men who have the following objects at
heart:--

(i) To claim for the Christian Law the ultimate authority to rule
social practice.

(ii) To study in common how to apply the moral truths and
principles of Christianity to the social and economic difficulties
of the present time.

(iii) To present CHRIST in practical life as the Living Master and
King, the enemy of wrong and selfishness, the power of
righteousness and love."

The Christian Social Union, originating with some Oxford men in London,
was soon reinforced from Cambridge, which had fallen under the inspiring
though impalpable influence of Westcott's teaching. Westcott was, in
some sense, the continuator of Mauricianism; and so, when Westcott
joined the Union, the two streams, of Mauricianism and of the Oxford
Movement, fused. Let Dr. Holland, with whom the work began, tell the
rest of the story--"We founded the C. S. U. under Westcott's
presidentship, leaving to the Guild of St. Matthew their old work of
justifying God to the People, while we devoted ourselves to converting
and impregnating the solid, stolid, flock of our own church folk within
the fold.... We had our work cut out for us in dislodging the horrible
cast-iron formulae, which were indeed wholly obsolete, but which seemed
for that very reason to take tighter possession of their last refuge in
the bulk of the Church's laity."

"Let no man think that sudden in a minute
All is accomplished and the work is done;--
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it,
Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun."[60]

The spirit which created the Christian Social Union found, in the same
year, an unexpected outlet in the secular sphere. In the Session of
1888, the Conservative Ministry, noting the general disgust which had
been aroused by the corrupt misgovernment of Greater London, passed the
"Local Government Act," which, among other provisions, made London into
a County, gave it a "County Council," and endowed that Council with
far-reaching powers. To social reformers this was a tremendous event.
For forty years they had been labouring to procure something of the
sort, and now it dropped down from the skies, and seemed at first almost
too good to be true. Under the shock of the surprise, London suddenly
awoke to the consciousness of a corporate life. On every side men were
stirred by an honest impulse to give the experimen