about the honour of his home, he endeavours to promote its welfare, he will sink himself in its interest. Towards the State he is lukewarm and neutral. He does not concern himself about its affairs or its character unless his own welfare is involved. He is not proud of its glory unless he obtains some direct prosperity for himself. The State does not represent to him anything more inspiring than the police or sanitation. It is simply an administration of convenience. No doubt his imagination may catch fire when the State assumes an imperial form, but even then his allegiance is very utilitarian. When the State assumes a municipal form, it does not seem to some of us that the average citizen has ever come within a thousand miles of believing that the government of a city is a divine ordinance, or that the local state is the nurse of character, and a sphere where citizens can rise to their stature of moral perfection.

Higher ideas of the State would also do much to raise the character of its servants. Were it believed that the servants of the State are ministers of God, then they would be as carefully chosen as the officers of the Church, and they would feel as

great a responsibility for the discharge of their duties. It may be necessary that politics in our country should be conducted along party lines, but it is nothing less than a sin that any party should be put into competition with the State, and that an advantage to a party should be snatched to the detriment of the State. Men who do such things are traitors to the commonwealth and should be marked for condemnation. The public servant should be indifferent to his own interest, and to the interest. of any section of the people. His eye should be ever on the general good, and his devotion be to the nation. When such a man arises, no empty gabbler nor foolish trifler, no self-opinionative crank nor greedy schemer, but a man whose words are wise and whose work is thorough, who loves the people and seeks their highest good, let that man be honoured and promoted. For such men are the servants of the Highest, and by their work the State becomes the Kingdom of God.

I'

XXI

IMPERIAL PATRIOTISM

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."--Ps. cxxxvii. 5, 6.

T has been urged that while our faith revived virtues which were languishing unto death under the former civilization, and called into existence others hitherto unknown, Christianity has been a cruel stepmother to one of the noblest qualities of Paganism. Chastity and pity have come to their full height under the inspiration of Christ, humility and self-sacrifice have been vindicated by His example; but patriotism has starved. One anticipates the evidence for this criticism. Jesus' own aloofness from the burning questions of His day, the cosmopolitan spirit of His chief apostle, the comprehensive charter of the new kingdom, the trend of the Sermon on the Mount, with its enforcement of meekness

and patience, and the spiritual aims of our religion, have all seemed inconsistent with that ancient devotion, without scruple and without reserve, to the cause of one's country. This suspicion has been fed by the attitude of the largest Christian community, which maintains itself as a separate kingdom in every State, and whose members give precedence to its ecclesiastical ruler before the sovereign of their country. And also by an extreme school of Protestants whose superior and ultra-refined spirituality does not allow its disciples to take part in spiritual affairs. Pronounced Christians, it is supposed, ought to be like those large-minded people who are so much concerned with their neighbours' affairs that they are indifferent to their own homes, and are so entirely citizens of the world that they are citizens of no place in particular. One is haunted with the feeling that in proportion as people become spiritual they cease to be national, and the more they think of the world which is to come, the less they are concerned about the welfare of the world which is, and especially about that portion which God has given them for a habitation. The

charge of lukewarmness towards the State has not been made without some reason, and every disciple of Jesus ought to settle with his conscience the duty of patriotism.

For one

Certainly it may be frankly admitted that if Christianity impoverishes this high virtue which has existed from the dawn of nations, and which lent an austere glory to the Pagan communities, our religion has come short of perfection. thing it would throw two of our most powerful instincts into bitter conflict-our loyalty to the body of Christ into which we have been baptized, and our loyalty to the community into which we have been born. Can there be a more bitter calamity in the sphere of conscience than when an honest man has to choose between his Christianity and his citizenship. It is an intolerable dilemma because it is an artificial situation. What is the Church in any country but the nation acting in a religious capacity? And what is the State but the nation acting in a civil capacity. Many noble minds indeed have imagined an ideal condition of affairs, when there shall be no longer a limited body of religious people in a land-the remnant of the Hebrew prophet;