ARIANISM AND MODERN THOUGHT. 149 
whole conception of the divine is softened and made humane, 
and suffused with a tenderness our fathers never dared to 
realise as we are realising it. The change is immeasurable 
when we come to this from the hard impassive God of Islam 
or Arianism—not to add of Rome and Geneva—who sits 
throned far off in selfish bliss, and has a glory of his own which 
is not the highest welfare of his creatures. 
In yet another direction the social development strikes at 
the root of all these Arianizing or Unitarian conceptions. The 
advance of the nineteenth century is shown not only in the 
changed: spirit of governments, but in the wider range of their 
action, and in the increasing attention they give to social 
questions. Administration was comparatively simple when it 
was chiefly occupied with the king’s wars, or with the security 
of hfe and property. But the modern state regulates factories 
and provides for the poor; it inspects slums and stamps out 
diseases ; it educates the young and pensions the old, regulates 
companies from the railways downward, and endeavours to deal 
with strikes and lock-outs. In all directions it cares for the 
destitute and the helpless, from the vaccination of infants to 
the supervision of criminals. No doubt much of this work is 
badly done, but there is not much dispute that it ought to be 
done, and that a good deal of it is best done by the state. And 
this is no passing fancy, but a steady trend of thought, most 
marked in the most civilised states. There is not much of it, 
I fancy, in Honduras or Afghanistan. The tide will not 
recede—we shall not leave the destitute to chance help, or 
cease to hinder infection. On the contrary, there is every 
sign that it will advance further. We have all been more or 
less of socialists ever since the Poor Law of 1835 firmly 
planted the principle of socialism in the state; and the 
practical questions which now divide us concern rather means 
than ends, for we all profess the utmost devotion to the social 
welfare of the nation. So we are, at any rate, all agreed that 
social questions are much more complicated and more urgent 
than they used to be. This means that the social element of 
human nature is being rapidly developed along new lines. 
Some think it bids fair to swamp the individual ; and though 
I do not believe this, it certainly plays a larger and a growing 
part in life. 
It is time now to show more precisely what all this has to 
«lo with Arianism. If, then, man has in him that spark of the 
divine which is theologically called the image of God—and he 
must have it if the universe is rational—then the social element 
