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claimed the sanctity of the home, that enjoined the duty of the strong to support the weak. The tares indeed grew in rank luxuriance, threatening often to choke the wheat, but the wheat remained-pure grain and wholesome-in the midst of manifold corruption.

CHAPTER VI.

NATIONAL CHURCHES AND THEIR SOCIAL WORK.

LOOKING beyond the limits of Palestine, and far away into "dim and distant courses" of the future, our Lord contemplated other sheep than those of the Jewish fold, whom to bring, He declared, was the necessity of His mission, in order that, hearing His voice, they might be made partakers of His grace, and in their several folds-i.e., the varieties of their estate-might be comprehended in one world-wide and worldwithout-end flock, under the guidance of Himself, the one universal Shepherd.1 The ideal of the Christian brotherhood which He thus presents is a catholicity which allows ample scope for diversities. St Paul gives another form to the conception of his Master when he says that in the new humanity which Christians "put on," "there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free1 St John x. 16.

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man, but Christ is all and in all." The point of his assertion is, not that the distinctions which he indicates are obliterated, but that, in the large and charitable air of Christianity, they are no longer causes of separation; they are only as the differing tones which blend in noble music, the discords which they once denoted having been quenched by the "meeting harmonies" of the Gospel, which has made peace between Jew and Gentile, and revealed the Christ of God as the Redeemer and Head of mankind. For there are affinities of race and blood, rooted in the nature of things, that link peoples together in special intimacies, forming climates of thought and feeling by which all are subtly affected. To ignore these affinities, is impossible; to make room for them, permeating them at the same time by the Spirit of the Lord, and subordinating them to the accomplishment of the ends common to the whole Christian society, is the secret of a truly catholic community. The vision of the Church triumphant that thrilled the heart of St John was that of "a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb."1 National, tribal, language, variations are recognised; but 1 Revelation vii. 9.

National Diversities,

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they are the elements of the eternal unity, the notes that are harmonised in the great voice of praise, "Unto our God Who sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb."

In the fluid period of the Church's history, there was no difficulty in combining national and tribal diversities with the idea of the one Church. For the unity then was spiritual rather than ecclesiastical. There was the "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all." It was enough that those who believed were baptised into Christ and remained steadfast in the "apostles' teaching. and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers." They formed companies, separated, by their faith and worship, from many of the religious observances and social customs of the civic societies that constituted their environment, yet otherwise maintaining the relations of citizenship towards these societies. But, as the ages progressed, complications ensued. The government of the Church, as we have seen, was gradually consolidated on lines in many respects parallel to those of the Empire. From the ninth century, when the supremacy of the Roman See was complete, the tendency was in the direction of a uniformity of rule and ritual with which local 1 Ephesians iv. 5, 6.

2 Acts ii. 42,

and national differences were apt to collide. By its insistence on religious unity, Christianity had always opposed Polytheism, with its many gods and many rites, but, in the earlier days, elasticities, in the details of discipline, were not regarded as inconsistent with the truth of an essentially spiritual unity. In proportion as the government of the Church became oligarchical, and finally monarchical, these elasticities were discountenanced as incompatible with the solidarity of the ecclesiastical system.

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Along with this Church development, we observe a change in the plan of the Church's aggressive campaign. The more primitive Christianity aimed at the conversion of individual souls. The working of the faith was often from the base upwards. "God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that He might put to shame the things that are strong." But, in later missions, the object was to reach the head of the tribe or nation, to secure his adhesion, and then through him to win the people to the adoption of the new way. And two consequences resulted. The one, that ancient customs remained, with at least a certain potency, in the nominally Christian community. The policy of the Church 1 I Corinthians i. 27.

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