, and might take more seriously did, we
realize them as the impulsions of holy and creative Spirit pressing us
towards novelty, giving us our chance; our small actualization of the
universal tendency to the Divine. As it is, we do feel a little
uncomfortable when these stirrings reach us; but commonly console
ourselves with the thought that their realization is at present outside
the sphere of practical politics. Yet the obligation of response to
those stirrings is laid on all who feel them; and unless some will first
make this venture of faith, our possible future will never be achieved.
Christ was born among those who _expected_ the Kingdom of God. The
favouring atmosphere of His childhood is suggested by these words. It is
our business to prepare, so far as we may, a favourable atmosphere and
environment for the children who will make the future: and this
environment is not anything mysterious, it is simply ourselves. The men
and women who are now coming to maturity, still supple to experience and
capable of enthusiastic and disinterested choice--that is, of surrender
in the noblest sense--will have great opportunities of influencing those
who are younger than themselves. The torch is being offered to them; and
it is of vital importance to the unborn future that they should grasp
and hand it on, without worrying about whether their fingers are going
to be burnt. If they do grasp it, they may prove to be the bringers in
of a new world, a fresh and vigorous social order, which is based upon
true values, controlled by a spiritual conception of life; a world in
which this factor is as freely acknowledged by all normal persons, as is
the movement of the earth round the sun.

I do not speak here of fantastic dreams about Utopias, or of the
coloured pictures of the apocalyptic imagination; but of a concrete
genuine possibility, at which clear-sighted persons have hinted again
and again. Consider our racial past. Look at the Piltdown skull:
reconstruct the person or creature whose brain that skull contained, and
actualize the directions in which his imperious instincts, his vaguely
conscious will and desire, were pressing into life. They too were
expressions of Creative Spirit; and there is perfect continuity between
his vital impulse and our own. Now, consider one of the better
achievements of civilization; say the life of a University, with its
devotion to disinterested learning, its conservation of old beauty and
quest of