and it has found itself bound
hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a
curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now
enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders are
so constantly misleaders.

It is all due to the hoary temptation to try to get to one's end by some
sort of a short cut: "All these things will I give you if you will fall
down and worship me." Our Lord knew that Satan could not really give Him
the ends He was seeking; but His followers are constantly confident that
he can, and are therefore his constant and ready tools for this or that
party or interest. They sell themselves to monarchy or democracy, to
capital or labour, with the same guileless innocence of what is
happening to them, with the same simple-minded incapacity to learn
anything from the lessons of the past. There are no short cuts to
spiritual ends, and those ends can never be accomplished by secular
means. The interests of the Kingdom of God can never be forwarded by
alliance with the powers of this world; the interests of particular
persons or parties in the Church may be--but that is quite
another thing.

The lesson is one that is not without application to the individual
life. There again the tendency to mind something other than one's own
business is almost ineradicable. We have before us the work of building
our spiritual house, of finishing the work that the Father has given us
to do, of carrying to a successful conclusion the work of our
sanctification. In view of the experience of nearly two thousand years
of Christianity and of our own personal experience, that would seem a
sufficiently difficult and obligatory work to occupy the undivided
energies of a life-time. But we are accustomed to treat this primary
business of life quite as though it were a parergon, a thing to play
with in our unoccupied hours, the fad of a collector rather than the
supreme interest of an immortal being. That spiritual results are no
oftener achieved than they are can occasion no surprise when one
understands the sort of spirit wherewith they are approached. If the
average man adopted toward his business the attitude he adopts toward
his religion he would be bankrupt within a week,--and he knows it. You
know that the attention you are paying to religion and the sort of
energy and sacrifice you are putting into it are insufficient to secure
any sort of a result worth having. Spiritually s