SOCIAL RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE 461 



all kindreds and peoples and tribes are included in it. That kingdom 

 cannot come in its fullness to the most favored land until it has 

 fully come to the darkest corner of the earth; hence a new impulse 

 to Christian missions. And our sympathies and endeavors reach 

 not only outward to other nations, but also forward to other genera- 

 tions. We become interested in all that works the improvement 

 or deterioration of the human stock, and it becomes as easy to make 

 sacrifices for those who are to live five hundred years hence as for 

 those who live ten thousand miles away. Many men, calling them- 

 selves Christians, are as little concerned for future generations as was 

 Sir Boyle Roche when he asked the Irish Parliament: " Why should 

 we put ourselves out of the way for posterity? What has posterity 

 done for us? " But we see that the kingdom which Jesus preached 

 cannot fully come in the world, that the humanity for which he 

 lived and died cannot be fully saved, until the heredity of every 

 member of every generation gives to him the highest possibilities of 

 the noblest manhood, nor until the environment of every child born 

 into the world enables him to realize those possibilities; for the long 

 lines of descent which run through the ages are the warp in the great 

 loom of time, while ceaseless intercommunication is the swift shuttle 

 flying back and forth throughout the earth and weaving in the woof 

 of common interest, thus drawing close the countless individual 

 threads into one vast web of humanity. 



Furthermore, accepting the teaching of Jesus, that the kingdom 

 of God is the world redeemed, makes a new place in our religion for 

 the physical world. It is no longer regarded as a sort of necessary 

 evil, utterly foreign to the great spiritual realities, if not actually 

 hostile to them. It is now seen to be a component part of the 

 kingdom of God. We discover that spirit and matter are, in this 

 world, intimately related, and that each conditions the other. We 

 gain new respect for the human body, and perceive how noble and 

 necessary an object of endeavor is the physical perfection of the 

 race. We now find ourselves toiling to save not souls, but men. 

 Our ideal for the individual is not the highest spirituality, nor the 

 greatest intellectuality, nor the finest corporality, but all of these 

 united into the noblest manhood. 



With our new apprehension of the physical world as a part of the 

 kingdom of God, we accept the laws of nature as laws of that king- 

 dom. Science, therefore, which discovers those laws to us, becomes 

 another revelation from God, the teachings of which are to be eagerly 

 studied and conscientiously obeyed. 



Thus religion, under the influence of the social teachings of Jesus, 

 is expanded from interest and effort in behalf of a fraction of the indi- 

 vidual until it embraces all the interests of the whole world; and 

 instead of loosening its grip by fixing attention on " a land that is 



