THE true Church is still a sort of ideal challenge to the faithful, rather than an already finished institution."

"Every man who learns what the true goal of life is must live this twofold existence—as separate individual —yet also as member of a spiritual community which, if loyal, he loves, and in which, in so far as he is loyal, he knows that his only true life is hidden and is lived."

Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, I, 54, 203.

A scientist's conception of the Church: "A place in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of pure, just, and true living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and business shall have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets, compared with peace and charity."

Thomas H. Huxley, Life and Letters.

"Oft have I seen at some cathedral door

     A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,

     Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet

     Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;

     Far off the noises of the world retreat;

     The loud vociferations of the street

     Become an indistinguishable roar.

So, as I enter here from; day to day.

     And leave my burden at this minster gate,

     Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,

The tumult of the time disconsolate

     To inarticulate murmurs dies away,

     While the eternal ages watch and wait"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Divina Commedia.

Chapter VI

THE PLACE OF THE CHURCH

ONE of the strange facts in our life to-day is that we are facing an indifference to the Church at the same time with a deepening interest in religion. We are in the midst of a great revival. There are many in the Church who do not realize it, for it has not come in the old forms. We may see it in the deepening interest in all questions that concern faith. We may see it in literature, in the novels which deal with the questions of religion. It is present in the drama, for it is the religious appeal that has given the strength to such a production as "The Servant in the House." Most of all, the religious revival is to be seen in the quickened social conscience of the men of this day. Back of our great social and industrial movements, back of all our questions of political reform, back of the proposals of eight-hour day and minimum wage and industrial insurance, lies the growing passion for justice and for brotherhood. The maker of that conscience is none other than Christ, and the stirring of the new passion is a revival of His religion that is deeper even than the spirit of philanthropy which has marked the past age.

Is it not strange, then, that in the midst of this all there should be marked on every side a strong indifference to the Church? The young men who would have turned to the ministry a generation ago are now looking to social service or a career in political reform. Laymen who might have given their strength fifty years ago to the work in the Church are seeking to serve men in movements outside the Church, while the masses of people seem to be increasingly unconcerned. It is not that they oppose the Church, they simply pass it by. Once the Church faced conflict and fought against bitter foes for her very life; in that conflict she grew. To-day it would almost seem that the Church which waxed strong against her enemies, might perish from mere indifference. What is perhaps most significant in all this is the fact that the men of large vision, the men of earnest, moral spirit, are turning aside from the Church because of their very earnestness. They see the Church as an institution concerned for its own life, debating petty matters of ritual and robes, of differing doctrines and forms, and wasting its resources by its divisions. Outside are men oppressed, and ill-fed children born in the physical and moral filth of the slum, and women exploited by greed and lust. Here, they say, is our work. We want to serve men; we want to be where life is real and life is full. We do not oppose the Church: we wish it well; but men's work and a man's life lie outside.

There is much in that spirit with 'which we may agree. We stand for men, and religion is here to serve men and to save men. Our supreme concern is not an institution, but the triumph of the Kingdom of God. But the trouble lies not here. The failure is a wrong conception of the Church, and there is no deeper need for faith to-day than a right conception of that fellowship of faith and service which is bodied forth in the Church of Jesus Christ. We want no return to institutionalism, but the new day of faith must sound as one of its strongest notes the appeal to men on behalf of the Church.

It is not high-churchism for which we are standing here. Indeed, the first thing that we need to do is to overcome some of the old conceptions of the Church which have ruled the past and against which men are reacting to-day. Here is the institutional conception of the Church, the old thought that, somehow or other, a certain divine pattern of organization has been handed down, and that this organization and its forms are sacred in themselves. A very little study of the New Testament will show there is no ground for such a conception at all. Not one passage in the New Testament tells us how the Church is to be organized. We catch the names of certain officers and certain leaders, but even if we degrade the New Testament to a book of laws, there is no law here by which to organize the Church. The Church has been made, in the second place, a con-server of doctrines, the authority for handing down certain dogmas. Against that, too, we must protest in the name of religion, which comes with a message, but which does not ask men to accept a theology. Then there is the sacramental conception of the Church, the theory that God has decided to give to men His salvation. His life, and His help only through the channel of certain forms and ceremonies and by certain men, and that this is committed to the Church. With this, too, men have grown impatient. Christianity is a spiritual and a personal faith, and it is broader than any institution. All life belongs to God, and He may use any channel by which to come to men. No Church and no sum of Churches have ever shut up within themselves the life from God.

But when we have put these conceptions of the Church aside, we have not yet settled our question. Here is the fact that confronts us: From the very beginning the growth of the Christian faith and the life of Christian men have been inseparable from the Christian Church. In her bosom the saints of all the ages have been nurtured. The noblest lives of our race, far-famed or humble, have gained their faith through her message and their strength in her fellowship. She has given birth to schools and hospitals and every manner of philanthropy. She has inspired the vast majority of those who have wrought in great reform or gracious ministry. The greatest treasure of our race, the story of Christ and of His first followers, was brought forth by her devotion and handed down by her care. Wherever Christian faith and life have gone, it has been by her missionary zeal. And nowhere do \^e find the Christian religion surviving without the Christian Church. Is it not of deepest significance that, while the New Testament gives no command anywhere to establish the Christian Church and no body of direction as to how this shall be done, yet, despite that fact, the Christian Church is there from the beginning? Does it not mean that the Church is more than a matter of rule or commandment, that it is essential to the very life of Christianity and the inevitable outworking of its very spirit?

If now we ask about the place of the Church in our working faith, we shall proceed just as we have done before. We shall not appeal to tradition or authority. We shall ask simply, what is the witness of history and of the vital religious experience of man.

If we look at this essential spirit of Christianity as we have already considered it, we shall find four elements involved. This faith is a truth that is believed, and thus a message to be given to men. Second, the Christian life is a fellowship and involves a community. Third, this religion is a worship, and a common worship to which it calls men. Fourth, it unites men for common service. The Church lives on, not because of tradition or dogma or command, but because it embodies these great elements of Christian faith and life. How essential they are for that life and what they mean for men we shall see as we study them in order.

The Church and Its Message

The first meaning of the Church lies in its Message. The Church opens its doors because it has something to say to men. Jesus came as a teacher. The word that He read from the prophet in the little home-town synagogue was the confession of His life-purpose. He came "to preach good tidings to the poor," "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Jesus looked upon Himself as a preacher. When He sent His disciples forth He gave them nothing to bear but a message.

Now, our age is rather skeptical here. We are forever crying for "deeds, not words." We want actions, not ideas; life, and not doctrines. And as for creeds, the silence of our scorn is enough. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by the word." We reverse Him and say, Man shall not live by words, but by crop reports and balance of trade. The contrast is not between words and deeds, between doctrine and life; it is between the life that is unthinking, unaspiring— that has no high meaning and no power—and the life that has found its purpose and inspiration and has joined itself to the eternal.

The final forces of history are not armies, but ideas. Marion Crawford tells this story of Carlyle: "It was at a dinner party, and Carlyle sat listening to the talk of lesser men, the snow on his hair and the fire in his amber eyes. 'The British people,' said one of the company, 'can afford to laugh at theories.' 'Sir,' said Carlyle, speaking for the first time during the dinner, 'the French nobility of a hundred years ago said they could afford to laugh at theories. Then came a man and wrote a book called the "Social Contract." The man was called Jean Jacques Rosseau, and his book was a theory, and nothing but a theory. The nobles could laugh at his theory; but their skins went to bind the second edition of his book.' "¹ Paul went forth with a few ideas. No hands had been laid upon him. No great institution stood behind him. He came from a despised race with the tidings of a leader that had been defeated and slain. With that message he faced the world of Roman power and Greek culture. But when, years later, the walls of that great empire crumbled and its armies melted away before the onset of the tribes of the north, the foundations laid by this poor traveling preacher withstood the shock and bore the new civilization that now reared its head. Every pulpit is a depot of dynamite. The Bible might well be marked, "Highly explosive; handle with care." The Church of the Prince of Peace is dealing with the mightiest forces known to man.

That force is needed to-day. The man who needs most to take the lesson to heart is the impatient reformer who leaves the Church to one side, that he may get at the real business of helping men. We are hunting short cuts to a new social age. We are slow to learn our lesson. The life of the world is not static, but dynamic. The progress of the world is not by laws and institutions. These are only the marks and monuments of the real forces, and without those forces they are of no avail. We are putting our hope to-day in laws and charters; but equal laws are of little value except as they register the spirit of the people. We must socialize the people as well as socialize our institutions. The new social day awaits the  work of the Church, the clear, strong note that shall arise above the clamor of party or the interest of section, that will speak of justice and brotherhood, and that will teach men the reverence for right that is learned at the throne of God.

What is true of society is true of the individual, and even more so. He, too, can not live by bread alone. I can understand how the man grows impatient when he sees little children in the mills, and homes that are shut out from light and air and food and beauty and pleasure which God meant for all His children to have. "The children want bread," he says, "and you are giving them a stone. Let us talk less about the heaven beyond and make a little more of heaven here on earth." There is truth in his words. Our first duty is to give people a fair chance at life. A fair wage is a necessary foundation for all social upbuilding. But why stop there.? That is only the foundation, and a foundation is here to be built upon. "Man shall not live by bread alone." It was not an ascetic that spoke that. It was one who had pity when men were hungry, and healed them when they were sick. But Jesus knew that there was hunger deeper than that for bread, and questions that reached beyond those of work and wage. Here are a hundred families of millionaires. The material question is all solved for them, but are there no longings, no needs.? Is there peace.'* Is there righteousness?

The glory of the Church is that she brings a message for these needs. Her voice has not always been clear; her vision has sometimes paled. The Church is human as well as divine. But the great words of God and right, of justice and love, of sin and pardon, of man's need and God's help, these men could always hear. And above all else she has brought to men the Christ. Nowhere else have men found the answer to these great questions. Elsewhere you may find now conscious ignorance, now hopeless pessimism, at most a great longing. Socrates says: "The oracle calls me the wisest of men, but not because I know. I differ from others only in this, that while none of us know, I alone knoT^' that I do not know." Omar Khayyam speaks for multitudes:

" 'Tis all a chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

     Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays." ²

And outside of such pessimism we have at most the religion of a longing as Tennyson has appeal-ingly put it:

"I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope.

     And gather dust and chaff, and call

     To what I feel is Lord of all.

And faintly trust the larger hope." ³

Over against all this the Church stands. It brings a great historic revelation. It comes not with man's longing, but with God's deed; not our cry to Heaven, but Heaven's word to us. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. It takes the common man and leads him into the presence of God. You are more than a cog in a great machine, it says. Cod is, and the world means good. Here is strength for your weakness; here is forgiveness for your sins; here is a life worth living in fellowship with God and in service of man, and here is hope for the life that lies beyond these days.

But, you say, are there not other voices that speak this message, and may we not read it in the Scriptures for ourselves.? Yes, there are other voices. But if you will look closely you will see that they have drawn from the message which the Church has handed do\\n. As for the Bible, that too is from the Church. There is not a single writing in the New Testament that did not come to life within the Church. Its Gospels were written directly for work of preaching and instruction within the Church, as Luke and John point out. The great Epistles were letters to Churches or to men within the Church. These writings were passed from hand to hand in the Church, and from one congregation to another. In the Church they were treasured and preserved. Here the first small collections were formed. Here the wheat was gathered slowly from the mass of grain and chaff that made up early Christian literature. Nor should we forget the patient copyists of the monasteries, the toilsome work which preserved for us every letter of this priceless heritage when so much else was whelmed in an age of semi-darkness. It was the Church that from the very first put these words into the speech of the common people. To-day she is doing this systematically for the nations of the earth in hundreds of languages and dialects. When a nation emerges from darkness, she is there to spread these writings and lay the foundations of the new life in these great principles. Last year she distributed over eleven millions of copies of the Bible, in whole or part, in the new Chinese Republic alone. No working faith is large enough for us that will let us take the truth with selfish hands into our little corner with no interest in the institution from which it came and through which it must reach the multitudes of our fellow-men.

The Church as Fellowship

The Church means a Fellowship, and claims its place as such in our working faith. I believe in the communion of the saints. Men sometimes feel that they have reached a higher stage when they can say: "I prefer to worship by myself and to think for myself. The formalism of the cathedral and the crudities of the meeting-house are no help to me." But that is an imperfect type of religion. The story of life as you go from lower to highest is the story of constantly closer relations, of deepening interdependence. The beast may walk alone, but no man liveth unto himself. The very man who withdraws into himself takes with him only what he has gotten from a great historic past, which he selfishly refuses to pass on. The finest souls have felt the inspiration that comes from fellowship as a real need of their life. They craved for it, alike that they might share and might receive. Christianity is essentially social. John the Baptist was a voice in the wilderness; Jesus gathered a company. There are pathetic suggestions of His longing for their fellowship. He takes them with Him when He goes to pray. "Ye are they," He says toward the end, "that have continued with Me in My temptations."⁴ At that closing supper He says, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you." ⁵ And in His last terrible struggle we hear Him again, "Could ye not watch one little hour with Me.?"⁶

No wonder that these same disciples gathered together again after His death. No wonder that others were joined to them. The first picture that we have of them tells us nothing about creed or form of organization. What we see is a faith and a fellowship. We feel the pull of that picture across the years. "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. And they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God."⁷ The fellowship was inseparable from the faith. These men must speak forth their faith, must pour out their love, and must win other men for that life. The heart of the Christian spirit is love, and love means fellowship, and that fellowship can no more be absent from our worship than from any other part. You might disband every Church to-morrow and tear down every place of worship, before a week was over the little companies and great would have begun to gather again.

What the fellowship means for the individual life needs hardly to be pointed out. There may be strong souls that can live alone. There are not many of them, and even these miss the highest through their solitude. Who can tell how large a part of life is atmosphere? The scientist, the artist, the reformer, the philosopher, these men are always seeking their own, establishing companies and conferences and associations. The Church affords such fellowship for men's highest life. Strong men find in such association their inspiration. The vision comes to Isaiah in the temple. The common man finds there example, sympathy, reproof, suggestion, that steady pull of social sentiment which is the most powerful influence that we know. The worst element in war is the moral deterioration that comes to the soldier, and the cause of that deterioration lies mainly here, that men have been torn away from those social groups of home and Church and community that made for them their moral and spiritual ideals. If the Church constantly holds up the highest with solemn and effective sanction, it saves men also from the lower. Every life has its times of moral sag. The fixed habit of Church attendance, like other good habits, to use a figure of Professor James, is a great flywheel that counteracts any unevenness of power, that carries us past the moments of weakness and the times of special moral strain. There is a deep suggestiveness in that simple note in the Gospels which speaks of Jesus: "And He entered, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day."⁸

Look at the meaning of this fellowship for our democracy. Democracy is not merely a matter of constitutional enactment; it is a spirit, and without that spirit our laws are of no avail. President Roosevelt pointed that out in one of his messages to Congress: "In the past the most direful among the influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever been the growth of the class spirit. If such a spirit grows up in this Republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us as it has proven fatal to every community in which it has become dominant."⁹ No one will deny that this tendency is present to-day. In the fear of God and the love of men the Church must counteract it. And that the Church is doing. Over against all spirit of class it sets forth the true democracy. It asks no questions as to wealth or standing of the men who come to its doors. Whatever may be true in single instances, taking the Church as a whole, there is no democracy like this in all the world. Without its doors distinctions reign. Within, men are led into the presence of that God before whom nothing counts but a pure and penitent heart, and who lifts up poor and rich alike to the privilege of sons of God. And then it adds to that great truth the passion of brotherly love and the deep conviction of the sacredness of all human life.

This fellowship means the perpetuation of the Christian faith. Christianity is a historical religion. That refers not simply to its origin, but to its embodiment. It has lived on not simply as ideal and enthusiasm, but in definite forms and institutions. And the comprehensive institution has been the Church. However imperfectly it has been done, here the great message has been preserved, here the life has been lived and passed on, and by it the word has been carried from land to land. The superior man who does not need the Church and passes it by is at heart the selfish man, or at least the shortsighted. What has he that has not been given to him? And what other source of his treasure can compare with the Christian Church? She has furnished the ideals and the moral power upon which that society rests which gives him his life. She has passed on the faith and the life which he has appropriated for himself. Now she calls upon him with right to share the task and serve his age and the ages yet to be, to help her do this work better than it has ever been done before.

One final aspect of this fellowship must be noted, and that is its comprehensiveness. There is an unmeasured inspiration in that thought. The fellowship to which the Christian Church presents a man is not alone the little company in village or city which worships together. It shows him the whole round world belted with prayer and praise, and tells him that he is a part of all of this. Here are the thronging worshipers of Korea lately emerged from paganism; here is the swift-growing host scattered all through the great Chinese Republic; here are the thatched chapels of the Philippines, the huts of Africa, and the great cathedrals of the ancient world. Nor is this all. The Church points him back through the ages, and bids him sing:

"For all the saints who from their labors rest.

Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,

Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest!

          Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" ¹⁰

And all the great heroes of the faith and all the unnamed multitudes of humble, loyal lives belong to that same fellowship, and all belong to Him.

"One family we dwell in Him,

     One Church above, beneath,

Though now divided by the stream.

     The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God,

     To His command we bow;

Part of His host have crossed the flood,

     And part are crossing now."¹¹

The Church and Worship

The Church means worship. Here, too, the Church meets little response from the spirit of our age. The Church says, Come apart and worship and meditate. The age replies, We are too busy to be idle, we must work and serve. Men may be earnest who speak this way, but they are shortsighted. Some of them are rather scornful because we call such worship a service. "To feed the hungry, that is service," they say; "to compass a reform or pass a just law; but to sit and sing and pray, where is the service in that.?" Now, that is not the sound conviction of common folks. The real marvel is not that so many stay away from church, but that week after week and year after year, in city and hamlet, in all lands and from all classes, in bare chapel and splendid cathedral, the worshipers gather together. The popular play boasts of its run of a hundred nights. The best seller holds its readers for a brief year. There must be some vital need that is met by an institution that can hold all kinds of men through all ages in this constant allegiance.

The first reason is found in the very nature of religion as social. Religion is not a matter of opinion to be gathered from books. It is a matter of life, and it spreads not from mind to mind, but from heart to heart. It is a kindling fire, not a cold logic. It needs fellowship in worship. Moreover, faith once gained is not a gift to be held by idle hands. It is the assertion of the invisible and the ideal and the heroic. The common experience of life is against it; the world of sight and sense that buffets us, the world of hard and selfish strife, in which we earn our bread, is not usually a

          "friend to grace,

To help us on to God."

Nor do the tides of our inner world set that way; selfishness and spiritual inertia are native to us. A virile, vital faith is an achievement that costs, and we need every influence that can help us to attain it. It is not enough for us once to have set up certain ideals. The heart must turn to them again and again. There is an element of time and meditation which the ideal demands. Only so does it become effective in our lives. The Church is a summons to such meditation.

And it brings us not only moral ideals, but the presence of God. Is He not everywhere.? you say. Yes, He is bound to no sacred place, but the limitations may be with us. Jesus knew men when He said, "Where two or three are gathered together." ¹² He was thinking not of a condition set by God, but of the nature of man. We have all had the same experience. We have gone to church at the end of a hard week's work, tired, depressed, inert, conscious of failure, with no spiritual aliveness, no spiritual desire. And then came the organ-strains, the reverent and expectant company, the opening words of invocation, the hymn of praise in which a thousand hearts voiced their desire and thanksgiving, and ere we knew it our own spirit had begun to kindle, and as we left we said. Surely God was in this place. Such worship is not a spiritual luxury. This spirit of reverence is the heart of all that is highest in us. It is not only the heart of religion, but the foundation of all order. When men cease to worship, then the reverence for all authority and all order in home and State begins to pass.

Let us still claim the name service for the public worship of the Church, and let us realize that it is not only service of God, but the highest service of man. Certainly it is service to feed men and clothe them, but the highest service, after all, is to lead them into the presence of God, to show them the meaning of life, to quicken ideals and kindle aspiration, to let them bow in humble confession, and then to let God Himself send them forth to a new life. Jesus was not mistaken in His order when He said first to the man who came for healing, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." ¹³ Nor was the early Church mistaken. We know with what pain they met for worship. Many were slaves. Their hard day's work left them no time except late at night or before the dawn. The days of persecution came, and such gatherings meant peril of life, so they hid away in catacombs or met outside the city walls. But they knew that the very life of the Church hinged upon such chance for worship. That early Church, that showed such marvelous spiritual power, that changed the ideals and life of an empire, shows us the worshiping congregation as its central fact from the very beginning.

The Church at Work

We do not know the real Church until we study the Church at Work. We might well stop here for a summary of our findings thus far. The fundamental fact for our working faith is the conviction of a living God who is in His world. His great deed and His great coming to men is in Jesus Christ. The Scriptures and the Church are monuments of His movement in the world. The Kingdom of God is His great end. But the Church is not only a monument, it is a means. It is not only a part of the Kingdom, it is a great instrument for the bringing in of that Kingdom. It is here that the Church has often erred. Men have identified the Kingdom with the Church, and men have made the Church an end instead of a means. Now, the Kingdom is greater than the Church, and the work of the Kingdom is far wider than the Church. Wherever the will of God is being done, there is the Kingdom. Wherever there is truth and love and righteousness, wherever men are seeking the higher life that is more than meat and drink, there is the Spirit of God and there is His Kingdom. Wherever business is being carried on justly and la\^s are being made in righteousness and men are being loved and served, there the Kingdom is being advanced in whatever name the work may be done.

The Kingdom is not the Church, but the glory of the Church is that it is the great instrument for advancing the Kingdom. That does not mean that all service is not sacred. It simply means that the Church serves at the point where service is highest and counts the most. Much of that service has already been suggested. The Church brings to men the vision of God and forgiveness of sin and fellowship with God. It gives them the ideal of life, and then supplies the power to achieve that ideal. And last of all it inspires them with the vision of the Kingdom and sends them out with the passion for service.

The Church of no other age has seen the task so clearly or been filled with such a spirit of service as to-day. It is learning that what Jesus said of the individual life is true of corporate Christianity, of the Church itself: "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall find it."¹⁴ It is facing the task of missions as never before, pouring the treasures of its wealth and the greater treasure of its choicest youth into the lands beyond. It has widened its bounds. It is turning its ministry toward all life. It claims to-day no power for itself over State and industry, but it is facing its obligation of service here and claiming these and all else for God and man. It is holding up its standards of justice and brotherhood and reverence for humanity, and trying to win for the weakest and the neediest the share of the heritage of earth.

How large that service is we can not realize in our land. So much of it in hospital and school and legislative hall is being done outside the visible Church. We do not realize how truly the Church has inspired this. Walk the streets of Pompeii and try to picture that ancient life. Here are market-place and temple, theater and public bath. But you will find trace of no hospital or asylum or school, no place whose doors were open to poor and helpless and suffering. The Church of the mission field faces exactly the same conditions today. And there, until the State becomes Christian in part at least, the Church must teach and heal and help as she did in these Western lands long ago. But here, as there, the work is as truly hers as if she controlled once more the agencies which she has inspired. Here is a harbor at low ebb, stretches of salt marsh, unsightly mud flats, scattered refuse. We watch the tide come in. It comes not only to the pier, where the proud vessels lie at anchor. It fills every cove, every little inlet. It lifts the great ocean liner, but it bears up tug and sail-boat and row-boat as well. The whole life of the harbor is lifted by the same great flood and at the same time. So the spirit of Christianity flowing through the Church lifts slowly but surely all the life of humankind.

The Coming Church

In all our working faith we are dealing with the dynamic, not the static; not with the finished and fixed, but with things that are in the making. It is so with the Church. We have seen what the meaning of the Church is. There is no question as to its permanent place. But how it shall fill that place is another matter. The Church that is to be is a matter of supreme concern for us. Many to-day are looking to the past for their ideal of the Church. They find there two marks which they crave for the Church of to-day: authority and unity. Once the Church held sway over all the life of men. With her rites and ministrations she compassed life from cradle to grave. Her voice was listened to in all affairs, and princes and kings heard from her the final word of authority. Today men pass her by, not merely in matters of business and State, but large numbers of them in affairs of faith and moral guidance as well. Once, they say, the Church was united. There was one body of Christ. To-day her place is taken by a multitude of separate companies, divided by forms and creeds and jealousies of the past, ofttimes warring together. And many are bewildered, while others are simply indifferent.

There is much truth in this, and yet a singular failure to discern the meaning of Christianity or read the lessons of history. The authority of the Church of the past, like its unity, was mainly external. The Church claimed the right to speak, and men had to bow*' in submission. That was not only in faith and conduct, but in matters of science and State as well. The arm of earthly power was used to enforce this authority when necessary. Faith was not a conviction of the soul, but a submission of the will. Its test was not surrender to God, but obedience to an institution. The Church alone was held sacred, life outside of it was profane. In the Church God moved and spoke, outside of it He was silent, absent.

Now, history does not move backwards. If that is what authority means, the Church has lost it forever. Faith means freedom for us, not servitude. Man has free access to God. And God has free access to man, too. He is bound to no channel of sacraments, to no lips of priest. We can not hedge off one part of the world and call it sacred. Religion is personal and ethical. Sacrament and institution do not make it. Where there are reverence and trust, where love and service are, there is religion. And all this tells us where the authority of the Church of to-morrow will be. Authority in religion can only be there where religion is itself. It is the life which gives the authority. The Church of to-morrow will have power with men just so far as it shall have the spirit of Jesus Christ. If it shall be loyal to the truth, filled with the spirit of reverence and love, ruled by a passion for justice and right and the service of men, then it shall be the Church of power, with such an authority as it has never had before.

And this will make the united Church of tomorrow for which we are all praying. For the unity, like the authority, must come from the nature of Christianity itself. No authority of pope or council can give it, no agreement as to organization or creed can bring it about. It must be the unity of an inner spirit, a common loyalty to Jesus Christ, a deeper devotion to the great task of serving men and bringing about His Kingdom.