a reaffirmation, in part a misinterpretation, of them. The altruism belonged to the reaffirmation, the anarchy to the misinterpretation.

Altruism must inevitably at last seek refuge from anarchy in authority. That authority cannot be found if Christianity is nothing more than a development of the moral tradition.

But Christianity from the first professed to be something far greater. It asserted itself as a new, and primarily a social, life. From the first the Saints have been in evidence, and their difference from others has just been the new life moulding the moral tradition, and gradually commending it to a reluctant world. The partial reception of the moral tradition is not per se the reception of the new life; wherever that is found in action, there is more than an improved moral tradition: there is a passion for righteousness, and for something called holiness, which is infinitely stronger and warmer than tradition. It is a new Group Mind striving to make good in society, through first making good in individuals; and the definition of it is found in St. John's Gospel, in St. Paul's Epistles, in the Holy Eucharist the central act of Christian worship—and in the patristic teaching gathered round it. It is Christ proclaimed as the Life of His Church.

It may be objected that both in the Johannine and in the Eucharistic teaching our Lord is represented rather as the life of the individual than as that of the Church. No doubt; but while this may be accounted for by the immediate practical aim of the teaching, it is impossible to suppose that the Johannine, the latest contribution to the Canonical Scriptures, regarded the life of the believer as something apart from the general life of the Church; and the jealous restriction of the Eucharist to those who remained in her communion implies the same thing. Our Lord is the Life of the Church, and therefore of the individual member. Nor does the doctrine of the Holy Spirit invalidate this teaching. "John of Damascus," remarks Professor Swete in his Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, "fairly represents the wide outlook of the great Greek theologians. The cosmic work of the Spirit is recognized, as well as His work in the economy of human salvation; and in regard to the latter, justice is done to the profound view that saw in the Incarnation nothing less than a divine scheme for the deifying' of human nature-the restoration of man to the image and likeness of God, which is mirrored in the Incarnate Son, and whick the Spirit of the Son reproduces in the regenerate life of His Body." This teaching, implicit along Johannine and Eucharistic lines of thought, is explicit in St. Paul, the earliest of Christian writers. Two of his epistles

set forth the local Church, one-that to the Ephesians-the Universal Church, as THE BODY OF CHRIST.

A body may be either a physical organism, of which the various portions mechanically obey the direction of the living mind; or it may be a social body, the unity of which consists in the submission, voluntary or coercive, of the living minds of the members to an ideal, a stimulus, a control emanating from the Group Mind. The Church is clearly of the latter class. It possesses all the characteristics noted by McDougall as belonging to such bodies. In particular, the power of raising the conduct of its members, especially in crises, above the normal level is in no other body so strikingly exhibited. Nevertheless, in one fundamental particular the group life of the Church is unique. That of an army or a nation is something developed out of the group, and, were the group dissipated, would automatically cease to exist. The Life of the Church first appears as an individual Life, inspiring a physical Body. Only through self-sacrifice unto physical death does It pass into a higher stage of existence, from which It gives Itself to be the living Group Mind of the Church. It is not developed from below; It is given from above by the operation of the Holy Spirit, Who conveys It. But when It reaches the Church, It has to subdue to Itself the individual minds of the members, and that not by coercion, but by persuasion. The powers of evil have waged a stubborn war against this process, and the divisions of Christendom have dimmed almost to extinction in many quarters the very consciousness of its character as a divine Group Mind striving to draw within its controlling influence the wills, the affections, and the intellects of all "who profess and call themselves Christians." It promises the perfect satisfaction of all these elements of human nature, and points back through the ages to an individual Life in Which they found their satisfaction; but human nature takes very long to combine into the perfect Group Life.

The final stage, the "divine, far-off event," in the history of the Church would seem to be the manifestation of a perfect moral tradition, not indeed innate, as that word is usually understood that is, not inherited through natural generationand yet not simply acquired, but in a sense innate through the new birth of Water and of the Spirit. This tradition, embracing a mode of group life, will possess an outward visible form to express it, and an inward spiritual power, which will make it no dead code, but a living force, by its intrinsic magnetism (so to speak) drawing wills, affections, intellects, into harmony with itself.

Some such group life the world, with its Boards of Conciliation and its League of Nations, is blindly endeavouring to evolve. The spectacle it presents at the present moment is that of many peoples deeply conscious that social life is far from perfect, and struggling to reach their unattained ideals; some willing to destroy all that has been hitherto won, and to start afresh from the beginning; some anxious to conserve what has been already gained, and by various expedients, political, eugenic, etc., purge it of its imperfections. It seems as if every path is destined to be explored which even looks as if it might possibly lead to perfection, before men wearily turn to take the gift so long held out to them. Only when they have convinced themselves, by mournful experience, that what they desire cannot be developed from below, will they have so far advanced as to be willing to receive it from above.

And yet the social experiments are anything but valueless. Men must develop from below in order to receive from above. If history has any lesson for us, it is that every form of spiritual power has to await its "fullness of time" for acceptance. Events lead up to it; premonitions of the wise put men on the outlook for it; the powder train is laid-it only awaits the spark. But that spark it cannot create. And nature tells the same tale. Matter must have reached an unique degree of sensitiveness when life entered into it and it became an organism; the living creature which first became conscious. must have been the most highly organized of the then existing species; and the first being into whose brain there floated the glory of spiritual vision must have been, the moment before, the king of those we call the lower animals. And the general trend of events by which one nation was prepared, through much experience of failure and disillusionment, for the lofty, monotheistic Faith of Judaism, and ultimately to be the starting-point of the world's redemption, no critical treatment of the books of the Old Testament can ever obscure. It seems, indeed, as if this world of ours were swimming in an infinite ocean of divine grace, wherein first one part and then another opens out to receive this or that element of the wondrous whole. God does not suddenly resolve to give; man becomes slowly fitted to receive. Perhaps only by comparison with all possible earthly approximations in group life will the human race be furnished with the knowledge and the sense of pressing need strong enough to stimulate the general will to accept that perfect Group Life so long manifested and offered to us, the Life of the Incarnate Christ energizing in the Church, and from the Church reaching out to draw all men-nay, all life-unto Itself. C. E. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.

MISCELLANEA

NOTES AND COMMENTS

MORE than once during last year the South African Alternative Liturgy was alluded to in these columns (cf. THEOLOGY, Vol. II., pp. 161ff, 208).

At the Episcopal Synod, held in November, 1921, and reported in the Church Chronicle dated December 1, 1921, the Bishops of the Province passed an Act revising the Alternative Liturgy by the excision of certain phrases which proved occasion of difficulty to many. "A widelysigned Memorial (they say) makes it clear that, if the phrases 'these sacred gifts and creatures of Thine Own' and 'that He may hallow this oblation and' were removed from the Prayer of Consecration, the alternative form would be generally accepted, and, as a result, would be more widely used, and thus tested"; and they decide, therefore, on the excision of the phrases referred to. The result of the excision is still to leave "the Memorial of the Holy Ghost in its normal position in the orderly sequence of the Canon," while avoiding a consecratory epiclesis.

The spirit in which both Bishops and clergy have approached and handled their task makes one hope that a similar charity and goodwill may prevail when the question is taken up nearer home.

We have received the following note concerning "The National Movement towards a Christian Order of Industry and Commerce." We gather that other movements with similar aims and on equally large lines are already in contemplation.

CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES IN BUSINESS.

Can Christian principles be applied to business? is a question being asked widely to-day. When we find that an affirmative answer is being given by men engaged in big business like Viscount Hambleden, Mr. Seebohm and Mr. Arnold Rowntree, and Mr. Angus Watson, one feels that the question is much more than an academic one. These gentlemen are the Vice-Presidents of the National Movement towards a Christian Order of Industry and Commerce, which has now taken an office at 24, Great Russell Street, London, W.C. 1. Mr. Sydney W. Pascall is Chairman of the Movement, and Sir Richard V. Vassar-Smith (Chairman of Lloyds Bank) is Treasurer, and the Council includes people drawn from such diverse walks of life as the wire industry, furniture-making, the wool trade, pottery, publishing, paper-making, confectionery, building, banking, education, and sausage-making. The names of Lord Robert Cecil, Mr. W. E. F. Macmillan, Miss Audrey Wedgwood, Miss M. J. Powell, Mr. George Garnett of Bradford, and Dr. Ernest Barker of King's College, London, will be noted. The defined aim of the Movement is "to rally men and women of goodwill engaged in the administration of industry, commerce, and the professions for the application of Christian principles to industrial, commercial, and professional life."

PAPERS FOR THE PRIESTHOOD

A.-DEVOTION

BY REV. W. B. TREVELYAN, FORMERLY WARDEN OF LIDDON HOUSE

IX.

AN attempt has been made in these brief papers to consider certain aspects of prayer in their bearing on the life of a priest. The subject is so deep and wide that, at best, only a fragment of it could be considered.

We have, however, seen that for a priest, whatever the nature of his work may be, prayer is essential. "Walk before Me," said God to Abraham, "and be thou perfect"; and a priest can accept no lower standard than this. If he is not, like Abraham, "the friend of God," he will never bring others to know or love Him.

Yet those of us who know practically what the daily demands on the time of a parish priest are, know also how great is the strain involved in maintaining so high an ideal. There are parishes in which, often (though not always) by no fault of his own, a priest's life is one long series of what we call "interruptions." Nothing can in such circumstances save a man from ineffectiveness, or perhaps from serious lapses, if he does not constantly strive to live near God; and that is impossible without prayer. But prayer demands real effort, and indeed not seldom necessitates the seeming neglect of outside calls as less essential.

Further, one of the chief demands made upon a priest by his people will, as time goes on, be for guidance in this matter of prayer. The priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth." His Offices, his Mass, his daily morning and evening prayers, his meditations, his intercessions-none of these can be lightly or without loss omitted. If he is to advise others in their difficulties, his own inner life must be right; otherwise vision, sympathy, joy, disappear, and in all probability" the hungry sheep look up and are not fed."

Many will remember the description in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean of the life of the early Christians: "Some transfiguring spirit was at work. . . begetting a unique effect of freshness, of grave yet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward world, was understood to set forth the veritable unction and reality of a certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, amongst the prerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom."

Perhaps it is just this that we need to-day. It may be the case that if there were more of this about us-this result of a vivid sense of nearness to God and of the Divine indwelling-we should attract others more to Him. Perhaps our religion to-day is a little matter-of-fact, formal, suburban, parochial. If there were more of the spirit of St. Paul's converts in us ("Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord "), we might satisfy and refresh, more than we do, those who are seeking rest and peace in a very drab, difficult, and anxious world. Possibly, a little more mystery and depth of a healthy kind, such as would follow from a keener sense of these inward things, would make a real difference.