CHURCH AND STATE

'I

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 convictions 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 pagès 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