ds of men, must be read in the light of history and
experience, and interpreted by the signs of the times.

(2) The ground idea of Jesus' teaching was, as Troeltsch has pointed
out,[28] the declaration of the kingdom of God. Everything indeed is
relative to union with God, but in God man's earthly life is involved.
Two notes were therefore struck by Jesus, a note of individualism and a
note of universalism--love to God and love to man. These notes do not
really conflict, but they became the two opposite voices of the Church,
and gave rise to different ethical tendencies. The first religious
communities consisted of the poor and the enslaved. It never occurred
to them that they had civic rights: all they desired was freedom to
worship Christ. Not how to transform the social world, but how to
maintain their own religious faith without molestation in the world of
unbelief and evil was their problem.

(3) In the early Catholic Church the spirit of individualism ruled.
With the Reformation a new type of life was developed, and a new
attitude to the social world was established. But while Lutheranism
sought to exercise its influence upon social life through state
regulation, Calvinism was more individualistic, and sought rather to
{242} enforce its teaching by means of the personal life. The attitude
of the various sects--Baptists, Pietists, Puritans--has been largely
individualistic, and instead of endeavouring to rectify the abuses of
industrial life they have been disposed rather to suffer the ills of
this evil world, finding in faith alone their compensation and solace.

In modern times the tendency of the Church, Romanist and Protestant
alike, has been toward social regeneration; and a form of Christian
Socialism has even appeared which however lacks unity of principle and
uniformity of action. The mediaeval idea of a Holy Roman Empire, in
which all nations and classes were to be consolidated, is now admitted
to be a dream incapable of realisation, partly because the idea itself
is illusory, but principally because the hold of the Papacy upon the
people has been weakened. The agitation, 'Los von Rom' on the one
hand, and the 'Modernist' movement on the other, have tended to
dissipate the unity and energy of Catholicism. Nevertheless the
Church, which is really the society of Christian people, is coming to
see that it cannot close its eyes to questions which concern the daily
life of man, nor hold aloof from e