for air and sunlight, so the seed of Christian life develops in
two directions, individualism as the root and communalism as the
beautiful tree. They are not contradictory, but supplementary
principles. While his own final gain is a real aim of the individual,
it is only a part of his aim; he also desires and labors for the gain
of all; and even the individual gain, he well knows, can be secured
only through the communal principle, through service to his
fellow-men. His own welfare, whether temporal or eternal, is
inseparably bound up with that of his fellows.

The Christian religion finds the sanctions for any and every social
order that history knows, in the fact that all physical and social
laws and organisms are part of the divine plan. Because any particular
social order is the association of imperfect men and women, it must be
more or less imperfect. But the Christian, even while he is seeking
to reform the social order and to bring it up to his ideal, must be
loyal to it. And for this loyalty to fellow-men and to God, the
highest conceivable sanctions are held out, namely, an endless and
infinite life of conscious, joyous fellowship with souls made perfect
in the Kingdom of God, and with God himself.

A comprehensive study, therefore, of the real nature and the true
function of religion in relation to man's development, whether
individual or communal, shows that Christianity fulfills the
conditions. A comparative study would show that, of all the existing
religions, Christianity alone does this. It alone combines in perfect
proportion the individual and the communal elements, and the requisite
sanctions.

An expansion of communal religion is taking place in modern times. The
community now arising is international in scope, interracial and
universal in character. Cultivated men and women the world around are
beginning to talk of national rights and national duties. Europe is
thought to be justified in suppressing the slave trade and its
accompanying horrors in Africa, and condemned for not preventing the
Turk from carrying on his wholesale slaughter of innocent Armenians.
The Spaniard is despised and condemned for his prolonged inhumanities
in Cuba and the Philippines, and the American is approved in warring
for humanity and justified in interfering with Spain's sovereignty.
The conscience of the world is beginning to discover that no nation,
though sovereign, has an absolute right over its people. Right is onl