le to judge whether this is now a Christian world. The test is
not beliefs or opinions regarding the Founder of Christianity (for
trifles such as that men used cheerfully to burn their fellows
aforetime, thinking they were doing God service); to find the true test
we must go back to the only test known to those who knew Christ. What
was their test? It was this--'If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of His.' That spirit was love enduring even the
Cross--love emptying itself that it might serve. Now, apply that test
to our social organisation to-day. In the one city you find in one
street mansions such as a Roman emperor could only desire in vain; and
a few yards away a street of crowded closes and airless dugouts and
fetid tenements where little children perish. Herod slaughtered a
score of babies and the centuries pour the vials of infamy upon him.
But this holocaust goes on, year in year out, ceaselessly. Yet the
dwellers in the terraces tolerate that. The causes that produce slums
and keep slums full are manifest. Yet they will not rouse themselves
to remove them. Is that being a Christian? We assemble in church and
recite, "I believe in God the Father," and every fact of the faith we
profess condemns our callous indifference. If we realised that God is
the Father of these babes, we would die to save them; yet we leave them
a prey to vested interests. Is that toleration of evil compatible with
Christianity?'

'You forget,' I objected, 'the law of environment. No man can live
ahead of his own time--at least only the great can--and we are waking
up to social duty as never before.'

'Waking up!' he exclaimed; 'we are going to sleep. A Christian should
never need to waken up to facts like that. He would have them as a
burden ever on his heart until they were for ever banished. He would
be constantly hearing the voice of Him who said of little ones like
these that it was better for those who did them wrong that a millstone
were hanged round their necks and that they were cast into the midst of
the sea.... If only we were Christians, endued with Christ's spirit of
love, we would make an end of that at once.... We are only
semi-pagans.'

II

'It isn't merely what you see outside,' went on the little man,
polishing his shining poll, 'but look inside the churches
themselves--any one of the hundreds in this city--and what do you find?
You find the house of God given over to an unholy m