The "Challenge" gives an inter ing report of a recent Conference called by the Bishop of Southwark to discuss the Church's place in national life" Some of the remarks of the Rev. W. Temple are well worth quoting. He stated that one main reason why the Church had not been able to take that place which they should expect the Church of England to be able to take was that they had been too limited in their outlook.
Too impression generally in the world was that the Charch existed primarily for the development of the spiritual of its own members. It must show itself as existing for the benefit of others. The war had called out a capacity for self-surrender such as the Church had not deen sble to call out because it had not offered the people n cause large enough for a man to give his life for. But the Church was the body of Christ, Who came into the world to give His Life for the ransora of many. Its whole Principle must be the principle of self. giving, finding ita own life and its own ultimate salvation, and therein the and salvation of all ite members precisely the process of forgetting all about it.
Continuing, Mr. "Temple said: What was it they were mainly concerned about in this war? Surely they were now mainly fighting to resist the doctrine which appeared very largely to dominate Germany—namely, that the national state ughest thing in the world, and beyond itself. and were cot to the doctrine that the nation existed 40 serve something beyond iteclf. What. was that? There was no claimant for that position except the Kingdom of God. "All the circumstances of the war wore surely call from God as clear an any call that had ever been heard in the course of history. Whether we liked it, or not we were responsible for the honour of El before the world, and it was still true, aa it was true of Tarael when St. Paul said, "The Name of God in blasphemed among the gentiles because of you.""
What was it as followers of Christ the people were responsible for in the The British Empire wae an entirely new kind of fact. There had never before been in the world such an association of free States. The Germans noticed at the beginning of the war that we hold this Empire with a very light grasp, and they thought that if they shook our hand it would tumble out.
But they found that we were not holding on to the Empire, but that the Empire was holding on to us. There had never before been an Fmpire so built on freedom. Freedom was also the basis of the divine kingdom. No one was forced into that kingdom, all were to be drawn And so there inship between this strange thing with which God had entrusted us, and which we called the British Empire, a kinship between it and the very Kingdom of Christ. In spite of all our sins snd shortcomings there was that kinship, and the fact constituted great call to the Church to get an empire outlook, to be less parochial, and to think alwava of the world-wide Kingdom of God. Then she would be able to assy to the nation, to the men who were
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.