r likely
to be a popular creed. As surely as the presence of high spiritual
instincts in the human mind guarantees its indestructibility, so surely
the deeply-rooted prejudices which keep the majority on a lower level
must prevent the Gospel of Christ from dominating mundane politics or
social life.

Moreover, the actual extent of its influence cannot be estimated. The
inwardness and individualism of its teaching make its apparent
effectiveness smaller than its real power, which works secretly and
unobserved. The vices which Christ regarded with abhorrence are
perversions of character--hypocrisy, hard-heartedness, and worldliness
or secularity; and who can say what degree of success the Gospel has
achieved in combating these? The method of Christianity is alien to all
externalism and machinery; it does not lend itself to those
accommodations and compromises without which nothing can be done in
politics. As Harnack says, the Gospel is not one of social improvement,
but of spiritual redemption. Its influence upon social and political
life is indirect and obscure, operating through a subtle modification of
current valuations, and curbing the competitive and acquisitive
instincts, which nearly correspond with what Christ called 'Mammon' and
St. Paul 'the flesh.' Christianity is a spiritual dynamic, which has
very little to do directly with the mechanism of social life.

It is, therefore, certain that when we speak of Christianity as a
factor in human life, we must not identify it with the opinions or
actions of the multitudes who are nominally Christians. We must not even
identify it, without qualification, with the types of character
exhibited by those who try to frame their lives in accordance with its
precepts. For these types are very largely determined by the ideals
which belong to the stage through which the life of the race is passing;
and these differ so widely in different ages and countries that the
historian of religion might well despair if he was compelled to regard
them all as typical manifestations of the same idea. There are times
when the disciple of Christ seems to turn his back upon society; he is
occupied solely with the relation of the individual soul to God. These
are periods when the opportunities for social service are much
restricted by a faulty structure of the body politic; periods when
secular civilisation is so brutal, or so servile, that the religious
life can only be led in seclusion from it