ome from conscious fellowship with God. If she ever
needed inspiration, she needs it now. If there ever was a time when she
could dispense with the divine guidance and grace, that time is not now.
The churches which desert the places of prayer, and think to substitute
the wisdom of men for the power of God, are not going to give much aid
in this struggle.

"It must be claimed," says one, "on behalf of the passion for God, that
where it exists it will--automatically, as has been said--set charity,
love, all sweet graces of philanthropic activity, into quick and
ceaseless play.... If the emphasis of religious thought be made to fall
upon the idea of life, this cannot fail to be; for to have the divine
life is to be possessed of and to give out the divine love.... The
regeneration of human society is found to come from the dominance of
spiritual passion, even though it be not the first thing on which
spiritual passion is set; the saint will be--just because he is a
saint--a philanthropist too, since a true sainthood must number love
among the graces of character it brings. It is a fact--one has to make
the sad admission--that religious people, professedly spiritual men and
women, have been and still are in some cases eaten through and through
by selfishness; these are those who, so that they can declare heaven to
be their own, have no care for the present hell in which so many of
their fellows spend their days and years. But that is not because they
are too deeply immersed in the passion for God,--it is because they have
not really immersed themselves in its flood. And in claiming for a
Godward passion the regulative and supreme place among the elements of
life, we do but secure a fuller tenancy among those elements of a
manward love; for the nature which sets itself to receive the whole of
God will, ere it knows it, and as an automatic effect of the new life it
wins, give itself to its brethren in their need. For God is love, and he
must dwell in love who dwells in God."[27]

We may hesitate to say that when the passion for God is the only thing
aimed at it is bound to result in social regeneration; there are too
many facts which prove the contrary. The aim must always include both
the Godward and the manward obligations; the first and the second great
commandments are of equal rank; what needs to be insisted on is the
impossibility of divorcing them.

The church which seeks the redemption of society cannot, then, dispe