The Lesson of History .137 



ing development of our time. And therefore it is that 

 the Church has failed to keep the hold which, as the 

 depository of the faith and dogma of the Christian 

 religion, it ought to have maintained upon the minds 

 and hearts of men. Fortunately the heart and mind of 

 the Master was one of such charm and attraction that 

 His teachings remain the greatest " power unto salva- 

 tion " among men, notwithstanding the failure of the 

 Church to apprehend the magnitude of its mission. 

 But at last it is awakening, and fortunately the youth 

 of the Established Church of England at any rate has 

 been aroused, and with all the energy of " eager hearts 

 and strong," by means of Students' Conferences on all 

 the needs of the times, are doing their utmost to 

 arouse the Church 1 to a full sense of its duties and 

 responsibilities. 



Lord Hugh Cecil, in a volume entitled " Conser- 

 vatism," adheres to the view that Christianity has to 

 do with the individual soul, and that states and govern- 

 ments are outside its jurisdiction. Their business is 

 doing justice, respecting the rights of property, without 

 investigating the methods of their acquisition. He 

 wants the individual rich man to respect the Gospel 

 injunction as regards his wealth, but the state has no 

 right in its own capacity to apply the Christian 

 standard or require sacrifices of the rich man which can 

 be said to penalise. A critic of this volume in the 

 " Westminster Gazette " gets to the root of the matter. 

 He says : " No state has adopted or ever can adopt 

 the non-ethical idea of property. So far as religion 

 enters into a community, it will enter into its state 

 policy. In some form or other the idea that the state in 

 the last resort has the right of controlling the property 



1 By " the Church," I mean the Church as by law established — 

 the Anglican Church in England, the Roman Catholic in Austria, 

 the Greek Church in Russia, and so on. Nonconformity has always 

 been much more alive to the needs and sufferings of the poor. 



