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the divine life unfolds its character in him, as the life of the vine unfolds its character in the branches and their fruit. The real freedom of man is the freedom wherewith Christ maketh free. Christianity, therefore, is necessary to the development and perfection of humanity, and the establishment of Christ's kingdom is essential to the development and perfection of human society.

Therefore, in every unchristianized condition, humanity must show its consciousness of incompleteness, and a yearning and striving, or at least a groping and fumbling, after the divine life and redemption which Christ alone brings. This is so marked in history as to give speciousness to the doctrine that Christianity is merely the more complete development of natural religion.

Christianity, therefore, is not only a power of spiritual regeneration to the individual, but, because it is so, is also the power which restores human nature to its completeness and society to its best condition. The transformation of human society into the kingdom of God creates the highest and best civilization.

This influence of Christianity in civilization makes it possible to realize a civilization which shall be permanent. Unchristian civilizations have either perished by their own corruption, or, as the Chinese, have become stationary, capable only, like Swift's Struldbrugs, of mumbling from generation to generation the ideas of a remote past. It is often said, as if it were an indisputable maxim, that states must have their youth, manhood, old age, and dissolution. Says a brilliant writer: "Each civilization rests on an idea or group of ideas. But these ideas are forms of thought, and thought by its own nature is constant change. Universal principles develop themselves to fresh and special results, and facts familiar or strange give rise to new general principles. Thus ideas change no less than outward relations; and a civilization which has grouped itself about an idea is but the shell of a germinant seed. The seed will germinate, and the shell must be broken and destroyed. The task of the his

torian, often a sad one, is to show how in each civilization lies the sentence of its own death."1

If, indeed, there are no unchanging principles, laws, and ideals, if principles themselves are but forms, changing with the changing exigencies of thought, then principles are as transitory as their outward manifestations; and a civilization which shall be permanent is in the nature of things impossible. But there are principles of truth, laws of character and action, and ideals of perfection which are unchanging and eternal. If these can be realized in civilization, there is no reason in the nature of things why the civilization should not be lasting.

Civilization in itself does not contain the elements necessary to perpetuity. If no supernatural influence comes down on humanity, we may expect that what has been will be, and that the principles of truth, justice, and love will never find complete expression in any civilization. But just this supernatural and redemptive agency comes into humanity through Christ. Christianity, therefore, has the word of promise inherent in it; it is no longer to be admitted that what always has been will be, but always the promise: "I will show you greater things." Christ makes effective in civilization the principles of truth, the law of love, the ideals of perfection which are unchanging and eternal. He consecrates all growth of physical and intellectual power, all discoveries and inventions, all philosophy and statesmanship, all poetry, painting, sculpture, and music, all thinking and acting, to God in the service of man for the realization of truth, love, and beauty in human life. Such a civilization has in it the elements of perpetuity. Such a state is not destined to decrepitude and death. There will still be new discoveries and inventions; the modes and fashions of life, customs, laws, and institutions may change; yet they are all but the exuberant outgrowth of the same life; the essential character and power of the civilization will abide unchanged. It is sometimes objected that if Jesus were at once so 1 Prof. C. C. Everett, Science of Thought, p. 44.

good and so great as Christianity represents, he would have revealed modern discoveries and inventions, and thus have spared mankind the dreariness of the dark ages, and given at once to the world the blessings of modern civilization. But by the very act of doing so he would have taught that these are the essentials to the redemption of the world and the highest well-being of man- that the Son of God came into the world to give to man "all the modern conveniences." Thus he would have intensified worldliness, and sanctioned a materialistic civilization. On the contrary, Christ asserted the pre-eminence of the spiritual, and brought into humanity that divine grace which in every civilization rouses man to the spiritual realities, relations, and possibilities of his being, and makes effectual those spiritual principles, laws, and ideals without which the most advanced civilization is selfish and self-destroying.

III. Christianity, by the Spiritual Forces which it introduces and makes effective, gradually creates a Christian Civilization.

It has been said that genius does not establish a school, but kindles an influence. The method of Christianity in Christianizing civilization is the same. It kindles an influence which creates the new beneath the old, and so pushes the old off. Its method is not the mechanical change of organization, but the inward process of life. Christ and the apostles made no direct assault on the existing forms of government, nor on slavery. But they taught principles, and required of individuals a life of faith and love, which, as they prevailed in society, would necessarily overthrow those institutions. By this leavening action, by this development of life, Christianity gradually removed the ancient Roman slavery; afterwards removed the mediaeval or feudal serfdom; and now is causing negro slavery to pass away.

IV. The Progress of Christ's Kingdom in Successive Ages will be modified by the Existing Civilization.

The truths of Christianity and the redeeming grace of

God are always the same. But they must work in and through humanity, and the results by which they declare themselves must be realized in and through humanity. Therefore the manifestations of the effects of God's grace acting in any age or nation, the forms in which Christian truth and life appear, the opinions, customs, laws, and institutions in which they embody themselves, must be determined by the existing condition of society and state of civilization. The type is the same, but its forms of manifestation vary; as the vertebrate type is the same through successive geological eras, but its forms diversified. We need not be surprised, therefore, if in the progress of Christianity, as of animal life, the type should appear in defective or even seemingly monstrous forms, or should be found in temporary alliance with weakness, error, or wrong.

1. Christianity, being the religion for all time, and the power that is to act through all ages in renovating and perfecting society through redemption, necessarily has meanings and applications which can be disclosed only by the progress. of Christ's kingdom through the ages.

An objection is urged against the Bible that the advance of science and civilization necessitates new interpretations and evokes new meanings. But this must be so, if it is the revelation of God. Christ compares his words to seeds; they are germinating words. We must see more in them when grown than we saw in them as seeds. The acorn contains the oak; but we cannot understand what the acorn contains until we see the oak. The oak is the only adequate exposition of the acorn; and it takes as long to make the exposition as it takes the oak to grow. The kingdom of God, as it grows silently through the ages, is the only adequate exposition of Christ's germinating words. Its growth necessitates new interpretations, and reveals new meanings. From the nature of things, so long as humanity is imperfect, and civilization imperfectly Christian, there must be an inadequate apprehension of the meaning and application of Christian truth; and so long as Christ's kingdom is ad

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vancing, new meanings and applications of the truth must be disclosed.

Therefore the significance of Christian grace and truth in its application to society cannot be immediately understood. No uninspired thinker of the apostolical churches could have delineated the peculiarities of civilization which Christianity has already produced. Such a civilization, even if described to him, would have been comparatively unintelligible. It was only by the actual experience of Christian life and the actual conflict with the kingdom of darkness that the full significance of the principles hidden in the gospel, the varied applications which they require, and the consequent changes in the social condition, could be learned. Living in a civilization saturated with the vices of heathenism, the Christian must soon have become aware of a sharp antagonism to the world, and to its opinions, laws, and institutions. Thus, at the very outset, we find the apostles before the council exclaiming: "We ought to obey God rather than men "a declaration containing the principles of individual rights, and liberty of conscience, and the supremacy of God's law above man's, which are the seed-thoughts of modern political progress. At every step the Christian was thus applying Christian truth and gaining the knowledge of its far-reaching and profound significance. And only by the progress of the church through the ages, the actual experience of the Christian life in removing the old and creating the new, could its meaning and application be discovered.

2. Man is prepared to appreciate and receive new meanings and applications of Christianity only when, in the progress of Christ's kingdom, the exigency to which they are pertinent has arisen, and man has been brought, in the providence of God, to a position in which he can see their necessity and value, and has been educated to a capacity to appreciate them. No age can appreciate new meanings and applications of truth, however clearly declared, much in advance of that stage of culture which, under God's education of the race, it has already attained. The first prophets of a coming

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