r nation, and belongs to no
unique and visible church. Yet such an unity is a source of religious
insight. We have a right to use it wherever we find it and however it
becomes accessible to us. As a fact, we all use such insight without
following any one principle as to the selection of the historical
sources. Socrates and Plato and Sophocles are religious teachers from
whom we have all directly or indirectly learned, whether we know it or
not. Our own Germanic ancestors, and the traditions of the Roman
Empire, have influenced our type of loyalty and have taught us
spiritual truth that we should not otherwise know.

Moreover, that which I have called the cause of all the loyal, the
real unity of the whole spiritual world, is not merely a moral ideal.
It is a religious reality. Its servants and ministers are present
wherever religious brotherhood finds sincere and hearty manifestation.
In the sight of a perfectly real but superhuman knowledge of the real
purposes and effective deeds of mankind, _all the loyal, whether they
individually know the fact or not, are, and in all times have been,
one genuine and religious brotherhood._ Human narrowness and the {280}
vicissitudes of the world of time have hidden, and still hide, the
knowledge of this community of the loyal from human eyes. But
indirectly it comes to light whenever the loyalty of one visible
spiritual community comes, through any sort of tradition, or custom,
or song or story, or wise word or noble deed, to awaken new
manifestations of the loyal life in faithful souls anywhere amongst
men.

_I call the community of all who have sought for salvation through
loyalty the Invisible Church._ What makes it invisible to us is our
ignorance of the facts of human history and, still more, our
narrowness in our appreciation of spiritual truth. And I merely report
the genuine facts, human and superhuman, when I say that _whatever any
form of the visible church has done or will do for the religious life
of mankind, the crowning source of religious insight is, for us all,
the actual loyalty, service, devotion, suffering, accomplishment,
traditions, example, teaching, and triumphs of the invisible church of
all the faithful._ And by the invisible church I mean the brotherhood
consisting of all who, in any clime or land, live in the Spirit.

Our terms have now been, so far as my time permits, sharply defined. I
am here not appealing to vague sentiments about human brotherhood