It is thus that we may account for the influence of Buddhism and other oriental religions over the sects of the Jews and the early Christian church. It is thus, also, that we may account for many phenomena in the early history of Christianity, such as the similarity of some ideas in the writings of Seneca with those in the Epistles of St. Paul.

In our own age and country this passage of words and of thoughts is infinitely more rapid. Words spoken in one part of England are flashed in a few hours to every extremity of the country. The phrases which were a short time ago the recondite language of a few leaders become now the common property of newspapers and vestrymen. Such expressions as "the bag and baggage policy," or "every interest is being harassed," or "England can stand two campaigns," with all that is associated with them, and all the feelings they suggest, course like some intoxicating substance through the veins of the people, and do their work almost as quickly. Indeed the danger is not now that the nation should fall short in unity and in quick response to the touch, but that, with the rapid succession of universally shared sensations, the powers of receptivity may be impaired for their higher uses, and no impression be deep and permanent.

Yet it cannot be said that the nation has been, during the last century, at all insensible to ideas of right and truth or of religión, which is their great sanction. Readers of the early life of Charles James Fox cannot but feel an admiring thankfulness at the change which a century has produced in the principles on which public affairs are conducted. That was a time when an incompetent debauchee, like the Duke of Grafton, could be Prime Minister; when the grand affairs, like those which led to the American War, were conducted by reckless gamesters like Lord Sandwich; when money and court intrigue were capable of subverting ministries. For the change which has come about it is difficult to say how large a share is due to direct Christian preaching, how much to Christian principle insinuating itself at times into minds like that of Fox himself, who hardly seems to have cared whether the Christian church existed or not. Moreover, it is clear that the heart of the nation was deeply influenced by the great religious movements which are associated with the names of Wesley, of Newman, and of Arnold. The Evangelical movement inscribed upon the conscience of the nation the immense importance of individual faith. But, vast as have been its effects on the nation through individuals, to the nation itself it had no mission; it has handled all class-questions and national questions with a shrinking, empirical hand, working out solutions of single problems like the slave trade, or the employment of women and children in factories, or the reformatory scheme, but, on the whole, looking at the larger social questions, and at politics generally, as beyond its province. The High Church movement inscribed on the conscience of the nation the reality of a spiritual community, and took in a larger view of life than its predecessor. But its restriction of the church to Episcopalians, and the undue powers which it gives to the clergy, must prevent its having any large and salutary influence on the training of the national conscience. The more liberal movement inaugurated by Arnold has been submerged in the more demonstrative action of the older movements, and divergent views as to the connection of the general

EDUCATION OF THE NATIONAL CONSCIENCE.

3

government with the system of religious worship, have separated its supporters from those who would have been their natural allies. But what it has endeavoured to write, though hitherto in blurred characters, on the conscience of the nation, is that the whole common life of man is a sacred thing, that the spirit of Christ is applicable to the whole circle of human interests, and, if so applied, can turn the world into a kingdom of God.

It is not necessary, however, that we should identify ourselves with any particular movement in order to take part in the training of the national conscience. The most that any movement can do is to direct the central and recognized forces of Christianity towards the point which is at the time the most important. We all desire that the national life should be conducted on Christian principles. It may be added that, whatever may be said as to the increase or decay of formed belief, there probably never was a time when the nation was more prepared to respond to practical appeals grounded on the Christian principle of self-sacrificing love. This conviction is our encouragement in drawing out the outlines on which the education of the national conscience must proceed.

1. The first thing we have to do is to withdraw from the national conscience the present overweening estimate of the importance of public worship and dogmatic belief, and to stamp upon it the transcendent importance of a Christian life. The primary characteristic of a Christian is not correct belief or worship, but a heart purified by faith in an Eternal Power of Love. The true sacrifice is not that of external worship, but the presenting our bodies, our lives, to God. The Church is not the community gathered for prayer and preaching; but the community living its whole life on Christian principles. And in a vast community like the nation we must give a very wide sense to these terms. It is not essential that any confession of belief should be exacted of its officers or legislators; but that they should, in the main, be pursuing, in all their public acts, justice and truth and the highest interests of the community.

2. We must lead men to look on the nation as a great brotherhood, and on its laws as the structure of this brotherhood, as establishing true relations between the various classes and individuals which compose it. The criminal and civil laws should be regarded not as mere guarantees of life and property, but as affecting the moral life of the people. The government and the judiciary system should be so administered as to help men to believe in the Eternal Justice. Public offices should be regarded not as a prize, but a charge. The extension of the franchise. should be looked upon as the admission of class after class within the pale of a great Christian brotherhood.

3. It must be maintained by us, as guides of the national conscience, that the object of the whole national life is the education of its members, and the establishment of right relations between them. But especially, to the conscience of a Christian country, this must mean the raising of the weaker classes. This care for the weak was the distinctive glory of the Jewish laws, that which made them so dear to the people and to the Prophets and Psalmists, though so often trodden under foot by the princes. Constitutional Government, in like manner, should be valued as establishing brotherly relations, and as enabling all classes

to express their needs, so that none should exact on the others, that none should suffer injustice.

4. In regard to the external relations of our country, we should teach that they should steadily be directed, not to the supremacy of our own nation, but to the general good of mankind. We should teach men to look on war as a hideous thing, and to make efforts for the substitution for it of arbitration. And, since our own country is in so many ways in contact with the weaker races of mankind, in India, China, Polynesia, Africa, and Turkey, we should see that its power is exercised for the training of those races in a Christian civilization. The opium traffic, with the wars it has occasioned, may stand as an example of that which (however difficult to suppress) would certainly never have been allowed to grow up if the national conscience were properly trained. We should incite men to demand that English influence throughout the globe should be a synonym for righteousness and Christian beneficence.

It may be asked how this education of the national conscience is to be conducted; whether by the pulpit or the press, or the fostering of Christian brotherhood by the right use and explanation of Christian symbolism; or by private advice, or by the platform, or by political action? The answer to this question must be that each man has his gift, his preference, his opportunities; that all methods are good if they will lead to the spiritual result at which we aim. But that, beyond all these special methods, is the interaction of the members of the community amongst each other. Each parent who sends forth his children well trained for their calling as members of a great Christian brotherhood, each schoolmaster who keeps Christian citizenship and public life before the view of his pupils, each man of business who conducts affairs with justice and high-mindedness, each man who in society makes a stand against a selfish policy, is exercising a ministry which is often more fruitful than that of Christian pastors, and is equally with theirs a ministry of the Church, an edifying of the brotherhood of the children of God.

The Principles of our Denominational Cohesion.*

AS SOON as a man becomes a Christian two principles of action confront him and claim his allegiance; one is individualism, the other is religious fellowship. Both are involved in Christian discipleship, neither can be altogether ignored, and yet one may be adopted to the temporary forgetulness and exclusion of the other. Following individualism alone the new convert is deeply impressed with his personal responsibility in the presence of the most solemn questions of life; he sees himself necessitated to bear his own burden, to take his own separate way, to discharge his own special duty, and meet the demands of his own conscientious conviction. His path lies as into a vast solitude, in which he confronts the great problems of existence, and stands alone with conscience, with eternity, and God. The "I, I only," of a lonely and solitary soul like Elijah; the "as for me, I," of great spirits like David; the avowal of an Athanasius against the world; are conspicuous as types of individualism whose significance and importance advancing centuries cannot diminish. Here is, at present, no question of denominationalism, or organisation, or association with his fellows; the chief concern lies within the limits of his own individuality, and his life, so far, is solitary and alone.

Following, on the other hand, the impulse of religious fellowship, the new convert is led to recognise, as one with him, all who, like him, hear the same divine call, acknowledge the same leadership and guidance, seek to serve the same Lord and Master, and, so to speak, travel in the same path. The thought now turns no longer to solitude, but to the vast aggregate of kindred souls moving on in obedience to the same lofty divine impulses, and aspiring after the same transcendant ideals. The eye looks not within simply to the supremacy of conscience, nor upward simply to the solemnities of duty and obligation in view of eternity and God, but around and below to fellowmen and fellow-disciples on this broad earth, and under this overhanging canopy of heaven, and the voice divine speaks not of solitary obligation and personal conviction, but of brotherhood, and companionship, and sympathy, and association; and above all other commands are heard the words, "Seek not each his own, but every man his neighbour's good;" "Bear ye one another's burden, and so fulfil the law of Christ. But neither is there here, at present, any question of denominationalism or organisation; the society is too vast, too multitudinous, and manifold. Within such an area, unlimited in extent and range, world-wide in sympathy and universal in thought and aim, denominationalism has no place, save in that large comprehensive form in which Christians are a denomination as contrasted with Buddhists and Mahommedans, or more generally the disciples of one master are marked off from the disciples of every other who is alien and hostile in teaching and life.

But these two principles of action, individualism and religious fellowship, may be followed not only thus theoretically and speculatively, in which, as we see, they are as parallel lines, which produced ever so far never meet; they may be followed also in their essential contrariety and difference, and then they are like divergent lines which

Paper read at the Midland Conference, Baxter Gate, Loughborough.

strike off away from each other into infinite space; but still again, and more reasonably, they may be followed practically, that is with a predominant practical purpose, and then they are not parallel or divergent, but convergent lines, and have, at last, their point of contact and coincidence. Now it is as they enter the sphere of practical life that individualism and religious fellowship are, in our inquiry, specially to be considered; it is as they affect men living and moving amongst men, in society, and amid the pressure of social duties and social needs. For man, as we meet with him, is not a hermit dwelling alone in the presence of the universe and God; nor is he part of a great aggregate of beings roaming at will gregariously, like a spontaneously formed flock or herd, over the fields of boundless space. He is a neighbour, a friend, a member of a family, of a state; and his sphere of duty is in the actual living world of men, with all their complicated wants and necessities. Carrying, then, our individualism and religious fellowship into this practical sphere of human life, the lines are seen to be not divergent, certainly, and not parallel either, but convergent, and to have their point of contact and coincidence. At that point of contact and coincidence denominationalism is born. It is just where individualism and religious fellowship meet and touch and intersect, cross or combine; it is just where the contrariety of individualism and religious fellowship are reconciled and blended in a higher unity that we are to seek, and that we shall find, the genesis of denominationalism.

If this be so, denominationalism is not an accident or a blunder, but an essential, if transitional, phase of Christianity as it enters into human history. If this be so, we shall note, too, that denominationalism, in principle at least, is not a late but an early incident in the life of the church. For example, the contention about the necessity of observing the Jewish law, and the binding force of Mosaism, is spoken of by Paul in one of the earliest portions of Christian literature, the Epistle to the Galatians. It is remarkable that the account he gives shows that in the early church individual conviction and Christian fellowship became coincident with different men at different points, and that there were, therefore, two gospels preached, two sets of principles admitted, two courses of action resolved upon, and so, virtually, even at that early stage, two denominations born. Gal. ii. 1-10. The traces of this divergence marked the history of the early church till a solution of the difficulty was found which practically admitted that Jews might continue, to some extent, to blend their Mosaism in ritual with Christianity, but Gentiles were not to be burdened with it. At all events there was a gospel of circumcision which moved along one line of conviction; and a gospel of uncircumcision which moved along another; and when the latter ultimately took up into itself the former, and showed how all were one in Christ, there arose still, as the era of persecution closed and opportunity was given to the peaceful development of Christian thought and life, other controversies and other divergencies in gentile churches; and the history of Christendom from that period onward is the history of denominationalisms more or less pronounced, and remains so to this day.

However all this may be regarded now-and we call attention to this New Testament historical aspect of our subject only in passing--denominationalism is really the blending and harmonious adjustment, in