that rational self-assertiveness could be the only principle at work in the social development of mankind. Some rejoiced and others lamented that religion, and especially the Christian religion, had received its coup de grâce. But Darwin himself was very cautious in adding philosophical or religious corollaries to his own purely biological conclusions. He viewed with alarm the assumptions whereby his theories were carried over into the social sphere, and wrote to a too ardent disciple, 'Your boldness sometimes makes me tremble.' His fears would have been fully realised had he lived till 1914. It was Nietzsche who carried this philosophy of pure materialism to its logical conclusion in a scheme of ethics based on the survival of the fittest. Christianity was a 'slave religion'; Christian morality was a disease to be ruthlessly stamped out. This philosophy bore its fruit in the 'frightfulness' of the late war.

Ever since the persecution of Galileo the Churches have committed themselves to a losing battle, time after time, in attempting to combat the findings of science in her own territory. For pure science must abstract from her purview all moral principles; she is simply not concerned with them. But against the false assumptions of science to carry her conclusions into the field of religion or morality the Church must wage unceasing warfare; and this not merely for her own sake, but for the sake of humanity. It has not always been recognised that the laws that govern the evolution of species do not necessarily apply to the consequent social development of mankind. Indeed, the author of Social Evolution recognises a disintegrating and destructive principle in the mere self-assertiveness of the individual or of the nation, and finds that religion (and particularly the Christian religion) has always been the integrating and progressive principle in human life. Competition and selection are still laws of progress. The battle must go to the strongest; the fittest must survive. But in the social evolution of mankind new elements of strength have emerged, and a new definition of the fittest' has become necessary. It has been said that man is incurably religious'; and it is a fact that there has been no race without religious beliefs of some sort, however primitive, while the sanctions of religion have always been necessary to the development of human society. Even the Taboo exercised some sort of restraint upon the destructive power of self-interest, and gave a sanction and reinforcement to those altruistic instincts which make for goodwill and cooperation. Christianity in particular has always made an irresistible appeal to those fundamental spiritual instincts of man to which it supremely corresponds.' There is a Christ within us that responds instinctively to the Christ without. We may argue to our complete intellectual satisfaction that self

interest' is, ought to be, and must be,' the mainspring of human action, and yet there is that within us which recognises and aspires to higher values than these and compels us, in spite of our own apparent interests, and sometimes even in spite of our reason, to value an act of self-sacrifice more highly than an astute stroke of business. With the rational Greeks, we may call the Cross 'foolishness,' and yet we instinctively recognise it as an act of Divine folly, and the positive results which it produced upon the world have proved that here, at any rate,' the foolishness of God was wiser than men.' The Church, in commending the message of religion, has been content to trust too much to the obsolete weapon of external authority. She has not taken the trouble to present the religion of Christ in a form intelligible at the present day. She has not been at pains to free the living faith from the grave-clothes of pre-Copernican theology and mediæval superstition, or from the fetters of obsolete formula. She has too often failed to realise that her old armoury of an infallible book or an infallible Church is obsolete and must be scrapped. The Take it or leave it' attitude has been tried and has failed. For the spirit of the age-for good or ill-is to challenge all axioms, however firmly established, to make experience the only criterion. The question is not 'Is it orthodox?' but 'Is it alive?' It is largely because the Church refuses to recognise this change of attitude that she is out of touch with human interests and fails to capture those who would be her most valuable allies, and without whom she cannot present a solid front to the materialism of to-day. There is plenty of the spirit of adventure and selfsacrifice alive in the world. But it remains outside the ranks of organised religion, because the Churches' presentation of Christ and His message is one that neither satisfies the needs nor kindles the enthusiasm of thoughtful men and women.

A review of the building up of Western civilisation shows that other considerations than those of rational self-interest have continually been present and have been responsible for most of its social and political developments in the past. It was the Christian religion that kept the lamp of civilisation alight in the Dark Ages, that was responsible for the ideals of chivalry, the emancipation of women, the spread of education, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of hospitals, and for almost every kind of social reform. It may be objected that all these would have come about in any case as self-interest became more enlightened; but was it not definite Christian ideals of service rather than enlightened self-interest that inspired a Wilberforce or a Shaftesbury or a Howard? Their battles were fought on purely moral issues, and so quickened the pulse of public opinion that their reforms were carried out in the very teeth of vested interests.

Indeed, some saw in them merely an inconvenient dislocation of trade and economics.

It has been said that the Reformation liberated into the practical life of the people affected by it that immense body of altruistic feeling which has been, from the beginning, the distinctive social product of religion, the willingness to sacrifice individual welfare in favour of others.' It was that 'deepening and softening' influence exercised upon the nation that has made the ruling classes increasingly ready to alleviate the injustices and disabilities of the masses, though it was often against material interest to do so. This readiness to make concessions has surely been the reason why the inevitable social development has proceeded in this country along regular and constitutional lines. In France, where the influence of the Reformation was less widely felt, it needed the bloody upheaval of the Revolution. More recently, in the case of Russia, the forces that underlie social evolution found an equally volcanic escape in the Bolshevist débâcle.

It is directly from this inherited Christian atmosphere that we derive our ideals of sportsmanship, love of fair play, high sense of duty, generosity to a fallen foe, sensitiveness to the wrongs and injustices of others. It is largely to this spirit that we owe our success as a colonising Power. We cannot deny that there have been occasions when our own country took part in the mad race for the 'glittering prizes' of the rich places of the earth; but, on the whole, moral principles of responsibility to the inferior races, and not merely the desire to exploit them to our own material advantage, have characterised British government all over the world. It was owing to our generous treatment of the Boers after the South African war, condemned at the time as a piece of ill-judged idealism, that we could rely on their loyalty in the greater war. Our commercial success, too, is not so much due to any natural business acumen as to our reputation for honesty, our (once) sound and conscientious workmanship, and to the fact that an Englishman's word is still accepted as his bond, into whatever country his business takes him. Christ's words, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you,' have received a remarkable fulfilment in the history of nations. It is a fact proved by experience that, when a nation puts moral principles in the forefront of her policy, all these things'-prestige, national well-being, and even material progress -inevitably follow. Lecky, speaking of the prosperity of nations, has said:

Its foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit, in simple habits, in courage, uprightness, and a certain soundness and moderation of judgment

which springs quite as much from character as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom, in private life and irrespective of party, competent judges speak with genuine respect? Are they of sincere convictions, consistent lives, indisputable integrity? . . . It is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the horoscope of a nation.

When Christ boldly applied to Himself the Old Testament quotation, 'The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner,' He was projecting a truth which applies no less faithfully to State than it does to Church. The verdict of history has shown that it is on the foundation of Christian principles rather than of expediency that a nation builds up its life most securely. And the converse is true of nations as well as of individuals that on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.' The havoc of the war, the present impasse, the failure of diplomacy based on expediency, the breakdown of our economic system, are a measure of the nations' rejection of Christ.

But there are grounds for hope in the future. The nobler instincts are not yet atrophied, and there is hope while there remain seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of self-interest. National reconstruction on a spiritual basis is still possible, and in recent times the remarkable utterance made by some of the leaders of the Empire shows that Christian ideals are still at work. In a declaration made soon after the war the Prime Ministers of four of the self-governing Dominions wrote:

Neither science, education, diplomacy nor commercial prosperity, when allied with a belief in a material force as the ultimate power, are real foundations for the ordered development of the world's life. These things are, in themselves, simply the tools of the spirit that handles them. The hope of a life of peace depends upon something deeper and more fundamental, viz., on the spirit of goodwill, and that spirit of goodwill itself rests on spiritual forces. . . . The hope of a brotherhood of humanity reposes on the deeper spiritual fact of the Fatherhood of God. . . . Seeking for the ultimate foundation on which to reconstruct an ordered life for all men, we shall find it only in that Fatherhood and in the Divine purpose for the world which is central to the message of Christianity.

This recognition in high places of religious principles is re-echoed in the mandatory clauses of the Versailles Treaty (rare oasis in a particularly arid desert!), which pledge the signatories to a guarantee that there shall be applied to the people of those colonies and territories which are not able to stand by themselves in the strenuous conditions of modern life the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples

form a sacred trust to civilisation.'
Powers will derive no benefit from such trusteeship.'

Or again, The mandatory

In the struggle for the highest spiritual and social interests of humanity there are two influences at work without whose co-operation the ideal of turning old worlds into new will never be realised. The one is the influence of women, the other education. In present-day education there are too many purely utilitarian tendencies at work. This, if ever, is the day of specialism and the specialist. Specialism in what? In knowledge that will make for commercial success. The presence of everything in the curriculum which has not that as its ultimate aim and end is resented by the parent who has a watchful, but really improvident, eye on the future. 'I want my son to be a richer man than his father,' he says. 'I want him to learn business methods now. Religion, poetry, music, the classics, citizenship? Yes, a smattering; but Religion and Art, in all their manifestations, are only a luxury and do not ensure an income.' And so another and another are trained to take their place in the scramble for prosperity; while education, too long confused with instruction, is left outside the door. The rigid formalism and barren processes of the old systems of education have already begun to disappear. But as long as self-advancement is postulated as the be-all and the end-all of school training, so long will the country be kept waiting for a cultured and spiritualised generation. Culture, 'the acquainting of ourselves with all the best that has been known or said,' is a word for which a wholly businesslike and hustling world has little use; indeed, it has hardly yet shaken off the barbarous significance with which it was invested during the war. If, indeed, the hope of reconstruction lies with the children, what infinite possibilities are ours! What, for example, might not be accomplished if a tithe of the vast sums that the country expends on its buildings, its armies, its aeroplanes, its elections, its pensions and its doles were devoted to the cause of real education; if the whole business of training the men and women of the future were put into the hands of an army of idealist and enthusiastic teachers who would spiritualise education, awaken the love of truth and beauty, teach citizenship, the value of co-operation, the virtue of tolerance, the spirit of real democracy?

Almost as large a responsibility rests upon the women as upon the teachers. There is a Divine economy in the difference of the sexes. The self-sacrificing instincts, more prominent in the woman, should exercise a counter-influence upon the natural self-assertiveness of the male. She has always been the accepted mediator of religion to man. To-day her emancipation is complete. Her influence has spread beyond the home. She has taken her place in the business world on an equal footing with