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fellowship, and to maintain an unceasing conflict against evil;
and they see that the war is due to causes which are in absolute
opposition to these great ideals. And there is much more reason
for such disappointment. But where should we seek for the
cause of this failure? Is it not that the Church has to so large
an extent lost sight of her own principles? If so, then it is
no matter for surprise that the world has not been much
impressed by them. *‘ If the salt have lost its savour, wherewith
shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be
cast out and trodden under foot of men.”
Had we forgotten that to be a Christian means to follow Him
Who said: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if
itis already kindled ? ” Had we forgotten the great demands He
makes and the hard conditions He attaches to discipleship ?
““ If any man cometh after Me, and hateth not his own father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
‘When the promised power came from on high to the Church,
it was not ‘in semblance of a dove,” but as a rushing, mighty
wind, and in tongues of fire. It was that fire that burned in
S. Paul and in many another disciple, and drove them over land
and sea, from city to city, bearing the Gospel of Christ.
Where is the fire of the Church to-day? Had it burned so
low that it must needs be rekindled by the fierce tribulation of
these dreadful days? If our efforts for reconstruction are to be
a building up of the gold that endures, not of hay and stubble,
we need to be stirred out of our complacency, and approach our
task in the spirit of penitence—to face boldly our failures in the
past, and go forward with renewed courage for the future.
Hence I trust that I shall be forgiven if any words of mine
seem harsh, or spoken without due consideration. In the
brief time at my disposal I can do no more than touch
upon a few points, and tentatively put before you a few
suggestions. I am fully conscious how very defective is any
attempt I can make to deal with so great a subject. I must also
ask that it should be borne in mind that in what I am about to
say I am thinking, not of the Church as a whole, but only of that
hranch of the Church which I know best.
How then have the four great principles of which I have
spoken been carried out in our modern Church life? How may
we carry them out in the future ?
(a) Other-worldliness.—Can we imagine someone altogether
ignorant of the character of our Christian Faith coming amongst
us for the first time, and seeking to learn from what he could
observe of the everyday life of the Church what are the things
to which she attaches the most importance? Would he gather
from the lives of most Christian men and women that they
belong to a spiritual realm, in which another scale of values