But at least we need not forget this, that in regard to Politics the Church of the Incarnation can appeal to the Democracy as the Religion of the Fishermen who gathered round the Carpenter's Son: that in Sociology the Church of the Incarnation can point the Social Reformer to the Pattern of a Perfect Man laying down His life for enemy and for friend: that in regard to Ethics, the Church of the Incarnation can point in the crowning act of her worship to a Sacrament of Brotherhood as the ideal of human fellowship, brought thus into a Divine light, and quickened by a Divine spirit.

And lastly, of Poetry and Art let me at least repeat in this connection what I have more than once said in one form or another from this pulpit.

The function of the great Painter is in its own special province of form and colour identical with that of the great Poet. The Painter's power and gift is indeed more limited than that of the Poet, for his choice of subject is conditioned by the requirement that its treatment shall come within the realm of the beautiful. All life, all nature, is the legitimate realm of the Poet. He not only beholds the Present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the Future in the Present, and his thoughts are the germ

of the flower and fruit of latest time. And all life, all nature, is also the realm of Art, limited only by the condition of beauty. The Painter, like the Poet, perceives the Infinite in things, and under the conditions of his work suggests it. But to both Painter and Poet, who is also Christian, the fulfilment of his office demands not only insight but self-control. Both need discipline, both need devotion to an ideal, both need self-sacrificing, strenuous courage. For both, in the Christian view, must be Interpreters of Life, Prophets of the Infinite.

They must enter within

again must declare their

the veil, and coming forth heavenly visions to men. They must strive to make clear to others what their keener sensibility and penetrative insight have made visible to them. They must first perceive, and then reveal the Infinite.

And can any one doubt who, in Art, has followed the history of its development in Christendom, from the rude though tender sweetness of the early Christian mosaics, through the struggles of the Middle Ages, to the inexpressible delicacy and beauty of Fra Angelico, to the calm dignity of Leonardo, to the unearthly majesty of the Mother and Son in the Dresden Madonna, or the sublime figure of Van Eyck's Imperial Christ: or who in Poetry has traced the growth, even in our own country alone, in what

ever varying measures, of the divine gift of song, from the quaint grotesqueness of Cynewulf's Christ, in the second half of the eighth century, down to the almost Christiad, though veiled, of Tennyson's Idylls of the King; can any one who has done this, I say, doubt the supreme potency of the spell which the Personality of the Christ has exercised in the realm of Poetry and of Art?

And now I must close.

For some of us, for all of us, it may be that, even with the key which the doctrine of the Incarnation gives us, it is difficult to grasp the thought of the Church of Christ as a Sovereign Society embracing in one comprehensive unity all these realms of thought and action. Your outlook rather, you may say, seems to show you a picture not of ordered beauty, but of confused colour and formless design.

Ah, well, I will only say now-Have Patience! Have Faith! It doth not yet appear what we shall be. We only know now that we are weaving at the loom of our own destiny.

'Let us take to our hearts a lesson-no lesson can braver be-
From the ways of the tapestry weavers on the other side of the sea.
Above their heads the pattern hangs; they study it with care;
The while their fingers deftly weave, their eyes are fastened there.
They tell this curious thing, besides, of the patient, plodding

weaver

He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side

ever.

It is only when the weaver stops, and the web is loosed and turned,
That he sees his real handiwork-that his marvellous skill is learned.
Ah! the sight of its delicate beauty! how it pays him for all it cost!
No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost.
The years of man are Nature's looms; let down from the place of
the sun,

Wherein we are weaving alway, till the mystic web is done.
Sometimes blindly; but weaving surely, each for himself his fate;
We may not see how the right side looks: we can only weave and
wait.'

B

II

CHRIST IN THE REALM OF HISTORY

'All Power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.'--MATTHEW Xxviii. 18.

A DECLARATION and an injunction consequent on it; the Leader makes his proclamation, and the followers are to rally round and impose his Lordship on the world.

But mark the difference: the King, the Conqueror, of this world issues his mandate when he unsheathes the sword and puts himself at the head of his enthusiastic troops; and, if he is to win the victory, he must never for an hour be lost to sight. Whereas Christ utters these words at the very moment when He is taking leave of His people, after He has been displayed dying, dead, on the Cross of shame, a servile end, when His followers are downhearted, scattered, fondly clinging to what seemed to human eyes a lost cause. The whole thing is appar