that nice quality of self-respect, that fine temper of emotional sincerity. It is not nearly so difficult for us to persuade ourselves that we share in a sentiment which is in the air. Epidemics of spurious emotion and crazy sentimentalism are all too possible in the democratic state. And they are only destructive. They are the fevers of the body politic, infectious and deadly, leaving it limp and feeble and exhausted. The state-life, indeed, needs sentiment. It wants to be permeated through and through with a sentiment which is sincere and noble and permanent. In order that any life-the life of nation or of individual-may grow to self-mastery, it must have an ideal which can satisfy the heart and focus and inspire the highest energies. But such an ideal cannot be forced. It cannot be built up by mere verbal insistence, by the noisy rant of even well-intentioned reformers. The Fabian method is the only sure and certain one in building up a great national ideal. Patience sometimes seems, to hearts on fire for the reform of some crying injustice, an act of cowardice. But the patience which never gives way, which works and strives, which ever hopes, and knows no touch of despair, is the very condition of possessing one's soul. Enthusiasm, patience, faith,— these will gradually build up a true national ideal. But let me say it once more-such an ideal can never be forced.

And it is on the possession of such an ideal that the possibility of self-government depends—that self-government which is the true function of the democratic state, for which it has come into being and which it must live to effectuate. That is, in my mind, the real inspiration of the new political movements. They raise the state at once to the higher spiritual plane. They lay upon it the great business of ruling over its own spirit. They suggest new

vistas of government, in which the ideal will be no longer the rule of one part of the state, of one class by another, but the attempt of the state to discover its collective consciousness, to know its own mind. What seem so clearly to us the dangers in the way are quite real dangers. But they are the dangers incident to youth. They are the dangers which must be passed through and overcome before the full responsibility of manhood can be attained. In spite of all the crudities, the insincerities, the youthful vanities and foibles of the new democratic movement, the modern state is building up for itself an ideal, is marching steadily towards the self-mastery and self-possession in the power of which it will be able to work out its ideal. Nay, these crudities and foibles are themselves but the evidence that underneath the healthy life is working itself out and trying to discover a method of freely and adequately expressing itself. What that method of expression may be, what will be the new forms of government in the democratic state, I do not know, and I hardly care to know. They may be modifications of the present forms; they may be quite new and changed forms. At any rate, they will be the forms through which the new state-life can best express itself. They will be the forms of the self-government of a free people. For us the important question is not how the forms of government are changing, but how the consciousness which creates these forms is changing. Are we alive to the fact that democracy is nothing in itself if it does not lead us on to this great and difficult but inspiring work of self-government, just as the ardours of youth are nothing if they do not lead us on to the fruitful powers and activities of manhood? Are we alive to the fact that the state-life, the life of the whole nation, is for the first time in history emerging upon the plane of the

highest spiritual endeavour, where the watchwords will be not rights and self-assertion and sectional conflict, but duties and self-mastery, and the reconciliation and harmony of all sectional interests? If we are, we are reading the signs of the times aright.

THE CHRISTIAN SENSE OF

BEAUTY.1

BY THE

REV. W. C. GORDON LANG, M.A.,

Fellow and Dean of Divinity of Magdalen College, and Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford.

"Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name: bring an offering, and come before Him: worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."-I CHRON. xvi. 29.

THE subject of which we have to think this afternoon seems at first sight remote from the subjects of close practical interest which have hitherto engaged your attention. But in reality there is no subject on which it is of greater importance that those interested in the well-being of society should have some clear principle, and none in which it is more difficult to find such a principle, and to apply it. It comes before us in a hundred complicated, practical shapes. Ought picture-galleries to be open on Sundays? Is all good music in itself religious? Is this picture one which a Christian ought to admire, irrespective of its subject, merely for the sake of its form? Does the cleverness or the power of this drama cover its unsavoury morality? And so forth. These are questions which come before us daily. Modern life is so varied, so rapid, and so intense, that our senses are quickened; and in response to this quickening of the senses there is a constant

1 Taken from shorthand notes.

supply of new, and even surprising sensations, which fascinate and delight before we can summon any first principle for their criticism or control. The one thing needful, then, is to pause in the midst of this pressure, and endeavour to fix upon our minds some one guiding principle which shall regulate the Christian's sense of beauty. At present it is impossible to do more than suggest such a general principle; you must apply it to circumstances as they arise. The principle, then, which guides the Christian in the control of his sense of beauty is simply the Incarnation itself, the Word made flesh. This involves that the body with all its senses, which in different degrees crave the beautiful for their satisfaction, can be so consecrated as to be worthy of the indwelling of God; and that the senses at once can and ought to be as really as the spirit a way to God. If we follow this guiding principle, the quest of the beautiful through the senses becomes not merely a possible object of Christian endeavour, but one without which it is impossible to realize the fulness of that Godward life which was manifested in Christ. For God is the ultimate Source and Satisfaction of our capacity to seek and to know the Beautiful. When we see the rich colours of a sunset, or when we are thrilled by the sound of music, we are conscious at once of a sense of exquisite delight, and also of a strange yearning for something only hinted, not disclosed. It is difficult to know whether the sense of delight or the sense of yearning is the stronger. And the reason of this is, that beauty as we feel it is only partial; that it is at best but "the pledge" of some "beauty in its plenitude." It is something more than the mere passing pleasurable excitement of certain nerves; it is the momentary insight into a vaster beauty of which that which we feel is but a partial revelation. Now, this perfect beauty can be none other than God