been able
to love God because he has never been able to love his neighbour. It is
in the foremost nations of the world, not in the most backward, in the
most Christian nations, not the most pagan, that we find unintelligent
conditions of industrialism which lead to social disorder, and a vulgar
disposition to self-assertion which makes for war. History and Homicide,
it has been said, are indistinguishable terms. "Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains."

This striking impotence of the human race to arrive at anything in the
nature of a coherent world-order, this bewildering incapacity of
individual man to live in love and charity with his neighbour, justifies
the presumption that divine help, if ever given, that an Incarnation of
the Divine Will, if ever vouchsafed, must surely have had for its chief
mercy the teaching of a science of life--a way of existence which would
bring the feet of unhappy man out of chaos, and finally make it possible
for the human race to live intelligently, and so, beautifully.

Now if this indeed were the purpose of the Incarnation, we may be
pardoned for thinking that the Church, which has been the cause of so
much tyranny and bloodshed in the past, and which even now so willingly
lends itself to bitter animosities and warlike controversies, has
missed the whole secret of its first and greatest dogma[2].

[Footnote 2: I asked a certain Dean the other day whether the old
controversy between High Church and Low Church still obtained in his
diocese. "Oh, dear, no!" he replied; "High and Low are now united to
fight Modernists."]

Therefore in studying the modern mind of Christianity, persuaded that
its mission is to teach mankind a lesson of quite sublime importance, we
may possibly arrive in our conclusion at a unifying principle which will
at least help the Church to turn its moral earnestness, its manifold
self-sacrifice, and its great but conflicting energies, in this one
direction which is its own supremest end, namely, the interpretation of
human life in terms of spiritual reality.

To those who distrust reason and hold fast rather fearfully to the
moorings of tradition, I would venture to say, first, that perilous
times are most perilous to error, and, secondly, in the words of Dr.
Kirsopp Lake, "After all, Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but
life in scorn of consequence--a courageous trust in the great purpose of
all things and pressing forward to finish the wor