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THE conflict between religious and political principles is one of the most remarkable phenomena of our time. When discord once appears in the sphere of religious and spiritual principles it is impossible to predict by what limits it will be confined, what elements it will involve, and whither will flow the stream of passions aroused by the clash of convice practic tions and beliefs. Where the religious convictions of a people are concerned, it is essential that the State shall establish its demands and regulations with especial caution to avoid such collision with their sentiments and spiritual necessities as would be resented by the masses. For, however powerful the State may be, its power is based alone upon identity of religious profession with the people; the faith of the people sustains it; when discord once appears to weaken this identity, its foundations are sapped, its power dissolves away. In spiritual sympathy with its rulers a people may bear many heavy burdens, may concede much, and surrender many of its privileges and rights. In one domain alone the State must not demand concession, or the people concede, and that is the domain where every believer, and all together, sink the foundations of their spiritual existence and bind them

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selves with eternity. There are depths in this domain to which the secular power dare not, and must not, descend, lest it strike at the roots of faith in each and all.

The prime cause of the misunderstandings which now exist, and which threaten to increase, between the people and its rulers is the artificial theory, popularly held, of the relations of Church to State. In the course of events in Western Europe-events indissolubly bound up with the development of the Roman Catholic Church-there originated and took root, as an element in political construction, the idea of the Church as a religious and political institution, with a power which, in opposition to the State, carried on with it a political conflict, the incidents of which crowd the pages of history in Western Europe. This conception of the political mission of the Church has driven into the background its simple, true, and natural conception as a congregation of Christians organically bound by identity of faith in divine alliance. Yet this innate conception lies concealed in the depths of the popular conscience, corresponding with the essential aspiration of the human soul—the aspiration to faith and identity of faith with others. In this sense the Church, as a community of believers, cannot and must not detach itself from the State, as a society united by a civil bond. Whatever perfection theories based on the separation of Church and State may attain in the minds of logicians, they do not satisfy the simple sentiments of the mass of believers. They may indeed content the political mind which sees in them the best of all possible compromises, and

a perfect construction of philosophic ideas; but in the depths of the soul which feels the living necessity of faith, and of unity of faith with life, these artificial theories are irreconcilable with truth. The spiritual life needs and seeks above all things spiritual unity; to this it aspires as the ideal of its existence, but when this ideal is realised in duality, it scorns to accept it and turns away. By its nature faith is uncompromising, and tolerates no accommodations in its ideals. It is true that the actual life of all and each of us is an uninterrupted history of failure and duality, a melancholy discord between thought and work, between faith and life; but in this ceaseless struggle the human soul is sustained by nothing so much as by faith in an ideal ultimate unity, a faith which it cherishes as the strongest sanctuary of existence. Reduce a believer to the recognition of this duality, he will be humiliated. Reveal to him that end of all duality to which his soul aspires,-he lifts his head, he feels his life renewed, and marches onward armed with faith. Tell him that life and faith are independent of one another, and his soul rejects the thought with the abhorrence with which it would reject the thought of ultimate annihilation.

It may be objected that this is a question of personal belief. But the faith of individuals can in no way be distinguished from the faith of the Church, for its essential need is community, and of this need it finds satisfaction only in the Church.

*****The struggle between Church and State in Western Europe has now endured for many years. The last word in this struggle has not yet been