er unity. In our
Imperial destiny it is the part of those who would be the greatest to
become the servants of all.

Thank God for all who have laboured in this spirit to build our goodly
heritage.

UNITY BETWEEN NATIONS

By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.

In the previous lectures of this course you have been considering the
problem of home reunion. My task to-day is to remind you of the fact
that beyond the reunion of the Churches at home there lies the larger
problem of the realisation of the Christian ideal of a universal
brotherhood. How can this ideal be realised in a world divided into
nations? I am going to treat the subject historically; firstly because I
find myself incapable of treating it in any other way, and secondly
because you can only build securely if you build on the foundation of
the historic past. The State may ignore the lessons of the past, the
Church can never do so.

How can we deal with the apparent antagonism between the centrifugal
force of nationality and the centripetal force of the Catholic ideal?
There are two possible answers that we cannot accept. It is possible for
religion to set itself against the development of national life, and
claim that a world-religion must find expression in a world-state. That
is the mediaeval answer.

Or it is possible for religion to become subordinate to nationality at
the cost of losing the note of Catholicity, so that the consecration of
national life may seem a nobler task than the gathering of humanity into
conscious fellowship in one great society. This is the modern answer.

With neither of these solutions can we be satisfied. The existence of
nations as units of political self-consciousness within the larger life
of humanity does, we believe, minister to the fulfilment of the purpose
of God. Whatever may be the case hereafter, the establishment of a
world-state, at the present stage in the evolution of human
institutions, would mean the impoverishment of the life of humanity. Yet
a Church that is merely national or imperial has missed the true
significance of its mission.

At the beginning of the Christian era, the greatest attempt ever made to
gather all peoples into a universal society was actually in progress.
The Roman Empire was founded on the basis of a common administrative
system, and a common law--the _jus gentium_. It needed a common
religion. The effort to supply this passes through three stages. The
earliest of these