he social purpose renders
Church unity a pressing task for the existing Christian communions. John
Bunyan's pilgrim could make his progress from the City of Destruction to
the New Jerusalem with a few like-minded companions; but a Christian
whose aim is the transformation of the City of Destruction into the City
of God needs the cooeperation of every fellow believer. Denominational
exclusiveness becomes intolerable to the Christian who finds a whole
world's redemption laid on his conscience.

(5) It demands a social reinterpretation of many of the Church's
doctrines, a reinterpretation which gives them richer meaning. The
vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ, for example, becomes intelligible
and kindling to those who have a social conscience and know something of
bearing the guilt of others; and the New Testament teaching of the Holy
Spirit is much more real and clear to those who have felt the social
spirit of our day lifting them out of themselves into the life of the
community, quickening their consciences and sympathies, and giving them
a sense of brotherhood with men and women very unlike themselves. Vinet
wrote a generation ago, "_L'Esprit Saint c'est Dieu social_."

We have by no means exhausted the list of quarries from which stones,
and stones already prepared for our purpose, can be and are taken for
the edifice of our Christian convictions. The life of men with Christ in
God preserves its continuity through the ages; it has to interpret
itself to every generation in new forms of thought. Under old monarchies
it was the custom on the accession of a sovereign to call in the coins
of his predecessor and remint them with the new king's effigy. The
silver and the gold remain, but the impress on them is different. The
reminting of our Christian convictions is a somewhat similar process:
the precious ore of the religious experience continues, but it bears the
stamp of the current ruling ideas in men's view of the world. But
lifeless metal, however valuable, cannot offer a parallel to the vital
experiences of the human spirit. The remolding of the forms of its
convictions does more than conserve the same quantity of experience; a
more commodious temple of thought enables the Spirit of faith to expand
the souls of men within. In theology by altering boundaries we often
gain territory. We not only make the map of our soul's life with God
clearer to ourselves, so that we live within its confines more
intelligently; we