ligent apprehension of God is less likely to grow than even amidst the confusion of rival creeds.

True theology does not teach that liberty, in the sense of license, is to be worshipped as an end, or that it is a good thing for men to indulge every fancy or conceit of opinion that may suggest itself, or that guidance and restraint may not be helpful in fostering the tenderest affections. It leaves room for various judgments as to what the civil power should do or not do in the aim of helping truth against error. Its own business is to testify that under all circumstances what God desires is, that men should come near to him in filial knowledge and love. And that respect for honest opinion, which is the best motive for leaving opinion free, assists theology in keeping faithful to this testimony.

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2. A similar misrepresentation of the mind of God is in process being corrected by the steady advance of Democracy. This movement also received a prodigious impulse from the French Revolution; but the democratic tendency is one of older date and more continuous progress in this country and its offshoots. It has never perhaps been in alliance with theology, but the early incidents of the French Revolution attached to it the reputation of being expressly irreligious and anti-Christian. Religious teaching, from episcopal charges down to the lessons of the Sunday-school, was for a long time, as most of us can remember, in the habit of assuming that true religion was identified with government by the upper classes. The Dissenting bodies, it is true, combined religion to a considerable extent with democratic politics, and their religion was prevented from speaking so conservative a language; but the democratic politics entered into the combination from the secular side, and the Nonconformist advocates of popular rights were generally content with maintaining that there was no necessary incompatibility between the love of freedom in this world and the care of the soul for the next.

It is not easy without a good deal of discrimination to fix the relations of Christianity, in its Catholic and its Protestant forms respectively, to the democratic movement. On the one hand, it has always been the glory of Catholicism to vindicate the claims of the weaker classes to sympathy and help, and this principle has borne most important social fruit. On the other hand, Protestantism, with its traditions of independence and rebellion, has nourished a stubborn spirit of resistance to oppression, by the help of which many of the victories of democracy have been achieved. But we may safely say that neither from Catholic nor from Protestant theology could we extract any formal witness in favour of the acquisition of political power by the humbler and more numerous classes.

In this country an aristocratic system of society came down from

the middle ages. The medieval Church did much, it is universally acknowledged, to protect the poor and to elevate their condition. But as society was Christian in those days, Christianity was naturally identified with the existing order. The governing classes honoured the Church, and the Church desired to stand well with the governing classes. At the Reformation the theological movement was identified with the national, and this was not democratic. The king and the nobility promoted and led the insurrection against Rome, and there was no revolutionary disturbance of the previous social order. It naturally came to pass therefore, when the new ecclesiastical system was settled, that the Church was intertwined with royalty and aristocracy. It confessed its old obligation to bear witness against tyranny and injustice, but it taught submission to the ruling powers, and exhorted the lower classes-and à fortiori the humblest-to keep their place, and not to aspire to any share in the government of the realm.

But the lower classes have not been content to stay in their places. Whatever the Church has taught, democracy has advanced irresistibly. Privilege after privilege has been wrenched out of the grasp of the favoured classes; power has gradually descended by the steps of the social stairs, until it has joined hands with the vast class at the bottom. At the present time it is a confessed fact, whether we like it or not, that the working class, if it had peculiar interests and were unanimously resolved to promote them, might dictate the policy of the empire. It is beginning to be acknowledged as a rational principle, that in the organization and legal arrangements of society, whilst the good of the body as a whole should be sought, the most numerous and least fortunate sections have actually a better title to consideration than the rich and the few.

The proper effect of this change upon Christian theology is to awaken it to the re-discovery of its first teaching. It has never been wrong to declare that the New Testament is in favour of order. The authority and value of government for the securing of justice and the social well-being are plainly insisted on in its pages, and loyalty is one of the virtues it commends. But where does it say that society ought to be organized with a view to the greater happiness of the rich and few? Where does it say that they ought to have all the power and the poor to have none? Our Lord laid down emphatically that in his kingdom-that is, in Christendomthe justification of superior authority would be in its capacity to serve. "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister." Critics who look at the Gospel history from the modern point of view, tell us with much truth that Jesus proclaimed a social revolution in the interest of the poor. He certainly declared that

he was anointed to give good news to the poor, and to proclaim the year of Jubilee. The meek, he said, were to inherit the earth. He always expressed sympathy with the lower classes rather than with the rich, and what was much more than words, he lived with them as one of themselves. The first Christians were for the most part poor men, and one of their teachers speaks with strong feeling against the rich. "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, but the rich in that he is made low." St. Paul shows how men as Christians are raised or lowered to one level when he affirms that there is in Christ no distinction of Greek or Jew, of Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.

This witness in behalf of that which is properly human in all men as triumphing over distinctions of race and condition, is a theological doctrine which has always maintained its place somewhere in systems of Christian theology. But in past times there has been a sort of common understanding that it should not interfere with the actual relations of society. The progress of democracy asserts in another form the purpose of the Ruler of the world, that the lower classes shall not be regarded as existing for the greater honour and pleasure of the upper. We can now see a new power in the revolutionary doctrines of the New Testament. We still do not find its authors inciting men to rebellion; the principle of order remains a sacred one in their teaching. But we recognise it as a design of God, manifested in Christ, to interfere thoroughly and effectually with aristocratic assumptions. The principles laid down by our Lord and his followers, when once we accept them as intended to remodel society, are perceived to involve consequences by the side of which the aims of ordinary Liberalism look pale. Theology is now constrained to teach that, according to the mind of God, the one comprehensive function of the rich and great is to assist in the elevation of the multitudes.

3. The modern science of Political Economy has had frequent passages of arms with religion, and is still looked upon by many religious persons as thoroughly unchristian. It has acquired this character by marking with decided condemnation some habits which traditional Christianity had fostered.

One of these is almsgiving. "Give to him that asketh thee," said Jesus, "and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." This is only the earliest of a number of precepts by which practical kindness towards the needy and suffering is inculcated in the New Testament, as one of the most characteristic virtues of the kingdom of heaven. From the first days Christians set themselves to do what their Lord and his Apostles had enjoined. They sought to lay

up treasure in heaven by giving relief to the poor. Wherever they saw want and destitution they held themselves bound to give alms out of their greater abundance. Rich men, when their hopes or their fears were touched, were induced to give on a large scale; and great revenues were devoted in perpetuity to various modes of beneficence. It became evident by the time of the Reformation that the monasteries from which doles were prodigally dispensed drew about them crowds of lazy beggars, to whom it was more agreeable to live on alms than to work for their bread. Protestant Christians have continually had this warning before their minds and on their lips, and it has shown them that there is a danger in uncontrolled almsgiving. This much is generally admitted; and every one will acknowledge it to be an abuse of charity when sturdy mendicants are encouraged and enabled by the alms of the pious to lead a life of idleness. But that actual distress should be known to exist and the gifts of charity be withheld seems to most Christians a violation of the precepts of Christ, as well as a quenching of natural kindness. It must be right, they think, to give to him that needeth, and they will leave the consequences to God.

Another habit of the same category is that of marrying early and in trust. Religion has looked favourably on this habit. "God himself bade men be fruitful and multiply. Let young people who fall in love marry, or they may do worse. God will provide food for the mouths he sends into the world." Our Lord, it is urged, exhorted his disciples to a simple dependence on the heavenly Father who feeds the sparrows, and condemned anxious care about the morrow. To discourage early marriages on prudential grounds has been stigmatized by religious persons as a hard, godless, immoral policy.

As regards human life in general, it may be said that the industrial theory of it has been treated for the most part as a rival, if not as an enemy, by theological interests. The old traditional teaching of the Church represented it as the business of the Christian to prepare himself for the life to come. The things of this life were snares which he ought as far as possible to shun. The love of money was the root of all evil; it was extremely difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The man who accumulated wealth was a fool not to remember that at any moment his soul might be required of him. Medieval theology, in an uncompromising spirit, asserted the superior credit and reasonableness of a simply ascetic life. better that a man should renounce wealth, marriage, comfort, should withdraw himself from the occupations and interests of secular society, and devote himself wholly to the pursuit of salvation. Protestantism recoiled from such a condemnation of the present world, and its trumpet has given an uncertain sound on this question. But

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its attitude towards industrialism and secular civilization has been generally that of toleration and compromise. Its theology has recommended detachment from the world in the interest of the soul and its salvation. Life is still pictured as a pilgrimage through a trying wilderness to Paradise. But for various reasons of necessity and expediency Christians may accommodate themselves innocently and judiciously to the exigencies of this world. Making money is a thing of the earth, earthy; but money is a powerful instrument, and true Christians will not forego the opportunities it gives for promoting the cause of religion.

Economic science, by studying the facts which come within its scope and tracing effects to causes, has arrived at decided conclusions. on these points. Under its teaching we know now many things of which the best men were formerly ignorant. We see how carelessness is directly and inevitably produced by the chance of obtaining alms easily in time of need; and carelessness is the mother of idleness and sensual indulgence as well as of destitution. Benevolence on the part of the rich may create what the French expressively call la · misère; it has no power to remove it. Where there is a hard struggle for the means of living, to marry and multiply without thought of the future is the way to keep down to the lowest point the condition of the whole labouring class. The accumulation of capital by saving is the only means of providing employment; and he who makes a fortune and invests it does much more for the poor than he who gives away all that he receives to the neediest people about him. The science that establishes these conclusions points, as a matter of course, to certain rules of conduct. If you wish well to the mass of mankind, you will endeavour to check waste, to increase production, to encourage industry and forethought and self-restraint. You will be extremely cautious not to put temptations in the way of the poor, by which-weak as they are by nature and circumstance they may be seduced into thriftlessness. You will throw yourself heartily into the industrial efforts by which the fabric of material prosperity is built up.

This economic doctrine is perplexing to those who have received. the theological tradition. There is much in it of which they cannot but approve, but still the care of the soul, the trust of the believer in Divine Providence, the grace of charity, appear to be rudely jostled by the duties thus prescribed. But let Christians reflect upon their own proper aims, and inquire into the tendency of the habits which economy condemns to promote those aims. Then let them do justice to the higher and ultimate objects of the economists. They will find that the modern science convicts them of a fatal departure from their