need of the Church been outgrown? So some would have us believe. We humbly but fervently protest. The separation of Christ and His Church in thought or practice is productive of much harm. To divorce the Bride from the Bridegroom does not make for righteousness, but does produce many spiritual orphans.

To be complete in Christ requires that we be completely in Him. We do not believe that any one can consistently claim to be in Christ who is persistently indifferent and even hostile to the Church. As some one said, "A man can be a Christian outside the Church, but not a very good Christian." The Church is divinely pledged to bring the life of Jesus into saving relationship with the life of the world. She is the manifest expression of the principality and power of which He is the Head. She is the chosen vessel by which God, through His Son, would pour forth His own divine life, that human life may become more divine and complete.

For completing the mind we have the school, for completing the body the gymnasium. Shall the Church be assigned an inferior place in the God-given task of completing the souls of men?

It is the great work of the Church to endeavor to personally relate the individual man in a personal way to the personal Christ, and to do this until every man shall make the service of Christ the business of his life, Christ's will his law, Christ's presence his joy, Christ's glory his crown. Thus the world's life will be saved, made whole, completed.

If "the Reformation in Germany was the spiritual biography of Luther writ large, a spiritual experience materialized in institutions and intellectualized in confessions," is it too much for the believing Christian to hope for a world-wide reformation and a complete Christianization through the compelling, constraining, consecrating power of Christ applied to the life of men and of nations. May we not indulge in the hope that even now the world at war is passing through the death-pangs of a new birth?

"It is clear," said President Wilson, "that nations must in the future be governed by the same high code of honor that we demand of individuals."

The completion of the world's life can not take place until the completing process of Christ's life permeates more fully the life of nations.

Henry Churchhill King, in his recent book on Fundamental Questions, tells of an international social gathering of the Y. W. C. A. of Boston. At the meeting some one said, Can we not sing something together? How can we, replied another, when we all speak a different language? But, suggested a French girl, the tunes are the same and there ought to be a tune we all know, even if we have to sing different words. Everybody knows "Holy Night," said a woman of large musical ability, born in Russia, of English and German parentage, and with near relatives in each of the three armies. She sat down at the piano and began to play the song. An American concert singer with a rare voice stood by and led. One after another the others joined, till French, Swiss, German, Austrian, Belgian, Pole, Russian, Italian were all singing together the same message to the same music but each in her own tongue.

If all the nations of the earth start from Christ, the nations will come into harmony, and out of the present discord will come the sweet concord of a new civilization. For that new

civilization we fondly hope and fervently pray. But that new civilization will only come and be complete and lasting when the nations of the earth shall be brought into universal peace under the banner of Christ and when human life and all nations and all governments shall have become more completely and genuinely Christian.

READING, PA.

IX.

APEX OR BASE?

BERNARD C. STEINER.

No problem of political science is greater or more difficult of solution than the establishment of a stable state. How shall men organize a government which shall endure? How may a nation become a permanent entity? How shall an end be put to the long roll of "empires" "of old that went and came"? Are the governments of the earth perpetually to be in a state of flux, as the philosopher of old time taught all nature was? Must each existing nation look forward to the prospect of some of Macauley's New Zealanders, considering the political organizations of to-day, as we look back upon Carthage and Tyre? These questions are not completely answerable, nor is the problem one which can accurately be solved, but it is surely of value to gaze back upon the past and see what a philosophic study of history may teach by examples from former times. The matter is all the more surprising and difficult, because men have again and again considered that they had established a stable state and that their workmanship would endure, yet a later age has seen the results of their efforts crumble into dust and oblivion.

Another cognate question also presses for solution. We may grant that no state may be assured of ultimate stability, that the seeds of disintegration may have been sown already in a political organization, though it seems strong and flourishing, that the biological analogy of youth, manhood, and old age is as true of the state as of the men who are its subjects or citizens. While we may admit this natural law in the political world, we would ascertain what form of governmental organization has most promise of permanence, and how the com

ing on of old age may best be postponed. If we dare not be dogmatic and say that thus and so may a permanently stable state be formed; nor prophetic enough to proclaim that any existing form of government, or any modification thereof, will endure as long as man exists on earth; we may at least make our guess, on the bases both of theory and experience, that certain ideas have more solidity and promise of permanence within them than others have. The great centripetal forces bringing men together may surely be applied, in some way or other, so as to offer the maximum possible resistance to the marvellously strong centrifugal forces, whose pull has been so strong as to disrupt the powerful states of the past.

Before we set forth any theory of a stable state, let us glance at some of the answers which men have given in the past to the question. We shall find that, just as Aristotle made certain basic divisions of forms of government, which classification modern schools have modified but not cast aside, so the ancient attempts to solve the problem of a stable state embrace almost all the main theories which are held to-day.

Half a dozen ancient nations made as many different attempts to establish a stable state. The Egyptians based theirs upon a hierarchy. They combined religion and government, placing power largely in the hands of a priestly class, who were the intermediaries between the common people and the gods they worshipped. For centuries, even for millenniums, this state continued, protected by the geographical position of the land, as well as by the careful organization of the people, but it finally fell before the march of Alexander's legions. Its success was possible only with an ignorant and superstitious people.

Assyria attempted to found an empire upon a military despotism and learned that, while a despot is one of the strongest of rulers, no one can secure an unlimited succession of strong despots and that such an autocracy has less promise of endurance than a hierarchy, where the college of priests is recruited from a group of families, rather than from one family

alone, and where, consequently, there is more probability of finding a succession of able men to administer the state. The Assyrian tried, by a policy of frightfulness and by an extensive use of deportation of the inhabitants from countries occupied by his army, to render his rule complete and his state stable. He abandoned the policy of a self-contained state, such as Egypt, and initiated the idea of a world empire. He failed, as have all his successors in this attempt. His pyramid of government was erected on too narrow a base. It balanced a while on its apex and terrified the earth, when Sennacherib came down like the wolf on the fold," but then it toppled over with a crash, foretold by the prophet Nahum. Who that has read them can forget his terrible denunciations and the absolute truth of their fulfillment! And it shall come to pass that all that look upon thee shall flee from thee and say: Nineveh is laid waste, who will bemoan her, whence shall I ask comforters for her?"

The Jewish solution seemed more hopeful. The state was to be a patriarchal theocracy with the Lord Jehovah as the ruler, but the people's religious life was not sufficiently steadfast, nor their moral life sufficiently high, to make the carrying out of the theory a successful one. The sad formula of the writer of Judges tells us of the failure, more clearly than any other writer has done. "The people served Jehovah all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of Jehovah that he did for Israel. . . . And there arose another generation after them which knew not Jehovah, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of Jehovah and served Baalim. . . . And the angel of Jehovah was hot against Israel and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about. . . . Nevertheless, Jehovah raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hands of those that spoiled them." Though they have been called a people with a "genius for religion" above that possessed by