266 RELIGION 



religion, a foreign invasion to be followed by international peace; it is 

 itself a part of the religion. The detachment of political inexpedi- 

 ency from religious ideals is the gravest indictment which can be 

 made, not so much against the politics as against the religion of a land. 

 In beginning the biography of Gladstone, Mr. Morley calls attention 

 to the essentially religious character of this great political career. 

 " He steadfastly strove," says his biographer, " to apply the nobler 

 moralities of his church to the affairs of his own nation and of the 

 commonwealth of nations. . . . Well was it said of him, ' You have 

 so lived and wrought that you have kept the soul alive in England.' 

 That is the expansion of religion for which modern politics waits. 

 The highest problem of the statesman is to keep the soul alive in 

 his own nation and in the commonwealth of nations; and this, which 

 is political greatness, is at the same time the largest expression of 

 religion. 



Such, then, is the call of the twentieth century to the religious life. 

 Other centuries have been preparing the way for this expansion. 

 Never before could the world of industry and politics be surveyed 

 as one world, or the movement of the ages invite religion so urgently 

 to a new enlargement of its sphere. Yet shall we speak of this ex- 

 pansion of religion as a new ideal? On the contrary, this conception 

 of the unity of the world and this spiritual interpretation of its affairs 

 was precisely the vision which lay before the mind of Jesus Christ 

 in his teaching concerning the kingdom of God. Involved in 

 Oriental imagery as his thought inevitably was, and directed at one 

 time toward present circumstances and at another toward an ideal 

 future, the fundamental note of the teaching of Jesus was his faith in 

 the possibility of a consecrated world, when the will of God should 

 be done on earth as in heaven, and out through all the circles of 

 human association should radiate the controlling power of the con- 

 sciousness of God. How distorted and shrunken has been at times 

 the thought of the Church concerning the kingdom of God! The 

 largeness of the purpose of Jesus has made it inconceivable to a 

 shut-in world. He has been thought to proclaim an ecclesiastical 

 organization, or an internal experience, or a glorious future in heaven 

 for the saints, and it is quite true that all these aspects of the king- 

 dom issue legitimately from his teaching. It seems to have been 

 reserved, however, for the present age to appreciate the dimension 

 of the kingdom of God. The unity of the world is a prerequisite 

 for the recognition of the scope of religion. Social organization, 

 industrial combination, political concentration, - - these great events 

 of the last century prepare us to discern, as it has been disclosed to 

 no other generation in Christian history, the vision which dominated 

 the mind of Jesus of a whole world --its homes, its business, its 

 politics, its personal hopes and fears - - penetrated and spiritualized 



