06

3. THE LORD'S PRAYER: TO WHOM ADDRESSED

4. THE LORD'S PRAYER: THE PETITIONS AND THE

5. THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES

6. CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY .

7. OPENING SENTENCES AND BENEDICTION

8. THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS

9. ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER

70

118

144

181

"The only infallible guardian of truth is the spirit of truthfulness."GEORGE TYRRELL.

"I looked forward, through the present age of loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic periods: unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical and political, require to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others."-JOHN STUART MILL.

"

'Perhaps in religion, as in politics, the age of the symbol is passing away, and a solemn manifestation may be approaching of the idea as yet hidden in that symbol."-GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam: purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms."— JOHN MILTON.

RSITY

FOREWORD

PROBABLY no generation of Christian life in any community has ever passed but that someone filled with its spirit has been led, upon occasion, to maintain that faith in Christ is and must be identical with faith in any and every phase of righteousness. A beautiful instance of such identification is found in an utterance of St Anselm. "In 1012, the Danes "-so Professor Gardiner tells the story

seized Aelfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, and offered
to set him free if he would pay a ransom for his life. He
refused to do so, lest he should have to wring money from
the poor in order to pay it. The drunken Danes pelted
him with bones, till one of the number clave his skull with
an axe. He was
soon counted as a martyr. Long
afterwards, one of the most famous of his successors, the
Norman Lanfranc, doubted whether he was really a
martyr, as he had not died for the faith. "He that dies
for righteousness," answered the gentle Anselm, "dies for
the faith" ; and to this day the name of Aelfheah is
retained as St Alphege in the list of English saints.

The teaching of this volume is based upon the principle

which lies at the heart of Anselm's utterance. The test that any man is living for God, for Christ, for the Holy Spirit, is his readiness to die rather than wring money from the poor or commit any other form of social injustice.

But if this be the test, there is no escaping the conclusion that righteousness itself is the only true and living God -that the only true and living God is nothing more and nothing less than righteousness.

The supreme revelation of our day consists in that insight by which the hitherto fleeting glimpse of the identity of righteousness with God is becoming the steady vision of a universal principle. But this revelation involves a train of further illuminations equal in value to itself. Inevitably follows from it, for instance, a perception of the identity of the sphere of righteousness with human society on earth. The end of religion, however inward, however spiritual, however mystical, is the perfection of families, cities and States, and the federation of nations.

This revelation of our day is dividing the professed disciples of Christ into three antagonistic camps. Those who follow the new gleam in perfect faith insist that the whole concern of religion is the establishment of social justice here on earth. By arousing protest, this new doctrine and the new agitation in obedience to it are driving into closer consolidation, as a second militant group, those who identify religion with the use of supernatural means towards some salvation of individual souls in a life beyond death. A third camp is organising itself which consists of those who, while touched by the new thought, still cling to the old. They maintain that the new emphasis of social justice and the new valuation of the family, the city and the State are wholly within the domain of religion, but do not constitute its entire sphere. The Church, they say, has perhaps at times sacrificed earth for heaven, but it need not now replace the motive of attaining salvation after death by that of perfecting the life of London; each motive, they would insist, may