suppress freedom in religion were to suppress it
in life, to paralyze that individual initiative which was the secret of
their advancement.

The new Church Universal, then, would be the militant, aggressive body
of the reborn, whose mission it was to send out into the life of the
nation transformed men and women who would labour unremittingly for
the Kingdom of God. Unity would come--but unity in freedom, true
Catholicity. The truth would gradually pervade the masses--be wrought
out by them. Even the great evolutionary forces of the age, such as
economic necessity, were acting to drive divided Christianity into
consolidation, and the starving churches of country villages were now
beginning to combine.

No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization
of the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his
gift, teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers
of sick and despondent souls. But the supreme function of the Church was
to inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind. If she failed to inspire,
the Church would wither and perish. And therefore she must revive again
the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift
was given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole
country-sides.

But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
come? Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
must be born. Reborn,--that was the word. Let the Church have faith.
Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East
and out of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce
fearlessly the shortcomings and evils of the age. They had not failed
in past ages, when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference,
and darkness. And they would not fail now.

Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
defined personality as a conscious relationship with God. "All truth,"
he had said, "comes to the world through personality." And down the
ages had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities. Paul, Augustine,
Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips
Brooks, whose Authority was that of the Spirit, whose light had so