idols. An idol is nothing. The meat is neither the better nor the worse for being offered before an idol. To treat it as though it were is to appear to give a reality to the idol.”

Now, St. Paul does not say, "Both parties are partly in the wrong. The truth lies between you. Don't be one-sided." He does not say, "Your dispute is all about nothing. The point at issue is altogether unimportant. There should be no division on the matter at all." He does not say, "You are both altogether on the wrong tack. Here is the true way to look at the matter." He takes a side. He starts by saying to one party, "On the point at issue you are altogether in the right. An idol is nothing at all. And meat offered before an idol is neither the better nor the worse." And then-does he turn to the other party in the dispute and say, "Why do you disturb the peace of the Church? Why do you set yourselves against a principle so obviously true?" Not a bit of it. He turns upon his own side and says, " You are guilty of the evils of party division. You are right? Certainly it is obvious enough. You know? As to knowing we all feel like that. We know that we all have knowledge.' You are perfectly convinced that you are right? Exactly. Knowledge puffeth up.' Your knowledge, your strong conviction, your unerring and correct judgment on the question of principle, is of no use, confers no practical benefit on the society to which you belong, unless it is inspired and used by charity. You with your knowledge have to play your part in the construction, in the building up, of a spiritual society. In this social construction being perfectly right is not the constructive force. In and by itself it is of no use; it issues only in your dwelling with complacency on your own unerring wisdom. There is only one constructive principle-the principle of love."

That is a little vague. Let us follow the guidance of St. Paul's treatment of religious partisanship and see what it means.

Does it mean, Don't let us have any parties? Sometimes you hear people say, "If we could only do without parties and all agree!" St. Paul's treatment of the matter does not point in the direction of an ideal state, which would pass an act of political uniformity, and have thirty-nine articles of political belief and no dissenters. Nor does St. Paul seem to say, "Why must you be ranged into parties? Why not let each man judge for himself, and take each question on its merits as it comes?" He lends no support to any such ideal of political atomism.

So far St. Paul's teaching harmonizes with our accepted political doctrine. Political parties come, we should say, from two main causes. There are at least two sides to any practical question, and what Burke called the great leading general principles in government, to which the consideration of any particular question will naturally be referred, lead the individual man to approach the particular question in the first instance from one side rather than the other. On the other hand, corporate action is stronger than individual action, and we are naturally led to associate ourselves with those on one side or the other with whom we are bound to find that we agree. Party is a body of men for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle upon which they are all agreed. A bureaucracy would eliminate partisanship in politics, but it would do so at the cost of a complete suppression of that individual liberty of opinion with which party allegiance is supposed to interfere. And individual self-interest, now educated and disciplined by party allegiance, that is, by subordination to the interest of common principles of public policy, would seek

the ends of individual self-interest alone. The existence of parties, bodies of divergent opinion, we need not deplore in politics any more than St. Paul did. in religion. They are to be used for the attainment and realization of an adequate political ideal; only charity is the force to use them.

Nor, again, does St. Paul's charity say to us, "There must be parties, it is true, but keep clear of them. See the good on both sides, but don't belong to either." Rather he seems to say, "Choose your side on a clear ground of principle, and declare yourself. Only," he adds, "remember it is not the clear grasp of principle that does the work of life. To begin with, you must be a partisan; but you must be more. 'Charity edifieth.' Charity is the practically con

structive principle."

There are two ways of picturing the aim, the ideal result, of party conflict. According to one ideal, what each party would aim at would be gradually to permeate the other-to pervade it, to include and comprehend it. Where political discussion is most fruitful, this is, in fact, the kind of result that comes about. According to the other ideal, each party should aim at neutralizing the efforts of the other, preventing them from accomplishing their ends. Religious divisions are sometimes said to neutralize in this way the efforts of religious activity, and it must be confessed that to this ideal political life seems sometimes to approximate. Charity in this sense is no more than a sympathetic endeavour to understand the mind of your opponent, and, while the opposition between you remains, to give effect to all that you can appreciate as practicable and true in his ideal. A very commonplace form of charity, no doubt, but a virtue not only of incalculable practical value, but of incalculable moral worth in the eyes of those who believe that God's work can only be done in God's way.

But charity " edifieth," is a constructive power, not only as the inspiration of practical effective work, but as the influence which forwards the interests of the truth. We look back with horror and wonder to the days when the principle of persecuting your religious opponents was recognized by the professors of nearly all religious creeds. Sometimes one is inclined to doubt whether the evil spirit of persecution, exorcised from the soul of the religious enthusiast, has not found for itself a home swept and garnished in the mind of the political partisan; whether he does not need to be reminded that you can't compel political orthodoxy, or suppress the element of truth which must surely lie concealed in the worst heresies of your political opponents. In politics no less than in religion, truth is the possession not of the individual but of the society, and of the individual only as a member of the society. If you recklessly disregard your neighbour's conviction, you not only fail to forward the interests of the conviction you profess; you insensibly dwarf your own mind and contract your own intellectual sympathies. The enlightened Corinthian who shared St. Paul's freedom from superstition as to meat offered to idols had an alternative of this kind before him. His opponent was rightly and conscientiously anxious to be free from any complicity with idolatrous worship. This loyal devotion was theoretically approved by the opposite party. But this theoretical approval might die down into a very shadowy kind of belief, if he declined to give practical effect to the sympathy he professed to feel; or it might be deepened into a strong practical conviction, influential in other spheres of Christian life— as, for instance, in inspiring a loyal adherence to that moral ideal of the gospel which made the Christian separate himself from the vices of the Gentile world, and saved him from being "unequally yoked together

with unbelievers." If we look back in political history, we may be able to say at any time since the Petitioners and Abhorrers of Charles II.'s time first gained the nicknames of Whig and Tory, that at such and such a juncture our sympathies would go with this party or with that. But we should generally be disposed to allow the truths for which I plead-that the party with which we should not sympathize had some truth to maintain, some danger to avert; that where from any cause the results of mutual sympathy and mutual appreciation were realized, there more good was done, less evil left to be undone; and that where any party behaved as if the differences of party were as the differences of light from darkness, justifying a kind of proscription of political principles, there some truth suppressed revenged itself with all the greater force on those who had presumed to pose as the masters, not the servants, of the truth. Take your side. Maintain its principles. Uphold your political ideal as you see it. But remember that you do not see all, and that your political ideal, as it really is, as you would see it now if your vision were wide enough, is not likely to be realized solely by the efforts of that section of the population who support your own party, and without any contributory share on the part of that nearly equal section of the population who are politically your opponents.

But, above all, charity "edifieth," charity is a constructive force in politics in the sense that the spirit of charity, as the spirit of practical sympathy and appreciation toward your opponents, and as the spirit of genuine political toleration towards your opponents' views, helps to build up in the mind and heart of the people whom politicians serve, the one commanding political ideal of a social life governed throughout by the principle of mutual help. Such