Are

ago would have been thought so secular and so remote from the worship and service of Christ as baths and gymnasium and technical schools. It is within the memory of most people that collections. were made in church for little else than church expenses, and missionary and Bible societies, and relief of the poor. What is the meaning of this extension and alteration of the range of our religious almsgiving? Is it an upward step or a downward ? Are our aspirations deserting heaven for earth? we giving up eternal hopes, and saying that we must make the best of this world for ourselves and others? Or is it that we better understand how the physical, the artistic, the intellectual sides of human nature react on the spiritual; and that if we would aim at real progress in virtue and godliness, we cannot neglect, as a nation, any side of this many-sided creature, man? It marks a real change. It is a step upward or downward. Which is it?

I believe the answer to this is perfectly clear. It is an upward step. This development of the undying spirit of Christianity which we are witnessing marks an onward step in what we may call the application of the principles of Christianity to the national and world-problems which press on us now so heavily. I have not forgotten my text, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness." These are our Lord's words, and they stand eternally true. And we do not at once associate the kingdom of God with technical schools and winter gardens. Nevertheless, we must face the questions-What is the kingdom of God? What is righteousness? What are the paths toward it ? Are we quite satisfied that we, as a nation and

How are we to seek it?

as a Church, have sought it, and are seeking it, as wisely as we might? Have we grasped the whole problem which the Church of Christ has to face? It represents that element in man which touches on the ideal, the eternal, the divine, and it is therefore concerned with all that elevates and refines and purifies. Whole populations among us are dragged down by dulness, by the mere absence of healthy interests and inspiring emotions. Is it not the duty of the Church

to attack this cause of moral deterioration?

The truth is we are face to face with a problem greater in some respects than any which the Church has had to face before. It is not one of to-day, or of this year; it is one of the century, or of several centuries how to promote real worthiness of life under new conditions among the millions of whom our nation consists; how to prevent the formation of the vast "residuum," the failures of our civilisation and our Christianity. Our national wealth has increased, our political liberty has increased, our knowledge of natural laws has increased enormously; but our national virtue and intelligence have not increased pari passu. Can it be said that the worthiness of life, either among rich or poor, is greater among us than it was? And what progress, except progress in character and worthiness, is worth calling progress?

The meaning of such a phenomenon as the Beaumont Trust is that a conviction is forcing itself home on us as a nation that all attempts to make life freer and happier without elevating character are worthless and even mischievous. Side by side with this conviction is growing another-that character is the slow result of many conditions, of which religion is only one, though an indispensable one. There

will of course be Secularists who will point to the failure of religion to grapple alone with these new and great problems, and will discard it in their enthusiasm for other means. We are certain that they are wrong in this, though their error is but the exaggeration, as error commonly is, of an overlooked truth. Their error is that they would ignore man's highest nature. But we Christians, on our part, are forced to recognise that there are other conditions necessary to the development of character besides religion. The education of the human spirit is the nurture of a living germ; there must be a soil and climate in which it can grow; it requires light and food, and it requires many-sided culture. Thank God that the highest spiritual gifts and virtue can exist sometimes even under desperately unfavourable conditions, whether of luxury or want; God has His witnesses everywhere. But such exceptions do not disprove the rule. The aim of a Christian nation must be that all lives shall have the blessing of industry and of sympathy with others; and that no man shall be so debarred from the possibility of getting an education in body, mind, and spirit, as to prevent him from rising to the highest spiritual level of which he is capable; and this is less possible in the England of to-day than it was in the England of three centuries ago.

Therefore our Christian Church of to-day, which ought to be the very soul of the nation, the impulse and the guide towards all that is good, must give itself to these problems, and must work at the causes of these evils, and not only at their symptoms; it must prevent, and not only palliate. Where are the causes?

The ultimate cause is not in our laws. Naturally

to the Revolutionary Social Democrat, who is not profound enough to see that the existing relations of society are the outcome and product of national character, these relations are the cause of all evils, including the defective standard of human virtue; and he clamours for a social and political revolution, as if that would alter human nature. It is not our morality, or want of morality," says the latest and most systematic exponent of modern Revolutionary Socialism, "which makes our economic relations what they are, but our economic system which makes our morality what it is." This is but a superficial philosophy.

The causes lie deeper than this-in human nature, and its lusts and passions, in the meanness, the selfishness, the untrustworthiness, the ungodliness of men and women, and our resulting national habits as seen in London, West and East. These causes, stamped on the race by the terrible law of heredity, can be but slowly affected, and that only by a still mightier power-the Holy Spirit of God, inspiring men and women with Christ-like devotion and love to their Master and their brethren. For this power

can affect human nature itself can transform national character; and this is the root of the whole matter. This alone will make men fit to live under better laws. Of course the Christian Church takes as its ideal a Christian Socialism, in which all reap the fruit of their labour, and all labour for the good of others, as well as for themselves. Of course the Christian Church looks with hopefulness on co-operation as a training in virtue and brotherhood, and as a step towards a higher society. But it knows very well that the obstacle to co-operation is the lack of

national virtue, of common honesty, prudence, temperance, brotherliness; and that as national virtue grows it will register itself in national institutions and national happiness.

You may remember that John Wesley regarded at one time with much alarm the increasing prosperity of the poorer members of the Methodist Churches. He feared that it showed too great an attention to their worldly interests. It did not occur to him at first that prosperity is the natural result of the selfdenying care for their own families, the temperance, the self-respect, that are the Gospel's first practical lesson. What more practical, more convincing comment can be made on my text, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you "?

I have made these remarks because the inaction of the Church in promoting social reforming legislation in the interest of the labouring classes is often pointed at scornfully by Socialists. But her true work is in reforming people, not laws. The laws are the result of the people. And hence it is plain that if the People's Palace is a scheme likely to raise the tone and character of our people, it is a legitimate and rightful work for our Church to advocate.

There is one parallel in history to the present problem, from which the Church may get much guidance and hope, and non-Church people may get much instruction. It is the dealing of the primitive Church with domestic slavery under the Roman Empire. Here were masses of men similarly condemned to a lower level of life by an institution as universally accepted as are our present social relations, or want of relations, of rich and poor, of