nt by the few.

Thomas More foresaw prophetically a community which should realize the
loftiest vision, and whose bond should be human and social, not
theologic.

The Puritan tried to enforce the will of God, as he understood it, by
authority,--to build a commonwealth on Hebrew lines. He failed, in
England and America, but stamped his character on both peoples.

Then came the essay of the Quaker toward a reign of peace.

Next, the Wesleyan movement, quickening the English heart and
conscience, and sending the wave which did in a degree for the West of
America what Puritanism and Quakerism did for the East.

Then the uprising in France,--the passionate aspiration for "liberty,
equality, fraternity,"--at war with Christianity, instead of at one
with it like English freedom, and working great and mixed results.

We see the American republic, founded by a blending of hard common
sense, experience, devotion, and widening purpose, and best typified in
Washington.

In Lincoln the problem of the American commonwealth--to maintain unity,
yet purify itself--and the problem of a human life are both solved by
the old virtues, honesty, self-rule, self-devotion.

The present movement of the world is toward a nobler social order. It
is to lift the common man upward, on material good as a stepping-stone,
toward the height of the saint and seer. This is the better soul of
democracy, the noble element in politics, the reformation in the
churches, the bond of sympathy with Christ.

Along with this goes a new personal ideal, exemplified in
Emerson,--accepting the present world as the symbol and instrument of a
celestial destiny. "Contenting himself with obedience, man becomes
divine."

In the Gospel history, the figures of the woman and the child take a
high place. In Jesus himself the feminine element blent with the
masculine. Medieval religion and art found their best symbol in the
figure of the mother clasping her babe. Our modern time is giving
freedom to woman and recognizing her equality with man, and we are
learning that the secret of the world's advance lies in the right
training of children under natural law. So the sentiment which grows
up in the natural relations of life is elevated by religion, then
developed and perfected by freedom and by science.

For us the practical problem is the cultivation of the religious nature
along with the other elements of a complete manhood. We are not
obliged by intell