day. It has been influenced by their spirit, and it has, wherever its true functions have been exercised, exerted immeasurable influence upon their character.

3. Especially has the Church from the beginning been related to the State, in whatever form the latter existed in any country, in any period of history. No more than its Master can it escape that relationship. Slowly did it emerge through what we now call Christendom, as the one supreme organization of men whose ideal is to gather all the citizens of a nation, and even the citizens of all nations, into conscious mutual relationships of trust and love and service under its own inspiration and direction. Thus in its empire over the spiritual life it alone stands comparison with, and is vitally related with, the State in its empire over the temporal relations of men.

The ideal relationship of the Church to the State is somewhat simple of description, though the actual history has been extremely complicated. Its purpose, and where it is powerful its actual effect, is to stimulate the ethical ideals of the community as a whole, to purify the purposes of the government, to give energy to every political and social force that seeks to extend justice and mercy throughout the community, to encourage all efforts to elevate the entire life of the nation. It is under the influence of the Church that the very fact of

war has been brought increasingly under severe criticism and condemnation. If today men hate war, if they have ceased to consider, in most Christian lands, that it is a necessity of human life, if efforts have been made to moralize the methods of warfare between modern nations, these influences can be traced directly to the teaching and spirit of the Church of Christ. One of its most powerful and subtle influences is to be found in the fact that men who deny the claims of the Church yet cling to its ethical and social ideals as if these were primeval and indisputable possessions of the human spirit. But it is one of the glories of the Christian religion that its fundamental teachings about man have thus come to be accepted as if they were inevitable and inalienable. As a matter of fact, their meaning has been only laboriously discovered and their tenure of the human heart must always be insecure unless the force which revealed them also retains them in the hearts of men. Neither that discovery nor that tenure is yet complete.

4. Throughout the history of the Church it has always appealed to the New Testament, that is, to the teaching and example of Christ and His Apostles, as the primary and supreme interpreter of its nature and its task in the world. To these writings, the only writings of the ancient world that dominate the life of today, and that with ever widening influence, we must go for light upon

the specific question before us: What is the relation of the Church to the State when the State engages in war? First, we must try to discover something of the relations in which Christ set Himself towards the State, the organized life of the people among whom He lived and worked.2

In the first place, a close, study of the gospels reveals the fact that Jesus was involved in a struggle with Jewish political parties in the work of establishing His community. After vain dealings with the Jewish authorities themselves, there was nothing for Him to do but to draw to Himself individuals whom He gradually moulded into a distinct community. He established this community on a purely spiritual basis, releasing it from any relation to or dependence upon any political party in the land. This was a daring thing to do, and it cost Him His life.

But in the second place, a close scrutiny of His life and teaching reveals the fact that He was consciously creating His community with relation to the background of social organization. He did not attempt to draw His followers into a desert place to form a separate community. He left them in their natural human, social, and even national relations. His teaching has constant

2 This subject has been recently investigated in a work called "The Political Relations of Christ's Ministry," by Stephen Liberty, M.A. (University Press, Oxford), an original and penetrating study of the subject.

reference of a genial and positive nature to the world in which they live, the business life of an ordered community, the functions of judges, the homes from which His disciples came and to which they returned, the institution of the synagogue. These and other facts are present as accepted elements in the life of His community. He assumes that the community will continue in the midst of the world, hence His parables of the tares and of the good and bad fish brought to shore in the net. His very teaching concerning the nature and uses of wealth presupposes the continued activity of His disciples in their natural social relations. There is not the slightest suggestion of a separatist spirit in His teaching, so far as the relation of His community to the life of the whole people is concerned. Rather do we find that He treats as a matter of great personal grief the fact that He had been rejected by the city of Jerusalem, by the rulers and leaders of the people. He even prophesies that this rejection will have as one of its results the transfer of the power, which they greedily grasped and misused, to the hands of an alien power. He seems to have given full warning that the failure of the leaders of Israel to establish their community on purely spiritual lines, would mean not only the abolishing of their earthly power in whatever minor ways it still survived, but the loss of their spiritual destiny in the life of the race. As He

looks into the future He foresees the continuance of national history, nation fighting with nation, He sees His own disciples confronting the hostility of the powers that be, brought before governors and kings for their allegiance to His authority.

In the third place, it is of especial interest and importance to see how Jesus related Himself with the Roman Government, the de facto authority in Palestine. First, He avoided identifying His movement with any form of religious revolutionary method. This means that He accepted and understood that His disciples would live under the authority of the State in the form of the Roman Empire. Next, as we have already pointed out, He warned the Jews that the history of States is under the governance of God, and that the policy they pursued would decide whether He would continue them in authority or give that authority to others. Further, he accepted the Roman Government by entering into friendly relations with and approving the faith of men who were in the service of the State. People complained that He made friends of tax-gatherers, and it is one of the outstanding events of His ministry that He blessed the faith of the centurion. Now Thomas Barclay, whose "Apology" is recognized as one of the leading authorities among the Society of Friends, urges that there is no proof that the centurion on exercising this faith in Christ and receiving His blessing did not