faulty ideal of Christianity, which had
been tried for the greater part of nineteen hundred years and failed. The
theory of monasticism is that Christ died to redeem our carnal nature,
and all we have to do is to believe and pray. But it is not enough that
Christ died once. He must be dying always--every day--and in every one
of us. God is calling on us in this age to seek a new social application
of the Gospel, or, shall I say, to go back to the old one?"

"And that is----?"

"To present Christ in practical life as the living Master and King and
example, and to apply Christianity to the life of our own time."

The Prime Minister had not taken his eyes off him. "What does this mean?"
he had asked himself, but he only smiled his difficult smile and began to
talk lightly. If this creed applied to the individual it applied also to
the State; but think of a cabinet conducting the affairs of a nation on
the charming principle of "taking no thought for the morrow," and "loving
your enemies," and "turning the other cheek," and "selling all and giving
to the poor"!

John stuck to his guns. If the Christian religion could not be the
ultimate authority to rule a Christian nation, it was only because we
lacked faith and trusted too much to mechanical laws made by statesmen
rather than to moral laws made by Christ. "Either the life of Christ, as
the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing. If
something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's sake
let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!"

The Prime Minister continued to ask himself, "What is the key to this?"
and to look at John as he would have looked at a problem that had to be
solved, but he only went on smiling and talking lightly. It was true we
said a prayer and took an oath on the Bible in the Houses of Parliament,
but did anybody think for a moment that we intended to trust the nation
to the charming romanticism of the politics of Jesus? As for the Church,
it was founded on acts of Parliament, it was endowed and established by
the State, its head was the sovereign, its clergy were civil servants who
went to levees and hung on the edge of drawing-rooms and troubled the
knocker of No. 10 Downing-Street. And as for Christ's laws--in this
country they were interpreted by the Privy Council and were under the
direct control of a State department. Still, it was a harmless
superstition that we were a Christian nat