, or
to merely moral ideals about what we merely hope that man may yet come
to be. And I am not for a moment committing myself to any mere worship
of humanity, so long as one conceives humanity as the mere collection
of those who are subject to the {281} natural laws that govern our
present physical and mental existence. Humanity, viewed as a mere
product of nature, is narrow-minded and degraded enough. Its life is
full of uncomprehended evils and of mutual misunderstandings. It is
not a fitting object of any religious reverence. But it needs
salvation. It has been finding salvation through loyalty. And the true
cause, the genuine community, the real spiritual brotherhood of the
loyal is a superhuman and not merely a human reality. It expresses
itself in the lives of the loyal. In so far as these expressions
directly or indirectly inspire our own genuine loyalty, they give us
insight. Of such insight, whatever you may learn from communion with
any form of the visible church, is an instance--a special embodiment.
The invisible church, then, is no merely human and secular
institution. It is a real and superhuman organisation. It includes and
transcends every form of the visible church. It is the actual subject
to which belong all the spiritual gifts which we can hope to enjoy. If
your spiritual eyes were open, no diversity of human tongues, no
strangeness of rites or of customs or of other forms of service, no
accidental quaintnesses of tradition or of symbols or of creeds, would
hide from your vision its perfections. It believes everywhere in the
unity of the Spirit, and aims to save men through winning them over to
the conscious service of its own unity. And it grants you the free
grace of whatever religious insight you can acquire from outside
yourself. {282} If you are truly religious, you live in it and for it.
You conceive its life in your own way and, no doubt, under the
limitations of your own time and creed. But you cannot flee from its
presence. And your salvation lies in its reality, in your service, and
in your communion with its endlessly varied company of those who
suffer and who in the might of the spirit overcome.

Let me tell you something of this life of the invisible church.

III

And first let me speak of its membership. We have now repeatedly
defined the test of such membership. The invisible church is the
spiritual brotherhood of the loyal. Only a searcher of hearts