e, partly
inseparable from the social order and partly superior to it. This
religion must provide not only sanctions, but ideals, for a perfect
social order in which, while the most complex organization of society
shall be possible, the freedom and the high development of the
individual's personality shall also be secured.

The fulfillment of such conditions would at first thought seem to be
impossible. How can a religion give sanctions which at the very time
that they authorize the fullest development and organization of
society, apparently making society its chief end, also assume the
fullest liberty and development of the individual, making him and his
salvation its chief end? Are not these ends incompatible? What has
been said already along this general line of thought has prepared us
to see that they are not. The great, though unconscious, need of the
ages, and the unconscious effort of all religious evolution has been
the development of just such a religion. As the "cake" of social
custom was at first the great need for, and afterwards the great
obstacle in the way of, social evolution, so the sanctions of a
communal religion were at first the great need for, and afterwards the
great obstacle in the way of, religious evolution and of personal
development. Through its sanctions religion is the most powerful of
all the factors of the higher human evolution, either helping it
onward or holding it back.

Has, then, any religion secured such a dual development as we have
just seen to be necessary? As a matter of fact, one and only one has
done so, Christianity. This religion clearly attains and maintains the
apparently impossible combination of individualism and communalism by
the nature of its conception of the method of individual salvation.
Its communalism is guaranteed by, because it rests on, its
individualism. At the very moment that it pronounces the individual of
inestimable worth,--a son of God,--it commands him to show that
sonship by loving all God's other sons, and by serving them to the
extent of self-sacrifice, and of death if need be. Its communalism is
thus inseparable from its individualism and its individualism from its
communalism.

Christian individualism embraces and includes thoroughgoing
communalism. True and full Christians are the most devoted patriots.
As the acorn sends forth far-reaching; roots into the soil for
moisture and nourishment, and a mighty trunk and spreading branches
upward