an impression of the body of literature produced in recent years, in which it is assumed, sometimes with embitterment, that the centre of gravity of Christianity is outside the Church.  Sell, in the very title of his illuminating little book, Christenthum und Weltgeschichte seit der Reformation:  das Christenthum in seiner Entwickelung ueber die Kirche hinaus, 1910, records an impression, which is widespread and true, that the characteristic mark of modern Christianity is that it has transcended the organs and agencies officially created for it.  It has become non-ecclesiastical, if not actually hostile to the Church.  It has permeated the world in unexpected fashion and does the deeds of Christianity, though rather eager to avoid the name.  The anti-clericalism of the Latin countries is not unintelligible, the anti-ecclesiasticism of the Teutonic not without a cause.  German socialism, ever since Karl Marx, has been fundamentally antagonistic to any religion whatsoever.  It is purely secularist in tone.  This is also a strained situation, liable to become perverse.  That part of the Christian Church which understands itself, rejoices in nothing so much as in the fact that the spirit of Christ is so widely disseminated, his influence felt by many who do not know what influence it is which they feel, his work done by vast numbers who would never call themselves his workers.  That part of the Church is not therewith convinced but that there is need of the Church as institution, and of those who are consciously disciples of Jesus in the world.

By far the largest question, however, which is raised in this connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated.  It is, perhaps, the last question one would have expected the literature of the social movement to raise.  It is, namely, the question of the individual.  Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, to which the individual is sacrificed, has obtained.  Within the period of which this book treats the world has won an enlargement of horizon of which it never dreamed.  It has gained a forecast of the future of culture and civilisation which is beyond imagination.  The access of comfort makes men at home in the world as they never were at home.  There has been set a value on this life which life never had before.  The succession of discoveries and applications of discovery makes it seem as if there were to be no end in this direction.  From Rousseau to Spencer men have elaborated the view that the historical process cannot really issue in anything else than in ever higher stages of perfection and of happiness.  They postulate a continuous enhancement of energy and a steady perfecting of intellectual and moral quality.  As the goal of evolution appears an ideal condition which is either indefinitely remote, that is, which gives room for the bliss of infinite progress in its direction, or else a definitely attainable condition, which would have within itself the conditions of perpetuity.