(3) Finally the programme that centres all things in Christ visualizes humanity, 2.e. mankind viewed together as a whole. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a frontispiece te his famous book on political theory, depicting a vast Man made up of innumerable men. That vast Man he meant for the State in which their rights and powers are merged. St. Paul also, and long before in Ephesians, pictured a vast Man into whose stature we were socially to grow. But with the apostle it was not the state but humanity in which we are completed, and the vital organ of that Humanity was Christ.
That is the third conception on the strength of which human politics can be turned into a real programme. It is something to work for when each feels his relation to the whole, and serves the head through his fellow members. The final goal of Humaity, the harvest-home of creation, is peace, and this idea has recently been presented to us by a speech from the late Premier of Great Britain to Free Church leaders, by a sermon of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the League of Nations, and a manifest of Dr. Jowett to the Churches in general.
What are we to say to this, and how can we take up this crusade when we see forces on the horizon that are merely nationalist or racial, and, as in the case of the Turks, find sanction for violence even in their religion. It is obvious that peace cannot be enacted in these circumstances by a Tsar or even by a Conference. It is a case of a step ata time. And surely the first thing to build is the comity of Christendom. So long as Christian nations are armed against each other it is futile to talk of a World peace.
Christendom must be united first, and that can only be accomplished. as it seems to me, by an international Church that has no interest in state patronage or designs on temporal power—a free Church in a fettered world. United Christendom would be safe against the world with a stall combined army. and that army need only operate on behalf of the oppressed.
But not a step will be taken in this direction until the Church aeccopts the clear programme of Humanity which is lit up by the name of Christ. There is a certain rivalry between the social and the individual gospels, and neither of itself is sufficient. What we want is an organic gospel which has its roots in the converted soul and its fruits in a redeemed humanity. That human programme is the divine harvest. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the Harvest that He will send forth labourers into His Mrs. Grover Cleveland, wife of the former ex-president of the United States, is now in Japan. She is now Mrs. Preston of Princeton, New Jersey, having married a professor in Princeton University.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.