world which the
love of God holds together--a world at least, though not yet a
family--one heaving mass of dissolution. But they labour in vain.
Through the mass and through it, that it may cohere, this way and that,
guided in dance inexplicable of prophetic harmony, move the children of
God, the lights of the world, the lovers of men, the fellow-workers with
God, the peace-makers--ever weaving, after a pattern devised by, and
known only to him who orders their ways, the web of the world's history.
But for them the world would have no history; it would vanish, a cloud
of windborne dust. As in his labour, so shall these share in the joy of
God, in the divine fruition of victorious endeavour. Blessed are the
peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God--_the_
children because they set the Father on the throne of the Family.

The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the peace-makers,
is, how to carry themselves toward the undoers of peace, the disuniters
of souls. Perhaps the most potent of these are not those powers of the
church visible who care for canon and dogma more than for truth, and for
the church more than for Christ; who take uniformity for unity; who
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, nor knowing what spirit they are
of; such men, I say, are perhaps neither the most active nor the most
potent force working for the disintegration of the body of Christ. I
imagine also that neither are the party-liars of politics the worst foes
to divine unity, ungenerous, and often knowingly false as they are to
their opponents, to whom they seem to have no desire to be honest and
fair. I think, rather, they must be the babbling liars of the social
circle, and the faithless brothers and unloving sisters of disunited
human families. But why inquire? Every self-assertion, every form of
self-seeking however small or poor, world-noble or grotesque, is a
separating and scattering force. And these forces are multitudinous,
these points of radial repulsion are innumerable, because of the
prevailing passion of mean souls to seem great, and feel important. If
such cannot hope to attract the attention of the great-little world, if
they cannot even become 'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,' they will,
in what sphere they may call their own, however small it be, try to make
a party for themselves; each, revolving on his or her own axis, will
attempt to self-centre a private whirlpool of human monads. To draw suc