nance the view that we cannot
be Christians unless we are enthusiastic members of _some_ religious
corporation. Professor Royce seems to have been carried away by the idea
which prompted him to write his book; but a little thought about the
characters of his acquaintances might have given him pause.

The mechanical theory of devolution which assumes so much importance in
some fashionable Anglican teaching about the Church need not detain us
long. The logical choice must ultimately be between the great
international Catholic Church and what Auguste Sabatier called the
religion of the Spirit. The religion of all Protestants, when it is not
secularised, as it too often is, belongs to this latter type, even when
they lay most stress on the idea of brotherhood and corporate action.
For with them institutions are never much more than associations for
mutual help and edification. The Protestant always hopes to be saved
_qua_ Christian, not _qua_ Churchman.

A third question which must be asked is whether institutionalism in
practice makes for unity among Christians, or for division. Too often
the chief visible sign of the 'corporate idea' of which so much is said,
is the rigidity of the spikes which it erects round its own particular
fold. The obstacles to acts of reunion (which in no way carry with them
the necessity of formal amalgamation) are raised almost exclusively by
stiff institutionalists. The much-discussed Kikuyu case has brought this
home to everybody. But for these uncompromising Churchmen, Christians of
all denominations would be glad enough to meet together at the Lord's
table on special occasions like the service which gave rise to this
controversy. Anglicans are well aware that the differences of opinion
within their body are far greater than those which separate some of them
from Protestant Nonconformity, and others of them from Home. Allegiance
to this or that denomination is generally an accident of early
surroundings. To make these external classifications into barriers which
cannot be crossed is either an absurdity or a confession that a Church
is a political aggregate. A Roman Monsignor explained, _a propos_ of the
Kikuyu service, that no Roman Catholic could ever communicate in a
Protestant church, because in so doing he would be guilty of an act of
apostasy, and would be no longer a Roman Catholic. The attitude is
consistent with the Roman claim to universal jurisdiction; for any other
body it would b