be destroyed. And, further, the conflict of the Church and the world, which was real at first, has been prolonged when there is no further reason for it. It has seemed quite natural that the Church should neglect the general interests of society; for why should it busy itself about anything so transient? And more, when movements of a liberal character, movements which are often essentially Christian in their tendency, sometimes even in their origination, arise in society, instead of looking at these as the work of the Divine Spirit, the official representatives of the Church have looked askance at them and misjudged them. Even in Protestant communities the whole reforming tendency of the last hundred years has often been opposed by those who are held to represent the Church; while in the Roman Catholic community the Syllabus of the Pope all but binds the believer to an irreconcileable war with modern civilization; and the tone commonly attributed to the Church in doctrinal writings is that of a despised and perse

1

1 See Note II, Quotations from the Papal Encyclical and Syllabus of Errors.

cuted woman, rather than that of a strong man with an arm to succour and a heart to comfort, engaged, with manly hope, in restoring to society its true principle of life, and forwarding its progress towards a state of perfect justice and love.

We must admit, with both Scripture and experience, that the world is very imperfect and, in many of its arrangements, unjust; and that its condition consequently, at any given time, is liable to the condemnation that it has fallen short of the glory of God,' or even that it lies in wickedness.' But its whole structure bears witness to a higher destiny; and we equally follow Scripture and experience in conceiving of it as painfully undergoing a deliverance into a state of spiritual liberty.

Another result of the misconception which sees no hope of deliverance for the world is, that salvation is looked upon merely as the deliverance of individuals. The idea of the salvation of society has been ignored, though it stands out prominently in both the Old and the New Testament1. The Protestant theology, which centres in the doctrine of justification by faith, has perhaps contributed to this, by insisting too exclusively on the relation of the individual soul to God. It has narrowed the notion of faith, so as to take no notice of that half-conscious or embryo faith which operates very widely, as a general and national sentiment, and consequently has not attended to the influence which

1 This is fully shown in the Second and Third Lectures, which point out the evolution of the social and political idea of religion in the Old and New Testament respectively.

faithful men ought to exert on the organization of social life as a direct part of the Christian scheme; nor, again, to the influence which Society, if imbued with the Christian spirit, may exercise on all its members. It has not dared to think of a saved and living Society, even as an object of hope; but has conceived of the surrounding social state merely as hindering the individual, more or less, according to its greater or less corruption. The Catholic theology, on the other hand, which has in some sense maintained the idea of the Christian community, has yet never set itself to realize a Christian state of society generally as the object of the Church's endeavour. It was observed, indeed, by Mr. Ripley, the translator of Jouffroy's Essays1, that the ordinary Catechisms teach a philosophy of history. If you ask a Catholic child whence came the human race, he knows; if you ask him what it is engaged in, whither it is going, he knows.' But this is more than can be truly asserted. No doubt the common Church teaching has this element of greatness, that it conceives of the human race as one; but that it teaches a sound doctrine as to the true aims and hopes of the race is more than questionable. It has, like St. Augustine in the De Civitate Dei 2, drawn out the contrast between the worldly and the heavenly cities, and has represented the heavenly society as using the earthly, only as a stranger might use an inn, on its way to a better land. The existing

1 Introductory notice to Jouffroy's Essays, pp. 23, 24, quoted in Flint's Philosophy of History, p. 4.

2 See Note III, in which the true scope of the De Civ. Dei is shown.

society appears in this theology, not as the object of the redemptive efforts of Christ's servants, but as withering away under their scorn. Or, again, it has attempted to overlay the existing society with Christian forms, and to place it under the dominion of the clergy. It has never frankly fallen in with human progress, and sought to inspire it with Christian principle. The Church, as represented in the Catholic theology, has always been a separate organization and a cause of division in human life. The truer theology would partly combine the Protestant and the Catholic, partly supersede them both. It would acknowledge with the Protestant the paramount importance of individual conviction, while it would maintain with the Catholic that the full development of the redemptive work is to be seen only in an organized society. But it would assert that this organized society must ultimately be coextensive with the world1; and therefore that the main object of Christian effort is not to be found either in the saving of individuals out of a ruined world, or in the organizing of a separate society destined always to hold aloof from the world, but in the saving of the world itself.

II. What then, we may ask, secondly, in view of this purpose of God to save the world, is the Christian Church? It can be nothing else than that portion of human society which is renewed by the Christian spirit, a portion which must grow till it becomes the whole. This ideal, or destination, of the Church, is that of the vision drawn out in the 4th and 5th

1 See Note IV, a quotation from 'La Mission Actuelle des Souverains.'

chapters of the Apocalypse1. In the centre is the slain Lamb, that is, God made known to us through the self-renouncing love expressed in the Cross of Christ. Round this central figure are ranged first the elders, representing the redeemed humanity; then the four living beings who represent the animate creation and, beyond these, partaking in a more distant manner of the common redemption, every creature in heaven and earth is heard joining in adoration. We must take this vision as representing, not a world removed from our own, but this world itself, in its ideal state and in its destined renewal: and this renewal, not as a sudden transformation after • a vast cataclysm, but as wrought out gradually through the Christian centuries by the operation of the divine judgments and the expansion of the Christian Church. When men are brought into living contact with the redemptive love of God and of Christ, the effect of this is not only upon the first-formed brotherhood which consciously realizes it, but upon the whole course of society and of nature: first upon the social condition of men and the institutions under which they live, then upon the animals who are their fellowcreatures and fellow-servants, then upon inanimate nature, upon the fields they cultivate and the earth which it was their original mission to subdue; till, out of the chaos which selfishness has made, there arises a new harmony of creative love. This also is expressed in the Apocalypse by the visions in which for

2

1 This vision is embodied, in idea though not in detail, in Van Eyk's magnificent picture, the worship of the Immaculate Lamb. 2 Rev. xix. and xx.